Aaron Elkins - Old Bones

He extended his lips to accept the Gitane he had just lit at the dashboard. "Perhaps he was. In any case, according to what they said, Guillaume du Rocher-your old friend, Dr. Oliver-killed the Nazi in retribution for his cousin’s death. Certainly, there is no question but that Kassel disappeared with no trace in October 1942. I think that now we have some reason to think that Guillaume-"

"-buried him in the cellar," John said.

"So it would seem. No one appears to know for sure what was done with the body, and Guillaume, they tell me, hadn’t talked of it for over forty years. He didn’t happen to mention it to you, Dr. Oliver?"

"Not a word. I was only here for a couple of days. We talked about phylogenetic relationships between the Middle Pleistocene hominids and the western Neanderthals."

"Hey, no kidding," John said. "That must have been a blast. I’m sorry I missed it."

It was a blast, Gideon remembered. Afterwards, the ailing old man had told him he hadn’t enjoyed an evening so much in years, and Gideon had believed him. He thought about Guillaume some more, staring without seeing at the lights of the big trucks flashing by on their night hauls to Rennes. "Inspector," he said, "do you know just what it was that happened to Guillaume?"

"He was drowned in the tide."

"Yes, but do you know how it happened? Did he have an attack of some kind? A stroke?"

"No, I don’t think so. He was rather far out collecting shells, and he didn’t become aware of the tide until it was too late for him to get back. When he began to run, he stepped into some quicksand. It’s very treacherous there."

"Mm."

"Exactly what is it that bothers you?" Joly asked after a pause.

"It’s just that he didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d go out there without knowing exactly when the tide was coming in and exactly when he’d have to start back. He was fascinated by the tides. He had some kind of theory about biannual cycles, and he kept tide schedules going back a dozen years."

"When was it you saw him?"

"Almost two years ago."

"Ah. Well, as I understand it, his health had declined since then; his alertness too, I’m sorry to say. He might easily have become confused."

"I suppose so," said Gideon, unconvinced. "Still-"

"Dr. Oliver," Joly said briskly, "I can assure you there is nothing questionable about Guillaume du Rocher’s death. He was simply caught unawares. Half a dozen witnesses saw it, one with binoculars. Afterwards his body was found buried in the sand up to the hips. It’s happened many, many times before, and it will happen again. The bay is famous for it."

"I guess so."

John turned around. "Okay, Doc, let’s hear it. What’s your theory?"

"I don’t have one," Gideon said truthfully. "It’s just that… hell, I don’t know. It doesn’t sound right."

"Perhaps we would do better," Joly said with authority, "to discuss the case at hand-the skeleton in the cellar. Several of the people at the manoir remember Kassel; their descriptions corroborate one another, and I am hoping that your investigation will bear them out: a tall, powerful man, very Aryan in appearance-"

"What?"

Joly’s cool eyes flicked at him in the rearview mirror. "Pardon? Have I said something-? Ah, of course. You prefer not to know who it is you’re trying to identify. I apologize; you told us on the first day of the seminar."

"Well, that’s true. Forensic anthro’s like anything else. You tend to find what you’re looking for. But-"

"Still, inasmuch as it’s almost certain that the bones are Herr Kassel’s…" Again he glanced at Gideon. "You think not?"

The words were courteous enough, but even in the small mirror the afflicted expression in Joly’s eyes was unmistakable: What have I done that God has seen fit to inflict this difficult man on me?

"I think not," Gideon said, and told him straightforwardly about his height and weight calculations. "Five-feet-nine, tops. A hundred and forty pounds, tops. There’s no way anybody could mistake him for‘tall and powerful,’ Inspector."

Joly considered this without pleasure. "Don’t forget about the psychological component, Dr. Oliver. We’re dealing with memories forty-five years old. Isn’t it likely that people’s image of this feared, powerful commandant has been warped by time into something even more terrifying than he was?"

"That’s true," John said, on Joly’s side for once.

"Sure, but this guy was built along the lines of Ray Schaefer. Do you think even forty-five years could warp that build into an Aryan superman’s?"

"Yeah, but don’t forget about the fudging component, Doc," John contributed. "You said down in the cellar you weren’t sure about the height and weight, didn’t you?"

"I didn’t say I wasn’t sure, I said the indicators didn’t provide technically cogent data."

"Oh, the indicators didn’t provide…Well, that’s different. That’s a whole ’nother story. Excuse me."

Gideon sighed. "Okay, okay, you’re right. I can’t prove it, but my gut tells me this was a little guy, not a big one. Is that better?"

John hooked an elbow over the back of the seat and turned around, his dark eyes round. "I’m right? "

"In principle."

"Oh, in principle." He swung back around to the front and nodded sadly. "You had me shook up there for a minute. I thought I was just plain right."

If Joly found this exchange entertaining he didn’t show it. "Dr. Oliver, to speak frankly, it seems to me that you’re going out of your way to be obstructive-"

"Obstructive?" Gideon repeated, offended. "You asked me in to give my opinion, and that’s what I’ve given. If you’ve already made up your mind who that skeleton is, you don’t need-"

"No, no, I’m sorry," Joly said hurriedly. "I didn’t mean it that way. It simply occurred to me that with all the available information pointing to its being Kassel…Well, I find myself wondering if your modus operandi perhaps involves a certain skepticism, a need to quarrel with the obvious, to make the simple complex…"

"Every time," John said cheerfully. "That’s his MO, all right. That’s how he got to be the Skeleton Detective of America."

The look that Joly shot him made it icily clear that he knew when he was being put on and it didn’t amuse him. He exhaled smoke through his long nose and ground out his cigarette in the ashtray. "Perhaps we’ll learn more tomorrow," he said curtly. "I’m having the rest of the cellar excavated, of course."

"Of course," John said, and wisely held his peace.

Each with his own thoughts they said no more until Joly swung the blue Renault off the N137 at the St. Malo exit.

Gideon was one of those people who could wake up at a set time without an alarm clock, but it was an instinct he never wholly trusted. As a result, he usually set an alarm before going to bed and generally wound up jerking awake ten minutes before it went off, thus allowing him to punch down the button and avoid being shaken out of his sleep by the alarm itself. Thus also losing him ten minutes’ additional sleep that he wanted dearly at the time. It was one of those little problems he had yet to get around to figuring out.

But he was surprised the next morning when the alarm went off while he was still asleep. He slammed the button down twice before he realized it was the telephone. Blindly, he reached for it, his heart racing. He didn’t like telephone calls in the middle of the night; that was the way he’d learned that Nora was dead. As he groped for the receiver he saw the time on the glowing clock dial and relaxed: ten after seven. Not the middle of the night at all.

Still, damn early.

He growled something into the telephone.

"Oh-oh, sounds like he hasn’t been fed yet. I didn’t wake you up, did I?"