Old Bones

SEVENTEEN

There was a ripple of anticipation around the circle. They had been through three sessions with Gideon, and they knew that he was not above the occasional use of a dramatic device to make a point. But this time they waited in vain.

"I think," Joly said, "this is something the professor and I had best talk about alone. I’m sure you understand."

"Good idea," Gideon agreed. What he had to say was going to test Joly’s newly acquired tolerance to its limit, and it would never do for the dignified inspecteur principal to have a fit in front of his colleagues.

When they had left, buzzing, Joly closed the door behind them, silently walked the length of the room back to the table, looked at John, looked at Gideon, and sighed.

"I know I’m going to regret this…" He tipped his head towards the table, looked back at Gideon, and elaborately formed his lips into a circle, as if he were about to blow a smoke ring.

"Who?" he said suspiciously.

Gideon decided that the best way to tell him was just to tell him.

"I think it’s Guillaume du Rocher."

After a brief moment of stunned silence, John smacked his big hands together and yelped with joy.

Joly’s lips continued to form their fishlike O for a few seconds, then wavered and shut. He subsided slowly into one of the scattered chairs with another immense sigh.

"This-" Gideon began.

But Joly was resignedly holding uphis hand. "By Guillaume du Rocher," he said patiently, "I imagine you mean… I pray fervently you mean… some long-lost relative-of whose existence only you happen to be aware, of course- who happens to have the same name as the Guillaume du Rocher who drowned last Monday in Mont St. Michel Bay?"

"No, I don’t-"

"Because you can not mean the Guillaume du Rocher who drowned last Monday in Mont St. Michel Bay, and who was publicly buried in the family cemetery at Rochebonne one day before the first of these bones-these very old bones-were found." A rare plaintive look puckered the flesh around his eyes. "Can you?"

"No, I don’t mean that Guillaume either."

"Come on, Doc," John laughed. He too dropped into one of the black plastic-and-chrome chairs. "What do you mean? Who is this guy?"

"What I mean," Gideon said, "is that unless I’m way off base the man who drowned in the bay wasn’t really Guillaume du Rocher."

Their expressions were so artlessly baffled-jaws dropping, brows soaring, like a couple of ungifted actors simulating astonishment-that he burst out laughing. In all fairness, he remarked to himself, being the Skeleton Detective of America did have its moments.

"I’m pretty sure this is the real Guillaume," he said with a glance at the skeleton, "and he’s been dead since World War II, not since last Monday."

"Well-but-" John stammered. "You said you met him yourself a couple of years ago-"

"What I met was somebody who called himself Guillaume du Rocher."

"And are we permitted to know," Joly asked, recovering his equilibrium, "how you deduced that the man who was known as Guillaume du Rocher for as long as anyone can remember-to his family, his attorney, his servants, his doctor, and scores of others who knew him well-was not the‘real’ Guillaume du Rocher?" He pulled out a fresh pack of Gitanes and tore it open; rather testily, it seemed to Gideon.

"I deduced it from the simple fact that these bones belonged to the real Guillaume. Therefore, nobody else could be him, no matter how many people recognized him or think they recognized him. He’s been down in that cellar for almost fifty years. At least that’s the way it looks to me," he added circumspectly, mindful that less than twenty-four hours ago he’d been telling them the bones were Alain’s. "John, do you remember what Loti said to us?"

The ends of Joly’s mouth moved slightly down. He was not pleased to hear that they had been interviewing the doctor.

"Not really," John said. "I got the bonjour pretty good, and I got the au revoir, but I didn’t get too much in between."

"He said Guillaume had rickets."

"Yeah, that’s right; you told me." His eyes widened. "This skeleton’s got rickets?"

"It sure as hell does. The leg bones show torsion, bowing, shortening-not extreme, but enough. That’s why the class came up with such a low height estimate, and it’s what messed them up on race. It all adds up to rickets."

And, he was too embarrassed to mention, so did the beading on the ribs that he’d noticed days ago and promptly forgotten. Not prayer beads at all. The "rickety rosary" was what old pathology texts called it, and it should have been a giveaway. But with rickets being so uncommon for the last fifty years, and with this particular case being relatively mild, and with his reference books back in Port Angeles…Given time he could probably come up with a dozen excuses, but the simple fact was that he’d missed it.

"Doc," John said. "Am I wrong, or don’t you get rickets from malnutrition? Why would a rich guy like Guillaume have it?"

"It comes from a lack of vitamin D in kids. It throws off bone metabolism. But people didn’t even know what vitamins were when he was born, and plenty of rich kids got it."

Joly had lit his cigarette and come to the table to stare accusingly down at the bones. "Why would a case of rickets prove so conclusively that this is Guillaume? As you said, other people have had it."

"But not any other du Rochers, according to Loti. And this is a du Rocher, all right; the sternal foramen, the skeletal proportions-Who else could it possibly be?"

"I believe the same question was asked of me yesterday," Joly observed drily. "At that time the correct answer was Alain du Rocher."

"Well, I was wrong," Gideon admitted again. "I was going with the information I had at the time."

Joly merely looked at him.

"You get new data, you have to modify your hypotheses," John contributed sagely from his chair.

"That’s about the size of it," Gideon smiled. "Look, maybe it can be verified. The teeth have had some work done on them. Maybe there are some dental records around."

"After all this time?" Joly said. "I doubt it." He frowned, stroking his cheek, still looking penetratingly down at the bones, as if waiting for them to explain themselves. "All right, let’s say you’re right-"

"You’re wearing him down, Doc," John said.

"Very probably," Joly conceded. He turned to face Gideon through a veil of blue smoke. "If so, it raises a good many new questions. Who killed him? Why? How was it possible to keep it secret all this time? Is there a connection to Claude’s murder?"

"I’ve got a good one too," John said. "If that stuff on the table is what’s left of Guillaume du Rocher…"

"Yes?" Joly said, turning.

"…then just who the hell was it who drowned in the bay last week?"

Under self-imposed and mutually agreeable rules John and Gideon gave themselves a break from the proliferating mysteries of Rochebonne and didn’t discuss them during most of the drive to Mont St. Michel. But when they stopped for gas at an Elf Station near St. Georges de Grehaigne, John could no longer restrain himself.

"Doc, I’ve been thinking about it," he said, turning intently towards Gideon, his palms on his thighs and his elbows akimbo. "I don’t think it makes any sense. How could anybody get away with it? It’s impossible."

"What’s impossible about it?"

"Well, what are you saying? That after Guillaume died somebody imitated him for the next fifty years or so and fooled everyone who knew him? It can’t be done."

"Why not? Remember, everybody thought he went off to join the Resistance in 1942. When he showed up again-that is, when the fake Guillaume showed up-"

"Come on, admit it. Listen to what you’re saying. Does this sound like real life?"

"-nobody had seen the real one for two solid years."

"Doc, Doc, you’ve been watching too much TV. I’m telling you it can’t be done; not really. You can’t fool a guy’s family, his friends…There are too many little things you can’t imitate exactly-his expressions, the way he smiles, the way he walks, and moves, and even stands; the little bits of trivia he knows-"

"Even," Gideon said, "if the new Guillaume’s face was so scarred you’d never be able to recognize it? Even with a damaged larynx that changed his voice to a whisper? Even if most of his bones had been pinned back together with 1944 techniques so he walked, and moved, and stood differently? Even if he turned reclusive and hardly talked to anyone any more? Even if he’d already lived at Rochebonne so he knew the routine?"

"Yeah, well, that’s a point-but are you telling me his own doctor wouldn’t know him?"

"Loti never saw him until they brought him into the hospital in 1944."

"What about the rickets?"

"What about the rickets?"

"Well, Loti knew Guillaume had rickets as a kid. Couldn’t he see the new Guillaume didn’t have it?"

"John, after the crushing this guy’s bones went through, no doctor in the world would have spotted a mild case of rickets unless he did a microscopic analysis of the bone tissue. And why would Loti do that?"

"Yeah, but…" John shook his head with frustration. "His handwriting, what about his handwriting? There must have been things around that he signed before. You’re telling me that no one ever noticed the difference in-" He stopped and fell back against the seat. "You’re going to say that the paralyzed arm was the one he used to write with before the war. Aren’t you?"

"I don’t know, but I’ll give you odds it was."

As Gideon paid the bill and drove back out onto the N176, John watched him thoughtfully. "You’re really starting to believe this stuff, aren’t you?"

"God help me," Gideon said, "I think I am."