Aaron Elkins - Murder In The Queen's armes

"I’m talking about the fact," Bagshawe intoned, "that by so very indirectly accusing Professor Marcus you were hoping that we would overlook your own motive for killing Mr. Alexander." His voice was like the doomful knell of justice. In it Gideon could hear the clank of chains, the bleak, muffled kerchunk of iron dungeon doors slammed home.

Frawley heard them, too. This time he did squeak. "Me? Why would I want to kill Randy?"

"Will you deny that Mr. Alexander, who liked his little joke, played one on you? Did he not once convince a group of equally playful Indians in Missouri to tell you that they were soon to hold a once-every-hundred-years secret dance during which they would dig up a sacred vulture egg that had been buried at the last ceremony? And to solemnly inform you that you were the only anthropologist they trusted enough to be present?"

"Christ," Gideon said. "And you bought it, Jack?"

Frawley made a motion with his head that was part denial, part assent, part frustration.

"He not only bought it," Bagshawe said, "he presented a paper on it to the Eastern Missouri Anthropological Society and was thereby made-so my informants advise me- an object of some ridicule."

Gideon felt a wave of compassion for the visibly sagging Frawley. That kind of joke was every anthropologist’s nightmare, and if Randy was in the habit of playing merry little pranks like that, it was a wonder he’d lived as long as he had.

"All right, Inspector, you’re right," Frawley said, seeming to drag the words out of himself. "I was jealous of Nate. I’ve behaved like a fool-but I didn’t kill Randy! As God is my witness, I never thought in my wildest dreams that Nate… that anybody…would murder Randy." As if he didn’t already look sufficiently abject, Frawley had taken off his hat and was crushing it in both hands. "I’ll try to make amends. Please believe me when I say you’ll have my complete cooperation in any way you want."

Bagshawe sucked his teeth and studied him. "I think it goes without saying, Professor Frawley, that I’d take a very dim view of it if you attempted to leave the vicinity of Charmouth without my permission."

"Yes, of course, Inspector. I wouldn’t think of it. I want to do everything I can to help solve this terrible tragedy."

Gideon felt like going away and washing his hands somewhere, but he asked another question. "Jack, before you go-we’ve found a discrepancy in the excavation records from November one. There’s a find card on a partial human femur, but it was never entered in the field catalog."

Frawley looked uncomprehendingly at him. "What?"

"You make the entries in the field catalog, don’t you?"

"Yes, every night; sometimes the next morning. A femur, did you say? That’s impossible. We’ve never found a human bone-not until Poundbury Man. We thought we had some ribs, but you straightened us out on that."

"You’re positive?"

"Of course I’m positive. I’d know about it if we had, wouldn’t I? No, we never found one. Ask anybody."

Gideon remembered the scrawled signature in the lower right-hand corner of the card: Leon Hillyer. He would indeed ask somebody.

GIDEON and Bagshawe remained near the edge of the cliff, looking out toward the water. The sea was a flat, summery blue, and a white, picture-book passenger liner steamed eastward from Plymouth, riding the horizon toward France.

Bagshawe took out his pipe and lit it with a wooden match, using his wide body to block the breeze. Then he sat down on a chair-high boulder, first arranging the skirts of his coat like the tails of a cutaway.

"Nasty piece of goods, our man Frawley," he said cheerfully. "Do you think he told us the truth about what Alexander said to him?"

"I don’t know," Gideon said, "but I don’t see Jack Frawley as a font of veracity."

Unexpectedly, Bagshawe guffawed. "No, you’re right there. Still, if it’s true, it provides us, doesn’t it, with a plausible motive for your friend Professor Marcus-who, by the way, continues to proclaim himself innocent of both murder and fraud."

"I take it Nate’s still your prime suspect?"

"Prime suspect? Oh no, I wouldn’t say that. There’s Professor Frawley, isn’t there, and then the others as well. Five in all, and all prime."

"Five? You mean all the people on the dig?"

"Just so, Professor. A single day’s work-interviews with the lot, and a few calls across the Pond-and we’ve turned up, I’m sorry to say, credible motives for every man-jack of them, and Miss Mazur, too. And none of them took much digging. Young Barry Fusco, for instance, owed Randy some three thousand dollars, which he was having a hard time repaying. Randy, so it’s said, had been making nasty noises at Barry, threatening to go to the lad’s father when they go back home."

"His father? Why would he go to his father?"

"Well, you see, Barry borrowed it in the first place to keep his father from finding out he’d wrecked a new car that had been a present. Apparently, the father’s a stern old gent of whom Barry lives in considerable awe."

"And so Barry might have killed Randy to keep his father from finding out?"

"Exactly, Professor, but I can see you’re not taken with the idea. Well, neither am I, but there it is. Now, Sandra Mazur and Leon Hillyer each present a bit more potential; two points of a steamy little triangle, with Randy being the third." He smiled with the metaphor.

"Do you mean Sandra was having affairs with both of them?" This surprised Gideon. The brittle Sandra hardly seemed the sort of woman to stir up male instincts of violence or passion-not his at any rate.

"I know what you’re thinking," Bagshawe said, "but there’s more involved than the young lady’s charms; there’s a tidy sum of money. Miss Mazur, you see, will come into a sizable inheritance on her thirtieth birthday. Both men were in grim pursuit, and each, I gather, had been unaware he had a rival. Sufficient reason for homicide, I should say, should one of them find out."

Gideon thought it over. Leon, ambitious and bright, did seem the kind of man who wouldn’t be at all averse to marrying for money. And although it might appear that Randy, coming from a wealthy family himself, had less to gain, his position had been insecure. From what Nate had said, his father had been threatening to disinherit him. It was obvious to Gideon, knowing what he knew about Randy’s style of living, that Randy would have welcomed the advantages of a rich wife.

"You’re saying," he said, "that Leon might have found out about Randy and killed him?"

"Yes; without premeditation, I should think. Leon’s a clever young man. If he’d planned to do Randy in, he’d choose someplace removed from the dig to do it. But I don’t rule out an argument and a hot-blooded murder."

"But where’s the motive for Sandra in all that? And do you really think she could have killed Randy, even armed with a mallet? She can’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds."

Bagshawe waved dismissively. "Given the proper incentive, women have been known to kill men a great deal larger than themselves, as I’m sure you know very well. And she had an incentive. It seems she’d become disenchanted with the ways of our Randy and had, in fact, settled on the lucky Leon as her man. This, she claims, she finally told Randy, but he seems to have taken exception. He threatened to make their affair public-and a few little tidbits about certain of Miss Mazur’s, ah, unusual proclivities as well." He lowered his eyes and coughed delicately. "Well, then, Leon, you see, with his eye on a rising academic career in the Ivy League, if that’s the right term, might very well bow out and find himself a more socially acceptable wife. You see?"

"I think I do, and I guess that Sandra might have a motive, all right. But why would she tell you all this?"