Old Bones

NINE

Gideon was one of those people who could wake up at a set time without an alarm clock, but it was an instinct he never wholly trusted. As a result, he usually set an alarm before going to bed and generally wound up jerking awake ten minutes before it went off, thus allowing him to punch down the button and avoid being shaken out of his sleep by the alarm itself. Thus also losing him ten minutes’ additional sleep that he wanted dearly at the time. It was one of those little problems he had yet to get around to figuring out.

But he was surprised the next morning when the alarm went off while he was still asleep. He slammed the button down twice before he realized it was the telephone. Blindly, he reached for it, his heart racing. He didn’t like telephone calls in the middle of the night; that was the way he’d learned that Nora was dead. As he groped for the receiver he saw the time on the glowing clock dial and relaxed: ten after seven. Not the middle of the night at all.

Still, damn early.

He growled something into the telephone.

"Oh-oh, sounds like he hasn’t been fed yet. I didn’t wake you up, did I?"

"Julie?" He smiled and fell back against the pillows, closing his eyes again, letting her voice flow over him. "I love you."

He’d already called her twice in the five days he’d been in France. They’d talked and laughed for almost an hour each time, like a couple of kids with crushes. He hadn’t yet had the courage to inquire about the bills.

"I love you too. I miss you horribly. When are you coming back?"

"Wednesday. I keep telling you."

"I know, but I like to hear it. Four more days." She sighed. "That’s still a long time."

"Mm, I’m glad you miss me. Are you home now? How did the supervisors’ seminar go?"

"I just got back from Arizona an hour ago. And I know all about effective supervision now. It’s nothing but a matter of providing a climate conducive to the maximization of intra-group cooperation."

"I always thought it had something to do with planning, delegation, that kind of stuff."

"That shows how out of date you are. How’s life in St. Malo? Still pretty dull?"

"Well, no, as a matter of fact. Remember the Guillaume du Rocher I mentioned to you? They’ve found a dismembered skeleton in his basement, and the police have asked me in. What are you laughing at?"

"It’s amazing. This always happens to you, doesn’t it? So tell me about your dismembered skeleton." He could tell from her voice that she was settling herself comfortably.

He went over it with her briefly. "Everybody," he concluded, "is convinced it’s this SS officer Kassel that Guillaume killed in 1942. Even John thinks so. But I’m just as positive it isn’t. Maybe I’ll find out more today."

"What does your friend Guillaume have to say about it?"

"Guillaume’s dead. He drowned Monday, the same day I got here. The funeral was a couple of days ago."

"Oh, I’m sorry, Gideon. I know you liked him." She was quiet a moment. "Doesn’t it strike you that there’s something funny about that?"

His eyes popped open in surprise. "It sure does, but what makes you think so?"

"Well, I was just thinking…It’s an awfully big coincidence; here’s a body lying hidden under the house for forty or fifty years. Then when it finally gets found, it turns out that the person who’s supposed to have done it got buried the day before. How convenient."

"You know, that’s a good point," he said admiringly. "I never thought about that."

"The bones are found," Julie went on, "the victim is identified, the killer is identified, and the case is all wrapped up-all in one day. Only the only person who can confirm it-or argue with it, I bet-just died. And you never thought about that?"

"No."

"You’re slipping, Dr. Oliver. I think marriage has made you soft. When you get back I’m going to have to keep you less contented."

"Just try it," he said, then got himself more comfortably stretched out on his back and got down to the sweet, serious business of telling her just how much he missed her. And how he was going to show it when he got home.

An hour later, while John went lamenting to Professor Wuorinen’s final lecture ("Larval Invasions of Calliphoridae in Unburied Corpses from Two to Four Weeks Old." Many graphic color slides), Gideon was picked up at the hotel and driven to the manoir by a sharply dressed, intense young man with red hair and elevator heels, who introduced himself as Sergeant Denis. Ray met them at the thick oak door and politely invited Denis to join them for coffee.

"No, thank you, monsieur," Denis said, as firmly as if Ray had suggested a double brandy. He bobbed a Joly-style bow and went to break the police seal on the cellar door and get the workmen started digging.

"Well, let’s go sit down," Ray said. "I’ve asked Beatrice to bring us some coffee."

With luck Beatrice would not take Ray’s request in too narrow a sense; he was ravenous, although he’d breakfasted in the hotel restaurant at eight. Delicious as the French petit dejeuner of croissants, rolls, and cafe au lait was, its staying power was an hour and a half at most. The French, realizing this, often had a second breakfast at midmorning to tide them over until lunch, and if Beatrice were to offer him something along that line, he would not turn it down.

In the window alcove of the salon were the same people he’d met the evening before, as if they’d been there all night, leaving only to change their clothes. Now, however, it was an ample breakfast they were putting away, and Beatrice’s croissants looked a lot better than the ones at the Terminus.

Ray and Gideon walked past the group, which was deep in conversation (except for Jules, who was sucking in croissants as quickly as he could smear them with jam and butter), and headed toward a pair of chairs in the far corner, but Rene caught their eye with an amiable smile and waved them over. There was no polite escape. With a small shrug between them, they joined the others. This time it was Ben who moved his chair to make room for them.

Beatrice got there at the same time they did, and, happily, she had not forgotten his good appetite. With the steaming pitchers of milk and coffee there were two big baskets; one of croissants and one of rolls, both of them warm and fragrant-altogether the best combination of smells to be found in France. Maybe in the world.

"We’ve solved your mystery for you," Rene announced, sprightly and pink-cheeked.

"Oh?"

" Obersturmbannfuhrer Kassel of the SS. That’s who it is. It must be."

"Yes, I heard something about him." Gideon glanced down to break open a roll. "Tell me, do you remember what he looked like?"

"I’ll never forget." The shadow of a cloud rippled over Rene’s bland face. "No one could, who was here when the trouble came. Very handsome in the German way; very cold, very Aryan. A blond giant…"

"You know," Ben pointed out, "you might be overstating this‘giant’ thing a little, which maybe could mislead Gideon. You were a kid then, and to a kid every grown-up looks big and strong."

"Rene was sixteen," Mathilde said. "That was not a child in those days. Besides, I remember the SS man very well too. And I was… somewhat older." After a moment she added: "At that time." Just in case anyone thought it might still be true.

"Well, what about the bones, Gideon?" Sophie asked. "Do they fit the description, or don’t you have enough to go on?"

He hesitated. He had more than enough to go on, and no, they didn’t fit the description, whatever Joly might think. But he was saved from having to hedge by someone making an entrance into the salon. Six pairs of eyes swiveled in the newcomer’s direction with candid hostility. Even Ray, to whom glowers didn’t come easily or often in Gideon’s experience, managed a creditable one.

"Claire’s father," Ray whispered to him. Gideon, whose back was to the doorway, turned out of curiosity.

Claude Fougeray, as Joly had said, was not an endearing man, at least to look at. Short-necked and squat, radiating belligerence, he stopped at the entrance of the room to return the collective antagonism with a goggling, malevolent stare of his own. Then he muttered an ugly laugh and made his way past them to the empty dining room.

Good God, if that was Claire’s father, no wonder her eyes had that haunted look.

In the salon the conversation had stopped, so that the clink of carafe against wineglass in the other room was audible, then the hollow gurgle of liquid being poured, and even the three wolfish gulps that followed. There was another muttered, contemptuous laugh, and the process was repeated: clink, gurgle, glug, glug, glug. And again the clink…Gideon shuddered. It was 9:15 a.m.

"Tell me, Rene," Sophie said, her voice brighter and louder than before, "what will you and Mathilde do? Will you give up your job in Germany and come and live at the manoir?"

"Well," Rene said, "we haven’t really-"

"Of course we will," said Mathilde. "It may take a few weeks to put things in order, however. It’s quite difficult at the moment without an automobile to get about in. Guillaume’s Citroen is still in the car park at Mont St. Michel, you know. I was hoping, Raymond, that you might go there and drive it back."

"The car? Yes, of course. But how would I get there?"

"Take someone else’s car, of course."

"But no one else has a car, my dear," Rene said. "Marcel picked everyone up at the airport or the train station in Dinan."

Mathilde shrugged crossly. She was not interested in details. "You can take a taxi to the train station, I suppose, and go from there, or perhaps you can rent a car. It’s all very annoying. I can’t imagine why Guillaume kept only the one car here. In Frankfurt we have-"

"Ha!" Behind Gideon, Claude had returned to the entrance to the salon. No one looked in his direction.

"-three automobiles and could easily do with another. It sounds ostentatious, I suppose, but-"

"Ha!"

Even Mathilde faltered. "-but as a matter of fact…as a matter of fact…"

"Ha!" There was a startlingly loud crash.

Gideon spun around in time to see Claude’s half-filled wineglass drop to the thinly carpeted stone floor and smash a few inches from where the carafe had splintered a moment before.

"Jesus Christ!" Ben Butts cried hoarsely. "What is it? Claude…!"

Claude’s body was rigid, arms spread, fingers clawing convulsively at the air. "Ha!" he cried. "Caah!" From one corner of his stretched lips a fine white froth seeped, as if his mouth were full of soap. His bulging eyes heaved.

"Oh, my God," Sophie murmured. "He can’t breathe!"

"Do something!" Mathilde commanded all-inclusively. "He’s having a heart attack!" And, her tone implied, on my Aubusson carpet.

Gideon, as paralyzed as the rest of them, finally pulled himself out of his chair and moved toward the stricken man. Before he got there Claude jerked as if an electrical current had pulsed through him, grunted through clenched teeth, then abruptly threw himself down on the floor, onto his back, like a circus performer who would momentarily spring unaided to his feet, all in one movement.

He didn’t spring to his feet, of course. He didn’t move at all, except for his outflung arms, which settled gently to the floor at his side in a quiet motion of terrible finality. His eyelids were lowered halfway over glazed and unfocused eyes. When his mouth fell open a moment later, a gob of foam welled from it and slid down his cheek toward his ear.

Head down, hands clasped behind his back, Joly listened to Gideon’s brief description of what had happened. When it was done he nodded once and stepped from the vestibule back into the salon to address the assembled household, who sat, edgy and subdued, in the alcove. Only Leona and Claire, in seclusion in their rooms, were absent.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said matter-of-factly, "I shall want to speak with each of you in the next few hours. After that, I expect to ask for your cooperation in remaining in the vicinity for the next several days."

"But we’re supposed to fly to the States tonight," Ben said.

Others began to protest too, but Joly cut them off. "If any of you find it an extreme inconvenience to remain until-let’s say Tuesday, three days-please inform me when we speak privately. But I hope that won’t be the case. It would create annoying and time-consuming difficulties for me and for yourselves. Madame," he said to Mathilde, "is there a room in which it would be convenient for me to hold interviews?"

"I suppose so," Mathilde said grudgingly. "Guillaume’s study is right across the hall."

"And someplace other than here where people might wait comfortably? I’m afraid I must ask all of you not to return to your rooms for the moment."

Mathilde fixed him with a penetrating eye. "Are your men going to search them?"

"Yes, they are."

She sighed her displeasure. "There are some chairs at the landing near the central staircase."

"Thank you. Fleury, please escort everyone as Madame du Rocher directs, and wait with them."

There was some muttering but they went meekly, except for Mathilde, who expressed restrained indignation at these high-handed police methods in her own home.

"Oh, and get somebody here from Pathology," Joly called after Fleury. "Dr. Fouret, if he’s available."

"I hope he’s a real doctor," Mathilde grumbled with a last scathing look at Gideon over her shoulder. Gideon spread his hands apologetically. His tentative, conspicuously amateurish attempts at CPR had not met with her approval. Nor with his own, but Claude had been so obviously beyond the reach of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation or any other earthly assistance that nothing would have helped in any case. Not even a real doctor.

So said Dr. Loti, the elderly physician-Guillaume’s doctor of many years-who had been summoned by Marcel after Claude’s shocking attack.

"Well," he said to Joly, coming from behind the folding screen that had been set up around Claude’s body and snapping shut his black leather case, "your professor friend here is right about the cause of death. I’m sure your laboratory will confirm it." He nodded at Gideon. "The smell of bitter almonds; very good, young man."

Joly’s glance at Gideon was not especially grateful.

"Look, Inspector," Gideon said, "this is your case. I don’t want anything to do with it. I don’t know anything about it. I just happened to be here."

"So it seems."

"All I know about bitter almonds is what I read in Sherlock Holmes. I don’t even know what a bitter almond is."

"Mm." Joly turned to Loti. "Do you have any idea how quick death would have been?"

"Within minutes, probably only a very few. Cyanide is one of the most rapidly lethal of all poisons. It disrupts the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood the moment it’s ingested."

"Then we can certainly assume that it was in the wine," Joly mused. He stood looking at the crime-scene crew taking their photographs and bustling around the corpse on their knees. One man was dusting the pieces of the broken carafe with black powder. "Are you getting any prints?" Joly asked him.

"Yes. More than one person’s, I think."

"Good."

"But you know," Gideon volunteered, "you wouldn’t have had to touch the carafe if you wanted to put poison in it. In fact, you’d be crazy if you did."

Joly gazed down his nose at him for a long moment, his lips pursed. "Thank you," he said.

"You’re very welcome." Funny the way policemen never seem to be particularly appreciative when obliging laymen point out self-evident facts to them. "I think," he said prudently, "that I’ll get out of here and take another crack at those bones."

Inspector Joly did not object.

When the manoir had been built, the stairwell in the southeast corner had evidently been housed in a massive tower. The tower itself had disappeared long ago, probably in some nineteenth-century remodeling, so that there was no sign of it from the outside. Inside, however, the worn stone steps still spiraled in their old cylindrical casing, and the landings were big, hexagonal chambers of bleak, gray stone, sparsely decorated with gloomy fragments of Greek and Roman statues, and furnished with a few appropriately austere wooden chairs and benches.

Fleury had taken the family members to the landing on the ground floor, through which Gideon had to pass on the way to the cellar, and there they stood or sat, alone or in small, grim clumps, looking put-upon, annoyed, or bewildered. There didn’t seem to be much in the way of grieving, Gideon noted. Not surprising, given his own brief acquaintance with Claude.

Ray (one of the bewildered ones) approached him tentatively. "It wasn’t a heart attack, then? I mean, with the police here and all…?"

Gideon led him a little away from the others; out of hearing. "It looks like the wine was poisoned, Ray."

When his friend seemed more bewildered yet, Gideon said gently: "It looks like he was murdered."

"‘As if,’ " Ray murmured automatically, off in his own world, "in both instances. Or‘as though.’ " He frowned dreamily while Gideon’s words made their way through. "Murdered," he finally said. "But why would anyone want to-" Guile was not one of Ray Schaefer’s strong points, and Gideon saw his eyes widen at some unwelcome thought in the midst of his conventional response. "-to kill Claude?" he finished weakly and predictably.

Gideon studied him for a moment. "Ray, if you know something, you ought to mention it to Joly."

"Oh, I don’t know anything," he said, dropping his eyes to stare at his toes. "Nothing important; nothing that could matter." He paused and considered. "It’s just…well, there was some trouble during the war."

"The war? You mean the Second World War?" He looked at Ray with interest. There were an awful lot of World War II vibrations bouncing around the Manoir de Rochebonne.

"Well, yes, sure. In 1942." Ray wriggled and shifted. "Oh-it’s just that Claude had a chance to warn some people that the Nazis were going to arrest them, but he didn’t do it and the SS executed them. One of them was my Uncle Alain-my cousin, rather; Sophie’s and Rene’s brother- and I guess there were some hard feelings."

"Yeah, I can see how there just might be."

"Well, I mean really hard feelings." He hesitated, then gave his mild version of a what-the-hell shrug. "The thing is, Sophie absolutely adored him, and she’s never forgiven Claude. They never even got Alain’s body back from the Nazis."

"I see."

"And Mathilde was engaged to him before she married Rene. And-"

"Listen, Ray, if you’re thinking about holding this back because you think it’ll protect Sophie or Mathilde-"

"Me?" Ray said miserably and uttered an implausible laugh.

"-don’t do it. Tell Joly what you know."

"But I don’t-Gideon, it was almost fifty years ago."

"Ray, don’t hide anything; it can wind up hurting whoever you’re trying to help. Believe me."

"Whomever," Ray said, and retreated into a mute and uncharacteristic mumpishness.