Aaron Elkins - Murder In The Queen's armes

"Mr. Hinshore," Abe said, smiling, "did anyone ever tell you you got the soul of an anthropologist?"

Hinshore seemed genuinely pleased. "Why, thank you, Professor. I take that as a real compliment. Well," he said, and cleared his throat, "here I am, chattering away, with you trying to talk business. Is it all right if I serve dinner in ten minutes?"

Gideon continued talking, and Abe and Julie continued listening through the sherry and pate, and then through bowls of oxtail soup in the dining room, where they were the sole diners, Robyn and Arbuckle not yet having returned from Swanscombe. Hinshore had already served their main course of roast lamb with mint jelly before Abe said anything.

"So what do you think, Gideon? This is too tall an order for me, bringing Nathan to his right mind?"

Gideon shook his head slowly as he dipped a slice of lamb in Mrs. Hinshore’s homemade mint jelly. "I don’t know, Abe. I don’t think Nate’s about to listen to reason. He’s really gone overboard on this theory of his."

Abe rolled his eyes. "This cockamamy Mycenaean theory."

"That’s the one. I really think he’s gotten obsessive about it. Nate’s not his old self, Abe. All the old nastiness is there, but none of the healthy skepticism about his own ideas. You’ll find him changed." Gideon grimaced. Hadn’t Jack Frawley used just those words?

Abe swallowed the bread he’d been chewing. "Changed, obsessive…" He exhaled a long, noisy sigh. "I made a big trip for nothing, you think?" He seemed suddenly tired, drained. As he ought to be, Gideon thought; he had been traveling for at least fourteen hours, and according to his Sequim-based biological clock, it was now about 4:00 a.m.

The same thought apparently occurred to Julie. With a small crease of concern on her brow, she said. "We probably ought to get you to bed early, Abe. You’ve had a long day, with an important one coming up tomorrow."

Ordinarily he would have rounded good-humoredly on her at the nursely "we," but instead he shrugged wearily. "I was going to go yet tonight and have a talk with Nathan, but maybe you’re right. Anyway, I wouldn’t want Arbuckle and the Dorset man, what’s his name, Robyn, should think I was fraternizing with the enemy."

"I’d never met Robyn before last night," Gideon said. "Do you know him?"

"Yeah, I know him a little."

"What do you think of him?"

Abe chewed his lamb and pondered. "A very clean person," he said finally. "A nice dresser. You got to give him that."

Gideon laughed. "I gather you don’t think too much of his professional abilities."

"I got nothing against him. A doppes, a dilettante. He plays at archaeology, like in the nineteenth century rich people did."

"Will he be fair at the inquiry?"

"Sure," Abe said, "I think so. Why not? So will the other one, the one from Horizon, Arbuckle. Not the most brilliant person in the world, but he does his job. In the words of Dr. Johnson, ‘a harmless drudge.’ "

Hinshore came to clear the table. "Everything to your liking, Professor Goldstein?" Since Gideon had explained to him who Abe was, he had treated him with solicitous respect.

"Fine," Abe said. "Delicious."

Hinshore’s narrow face lit up with pleasure. "I’ll tell the missus. And now perhaps a little cheese? We have a fine old Brie and some first-class Gorgonzola. A little more St. Emilion to go with it, perhaps?"

They had the cheese but not the wine. Julie’s brows knitted. "Gideon," she said, spreading the pungent, runny Brie on a slice of bread, "this student you think was murdered-"

"There’s no ‘think’ about it. The broken ulna and radius, the fractured hyoid, the crushed larynx-"

She shut her eyes and waved the bread at him. "All right, I believe you."

Gideon grinned as he cut some blue-veined Gorgonzola. "I’m starting to sound like Merrill."

"Heaven forbid. We’d have to get a divorce." She popped the bread into her mouth and licked her finger. "From what you said, Inspector Bagshawe thinks the killer is someone at the dig, maybe Nate himself. Is that right?"

"He didn’t say it in so many words, but that was the impression I got, yes. With Nate at the head of the list."

"But why? Why not somebody from outside the dig?"

"Well, I think Bagshawe’s just beginning with known factors. Where else could he start?"

"Didn’t Alexander belong to some kind of motorcycle gang in Missouri? Couldn’t there have been some sort of grudge, and they bumped him off?"

Abe looked accusingly at Gideon. "Bumped him off? This is what comes of being married to a skeleton detective? And such a nice girl she was."

"She certainly was," Gideon said. "But no, I don’t think a motorcycle gang is too likely. Why come all the way to nice, quiet Dorset to do it, when he could have been just as easily bumped off the road in nice, quiet Missouri?"

He turned suddenly to Abe. "Do you remember if Nate is left-handed?"

"No," Abe said promptly.

"No you don’t remember, or no he’s not left-handed?"

"No he’s not left-handed."

Gideon heaved a relieved sigh, then looked up. "How can you be that sure? You haven’t seen him in years."

"Because," Abe explained. "I remember. Julie, you’re thinking something?"

"Uh-huh, I am," she said slowly, reaching for another piece of bread. "Let me ask this. Now don’t you two jump down my throat-remember, I don’t know the man-but is there a possibility that Nate Marcus actually did kill him- to keep him from telling whatever it was?"

Gideon was hardly about to jump down her throat. His protests to Bagshawe notwithstanding, the idea ranged uncomfortably about the perimeters of his mind. "I don’t think so, but I’m not as sure as I’d like to be. What do you think, Abe? You probably know him better than I do."

Abe still had a little dinner wine left. He swirled it thoughtfully. "You know how you read in the paper when there’s some terrible murder and the mother says, ‘No, it couldn’t be my son who did it, such a darling boy, always so polite’? Well, this is how I feel about Nathan. Maybe not always so polite, but a murderer? Impossible." He drained the wine, tilted his head, lifted a white eyebrow. "Still, who knows? All the time the criminologists are telling us anybody could be a murderer with the right motivation."

"I don’t really believe that, though," Gideon said.

"Me neither," said Julie.

"Me neither," said Abe. " Nu, so much for the criminologists."

Gideon paused in the act of slicing a chunk of Gorgonzola and snapped his fingers softly. "Something just occurred to me. I need to make a telephone call. Be right back."

He found Barry Fusco on his first attempt, at the Coach and Horses, and waited impatiently while the landlord called him to the telephone.

"Barry, when I was up at the dig a couple of weeks ago, you came down to the gate to let me in. Are you responsible for letting people in, or were you just being helpful?"

"Huh?" Barry sounded as if he’d been asleep. "No, I’m on gate duty this month."

That was what Gideon had hoped. "So you’d know about any visitors?"

"Uh-huh," Barry said through a yawn. "I mean, we all have our own keys, but if it’s a visitor, someone who doesn’t have one, I’m supposed to let him in."

"Do you remember if there were any other visitors the day I was there?"

"There were some school kids-"

"No, they left before I did. Was there anybody there after me?"

"Uh-uh. Nope."

"Why so sure?"

"Because the whole time I’ve been on, I only had to let visitors in twice, and that was on the same day-you and that school group. That was it."

"You’re positive?"

"Sure. Nobody else. We used to get some people in the summer, but not now. What’s the difference, Dr. Oliver?"