Aaron Elkins - Old Bones

Beatrice and Marcel, their English almost non-existent, were watching Mathilde impassively. Most of the others stared at her, half-fascinated, half-horrified, the way people at a zoo peer through the glass at a monstrous snake.

"Madame…" Claire said in her gentle voice. "Aunt Mathilde… did you kill my father?" Not an easy thing to say inoffensively, but from Claire it was not so much an accusation as a timid inquiry.

It was, however, enough to straighten up Mathilde’s spine. She looked condescendingly at Claire. "My dear child, what an extraordinary idea!"

"Oh, yeah?" Leona said, this time resorting to her coarse and shaky English. Gideon’s well-trained ear told him she had learned it in Naples; probably the streets of Naples. "Maybe you was afraid of what he would find out-Claude." She was quite matter-of-fact now, he noticed. The idea that Mathilde might have murdered her husband didn’t seem to bother her nearly as much as the thought that she might have bilked him (and by extension, her) out of the Domaine de Rochebonne. If anything, her estimation of Mathilde appeared to have increased.

"Find out?" Mathilde replied after a moment of convincingly astonished silence.

"Yeah, when he goes down there in the cellar-Maybe he sees something, finds out something…" Leona’s English or her imagination failed her. "Who knows?" she finished lamely, and fell back against her chair.

Mathilde glanced around the room, then appealed to Gideon. "I have no idea what the woman’s talking about."

"Did Claude go down into the cellar?" Rene asked mildly. "I didn’t know that."

"He was going to go," Leona said, resorting again to French. "To watch what he was doing." She indicated Gideon by extending her fluorescent orange lips towards him.

Jules put down his glass with a peevish thump. "I must say, I don’t see why we should have to sit here and listen to this," he said querulously, his soft, babyish cheeks streaked with sullen red. "I mean, here’s this woman, a guest in our house, and she has the, the…"

Gideon had stopped listening. A few more of the last remaining odd-shaped pieces that had been rattling disconnectedly around his mind had just dropped into their slots.

"…have to sit here and listen to this," Jules concluded sulkily, back where he’d begun.

Gideon, thoughtful, looked towards the doorway. "Marcel?"

The servant started. "Monsieur?"

"On the day Claude Fougeray died, did you tell him that he could come down to the cellar at ten o’clock to watch me at work?"

Gideon winced, feeling silly. The ponderous question had reverberated like a line out of an old Perry Mason show. The others, John included, stared uncertainly at him. So did Marcel. He spread his hands and shook his head to show he didn’t understand. A quick darting of his eyes at Beatrice, however, indicated that Claude’s name had registered well enough.

Gideon repeated the question in French, trying to make it a little less turgid.

No, Marcel replied defensively, he hadn’t told that to Monsieur Fougeray. Why should he? There was an uneasy, aggressive shifting of his wiry shoulders, another darty glance at Beatrice. He did not like being questioned about Claude Fougeray.

But Gideon had other game in mind. "Jules, didn’t you tell Marcel to give that information to Claude?"

There was a pause while Jules vacuumed up the last of the olives with his lips. "What information?"

"The night before Claude died," Gideon said patiently, "Joly asked you to tell Claude to come down to the cellar the next morning. You said you’d tell Marcel to pass it on."

With his tongue Jules tucked the olive into one cheek, presumably for future attention. "I did tell him."

"He doesn’t seem to remember."

Jules glanced pettishly at Gideon. "Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t have a chance to mention it. There wasn’t much point after Claude died, and he did die awfully early the next morning- ridiculously early, if I may say so." He crossed one leg over the other, looking pleased with this grotesque attempt at humor.

"Yes," Gideon said, deciding that if there was ever a moment for a denouement, this was it. "You killed him."

The reactions were varied. Predictably, Claire gasped and Ray looked dumbfounded.

Leona examined Jules with frank new interest.

Mathilde slowly opened her mouth. "Jules?" she whispered.

"No really?" Rene murmured to Sophie, sitting nearby. "Do you think that’s true?"

At Gideon’s side John murmured: "I love this part."

Gideon waited for Jules to speak for himself. The young man took the olive from his mouth and placed it in an ashtray, uncrossing his plump thighs to lean forward.

"That’s stupid. Why would I do that?"

"Because at the reading of the will he’d said he didn’t believe Guillaume had really written it. You knew he’d studied to be a doctor, and you were afraid that if he saw the skeleton he’d recognize the rickets and realize that was Guillaume."

Jules laughed. "So what? Why should I care? I didn’t kill Guillaume, did I?" He glanced with unmistakable meaning at his mother, then held up his empty glass to Marcel.

"You’ve had enough, Jules," Mathilde said icily. Jules glared at her but put down the glass.

"No, you didn’t care about that," Gideon said, "but you cared one hell of a lot about the inheritance. And if anyone found out the guy who wrote that will wasn’t who he said he was, that would have been the end of it. No fabulous inheritance for your parents-or for you not too far down the line. And that was something you weren’t about to let happen."

"Dr. Oliver," Mathilde announced in her most imperious contralto, "I cannot have you-"

"Be quiet, Mathilde," Sophie interrupted curtly. "Let’s get it sorted out once and for all, for God’s sake."

Gideon could almost see the tiny gears whizzing behind Jules’ little eyes. "I see your point," he said with strained reasonableness, "but why pick on me? I’m not the only one here who knew about the fraud, am I?" He permitted his gaze to rest once again on his mother. A dew of sweat had formed on his upper lip.

"What a miserable little shit," John muttered out of the side of his mouth.

Gideon agreed. Whatever discomfort he’d felt about brow-beating the slug-like Jules was rapidly disappearing.

"That’s right," he said. "Two people knew; you and your mother. But only one person knew Claude was going to see the bones the next day. And that’s you."

"You’re out of your mind. That inspector told me about it while we were all having drinks. Anybody could have heard."

"No, the rest had gone in to dinner. There were just you, me, and John."

Jules licked his lips, beginning to look concerned. He’d already as much as accused his mother. Was he going to accuse John now?

"I must have mentioned it to-to someone else. I’m sure I told Marcel. Marcel, didn’t-"

"And of course that’s why you tried to kill me too; to keep me from figuring out it was Guillaume down there."

More gasps. He’d forgotten that none of them knew about the letter-bomb. This was turning into quite an evening for them all.

"This is ridiculous!" Jules said with abrupt heat. The red streaks had reappeared in his downy, round cheeks. "I’m not going to sit here-"

"And Alain as well. That’s why you saw to it he drowned in the bay."

Jules’ slack-jawed blink of amazement was so transparently sincere that for a moment Gideon thought he might have it wrong, but he realized that what he was seeing was simply Jules’ astonishment that anyone had even caught on to the fact that the murder had occurred. And it had been a clever thing; for that much Gideon gave him credit, if you could call it credit. It had been sheer luck, nothing else, that had uncovered it.