Aaron Elkins - Murder In The Queen's armes

"That’s Nate Marcus? The intense, dogged scientist I’ve been hearing about?"

"In the flesh, and stewed to the gills."

The closer they came, the tighter he seemed. Sweating and red-eyed, he wavered as he leaned forward to push out a chair for Julie, and he moved with a drunk’s exaggerated slow motion, as if his own chair was balanced precariously on a tightrope instead of sitting firmly on the sturdy old floor of the George.

"What are you drinking?" His speech was slow too, and overly precise. He’d been drinking, it appeared, for quite a while.

"Nothing, thanks. We just came in for some lunch. Julie, this is Nate Marcus. Nate, this is my wife, Julie."

"What do you mean, nothing? How often do you get offered a drink by an old buddy you just helped crucify?" He made an ugly, rattling, laughing sound.

Gideon sighed. It didn’t seem too promising. "I think maybe we’d better talk another time." He began to get up.

"Wait, hold it… please." Nate’s hand pawed flabbily at his arm. "I’m sorry," he said. "Not mad at you." His reddened eyes focused more or less on Julie. "How do you do, Mrs. Oliver? I seem" he explained graciously, "to be a little drunk." To Gideon he said, "Stay, please." Gideon lowered himself back into his chair.

When the barmaid came for their order, he and Julie both asked for Ploughman’s lunches. Nate ordered pints of stout for them as well. "Put it," he declaimed, "on my bill. If you please."

"Nate," Gideon said, "there’s no reason-"

Nate closed his eyes and held up his hand. "No, no, no, no. Nope." His head rotated gingerly back and forth. "No. Insist. Want you to know there aren’t any hard feelings.

Just trying to do your job, that’s all. Should have listened to you in first place. But…but…" His voice trailed away while he stared glumly at his pork pie. Then, as if drawing inspiration from it he went on. "But…God-damn-it," he said with labored precision, "how could you possibly think that I would… that I could fake a…"

"I never thought you did, Nate. Somebody did, but not you."

Nate shook his head and blinked. "But that’s what I can’t understand. How could… I’m telling you, I found it myself! " His hand jumped convulsively and knocked over the highball glass. The amber dregs ran over the wooden table, releasing a fog of Scotch fumes. Nate seemed not to notice. He stared earnestly at Gideon.

"What Gideon means," Julie said soothingly, "is that someone tricked you somehow."

"Tricked me?" He weighed this while he took another pull at his stout. "No, impossible. I found it by accident. It could easily have laid… lain there another three thousand years. It was under a bush, between the roots, with only a little bit sticking up. You could hardly see it when you looked right at it; just a tiny, teeny, weeny-"

"Then how did you see it?" Gideon asked.

"I thought," Nate said grandly, "that you believed me."

"I do," said Gideon, not a hundred percent sure that he did, "but just how did you see it?"

"Well." Nate appeared to be conducting a boozy search of his mind. "I was coming back from a walk at lunch, right? Okay. There was this scrap of paper on the ground, caught in the brush. I just happened to see it shine in the sun. Just a shiny blue scrap of paper. Naturally, I bent down to pick it up." He turned to Julie and explained primly, "Good housekeeping is essential during any excavation. That’s what good archaeology comes down to: good house-keeping." He raised his glass, toasting good housekeeping, good archaeology, or both, then drank and put the glass carefully down again, leaving a foamy mustache on his lip. He looked blankly at both of them, and Gideon thought he might be wondering who they were and where he was. But surprisingly, he found his thread again.

"I bent down to pick it up," he repeated, "and there, just a few inches away, I saw it. It was curved," he said, with sad intensity. "I knew it was part of a skull right away…" His eyes had begun to brighten, as if he’d momentarily forgotten what had happened since, but he checked himself, shivered, and stopped speaking.

The barmaid arrived with Julie’s and Gideon’s pints and wiped up Nate’s spilled drink, keeping well clear of him.

Tonelessly, Nate said, "Cheers," but did not lift his glass when they drank.

Gideon put down his glass. "Nate, forget about that part of it for a while. I want to ask you-"

"Forget about it!" he said in a strangled voice. With an effort he composed himself. "Want to ask me what?" he said calmly, then stifled a burp. "Pardon me," he said to Julie.

"Was another bone ever found up there on Stonebarrow? A femur?"

"No. No other bones. No femurs, no nothing. Why, what’s it to you?" He snickered vapidly, cleared his throat, and put on a serious expression again. "Who says there was a bone?"

"Leon Hillyer wrote up a find card on a partial femur."

"Leon Hillyer," Nate muttered with disgust, and then mumbled some more.

"Pardon?"

"I said," Nate enunciated loudly, "that he is too damn incompetent to fill in a find card correctly."

Gideon let that sink in for a few seconds. Then he said, "He strikes me as kind of bright. Didn’t he win a Grabow Award a few years ago?"

"Grabow Award," Nate grumbled. "He’s glick and he’s slib, that’s all he is."

"Pardon?" Gideon said again.

"I said, " Nate practically shouted, "that he is gl… slick and glib, that’s all. Wants to jump to grand conclusions without going through all the grubwork." He swallowed a long draught of the stout and studied the glass somberly. "Hell, who doesn’t? But that’s what archaeology is: recording and counting and sorting. And," he added with a fierce look at Julie, "housekeeping."

"I’m sure it is," Julie said politely.

"Damn right." Nate closed his eyes and seemed to doze.

The barmaid brought their Ploughman’s lunches: warm rolls, butter, big crumbly, blue-veined wedges of Stilton, pickled onions, tomato, and chutney. " ’Kew," she said. "You don’t suppose the gentleman wants another glass of stout?"

"I don’t think so," said Gideon.

"That’s good," she responded sensibly, and went away.

"What do we do now?" Julie asked.

"Eat, I guess, and let Nate enjoy his snooze. I’ll get him back to the Cormorant when we’re done. It’s only a couple of blocks."

Julie thoughtfully sliced into a large pickled onion. "Poor, poor man. Do you still believe he didn’t do it himself? Plant the skull, I mean?"

"Yes, I do. Even though Frawley says he did."

Nate had begun to snore softly. Gideon turned his own chair slightly away from him and cut off a section of cheese. He was extremely hungry. "The Stilton’s good, isn’t it?"

"Mmm, fabulous. I suppose you’re going back up to Stonebarrow Fell after lunch? No country walks today?"

"I think I’d better." He smiled and caressed the back of her hand with his fingertips. "Poor Julie. I’ve been ignoring you, haven’t I?"

"Oh, that’s okay; I know Abe needs you. You know what I’d really like to do, though?"

"Speak," Gideon managed, with his mouth full of roll and chutney, "and it’s yours."

"Do you remember that beautiful meadow on the way to Wootton Fitzpaine, where we sat on a log for a while?"

Gideon nodded. "Dyne Meadow."

"Uh-huh. Well, there’s a full moon tonight. I looked it up; it comes up at seven-oh-four. Wouldn’t it be lovely to go back there, sit on that log, and watch the moonrise? The sky’s clear and it’s not very cold. Am I being silly?"

"I think," Gideon said, "it sounds like a great idea. We’ll have dinner early and take along some brandy and a thermos of coffee."

Julie smiled and fell happily to her chutney.

"Grubwork," Nate announced startlingly, "and Hillyer thinks he’s too damn brilliant to be bothered with it. That’s his problem. Archaeology is ninety percent grubwork and ten percent brainwork." He inhaled noisily. "And fifty percent housework. Leon thinks it’s a hundred percent intell… intellectualization."