Aaron Elkins: Skeleton dance

Just over his shoulder Marielle laughed aloud. "It's an abri. Those bones are ten thousand years old. We've been on a wild goose chase, looking for what's left of some stone-age man, what do you think of that?"

It was clear that the prefect regarded this as a personal victory. In the rear, the dutiful Noyon chuckled wanly.

"We'll see soon enough," Joly said. "I'll go first." He handed the rope to Noyon. "Officer, you stay here with the dog."

"It's the story of my life," Noyon murmured.

With a resigned glance, first at the dirt floor of the crevice and then at his crisply creased trousers-what immutable law was it that ordained that he would have to be wearing the new suit from Arnys today?-Joly settled to his knees and began to crawl through the corridor. Behind him, the amazed, deeply offended Toutou yapped loudly away.

"Marielle," Joly called back as he neared the end, "it gets quite narrow in here. If it's too difficult-"

"Don't worry about me, I can make it fine," Marielle snapped, and by dint of a few contortions, a torn epaulet, and an iron determination not to be outdone, he did.

By the time he reached the cave, Joly was sitting on a rounded boulder near the entrance, trying to make sense of the jumbled bones and disturbed earth around him. Obviously, the body had originally been buried in the center of the space, where some of it-the pelvis, the lower part of the vertebral column, and at least one of the upper leg bones were still partially interred. As for the rest-as much as was still there-it was clear that Toutou had been busy, and probably some of his friends as well. Dozens of bones had been wrenched out of the ground and scattered around the cave. There were a shoulder blade and some hand and foot bones in a little heap at the rear, a rib practically at the inspector's feet, vertebrae here and there, and half of an upside-down human jawbone near the cave entrance. All had been heavily gnawed, with edges and bone-ends virtually chewed away. Many, if not most, of the bones were missing altogether; possibly they were in the cardboard box at the Les Eyzies mairie, courtesy of Toutou.

Marielle, on his hands and knees, emerged huffing and red-faced from the crevice into the abri. "Ha," he said jovially, getting to his feet, "what do we have here?"

Joly held up his hand. "Stop there, please. We don't wish to disturb the site any further until it's been processed."

Marielle smiled at him. "Inspector, I hope you won't think it impertinent of me," he said, "but I find myself wondering what process you are referring to. This is a Cro-Magnon abri, many thousands of years old. I assure you, I'm familiar with these things. You see those bits of flint scattered about? They are tool flakes."

"I believe so, yes."

"And the black deposits up there? The result of centuries of fires."

"Yes, I thought as much."

"The cave opening, as you observe, is oriented toward the south to take advantage of the sun, as was typical of the Stone Age; the rock fall which now blocks it is clearly recent. And this-" he gestured at the skeleton. "-is without doubt a Cro-Magnon burial."

"There I have to disagree. I'm afraid we have a homicide investigation on our hands."

"If so, I fear the perpetrator may be somewhat beyond our reach by now."

Joly was astonished. Was the man capable of humor then? "No, I don't think so. I believe this is a recent burial."

"Recent!" Marielle shook his head. "Everything here bespeaks antiquity. Believe me, I've studied these things. Observe the placement of the body, the flexed position, the orientation relative to the cave opening. Observe the fact that the skeleton is without any sign of clothing. Observe-"

"I'm not a student of these things myself, Marielle," Joly said shortly, standing up and coming within a couple of inches of striking his head on the stony roof. The smug and gassy Marielle had finally gotten his goat, as he usually managed to do after an hour or so. "Do you suppose that's why I wasn't aware that the Cro-Magnon people went in for dentistry?"

"Dentistry?…?" Marielle took a harder look at the broken jawbone, where he was dismayed to see the dull sheen of a gold crown on one of the rear teeth. He felt himself flush, hoping that Joly couldn't see it in the dimness of the cave. "It's, ah, possible that I was mistaken about the age…"

"Highly possible, I should say. Now then, Marielle-"

"But on the other hand," the stung Marielle interrupted, "with all due respect, it seems possible that you are mistaken as to the immediate need for a homicide investigation. Where is the evidence of a crime? Many people-villagers, campers, tourists-explore these caves. People have died in them before. They slip and fall, they are crushed by loosened rocks, they die of natural causes-"

Joly looked at him, only barely managing to keep from shaking his head at the man's never-ending obtuseness.

"And do they bury themselves as well?" he asked.

"All right, then, how does this one sound?" Julie said, talking through a ballpoint pen clenched like a pirate's dagger between her teeth. "It's just a few miles from Piltdown." She smoothed the copy of "Holiday Rentals in Southeast England" that lay open on her lap, took the pen from her mouth, circled an entry, and read aloud.

"'Huffield Manor. Surrounded by flagstone terraces and overlooking its own six acres of wooded hillside near the handsome medieval village of Horsted Keynes, this beguiling eighteenth-century stone priory has been converted to a luxurious six-room manor house, completely renovated in 1997. Original beamed ceilings throughout. Large, marble-tiled entry hall with sweeping oak staircase and oak-balustraded minstrel gallery-'"

Gideon looked up from the fresh-from-the-printer sheets that were spread over his own lap. "Hey, hold it, I think you're getting confused. I get half-pay while I'm on sabbatical, not double-pay. What does this place rent for?"

"I haven't gotten to that yet. Ummm… yikes, scratch that!" She went back to turning pages while Gideon returned to his own reading. "Okay, here's one. 'Cozy stone cottage, a rustic, romantic little charmer…'"

"That sounds more like it," Gideon said.

They had been sitting in their living room for an hour, unwinding over wine and cheese, listening to Mozart, and savoring the view that ran from Puget Sound and the pearly Seattle skyline a few miles to the east, to cozy Eagle Harbor closer at hand, where one of the big, green-and-white ferries from the city was amiably lumbering up to settle against the Bainbridge Island ferry dock, only two blocks away from where they sat and no more than a five-minute walk. The easy access to downtown Seattle-in effect, one could walk to it from semi-rural Bainbridge-was one of the big selling points of their recently purchased house, set higgledy-piggledy with its neighbors on the hillside above the dock.

The next ferry would be leaving at 5:10 and they planned to be on it for a Friday night dinner with friends and then a Mariner game at the new ballpark. In the meantime Gideon browsed through the day's output on the book he was working on and Julie fine-tuned their upcoming travel schedule-a four-week jaunt to Germany's Neander Valley, to Oxford and Sussex in England, and to the Dordogne in France, in that order, scheduled to begin the following week. The itinerary had been determined by Gideon's research needs. Julie, a supervisory park ranger at Olympic National Park's administrative headquarters in Port Angeles, would be visiting one or two parks while they were overseas, but was basically going along, as she freely put it, for the ride, and to provide much-needed "logistical support" for the notoriously absent-minded Gideon.

"'… situated in a small, rural village on the banks of the Ouse, within easy driving distance of Sheffield Park, Cuckfield, Pilt Down, etc. Sitting room with river view, one bedroom, one bath, small but modern kitchen with fridge…'" She stopped reading and waved the brochure at him. "Hello? Anybody there?"