Aaron Elkins - Old Bones

"Why, yes," said Joly, "that should certainly settle it."

"Moroccans, maybe, or more likely Algerians."

"And to think," Joly said, "that yesterday a performance like that would have made me smile."

"You’re smiling now." Not that it was easy to tell, but by this time Gideon could recognize the slight compression of the lips combined with the barely visible upturning of their corners as a Joly smile. The cool, constantly assessing eyes hardly came into it.

"Ah," Joly said, "but it’s a different sort of smile. I must confess that even this morning my first reaction to your findings was that you were-" He shrugged. "-well, wishfully extending the implications to be made from rather scant data-a sort of artistic exuberance, quite understandable under the circumstances."

Gideon laughed. "Inspector, where did you learn your English?"

Joly bowed his head stiffly, accepting it for the compliment it was.

Over a first course of palourdes -steamed clams on the half shell, drenched with garlic butter-Gideon explained the rest of his findings. Joly poked single-mindedly away at his clams but nodded with appreciation from time to time.

"Some of it was artistic exuberance," Gideon admitted. "I think it was a kitchen knife, but I wouldn’t want to bet my life on it. And as for the murderer being right-handed-"

"Ah, yes. The angle of the notch on the rib, I suppose? It suggested that the thrust was delivered from in front of the victim, and since it pierced his left side…"

"Right. I mean, correct."

Joly dabbed at his lips with a napkin and sipped from a glass of Muscadet. "Well, I would consider that a fairly reasonable inference, at least until other evidence presents itself." Which was about how Gideon felt about it too, now that his earlier flush of belligerence had passed.

When the main course came, the conversation lapsed while they dug in. Joly was an enthusiastic eater, and if his grilled trout was as good as Gideon’s flame-charred fresh sardines there was reason for his enthusiasm. By the time the cheese plate was brought, Joly had had a second glass of wine and was loose to the point of actually leaning against the back of his chair. A good time, Gideon thought, to find out what had been going on upstairs while he’d been in the cellar.

"How’d your investigation go this morning?"

Joly nodded silently, as if that were an answer, and went on trying to cut his way through a rocklike wedge of Cantal.

"Making progress?"

Shrug. Noncommittal grunt.

"Not solved yet, I take it?"

"Not yet." Coherent speech this time. A distinct improvement.

"Suspects?"

"Oh, yes."

"Well, it certainly is fascinating getting all this information right from the horse’s mouth." He bit into a roll spread with soft, tart Banon.

Joly smiled. "Everyone in the manoir is a legitimate suspect." He hesitated, then apparently decided to trust Gideon after all. "The wine carafe was placed on the sideboard by Marcel at about ten o’clock last night, when Claude took the previous one up to his room. Between then and nine o’clock in the morning, everyone had ample opportunity to drop a few hundred milligrams of cyanide into it. With or without fingerprints."

"So much for opportunity. Any leads on why he was killed?"

Joly had succeeded in separating a hard crescent of cheese from the wedge and using his fork to place it on his bread. He looked up at Gideon without raising his head, so that his eyebrows were lifted and his forehead wrinkled. Unexpectedly, he burst into his machine-gun laugh; a real one, the kind in which his eyes participated.

"In my long and distinguished career, Dr. Oliver, I have rarely seen so many credible motives." He put down his fork and leaned forward. "In less than a week, Claude Fougeray has antagonized everyone within reach." He began to count on his fingers. "He held Jules du Rocher up to ridicule as a braying and cowardly fool, which he no doubt is; he brought the docile Marcel Lupis to white-faced and violent rage by insulting Madame Lupis; he disparaged Ben Butts’ honor; he-Now, what have I forgotten?" His right forefinger paused over the fourth finger of his left hand and came down. "Oh, of course he’s devoted a lifetime to bullying and mortifying his wife and daughter. And Leona Fougeray, who makes no bones about her delight that he’s dead, is not a woman I would care to provoke."

Joly gave up counting and slowly twirled his wineglass by the stem, staring into the dregs. "Ah, and in what must have been a memorable scene at the reading of Guillaume’s will, he implied strongly that he would challenge it; this in front of a roomful of people who benefited substantially from its provisions."

Gideon listened with increasing respect as Joly went on to elaborate. A lot had been uncovered in a very few hours. "Are people usually this forthcoming?" he asked.

"About each other, yes." Joly smiled. "Especially about their relatives. If it’s damning evidence you want, I often say, talk to your suspect’s family."

Gideon smiled too. It sounded like something Ben’s Uncle Beau Will’m might say.

Joly continued to rotate his glass thoughtfully, then drained the little left in it. "But you know, I can’t say that I put much faith in Claude’s being murdered as revenge for offended dignity or impugned honor. Or even to avoid the bother of divorce. It simply doesn’t happen very often."

"Which leaves the will. You think somebody killed him to keep him from contesting it?"

Joly squirmed a little. He didn’t like being pinned down. "Not exactly. The possibility of a successful challenge was small to the point of absurdity. There were simply no grounds. The lawyer Bonfante carefully explained that to everyone after the reading. Why should someone risk murder in such a case?"

"What did you mean,‘not exactly’?" He poured himself and Joly some wine from the half-bottle of new Beaujolais they’d ordered to go with the cheese; the policeman held up his hand when the glass was a quarter full.

"Well, I think there’s something else going on beneath the surface-something that they haven’t been so forthcoming about. Claude Fougeray, it seems, declared loudly and at every opportunity that the reason Guillaume had called them all together was to announce a new will he was going to prepare; presumably with Claude himself as the major beneficiary."

"Do you think it might be true?"

The inspector swirled the wine in his glass thoughtfully. "Not really. So far I’ve found nothing to suggest it was anything more than wishful thinking. And Bonfante says Guillaume hadn’t mentioned his will in years."

"But you’re not completely sure about it?"

"I wonder about it, yes."

"You think the attorney might be lying?"

"Georges Bonfante? No, no, I’ve known him for years. And if you’re thinking he himself might make an interesting suspect, I’m afraid he won’t. He hasn’t been near the manoir since the reading. Neither have any other outsiders, I might add. So our suspects, if not our motives, are finite and well-defined. A nice, old-fashioned mystery."

Gideon tried some of the ash-impregnated Montrachet on a piece of roll, scraping off most of the grit and doing his best not to think about the horrifying lesions he’d seen in the teeth of prehistoric peoples who’d consumed ash with their food as a matter of course. But taking care of your teeth was an everyday concern. How often did you meet up with a really first-rate Montrachet?

"What was the reason Guillaume got them all together?" he asked.

"Ah, your mind runs like mine," Joly said; clearly a compliment. "According to Jules it was to discuss the selling of the manoir to a hotel chain."

"According to Jules?"

"Jules was the only one he told, apparently. He was the old man’s great favorite, it appears; they were very close."