"Oh, I’m sorry, Gideon. I know you liked him." She was quiet a moment. "Doesn’t it strike you that there’s something funny about that?"
His eyes popped open in surprise. "It sure does, but what makes you think so?"
"Well, I was just thinking…It’s an awfully big coincidence; here’s a body lying hidden under the house for forty or fifty years. Then when it finally gets found, it turns out that the person who’s supposed to have done it got buried the day before. How convenient."
"You know, that’s a good point," he said admiringly. "I never thought about that."
"The bones are found," Julie went on, "the victim is identified, the killer is identified, and the case is all wrapped up-all in one day. Only the only person who can confirm it-or argue with it, I bet-just died. And you never thought about that?"
"No."
"You’re slipping, Dr. Oliver. I think marriage has made you soft. When you get back I’m going to have to keep you less contented."
"Just try it," he said, then got himself more comfortably stretched out on his back and got down to the sweet, serious business of telling her just how much he missed her. And how he was going to show it when he got home.
An hour later, while John went lamenting to Professor Wuorinen’s final lecture ("Larval Invasions of Calliphoridae in Unburied Corpses from Two to Four Weeks Old." Many graphic color slides), Gideon was picked up at the hotel and driven to the manoir by a sharply dressed, intense young man with red hair and elevator heels, who introduced himself as Sergeant Denis. Ray met them at the thick oak door and politely invited Denis to join them for coffee.
"No, thank you, monsieur," Denis said, as firmly as if Ray had suggested a double brandy. He bobbed a Joly-style bow and went to break the police seal on the cellar door and get the workmen started digging.
"Well, let’s go sit down," Ray said. "I’ve asked Beatrice to bring us some coffee."
With luck Beatrice would not take Ray’s request in too narrow a sense; he was ravenous, although he’d breakfasted in the hotel restaurant at eight. Delicious as the French petit dejeuner of croissants, rolls, and cafe au lait was, its staying power was an hour and a half at most. The French, realizing this, often had a second breakfast at midmorning to tide them over until lunch, and if Beatrice were to offer him something along that line, he would not turn it down.
In the window alcove of the salon were the same people he’d met the evening before, as if they’d been there all night, leaving only to change their clothes. Now, however, it was an ample breakfast they were putting away, and Beatrice’s croissants looked a lot better than the ones at the Terminus.
Ray and Gideon walked past the group, which was deep in conversation (except for Jules, who was sucking in croissants as quickly as he could smear them with jam and butter), and headed toward a pair of chairs in the far corner, but Rene caught their eye with an amiable smile and waved them over. There was no polite escape. With a small shrug between them, they joined the others. This time it was Ben who moved his chair to make room for them.
Beatrice got there at the same time they did, and, happily, she had not forgotten his good appetite. With the steaming pitchers of milk and coffee there were two big baskets; one of croissants and one of rolls, both of them warm and fragrant-altogether the best combination of smells to be found in France. Maybe in the world.
"We’ve solved your mystery for you," Rene announced, sprightly and pink-cheeked.
"Oh?"
" Obersturmbannfuhrer Kassel of the SS. That’s who it is. It must be."
"Yes, I heard something about him." Gideon glanced down to break open a roll. "Tell me, do you remember what he looked like?"
"I’ll never forget." The shadow of a cloud rippled over Rene’s bland face. "No one could, who was here when the trouble came. Very handsome in the German way; very cold, very Aryan. A blond giant…"
"You know," Ben pointed out, "you might be overstating this‘giant’ thing a little, which maybe could mislead Gideon. You were a kid then, and to a kid every grown-up looks big and strong."
"Rene was sixteen," Mathilde said. "That was not a child in those days. Besides, I remember the SS man very well too. And I was… somewhat older." After a moment she added: "At that time." Just in case anyone thought it might still be true.
"Well, what about the bones, Gideon?" Sophie asked. "Do they fit the description, or don’t you have enough to go on?"
He hesitated. He had more than enough to go on, and no, they didn’t fit the description, whatever Joly might think. But he was saved from having to hedge by someone making an entrance into the salon. Six pairs of eyes swiveled in the newcomer’s direction with candid hostility. Even Ray, to whom glowers didn’t come easily or often in Gideon’s experience, managed a creditable one.
"Claire’s father," Ray whispered to him. Gideon, whose back was to the doorway, turned out of curiosity.
Claude Fougeray, as Joly had said, was not an endearing man, at least to look at. Short-necked and squat, radiating belligerence, he stopped at the entrance of the room to return the collective antagonism with a goggling, malevolent stare of his own. Then he muttered an ugly laugh and made his way past them to the empty dining room.
Good God, if that was Claire’s father, no wonder her eyes had that haunted look.
In the salon the conversation had stopped, so that the clink of carafe against wineglass in the other room was audible, then the hollow gurgle of liquid being poured, and even the three wolfish gulps that followed. There was another muttered, contemptuous laugh, and the process was repeated: clink, gurgle, glug, glug, glug. And again the clink…Gideon shuddered. It was 9:15 a.m.
"Tell me, Rene," Sophie said, her voice brighter and louder than before, "what will you and Mathilde do? Will you give up your job in Germany and come and live at the manoir?"
"Well," Rene said, "we haven’t really-"
"Of course we will," said Mathilde. "It may take a few weeks to put things in order, however. It’s quite difficult at the moment without an automobile to get about in. Guillaume’s Citroen is still in the car park at Mont St. Michel, you know. I was hoping, Raymond, that you might go there and drive it back."
"The car? Yes, of course. But how would I get there?"
"Take someone else’s car, of course."
"But no one else has a car, my dear," Rene said. "Marcel picked everyone up at the airport or the train station in Dinan."
Mathilde shrugged crossly. She was not interested in details. "You can take a taxi to the train station, I suppose, and go from there, or perhaps you can rent a car. It’s all very annoying. I can’t imagine why Guillaume kept only the one car here. In Frankfurt we have-"
"Ha!" Behind Gideon, Claude had returned to the entrance to the salon. No one looked in his direction.
"-three automobiles and could easily do with another. It sounds ostentatious, I suppose, but-"
"Ha!"
Even Mathilde faltered. "-but as a matter of fact…as a matter of fact…"
"Ha!" There was a startlingly loud crash.
Gideon spun around in time to see Claude’s half-filled wineglass drop to the thinly carpeted stone floor and smash a few inches from where the carafe had splintered a moment before.
"Jesus Christ!" Ben Butts cried hoarsely. "What is it? Claude…!"
Claude’s body was rigid, arms spread, fingers clawing convulsively at the air. "Ha!" he cried. "Caah!" From one corner of his stretched lips a fine white froth seeped, as if his mouth were full of soap. His bulging eyes heaved.
"Oh, my God," Sophie murmured. "He can’t breathe!"
"Do something!" Mathilde commanded all-inclusively. "He’s having a heart attack!" And, her tone implied, on my Aubusson carpet.
Gideon, as paralyzed as the rest of them, finally pulled himself out of his chair and moved toward the stricken man. Before he got there Claude jerked as if an electrical current had pulsed through him, grunted through clenched teeth, then abruptly threw himself down on the floor, onto his back, like a circus performer who would momentarily spring unaided to his feet, all in one movement.