Old Bones

by Aaron Elkins

  Ray was reminded of old photographs taken in Palm Springs of Gary Cooper, or Gilbert Roland, or Robert Taylor in much the same sort of pose, with similar rackets and identical clothing, except perhaps for the addition of tennis sweaters draped over their shoulders, the sleeves knotted casually around their necks. No, on second look, the sweaters were here too, tossed in a jumble onto the bench.

  "He’s very handsome," Ray said, not sure what was expected of him. "And he looks nice."

  Sophie smiled at him gratefully. "Oh, I wish you’d known him. I wish," she said, looking at her husband, "you’d both known him. He was so—so very—I thought he was the most wonderful man in the world. René adored him too. Everyone did. And he—he thought I was a princess, a little queen."

  "Who’s that with him?" Ray asked, a little embarrassed. This was another new side of Sophie. "René?"

  "René!" Sophie laughed. "No, René always looked like a little butterball, even when he was a boy. Besides, René’s only two years older than I am. He wouldn’t have been more than seven when this was taken. You haven’t been paying attention. No, that’s Guillaume."

  "Guillaume?" Ray echoed with surprise. There wasn’t the faintest intimation of this dashing, good-looking youth in the bleak, coldly meticulous old man he knew, with his single grim eye and crippled limbs.

  "Indeed. Guillaume was quite attractive in his day, and a marvelous athlete. He had problems with his legs even then, you know—some sort of mineral deficiency or some such thing as a child, but you’d never know it on the tennis court. I remember a time when he and Alain went at it for seven hours… Ah, well." She smiled to herself. "They look a great deal alike, don’t they? The du Rocher look; you have it too—the long nose and the skinny legs."

  "Thank you," he said dryly, examining the two lithe, aristocratic figures again, "but I’m afraid there must be more to it than that. I seem to be missing something."

  "Well, it’s nothing but your terrible posture," Sophie said from force of old habit. "How many times must I tell you? Look at you, scrunched up in your chair like an accordion."

  "Come on, Sophie, let him be," Ben said. "He’s grown up now."

  "I suppose that’s true," she said, eyeing Ray doubtfully.

  Ray wiggled uncomfortably and unknotted his legs a little. He handed the locket back to her. "They were close, then?"

  "Tremendously close. They lived for each other. But as unlike as can be. Guillaume was very much the way he is now. Domineering, aloof, cold…but Alain—Alain was like the sunshine, like …This is ridiculous," she said with some surprise. "I’m becoming positively maudlin."

  She snapped the locket shut with a no-nonsense click and arranged her stocky body more squarely on the bench. "Now let me get on with it. I want to tell you what happened." She put the locket in her purse and zipped it up, then took a deep breath with her eyes closed.

  Ben had been sitting motionless, his fingertips out to the reluctant swan. He let his hand drift back to Sophie’s shoulder and squeezed it. "Honey, I know the story pretty near as well as you do, even if I wasn’t there. I can tell him if you want."

  She shook her head. "No, I want to; I’m fine." She breathed deeply and opened her eyes. She didn’t look fine. "Raymond, I think you know that in 1942 the Germans occupied this part of France."

  "Yes. I’ve always been interested, of course, and I enjoy history anyway, so I’ve read just about everything I could find about the occupation of Brittany."

  "Yes—" She dropped her chin, raised her eyebrows and studied him quizzically. "History? Do you consider the Second World War history?"

  "Well, yes. It was ten years before I was born."

  "Ten years? Good gracious, young man, when were you born?"

  "Nineteen-fifty-three." He spread his hands. "I’m sorry."

  "Nineteen-fifty-three," she repeated. "Do you mean to say we have college professors who were born in 1953? God help us."

  From her other side Ben smiled across at Ray and nodded. Thank you, he was saying, for shifting her into a more Sophie-like gear. Ray smiled back, pleased with himself.

  "Now then," Sophie said, quite businesslike. "You should know that Alain was also active in the Maquis—the Resistance—even before Guillaume was. He was a sector leader in the area around Ploujean."

  A highly successful leader, she went on to explain; so successful that in January 1942 the SS descended on Ploujean to take control from the regular German army and stamp out local Resistance efforts. With their usual methods they found out about Alain, arrested him, and executed him in the basement of the town hall in Ploujean.

  "I’m sorry," Ray mumbled.

  Sophie made a small shrugging movement, staring over his shoulder and up the hill towards the back of the manoir. "They executed five others at the same time. There’s a plaque in the town square."

  There was more to tell. The grieving, raging Guillaume somehow managed to get to the SS Obersturmbannführer who had been responsible and assassinate him. The very next day.

  "My God," Ray breathed, "they must have massacred the whole town in retaliation."

  "No, somehow that didn’t happen, but of course Guillaume had to flee. He ran off to join the Resistance in the caves near Dol and he was quite a hero, they say. That’s how he got those scars, as I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. A bombed building collapsed on him, as I understand it. He certainly looked it."

  Guillaume’s having been a Resistance hero came as no surprise to Ray. There was a rocklike, Olympian quality about his formidable relative that would have made anything credible. To have heard that he had wound up by Montgomery’s side at the very invasion of Normandy—or by Charlemagne’s at Roncesvalles—wouldn’t have amazed him.

  Sophie returned her eyes to his. "Now you know."

  "But I don’t understand. What was that you said to Claude Fougeray? How could he have been responsible for Alain’s death?"

  "Claude," she said, and made a growling sound. "That worm. How he has the nerve to sit there in that house—!"

  "Honey," Ben said, "I think I’ll tell this part of it." He went on before she could respond. "Claude worked at the mairie in St. Malo during the Occupation. He was a clerk for the mayor—which meant, of course, for the German military administration. Now, a lot of people had jobs like that, and it doesn’t necessarily mean—"

  "Oh, yes it does," Sophie said with a snort. "Do you know how he got that job? He informed on a family that was hiding two Jews. That’s how he proved his heart was in the right place. The Germans shipped them all off together and then rewarded Claude with his precious job."

  "Now, honey, that’s all hearsay; Nobody knows—"

  "Everyone knows. It’s common knowledge."

  "Well, anyway," Ben said to Ray with a sigh, "it wasn’t that Claude was responsible in any direct way for Alain’s death…Now, he wasn’t, Sophie; you know that." He waited for his wife to subside. "What happened, Ray, was that Claude was privy to some inside information. He knew there were going to be some SS arrests two days before they happened. Apparently he even knew Alain’s name was on the list, but he…well, he never warned anyone."

  "He never…" Ray was shocked. "You mean to say he—he just …his own cousin…?"

  "I know, but the Nazis told him if word got out they’d shoot everybody in Ploujean instead, and him too."

  "So he said," Sophie put in bitterly.

  Ben made a tck-ing sound, tongue against his teeth. "I don’t know; I can feel for the poor bugger. Things were hard."

  "That’s not an excuse," Sophie said stolidly to her hands. "He could have done something. But he didn’t. And so there he is, sitting in the manoir, grosser, and fatter, and more disgusting than ever …And Alain and five other good, brave men have been dead for forty-five years." Her eyes shimmered with held-back tears. "Forty-five years, and nobody knows where they’re buried. If the damned Nazis even buried them."

  In the quiet that followed, Ray reached out to pat her hands, which lay
loosely clasped on the purse in her lap.

  "Afterwards, Claude holed up behind the walls in St. Malo with his Nazi pals," Ben went on, "where the Maquis couldn’t get to him. When the Germans pulled out he ran too. Turned up in Avranches, near Mont St. Michel, where nobody knew him, and started a butcher shop. Now he owns a meat-processing plant in Rennes; the sausage king of Brittany, so they say." He smiled crookedly. "He started out to be a surgeon, if you can believe it."

  "You’re not serious," Ray said.

  "No, it’s true," Sophie said. "He studied medicine for a year or two, but the war put an end to it. It’s a family joke."

  "A joke?"

  "They say one profession was as good as another to Claude," Ben said. "He just likes the feel of raw meat. That’s always good for a laugh from Jules."

  Sophie stood up and shivered. "The sun’s gone in. Maybe we ought to go inside. Guillaume’s probably back by now."

  They began to walk up the patch towards the house. "There’s still something I don’t understand," Ray said.

  Ben lifted an eyebrow in his direction.

  "What’s he doing here? I mean, why would Guillaume invite him to a family council?"

  "Well, I think that’s what we’re all wondering. But he’s actually Guillaume’s closest relative, a lot closer than Sophie or René. You’re even further off, and there isn’t anyone else in the family. So if there’s some sort of important business, I guess he’s got a right to be here."

  "I don’t see why," Sophie said. "He’s only related because his father married Guillaume’s aunt."

  "Only!" Ben laughed. "That just makes him Guillaume’s first cousin, that’s all! Way back when, he was next in line for the domaine, but when Guillaume got back after the war he cut Claude out of his will. Naturally enough."

  After a few more steps Ben spoke to Sophie. "Did you see the way Mathilde jumped when you mentioned Alain’s name? I wonder if she’s still carrying a torch for him. Poor old René."

  "For Alain?" Ray said. "Mathilde?"

  Sophie nodded. "They were engaged. I suppose they were having an affair, although I was too young to know about it."

  "But—but she—"

  "Don’t look so censorious, dear. She and René weren’t a thing yet. And she was very beautiful, in a monumental sort of way."

  "Yes, but she was only…How old could she have been?"

  "Oh, about seventeen, I suppose. And Alain was in his early thirties."

  Ray blinked, not with mere prudish disapproval—not entirely—but with astonishment. His straitlaced, comically stuffy Aunt Mathilde a teenaged beauty carrying on an illicit affair with the dashing Alain?

  Sophie laughed softly at his expression. "As a matter of fact, that’s what I like most about her; that she loved Alain."

  When they got to the top of the path, Ray said he thought he wouldn’t go in yet, but would stroll down the quiet lane toward Ploujean. Maybe he’d look at the plaque. They’d given him a lot to think about. He turned from them, walked a step, and came impulsively back to put his arms around Sophie in an awkward hug.

  "Aahh," she said, "dear Raymond," and laughed, and patted him lightly on the shoulders, and kissed the air by the side of his freckled cheek.

  "What a nice boy he’s turned out to be," she said to Ben as Ray headed down the alley between the rows of bare plane trees, "but I do worry about him."

  "What’s there to worry about? He seems fine to me."

  "But he’s so—well, he’s like an old maid, and he’s not even thirty-five. I don’t suppose he’ll ever get married now. I don’t know if he even likes women. I’m not sure he knows about women."

  "Maybe not, but hell, he’s happier with those dusty old books than most men ever are with wives, and that’s what counts, isn’t it?"

  "Yes, of course," she said, unconvinced. "Still—" ;

  "Sophie, don’t worry about him." He pulled open the door for her. "You know, ol’ Ray reminds me of what my Uncle Bobby Will used to say about p’fessers…."

  WHEN Ray joined them almost an hour later there had still been no word from their host, and Sophie was beginning to worry. "It’s not like Guillaume—No, thank you, Marcel."

  Ray and Ben also turned down the coffee being wheeled around on a tray by the quiet, dark servant. As he had moved on to the Fougerays, whom Leona had icily rejoined but not yet favored with speech, the telephone on a side table near the door chirred softly. The servant stopped, bowed gravely to Claude, who was ignoring him, and went into the study to pick up an extension telephone.

  In a few moments he emerged, his demeanor for once shaken, his olive face gray. Something in the air made everyone stop talking and look at him. Marcel licked his lips and glanced uneasily around the room.

  "Well, what is it, for heaven’s sake?" Mathilde demanded.

  Marcel seemed grateful for the prompt. "It’s the police, madame. There seems to have been an accident at Mont St. Michel. Monsieur du Rocher has been, ah, drowned."

  FOUR

  RAY steeled himself for a violent outburst of emotion at this news, but the reaction around the room was one of quiet disbelief. It was as if word had come of the death of a distant, godlike figure whose mortality was not heretofore assured. And so, he supposed, it had.

  Claude, as the nearest living relative, was asked by the police to go that afternoon to the mortuary at Pontorson, the little town separated by a mile-long causeway from Mont St. Michel, to identify the body. When it came out, however, that he had not seen Guillaume in over forty years, he and René went together, driven by a mournfully respectful gardien de la paix who called for them at the manoir.

  Everyone would stay on for a few days to attend the funeral. This caused some more-than-customary grumbling on the part of Beatrice Lupis, Marcel’s wife, a large woman with swollen ankles, who wore tent-like, dun-brown housedresses and was easily aggrieved. Her dissatisfaction over cooking and cleaning for the nine family members for several additional days contributed to an unpleasant scene with Claude Fougeray, whose muttered demand for un pichet of wine was met with a muttered response to the effect that he would just have to wait until she was good and ready, and that he had already had more wine than was good for him.

  Unfortunately for her, Madame Lupis’ penchant for instant irritation, impressive though it was, was no match for Claude’s, and his sudden explosion rattled the leaded windows of the salon. An imminent physical confrontation was headed off by Ben Butts, whose retelling of what his Uncle Willie Joe used to say about drinking wine ("Makes you feel fit as a fiddle when you’re tight as a drum"), while rendered senseless by translation, managed to muddle the situation long enough for Marcel to appear with the requested carafe.

  "I will see to it, monsieur," he said, his face as usual expressionless, "that there is a full pichet on the sideboard at all times for your pleasure."

  "And a glass," Claude said sullenly.

  "Of course. Monsieur enjoys red wine?"

  "Monsieur enjoys Château Haut-Brion," muttered Claude.

  "I’m sorry, monsieur—"

  "I know, Guillaume was too cheap to stock anything but crap." He snatched the carafe and retreated to his room, talking to himself as he climbed the stone steps.

  At dinner the same day, Claude was involved in another unpleasant scene, this one having unexpected consequences for Ray. As usual the Buttses and du Rochers— and Ray—were at one end of the long dining room table, the Fougerays clustered at a smaller table as far away as possible. Claude and Leona were quarreling again, their sharp whispers increasing in volume through crûdités, potage au cresson, and loup de mer until, just after the

  meat course had been set down, Leona leaped up, her eyes blazing. She leaned forward and slapped her husband’s face with a resounding smack.

  "Pig!" she spat.

  Claude’s eyes bulged wildly. "Sit—!"

  With a grand and graceful swoop of her slender, Hanae Morae-clad arm she flung her napkin into his face, then spun dramaticall
y about and clicked out of the room on wobbly spike heels. Ray began to wonder if they did this every day.

  "Ah," murmured Jules du Rocher drolly, "the evening’s entertainment begins." But he was careful this time to keep his voice within the hearing of his table companions only.

  Claude tore the napkin from his purpling face and began to shout something after her, but Claire laid her hand on his.

  "Father…" she murmured.

  He brushed her away and stood up, looking after Leona, his head lowered menacingly. Claire rose anxiously with him.

  "Oh, leave me alone, for Christ’s sake!" Claude snapped. "Stay where you are!" He glared at her until she sank miserably back into her chair, then clumped off after his wife, staring pugnaciously at the assembled Buttses and du Rochers in passing.

  Jules waited until he was in the stairwell, safely out of hearing, then patted the corners of his plump mouth with the folded edge of his napkin and looked slyly around the table to indicate that a witticism was on the way.

  "I must remember to compliment Madame Fougeray on her aim," he said. He spoke in a cool, conversational voice, willing to brave the umbrage of Claire Fougeray, if not her father. "I thought that Cousin Claude looked quite fetching with a serviette—"

  "Why the hell don’t you shut up?" Ray said in English.

  He saw Sophie and Ben glance at each other with surprise, but they couldn’t have been more startled than he was.

  Jules stared open-mouthed at him. "What?" He spoke French.

  Every one of Ray’s many inhibitions called on him to mumble an apology. Instead, he translated his remark for Jules’ benefit, although everyone at the table spoke fluent English.

  "Fermez," he said with his most precise accent, "ta bouche."

  Then, in the stupefied silence that followed, he did something even more amazing. He stood up, tossed his napkin onto the table, and strode—not walked, strode— across the room to where Claire Fougeray sat alone, staring dolefully at her untouched and congealing entrecôte chasseur.

  "May I sit down, mademoiselle?"