Aaron Elkins - Murder In The Queen's armes

"She didn’t, but a chambermaid at the Jug and Sceptre, where Randy was putting up, heard them shouting at each other early one morning, and told all to Sergeant Fryer-remarkable memory for details, that woman has-and with what Miss Mazur did tell me, it wasn’t hard to piece it all together."

He leaned over, tapped his pipe against a rock, blew through the stem, and put it in his pocket. "So you see, Professor, the investigation progresses satisfactorily, and there’s no reason at all for you not to return to your bones."

"I think I’ve just been fired," Gideon said with a grin as Bagshawe got to his feet. "And speaking of bones, I have some questions to ask Leon about still another bone that’s turned up, or rather, that hasn’t turned up."

"That’s the ticket," Bagshawe said with an amicable lack of interest.

"It’s a piece of a femur that seems to have been found and then lost again. You’re welcome to sit in if you like."

Bagshawe let his expression answer for him, and very eloquent it was.

When Gideon went to the dig, he stood for a while, watching the crew work at backfilling under Abe’s efficient direction. With newly informed eyes he took a good, long look at them, but Sandra seemed as drawn and hard-edged as ever, not his idea of a seductress-no matter how rich- and a pretty unlikely murderess, too, although she was a better bet for that. The rosy-cheeked Barry looked no less wholesome than ever, and Frawley no less ineffectual. And Leon, who was coolly lecturing Abe on some stratigraphic complexities, hardly fit the mold of Bagshawe’s hot-blooded murderer. Cold-blooded, however…that might be another thing.

But when it came down to it, there was something unsatisfying, something inescapably spurious about every one of the hypotheses Bagshawe had advanced. And what about the left-handed mallet blow? None of them, after all, were left-handed. How could he fit that inescapable fact into even the few shadowy patterns that had emerged thus far? Or was he offbase in his continuing certainty that the killer was left-handed? Bagshawe disagreed with him, and Bagshawe was a pretty fair cop.

When Abe called a halt for lunch, Gideon took him aside. "Frawley says Leon never reported finding any bone."

"Is that so?" Abe said thoughtfully. "Maybe we should have a little brown-bag talk with Leon."

Most of the staff were taking advantage of the fine weather to eat their sack lunches on the bluff, but Leon had made for the shed. He was at the table writing a postcard, a cup of coffee beside him, when Abe and Gideon came in. He looked up, smiling.

"Hi, Abe. Hiya, Gideon."

"Leon," Abe said, "you wouldn’t mind if we had a little talk? It shouldn’t take long."

"Not at all, Abe. Just let me finish this card or I’ll never get back to it."

Gideon went to the table in the corner to make coffee for himself and Abe. Above the hot plate, a small mirror was taped to the wall. In it he could see Leon bent over the postcard, writing slowly. There was something…

He put down the coffee jar and whirled around. "You’re writing left-handed!"

There was a long, frozen moment during which Leon stared speechlessly back at Gideon, and Abe stared from one to the other. At last Leon mutely lifted the hand in which he held his pen.

It was his right hand, inarguably his right hand.

"I… sorry," Gideon said lamely. "My mistake."

"You were looking in the mirror," Abe said. "You saw it backwards."

"I guess so. Sorry," he said again, feeling idiotic. "I don’t know what I was thinking of." But he knew very well; he had a case of left-handed mallet murderers on the brain.

"What’s the big deal anyway?" Leon asked.

"No big deal," Abe said. "So, let’s have some lunch, and we’ll have our little talk."

He tore open a brown paper bag, removed its waxed paper-wrapped contents, and spread it out as a make-do tablecloth. He and Leon had their meals with them, but Gideon was empty-handed; he had promised to meet Julie at the George for a late lunch. Still somewhat disconcerted, he peeked once again at Leon in the mirror- right-handed, definitely right-handed-and brought back the coffee mugs.

"Jesus Christ," Leon said. "Fish paste." He was peering into one of the two sandwiches packed for him by his landlady. He groaned and shook his head in waggish despair. "The English."

Abe smiled tolerantly. As well he could, Gideon thought. Mrs. Hinshore had provided a thick, aromatic roast-beef-and-horseradish sandwich for him.

"Wow," Leon said, watching him unwrap it. "I think I’m staying at the wrong place." He was relaxed and smiling, his elbow over the back of his chair.

"Leon," Gideon said, "do you remember coming up with a fragment of a human femur a few weeks ago?"

"Uh-uh."

"November one, it would have been. It was never entered in the field catalog."

"Maybe," Leon said absently, chewing slowly, "but I don’t think so."

"You don’t think so?" Abe looked up sharply from his sandwich. "A human bone isn’t important enough to remember?"

"Well, sure it’s important, Abe," Leon replied with some edge, "and I guess I’d remember it if I dug it up. So I guess I didn’t."

Abe put the sandwich down on the paper sack and reached inside his cardigan sweater. His hand emerged with the find card, which he extended to Leon.

Leon wiped his fingers, took the card, and frowned. "Huh," he said, " ‘human femur, left, partial.’ That’s my handwriting, all right… Boy, it’s hard to remember. You’re talking about a month ago; we’ve dug up a lot of stuff since." He shook his head at the card and handed it back. "I don’t know what to say, Abe."

He took another dreamy bite of his sandwich. "Wait a minute; maybe I do remember." He swallowed, his eyes rolled upward. Gideon was struck with the distinct impression that some quick fabrication was underway. "Yeah, that’s right-I found something I thought might be a human bone, and I wrote it on the find card. I remember, I got all excited about it." He laughed merrily at himself. "And then when Jack looked at it, he said it was just a piece of a steatite carving." Again he chuckled at himself.

"That’s hard to buy, Leon," Gideon said. "A couple of weeks ago you recognized the difference-a damn subtle one-between the ribs of a deer and those of a human being. Now you’re saying you couldn’t tell the difference between a stone carving and a femur?"

Leon hunched his shoulders and spread his hands humorously. "What can I say? I’m human too."

Abe looked at him, running a finger over his chin. "In the field catalog on November first, there is only one entry: four faience beads. No steatite carving."

Thoughtfully, Leon reached into his paper sack, ignoring a second sandwich and bringing out a roll of mints. He offered it around. "Polos. They’re like Lifesavers." Gideon and Abe declined, and Leon popped one into his mouth and dropped the roll into a shirt pocket. "Well," he said at last,

"I sure don’t know how to account for it. Maybe I got the date wrong on the card."

"That’s possible," Abe said pleasantly, "but in the whole catalog there’s no steatite carving."

Again Leon spread his hands.

"There was something else, Leon," Gideon said. "Originally, you put down the depth as twenty-one inches, then crossed it out and changed it to twelve. What was that about?"

"I did?" Leon asked for the card back from Abe and made a show of studying it intently. "Oh," he said with a smile, "I see what you mean. No big mystery. I just transposed the numbers by mistake. Do it all the time. I’d make a hell of a meter-reader, huh?" Still smiling, he handed the card back to Abe. "Boy, you guys are picky! And I thought Nate gave me a hard time."

"Was Nate giving you a hard time?" Gideon asked.