Aaron Elkins: Skeleton dance

"Yes?"

Joly drew his feet together and stood even a little straighter than usual. "Michel Georges Montfort, in accord with the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure I now place you under temporary detention until a warrant for your formal arrest and confinement on the charge of murder shall be obtained. Will you come with me now?"

It wasn't delivered loudly or even particularly doomfully, and yet it crackled through the room like a rifle shot. The babble of conversation stopped in mid-sentence. Without anyone's having turned in an obvious way to stare, everybody was avidly watching the two men. Gideon had a dreamlike sense of being part of some surreal drawing-room tableau. Cups were balanced on saucers, cigarettes on lips, breathing suspended. The only movement was on the part of the man Montfort had been talking to, who shrank inconspicuously away, or as inconspicuously as possible under the circumstances, his feet sliding noiselessly backward over the floor.

To someone watching the scene from off to the side or from any distance, it would have seemed as if Montfort received Joly's pronouncement with no emotion whatever. Certainly he didn't blanche, or gasp, or flush with outrage or astonishment, his mouth didn't twitch, his body didn't jerk. His one visible reaction was to slowly roll the small cigar he was smoking from one side of his mouth to the other while Joly was speaking. His thumbs, which had been lodged in the pockets of his vest while he had been holding forth, remained there as he studied the equally impassive police inspector and weighed his reply.

But Gideon, standing 20 feet away near the windows, with the light at his back, was looking full into his face and saw an extraordinary series of expressions shoot across it with lightning speed: astonishment, disbelief, calculation, resignation, and finally decision, all in the space of two or three seconds.

"May I get my things?" he asked

Joly inclined his head.

Montfort removed the cigar from his mouth and placed it in an ashtray on a nearby table, first tapping it to remove the ash. As you see, I am in no hurry, he seemed to be saying. I am under no stress.

On the wall a few feet from Gideon was a coat rack with a wire shelf above it. Although it hadn't rained since the day before, the skies were mixed, and many attendees had brought raincoats or umbrellas and left them there. Montfort removed a brown raincoat from the rack and a large, furled black umbrella from the shelf. His eyes briefly met Gideon's, but now there was nothing at all in them; it was like looking into a statue's eyes. An ice-water chill trickled down Gideon's spine.

With the coat draped over his arm Montfort turned back to the noiseless room and stood there, coolly appraising the throng of rapt, appalled faces.

Joly only had so much patience. "If you please-" he began tartly.

Gideon must have glanced at Joly as he was speaking because he never saw the coat coming. He only knew that it had suddenly been thrown over his head, smelling of mildew and plunging him into darkness and that almost at the same time he took a heavy blow at the junction of his neck and left shoulder. He flung the coat off just in time to see Montfort lashing out again with the umbrella, a heavy, old-fashioned one with steel shaft and spokes. This time, throwing up his arm, Gideon caught it flush on the point of the elbow. Tears of pain jumped to his eyes, but still he managed to catch hold of it as Montfort raised it again.

"Michel, don't be stupid. What-"

Montfort was a heavy man with burly, powerful shoulders, and Gideon had had to pull hard on the umbrella to hold it back. Unexpectedly, Montfort let go. Gideon stumbled backward, tripping over his own feet, almost falling.

Montfort came after him. "Bastard!" he said, trying clumsily to shove him aside and get by. To the window, Gideon realized almost too late. To the open window, a hundred feet above the street. That's what this was about. Reaching out he managed to clamp his hand on Montfort's upper arm just as the archaeologist got a grasp on the window frame. Struggling, Montfort balled up his other fist and smashed it into Gideon's face like a man driving nails with a hammer. He felt blood spurt from his nose. The heavy, quivering fist was raised again and Gideon made a grab for that arm as well, using the thrust of his legs and the weight of his body to spin Montfort around and slam him hard against the wall beside the window.

The jolt seemed to take the fight out of the older man. "Gideon, don't let them do this to me," he whispered. Panting, he cast a terrified glance at the rapidly approaching Peyrol His once-ruddy face was drained of blood; gray-white below the eyes, sickly blue around the mouth. "How can I face this? I beg you-let me go, let me get it over with." One hand plucked ineffectually at Gideon's hold.

For a moment, Gideon softened-a man of Montfort's stature and accomplishments and very real contributions to endure a trial for murder, to go to prison for the rest of his life!-but only for a moment. He brushed Montfort's hand away. His own hand, which had very nearly loosened, tightened on Montfort's arm.

"You stood behind Jacques and crushed his skull," he said through set teeth. "You killed Ely." And you damn well cost me a bunch of neuro-axons I can't afford, let's not forget that. "You-"

"Permit me, monsieur," said Sergeant Peyrol to Gideon. And to Montfort, quite sternly. "This won't do, monsieur. Come with me at once, please."

Montfort, with a final, reproachful look at Gideon and a last, longing look at the open window and the empty space beyond, lowered his head and went with the sergeant.

Julie came up to Gideon as the room began buzzing with excited whispers again. "Are you all right?"

"Sure, I'm fine. I think I'd better go along with them to the mairie."

She handed him a packet of tissues. "You might want to wipe your nose first."

" Visitez… l'usine," Julie said, practicing her French by reading aloud from the sign in the window of a pate shop. She brightened momentarily, having successfully translated it, but her expression changed as the meaning sank in. "Yuck, why would anyone want to visit a chopped-liver factory?"

Gideon shook his head. "Got me."

"It certainly couldn't be anywhere near as entertaining as what you've just been telling me about intestinal bacteria and decomposing brains."

"Probably not as edifying either."

They were on the main street of the village. When Gideon had returned from the mairie an hour before and had begun to fill her in, Julie had interrupted: "How about getting out and taking a walk while you tell me? I could use the fresh air-and it'd help to be rubbing shoulders with real, everyday, normal people who're talking about something besides murder for a change."

Having spent most of the afternoon sitting in on Montfort's interrogation as a sort of interpreter of things scientific, he felt much the same way. Strictly speaking, Montfort hadn't been required to submit to being questioned until Joly got his warrant, but he'd waived his right to silence. With his frustrated attorney there but unable to convince him to shut up, he had woodenly answered question after question in a listless, unconcerned voice that had made Gideon's skin crawl; the voice of a man no longer part of this world.

The first thing he'd done on getting back to the hotel was to stand under a steaming shower until his skin felt as if it had been wire-brushed. Then he'd put on fresh clothes. After that he'd wanted to be around some everyday people too, and they had strolled the length of the village, first south through the riverside park, where mothers with old-fashioned prams, youngsters on swings, and old men playing petanque had restored their faith in normal-or at least normal-looking-people. Then back along the shop-lined main street with its tourists and shoppers, also reassuringly ordinary-looking.