Aaron Elkins - Old Bones

"No, you’re right. It was cyanide; because it works so fast. Goering killed himself with it in Nuremberg. Himmler bit into a glass capsule too. What makes you ask?"

"I was just thinking that if somebody was getting back at Claude for cooperating with the SS, cyanide would be a logical choice-you know, a kind of symbol, linking him with Nazi war criminals. Does that make any sense?"

"Well, it seems a little theatrical, but I guess it’s a point. I’ll mention it to Joly. Any other hints I ought to pass along?"

"You’re being snide, but yes, there is something else. You can tell him that Mathilde’s husband… What’s his name?"

"Rene."

"You can tell him that Rene isn’t guilty."

"Fine, I’ll sure do that. This morning. Did you want me to give him any particular reason?" He sipped the coffee.

"Uh-huh. You can point out that since he’s the one who let the workmen in to dig up the basement-You did tell me that, didn’t you?"

"Yes…"

"Then he couldn’t have had anything to do with Alain’s body being down there, or he’d never have let them get near the place."

Gideon put down the mug. "Julie, that is really a good point! Of course he wouldn’t have! I was being snide, and I hereby apologize. Abjectly. You’re making more progress back there in Port Angeles than I am in St. Malo."

She laughed, delighted. "You really hadn’t thought about that yourself?"

"I hadn’t even thought about thinking about it." He had another sip of coffee and ran the idea through his mind. "So if it’s true that Claude’s murder has its roots in the Occupation, and if it’s true that it was an act of revenge, and if Rene’s out of the picture… that just leaves Mathilde du Rocher and Sophie Butts. And Marcel, of course. They were all young then, but they haven’t forgotten."

"Don’t get carried away now; that’s a lot of if’s."

"There are a few," he admitted.

"Now that I’ve made my contribution, you don’t suppose we could talk about something besides murders, and skeletons, and Nazis for a while, do you? Things are getting creepier than ever around here."

He smiled. "You bet. You all settled down for the night?"

"Uh-huh. I’m in bed."

"Good," he said, his voice softening. "What are you wearing? That silky tan thing, I hope; the one that accentuates that lovely, long, marvelous intra-sacrospinalis sulcus you have."

"Ah," she said with a sigh, "that’s more like it."

Joly brought the three hoards of bones to the seminar in separate boxes, and he, Gideon, and John tagged each set with different-colored plastic tape to identify them. Then Gideon had the attendees lay them all out in proper anatomical position.

This was accomplished to his and the students’ satisfaction. Of the 200 visible bones of the human body (the other six were ear bones, deep in the skull), 197 were present, mice apparently having made off with three small wrist bones.

Gideon then told them in general terms about the circumstances of the find, discussed the sternal foramen, and pointed out and explained the knife-scarring on the fifth rib.

"Now, what I’d like you to do," he said to the twenty-odd trainees gathered around the table, "is to estimate sex, age, and height on your own, going through the same steps I would; by now you should know what they are. See what you can do with race too. You’ll split into three groups and we’ll get three separate reports, and then I’ll tell you how I see it. Any questions? If not-"

"Hold on one moment, please, Doctor." The speaker was a slender, delicate black police captain from Nairobi; voluble, articulate, and animated. And always ready to argue. "How do we know," he demanded in his machine-gun English, "that, these bones are a single individual? They were found in three separate packages. Perhaps they are parts of three individuals. Or two, or four. Who can tell for certain?"

"It’s obvious," retorted an officer of the Parisian Surete Urbain irritably, anxious to get on with the exercise. "We found a hundred and ninety-seven bones, all different. If there were more than one person here there would have been some duplications: two mandibles, two left clavicles-"

"True," Gideon heard Joly say quietly behind him, apparently talking to John.

"No, no, no," the Kenyan said. "To find duplications would indeed prove that there is more than one burial. But not to find them does not prove that there is not more than one burial." He folded his slender arms. "It is not warranted by the facts."

"That’s true too," Joly allowed.

But the class grumbled predictably at the Kenyan: Hadn’t Dr. Oliver said a hundred times that science doesn’t deal with proof, but with probability? And to find 197 bones without a single duplication-

"No, wait," Gideon said. "Captain Morefu’s making a sound point. We can do better than that. As a matter of fact, I have; while you were putting the skeleton together, I did a little matching."

He picked up the fifth cervical vertebrae, which was tagged with blue tape, and the fourth, tagged with green. "Vertebrae are the most complexly shaped and probably the most variable bones in the body, and they nestle into each other more closely than any others do; that’s what gives the spinal column its strength. Now, this C4 and C5 were in two different packages; if they were from two different people, they might fit roughly into each other-but not like this."

He held up the small, hollow-centered bones and slipped them against each other. They fit perfectly; as neat, tight, and inescapably matching as a pair of stackable chairs.

"No. No, Dr. Oliver, no." Captain Morefu was shaking his fine head. "How can I accept this as proof? How can we say with certainty that no two people have ever had greatly similar spinal columns? Many times have I seen-"

"Wait, Captain; give me a chance. There’s something else, and it’s about as close to proof as we’re going to get in this business. If you look at these two vertebrae-" He paused and held them out. "Here, have a look. Tell me if you see anything."

The Kenyan took them, turning them slowly around, frowning hard. After a few seconds he looked up, his face transformed and smiling. "These scratches. They match."

"That’s it," Gideon said and explained to the others. "The captain’s referring to the cut marks made during the dismemberment. If you hold the adjacent bones together in their natural positions, you can see how some of the marks start on one bone and end on the other. How could that happen unless they were together when the cuts were made? Case closed; We’re dealing with a single body."

He put the vertebrae down. "Now get going with your analysis. And remember, start with the sex."

"What difference does it make what we start with?" someone wanted to know. "Why the sex first?"

"Partly because you have to know the sex to draw other conclusions from it. Men and women have different proportions, as you may have noticed."

"No shit," one of the Americans said.

"But also," Gideon said with a smile, "sexing a skeleton is easier than anything else, and it’s nice to start with something easy. If you just flipped a coin you’d be right half the time. Compared to determining age, there’s nothing to it."

"For you, maybe," someone muttered.

"For you too," he said, not quite truthfully. "You’ve all watched me do it. Now let’s get to it."

The exercise went slowly while the groups measured, calculated, and debated. Gideon was itching to have a go at the new material himself, but resigned himself to wait, enjoying the teacherly satisfaction of watching his students put to competent use what they had learned from him.

At a little before ten, the three groups began their reports. They were unanimous in their determination of sex: the skeleton was that of a male. Gideon congratulated them and announced his agreement. A moment’s glance at the pelvis had confirmed what he already knew.