Aaron Elkins - Skeleton dance

The rifle, which had been underneath him, had remained where it was, lying now a few inches away on the flattened, yellowing grass.

"Well, what do you think?" Joly asked, straightening up and brushing off the knees of his trousers, although he'd never quite let them come in contact with the earth.

"What do I think?" Roussillot paused to light a cigarette for Joly and one for himself and blew out a stream of smoke while he studied the corpse. "I think I see before me a reasonably well-nourished man in his forties, apparently a suicide, who's been dead anywhere from… let us say two days to a week. I think-"

Joly looked at him. " Two days, did you say? I should have said a week at a minimum."

Roussillot smiled tolerantly-a good way to get under Joly's skin although it was no doubt meant kindly. "My dear Joly, these things are not as clear-cut as you people like to imagine. You could well be right; it might be a week. Or it might be only two days. That is precisely why I said-"

"But look at the maggots, at the skin; it's already begun to slip in places."

"Yes, very true, but on the other hand, do you see any bloating of the abdomen, any copious discharge of fluids from the natural orifices? No; in fact there has been little if any distension of the gut. That, in my opinion, is far more significant, more reliable, and it sounds more like two days than seven, wouldn't you say? And surely you've noticed that the smell, while hardly agreeable, is by no means the overpowering odor one would expect from a corpse that's been lying out in the warm sun for a week."

"No, now that you mention it," Joly said thoughtfully, "it isn't." He was obscurely annoyed with Roussillot for pointing out something that he himself should have noticed.

"You have to understand, Joly, the variables of post-mortem change-or taphonomic progression, as we refer to it in my profession-are highly inconstant and rarely in agreement. That is the reason we offer our findings in terms of ranges and not of fixed times. In this case it may be that the warmth of the last several days has accelerated some decompositional processes, but not others. On the other hand, the location of the body in this relatively cool spot by the river may have contributed-"

"Yes, yes, I see," said Joly, whose supply of patience for being lectured, even in Roussillot's good-natured and inoffensive manner, was not especially large. "I presume you're willing to risk a more definitive determination of the cause of death, however?" With his cigarette he gestured at the dead man's chest.

"That hole?" Roussillot shrugged. "On the contrary, I wouldn't want to commit myself until the autopsy… however, I'd be willing to go on record to the effect that it probably did nothing for his health."

That made them both laugh-for men working around corpses it never took much-and cleared the air, and for a few minutes they both went about their tasks, smoking and pursuing their own thoughts; Roussillot kneeling beside the body (without regard for his trouser knees) and gently probing with a finger here and there, Joly bending over the rifle with great interest, but not touching it.

"Joly, wait!" Roussillot said suddenly, reaching out to grasp Joly's shoulder. "What's the matter with me? This is no suicide. Look at the wound, the gunshot wound."

Joly looked. "Yes?"

"Well, look at it! Wouldn't you assume that a man intent on putting a shotgun blast through his heart would place the muzzle of the weapon against his chest before pulling the trigger?"

"Yes, I suppose I would."

"Of course you would. But do you see any charring of the material, any soot, any residue at all that would mark it as a contact wound?"

"No, I don't."

"No. What's more, take a good, close look. Does that look like a shotgun wound to you?"

"No, it doesn't."

"Well, then, it couldn't very well have been made by a shotgun, could it?"

"No. What is your point, Roussillot?"

"What is my… what is my…?" It was gratifying to see, Joly thought, that Roussillot's skin could be gotten under as well. "My point, Inspector Joly," he said in a strained voice, "is that this wound… here… could not have been made by that shotgun… there."

"But this isn't a shotgun."

"Not a… not a…"

"Shotgun. I believe you've been misled by the barrels, which have a superficial resemblance to the arrangement of certain double-barreled shotguns-an over-and-under pattern, as we refer to it in my profession. If you look more closely, however, you'll see that there are actually three barrels. Only the top one is, in fact, a barrel-that is, the cylinder down which the projectile is propelled. The others-" He tapped them with a pencil. "-are air reservoirs."

"Air reservoirs?" Roussillot said, squinting through the smoke at him. "What kind of-"

"We see before us," said Joly, "a Cobra Magnum F-16 high-velocity air rifle."

Roussillot stared at it, and then at Joly. "The weapon used to kill the other one, Carpenter."

"Yes, three years ago."

"But how very curious." He grunted as he pushed himself to his feet. "Ah, when did my joints get to be older than I am?" He took a final drag on his cigarette, put the butt into an airtight metal case he carried with him, and continued to emit smoke for two more breaths while looking down at the body. "An air rifle," he said at length. "Of course. No primer, no gunpowder, no explosion, nothing to burn. That would explain the lack of soot, wouldn't you say?"

"I should think so, yes."

"So we're back to suicide. Felix!" he called. "Are you or are you not intending to bag the hands at some point?"

"And how was I supposed to bag them?" said the aggrieved Felix. "He had them under him, didn't he? And then I didn't want to interrupt you and the inspector."

Muttering, he knelt by the body's right hand, shook out a paper bag, produced a length of cord, and expertly began to slide the bag around the hand, when Joly intervened.

"One moment, Felix." He dropped to his knees beside the investigator, so intent on the yellowed, upturned hand that for once he gave no thought to grass stains. "Roussillot, what would this be?"

He was pointing at the base of the little finger, which was encircled by a sort of furrow, as if a tightly wound rubber band had been removed only a little while ago.

"Well, now…" Roussillot said, bending attentively over the hand. "Yes. You notice that the skin here is not only indented, but has a dry, withered appearance, quite different from the greasiness of the rest of the hand. As to its cause-"

"Could he have worn a ring there recently?" Joly asked impatiently.

"A ring? Why, yes," Roussillot said. "It could very well be that. It probably is that. The compression of the tissue would have… my God, Joly, you don't think-?"

Gideon had started to nod peacefully off over Psalmanzar for the third time when Monsieur Leyssales knocked discreetly on the wall beside the open door. There was a telephone call for the professor. If he liked he could take it on the desk telephone in the lobby.

"Gideon, we have Bousquet," were Joly's first words.

"Congratulations, Lucien. When did you find him? Where?"

"This morning, on the riverbank a few miles below Les Eyzies, where he'd been for the last several days."

In Gideon's drowsy state of mind it took a few seconds to penetrate. "He's dead?"

"A suicide, it seems."

"It seems?"

"A figure of speech. There's not much doubt. He shot himself-with the same rifle that killed Carpenter."

"The same rifle that-why would he-what would he-"

"I have no idea."

"Where was the gun, Lucien?"

"Where you'd expect. Underneath the body. He had collapsed forward onto it."

"His fingerprints were on it?"