Old Bones

by Aaron Elkins

  "Well, maybe they just wanted to keep an old family scandal quiet. Maybe they forgot about it, or didn’t see any connection."

  Joly tilted his head back and barked. "Yes, and maybe oysters grow on trees."

  They had agreed to pay for their own lunches, and Joly, who thought he might have been overcharged, carefully compared his bill to the prices written on a blackboard behind the grill. But he had trouble reading the posted prices, tilting his head up, then down, and finally raising his glasses slightly and peering along his nose at the chalkboard.

  "I have had these damned bifocal lenses for a week," he muttered, "and I’m no more used to them than on the first day. I still can’t see anything, except through the bottoms. It’s very hard on the neck. May you never have to wear them, Dr. Oliver."

  Gideon’s cheeks burned suddenly. And well he deserved to blush. All those smug and uncharitable observations about Joly’s haughty posture and down-the-nose stare, and it had turned out to be a matter of new bifocals, not stiff-necked pomposity at all. Or only a little. Even the inspector’s wide, clean upper lip suddenly looked more human, less invulnerable, than before.

  "Inspector," Gideon said, "do you suppose we know each other well enough for you to call me by my first name? It’s Gideon."

  "Oh," Joly said, groping through his coin purse, "yes, of course. Mine, ahum, is Lucien."

  Gideon had the impression it was something he hadn’t told many people.

  WHEN they got back to the manoir they were met by an excited Sergeant Denis, who herded them breathlessly into the cellar. Another find had been unearthed, this one not wrapped in a package, but simply dumped into the ground about ten feet from the first; nine pieces in all, soiled and discolored. Not bones this time, but articles of military dress.

  A pair of cracked, black boots with straps over the insteps; a leather, Sam Browne-style belt, also black, with a disk-shaped buckle; a shoulder cord of braided metal; some tarnished medals and military insignia; and a peaked, black cap. And on the cap, darkened by time but still glinting malevolently after all these years, the SS Death’s Head, lovingly molded in dull white metal.

  Gideon and Joly looked at each other over the head of the thrilled and garrulous Denis.

  "Son of a gun," Gideon said.

  "Voilà," said Joly.

  TWELVE

  "SO you were wrong," John said philosophically. "It’s not like it never happened before, you know."

  "I’m not wrong," Gideon maintained. "I don’t make that kind of mistake with skeletal material; you know that."

  "What about those bones they found scattered along the Massachusetts Turnpike near, where was it, Stockbridge? Remember? You were sure as hell wrong there."

  "True, but that was an understandable mistake, a minor misinterpretation."

  John stopped walking and stared at him in mock incredulity; or perhaps it was outright incredulity. "Telling us the bones belonged to a five-to-seven-year-old when the guy was really thirty-two is a minor misinterpretation?"

  "Well, Jesus Christ, John, the guy turned out to have cleidocranial dyostosis. You know how rare that is?"

  "I don’t even know what it is."

  "His ossification schedule was all screwed up. How was I supposed to know that? All I had to go on were a couple of maxillary bones and a clavicle—"

  John played an imaginary violin.

  "Come on, John, that was just my preliminary report, anyway. When they found the rest of the post-cranial skeleton I came up with the right age, didn’t I? Well, didn’t I? I practically identified the guy for you."

  "That’s true," John admitted, and they began walking again. "But you don’t have very much to go on down in the cellar either. Remember, you were the one who said it was just a gut feeling. Maybe this Kassel was a huge guy with little hands and feet. Maybe he had polio as a kid and his spinal column shrunk up or something. Isn’t that possible? Couldn’t you be wrong about his size?"

  "No," Gideon said. He shook his head back and forth as they continued their slow pace. "Absolutely not. Uh-uh. Nope."

  "Well, as long as you keep an open mind." John’s twinkly child’s laugh burbled out and Gideon laughed too.

  They had been walking around the pond behind the manoir for almost an hour, along the gravel path cut into the terraced bank. The early March twilight had come while Gideon had filled John in on the day’s events, and above them, on a knoll, the great stone building loomed, silhouetted against what was left of the light, its complex, steeply pitched roof angles and tall stone chimneys as featureless, black, and sharp as paper cutouts. In the rear courtyard, a few stunted, gnarled oak trees, still bare, were outlined against the empty, rose-gray sky.

  In all, Gideon mused, downright sinister-looking; a fine setting for skeletons in the cellar and murders in the drawing room. Or the salon, as they called it.

  "Let’s go around one more time," John said. "I’ve got some ideas about Fougeray’s murder." They went a few steps in silence while he arranged his thoughts. "From what you said, Joly’s got more motives than he knows what to do with."

  "Right. Everything from Alain’s death almost fifty years ago right up through some muddy insinuations Claude tossed around when they read the will. Plus the fact that he antagonized everybody in the place from the first day he got here. Joly hardly knows where to start."

  "Well, I think maybe I do. The first thing he needs to do is find out when the murder was planned. If the killer didn’t set it up until this week, then it might be on account of something new. But if it got planned before this family council ever started, then obviously Claude got killed on account of something that happened before."

  "I suppose Joly’d agree with you, but how is he supposed to figure out when it was planned?"

  "By finding out when the cyanide got bought."

  "And how—"

  "How is he supposed to find that out? By using those little gray cells these French detectives are supposed to have so many of."

  "Belgian, not French. Poirot was Belgian."

  "Big deal; same thing. Look: If the murder was planned ahead of time, then the killer could have gotten hold of the cyanide ahead of time. But if it got planned since this family meeting started, then he had to get it in the last few days, right?"

  "I suppose so," Gideon said, his interest deepening. When John started sounding like a cop he was generally on to something.

  "What do you mean, you suppose? People don’t go around with a vial of cyanide on them in case they just happen to run into somebody they’d like to bump off. They get it for a reason. So all Joly has to do is find out if this particular cyanide got bought before this week or not. If it got bought before, then the murder was planned before; it has to be one of the old motives, not a new one, and nothing Claude did or said after he got here had anything to do with it."

  "Of course," Gideon said after a moment. "You’re right."

  "Sure I’m right. What are you sounding so amazed about?"

  "I’m not amazed. I’m just wondering how Joly would go about figuring out when the cyanide got bought."

  "For starters he could check with the pharmacies and chemical supply outfits in the area to see if any’s been bought in the last week."

  "Would a chemical supply place keep a list of the people who buy cyanide?"

  "In France, who knows? Back home, it’s different from state to state. In a lot of places the buyer has to sign a‘poison book.’ But even if they don’t do that here, how much of a job could it be to check it out? You’re only talking about a radius of maybe fifty miles with no big cities in it, and how many people buy cyanide?"

  "I don’t know. What’s it used for aside from murder?"

  "Poisoning rats and moles; that kind of thing—but not much anymore, at least in the States. Also, I think they use it in metallurgy; you know, silver plating. I don’t know for what else. Not much."

  Gideon nodded. "Why fifty miles? Why not a hundred, or five hundred?"

  "J
ust a rough figure. I’m guessing whoever did it wouldn’t want to disappear from sight for too long while he bought the stuff, just in case it made him look suspicious later on, and fifty miles is about as far as you could drive and still get back inside of two or three hours."

  "Yeah, I guess…" Gideon stopped John with a hand on his forearm. "John, nobody drove anywhere. There wasn’t a car available. Guillaume’s was the only one here, and it’s still at Mont St. Michel."

  "Is that right?" John’s face was masked by the dusk now, but Gideon heard the quickening in his voice. "That makes it a whole lot easier. You’d just have to check in these little towns right around here."

  "No, someone might have gotten a taxi to Dinan and bought it there or even taken a train from there to somewhere else."

  "Sure, but how many taxis could there be around here, and how many passengers could they get? This is the boonies, Doc. It’d be a snap to check out. Hey, you think Joly’s thought about all this?"

  "Probably," Gideon said as they began walking toward the manoir again. "He seems pretty sharp to me."

  "Yeah, but you never know. It’s funny how little things can get by you. You think I ought to mention it to him?"

  "Sure," Gideon said. "He really likes it when you tell him how to do his job."

  JOLY had been faintly irritated to begin with, having been interrupted while interviewing Sophie Butts in the study, and he listened to John with his head bent sharply down, his back poker-straight, impatiently jiggling his toe. But in the end he was appreciative.

  "Thank you," he said politely. "Of course I’ve already begun canvassing local suppliers of cyanide, but I must admit that I hadn’t thought of all this."

  "You would have," John said magnanimously. "You’ve just been up to your ears."

  "Very true. Oh, and you’ll both be interested to know that Claude’s death by cyanide poisoning has been confirmed. Potassium cyanide, in solution in the wine. The level in his blood was nearly five percent; it’s a wonder he lived as long as he did." He bowed lightly in Gideon’s direction. "It might well have gone undetected, Dr. Oliver— er, Gideon. Cyanide poisoning is easy to miss unless one is looking for it. It’s a good choice for murder, as a matter of fact."

  "Well, thanks, uh, Lucien; there was that bitter-almond smell. Pretty hard to miss."

  When Joly had gone back into the study, John turned slowly to Gideon. "‘Lucien’?" he said wonderingly. " ‘Gideon’? What’s going on?"

  "You just have to know how to handle him, John."

  "Maybe," he said, nodding. "But you know, I think the guy’s finally starting to appreciate us."

  On their way out they found Ray moping aimlessly around the courtyard, kicking at pebbles. It seemed as good a time as any to bring up something that Gideon had been wanting to ask him.

  "Ray," he said without preface, "what was Guillaume doing out in Mont St. Michel Bay when he died?"

  "Guillaume?" Ray’s sandy eyebrows rose. "Looking for shells. I thought you knew."

  "I heard, but how do you know that’s what he was doing?"

  "He told us—the night before, at dinner. He said we’d have our meeting the next day, but it’d have to wait until the afternoon. It was going to be the first good day for collecting since October, and he was going to be out in the bay all morning. Why do you ask?"

  "Look," Gideon said, "does it make sense to you that he’d let the tide catch him by surprise? Would a guy as clear-headed and systematic as that go out there without checking a tide table?"

  Ray frowned. "I suppose it is a little surprising, but— well, you know, everybody says he’s been getting absentminded; he’s almost eighty. I mean he was."

  "Did he seem to be getting absentminded to you?"

  "I don’t know. Maybe a little, but he was as intimidating as ever; I can tell you that." He peered worriedly up into Gideon’s eyes, then John’s, then Gideon’s again. "Gideon, you’re making this sound awfully… sinister. Why, you’re saying that Guillaume’s death wasn’t an accident either, aren’t you?"

  "I don’t know, Ray," Gideon said kindly. "The police don’t find anything suspicious in it, if that makes you feel better."

  Ray sighed. "This is all extremely traumatic."

  Gideon nodded sympathetically. Not as traumatic as it was going to get, an uneasy hunch told him.

  "DOC," John said as Gideon drove slowly between the gateposts and swung the rented Cortina to the right, the headlights picking out the trunks of the roadside plane trees like twin rows of colorless concrete pillars, "you’re doing it again."

  "Doing what?" Gideon wondered blamelessly.

  "Sticking your nose into something that isn’t your business."

  "Me? Surely not."

  "Look, if you think there’s something funny about Guillaume’s death, just tell Joly. Don’t run your own private investigation."

  "I already told him. He doesn’t agree."

  "But you know a little more now. Maybe—"

  "John, no offense, but I’ll take care of this myself. Don’t worry, when and if I have something to tell Joly, I’ll tell him. I’m not doing this to get in his way, you know."

  "I know. You’re doing it to find an excuse to avoid going to any more lectures on sarcosaprophagous bugs. Jesus, I didn’t know I could say it." He laughed and stretched. "Hey, tomorrow’s Sunday. No school. We got any plans?"

  "Nothing firm. We were going to spend some time in St. Malo—the old part: walk the ramparts, see Chateaubriand’s tomb, Jacques Cartier’s tomb…"

  "Tombs," John grumbled. "Great. Sounds like your kind of holiday."

  "All right, what do you say if between tombs we drop in on Dr. Loti? He lives in St. Malo."

  "Who’s Dr. Loti?"

  "He’s the one who came out to look at Claude’s body. He was also Guillaume’s doctor, and I thought I might ask him a question or two. Want to come along?"

  "What happened to taking care of this by yourself?"

  "I didn’t say I couldn’t use a little moral support from my friends. Besides, I know you; you think there’s something weird going on too."

  John considered the idea for some seconds. "To tell the truth, Doc, I don’t. But what are friends for?"

  THE next morning, as they breakfasted in the dining room of the Hôtel Terminus, a commissaire of police from one of the southern provinces came up to shake hands with them.

  "I’m very sorry," he said to Gideon in correct but tentative English. "I cannot stay for the second week. I have enjoyed the program very much."

  "Problems back home?" John asked, policeman to policeman.

  "Letter-bombs," he replied gravely. "Two last week to local politicians."

  "Anyone killed?"

  "Both recipients were killed. And two bystanders injured. It’s terrible; like a plague. Like guns in America. France is afflicted with it."

  "I didn’t know that," Gideon said.

  "Oh, yes. Everywhere: Paris, Marseilles, even St. Malo. These damned…" His pale, lined face flushed angrily, then set. He bowed and left.

  Gideon drank the last of his coffee. "Whose turn?"

  "Yours," John said, and slid the bill to him.

  Gideon signed it, put down his room number, and the two of them walked out to the hotel lobby.

  "Letter-bombs suck," John said.

  "I’m not too keen on them myself."

  "No, I mean there are some kinds of killers you can almost sympathize with. But shredding a guy’s face through the mail, when you can be a thousand miles away…not giving a damn if someone else opens it up and gets his eyes blown out or his hand torn off—you just spend another ten bucks for a couple of ounces of commercial explosive and a cheap detonator, pack it in a manila envelope, and send off another one. Ah, it sucks."

  "John, I agree with you. You don’t have to get graphic."

  When they stopped at Reception to leave their keys, the man at the desk pulled a thick, plain manila envelope out of a rack behind him. It was heavily stamped
, but there was no return address. Just "M. Oliver, Hôtel Terminus, 20, rue Nationale, 35400 St. Malo," penciled on the front.

  Gideon and John glanced at each other and laughed with a marked lack of conviction.

  "Uh, when did it come?" Gideon asked. "I wasn’t expecting anything."

  "It was in this morning’s mail. An express delivery. Is something wrong?"

  "Wrong?" Gideon said. "No, of course not." He lifted the envelope—gingerly—and carried it carefully from the desk, resting it on both palms like an unstable soufflé. It was stiff and heavy, about a quarter of an inch thick.

  "John," he said, walking very slowly and keeping his eyes on the envelope, "am I being overly paranoid?"

  "I don’t know about‘overly,’ but, yeah, I’d say you’re being paranoid. Who’d want to kill you?"

  "That’s what Ray said about Claude Fougeray," Gideon muttered.

  "Come on, you’re just spooked because of what that French cop said. Let’s get out of here. We’re supposed to be in that doctor’s office in twenty minutes."

  "No, wait up a minute." The bar, which extended into the lobby, wasn’t open yet. Gideon set the envelope face up on one of the round, plastic-topped tables and looked at it. John was right; if not for that brief discussion with the commissaire, he would already have torn it open and been on his way to St. Malo. All the same…

  "John, let’s say I thought this thing might be a bomb—"

  "For the sake of argument, you mean."

  "Right. Is there any way I could check it out, or would I just have to put it in the bathtub and turn on the water? Or call the police?"

  "No, there’s a kind of commonsense standard routine you go through, if it makes you feel any better. You look at the point of origin and the sender. If they’re unusual—"

  "It doesn’t say who the sender was. The point of origin’s Marseilles, according to the postmark." He frowned at John. "Marseilles?"