Old Bones

by Aaron Elkins

  While he was putting the other schedules back into the cabinet, Mathilde loomed in the doorway, dowdily imposing in navy blue sweater, pearls, and dark, boxy, pleated skirt.

  "Is there something I can help you with, Dr. Oliver?"

  "Oh… uh, no," Gideon said, caught with his hands in the till, so to speak. He closed the file drawer sheepishly. "I was just, uh…"

  "Yes," she said frostily. "I understand you were kind enough to drive Raymond back. You’ll stay for dinner, I hope? You too, Mr. Lau?"

  "Well—"

  "Great," John said from his innocent perch on the corner of the desk. "We’d love it."

  She looked frigidly at the friendly purple snails smiling from their breasts, at the giant green slipper-shoes on their feet. "You wouldn’t happen to have any…ah, less fantasque clothing with you, I suppose? Well, no matter. Please join us upstairs for apéritifs when you’ve finished here—" She smiled thinly. "—with whatever you’re doing."

  "Whew," John said when she’d left. "I bet it feels like hell to get caught snooping around somebody’s house without permission."

  "It does," Gideon said. "Sometimes I wonder how I let myself—" An echo from their earlier conversation drifted unexpectedly through his mind. "John, what you said before about wondering who you were sometimes—" He clapped his hands together. "It’s a long shot, but, my God, why didn’t I think of it before?"

  "I can’t imagine," John said blandly.

  "Shut the door, will you? We need to make another call."

  "DR. Loti, do you remember telling me that when Guillaume du Rocher was found in the rubble in St. Malo he was hallucinating?"

  "Yes, certainly." The doctor had been roused from his evening meal; he was still chewing.

  "And that he didn’t know who he was?"

  "Yes, that’s right."

  "Well, can you remember whether he had simple amnesia, so that he had no idea who he was? Or did he imagine he was somebody else?"

  "Oh," Dr. Loti said, "I remember very well."

  "And?"

  "He imagined he was someone else. He claimed it for two days." Continuing to display an unexpected flair for suspense, Dr. Loti continued his leisurely mastication.

  "And that was…?"

  "He believed he was his cousin Alain."

  Bingo. A whole set of puzzle pieces clattered into place.

  "Perhaps you’ve heard of him?" Dr. Loti prompted, possibly disappointed in the lack of an overt response.

  "I sure have," Gideon breathed. To John he made a raised-fist gesture of success that elicited a mystified frown.

  "It was quite a strong delusion," Dr. Loti continued and chuckled at the memory. "He very nearly had me convinced, even though I knew full well that poor Alain du Rocher had been executed by the Germans some years before. And then one morning, suddenly, his memory returned. He was himself, Guillaume du Rocher, just like that."

  Just like that. Alain du Rocher, Resistance hero of beloved memory, mourned as dead at the hands of the SS these forty-five years. Only now—just like that—it seemed he had been alive the whole time, until a week ago, living high off the hog as Guillaume du Rocher, lord of the manor… while Guillaume himself lay moldering to dust and bones in the gloomy cellar. Gideon nodded with something like gratification. Not so much because he’d anticipated this (he had, but it hadn’t been much more than a shot in the dark), but because it seemed to satisfy a certain daffy symmetry in the increasingly bizarre twists and contortions in the House of du Rocher.

  "Yes, yes, I remember it very well," Dr. Loti said in a settling-down-in-his-chair tone, clearly more inclined to reminisce than to return to his dinner. "An extremely interesting case…"

  Gideon headed him off. "It certainly is. You’ve been very helpful, Doctor. Thanks very much."

  "ALAIN!" John exploded. "How the hell could it be Alain?"

  Gideon, foreseeing this reaction, had taken him outside before telling him what he’d learned. "You’re nuts, you know that?" John raved to the black sky while they strode over the courtyard. "You’re always doing this! You—Ouch!"

  He had stubbed his toe on one of the beams for the kitchen garden’s new retaining wall. "Damn it, why don’t they have any lights out here?" he grumbled, and bent to rub his toe through the thin canvas shoe. "Look, how could Alain be alive all these years? The Nazis killed him in 1942; there were witnesses. The SS—"

  "—marched him into the mairie early one morning, and he was never seen again. That’s not necessarily the same thing as being killed."

  "Okay, so what happened to him, then?" John demanded, straightening up. "How did he get away? Where was he between 1942 and 1944?"

  "Who knows? He could have been anywhere."

  John snorted and made one of his spasmodic gestures of impatience. "All right, tell me, what’s the theory supposed to be? That while he was in the hospital he suddenly comes

  up with this plan to kill the real Guillaume and take over his property?"

  "I don’t think so," Gideon said. "I’m pretty sure Guillaume was already dead. Remember, he hadn’t been seen in years either. He disappeared in 1942 too."

  "Jesus," John said, starting them walking again, "this goddamn case is crawling with disappearing people."

  "In fact," Gideon said, thinking aloud, "he disappeared within a day or two of the time Alain did—supposedly to join the Resistance. Only now it looks as if it was Alain who took off somewhere, while Guillaume didn’t make it out of his own cellar. And when Alain came back after the Liberation, he decided that he could live a fuller, more productive, more meaningful life as his missing, rolling-in-money cousin than as himself.

  "I suppose," he added ruminatively, "this sounds a little fanciful to you."

  "A little? Sheesh." They walked without speaking for a few yards. "So what do you think—that Alain killed the real Guillaume—back in 1942, I mean—buried him in the cellar, and just let everybody think he was off running around with the Resistance?"

  "No, I don’t see how we could go that far yet. Possibly—"

  "Because," John said, with a subtle change in his voice, "he would have had to kill him, wouldn’t he? Or at least he’d have had to know Guillaume was already dead when everybody else thought he was off fighting the Germans. Otherwise, how could he be sure he wouldn’t come back someday?"

  As usual, John had quickly altered course after his first excitable response to an unexpected new hypothesis and settled down to constructive thinking.

  "That," Gideon conceded, "is a point."

  They had come to the tall stone pillars of the gateway and stood looking out into the darkness. The plane trees lining the road were dimly visible, a dense, pitchy black against the gauzy black of the sky. Gideon shivered as the night cold worked its way through his clothes, and they turned and began to walk back to the manoir.

  When they came to the pile of lumber that John had stumbled over, Gideon stopped. Something stirred at the edges of his memory. "You know," he said, "it’s funny…" But whatever it was evaded him, like a speck in the vision that scoots away when you try to focus on it.

  "What’s funny?" John asked, then laughed. "Never mind. I don’t think I want to know. I can only stand so much at a time. Hey, who else do you think knows this so-called Guillaume was really Alain? Assuming that he was."

  "My guess is that none of them do. Why tell them? The only ones who’d even remember the real Guillaume are Mathilde, René, and Sophie, and they were all teenagers or under in 1942. When Alain showed up two years later and claimed he was Guillaume, who could argue with him? He was the right age, he knew the ropes, he looked a lot like Guillaume to begin with, and he was such a patched-up mess that no one could possibly tell the difference—even Mathilde. Even though she’d been engaged to him, she was only a kid when he left, and it wouldn’t be too hard for him to keep his distance." He nodded approvingly at his own logic. "No, I’d bet no one’s ever caught on to him in all these years."

  "Yeah?" said John,
who had listened without comment to this lengthy exposition. "Well, you’d lose."

  Gideon paused with his fingers on the handle of the oak door. "Why?"

  "Because somebody was so afraid you’d find out who that skeleton really was they tried to blow your head off. Or did you forget again?"

  Gideon frowned, then laughed. "I forgot. Again."

  PRE-DINNER cocktails were being served in the Louis XV Room, an upstairs sitting room full of musty, handsome eighteenth-century clutter: lush overstuffed bergères, crystal pendant chandeliers, ormolu clocks, busy Beauvais tapestries after Boucher and Fragonard. Its delicate parquet floors and ornate, gilded wall moldings proclaimed it the centerpiece of Rochebonne but for more than four decades it had been little-used, being too sumptuous and grandiose for its dour owner. But it suited Mathilde just fine, and she was determined to return it to its onetime place of glory.

  The knowledge that this was the last evening they would all be together seemed to add a sparkle, almost a conviviality, to the cocktail hour, so that for once they had abandoned their customary groupings to recombine in new permutations.

  At the side of the cherrywood-fronted fireplace a dapper and liberally cologned René, drink in hand, was playing le seigneur du manoir to a twittery, vibrant Leona Fougeray. Leona, at her striking, brittle best in a neon orange jumpsuit cinched by a patent leather belt, laughed frequently, throwing back her head so that the reflections from the chandelier made her black Italian eyes shimmer.

  A few feet away, seated somewhat stiffly in three kingly armchairs of crushed red velvet and gilded wood, Mathilde, Claire, and Sophie chatted quietly, Mathilde frequently raising her eyes to glare without effect at her pink and animated husband. And standing on the other side of the room Ray, Ben, and Jules talked man-talk. Or at least Jules did. With his rump propped against an inlaid gaming table, a martini in one hand and a quickly changing succession of canapés in the other, he prattled to his abstracted and unresponsive audience.

  Gliding among them all with a tray of drinks was the granite-faced Marcel, while Beatrice hung about the entrance to a small pantry in her tent-like brown dress, lumbering grumpily out from time to time with fresh hors d’oeuvres.

  When Gideon and John entered, Ray separated himself and came worriedly to them.

  "Did you talk to Ben?" he asked in a low voice. "You don’t still think…?"

  "He didn’t lie about what was in the schedule," Gideon reassured him. "Someone altered the thing."

  "Thank heavens." He took a relieved swig of Chablis, then did a double-take. "Altered? You mean… altered?"

  "Probably not to get us," John said, looking casually around to make sure no one else was within hearing range. "Someone used it to kill Guillaume."

  Ray’s eyes opened wider. "Kill Guillaume?"

  "Right. Oh, by the way, Guillaume was Alain."

  Gideon thought that John, who had been on the receiving end of something similar a few minutes before, could be forgiven for this. Ray responded with surprising aplomb, swallowing his mouthful of wine without quite choking on it. "Tell me," he said when it was safely down, "have I been leading a particularly sheltered existence? Is this what life is like for other people?"

  "Only when the Skeleton Detective’s around," John said.

  Ray looked slowly about him. The others were still involved in their conversations or their tasks, but casting uneasy or even hostile looks toward Gideon and John. Almost, it seemed to Gideon, as if they were huddling for mutual support against the newcomers, as if everything were really just fine at the Manoir de Rochebonne—or would be, if not for the intrusion of these two unwelcome meddlers. Well, he thought, in a way they were right.

  "It’s so difficult to believe," Ray said softly. "One of these people is actually a murderer. But who? No, whom. No, who. I’m afraid this is really getting to me."

  "Monsieur?" Marcel extended the tray of drinks.

  "Merci." As Gideon took one of the slender, fluted tumblers of vermouth the telephone rang. Marcel turned, but Mathilde, closer, picked it up. She listened, murmured something, and extended it uncordially to Gideon, her face wooden. "For you."

  It was Dr. Loti.

  "Yes, hello again, it’s me. I think perhaps we might have been disconnected earlier," he said hopefully.

  "Yes, I think we were," Gideon said, repenting for having virtually hung up on the elderly physician before.

  "Ah. Well. I didn’t finish what I was telling you. You’ll be quite interested. You see, Guillaume didn’t really regain his memory‘just like that.’ That was a figure of speech. It was Mathilde du Rocher who did it all."

  "Mathilde?" Gideon exclaimed inadvertently and glanced at her. She had remained standing a few feet away, edgy and suspicious, watching him, straining every nerve to hear, not bothering to pretend otherwise. An eyebrow flicked at the sound of her name.

  He turned away from her and cradled the receiver against his shoulder. "What do you mean?"

  "Exactly what I said, young man. Without Mathilde, Guillaume would have died. Certainly he would never have recovered his identity. Ah, Mathilde—Mathilde Sylvestre, as she was then; a strapping, buxom girl with skin like rose petals. She had just become engaged to René, and she had volunteered as a nurse at the hospital. She sat with the mutilated hulk that was Guillaume for two whole days and most of two nights, talking to him, crooning to him, keeping his interest focused on this world instead of the next." Dr. Loti heaved a gusty sigh.

  "And?"

  "And? His memory came back. It never would have happened without her; I’m convinced of it. And from that moment he began to recover. You could see it in him, in the renewed fire in that single fierce eye gleaming through the bandages. He had decided," Dr. Loti pronounced with sentimental relish, "to live."

  "I see," Gideon said slowly.

  He had decided to live, all right—with Mathilde’s earnest help and counsel—but not his own life. More pieces of the puzzle: As a girl Mathilde had been engaged to Alain; Gideon already knew that. Now it seemed that she had still been in love with him when he returned. For whatever their reasons—his terrible injuries, her engagement to René—they had decided not to take up where they had left off. But they had put their heads together long enough to hatch a plot that put Guillaume’s wealth in Alain’s hands instead of Claude’s for forty long years…and finally, a week ago, into Mathilde’s.

  "These are not the sentimental imaginings of an old man," Dr. Loti cautioned him. "I tell you as a responsible physician: If not for Mathilde, Guillaume du Rocher would never have returned to this life."

  "I believe you," Gideon said. "Sincerely."

  TWENTY-ONE

  WHEN Gideon hung up Mathilde was still watching him intently. This time he returned her gaze, mulling over what he’d heard. There could be no question about her being involved in Alain’s deception; very probably she had authored it. How much else was she involved in?

  "And what did Dr. Loti want with you?" she demanded before he had removed his hand from the telephone.

  He hadn’t meant to engage her. Better to let Joly handle it. But when he floundered, searching for a reply, she prodded him.

  "It was about Guillaume, wasn’t it?" Her fluty voice sliced through the chitchat. Conversations were suspended; heads turned in their direction.

  "Yes, it was." Obviously, there wasn’t much point in denying it.

  "What did he tell you?"

  "I think it’d be better if we talked somewhere more private, Mathilde."

  Gideon heard René’s imploring whisper behind him. "What is it? What the devil is he talking about? What’s the—?"

  "Sh!" someone said imperiously, and the seigneur du manoir subsided.

  "I am not afraid to talk in my own house, in front of my own family," Mathilde said firmly. She stood with her stocky legs planted, her deep, square prow of a bosom thrust aggressively forward. "I believe I have every right to know what you discussed."

  Well, Joly wasn’t goin
g to like it, but Mathilde was clearly determined to have it out right then, and Gideon wasn’t in the mood to play games putting her off. It had been a long day.

  "Mathilde," he said, "I know Guillaume du Rocher was killed in 1942. And I know Alain wasn’t killed in 1942, but was alive until a week ago, playing Guillaume’s part."

  There was a collective gasp and a few exclamations of consternation. René laughed disbelievingly. Then, abruptly, utter quiet, thick with expectancy and confusion. Stunned faces stared at Gideon. A lazy, disinterested tick of the golden clock on the mantel looped through the silence.

  "And I know you know it too," he concluded flatly.

  Under a layer of powder Mathilde’s face reddened momentarily. Then, like someone putting down at last a burden she’d carried too long, she exhaled a long breath. "Yes," she said, her voice perfectly steady. "You’re quite right."

  Now there was an explosion of questions and ejaculations. People shouted at each other, at Mathilde, at Gideon. Mathilde waited for the noise to die down. "I think I should like to sit," she announced, and set herself bolt-upright on one of the crushed velvet chairs, hands clasped one on the other in her lap.

  "And a glass of vermouth, I think." She drank briefly from the fluted tumbler that Marcel brought to her and opened her mouth to speak.

  "Mother," Jules said, "you really don’t have to—"

  "Oh, be quiet, Jules. What’s the difference now? It’s out. I knew he’d find out." Jules shrugged and withdrew, and Mathilde continued, not speaking to anyone in particular. "What Dr. Oliver says is true. Guillaume has been dead for forty-five years. The man who died last week was Alain du Rocher."

  "Impossible!" Sophie said. "You think I wouldn’t know Alain? My own brother?"

  "Well, you didn’t," Mathilde said proudly. "It was Alain here in the manoir all these years, and none of you guessed." She looked disdainfully from face to face, challenging them, then took a measured sip of vermouth. "Alain was not executed by the Nazis. They let him go."