Murder in the Queen's Armes

'Is that important?'

'Important?” Gideon couldn't keep from laughing. “We hardly know anything about those people—we don't even know if they were people, properly speaking, or the last of Homo erectus. We don't know . . .'

He turned again to Arbuckle. “Paul! Did you hear what I've been saying? We've got a Mindel-Riss femur at Stonebarrow—a new Middle Pleistocene site!'

'That's great, Gideon,” Arbuckle said, and bent dully to his History of Dorset. He was in a very deep funk indeed, if news like this couldn't bring him out of it.

Hinshore had glided noiselessly up behind Gideon to look overhis shoulder at what was causing all the excitement.

'Oh,” he said, “A fossil, eh? Yes, I've seen that one before.'

Gideon sat perfectly still, replaying the words. Then he looked up at Hinshore. “You've seen this before?'

'Why, of course. I recognize the little thingummy on the side.” He indicated the bulge of the greater trochanter. Gideon stared at him, and Hinshore smiled broadly back.

'Where did you see this?” Abe asked.

'Well, I'm not sure. In the newspapers, I suppose, or on the telly.'

'Andy, you never saw this on television,” Gideon said.

'I didn't?” He studied the photographs some more, but warily, evidently made uneasy by Gideon's persistence. “Well, I guess I made a mistake then.” He shrugged and moved off, but before he'd gone three steps, he snapped his fingers loudly and turned around. “I remember!” He looked at Arbuckle. “Why, that's the fossil you had on the table, isn't it?'

Arbuckle appeared to have drifted away from the conversation. “Sorry?'

'Don't you remember? You were studying it, all absorbed, in the Tudor Room—” He faltered under Arbuckle's vacant, ill-focused stare, then appealed to Gideon. “I was telling you about it, don't you remember? You and Mr. Robyn. About how I'd almost put a mug down on it and Professor Arbuckle here nearly skinned me alive.'

'I'm sorry, Andy,” Arbuckle said mildly. “I didn't know what you were referring to then, and I don't know now.'

” ‘Course you do,” Hinshore said exasperatedly. “It was the second night you were here—on your first trip, I mean. November first, it would have been. I remember because the month started on a Thursday, and the missus...'

November first. For the second time in two hours everything fell sharply into place, but it was a different fit. Gideon took a long, hard look at Arbuckle, his heart thumping.

'You killed him, didn't you?” he said, forcing the words from a suddenly constricted throat.

For several long seconds Arbuckle stared at him. “Randy? What are you talking about?” He laughed, then frowned abruptly. “Gideon why are you saying this?'

'No, not Randy.” Gideon said. “Leon.'

'Leon?” He glanced hurriedly around the room for support. “What are you talking about? What are you trying to do?” The room was as still and silent as a painting. Arbuckle laughed again. “Oh no, you can't—I see what you're doing....I want to talk to Inspector Bagshawe!” he shouted, presumably for the ears of the constable in the hallway. His forehead was suddenly oily with sweat. “Why would I give him CPR if I was trying to kill him? Tell me that.” The question was thrown to the room at large.

'I think I know the answer to that, Paul.” The sitting room was, if anything, more hushed than before, and Gideon's heart beat louder than ever in his ears. At the edge of his vision he saw Inspector Bagshawe heave noiselessly into the doorway and remain there, with the constable just behind him.

'I think,” Gideon said, “that you gave him CPR because when you'd killed him a few minutes before, you'd gotten blood on your clothes, or your hands, or maybe you'd left your fingerprints on him. By leaning all over him again after he was dead, you had a credible explanation for any of that.'

'But—that's patently ridiculous.” Arbuckle's round glasses fogged as suddenly as if they had been sprayed, and he took them off to wipe them with a handkerchief. Without spectacles his blue eyes were washed-out and expressionless, the disturbing, ineffectual eyes of a scholar, a recluse. “I tried to save his life, and you're making it sound as if—'

'Come on, Paul. The bridge of his nose was rammed two inches into his cranium—it didn't take a physical anthropologists to know he was dead. There was no possible chance he was alive, and you knew it.'

Nate had not yet moved or even opened his eyes. Now, without doing either, he spoke, seemingly to himself, in very much his normal voice. “I don't believe it. Arbuckle? Jesus H. Christ.'

Arbuckle, stolidly ignoring this, put the wire-rimmed glasses back on his face, meticulously adjusting each earpiece, then wiped his forehead with his crumpled handkerchief. He closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them, he stared stiffly at Gideon for a few more seconds. Then he sagged against the chair, seeming to grow smaller, to deflate. A History of Dorset slid from his lap and slapped against the floor.

'I never, never meant it to happen,” he said. “All I was trying to do was to get that'—he turned toward the sprawling Nate Marcus, and his timid, viscous voice quivered— “that coarse, mindless idiot off the dig!” He glared at Nate, who remained relaxed and unresponsive in his chair; then he continued more quietly: “I arranged the Poundbury thing, I admit that, but . . . the deaths...my God, I never meant... it never occurred to me—'

'And the dog?” Gideon said.

'Dog?'

'In the meadow.'