Unnatural Selection

FIFTEEN

The only room in Star Castle that was large enough to comfortably hold seven people, other than the dining room and the dungeon bar, was the cozy second-floor lounge, and it was there that the consortium held its meetings, seated not at a conference table but informally, in a rough circle, on what were probably the very same overstuffed Victorian armchairs on which Queen Victoria and her retinue had taken tea there that hallowed afternoon in 1847.

It was 9:45 A.M. The second urn of post-breakfast coffee, prepared by Mrs. Bewley, was on the seventeenth-century sideboard, and the light had gone on indicating that it was ready. Various items of administrivia had been disposed of, and it was time to get down to the serious business of the day: the reading and discussion of Donald’s paper on the many social and ecological benefits of properly regulated sport-hunting. But one member had yet to arrive.

“So where’s Joey?” Liz asked.

“Well, you know, big night last night,” Kozlov said, tipping an imaginary glass to his lips with an amiable wink. “Maybe not so good feeling. We start anyway, okay?”

“If you like,” said Donald, who was just as happy not to have Joey there to carp at his presentation anyway. “Julie,” he said coyly, “may I have your promise not to report on my paper to your famous husband? I wouldn’t want to upset him again.”

“My lips are sealed,” said Julie, amid general laughter. I wouldn’t want to upset him, either, she thought.

From his attache case Donald removed a sheaf of papers of alarming thickness, placed them on the butler’s table in front of him, lovingly patted them into a neat stack, cleared his throat, cleared his throat again, and began.

“Man’s hunting heritage predates the agricultural revolution of the Neolithic era by millions of years. Without the prehistoric hunter’s contribution to early hominoid society, human social mores and family structure could hardly have developed…”

The room was filled with a faint, sad, sighing sound, partly from human lungs, and partly from slowly compressing seat cushions, as his colleagues resignedly settled themselves in for what looked like a very long haul.

Alone again, Gideon sank into a chair beside the table, angling the scapulas in front of his face to look diagonally down their dorsal surfaces.

“Now what do we have here?” he said, happily and aloud, almost as if he expected them to answer him.

Which, in a way, they would.

Mrs. Bewley rinsed the last of the breakfast things that were too big for the dishwasher, put them on the drying rack, and dried her hands with a dish towel. She was troubled. Generally, she couldn’t remember her dreams five minutes after she woke up, but the one last night, if it was a dream, was still with her. She hadn’t been able to get the idea that something had happened out there, just beyond the kitchen window, out of her mind, although she hadn’t worked up the nerve to mention it to Mr. Kozlov or Mr. Moreton.

“This is silly,” she told herself firmly, stroking dry-skin lotion into her reddened hands. “You’re a capable, grown woman. If there’s something out there, which there probably isn’t, you can go and see for yourself. Besides”-and this was a thought she’d successfully fought to keep from the surface of her mind, although she now recognized it as the source of the nagging guilt that had been with her since she’d awakened-“someone might be hurt.”

She took a final drag from the cigarette she had burning in an ashtray on the windowsill, got her sweater on, squared her shoulders, and went out to look.

Gideon was sitting at the table, hunched over the two scapulas, when Clapper appeared at the opening to the glassed-in cubicle.

“Well, Gideon, you were right. Whoever it is that you’re communing with, it’s not Pete Williams. I just got word. The gentleman is alive and well in London.”

“Mm,” said Gideon, not looking up. His elbows were on the table, his chin supported in his hands, his eyes on the scapulas.

“Amusingly enough, by the by, he does work for a garage, or rather a franchise of them, but your informant got it slightly wrong. He’s an accountant, not a mechanic.” A rumble of laughter came from his chest.

“Yes, I know.”

The laugh was cut short. “You know? How do you know?”

“How do I know what?”

“How do you know he’s an accountant?”

Gideon finally looked up. “How do I know who’s an accountant?”

Clapper stared silently down at him, his big hands on his hips. “I think I’ll go out and come in again,” he said mildly. “We can start all over.”

Gideon leaned back in the chair. “I’m sorry, Mike. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention.”

“You weren’t paying any attention,” Clapper grumbled. “Pete Williams,” he said, enunciating with great clarity, “still walks among us. And he is not an automobile mechanic, he’s an accountant. Accountants, to my knowledge, do not spend a great deal of time twisting screwdrivers or anything else. Ergo, no supinator crest. Ergo, the chap we have before us on the table is not Pete Williams.”

“Yes, I know it’s not Williams. That’s what I meant before. When I said I knew.”

Clapper sighed. “I’m not getting any less confused. You know it’s not Williams? How do you know it’s not Williams?”

Gideon was as subject as any other forensic anthropologist to engaging in the secret vice and great pleasure of the field; namely, boggling the minds of policemen large and small. He let a deeply satisfying beat go by before replying.

“I know,” he said with a sweet and childlike smile, “because I know who this is.”