Murder In The Queen's armes

TEN

Gideon and Julie had the afternoon to themselves, and they spent it walking east over the deserted, rocky beach from Charmouth toward Golden Cap, along the base of the blue lias cliffs. It was the kind of time they had dreamed of when they planned the trip: mesmerized into a tranquil stupor by the sound of the surf, they wandered aimlessly along the shore in the thin November sunlight, talking now of one subject, now of another-all of it desultory and haphazard, and lost as soon as the next thundering wave washed their minds clean. Now and then they kissed gently or simply embraced without a word. They held hands most of the time and paused frequently to look at the sea, or so that one of them could show the other some small, perfect spiral of a petrified sea creature embedded in the rocks at their feet.

"Gideon, is that Stonebarrow Fell up there?" Julie said suddenly.

"Where?"

"Up there, where you’ve been staring for the last five minutes."

"Have I? Yes, I guess Stonebarrow would be up there, just about straight above us."

She squeezed his hand. "Don’t think unpleasant thoughts; it’s too lovely here." She moved closer to him and made a little motion with her shoulders. He was barely conscious of it, and couldn’t have described it, but he knew what it meant: Hug me.

He put his arm around her and squeezed. "I’m not thinking unpleasant thoughts."

"Yes, you are. You’re worried about poor Nate Marcus and what’s going to happen to him tomorrow."

He smiled. "Yes, you’re right. Pretty close, anyway. Okay, no more unpleasant thoughts." He squeezed her once more, and they began to walk again, with his arm over her shoulder and his fingers resting lightly on the cool nape of her neck.

Pretty close, but not quite on the mark. What he was thinking about was Randy Alexander. If-just if- Alexander had been flung from the top of Stonebarrow Fell, he would have landed immediately in front of where they were. And immediately in front of them was a semicircular basin of cloudy, stagnant-looking sea water, about two hundred feet in diameter, formed by a great, curving reef that spread seaward from the base of the cliff. In it was a lot of algae and some floating debris. As Gideon watched, the tide, which had been flooding for some hours, began to retreat, flowing out of the lagoon and taking with it a large, rotten log, presumably to be carried out to sea.

As he walked, he looked more closely at the basin. It seemed to be fifteen or twenty feet deep at its center. More than deep enough. Kneeling, he touched his fingers to the water. Warm, far warmer than the ocean, as was to be expected.

He flicked the water from his fingers and stood up. He had solved Merrill’s little mystery. Assuming that Alexander’s body had fallen from Stonebarrow Fell, it would have landed smack in the middle of this stagnant, warm pond, in which decomposition would have proceeded far more quickly than in the colder open sea. The body might easily have lain there in the lagoon for two weeks before being floated-just like the log, already fifty feet offshore-out into the Atlantic, to be beached by the current at Seaton… looking just like one of Merrill’s typical four-weekers.

Immigrant pushcart peddler metamorphosed into world-renowned anthropologist was the way one of television’s more literate interviewers had once introduced Professor Abraham Irving Goldstein, and the phrase, literally true, was as good a nutshell description of Abe as Gideon knew. In 1924, a seventeen-year-old freshly arrived from Russia, speaking nothing but Yiddish, he was hawking thread and ribbons from a pushcart on Brooklyn’s Pitkin Avenue. A decade later he had his Ph. D. from Columbia and was embarking on a career that would make him one of the world’s foremost cultural anthropologists, first at Columbia, then at the University of Wisconsin-where he’d been Gideon’s professor, and Nate Marcus’s as well-and finally at the University of Washington.

Through it all he’d managed to keep his immigrant pushcart peddler’s speech patterns. Whether these still came naturally sixty years later, or were part of his "delightful panoply of studied eccentricities" (as the same interviewer had called them) was a moot question. Abe himself professed innocence. ("Accent? What kind accent?")

Gideon hadn’t seen him for a few months now, and he watched with a trace of anxiety as the deep-blue train from London drew smoothly to the platform at Axminster. His old friend and mentor, now long-retired, was getting along in years, to the point at which one always wondered whether even a short space of time might not produce some sad and irreversible change, some awful omen of approaching decrepitude.

He needn’t have worried. In the lit interior of the car that stopped directly in front of him he saw Abe get to his feet, sprightly and cheerful, ruffle the hair of a patently enchanted five-year-old boy in the seat opposite, and deliver a courtly bow to a blond, pretty woman, obviously the boy’s mother. When he shuffled down the aisle with his bag, Gideon could see that his eyes had all their usual sparkle, or maybe just a little more than usual; that would be the pretty young mother.

Abe was a thin, active man-Gideon had once made the mistake of calling him "spry" within his hearing-whose nervous energy and shock of frizzy white hair gave him a distinct resemblance to Artur Rubinstein. Years ago, when Gideon had been walking with him during an anthropological conference in Boston, they had been approached by a teenager who shyly asked for Abe’s autograph. Abe, who had been the subject of magazine articles and television programs, complied with a flourish, and the boy watched him with adulation in his eyes. But when he looked at the signature, his face fell; he had thought, he stammered, that Abe was the great pianist. Abe had responded in character: He had put his arm around the boy’s shoulder, drawn his head close, and said, in a conspiratorial whisper, "Ah, but Abraham Irving Goldstein is my real name."

When he clambered down to the Axminster platform, he did it with painful slowness-he was increasingly troubled with arthritis-and when Gideon embraced him, he was keenly aware of just how frail the old man’s body was.

"Abe, you are all right, aren’t you?" he asked, then suddenly laughed.

"So what’s so funny?"

"I’m laughing because I know exactly what you’re going to say."

"What am I going to say?"

"You’re going to say, ‘So why shouldn’t I be all right?’ "

Abe smiled. "So why shouldn’t I say it?"

They talked of other things on the short drive to Char-mouth, and it was not until they joined Julie that Gideon told him about his visit to Stonebarrow Fell, about the murder of Randy Alexander, about his lagoon hypothesis, and, in passing, about the disappearance of the Poundbury calvarium.

He had talked through a round of predinner sherries in front of the fire in the Tudor Room, and then a second round, to which Andy Hinshore contributed an accompaniment of pate and bread.

When they thanked him, he grinned. "It does my heart good to see people enjoying themselves in this room. Just think, people have been sitting before this fireplace in comradeship and warmth-this very fireplace-for five hundred years. Five centuries ago, someone stood here, sheltered from the night, just as I stand here, with his hand on this stone, just as mine is. It’s almost as if…as if I’m communicating with him, like."

"Mr. Hinshore," Abe said, smiling, "did anyone ever tell you you got the soul of an anthropologist?"

Hinshore seemed genuinely pleased. "Why, thank you, Professor. I take that as a real compliment. Well," he said, and cleared his throat, "here I am, chattering away, with you trying to talk business. Is it all right if I serve dinner in ten minutes?"

Gideon continued talking, and Abe and Julie continued listening through the sherry and pate, and then through bowls of oxtail soup in the dining room, where they were the sole diners, Robyn and Arbuckle not yet having returned from Swanscombe. Hinshore had already served their main course of roast lamb with mint jelly before Abe said anything.

"So what do you think, Gideon? This is too tall an order for me, bringing Nathan to his right mind?"

Gideon shook his head slowly as he dipped a slice of lamb in Mrs. Hinshore’s homemade mint jelly. "I don’t know, Abe. I don’t think Nate’s about to listen to reason. He’s really gone overboard on this theory of his."

Abe rolled his eyes. "This cockamamy Mycenaean theory."

"That’s the one. I really think he’s gotten obsessive about it. Nate’s not his old self, Abe. All the old nastiness is there, but none of the healthy skepticism about his own ideas. You’ll find him changed." Gideon grimaced. Hadn’t Jack Frawley used just those words?

Abe swallowed the bread he’d been chewing. "Changed, obsessive…" He exhaled a long, noisy sigh. "I made a big trip for nothing, you think?" He seemed suddenly tired, drained. As he ought to be, Gideon thought; he had been traveling for at least fourteen hours, and according to his Sequim-based biological clock, it was now about 4:00 a.m.

The same thought apparently occurred to Julie. With a small crease of concern on her brow, she said. "We probably ought to get you to bed early, Abe. You’ve had a long day, with an important one coming up tomorrow."

Ordinarily he would have rounded good-humoredly on her at the nursely "we," but instead he shrugged wearily. "I was going to go yet tonight and have a talk with Nathan, but maybe you’re right. Anyway, I wouldn’t want Arbuckle and the Dorset man, what’s his name, Robyn, should think I was fraternizing with the enemy."

"I’d never met Robyn before last night," Gideon said. "Do you know him?"

"Yeah, I know him a little."

"What do you think of him?"

Abe chewed his lamb and pondered. "A very clean person," he said finally. "A nice dresser. You got to give him that."

Gideon laughed. "I gather you don’t think too much of his professional abilities."

"I got nothing against him. A doppes, a dilettante. He plays at archaeology, like in the nineteenth century rich people did."

"Will he be fair at the inquiry?"

"Sure," Abe said, "I think so. Why not? So will the other one, the one from Horizon, Arbuckle. Not the most brilliant person in the world, but he does his job. In the words of Dr. Johnson, ‘a harmless drudge.’ "

Hinshore came to clear the table. "Everything to your liking, Professor Goldstein?" Since Gideon had explained to him who Abe was, he had treated him with solicitous respect.

"Fine," Abe said. "Delicious."

Hinshore’s narrow face lit up with pleasure. "I’ll tell the missus. And now perhaps a little cheese? We have a fine old Brie and some first-class Gorgonzola. A little more St. Emilion to go with it, perhaps?"

They had the cheese but not the wine. Julie’s brows knitted. "Gideon," she said, spreading the pungent, runny Brie on a slice of bread, "this student you think was murdered-"

"There’s no ‘think’ about it. The broken ulna and radius, the fractured hyoid, the crushed larynx-"

She shut her eyes and waved the bread at him. "All right, I believe you."

Gideon grinned as he cut some blue-veined Gorgonzola. "I’m starting to sound like Merrill."

"Heaven forbid. We’d have to get a divorce." She popped the bread into her mouth and licked her finger. "From what you said, Inspector Bagshawe thinks the killer is someone at the dig, maybe Nate himself. Is that right?"

"He didn’t say it in so many words, but that was the impression I got, yes. With Nate at the head of the list."

"But why? Why not somebody from outside the dig?"

"Well, I think Bagshawe’s just beginning with known factors. Where else could he start?"

"Didn’t Alexander belong to some kind of motorcycle gang in Missouri? Couldn’t there have been some sort of grudge, and they bumped him off?"

Abe looked accusingly at Gideon. "Bumped him off? This is what comes of being married to a skeleton detective? And such a nice girl she was."

"She certainly was," Gideon said. "But no, I don’t think a motorcycle gang is too likely. Why come all the way to nice, quiet Dorset to do it, when he could have been just as easily bumped off the road in nice, quiet Missouri?"

He turned suddenly to Abe. "Do you remember if Nate is left-handed?"

"No," Abe said promptly.

"No you don’t remember, or no he’s not left-handed?"

"No he’s not left-handed."

Gideon heaved a relieved sigh, then looked up. "How can you be that sure? You haven’t seen him in years."

"Because," Abe explained. "I remember. Julie, you’re thinking something?"

"Uh-huh, I am," she said slowly, reaching for another piece of bread. "Let me ask this. Now don’t you two jump down my throat-remember, I don’t know the man-but is there a possibility that Nate Marcus actually did kill him- to keep him from telling whatever it was?"

Gideon was hardly about to jump down her throat. His protests to Bagshawe notwithstanding, the idea ranged uncomfortably about the perimeters of his mind. "I don’t think so, but I’m not as sure as I’d like to be. What do you think, Abe? You probably know him better than I do."

Abe still had a little dinner wine left. He swirled it thoughtfully. "You know how you read in the paper when there’s some terrible murder and the mother says, ‘No, it couldn’t be my son who did it, such a darling boy, always so polite’? Well, this is how I feel about Nathan. Maybe not always so polite, but a murderer? Impossible." He drained the wine, tilted his head, lifted a white eyebrow. "Still, who knows? All the time the criminologists are telling us anybody could be a murderer with the right motivation."

"I don’t really believe that, though," Gideon said.

"Me neither," said Julie.

"Me neither," said Abe. " Nu, so much for the criminologists."

Gideon paused in the act of slicing a chunk of Gorgonzola and snapped his fingers softly. "Something just occurred to me. I need to make a telephone call. Be right back."

He found Barry Fusco on his first attempt, at the Coach and Horses, and waited impatiently while the landlord called him to the telephone.

"Barry, when I was up at the dig a couple of weeks ago, you came down to the gate to let me in. Are you responsible for letting people in, or were you just being helpful?"

"Huh?" Barry sounded as if he’d been asleep. "No, I’m on gate duty this month."

That was what Gideon had hoped. "So you’d know about any visitors?"

"Uh-huh," Barry said through a yawn. "I mean, we all have our own keys, but if it’s a visitor, someone who doesn’t have one, I’m supposed to let him in."

"Do you remember if there were any other visitors the day I was there?"

"There were some school kids-"

"No, they left before I did. Was there anybody there after me?"

"Uh-uh. Nope."

"Why so sure?"

"Because the whole time I’ve been on, I only had to let visitors in twice, and that was on the same day-you and that school group. That was it."

"You’re positive?"

"Sure. Nobody else. We used to get some people in the summer, but not now. What’s the difference, Dr. Oliver?"

From the way he was talking, Gideon knew he hadn’t heard about Randy. Evidently, Bagshawe hadn’t yet made his trip up the hill. "Barry," he said casually, "are you right-handed?"

"Am I…" He laughed, as if Gideon had asked him a riddle. "All right, I’m right-handed. Why?"

"What about the others? Leon, Sandra, Dr. Frawley?"

"I don’t know. I think everyone’s right-handed, but I’m not sure. Wait a minute, Randy’s a lefty. He used to pitch Class-A ball. Did you know that?"

"I think I did hear something about it. Thanks a lot, Barry."

"Things are shaping up," Gideon said as he returned to the dining room. "It looks like it must have been somebody from the dig who killed him. If not Nate, then one of the others: Frawley, Leon, Sandra… who am I forgetting? Oh, Barry. Five suspects."

"How come?" Abe asked. "Why?"

"Let’s assume I’m right about Randy’s body being tossed into that lagoon from the top of Stonebarrow Fell itself, okay? Well there haven’t been any outsiders up to the fell since before Randy was killed-I was the last one, in fact… So an insider must have done it. Simple."

"How do you know this?" Abe asked. "About no outsiders." The fatigue seemed to have left him; there was color in his cheeks and a liveliness in his eyes; he sensed a mystery, an adventure.

Gideon told him about the call to Barry. "I suppose someone could have climbed over the fence, and Barry might not have seen him, but that’s pretty doubtful. It’s a pretty small dig."

"Gideon," Julie said, "you’ll need to tell Inspector Bagshawe about this, won’t you?"

Gideon nodded. "I was going to call him in the morning anyway-about the lagoon."

On Hinshore’s suggestion, they took their coffee in the Tudor Room, where the fire had been renewed for them. For a few lazy minutes they sipped quietly, gazing into the orange flames.

"I got a question," Abe said, still looking into the fire, his cup at his lips, the saucer held just below it. "This theft of the Poundbury skull in Dorchester; where do you think it fits in?"

"Fits in with what?" Gideon asked.

"With what?" Abe repeated, waggling the saucer impatiently. "With everything-the whole mish-mosh. "

"Why should it fit in at all?"

Over the rim of his cup, Abe looked at him as if Gideon had asked why one and one should be two. The old man put the cup down and wiped his lips with a napkin. "Listen, how far from Dorchester to Charmouth?"

"Thirty miles, maybe."

"Fine. Now, let me ask you: In your whole career, did you ever run into a… what are they calling it…an inquiry into a dig?"

"Not personally, no."

"No," Abe said. "What about a murder on a dig?"

"No."

"No. And stealing a calvarium from a museum? This, did you ever see?"

Gideon shook his head.

Abe nodded his. "No, no, and no. Three things that never happen, and they all happen inside of a few weeks of each other, and inside of thirty miles of each other. And you think they’re just three separate pieces of monkey business, nothing to do with each other?" He looked at Julie and jerked a thumb at Gideon. "Some detective!"

Gideon grumbled in mock annoyance. "In the first place, Dr. Goldstein, I’m not a detective-"

"Hoo, boy, you’re telling me."

They all laughed then, and Gideon poured more coffee for them from the silver pot. "Maybe you have a point, Abe," he said.

"Of course. And here’s another connection between all three things: you."

"Me?"

"You. You just happen to discover Poundbury’s missing; you just happen to arrive here the next day; you just happen to be the one Alexander wants to tell a secret-and you just happen to be the one that winds up analyzing the poor guy’s bones."

"But it’s true: I did just happen-"

"Of course." He put down his half-empty cup and rose.

"I think I’ll go ahead to bed now." He clasped Gideon’s shoulder and spoke to Julie. "This husband of yours; sometimes his fancy-dancy anthropological theories get a little ungepotchket -you know ungepotchket? "

Julie shook her head.

"Screwed up," Gideon murmured. His years of friendship with Abe had taught him a great many Yiddish expressions-by osmosis, as it were.

Abe narrowed his eyes, considering. "Screwed up? No, this I wouldn’t say. Ungepotchket is more, well… unnecessarily rococo."

Julie laughed. "Does it really mean that?"

"Sure," Abe said. "But about Gideon, this I got to say. Wherever he is…always it gets interesting. Good night, folks."

His papery face suddenly crinkled in a laugh, and on the spur of the moment Gideon got up and gently embraced the frail figure. "Good night, Abe. Sleep well. I’m glad you’re here."

When he had left, Gideon said to Julie, "He really could have a point, you know."

"Of course I got a point!" floated down the hall, followed by the closing of a door.

"Well," Julie said, "you do seem in the thick of things for a man who was going to be uninvolved."

"I know. It’s funny, isn’t it? But none of it was my doing, and once I give Bagshawe a call in the morning-and go up to the site at ten-I’m out of it."

Julie smiled and leaned back comfortably in her chair. In the firelight her cheeks were peach-colored and transparent-looking, as smooth and soft as the petals of a rose; she might have been a candlelit Madonna of Geertgen or La Tour. "Sure you are," she said. "All the same…"

"All the same you just have a feeling."

"Uh-huh."

"Me, too. And to tell the truth, I wish there was something I could do."

"Well," she said, and leaned forward to stroke the line of his jaw, "Abe’s certainly right about one thing. Life with you isn’t dull."