Aaron Elkins - Skeleton dance

Joly, Gideon, and Roussillot looked at one another. The same thought crossed all their minds, Gideon knew, but it was left to Roussillot to say it.

"Well, you have to admit," he said, "for an archaeologist it's a hell of a way to go."

"Gideon, it wasn't your fault. You're being… well, morbid is what you're being. Have some more kir."

The kir -white wine and black-currant syrup over ice; the region's warm-weather afternoon drink of choice-wasn't doing him much good but he took another sip anyway and settled further down in his chair, stretching out his legs and crossing his ankles. "Yeah, I know. It's just that… I was sitting right there in the garden fooling around with Lester's dumb flap copy, and all the time Jacques' messages were right there on the machine. If I'd only known he was trying to get hold of me-oh, hell."

"But how could you possibly know? Be reasonable, you're making it sound as if you went out of your way to shirk your responsibility. How could you conceivably imagine anything like this would happen?"

"I know, but I keep going over and over it in my mind. There were so many places where I could have kept it from happening. Why didn't I check our telephone messages when we first got back, for instance? I could have been at the museum by twelve-thirty. He wouldn't have been sitting there by himself all that time, waiting for me."

"But you might as well say, why did we go out at all, why didn't we just stay in the room, and then he would have gotten you on the phone the first time he called."

"That's true too. Or if we'd come back a couple of hours-"

"Here's Lucien," she said, pointing with relief to the inspector's long, angular figure bent almost double in climbing out of the low-to-the-ground Citroen he'd parked at the curb on the far side of the street. "Finally. Thank God, maybe he can talk some sense into you." She waved to him.

Having straightened up in his stiff, machinelike manner-something like a sofa-bed unfolding-Joly peered around, saw Julie's wave, and started toward them, looking worn. Gideon had left him in La Quinze a couple of hours earlier, and Joly had promised to join them when he was through, for an aperitif at the Cafe du Centre. With the day warmed by a golden late-afternoon sun, they'd been waiting for him on the cafe's patio, a pleasant terrace shaded by striped awnings and situated on one side of the village square, opposite what looked like a steepled country church, belfry and all, but was actually the mairie , Prefect Marielle's domain.

"Are those kirs?" Joly asked plaintively, dropping into a chair at their table. "I would kill for a kir."

"Not necessary," Julie said, signaling to the waiter that a kir was wanted for the newly arrived gentleman. She had picked up the French knack for saying a lot with an economy of gesture, Gideon noted admiringly.

"Lucien," she said, "will you please talk some sense into this man? He thinks he's responsible for Jacques' death. He thinks the reason Jacques is dead is because we didn't check our telephone messages."

"I didn't say that," Gideon said grumpily, "I only-"

"Jacques Beaupierre is dead because his murderer wanted him dead," Joly said wearily. "Do you really think that if he hadn't been able to kill him because you arrived on the scene-assuming of course that he didn't decide to kill you as well-that he would simply have dropped the idea, and forgotten all about it, and gone away somewhere?"

Gideon shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe he was killed to keep him from telling me what it was he wanted to tell me. If I'd been there for him and he'd already told me, the cat would have been out of the bag and there'd have been no point in killing him."

"It seems to me, Gideon, that you give yourself far too much importance in this. In my opinion, Beaupierre would have been murdered all the same, if not this afternoon, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then the next day." The kir came and Joly drank greedily, the ice cubes clinking in the glass. "Aah, life returns, the tissues rejuvenate. Now, I grant you," he said with a pale smile, "it might not have been with an Acheulian cordiform hand-axe of the Early Paleolithic variety-"

"Middle Paleolithic."

"-but murdered he would have been. Besides, if he was killed to keep him from making his 'dreadful confession,' then why not hold me responsible too? If I hadn't permitted him to put off the time of his interrogation, he might never have called you at all, or gone to La Quinze. And yet I assure you I do not hold myself responsible."

Gideon puffed out his cheeks and blew out a stream of air. "Yes, okay, you're both right," he said, beginning to come around-in his head if not in his gut. "I guess I'm not making much sense."

" Thank you, Lucien," said Julie, raising her glass to him.

"Now then," Joly said, setting down his kir after another grateful sip, "to other matters. You remember the ring?" He turned civilly to Julie. "Perhaps Gideon hasn't yet mentioned this?"

"The opal ring? No, he told me about it. You found it near Jacques' body at the Musee Thibault."

"Exactly. And this ring preyed upon my mind. I felt sure I had come across some reference to a similar ring not long before. And at last, at long last, it came to me. Now listen to this." He took a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket, unfolded it, and set his reading glasses on his nose. "I translate," he said with a polite nod to Julie. It took him a moment to find his place. "Here we are. '… brown eyes, brown hair. When last seen, was wearing- ' No, never mind that… ah, here, here. Now listen to this. 'He also wore…'" Joly looked up to make sure he had the full attention of his audience and went on, emphasizing every syllable. "'…also wore on the little finger of his right hand an embossed, heavy gold ring with a stone of opal or sapphire with a horse's or dog's head embedded in it." He whipped off the wire frame glasses, put them in their hard black case, and clicked it closed.

"But what are you reading from?" said Gideon after a moment's startled silence. "Who's it talking about?"

"This," Joly said triumphantly, "is the report on Jean Bousquet that was filed at the time of his disappearance, presumably with the cameo brooch of Madame Renouard's grandmother."

"Bousquet!" the other two exclaimed.

"None other," said Joly, sitting back and radiating satisfaction. "Apparently he has found reason to revisit the Perigord after all."

"And you think he's the one who killed Jacques?"

"It's hard to imagine another explanation. Rings do not generally fall off fingers on their own."

"Bousquet," Gideon said again, mostly to himself. It was amazing how the name of this drifter who had spent only three months in Les Eyzies and hadn't been heard of for the last three years kept cropping up. First it was Bousquet who'd been murdered and buried in the abri, possibly by Ely. Then that was switched: it was Bousquet who had murdered Ely. Now it was Bousquet who had killed Jacques. Well, this time at least, they might have it right. The ring was hard to argue with; it was something you could hold in your hand, something tangible, not just another airy conjecture based on a rickety structure of hypothetical premises.

"Gideon," Julie said excitedly, "do you suppose that man in St.-Cyprien, the one who hit you with that fibula-"

"Femur, not fibula. I wish he'd hit me with a fibula."

"All right, femur-could that have been Bousquet too?"

"I don't know, it never occurred to me. You know, you might be right."

"He had such a ring?" Joly asked.

"If he did I didn't see it. But he did have brown eyes and brown hair."

Joly smiled. "So does everyone else in France. In any case, with Marielle's assistance we have mounted a search for him. There is unfortunately no photograph of him available, and the physical description tells us little, but many people in Les Eyzies have reason to remember him, including some on Marielle's staff. If he's still in the area, I should be surprised if we fail to find him. Of course, having achieved his end, he may already have left again."