Murder in the Queen's Armes

Bagshawe went on remorselessly. “Now then, I ask myself: Might there not be another reason why you haven't told us this before? And why, when you finally did tell us, you so carefully implied that Professor Marcus might be not only a hoaxer but a murderer as well?'

'I don't know what you're talking about,” Frawley practically squeaked. “Why don't you say what you mean?'

'I'm talking about the fact,” Bagshawe intoned, “that by so very indirectly accusing Professor Marcus you were hoping that we would overlook your own motive for killing Mr. Alexander.” His voice was like the doomful knell of justice. In it Gideon could hear the clank of chains, the bleak, muffled kerchunk of iron dungeon doors slammed home.

Frawley heard them, too. This time he did squeak. “Me? Why would I want to kill Randy?'

'Will you deny that Mr. Alexander, who liked his little joke, played one on you? Did he not once convince a group of equally playful Indians in Missouri to tell you that they were soon to hold a once-every-hundred-years secret dance during which they would dig up a sacred vulture egg that had been buried at the last ceremony? And to solemnly inform you that you were the only anthropologist they trusted enough to be present?'

'Christ,” Gideon said. “And you bought it, Jack?'

Frawley made a motion with his head that was part denial, part assent, part frustration.

'He not only bought it,” Bagshawe said, “he presented a paper on it to the Eastern Missouri Anthropological Society and was thereby made—so my informants advise me— an object of some ridicule.'

Gideon felt a wave of compassion for the visibly sagging Frawley. That kind of joke was every anthropologist's nightmare, and if Randy was in the habit of playing merry little pranks like that, it was a wonder he'd lived as long as he had.

'All right, Inspector, you're right,” Frawley said, seeming to drag the words out of himself. “I was jealous of Nate. I've behaved like a fool—but I didn't kill Randy! As God is my witness, I never thought in my wildest dreams that Nate... that anybody...would murder Randy.” As if he didn't already look sufficiently abject, Frawley had taken off his hat and was crushing it in both hands. “I'll try to make amends. Please believe me when I say you'll have my complete cooperation in any way you want.'

Bagshawe sucked his teeth and studied him. “I think it goes without saying, Professor Frawley, that I'd take a very dim view of it if you attempted to leave the vicinity of Charmouth without my permission.'

'Yes, of course, Inspector. I wouldn't think of it. I want to do everything I can to help solve this terrible tragedy.'

Gideon felt like going away and washing his hands somewhere, but he asked another question. “Jack, before you go—we've found a discrepancy in the excavation records from November one. There's a find card on a partial human femur, but it was never entered in the field catalog.'

Frawley looked uncomprehendingly at him. “What?'

'You make the entries in the field catalog, don't you?'

'Yes, every night; sometimes the next morning. A femur, did you say? That's impossible. We've never found a human bone—not until Poundbury Man. We thought we had some ribs, but you straightened us out on that.'

'You're positive?'

'Of course I'm positive. I'd know about it if we had, wouldn't I? No, we never found one. Ask anybody.'

Gideon remembered the scrawled signature in the lower right-hand corner of the card: Leon Hillyer. He would indeed ask somebody.

GIDEON and Bagshawe remained near the edge of the cliff, looking out toward the water. The sea was a flat, summery blue, and a white, picture-book passenger liner steamed eastward from Plymouth, riding the horizon toward France.

Bagshawe took out his pipe and lit it with a wooden match, using his wide body to block the breeze. Then he sat down on a chair-high boulder, first arranging the skirts of his coat like the tails of a cutaway.

'Nasty piece of goods, our man Frawley,” he said cheerfully. “Do you think he told us the truth about what Alexander said to him?'

'I don't know,” Gideon said, “but I don't see Jack Frawley as a font of veracity.'

Unexpectedly, Bagshawe guffawed. “No, you're right there. Still, if it's true, it provides us, doesn't it, with a plausible motive for your friend Professor Marcus—who, by the way, continues to proclaim himself innocent of both murder and fraud.'

'I take it Nate's still your prime suspect?'

'Prime suspect? Oh no, I wouldn't say that. There's Professor Frawley, isn't there, and then the others as well. Five in all, and all prime.'

'Five? You mean all the people on the dig?'

'Just so, Professor. A single day's work—interviews with the lot, and a few calls across the Pond—and we've turned up, I'm sorry to say, credible motives for every man-jack of them, and Miss Mazur, too. And none of them took much digging. Young Barry Fusco, for instance, owed Randy some three thousand dollars, which he was having a hard time repaying. Randy, so it's said, had been making nasty noises at Barry, threatening to go to the lad's father when they go back home.'

'His father? Why would he go to his father?'

'Well, you see, Barry borrowed it in the first place to keep his father from finding out he'd wrecked a new car that had been a present. Apparently, the father's a stern old gent of whom Barry lives in considerable awe.'

'And so Barry might have killed Randy to keep his father from finding out?'

'Exactly, Professor, but I can see you're not taken with the idea. Well, neither am I, but there it is. Now, Sandra Mazur and Leon Hillyer each present a bit more potential; two points of a steamy little triangle, with Randy