Skeleton Dance

by Aaron Elkins

  She covered his hand with hers. "I know. You're right. I think so too." She shook her head. "It just seems so… impossible."

  "Jacques was the most senior member of the institute, you see, and Ely was the most junior and kind of a loose cannon besides, a firebrand, the sort of guy who attracted controversy without trying."

  "Then why was he appointed? And come to think of it, why wasn't Montfort in the running? You'd think he'd be the obvious choice."

  "He was. It was offered to him more than once. He turned it down—just not interested in that end of things. As for why Ely got it—" Gideon hunched his shoulders. "—I'm not sure. Could be because he was an American, and it'd been a while since the last time there'd been an American director. Whatever the reason, he's the one who got it, even though most people figured it was bound to go to Jacques as a matter of course."

  "And so you think…?"

  "I think that with Ely gone… it did."

  "Oh." It was Julie's turn to begin toying with her cup.

  "What is it?" Gideon said.

  "Nothing, but as long as we're rat-finking on our friends, I might as well get into the act too." She sighed; her mouth turned down at the corners. "Lucien might want to give some thought to Pru as well. She had a possible reason for wanting Ely dead. She told me at lunch."

  "Their affair, you mean. Yes, I suppose that's always—"

  "Affair, what affair? No, I mean, about his firing her."

  "Firing her? Ely fired Pru? She never told me that."

  "Well, laid her off. Practically as soon as he was in the director's chair."

  "It could have been on account of their affair," Gideon mused. "To get rid of her, if he was tired of it."

  "What affair, damn it? I don't know about any affair. All I know is they needed to make some financial cuts, some position had to be eliminated, and Pru was the one who got the axe."

  "Well, she would have been the least senior."

  "After Carpenter himself, you mean. Anyway, if he was trying to get her out of his hair it didn't work, because she hung around Les Eyzies and supported herself as a cave guide until Jacques re-hired her."

  "And when was that?"

  "Right off the bat. I guess he had more pull with the foundation, or maybe they found some more money somewhere, because the very first week he was on the job he not only put Pru back on the payroll, he brought on a full-time, hotshot secretary from Paris instead of the student part-timer they'd had before."

  "Madame Lacouture," Gideon said with a smile. "And his life has never been the same since." He gestured inquiringly at the empty coffee cups, and at Julie's nod he signaled Madame Leyssales for more.

  "Altogether I think Pru was out three or four months in all." Julie twisted uncomfortably in her chair. "Look, Gideon, the only reason I'm bringing this up is that it would be stupid to avoid mentioning it to Lucien, but not for a single minute do I think there's anything to it. There was absolutely no sign of resentment there; none. We were just telling each other our life stories—abridged versions, obviously—and she happened to mention it, that's all."

  "But what you might not know is that everybody but Pru has a permanent outside appointment for the seven months a year the institute's not in session. Pru's never latched on to a tenured university position, and as near as I can tell she spends the off-season traveling—Europe, Africa, Japan—on the cheap, I mean: pensiones, b-and-b's, ryokans, that kind of thing. Sometimes she latches on to a temporary job at a dig somewhere, but those are few and far between."

  "So?"

  "So Pru, unlike everybody else at the institute depends on her institute stipend to keep body and soul together. Unless, of course she has some independent income, about which I wouldn't know—but if she doesn't, then getting laid off would have had to be a serious blow."

  "And you're suggesting she might have been so upset that she killed him over it?"

  "Don't sound so incredulous. I'm just saying pretty much the same thing I was saying about Jacques, namely that when Carpenter was appointed she lost something important to her… but when he was killed she got it back. It's worth keeping in mind, that's all. Hey, aren't you the one who brought this up?"

  The coffees came. Julie added a little cream to hers, bringing a discreet sniff of disapproval from Madame Leyssales—except for their morning cafés au lait, the French held to the belief that coffee should be taken black.

  "Yes, but the more I think about it," Julie said, "the less likely it gets. Why would she be crazy enough to mention getting laid off to me if she'd murdered him over it, or if it even crossed her mind that someone might eventually think she had?"

  To create precisely the impression of innocence she had, in the event that Carpenter's murder was eventually discovered, thought Gideon, but there was such a thing as getting too rococo and he had the feeling that they'd just about reached that point, or perhaps passed it a while back. Besides, although he'd managed to hold off the after-effects of his concussion all day, his head had begun to ache—all this heavy thinking—and he was beginning to sorely feel the need to lie down.

  "You're right about that," he agreed, swigging down the two tablespoons or so of coffee in the tiny cup and wishing he'd remembered to ask for decaf instead. "We'll pass all this on to Lucien—he'll probably laugh—but I vote that we return to our previous hypothesis."

  "Agreed," said Julie. "The Theory of Interconnected Monkey Business is hereby officially re-invoked." She stood up. "Let's get you to bed before you fall out of your chair."

  "Still awake?" she asked.

  "Uh-huh," Gideon said, not sure if he was or not. He'd been lying on his back, not his usual position for sleeping, and staring at the occasional reflections of headlights shimmering across the dark ceiling.

  "Can I ask you a question?"

  "As long as it doesn't require actual thought."

  "Why didn't you tell me that Pru had an affair with Carpenter?"

  "I didn't see that it had any connection to the murder. Anyway, I only found out about it myself this morning."

  "That's right, this morning. And we spent most of the afternoon walking around Préhistoparc, and then got all the way through dinner before you mentioned it, and even then it was accidental."

  Gideon yawned. "Well, it didn't seem pertinent to anything, so why talk about it?"

  "Boy, Julie said wonderingly, turning onto her side and away from him, so that Gideon automatically nestled snugly in behind her, fitting himself to her, his arm across her waist.

  "Boy, what?" he breathed into her hair.

  "Boy, men are sure different from women."

  Chapter 18

  For Lucien Anatole Joly, the next morning got off to a bad start. When he went downstairs, slippered and sleepy, to his front door for the breakfast delivery, he found in the bakery sack four puny marzipan cookies instead of his customary robust brioche and two croissants. This after six-and-a-half years—2,000 mornings!—of receiving exactly one brioche and two croissants, no more, no less, day in, day out, every morning of the week but Sunday.

  Then, over this dismal meal (was it possible that some deranged person had actually ordered marzipan cookies for breakfast? Was he even now looking with shocked displeasure at Joly's brioche and croissants?) his wife Josette told him that her insufferable younger brother Bernard (he of the semiconductor empire), along with his wife Rosamond (she of the most piercing laugh known to humanity) and their unspeakably precious twin girls would be spending Christmas week with them yet again. Five days, four nights, God help him.

  And when he reported briefly to his office at Police Nationale headquarters in Périgueux, Madame Fossier had even worse news: the juge d'instruction appointed to oversee—i.e., hinder, impede, and generally foul up—his investigation of the Carpenter case was Chauzat, the ignorant, interfering busybody Chauzat, from whom getting a simple search warrant was like pulling six teeth.

  Thus, by the time he arrived at Marielle's office in the Les Eyzies mairie
he was in no mood for further annoyances, but annoyances there were. It was in the prefect's office, which Marielle had grumblingly turned over to him for the day, that he was to meet with the professional staff of the Institut de Préhistoire, preparatory to interviewing them individually. His original intention had been to interrogate them in their own offices, but he had decided the walls of the cubicles were too flimsy for confidential conversation. Instead, he'd requested the director, Jacques Beaupierre, to ask them to report to the mairie, two blocks away, at nine o'clock in the morning.

  At 8:55, therefore, Joly was seated behind Marielle's handsome teak desk in Marielle's high-backed, creamy leather chair (both of them aggravatingly superior to the standard Police Nationale issue in his own office), waiting. But nine o'clock came and went, as did 9:05 and 9:10, while Joly fumed, illogically refusing to telephone Beaupierre, preferring to wait and see just how tardy they would be. When they at last arrived en masse, it was to a frigid welcome.

  "It's twenty minutes past nine," he said quietly but pointedly, his clean, thin, long-fingered hands folded on Marielle's spotless blotter.

  "Well, ha, ha, but you know how it is, Inspector," Beaupierre replied as they took the chairs that waited for them in a semicircle before the desk, "You must understand, there was some difficulty in informing everyone, and besides, we are all quite busy at this time of year, oh, extremely busy, and there are so many things that call for our, mm…" He cleared his throat and fell silent, apparently fascinated by the laminated certificate that hung on the wall behind Marielle's desk: a commendation from the communal hotel association for his unstinting cooperation in the temporary traffic re-routing of 1994.

  "May I also point out, sir, that we are unaccustomed to being summoned in this manner?" The speaker, seated beside Beaupierre, was a thick-bodied, rumble-voiced man in his middle years who made no effort to hide his displeasure.

  Joly turned a fishlike eye on him. "Ah. And who would you be, please?"

  "Who would—!" The man's neck swelled. "My name is Michel Georges Montfort," he said, drawing himself up in his chair, "doctor of archaeology, professor at the University of the Dordogne, and diplomate of the National Academy of Sciences."

  "I see. Thank you."

  Joly, of course, knew perfectly well who he was—Gideon had given him lively descriptions of them all—but this was the wrong day to trifle with him, even if the trifler happened to be a diplomate of the National Academy. Besides, Joly had learned long ago that in dealings such as these it was necessary to establish early and firmly who had the upper hand and who didn't.

  "It's hardly something to be upset about, Michel," said one of the others, a waspish creature that reminded him of his brother-in-law except that Bernard was unlikely to be seen in public in a bow tie featuring what appeared to be a depiction of egg yolks exploding in a microwave oven. "No doubt the inspector is simply eager for edification on the recent changes in thinking regarding late Quaternary palynological stratification."

  Émile Grize, Joly thought, feeling a dangerous tightening of his jaw muscles; Gideon had told him about him too.

  "I should be happy for edification on any subject," he said politely.

  Grize looked at him uncertainly.

  "However impractical," Joly concluded, scolding himself before the words were out of his mouth. He wasn't starting out on the right foot, and if he kept it up, he would shortly have a roomful of enemies.

  In general, Inspector Joly had never been much taken with scientists. Most of them, he believed, could be accurately grouped into three classifications: superior and disparaging, like Grize; pompous and self-inflated, like Montfort; and (the largest class by far) well-meaning but muddle-headed, like Beaupierre. There were exceptions of course—Gideon, for example, at least most of the time—but not many in his experience.

  He sat eyeing them with his hands folded for a few moments more before speaking again. "I am Inspector Joly. The officer seated behind you is Sergeant Peyrol, who will take notes. Later, I shall be interviewing each of you individually, so be good enough to keep yourselves available."

  He stopped, anticipating objection, but they had suddenly become as docile as lambs, hanging on his next words. They sensed by now that something important was up and they were off-balance. Joly began feeling a little more benevolent. "I hope this will not inconvenience you," he offered by way of a small olive branch. "I shall try to disturb your daily activities as little as possible.

  "Exactly what is this about, Inspector?" demanded Montfort, but now his tone was merely grumpy, not openly rude; presumably a matter more of constitution than intention. "Does it relate to Jean Bousquet?"

  "It very well may," said Joly. "Dr. Oliver has now completed his analysis of the bones from the abri and reached his conclusions. I'm sorry to inform you that they are the remains of Dr. Carpenter."

  It was as if someone had seized one end of the carpet on which their chairs rested and given it a snap. Everyone started. There were ejaculations of surprise, snorts of disbelief, gasps of incredulity; in Beaupierre's case, all of them from the same mouth.

  "That can't be!" Audrey Godwin-Pope exclaimed. "His plane… he died in a plane crash… everybody knows that."

  "Yes, yes," others cried, "that's true."

  "Not so," said Joly.

  "How horrible!" Beaupierre said into the abrupt silence, staring first at Joly, then around the circle of his colleagues, and then, every bit as fixedly, at empty air. "How horrible! I—"

  His lips had gone dead white; he seemed to be having trouble catching his breath. Joly, afraid he might be on the verge of a stroke, rose. "Monsieur—"

  But Montfort cut in. "Jacques, get hold of yourself, for God's sake," he muttered, although he too looked a little gray.

  To Joly's surprise it did the trick. Beaupierre nodded, drew in a long, shuddering breath through his mouth, and quieted down, one hand lifted to his closed eyes. The others began to talk excitedly among themselves, so that Joly had to rap on the desk for quiet.

  "That is all I wish to say at this point. You are welcome to return to your offices for the present. Sergeant Peyrol will inform you when I wish to see you. We will—"

  "Bousquet, it must have been Bousquet," Prudence McGinnis said to no one in particular. "Jean hated him."

  "Which of us didn't he hate?" asked Montfort. "He might have murdered all of us in our beds."

  "He didn't hate me," Grize said. "I had nothing against him, and he had nothing—"

  But Joly didn't want a discussion of the subject at this time. "We will start in three-quarters of an hour, at ten-thirty," he resumed firmly. "I hope we can be finished by mid-afternoon. I think it would be best to begin with the director. Professor Beaupierre, is that acceptable to you?"

  "What?" Blinking, Beaupierre floated back into this world. "Yes, of course—well, I… that is… yes, all right."

  "Very good, ten-thirty, then. Madame, gentlemen, thank you."

  They were slow in getting up—Joly could almost hear the gears spinning and grinding in their heads—and Prudence McGinnis paused at his desk on her way out.

  "It was Bousquet, wasn't it?"

  "We'll talk about it later, madame," replied Joly.

  She stood her ground. "Well, who else could it have been?"

  "Later, madame."

  The interval before his first interview was put to good use. Sergeant Peyrol, having heard at length about his superior's wretched breakfast, went out and returned with two excellent croissants, a passable brioche, and a double café noir from the Café de la Mairie across the street, so that by ten minutes after ten Joly was once again feeling human.

  "Thank you, Peyrol," he said, concluding his meal. He wrapped the remains in the newspaper on which he'd eaten so as not to sully Marielle's gorgeous desk and placed all in a wastepaper basket. The excellent Peyrol—not the most quick-witted sergeant he'd ever had, but an honest fellow—had even brought him a foil-wrapped towelette to wipe his hands and lips, which
he did with satisfaction.

  "Now then, Peyrol: what did you think of our cast of characters? Do you have any observations?" When he could, Joly liked to tutor his subordinates, generally employing the methods of Aristotle.

  "Well, I know who didn't do it," Peyrol said. "The director, Beaupierre. He was shocked, all right. I thought he was going to drop dead in front of us."

  "Shocked, yes," Joly said, "but at what?"

  Peyrol was stumped. "Why…at the news of Carpenter's death, what else?"

  "Might he not have been shocked only at the news that it had been found out?"

  Once it sank in, Peyrol's simple face glowed with comprehension "You mean he himself was the—"

  "Now, Peyrol, I offer it only as a possibility, one of many to be explored. You must learn—"

  When the telephone sounded, Joly snatched it up on the first chirp. "Yes?"

  "Inspector? It's Beaupierre. I… I'm not feeling very well, not well at all. I have a stomach condition… this has been a terrible, terrible shock, you have no idea…"

  "I'm very sorry to hear it."

  "Would it be possible… would you mind if I didn't come in until later? I need to lie down, to, to calm my system. I'm afraid I'm not really up to, to—"

  "Of course," Joly said soothingly. "Go and rest. I won't bother you for a while."

  Joly had no doubt about Beaupierre's being genuinely agitated, and postponing the interrogation was fine with him. His policeman's instinct told him—shouted at him—that while the director might not have murdered anyone, he wasn't being candid either. Joly smelt something—guilty knowledge, self-recrimination, remorse, pangs of conscience?—and letting Beaupierre simmer in his own juices for a few hours wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.