Skeleton dance

Chapter 17

Situated in a pleasant, wooded valley lined by low cliffs, Prehistoparc wasn't nearly as bad as Gideon had feared; neither seedy nor phony-baloney, although there was a definite Disney World feel to it. One paid an admission fee and then walked along a footpath that meandered through the natural forest, where two dozen life-sized, extensively labeled groupings of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon men and women going about their lives were artfully placed. The Neanderthals were perhaps a little exaggeratedly brutish-looking and the Cro-Magnons were maybe a tad over-clean and refined for people who lived in muddy rockshelters and wore animal skins, but on the whole the displays were interesting and within the bounds of scientific knowledge.

"So what's your opinion, Gideon?" Julie asked after he had filled her in on the day's bizarre developments while they strolled between the exhibits. " Did we all have it backwards? Was it Bousquet who killed Carpenter and not the other way around?"

"Maybe, but there are other possibilities." He stepped aside to let a couple of French kids waving rubber "Neanderthal" axes bought in the gift shop romp by hooting Plains Indian war whoops out of North Dakota by way of Warner Brothers.

"All we know for certain," he said, getting back on the path, "is that it's Ely Carpenter, not Bousquet, who's dead. But who killed him-that's anybody's Just because he had problems with Bousquet doesn't mean he didn't have them with somebody else."

"Somebody else at the institute, you mean."

"Well… yes. I didn't want to think so at first, but there's sure something funny going on. It's not just that everybody's playing it so cagey and close to the vest-well, everyone except Emile, who may just have his own axe to grind. There's also the theft of the bones from the morgue in St.-Cyprien, what about that? We assumed it was to keep me from identifying the skeleton as Bousquet's-which might conceivably have implicated Ely-but now we know it wasn't Bousquet's skeleton, it was Ely's, so what was that all about?"

"Oh, that," said Julie. "I already explained that."

"You did? When? Where was I?"

"It was right after we got back from the hospital, and you were right there. You brushed it off at the time. I can even give you your exact words: you said no way, impossible, uh-uh, couldn't be, you knew these people, they thought like scientists, and so forth. You went on for quite a while. If I'm not mistaken there was even a 'whereas' and a 'therefore' in there somewhere. It was quite impressive."

"Oh, gosh, did I really do that? I'm sorry, it must have been the concussion. Um, what was it you said again?"

"It wasn't the concussion, it was just you being professorial and smarter-than-thou," she said pleasantly. "You can't help it; I'm used to it. Anyway, what I said was that the bones might not have been Bousquet's at all-and that was exactly what someone didn't want anybody to know."

"I have admit, that has a familiar ring," Gideon said. "It's also starting to make sense, given what we know now." They paused briefly to take in the next scene, a messy but probably fairly accurate rendition of "Dismembering the Reindeer with Stone Implements."

"And," he continued as they moved on, "the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. Somebody-one of those five people at the institute-didn't want it known that the body in the cave was Ely's, that he hadn't gone down in the plane, or even left Les Eyzies-that he'd been murdered right there and the plane crash never happened." He took her hand as they walked. "You had it right, Julie; you were way out ahead of Joly and me. We should have paid attention."

"Apology accepted," Julie said, "if that's what that was."

"It was," Gideon said, "abjectly offered."

"You think Carpenter found out who was behind the hoax and threatened to expose him, and that's why he was killed?" She frowned, wrinkling her nose and looking askance at him in a way that never failed to make him laugh. "What, is that too melodramatic?"

"It's melodramatic, all right, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be true. You notice I've learned my lesson. I'm not brushing off your ideas any more-no matter how far-fetched they are."

Julie didn't bother to respond, and they continued companionably along the path, stopping to admire "Pursuing the Woolly Rhinoceros," "Harpoon Fishing During the Magdalenian Era," and "Prehistoric Artists at Work."

"I do have a question, though," Julie said as they walked on. "I understand Lucien's theory of how Carpenter could have gotten away with a fake crash, but this wasn't Carpenter. So who was in the plane? Did it go down, or didn't it go down?"

"Joly thinks the whole thing was a set-up, that the crash was faked just the way he thought before, except, of course, that it wasn't Ely at the controls. With Ely supposedly dead in a plane wreck, nobody was going to get suspicious and start looking into his disappearance in Les Eyzies; the killer was off the hook. As to who was piloting it, that's anybody's guess. Not Ely, that's all we can say for sure."

"And the 'Tell them I'm sorry'-what would have been the point of that?"

"Probably just a little added fillip to give it credibility."

"Pretty ambiguous, though," Julie said. "It could mean so many things."

"Yeah, I imagine the idea was to not overdo it by making everything too cut-and-dried. This way it seems more natural, more real. I'm guessing, you understand."

"Yes, but it makes sense-except don't pilots have to file a log or a flight plan or something? Could someone really get away with pretending to be someone else."

"Apparently yes. According to Joly, you can file your flight plan over the phone, just by calling ahead. If you have all the details on the plane right-tail number, air speed, probable route, fuel, that kind of stuff-no one's going to question who you say you are."

"It must have taken a lot of planning," Julie said.

"True, but Joly thinks that came later; that the murder itself wasn't premeditated-and I think he's probably right."

"Not premeditated? How do you come up with that?"

"Well, apparently he was shot with his own rifle."

"So?"

"People who have murder on their minds generally bring their own weapons; they don't rely on whatever happens to be at hand-and especially not on exotic Korean air rifles."

"I see. Yes, that makes sense."

They had stopped at "A Magdalenian Hunting Scene," with a spear-holding, loincloth-clad man and a tawny, crouching, cougarlike animal staring at each other across the face of a low ridge.

"Who's hunting who?" Julie said. "Whom."

"Hey, you know who that is?" Gideon gestured at the feline. "That's Felis spelaea herself-the cave lynx; that's the animal those four perforated bones at Tayac came from."

"Oh, that's interesting," Julie said. But she didn't quite manage to stifle a yawn; after almost two hours she'd had her fill of Paleolithic daily life.

So had Gideon, if he was going to be honest about it. "Want to go?"

She nodded. "Seeing all this activity's worn me out: killing mammoths, hunting bears, painting caves, picking berries, fighting tigers… do you suppose these people ever had time to just sit around?"

"And do what? Read books? Watch TV?"

"Sure, what's the matter, you never saw The Flintstones?"

"Well, that's a point," Gideon said laughing and throwing an arm around her shoulders. "Come on, it's getting a little chilly. Let's head back; I'm ready for a drink and some dinner."

The short drive back to Les Eyzies took them first through the tiny village of Tursac, clumped at the base of its massive, forbidding Romanesque church, and then along the valley of the Vezere, through a landscape of willows, poplars, and occasional stone houses, rimmed by low, white, mineral-streaked cliffs, and always threaded by the green, slow-flowing river. It was the same route they had taken to get to Prehistoparc only a couple of hours earlier, but then Gideon had been so absorbed in telling her about Carpenter, and Julie so engrossed in listening, they they'd hardly noticed the scenery. Now, with Julie driving (she was both the better driver and the jumpier passenger; they had discovered long ago that they both tended to be happier when she was the one behind the wheel), they took advantage of having largely talked themselves out to take in the sunny, fresh, agreeable countryside.

She had pulled the Peugeot into a parking slot in front of the hotel and turned off the engine before they returned to the subject of murder.

"Gideon, does Lucien think there's a connection between the Tayac hoax and Carpenter's death?"

"No. Or at least he prefers not to consider it yet. He actually quoted the law of parsimony to me. In Latin, yet."

"And what about you?"

"Sure there's a connection," Gideon said as they climbed out of the car, "I don't know what it is, but I'd bet twenty bucks it's there."

"So would I," Julie said with vigor, "unless somebody's decided to repeal Goldstein's Law."

At that they both smiled. Abe Goldstein had been Gideon's professor at the University of Wisconsin, a brilliant, eccentric Russian Jew, and the only person on whom Gideon was whole-heartedly willing to confer the title of mentor. Later, as an old man, he had become a close friend, of Julie's as well as Gideon's, and his loss was still deeply felt.

His Law of Interconnected Monkey Business-so named by Abe himself-was simply that when a lot of unusual or suspicious incidents occurred in the same place, at the same time, to the same people, the odds were that a relationship existed between them. And in Gideon's opinion, a string of events involving an elaborate archaeological hoax, the murder of the director of the archaeological institute that was involved in it, and his burial in one of that same institute's sites qualified as sufficiently unusual, suspicious, and connected to bring Goldstein's Law into play.

In Abe's own words: "In real life-I'm not talking about theory-construction, but real life-interconnected monkey business trumps parsimony. Every time."

But later on, in the wood-beamed hotel dining room, as they sat digesting a relatively simple (for France) a la carte dinner of pumpkin soup, medallions of veal, and green salad with warmed goat cheese, Gideon had second thoughts.

"You know," he said over coffee, "I wonder if we've been just a little too quick to invoke Interconnected Monkey Business. I've been thinking: there might be other reasons-other things besides the Old Man of Tayac-for somebody's wanting to kill Ely."

Julie looked up from the log fire into which she'd been contentedly and a little sleepily staring. "Mmm?"

"Did I ever mention to you that when he got the directorship he wasn't the only one in the running?"

"Yes, you said the board was considering Jacques and Audrey too."

He nodded soberly. "That's right."

She came fully awake. "Oh, wait a minute! You're not seriously telling me somebody killed him over the promotion, are you? That's crazy, why? Academic jealousy? Gideon if you people went around murdering each other over that, there wouldn't be a department head left standing in America."

"Well, that's true enough," Gideon said. "All the same I keep thinking about Jacques; I keep coming back to him."

"Jacques Beaupierre," Julie said, laughing. "Now there's a vicious, bloodthirsty killer if I ever saw one."

"I know, but the thing is-"

"Yes, you told me; he couldn't think of the name of the museum the bones came from. Sorry, I don't think that would hold up as evidence of foul play-not with anyone who actually knew anything about him…" She trailed off, peering into his eyes. "Why, you are serious, aren't you?"

"Well… not in the sense of accusing him of murder, no, I suppose not, but as something to think about, or rather for Joly to know about…" He stared down into his demitasse cup, rotating it on its saucer. "Julie, this whole thing is pretty painful to me. I mean, sitting here saying 'Let's see, which one of my old friends, people that I know-and like, for the most part-which one of them would I want to help Joly catch for murder and put away for the next thirty years? But somebody did do it, somebody blew apart Ely Carpenter's heart with that gun of his, and covered his body with dirt in the cave, and faked that crash to cover it-and I think it's going to turn out to be one of them. I wish to hell it wouldn't, but…"

She covered his hand with hers. "I know. You're right. I think so too." She shook her head. "It just seems so… impossible."

"Jacques was the most senior member of the institute, you see, and Ely was the most junior and kind of a loose cannon besides, a firebrand, the sort of guy who attracted controversy without trying."

"Then why was he appointed? And come to think of it, why wasn't Montfort in the running? You'd think he'd be the obvious choice."

"He was. It was offered to him more than once. He turned it down-just not interested in that end of things. As for why Ely got it-" Gideon hunched his shoulders. "-I'm not sure. Could be because he was an American, and it'd been a while since the last time there'd been an American director. Whatever the reason, he's the one who got it, even though most people figured it was bound to go to Jacques as a matter of course."

"And so you think…?"

"I think that with Ely gone… it did."

"Oh." It was Julie's turn to begin toying with her cup.

"What is it?" Gideon said.

"Nothing, but as long as we're rat-finking on our friends, I might as well get into the act too." She sighed; her mouth turned down at the corners. "Lucien might want to give some thought to Pru as well. She had a possible reason for wanting Ely dead. She told me at lunch."

"Their affair, you mean. Yes, I suppose that's always-"

"Affair, what affair? No, I mean, about his firing her."

"Firing her? Ely fired Pru? She never told me that."

"Well, laid her off. Practically as soon as he was in the director's chair."

"It could have been on account of their affair," Gideon mused. "To get rid of her, if he was tired of it."

" What affair, damn it? I don't know about any affair. All I know is they needed to make some financial cuts, some position had to be eliminated, and Pru was the one who got the axe."

"Well, she would have been the least senior."

"After Carpenter himself, you mean. Anyway, if he was trying to get her out of his hair it didn't work, because she hung around Les Eyzies and supported herself as a cave guide until Jacques re-hired her."

"And when was that?"

"Right off the bat. I guess he had more pull with the foundation, or maybe they found some more money somewhere, because the very first week he was on the job he not only put Pru back on the payroll, he brought on a full-time, hotshot secretary from Paris instead of the student part-timer they'd had before."

"Madame Lacouture," Gideon said with a smile. "And his life has never been the same since." He gestured inquiringly at the empty coffee cups, and at Julie's nod he signaled Madame Leyssales for more.

"Altogether I think Pru was out three or four months in all." Julie twisted uncomfortably in her chair. "Look, Gideon, the only reason I'm bringing this up is that it would be stupid to avoid mentioning it to Lucien, but not for a single minute do I think there's anything to it. There was absolutely no sign of resentment there; none. We were just telling each other our life stories-abridged versions, obviously-and she happened to mention it, that's all."

"But what you might not know is that everybody but Pru has a permanent outside appointment for the seven months a year the institute's not in session. Pru's never latched on to a tenured university position, and as near as I can tell she spends the off-season traveling-Europe, Africa, Japan-on the cheap, I mean: pensiones, b-and-b's, ryokans, that kind of thing. Sometimes she latches on to a temporary job at a dig somewhere, but those are few and far between."

"So?"

"So Pru, unlike everybody else at the institute depends on her institute stipend to keep body and soul together. Unless, of course she has some independent income, about which I wouldn't know-but if she doesn't, then getting laid off would have had to be a serious blow."

"And you're suggesting she might have been so upset that she killed him over it?"

"Don't sound so incredulous. I'm just saying pretty much the same thing I was saying about Jacques, namely that when Carpenter was appointed she lost something important to her… but when he was killed she got it back. It's worth keeping in mind, that's all. Hey, aren't you the one who brought this up?"

The coffees came. Julie added a little cream to hers, bringing a discreet sniff of disapproval from Madame Leyssales-except for their morning cafes au lait, the French held to the belief that coffee should be taken black.

"Yes, but the more I think about it," Julie said, "the less likely it gets. Why would she be crazy enough to mention getting laid off to me if she'd murdered him over it, or if it even crossed her mind that someone might eventually think she had?"

To create precisely the impression of innocence she had, in the event that Carpenter's murder was eventually discovered, thought Gideon, but there was such a thing as getting too rococo and he had the feeling that they'd just about reached that point, or perhaps passed it a while back. Besides, although he'd managed to hold off the after-effects of his concussion all day, his head had begun to ache-all this heavy thinking-and he was beginning to sorely feel the need to lie down.

"You're right about that," he agreed, swigging down the two tablespoons or so of coffee in the tiny cup and wishing he'd remembered to ask for decaf instead. "We'll pass all this on to Lucien-he'll probably laugh-but I vote that we return to our previous hypothesis."

"Agreed," said Julie. "The Theory of Interconnected Monkey Business is hereby officially re-invoked." She stood up. "Let's get you to bed before you fall out of your chair."

"Still awake?" she asked.

"Uh-huh," Gideon said, not sure if he was or not. He'd been lying on his back, not his usual position for sleeping, and staring at the occasional reflections of headlights shimmering across the dark ceiling.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"As long as it doesn't require actual thought."

"Why didn't you tell me that Pru had an affair with Carpenter?"

"I didn't see that it had any connection to the murder. Anyway, I only found out about it myself this morning."

"That's right, this morning. And we spent most of the afternoon walking around Prehistoparc, and then got all the way through dinner before you mentioned it, and even then it was accidental."

Gideon yawned. "Well, it didn't seem pertinent to anything, so why talk about it?"

"Boy, Julie said wonderingly, turning onto her side and away from him, so that Gideon automatically nestled snugly in behind her, fitting himself to her, his arm across her waist.

"Boy, what?" he breathed into her hair.

"Boy, men are sure different from women."