Aaron Elkins - Old Bones

"I don’t think so," Gideon said. "I’m pretty sure Guillaume was already dead. Remember, he hadn’t been seen in years either. He disappeared in 1942 too."

"Jesus," John said, starting them walking again, "this goddamn case is crawling with disappearing people."

"In fact," Gideon said, thinking aloud, "he disappeared within a day or two of the time Alain did-supposedly to join the Resistance. Only now it looks as if it was Alain who took off somewhere, while Guillaume didn’t make it out of his own cellar. And when Alain came back after the Liberation, he decided that he could live a fuller, more productive, more meaningful life as his missing, rolling-in-money cousin than as himself.

"I suppose," he added ruminatively, "this sounds a little fanciful to you."

"A little? Sheesh." They walked without speaking for a few yards. "So what do you think-that Alain killed the real Guillaume-back in 1942, I mean-buried him in the cellar, and just let everybody think he was off running around with the Resistance?"

"No, I don’t see how we could go that far yet. Possibly-"

"Because," John said, with a subtle change in his voice, "he would have had to kill him, wouldn’t he? Or at least he’d have had to know Guillaume was already dead when everybody else thought he was off fighting the Germans. Otherwise, how could he be sure he wouldn’t come back someday?"

As usual, John had quickly altered course after his first excitable response to an unexpected new hypothesis and settled down to constructive thinking.

"That," Gideon conceded, "is a point."

They had come to the tall stone pillars of the gateway and stood looking out into the darkness. The plane trees lining the road were dimly visible, a dense, pitchy black against the gauzy black of the sky. Gideon shivered as the night cold worked its way through his clothes, and they turned and began to walk back to the manoir.

When they came to the pile of lumber that John had stumbled over, Gideon stopped. Something stirred at the edges of his memory. "You know," he said, "it’s funny…" But whatever it was evaded him, like a speck in the vision that scoots away when you try to focus on it.

"What’s funny?" John asked, then laughed. "Never mind. I don’t think I want to know. I can only stand so much at a time. Hey, who else do you think knows this so-called Guillaume was really Alain? Assuming that he was."

"My guess is that none of them do. Why tell them? The only ones who’d even remember the real Guillaume are Mathilde, Rene, and Sophie, and they were all teenagers or under in 1942. When Alain showed up two years later and claimed he was Guillaume, who could argue with him? He was the right age, he knew the ropes, he looked a lot like Guillaume to begin with, and he was such a patched-up mess that no one could possibly tell the difference-even Mathilde. Even though she’d been engaged to him, she was only a kid when he left, and it wouldn’t be too hard for him to keep his distance." He nodded approvingly at his own logic. "No, I’d bet no one’s ever caught on to him in all these years."

"Yeah?" said John, who had listened without comment to this lengthy exposition. "Well, you’d lose."

Gideon paused with his fingers on the handle of the oak door. "Why?"

"Because somebody was so afraid you’d find out who that skeleton really was they tried to blow your head off. Or did you forget again?"

Gideon frowned, then laughed. "I forgot. Again."

Pre-dinner cocktails were being served in the Louis XV Room, an upstairs sitting room full of musty, handsome eighteenth-century clutter: lush overstuffed bergeres, crystal pendant chandeliers, ormolu clocks, busy Beauvais tapestries after Boucher and Fragonard. Its delicate parquet floors and ornate, gilded wall moldings proclaimed it the centerpiece of Rochebonne but for more than four decades it had been little-used, being too sumptuous and grandiose for its dour owner. But it suited Mathilde just fine, and she was determined to return it to its onetime place of glory.

The knowledge that this was the last evening they would all be together seemed to add a sparkle, almost a conviviality, to the cocktail hour, so that for once they had abandoned their customary groupings to recombine in new permutations.

At the side of the cherrywood-fronted fireplace a dapper and liberally cologned Rene, drink in hand, was playing le seigneur du manoir to a twittery, vibrant Leona Fougeray. Leona, at her striking, brittle best in a neon orange jumpsuit cinched by a patent leather belt, laughed frequently, throwing back her head so that the reflections from the chandelier made her black Italian eyes shimmer.

A few feet away, seated somewhat stiffly in three kingly armchairs of crushed red velvet and gilded wood, Mathilde, Claire, and Sophie chatted quietly, Mathilde frequently raising her eyes to glare without effect at her pink and animated husband. And standing on the other side of the room Ray, Ben, and Jules talked man-talk. Or at least Jules did. With his rump propped against an inlaid gaming table, a martini in one hand and a quickly changing succession of canapes in the other, he prattled to his abstracted and unresponsive audience.

Gliding among them all with a tray of drinks was the granite-faced Marcel, while Beatrice hung about the entrance to a small pantry in her tent-like brown dress, lumbering grumpily out from time to time with fresh hors d’oeuvres.

When Gideon and John entered, Ray separated himself and came worriedly to them.

"Did you talk to Ben?" he asked in a low voice. "You don’t still think…?"

"He didn’t lie about what was in the schedule," Gideon reassured him. "Someone altered the thing."

"Thank heavens." He took a relieved swig of Chablis, then did a double-take. "Altered? You mean… altered? "

"Probably not to get us," John said, looking casually around to make sure no one else was within hearing range. "Someone used it to kill Guillaume."

Ray’s eyes opened wider. "Kill Guillaume?"

"Right. Oh, by the way, Guillaume was Alain."

Gideon thought that John, who had been on the receiving end of something similar a few minutes before, could be forgiven for this. Ray responded with surprising aplomb, swallowing his mouthful of wine without quite choking on it. "Tell me," he said when it was safely down, "have I been leading a particularly sheltered existence? Is this what life is like for other people?"

"Only when the Skeleton Detective’s around," John said.

Ray looked slowly about him. The others were still involved in their conversations or their tasks, but casting uneasy or even hostile looks toward Gideon and John. Almost, it seemed to Gideon, as if they were huddling for mutual support against the newcomers, as if everything were really just fine at the Manoir de Rochebonne-or would be, if not for the intrusion of these two unwelcome meddlers. Well, he thought, in a way they were right.

"It’s so difficult to believe," Ray said softly. "One of these people is actually a murderer. But who? No, whom. No, who. I’m afraid this is really getting to me."

"Monsieur?" Marcel extended the tray of drinks.

"Merci." As Gideon took one of the slender, fluted tumblers of vermouth the telephone rang. Marcel turned, but Mathilde, closer, picked it up. She listened, murmured something, and extended it uncordially to Gideon, her face wooden. "For you."

It was Dr. Loti.

"Yes, hello again, it’s me. I think perhaps we might have been disconnected earlier," he said hopefully.

"Yes, I think we were," Gideon said, repenting for having virtually hung up on the elderly physician before.

"Ah. Well. I didn’t finish what I was telling you. You’ll be quite interested. You see, Guillaume didn’t really regain his memory‘just like that.’ That was a figure of speech. It was Mathilde du Rocher who did it all."