Old Bones

up again, but the surface remained unbroken except for an innocuous dimple that marked the place he had been. And within a few seconds it was as if he had never been there at all.

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TWO

* * * *

LUCIEN Anatole Joly, inspecteur principal of the Police Nationale's Provincial Department of Criminal Investigation, Cotes-du-Nord, tapped his long and graceful fingers noiselessly on the lined tablet that lay on the flat writing arm of his chair, which was in the center of the second row. He was not the sort of man who skulked to the back of the room when he attended a lecture; he came to listen and to learn.

So far, however, the Eighth Annual Conference on Science and Detection, held for the first time in St. Malo, had failed in its promise of useful edification. After a full morning the lined tablet held only a quarter of a page of Inspector Joly's neat, symmetrical script. Moreover, he was bored.

Inspector Joly was easily bored and not inclined to bear it magnanimously. There were many things he did not bear magnanimously. His subordinates referred to him as “Monsieur Giscard” because—Sergeant Denis had confided to him one day—of a resemblance to the former president of France; they were both tall, both bald and long-faced, both lean. So Denis had said. But Joly knew better. He knew very well that he looked nothing like the old conservative, whom he in fact admired greatly. No, the nickname had caught on because of a certain regal stiffness the two had in common, an awkwardness and impatience with trivia, and sometimes with social intercourse in general, that often projected itself as arrogance. Well, that was fine with him. As reputations went, it wasn't a bad one for a policeman.

The morning session had been a lecture and slide presentation by a dour Finnish entomologist who mumbled away in such a bizarre combination of French and English that he would have done as well to deliver it in Finnish. No doubt a part of the problem was the subject: “Sarcosaprophagous Insects as Forensic Criteria'—less than inviting in any language. Even with the language barrier, however, Joly now knew far more about the actions of blowfly larvae on decomposing corpses than he liked.

He was hoping—without much confidence—for a little more from the afternoon's topic, “Forensic Anthropology.” At least he knew what it meant. Well, perhaps not precisely, but he could pronounce it, and that was an improvement. He settled back in his chair, his lunch of omelette aux champignons and coffee sitting well inside him, and studied the speaker, who was arranging a few index cards at the head table while the conference chairman droned on with his remarks. Joly glanced again at the program notes:

Dr. Gideon P. Oliver, Professor of Anthropology, University of Washington—Port Angeles. Dr. Oliver has an outstanding reputation in the fields of biological anthropology and human evolution, having authored the distinguished text A Structuro-Functional Approach to Pleistocene Hominid Phylogeny, now in its third edition. He is almost equally well known to the international police community as “The Skeleton Detective” for his remarkable achievements in the forensic analysis of human skeletal remains.

Well, he certainly didn't look like Joly's idea of a scientist-cum-skeleton detective. Gideon Oliver was no gaunt and dessicated elderly man steeped in the dank aura of the morgue—or more appropriately the shallow grave in the open field. (Professor Wuorinen of the blowflies would have done perfectly.) He was, surprisingly, a big, wide-shouldered man with a broken nose and an easy smile, who looked more like a good-natured prizefighter than a professor. Joly had noticed him during the milling-about of the registration period, talking familiarly with the equally large Hawaiian FBI man—who didn't look much like the inspector's idea of an FBI special agent, for that matter. Ah, well, the world was changing.

* * * *

'... AND I know we've all enjoyed and will much benefit from this morning's fascinating presentation.” The conference chairman, Pierre Chagny, Deputy Director of the Central Directorate of Criminal Investigation of the Police Nationale, paused with a smile on his round face and mimed the clapping of his hands, encouraging a spiritless spatter of applause for Professor Wuorinen, who acknowledged it from a seat at the back of the room with a gloomy frown and a curt nod.

'And now it will be my pleasure to introduce a speaker already known to many of you as the Skeleton Detective of America....'

* * * *

GIDEON winced. Obviously, this skeleton detective business, hung on him by a fanciful crime reporter years before, was not going to go away, and in fact he had begun to resign himself to living with it. But “the Skeleton Detective of America'? That was another rung up the ladder of absurdity. With luck, it might never get back to his academic colleagues, but he doubted it. They were maliciously efficient at ferreting out such tidbits, and it wouldn't be long before he arrived at some committee meeting to find a meticulously printed place card labeled “Dr. G. P. Oliver, the Skeleton Detective of America.” That or worse.

He sighed, laid down his note cards, and looked around the room. Ninety people, sitting on stackable plastic chairs and regarding him with the sleepy and unhopeful gaze of an after-lunch audience that believes it is in for a long, dry lecture. Since France was the host country this year, most of the attendees were French, but everyone was supposed to have a command of English, the organization's official language. This Gideon doubted (certainly Professor Wuorinen's command was dubious), and he had considered speaking in French, but his courage had failed him. They would have to settle for English, along with printed translations of his charts and tables.

Off to the side in the second row, John Lau slumped on the small of his back, comfortably askew, one ankle up on the empty chair in front of him, and already two-thirds asleep. Old friends, they had come to St. Malo together, John to attend lectures and Gideon to give them. If that was as much enthusiasm as he could expect from his one and only crony in the place, Gideon thought, he was in big trouble.

'. . . my privilege to put you into the capable hands of the renowned Dr. Oliver for the first of his four presentations on forensic anthropology. I know you will find him thoroughly fascinating. Dr. Oliver.'

Gideon rose to transparently doubtful applause, shook hands with Monsieur Chagny, and waited for the room to settle down.

'What I hope to do over the next few days,” he began, “is to acquaint you with what bones can tell us, and how they tell it. I'm afraid we'll have to work with medical school specimens; there haven't been any murder cases involving skeletons in Brittany for some time, unfortunately. Or perhaps fortunately, depending on how you look at it....'