Aaron Elkins - Old Bones

But this was not the time for it. There was a turbulent exchange between Beatrice and the foreman. Guillaume du Rocher had just been laid in his grave, she pointed out heatedly; surely out of respect for him the work might be postponed for a week?

Certainly, the foreman replied, using his tongue to shift a toothpick from the left side of his mouth to the right. That would be possible, but four days’ masonry work had been contracted to begin today, and the equipment had been brought all the way from St. Brieuc. He had no choice, he was sorry to say, but to bill them for the contracted labor and equipment costs, whether or not the work was done. They would be happy to come back later, but they would have to charge all over again. It made little difference to him, he explained, and the toothpick moved back to the left. It was up to madame.

But it was monsieur who resolved the matter. Rene, aware that he was responsible for the domaine ’s outlay as well as its income, came to the doorway and suggested that it might be best to permit the work, inasmuch as it was being paid for anyway. The men would be out of sight in the cellar, after all, and if they kept their noise to a minimum, used the back entrances, and were generally discreet, why, no impropriety would be done.

Beatrice deferred and led the workmen around the kitchen entrance. Rene was well-pleased with the results of his timely and authoritative intercession, but before his second cup of coffee had been drunk the foreman was back. His trousers and sleeves were powdered with fine gray dust.

"Monsieur?" He approached, a great deal more diffident than he’d been before; actually wringing his hands, in fact. Had he not left his beret in the cellar he would certainly have been twisting it. The toothpick was not to be seen.

"Monsieur…we’ve found…in the cellar…we’ve found…"

"What, what?" asked Rene, alarmed.

The foreman swallowed and took another step forward. "In the cellar…there’s a…a…"

"A skeleton?" Sergeant Denis stopped doodling. He sat straight up in his hard plastic chair and pressed the telephone closer to his ear with his shoulder. "Did you say a skeleton?"

"Yes…Well, that is, not a whole one. There’s no… no head."

"No head. I see. Monsieur du Rocher, is it?"

"Yes, Rene du Rocher." This time Denis wrote it down. "And you found it in the cellar?"

"Yes. That is, the workmen did. It was buried in the floor, under the stones. It’s been, er, wrapped in paper."

"And you’re certain it’s human?"

A pause. "Well, we think so. Mr. Fougeray, my-one of my guests-said it was."

"A doctor, this Mr. Fougeray?"

"Oh, no. He owns-er, he’s a butcher." "A butcher," Denis said, writing dutifully.

"He said if it wasn’t a person, then it might be a large monkey of some kind, perhaps a gorilla."

Oh, yes, Denis thought. A gorilla buried in the cellar of the Manoir de Rochebonne. Wrapped in paper. Well, it had been a foolish question.

"Monsieur du Rocher, please touch nothing-"

"Oh, no, of course not."

"-and lock up the cellar."

"Lock it up? I’m not sure there’s a lock."

"Close the door, then." Denis paused. "There is a door?"

"Yes. Well, I’m sure there must be."

"Close it then, and don’t allow anyone in. I’ll have someone there shortly."

"Fleury," Denis said when he replaced the receiver, "go on out to the Manoir de Rochebonne-you know the place?"

Fleury looked up from the well-thumbed office copy of Lui. "Near Ploujean?"

"Yes. Someone’s found a skeleton in the cellar. I want you to keep it secure until the chief gets there. And take some statements."

"Fine," Fleury said, rolling up the magazine and wedging it into its place behind the A-G file cabinet. He stretched. Nothing ever surprised Fleury very much. "You’re really going to call Monsieur Giscard on this? It’s probably just a goat."

Denis looked up. "A goat? Why a goat?"

Fleury shrugged. "Why a person?"

Sergeant Denis eyed him. He had never understood Fleury very well. "People don’t bury goats in cellars." Or gorillas either.

Fleury shrugged. "Isn’t Monsieur Giscard at his convention in St. Malo all week?"

"It’s not a convention, it’s an institute, very scientific, with professors giving lectures. But he’ll have to be interrupted."

Fleury grinned. "He’ll probably appreciate it. He gets grumpy when he’s around anyone smarter than he is."

Fleury was right. Four and a half days of relentlessly abstruse scientific lectures had made Monsieur Giscard- that is, Inspector Lucien Anatole Joly-somewhat irascible. And the fact that most of the undeniably brilliant presenters were a decade or two younger than he was had not helped matters. True, there had been some high points: Gideon Oliver in particular was a lucid and engaging lecturer with, thank God, a sense of humor-an attribute not seemingly in great supply among scientists.

Still, what practical value was there in what he had to tell them? In over twenty years of police work Joly had called for the assistance of a forensic anthropologist three times, and not once could he say that it had made the difference between resolving a case and not resolving it. No, when it came down to it everything turned on the application of the well-established methodology of criminal investigation, diligently pursued. Without that, there was nothing, no matter how many forensic scientists you had on your side, gabbling about sternocleidomastoidal insertions, or sarcosaprophagous insects, or carboxyhemoglobin levels.

By the fifth afternoon, he was restless and bored, and he had begun to think up excuses for calling his office. When the message came for him to do just that, he responded with a sigh of relief and left the lecture hall with such alacrity that he stumbled over the legs of the Hawaiian FBI man dozing so comfortably in the aisle seat.

"Pardon, monsieur," Joly said.

"No problem," said the FBI man amiably without opening his eyes.

When he had hung up after talking to Denis, Joly called the public prosecutor, Monsieur Picard, to inform him of the case, as was his duty. This he did, as usual with some resentment. Pleasant and harmless he might be, but Monsieur Picard was not a policeman and didn’t think like one, and to be subordinate to him was a raw, never-ending frustration. That was the one thing Joly admired about the American justice system with its impossible decentralization of police powers into thousands of squabbling jurisdictions. At least they were not under the thumb of the damned judiciary.

Picard, never content simply to let the professionals do their work, would figure out some way of interfering, even in a case like this.

As indeed he did. "Listen, Joly," he said after he had heard the details, "isn’t that American skeleton expert at your conference?"

Joly was hardly concerned that the gritting of his teeth might be heard at the other end of the line. "Yes, sir," he said, as near as it can be done without opening the mouth.

"Well, I have a wonderful idea. Why don’t you talk with him and see if…"

Gideon remained at the lectern for a few minutes after his third presentation of the week, answering the questions of a few people who had clustered around him. This was over swiftly, however; the attendees were anxious to take full advantage of the coffee break to fortify themselves for the upcoming session on "Recent Advances in Ionization Analysis by Means of the Gas Chromatograph-Mass Spectrometer."

When they left, he began crating the two skulls and assorted bones the University of Rennes had lent him. (He had wanted to use his own demonstration materials from the anthropology lab in Port Angeles, but the postal authorities there had made uneasy noises about shipping dismembered human remains across international borders, and in the end it had seemed simpler to borrow them in France.) He was feeling cheerful as he packed the bones in polystyrene chips. For one thing the lectures were going well; for another it was very pleasant to be at a conference strictly as a presenter and not an attendee. It meant he could skip sessions when he felt like it. (He always could, of course, but this way he didn’t feel guilty.) And inasmuch as ionization analysis exerted less than a hypnotic pull on him and the weather was brightening, he thought he might get a taxi into the Old Town and walk the famous ramparts.