clumsy stunt like that? Was it because he—'
'Julie—!'
She flinched. “Sorry, I'll be quiet, I promise. Sir.'
'About time too,” said Gideon. He paused with his hands encircling a soup-bowl-sized cup of
'And?'
'He said:
''Him'?” Julie set down her own cup. “Meaning
'Oh, he was, he was. And to Ely, Michel Montfort was a god.'
'But. . . ?'
'But proteges and their gods have a way of eventually getting on each other's nerves. Look at it from Montfort's point of view. For twenty years he'd been the leading light of the sensitive-Neanderthal school. He was grooming Ely to be his inheritor, the man to whom he was going to pass the scepter. Only . . .'
Only he wasn't ready to pass it
'Wait, how could it do that?” Julie asked. “I thought he already
'Yes, by the time he found the bones he was, but you see, Montfort had planted them several months before that, when the competition was just getting started. He meant for him to find them
'So Montfort just left the bones there for him to find later?'
'Right. He couldn't keep Ely from being the director, but at least he could still ‘put him in his place.’”
'Incredible,” Julie murmured. “It seems so . . . childish.'
'Childish, yes, but it worked. Once Ely dug up the bones and fell for them, Montfort turned around and made sure they were exposed as a fraud by writing that letter to
'Wait a minute, you mean it wasn't Bousquet who wrote the anonymous letter? That was Montfort's doing too?'
'And Montfort just sat there and admitted all this?” Julie asked.
'Yes. I thought his lawyer was going to have a stroke.” Gideon slowly shook his head. “It was like watching a corpse talk, Julie. Ask him a question, he tells you the answer: ‘Did you kill Jacques Beaupierre?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Did you kill Jean Bousquet?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Did you then keep his body in a freezer for three years?’ ‘Yes.'” Gideon shivered. “And if you didn't interrupt to ask him something, he'd just go on and on like a robot, in this creepy monotone. Mostly, all Joly had to do was sit back and let him tell his story.'
He had told it as if by rote, with barely a glimmer of human feeling. The confrontation with Ely had taken place one morning at one of the remote
He'd realized at once that the body couldn't stay there. Remote as the site was, any search for Ely was bound to include the
'So it was actually Montfort in the plane?” Julie asked. “
No, it couldn't have been Montfort himself, Gideon told her, because he was still in Les Eyzies early the next morning, when he opened his door to a knock and found Jean Bousquet on his doorstep. Unknown to Montfort, Bousquet had been helping Ely, working in a clearing twenty yards away, putting dirt through a sifter, when Montfort had shown up. He'd heard the commotion and crept back in time to watch Montfort haul Ely's body off. Then, as he told Montfort, he had gone to his room in Madame Renouard's boarding house to think. He had spent the night in thought, and had at last come up with his master plan. Unfortunately for him, clear thinking wasn't his strong suit.
He wanted 50,000 francs. If Professor Montfort would give him 50,000 francs he would leave Les Eyzies and go to Marseilles. He would give his solemn word never to say anything to anybody about what he had seen. But if Montfort refused, he would go to the police at once. What was Professor Montfort's reply to be?
Naturally, Montfort shot him. With the only weapon at hand—the air rifle that he'd brought home from the