Aaron Elkins - Skeleton dance

Gideon was no more in favor of gratuitous repulsiveness than Julie was and explained, as non-graphically as he could, that the timetables of the various processes of decay and putrefaction, by which the time of death was usually estimated, were seriously out of whack in Bousquet's case. The withered, puttylike skin and the advanced decomposition of the brain (when the skull had been sawn open there had been little more than gray-brown slush inside, he didn't bother to tell her) went along with his estimate of four or five days. On the other hand, the relative freshness of the abdominal organs-minimal bloating, color change, or odor-supported Roussillot's estimate of only two days. And that was it, in a nutshell. Roussillot was inclined to go with the insides, Gideon with the outside and with the brain.

"You know, there's something familiar about all that," Julie said. She'd relaxed; apparently she'd been expecting something worse. "Weren't you involved in something similar once?"

"No, I'd remember it if I had."

"Hm. But it's pretty unusual, isn't it? To have differences like that?"

"Unusual yes, but it happens. Maybe one part of the body was mostly in the shade and another part in the sun, or some parts, being in contact with the ground, stayed cooler, or maybe the funny weather, hot in the daytime and chilly at night, had something to do with it. Or it could have had something to do with what he'd been eating-all kinds of things come into play. I could easily be wrong; Roussillot could easily be right. We'll just have to wait and see what the lab comes up with."

"Right, good thinking, I'm for that." She plucked the key out of the ignition. "Okay, have we finished talking about people's insides?"

Gideon laughed. "Is it safe to go get something to eat, you mean? I think so, yes."

The rain had slackened off again and the filtered late-afternoon sunshine had brought some life back into the village streets in the form of strollers and shoppers. A few feet from their car, waiters on the sidewalk terrace of the Cafe de la Mairie were drying chairs and tables, and it was there that they went, neither of them being in the mood for a full-fledged French dinner.

They were halfway through the specialite de la maison – soupe Perigordine, a rich, garlicky broth swimming with beans, potatoes, and lettuce, with an egg whipped into it and two round slices of bread floating on top-before the subject of Jean Bousquet came up again.

"Why?" Julie said, thinking out loud. "What would have been the advantage of making it look as if Bousquet killed himself? Wouldn't it have been easier and safer to just leave his body in the woods-maybe bury him-where he'd never be found? Or at least not for years."

"Ah, but then there'd be some of those loose ends left. Or as Lucien might put it, the snake wouldn't have swallowed itself. The police would still be poking into things, trying to find him."

"All right, I can see that, but why in the world use that funny air rifle to do it? Was that supposed to mean something?"

"Good question. Possibly it was to 'help' us make the connection between Bousquet and Ely's death. Maybe to imply that Bousquet was consumed with guilt and self-recrimination over it."

Julie tipped her head to the side. "I don't know, it sounds pretty far-fetched to me."

"Yeah, me too."

She spooned up soup for a few moments, thinking. "We are assuming whoever killed Ely also killed Bousquet, right? And Jacques too?

"Sure, Occam's Razor and the Law of Interconnected Monkey Business tell us that. Whatever's going on, it's all connected."

"I agree. All right, now tell me this: why would the murderer have kept that rifle all this time? He couldn't have known he'd want it again three years later to kill Bousquet."

"That's a real good question. And who is 'he'? Who are we talking about? Montfort? Audrey? Emile? Pru?" And as an afterthought: "Madame Lacouture?"

"And why?" Julie asked. "Above all, why? Okay, let's say Carpenter was killed over the hoax, one way or another. I can think of several possibilities for that. But why was Jacques killed? And Bousquet?

"And what was Bousquet doing back here anyway? If he's really been dead four or five days, that means he was here before anybody even knew I'd identified the bones as Ely's. So what brought him? What did he want?"

"Whew, we don't have very many answers, do we?"

"No," Gideon said, "but are we ever doing great on questions."

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.