" Ray pulled us out?"
"Now, really," Ray’s mild voice remarked from Gideon’s other side. "Is a tone of such marked incredulity necessary?"
Gideon and John were both tottery but able to walk unsupported, and the four of them reached the base of the Mont at last, hauled themselves off the tidal plain, and mounted the stone steps to the gardens in a weary, none-too-steady file. Looking straight ahead, they walked with dignity (which wasn’t easy; John had lost his shoes and socks, Gideon one of his shoes) past the sullen and staring group of people who craned their necks to see them from the North Tower.
"Why do you suppose they’re looking at us that way?" Ray asked, sounding giddy. "Are they annoyed with us for being lackbrained enough to walk merrily out into an incoming tide, or because we spoiled their afternoon by not getting drowned after all?"
In their shaky condition it seemed hilarious, and they made their way down the Grand Rue snorting and choking with laughter. But by the time they got to the car a predictable reaction had set in; they were depressed and their teeth had begun to chatter with cold. Their clothes, still dripping, clung freezingly to them. Gideon stopped at the first hotel they came to, a brown, grimy old place near the railroad station on the Rue Couesnon in Pontorson, a few blocks from the causeway.
The landlady, Madame Gluges, was not wildly hospitable. For exactly what purpose, she demanded in plain-speaking French, did they wish a room? Having put this question to them before committing herself as to whether or not space was available, she folded her stocky, sweatered arms and eyed them suspiciously, waiting for them to defend themselves.
Her guardedness was understandable; the foursome did not evoke confidence: three wet, bedraggled foreigners- two of them hulking, dangerous-looking devils-and a frowzy Frenchwoman, all of them waterlogged and luggageless. The brawny Oriental was actually barefoot, as if he’d come straight from the jungle, the other big one was wearing just one red and gray jogging shoe, and all of them had an overexcited, wild-eyed look. Drugs? Whiskey? Who knew what their story was? Fugitives from the police? Escapted convicts who had just swum ashore? Hardly a sight to warm the heart of a provincial hotel proprietress used to a quiet clientele of respectable (or at least solitary) traveling business representatives.
Ray didn’t help matters by promising they would be on their way by six, inasmuch as they only needed the room for an hour, but Claire quickly explained that they had been caught in the bay and wished merely to stay long enough to take hot showers and, if possible, to dry their clothes.
Very well, madame said, thawing a little at Claire’s soft manner, but it would not be possible for all of them to share a single room. The men in one, the woman in the other. On different floors. Only when this unequivocal condition was humbly accepted did she soften. She would charge them for only one room, not two, and if they would leave their clothes outside their doors, she would have them taken to the basement and put in the linen dryer.
With propriety thus guaranteed, Madame Gluges relented still further. While they were getting out of their wet clothes she knocked on their doors, bringing to each room an insulated pitcher of black coffee laced with cognac- and incidentally assuring herself that Claire was where she was supposed to be. Nevertheless, it was a kindness and gratefully received, so that by the time they had handed over their clothes and donned blankets or bedspreads, their hearts and bodies were beginning to rewarm.
There was one shower per floor, and while Ray, gorgeously draped in a royal blue chenille bedspread, stalked like an Indian chief through the dim hallways in search of it, Gideon and John, a couple of braves in plain gray blankets from the closet, sat in the room, nursed their bracing coffees, and talked.
"What do you think, John?" It was hardly necessary to say about what.
"I think Claire was right; tide tables don’t lie."
"That’s what I think. So why should Ben Butts want to do us in?"
"I don’t think he did, Doc. I think he wanted to do you in, and the rest of us just lucked out by being along."
"Me?" Gideon put his cup sharply down on the low table. "Why?" Before the words were out of his mouth he nodded at John. "Never mind, dumb question. I wonder why I have such a hard time getting used to the fact that someone’s trying to kill me." He picked up the cup again and took a fortifying swallow, then held it under his nose and savored the thick, sweet, pungent aroma of brandy.
"Ben," he mused. "Why Ben? What would he have against Claude? What would he have against Guillaume? Why kill them?"
"Guillaume?"
"The fake Guillaume, I mean; Mr. X. I don’t know what else to call him."
John poured the last of the coffee into their cups. "You don’t ever quit, do you?" he said, laughing. "You’re going to prove the poor guy was murdered whether he was or not."
"John, are you serious? If we didn’t learn anything else out there, at least we know how it was done now. Ben came damn near drowning all of us-" He downed the last warming slug of coffee. "-vital and nimble-witted though we are. Is it really so hard to believe he did the same thing to‘Guillaume’? Where do you suppose we’d be right now if we were sick, and old, and lame?"
John nodded slowly. Wrapped in the blanket, with his arms folded on his chest and his dark, flat, high-cheekboned face thoughtful, he really did look like a nineteenth-century Plains warrior sitting for his portrait by Catlin, remote and unfathomable.
"Doc, you got a point," he said fathomably.
"I just thought of another point. Ben’s a corporate lawyer for Southwest Electroplating."
John’s look suggested that if anybody was being unfathomable, it wasn’t him.
"Electroplating’s the same thing as silver-plating, isn’t it?" Gideon said. "Didn’t you tell me cyanide is used in silver-plating? Surely Ben wouldn’t have had any trouble making off with a little cyanide from his own firm without anybody knowing it."
"Yeah," John said, unconvinced, "only cyanide’s not that hard for anyone to get. But Iguess it’s something to think about." He shook his head. "Idon’t know, Doc. It’s hard to see Ben as the one behind it all. Does it feel right to you?"
No, Gideon admitted with a sigh, it didn’t. And the more he thought about it, the less right it felt. For one thing, he liked Ben too much to willingly accept him as a killer, but let that pass. There were too many other things that didn’t add up, too many downright absurdities. Surely Ben Butts was smart enough to think up a less whimsical plan than this for murder. How could he possibly know Gideon would show up at Mont St. Michel that particular day, and just in time to be hustled out into the incoming tide? And if he did somehow know, was he really the kind of monster who would sacrifice the others too? Say he was; how could he gamble they’d all be killed? Because if they weren’t, embarrassing questions would arise, such as the questions he and John were now asking. And how could Ben know that they would want to walk in the bay, anyway? What had he been doing, carrying around a tide table on the slim chance that he’d have an opportunity to play his droll little trick on them? It just wasn’t credible.
On the other hand, if not for that purpose, then why did he have a tide table with him? He certainly hadn’t planned to go out into the bay himself. And on the same hand, there was the one overwhelming, inarguable fact that overrode everything else: Ben had peered amicably into that tide table of his and calmly given them misinformation that was not merely a little bit off-the sort of error you’d make if you happened to read the wrong line in a tide table-but hugely and serendipitously off. The sort of error you’d make if you were trying to drown a few of your friends.
"I suppose," John said, "that what we ought to do is call Joly and tell him about this." He paused and lifted his eyebrows pensively. It wasn’t his first choice.