Aaron Elkins: Murder In The Queen's armes

Gideon was well aware of all this. He had himself studied photographs and casts of Poundbury Man and had never doubted the original analysis. "Professor," he said, "would it be possible to take it from the case-to handle it?"

The curator used a key at his waist to unlock the small, ordinary padlock, and raised the glass lid of the case. He turned aside four simple spring-clips that held down the black-velvet-covered block to which the time-stained bone was attached by two loops of wire. Looking oddly at Gideon, he stepped back and gestured politely at it. "Please," he said.

Gideon picked up the block and turned it so that he could look at the back of the fragment more closely. He needed only a second to confirm his impression.

"It isn’t Poundbury Man, sir."

"Not Poundbury Man?" The old archaeologist laughed tentatively. "Not Poundbury Man?"

"I’m afraid I don’t see how it can be." Poundbury Woman, maybe, or Poundbury Girl, but not Poundbury Man. There was no doubt in Gideon’s mind that what lay in his hand was the left rear half of a woman’s skull-not elderly at all, but in her twenties. And clearly broad-headed, not long-headed.

"Look at the nuchal crest," he said, "or rather, the absence of it-and the supra-auricular ridge. They’re not nearly pronounced enough to be male-"

"But Le Gros Clark himself stood right here, right where you are… Or was it in my office…? Yes, in my office-"

"And look, sir," Gideon persisted gently, "you can see for yourself that none of the sutures show even incipient closure, so she’s probably no more than twenty-four or twenty-five-"

"But of course it’s Poundbury Man. It must be Pound-bury Man. Why, what else would it be?" His thin, brown-flecked hand made an uncertain movement toward his lips.

"Hard to say," Gideon’s fingers brushed the fragment’s edges with seeming carelessness. "It’s old, all right. Not thirty thousand years, but a good two or three thousand anyway. On a guess I’d say she might be from one of the brachycephalic Beaker populations, one of the later groups, maybe 1400 or 1500 b.c."

"No, no." Professor Hall-Waddington shook his head querulously. "It’s quite impossible, I tell you. How could… how…?"

His voice sputtered to a stop as he took his first good look at the skull. "Why," he said, pointing an accusatory finger at it, "that’s not Pummy."

He snatched it from Gideon. "Do you know what this is? It’s from Sutton Bell-you know Sutton Bell? A later Beaker site near Avebury-1500 b.c. or thereabouts. Look here." He hunted briefly along the skull’s jagged perimeter and found some faded, tiny numbers written in pen: SB J6-2. "You see? But how very odd! How did it get into Pummy’s case? And where’s Pummy?"

"This fragment-is it from the museum’s collection?"

"Yes, of course, but it ought to be in storage in the basement." The tense skin around his eyes relaxed slightly. "Someone must have accidentally exchanged the two, don’t you think? Why, Pummy must be right downstairs in the basement."

The run to the basement was made with a speed and directness of which Gideon had thought Professor Hall-Waddington incapable. Once there, the doors of a metal storage cabinet were thrown ajar, the contents hastily rummaged through, and finally the lid of a dusty cardboard box labeled SB J6-2 was flung heedlessly across the room. Professor Hall-Waddington thrust his face into the box.

"Empty! Pummy…Pummy appears to have been…" He held the box in trembling hands and looked up at Gideon with wondering eyes. "But why would anyone steal a thirty-thousand-year-old parieto-occipital calvareal fragment?"

"Why would anyone steal a thirty-thousand-year-old whatzit?" Julie asked, her black eyes no less wondering.

"Beats the hell out of me," Gideon said.

She stopped walking and tilted her face upward. "Ooh, that smells wonderful. Whatever it is, let’s get some."

He agreed readily, delighted to see her healthy appetite returning. She had felt the lingering effects of jet lag through three wet and gloomy days in London, and their stay had left her a little dispirited, not a typical condition with her. He, too, had been depressed by the huge city- perceptibly grungier than the last time he’d seen it six years before-and was happy to get out of it.

Once they’d rented the little Ford Escort and driven west past the dormitory towns and through Hampshire, and then into the green and rolling hills of Dorset, they’d begun to cheer up, and now, guidebook in hand, they had just embarked on the agreeably small-scale adventure of exploring Dorchester.

The aroma that had caught their attention turned out to be coming from a bakery a few doors away on the High Street, and they went in and sat themselves down at a tiny wooden table, for two big wedges of warm Dorset apple cake and a pot of tea. They were both coffee drinkers, but this was England, after all, and what was the point of foreign travel if you carried your old tastes and prejudices around with you? Besides, they’d tried English coffee.

As they ate, Gideon tookthe opportunity to watch Julie and to congratulate himself on his good luck, both of which he’d been doing a lot of lately. And why not? Life was full and sweet, sweeter than he had any right to expect. When Nora had been killed four years before, he couldn’t imagine ever loving again; he could barely think about living. And now, astoundingly, he was married. There was Julie at his side, munching away; bouncy, pretty, bright, robust Julie, whom he hadn’t known a year ago, and who was now the center of his existence. She had left her ParkService job; he was on leave for the fall quarter; and they were spending a rambling, come-what-may honeymoon in England. And it was as if his life were starting over again.

"You know," she said suddenly, putting down her fork and brushing back a tendril of dark, glossy hair, "you sure don’t look like a world-renowned anthropologist." She’d been studying him too; the thought was absurdly pleasing.

"I’m not a world-renowned anthropologist."

"Yes, you are. You told me; twice, at least. And you’re certainly the world’s best-known skeleton detective." This referred to an unfortunate label that had appeared in a magazine article about his identification of some human remains that had been buried for thirty years. The sobriquet had clung, and Gideon spent considerable effort among his colleagues at Northern California State University trying to live it down.

"Bite your tongue," he said. Then, after a moment:

"What’s a world-renowned anthropologist supposed to look like?"

"Not like you. He’s not supposed to be big and broad-shouldered, with a prizefighter’s nose and a beautiful, warm, hairy chest, and-"

"Hey, finish your tea," he said, ridiculously happy. "I think we’d better do some sightseeing."

They went back out into the venerable and bustling High Street with its pleasing jumble of old cottages, staid Georgian bow windows, ancient, lichen-stained church walls, and twentieth-century facades. Inside of an hour they’d visited the Thomas Hardy statue at Top o’Town, admired the remains of the Roman wall, crossed a stone bridge on which a notice informed them that it was off-limits to "locomotive traction engines and other ponderous carriages," and looked at various sites purported to be models for the settings in Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge.

Docilely following the terse instructions in their guidebook, they turned left at the County Laboratory, walked down the narrow, high-walled passage to its end, and mounted the flight of steps. When they had done so, they found themselves in a parking lot.

This, their book informed them, is the site of No. 7 Shire Hall Place, where Hardy lived from June 1883 until June 1885-now, it added unnecessarily, a car park.