Skeleton dance

Chapter 24

The "new" home of the Perigord Institute of Prehistory, was actually five centuries old, a large, rectangular stone house that had originally been an outbuilding of the medieval cliffside chateau-a granary, perhaps, or a winery, or even a dovecote-but owned for most of the last century by a family with tobacco holdings in the nearby Lot valley. When the last male scion had died the previous year at the age of 101 and the house had come on the market, it had been bought by the Universite du Perigord and sparklingly refurbished for the use of the institute, which would have its own quarters at last, after thirty years of renting space from the foie-gras cooperative.

Like the chateau itself, the structure had been erected on a long, level terrace about a third of the way up the cliff, its back wall built into a recess in the cliff face, its front coming out to the very edge of the terrace, so that from the big windows of the main room, mullioned in the Baroque style, there was a straight drop of 100 feet down to the main street and an unobstructed view over the village and across the green valley of the Vezere.

The light-filled windows, some of which had been swung open to dissipate the remaining fumes from the recent painting, made a splendid backdrop for the speakers, of whom there were an alarming number. Everybody who was anybody in Les Eyzies was there: the mayor, the deputy mayor, the nine-member municipal council, the administrative magistrate, and, of course, the prefect of police. Unfortunately, most felt the need to utter a few words of civic benediction and of eulogy for Jacques, which made for a long, long morning.

Conspicuously absent from the table of honored guests at the front was Jacques' wife, who had responded to her invitation with a curt reference to other commitments.

"One would think she holds us personally responsible for his death," said Emile Grize, sitting next to Pru McGinnis in the row of folding chairs immediately behind Julie and Gideon.

"Like maybe," Pru said out of the corner of her mouth, "it might just have something to do with the choice of weapon? Duh."

It was meant to relieve the general tedium and sobriety, and Gideon smiled, but a glance at Julie showed that they were both thinking the same thing: Madame Beaupierre was right: one of them was responsible. The possible why's behind Jacques' death, and the other murders as well, might still be murky, but the possible who's were crystal-clear. When you took everything into consideration, starting back with the hoax itself, you couldn't get away from the conclusion that it had to be somebody from the institute: Audrey, Montfort, Emile, Pru. And as a long shot, Madame Lacouture. That was it; the total list of suspects, all of them right there in the room with them, listening to the obsequies for Jacques, gravely smiling or soberly nodding as the situation required.

The speeches ground on, made more formal and stilted by the fact that the main speaker, the director of the Horizon Foundation, Bob Cram-an administrator better known for his scratch golf than his linguistic skills-felt obliged to deliver his address in French, in keeping with the institute's bilingual tradition. But at last they were over and the fifty or so people in the room rose, to the creaking of many aged and not-so-aged knees, and shuffled gratefully toward the bar that had been set up in front of the windows, where coffee, soft drinks, bottled water, and cordials were available. Audrey's presentation as the new director was yet to come, after which everyone could go home for lunch.

Julie and Gideon got their bottles of Evian and spent most of the break chatting somewhat awkwardly with Audrey, whose eyeglasses were still patched with Scotch tape, but who was otherwise more her old self, although stiff and formal in her unaccustomed black skirt-suit; and with a remote, brusque Michel Montfort, no hand at social amenities even at the best of times.

As they took their seats again, Julie put her hand on Gideon's arm. "Tom Cabell!"

"Pardon?"

"Tom Cabell, your friend from Calgary, the medical examiner, the one with the squinchy little mustache-"

"Julie, I know who Tom Cabell is. What about him?"

"It was when the AAFS convention was in Seattle, remember? And we all went out to dinner in the Space Needle. That's when I heard about it."

"I suppose," Gideon said mildly, "that if I wait patiently, you'll eventually let me in on this."

"Gideon, I'm trying to tell you that I remember the case I was trying to think of-the one like Bousquet, where the different indicators didn't match and they had all that trouble coming up with the time of death? I thought it was one of yours, but it was one of his. Don't you remember? He was going on and on about it over the veal scallopine and I was doing my best not listen, but I couldn't help hearing."

"Julie, I honestly don't-"

It hit him like an electric shock. "I remember!" he said, sitting bolt upright. "You're right! I wasn't thinking of it because it wasn't a murder at all, or even a forensic case, it was just a hiker who got-who got…" He stared at her as the full impact hit him. "Julie, do you realize-"

"S-s-s-t," Emile hissed from behind them. Audrey had begun her address.

Gideon didn't hear two words of it. He was scowling out the windows and into space, not thinking as much as simply sitting there, barely breathing, letting things fall into place as if by gravity. They'd been wrong about everything-everything. It was as they'd been trying to play some gigantic, frustrating pinball game, only without their being aware of it the game board had been upside down from the beginning. Now, in a single instant it had been turned right side up, and the little steel balls were rolling merrily about, bumping into flippers, setting off lights and buzzers, and plunking neatly and satisfyingly, one after another, into their cups.

"Christ, could it really be true?" he murmured, bringing an inquisitive arching of her eyebrows from Julie and another reproving s-s-s-t from Emile.

Gideon patted Julie's knee and broke from his chair. A few seconds later he was at the telephone in the reception area, calling Joly's office in Perigueux and being told that the inspector had gone to Les Eyzies. A second call to the local mairie brought Sergeant Peyrol to the phone to explain that Inspector Joly was conducting an important investigation and couldn't be disturbed.

"Disturb him, Sergeant. He'll thank you, take my word for it."

"Lucien," he said when Joly picked up the receiver, "we've been on one hell of a wild goose-chase."

"No," said Joly crossly, "you don't tell me."

"Listen, when you read that description of Bousquet to us yesterday, the one that was filed when he disappeared, the one that mentioned the ring-"

"Gideon, I'm in the middle of something. Can't this wait?"

"I don't think so, no. The description-it said what he was wearing, didn't it? What exactly did it say?"

"About what he was wearing three years ago? Why in the name of God do you-"

"Just find it, will you, please? Humor me, okay?"

Joly muttered resignedly into the telephone. Papers were shuffled, probably more noisily than was strictly necessary. "All right, I have it here. ' Green-and-white plaid shirt with short sleeves, workman's blue trousers, moccasin-type shoes with no stockings.' All right?"

"And what-" He licked dry lips. Here came the crucial question. "-what was he wearing when you found him yesterday?"

"Yesterday?" Joly cried incredulously. "What was he wearing yesterday? What possible… what possible…"

The astonished silence told Gideon he'd guessed right. His chest expanded with the first deep, full breath he'd taken in the last five minutes. "He was wearing the same clothes, wasn't he?" he asked quietly.

"I… yes, that's right, the same clothes, but… Gideon, what's this about?"

"Things are even weirder than we thought, Lucien-look, I'm at the new institute headquarters up on the hill. Could you come on up here? I think you might be wanting to make an arrest. I'll meet you out front."

"He was what?" Joly exclaimed a few minutes later, as they stood near the stone parapet that ran along the edge of the cliffside terrace.

"Frozen," Gideon repeated.

Joly was huffing, as was Sergeant Peyrol, both of them having tramped up the steep road from the main street, and while he caught his breath he glowered at Gideon almost accusingly. "Frozen," he said again, as if trying out something unappetizing on his tongue.

"Yes, I think so," Gideon said, treading softly; he was verging on snake-oil territory here. "My guess is he's been sitting in a freezer somewhere for the last three years."

Joly reflected for a moment, his lips slightly pursed. "Dead, we may assume?"

"I'd have to say that's a pretty safe guess, yes."

"Yesterday, if I'm not mistaken, you said he'd been dead three days."

"I was a little off," Gideon admitted.

Peyrol, who didn't speak English but could understand some, laughed, converted it to a polite cough, and resumed his stiff military posture.

"Gideon," Joly said, leaning on the parapet and looking out over the trim tile roofs of the village, "how certain of this are you?"

"Pretty positive. I should have realized it right away; I just wasn't thinking along the right track."

It was the peculiar way the body had begun to decompose that should have told him, he explained as concisely as he could. Under ordinary circumstances, large-scale decomposition would begin in the dark, moist interior of the body, with rapid growth of bacteria in the lower intestines, resulting in the all-too-familiar bloating, discharges, and putrid smells. From there, the putrefaction would work its way outward while maggots and the like attacked the outside at a slower rate and worked inward.

But Bousquet's body showed the reverse: the internal organs were fresher than the skin. That was what happened when a body was frozen; the freezing killed off all the intestinal bacteria. But later, when it was unfrozen, it would be the surface that naturally thawed first and was therefore the first to be available to new bacteria and other organisms. So decomposition proceeded from outside in-as it had in Bousquet's case. The skin was discolored, withered, sloughing off; the insides of the body had barely begun to break down.

Joly, having lit a Gitane, pondered this, continuing to stare across the Vezere valley. "Not all of the insides. I looked at Roussillot's report. It says the brain was considerably decomposed."

"The head is smaller than the body. It thaws faster."

"Ah."

"And don't forget the clothes, Lucien-the very same clothes he had on the day he disappeared. How else do you explain that? I'm telling you, the guy's been in cold storage for the last three years, right up until you found him yesterday."

Joly made a decisive movement with his head, turned from the parapet, dropped his cigarette, and ground it out with his heel. He briskly straightened his jacket, buttoned both buttons, and tugged on his cuff-linked sleeves. "Shall we go in? I believe it's time to make that arrest."

"Don't you want to know who did it first?"

It was an uncharacteristically smug remark, and Gideon got what he deserved. "Oh, I know who did it," Joly said casually. "What I didn't know was how."

Inside, most of the crowd was milling about near the reopened bar. Audrey, who had finished her presentation a few moments earlier, was accepting congratulations and good wishes. Montfort was berating a small, miserable-looking man about some abstruse archaeological point. Julie was talking to Pru, Emile to one of the people from the foundation. With a quick glance around the room, Joly spotted his quarry. He strode purposefully over the wooden floor, his thin lips set, and waited until he was recognized.

"Yes?"

Joly drew his feet together and stood even a little straighter than usual. "Michel Georges Montfort, in accord with the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure I now place you under temporary detention until a warrant for your formal arrest and confinement on the charge of murder shall be obtained. Will you come with me now?"

It wasn't delivered loudly or even particularly doomfully, and yet it crackled through the room like a rifle shot. The babble of conversation stopped in mid-sentence. Without anyone's having turned in an obvious way to stare, everybody was avidly watching the two men. Gideon had a dreamlike sense of being part of some surreal drawing-room tableau. Cups were balanced on saucers, cigarettes on lips, breathing suspended. The only movement was on the part of the man Montfort had been talking to, who shrank inconspicuously away, or as inconspicuously as possible under the circumstances, his feet sliding noiselessly backward over the floor.

To someone watching the scene from off to the side or from any distance, it would have seemed as if Montfort received Joly's pronouncement with no emotion whatever. Certainly he didn't blanche, or gasp, or flush with outrage or astonishment, his mouth didn't twitch, his body didn't jerk. His one visible reaction was to slowly roll the small cigar he was smoking from one side of his mouth to the other while Joly was speaking. His thumbs, which had been lodged in the pockets of his vest while he had been holding forth, remained there as he studied the equally impassive police inspector and weighed his reply.

But Gideon, standing 20 feet away near the windows, with the light at his back, was looking full into his face and saw an extraordinary series of expressions shoot across it with lightning speed: astonishment, disbelief, calculation, resignation, and finally decision, all in the space of two or three seconds.

"May I get my things?" he asked

Joly inclined his head.

Montfort removed the cigar from his mouth and placed it in an ashtray on a nearby table, first tapping it to remove the ash. As you see, I am in no hurry, he seemed to be saying. I am under no stress.

On the wall a few feet from Gideon was a coat rack with a wire shelf above it. Although it hadn't rained since the day before, the skies were mixed, and many attendees had brought raincoats or umbrellas and left them there. Montfort removed a brown raincoat from the rack and a large, furled black umbrella from the shelf. His eyes briefly met Gideon's, but now there was nothing at all in them; it was like looking into a statue's eyes. An ice-water chill trickled down Gideon's spine.

With the coat draped over his arm Montfort turned back to the noiseless room and stood there, coolly appraising the throng of rapt, appalled faces.

Joly only had so much patience. "If you please-" he began tartly.

Gideon must have glanced at Joly as he was speaking because he never saw the coat coming. He only knew that it had suddenly been thrown over his head, smelling of mildew and plunging him into darkness and that almost at the same time he took a heavy blow at the junction of his neck and left shoulder. He flung the coat off just in time to see Montfort lashing out again with the umbrella, a heavy, old-fashioned one with steel shaft and spokes. This time, throwing up his arm, Gideon caught it flush on the point of the elbow. Tears of pain jumped to his eyes, but still he managed to catch hold of it as Montfort raised it again.

"Michel, don't be stupid. What-"

Montfort was a heavy man with burly, powerful shoulders, and Gideon had had to pull hard on the umbrella to hold it back. Unexpectedly, Montfort let go. Gideon stumbled backward, tripping over his own feet, almost falling.

Montfort came after him. "Bastard!" he said, trying clumsily to shove him aside and get by. To the window, Gideon realized almost too late. To the open window, a hundred feet above the street. That's what this was about. Reaching out he managed to clamp his hand on Montfort's upper arm just as the archaeologist got a grasp on the window frame. Struggling, Montfort balled up his other fist and smashed it into Gideon's face like a man driving nails with a hammer. He felt blood spurt from his nose. The heavy, quivering fist was raised again and Gideon made a grab for that arm as well, using the thrust of his legs and the weight of his body to spin Montfort around and slam him hard against the wall beside the window.

The jolt seemed to take the fight out of the older man. "Gideon, don't let them do this to me," he whispered. Panting, he cast a terrified glance at the rapidly approaching Peyrol His once-ruddy face was drained of blood; gray-white below the eyes, sickly blue around the mouth. "How can I face this? I beg you-let me go, let me get it over with." One hand plucked ineffectually at Gideon's hold.

For a moment, Gideon softened-a man of Montfort's stature and accomplishments and very real contributions to endure a trial for murder, to go to prison for the rest of his life!-but only for a moment. He brushed Montfort's hand away. His own hand, which had very nearly loosened, tightened on Montfort's arm.

"You stood behind Jacques and crushed his skull," he said through set teeth. "You killed Ely." And you damn well cost me a bunch of neuro-axons I can't afford, let's not forget that. "You-"

"Permit me, monsieur," said Sergeant Peyrol to Gideon. And to Montfort, quite sternly. "This won't do, monsieur. Come with me at once, please."

Montfort, with a final, reproachful look at Gideon and a last, longing look at the open window and the empty space beyond, lowered his head and went with the sergeant.

Julie came up to Gideon as the room began buzzing with excited whispers again. "Are you all right?"

"Sure, I'm fine. I think I'd better go along with them to the mairie."

She handed him a packet of tissues. "You might want to wipe your nose first."