Aaron Elkins - Gideon Oliver 03 - Murder In The Queen's Armes

by Murder In The Queen's Armes

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."

  "Yes," Gideon said. "he told me that the two of you have had a few friendly arguments about that."

  "Friendly arguments?" Asto
nished, Nate stared woozily at Julie. "You hear that? Friendly arguments! Ha, ha."

  "They weren’t friendly?" Gideon asked.

  "Unfriendly arguments, that’s what they were. I told him last summer, back at Gelden, oh, yeah." He looked accusingly at his glass. "You bet I did."

  "Told him what, Nate?"

  "Told him," Nate said, "that unless he showed me on this dig that he was at least trying to learn how to do the grubwork, I wasn’t going to approve his dissertation, and I was going to recommend that he be fulnk…flunked out. And…and he hasn’t made one goddamn effort—not one. So’s gonna be good-bye, Leon. Ho, ho, ho."

  "Wait a minute, Nate. You’re telling me Leon is flunking?"

  "Damn right. I don’t give a damn how many Grabows he wins. Archaeology is ninety percent grubwork, eighty percent—"

  "And he knows you’re flunking him?"

  "Well… sure…"

  "Leon Hillyer!" Gideon whispered fiercely. Why hadn’t it occurred to him before? Nate had practically leveled an accusing finger at Leon ten minutes ago—without knowing it, of course—and it had gone right by Gideon. He jumped up and went to the bar.

  "Do you have any candy?"

  The man behind the bar gestured to a rack of packaged candies near the cash register. "What’ll it be?"

  Gideon pointed. "Those."

  He handed over seven pence, took the candy, and went back to the table. Nate was hectoring Julie.

  "Grubwork! Grubwork, grubwork, grubwork—"

  "Nate," Gideon interrupted, slipping back into his seat, "you found the skull when you were on a walk during the lunch break, right?"

  " ’S right."

  "Do you usually take the same walk?"

  "Sure, why shouldn’t I?" He glared truculently at Gideon. "Eat a sandwich, then circle the fell. Takes ten minutes. So what?"

  "And a scrap of paper caught your attention, and then you saw the fragment?"

  Nate made a vexed sound deep in his throat. He was getting sleepy. "Already tol’ you, din’ I?"

  "And what color was the paper?"

  "How the hell would I know? Who gives a—" He turned to Julie. "Par’n me."

  "You already told me once," Gideon said. "I just want to hear it again."

  Nate squeezed his eyes shut and puffed out his cheeks. "Boo," he said.

  "Blue?"

  "Buh-loo." One eye opened stickily, and then the other. "Or was it gheen?"

  "Or both?" Gideon asked. "Like this?" He opened his hand to show the roll of Polos lying on his palm; green and white lettering on a blue background.

  Nate stared for so long that Gideon began to think he’d gone to sleep again, this time with his eyes open, but at last, with amazement in his voice, he said, " ’S right. ‘S what it was—Polos. How the hell you know tha’?"

  Very far gone now, he fell back in his chair, made a swipe at his empty glass of stout, and knocked that over too. "Don’ feel too great," he said. "Think I'll go home." Then he started snoring again, a little less softly and a lot more wetly.

  Julie, who had continued to make progress with her lunch, wrinkled her nose and pushed away her plate. "I guess I’ve had enough. Now will you tell me what this is all about? What’s so important about Polos?"

  "If you had a project director," Gideon said, "who took a predictable walk every day, and who was a bug on housekeeping, and you wanted him to ‘accidentally’ find a half-buried skull fragment, what would be easier than planting it in his path and then leaving a crumpled-up, bright-blue candy wrapper right there where it would be sure to catch his eye?"

  "And you think that’s what this Leon Hillyer did?"

  "Well, he’s popping one of these mints every time you look at him, so he’d sure have a supply of wrappers. And a reason."

  "To make Nate look bad, you mean? Maybe get him fired?"

  "That’s the idea. Leon might easily do better with another major prof who saw things more his way."

  Julie shook her head doubtfully. "It sounds pretty farfetched."

  "This whole affair is far-fetched. Anyway, it worked; Nate’s in disrepute, isn’t he? And he’s damn likely to lose his job at Gelden."

  "But wait a minute now. Didn’t you tell me that Jack Frawley said that Randy said…whew, I’m getting mixed up… that Randy told him that Nate had planted the skull himself?"

  "That’s what he said, all right, and you’re not the only one who’s confused." Gideon pushed his chair back from the table. "I think I ought to go back up the hill and talk with a few people, starting with Leon."

  "And leave me," Julie said, her voice rising, "with this"— she pointed at the rhythmically oinking archaeologist—"this body?"

  "No, I’ll get him back to his place first. You stay and finish your Guinness. See you later, honey." He tapped Nate on the arm. "Ready?"

  "Hoo," Nate said, "I feel lousy."

  With Gideon’s considerable help, he got to his feet and managed a reasonably steady gait to the door. Once in the street, the fresh air seemed to revive him a little, and they proceeded in stately silence to the Cormorant, a graciously moldering old inn with some elderly potted plants on the sidewalk in front and a proprietorial ale sign swinging gently over the entrance. Courage, it said, as if offering solace or guidance.

  Unlocking the door to Nate’s room presented certain difficulties, inasmuch as Nate insisted on doing it himself, but finally it was accomplished, and he looked gravely across the threshold at Gideon.

  "Who… whom…you think murdered Randy?"

  "It beats me, Nate."

  "Me, too. You b’lieve I did it?"

  "No."

  Nate nodded with satisfaction and beckoned Gideon closer with a crooked finger. "Me neither," he whispered. Then he burped, yawned, and gently closed the door.

  SEVENTEEN

  IT was apparent that Leon sensed something was wrong the moment Gideon told him he wanted to speak with him. Quietly, he stepped away from the group at the dig and trailed Gideon to the workroom with the anxious air of an eight-year-old following his father out to the woodshed.

  "I want to ask you something about the Poundbury skull," Gideon said as soon as they sat down at the table, "and I think you’d better consider very carefully before you answer it."

  Leon’s hand darted to his short golden beard, tugging at it under his chin. "The P-P-Poundbury skull?"

  Gideon was finally onto something real. It was the first time he’d seen Leon genuinely ruffled. "Did you take the Poundbury calvarium from the Dorchester Museum," he said, sounding to himself very much like Inspector Bagshawe at his most orotund, "bury it here at Stonebarrow Fell, and then lead Nate to it?"

  "Lead him to it? What do you m-mean, lead him to it?"

  Gideon took the roll of Polos from his jacket pocket and slapped it onto the table. Leon’s left eyelid twitched and then began to quiver, and the color drained from his face as suddenly as if someone had pulled a plug. A muscle leaped at the side of his throat. It was extremely quiet in the shed. The metal walls creaked gently, expanding in the afternoon sunlight. Someone had been gluing pottery not long ago, and the air was sharp with acetone.

  "Yes," Leon said, so faintly that the whispered, sibilant s was all that could be heard.

  Gideon was surprised. He didn’t quite know what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t a flat admission.

  "To make Nate look bad?" he asked quietly. "To get him out of your hair?"

  "Yes," Leon said again, more audibly this time. His eyelid still trembled slightly, and now it drooped stubbornly halfway over the eye. He tilted his head slightly back to look out from under it. "W-what are you going to do?"

  "Leon, there’s only one thing to do. Everyone concerned in this has to be told."

  Leon lunged forward in his chair, his clenched fists coming down hard on the table. "Gideon, please! I n-n-never meant to go this far—I’m begging you…!"

  "It’s got to be done, Leon."

  "But what w-will happen to me?"

/>   "I don’t know. When we’re done here, I’m going to go down and see Nate. I want him to know first, and we’ll see where he wants to take it from there." Assuming, of course, that he was sober enough to make any sense of it.

  Leon dropped his head and massaged his eyes hard. "Oh, God," he whispered, "I can’t believe this is happening."

  Paradoxically, Gideon was sorry for this intelligent, articulate, advantaged young man, now reduced to twitching and stuttering, who had cold-bloodedly and deceitfully tried to ruin his gullible professor. Nate’s career, it now seemed, might be salvaged, but Leon, with all his bright promise, was through in anthropology. An episode like this would never be forgiven. Nor should it, Gideon reminded himself sternly.

  "Who else was in on this?" he asked on a hunch. Professor Hall-Waddington had mentioned an American student "slouching about" Pummy’s case, and that didn’t sound like the quick, graceful Leon.

  "What?" Leon asked dully, his face still pale, his eyelid still drooping.

  "Was anyone else involved?"

  Leon sighed again. "Uh… no."

  "I understand the ‘no.’ What does the ‘uh’ mean?"

  Leon said nothing.

  "Come on, Leon. Who else?"

  Leon finally had his eyelid under control. "Randy Alexander," he said, not looking at Gideon.

  Randy. Gideon didn’t know if he was surprised or not, or if it made sense or not. On the whole, he thought it did. If nothing else, it forged that missing link, that connection Abe had foreseen, between the Poundbury affair and the murder. But beyond that, Gideon was almost as much in the dark as ever. Just what was the connection? Had Randy been killed because he’d threatened to expose the hoax? Had he in fact threatened to expose it? Had he gotten cold feet, and then tried to lie his way out of it before he got into trouble, first with Frawley and then with Gideon?

  Gideon made a slight head-shaking motion. The more he found out, the less clear—if that were possible— everything became. "Why was Randy in on it?" he asked. "The same reason you were?"

  "Randy? No, he just did it for a lark, for the fun of it. I talked him into it. It was easy."

  That fit in with what Gideon knew about Randy. "Leon," he said, "this throws a new light on Randy’s murder."