Murder in the Queen's Armes

all our little hypotheses and findings are between us; to be kept in the family, so to speak.'

'Of course,'

'Well, that's all right then. A very good day to you, Professor.'

Gideon replaced the receiver and leaned back in the armchair, hands behind his head, staring absently out the window. Their room, one flight up, overlooked the ancient, rock-walled back garden of the Queen's Armes. In the distance, about half a mile away, was the profile of the hillside that swept smoothly up to Stonebarrow Fell, lush and pearly green against a threatening, shifting sky of blacks and grays.

He and Julie had breakfasted early with Abe, Robyn, and Arbuckle. Afterward, Robyn and Arbuckle had retired to the sitting room and Abe had whispered to Gideon that he was going to the Cormorant to try to talk some sense into Nate.

Now Gideon heard a soft tap at the door behind him, and then the sounds of Abe and Julie talking. He got up and went to them.

'How'd you do with Nate?'

'No luck. Everything he said, he stands by.” Abe shook his head disgustedly. “Every foolish thing. Already he's planning a press conference after the inquiry—so the whole world can learn his wonderful secret from his own lips.” More slowly this time, he shook his head again. “It's not the way a scholar should act. It's not what I taught him, Gideon.'

'What did he say about Randy?” Julie asked.

'What about his mysterious find?” asked Gideon. “Would he tell you what it is?'

'Not a word. Only that it's going to ‘blow my mind.’ Feh, where did he learn to talk like this?'

'Abe,” Gideon said, “do you suppose it's possible that he's really got something—'

'To prove what?” Abe flared up peevishly. “That Agamemnon invaded Charmouth? In what, a floating wooden horse? Don't be ridiculous. What did they teach you in archaeology?'

'All right, all right,” Gideon said hastily. “I'm not an archaeologist, remember?'

'That you don't got to tell me,” Abe snapped. Then he patted the back of Gideon's hand. “So why am I mad at you? Nathan's the one who's making a fool of himself.” He looked at his watch. “Come on, it's after nine. Let's get the others and go. It's a big hill, and my arthritis is bothering me. Nathan will meet us there. Good-bye, Julie,” he said, and turned dejectedly to leave. “I wish I wasn't here. Who asked me to come?'

Gideon raised his eyes bleakly to Julie as he began to follow Abe out the door.

She stood on tiptoe to place a quick kiss on his cheek. “Be careful. Both of you seem to keep forgetting there's a murderer up there.'

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TWELVE

* * * *

A murderer? Try five. He'd been telling himself none of them looked like killers, but now the whole crew looked guilty as hell.

Gideon and Abe, flanked by Robyn and Arbuckle, had found Nate Marcus in the shed, seated at the cleaned-off worktable with his staff. All the dig members looked up, blinking into the daylight when the door was opened, and Gideon was afforded a frozen, snapshot glance. They might have been a cast assembled by a film director and told to look as edgy and disreputable as they possibly could.

Sandra Mazur was posturing exaggeratedly as she smoked a cigarette, holding it out in front of her between two rigidly stiffened fingers and theatrically sucking in her gaunt cheeks as she pulled in great lungfuls of smoke.

Next to her, Leon Hillyer picked nervously at his golden beard and smiled an unconvincing welcome to Gideon.

Jack Frawley's face looked like soggy, gray plaster of Paris, sunken in on itself and flabby-jowled. His basset's eyes slid and shifted like beads of mercury, from the blank tabletop to Nate, to the newcomers, and back to the tabletop.

Even the ingenuous Barry Fusco, with all his farm-boy freshness, looked shifty, his all-American grin a nervous parody. And Nate was the most blatantly agitated of all. He was literally chewing on the knuckles of his left hand, and when the door opened, he jumped to his feet, wiping his hand on the side of his pants. His face was greenish, and his eyes were sunken, as glazed as a couple of four-minute eggs.

It was obvious that Bagshawe had indeed come and told them about the murder, and Nate's first words confirmed it. “Sorry, meant to meet you at the gate,” he said, sounding short of breath, “but the police just left, and we've been talking about . . . what they told us. It looks like they've found my missing student. He's been, uh... killed.'

Gideon could feel him flinch away from the word murdered, but the archaeologist recovered himself as he spoke. Brusquely brushing aside Robyn's and Arbuckle's startled ejaculations and Abe's cluck of sympathy, he continued more firmly, even aggressively; Nate never went very long without taking the offensive. “The cops are down on the beach poking around, but they're coming back, so let's get on with it.'

As Gideon trooped back out with the others into the gray morning, he found Stonebarrow Fell, which had seemed so lovely two weeks before, ugly and sinister. The hacked-out trenches with their stark, vertical sides and their dew-concealed piles of gray dirt looked raw and naked, and somehow shocking, like open graves. Far below, beyond the fell's sharp edge, the sea was mole gray, the same color as the sky, and sullen-looking whitecaps scudded on the water's surface. As they walked in a solemn file over the broad crown of the hill, the wind lowed forlornly around them, driving long, shuddering ripples through the dense grass.