Aaron Elkins - Old Bones

"Jules?" Gideon said with surprise, remembering the soft young man who had slavered over the thought of severed heads and hands.

Joly smiled wryly at his expression. "Yes, it seems an inexplicable lapse in judgment by a man otherwise well-known for his discernment. How is that Montrachet?"

"It’s delicious, but I hope your teeth have thick enamel."

He offered the wine bottle again but Joly declined. "Thank you, no. I’ve already had too much. I generally limit myself to a single glass at lunch."

"Look, Inspector," Gideon said, pouring a little for himself, "I’m confused. Let’s say Guillaume had been planning a new will-"

"I don’t think it’s likely. Claude was given to deluding himself."

"But let’s say he had, and the estate was going to go to Claude instead of the others…Well, Guillaume died five days ago, right? Without making a new will. It was over and done; what connection could there be to Claude’s murder?"

Joly swallowed a small piece of bread and cheese and dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a napkin. "Yes, that’s true."

"Well-" Gideon put down his glass. "Hey, are you saying that you think there was something fishy about Guillaume’s death after all?"

This was dismissed with a wave of the hand and a sour expression. "I hope that wasn’t a pun. Why do you persist in returning to this? What reason would anyone have to kill Guillaume?"

"For the money in the will," Gideon said. "A lot of people must have been champing at the bit to get their hands on their shares."

"Surely they could wait another year or so."

"Another year?"

"You didn’t know? That’s all he was given to live by Dr. Loti, and that was some months ago."

Gideon very nearly blurted: "I’m sorry to hear that," which would have been pretty peculiar under the circumstances. "No," he said instead, "I didn’t know."

"Well, it’s common knowledge. Dr. Loti’s a good physician, but he isn’t the man to have if you want to keep secrets. Now, does that satisfy you?"

"I suppose so," Gideon said doubtfully. But with or without a plausible motive, Guillaume’s death just didn’t sit right. Not that he expected to convince Joly.

"‘I suppose so,’ " Joly repeated with a smile. "A man who doesn’t give up easily. Still you’re right in a way. There is, as you say, something fishy here somewhere; something they know but they’re not telling me, something not quite…" He searched for a word and came up, surprisingly, with: "…kosher. Something in the past, I think. I’ve begun to wonder if it might not have something to do with the SS man’s murder."

"Maybe, but-I hate to keep bringing this up, but that isn’t Helmut Kassel down there with the notch in his rib."

"Perhaps not, perhaps not." Joly nodded abstractedly; his attention was wandering. "Do you mind if we don’t stay for coffee? I think I should be getting back."

Gideon lifted his wine to finish it, but for the second time he checked it in midair and put it back on the table. "Something in the past, did you say? Inspector, didn’t anyone tell you about Alain du Rocher? About how Claude was responsible for his murder?"

Joly’s expression made it amply clear that nobody had. Head down, he listened, scowling, to Gideon’s explanation, not pleased that the information had failed to surface during his interviews. And also, Gideon thought, not too thrilled about having to get it from the Skeleton Detective of America.

"Perhaps I’ll have a little more wine after all," he said when he’d heard it all. He poured about a tablespoonful into his glass, rolled it around the bottom, and drank it grimly down. "Strange that no one should think of mentioning it to me."

"Well, maybe they just wanted to keep an old family scandal quiet. Maybe they forgot about it, or didn’t see any connection."

Joly tilted his head back and barked. "Yes, and maybe oysters grow on trees."

They had agreed to pay for their own lunches, and Joly, who thought he might have been overcharged, carefully compared his bill to the prices written on a blackboard behind the grill. But he had trouble reading the posted prices, tilting his head up, then down, and finally raising his glasses slightly and peering along his nose at the chalkboard.

"I have had these damned bifocal lenses for a week," he muttered, "and I’m no more used to them than on the first day. I still can’t see anything, except through the bottoms. It’s very hard on the neck. May you never have to wear them, Dr. Oliver."

Gideon’s cheeks burned suddenly. And well he deserved to blush. All those smug and uncharitable observations about Joly’s haughty posture and down-the-nose stare, and it had turned out to be a matter of new bifocals, not stiff-necked pomposity at all. Or only a little. Even the inspector’s wide, clean upper lip suddenly looked more human, less invulnerable, than before.

"Inspector," Gideon said, "do you suppose we know each other well enough for you to call me by my first name? It’s Gideon."

"Oh," Joly said, groping through his coin purse, "yes, of course. Mine, ahum, is Lucien."

Gideon had the impression it was something he hadn’t told many people.

When they got back to the manoir they were met by an excited Sergeant Denis, who herded them breathlessly into the cellar. Another find had been unearthed, this one not wrapped in a package, but simply dumped into the ground about ten feet from the first; nine pieces in all, soiled and discolored. Not bones this time, but articles of military dress.

A pair of cracked, black boots with straps over the insteps; a leather, Sam Browne-style belt, also black, with a disk-shaped buckle; a shoulder cord of braided metal; some tarnished medals and military insignia; and a peaked, black cap. And on the cap, darkened by time but still glinting malevolently after all these years, the SS Death’s Head, lovingly molded in dull white metal.

Gideon and Joly looked at each other over the head of the thrilled and garrulous Denis.

"Son of a gun," Gideon said.

"Voila," said Joly.

"So you were wrong," John said philosophically. "It’s not like it never happened before, you know."

"I’m not wrong," Gideon maintained. "I don’t make that kind of mistake with skeletal material; you know that."

"What about those bones they found scattered along the Massachusetts Turnpike near, where was it, Stockbridge? Remember? You were sure as hell wrong there."

"True, but that was an understandable mistake, a minor misinterpretation."

John stopped walking and stared at him in mock incredulity; or perhaps it was outright incredulity. "Telling us the bones belonged to a five-to-seven-year-old when the guy was really thirty-two is a minor misinterpretation?"

"Well, Jesus Christ, John, the guy turned out to have cleidocranial dyostosis. You know how rare that is?"

"I don’t even know what it is."

"His ossification schedule was all screwed up. How was I supposed to know that? All I had to go on were a couple of maxillary bones and a clavicle-"

John played an imaginary violin.

"Come on, John, that was just my preliminary report, anyway. When they found the rest of the post-cranial skeleton I came up with the right age, didn’t I? Well, didn’t I? I practically identified the guy for you."

"That’s true," John admitted, and they began walking again. "But you don’t have very much to go on down in the cellar either. Remember, you were the one who said it was just a gut feeling. Maybe this Kassel was a huge guy with little hands and feet. Maybe he had polio as a kid and his spinal column shrunk up or something. Isn’t that possible? Couldn’t you be wrong about his size?"

"No," Gideon said. He shook his head back and forth as they continued their slow pace. "Absolutely not. Uh-uh. Nope."