Old Bones

Ben had said, or anywhere near it. It was more than five hours later, at 11:33 p.m. But high tide was clearly shown as 4:43 p.m.—16:43, in the French system—when Ben had had every reason to think they'd still be in the bay. Gideon whistled softly at the height: 13.05 meters, with the previous low at 0.90 meters. A change of nearly fifty feet in a single tidal cycle! He breathed out a long sigh. They really had been lucky.

Every month was on a different page, one day per line. He scanned the entire page for March, seeking without much hope for some source of honest error on Ben's part. But there weren't any 5:15 low tides, a.m. or p.m. He thumbed through the rest of the booklet to see if there was a low tide at 5:15 on the twenty-third of any month, just in case Ben had gotten the right line but the wrong page. There wasn't. There was no tide at precisely 5:15, morning or afternoon, high or low, on any day of the year.

It was impossible to get around it, then; whether it felt right or not, Ben Butts, in his smiling and easygoing way, had deliberately sent them out into a Mont St. Michel flood tide that even at that moment had already been rolling steadily towards them.

All of which made his whicker of laughter when they walked into the salon thoroughly surprising. He had been alone, apparently the first one down to await the call for pre-dinner cocktails, and he had been seated in one of the wingbacked chairs in front of the fire, his back to the door, seemingly absorbed in the sports section of the International Herald Tribune. On John's firm suggestion, Ray and Claire had gone up to their rooms to change, having stoutly maintained their belief in his innocence during the drive.

'Hello, Ben,” Gideon had said quietly from behind him, watching carefully for a giveaway sign when he turned— the sudden pallor of astonishment, perhaps, or the deep flush of rage. Instead, that high-pitched and convincing whinny of pleasure.

'That's great!” he cried, taking in their violet sweatshirts and green shoes. “All you need are matching beanies. What are you going to do for your first number?'

It was hardly the snarl of a confounded murderer. Gideon's doubts began to mount again.

As they regarded him silently, Ben's grin rigidified. “All right, I give up. What are we playing?'

'Ben, you still got that tide table?” John asked, smiling.

'Sure, of course I do.” He folded the newspaper neatly, stood up, and began patting his pockets. “At least I think I do. Ah.” He produced it from the left hip pocket of his mohair jacket. John took it and handed it to Gideon.

'What's going on?” Ben asked uncomfortably. “Why do I have the feeling everybody's mad at me? Did I read the table wrong or something?” Abruptly, his face fell. “You're kidding. I couldn't have.'

'Let's just see,” Gideon said. He turned quickly to the page for March, found the line for the current day, and moved his finger to the column headed basses mers—low tides. He stared, blinked, and stared again. Then he looked up at the others, thoroughly confused.

'According to this, low tide was at 5:15,” he murmured.

'Well, of course,” Ben said. “That's what Isaid, isn't it?'

Gideon took out the booklet he had bought at Mono-prix and compared it to Ben's. The covers were the same, all right, and at first glance so were the contents. Sixty-four pages in all, mostly boating data and advertisements, and bound with a single hefty staple through the middle. The tidal information for March was on page 32, which was the left center page in each book, and the dates and days of the week in the two booklets matched. March 1 was shown as a Sunday, and so on. But the contents of the columns—the times and heights of the tides—were entirely different. As were the data, Gideon quickly ascertained, for the months on pages 31, 33, and 34, which were the other pages printed on the same folded sheet. The other pages seemed to be the same in each booklet.

'Ben, where did you get this thing?'

'From the car. It was in the door pocket. I wanted to see if we'd have a chance to watch a flood tide come in.'

'The car? What car?'

'I told you; the one we picked up at Mont St. Michel. Guillaume's car. The Citroen. How about telling me what's going on?'

'Nothing, Ben,” John said. “Just looking up some things.'

'Don't give me that, John. I may not be the brightest person in the world, but I sure know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad.” He laughed softly. “So my Aunt Gussie was wont to say.'

They left him staring bemusedly after them and walked out into the hallway.

Gideon looked at John. “Well, I guess that answers that.'

'What answers what? What's the question?'

'The question is: Why did Guillaume go out into the bay without checking a tide table? And the answer is that he didn't. He had this little gem right in the car with him; a perfectly nice little schedule, except for the small matter of a few pages in the middle. Which day did he die, do you remember? Last Sunday?'

'Monday. That would have been, uh—'

'The sixteenth.” Gideon found the relevant row. “He went out in the morning, and with this to guide him, he wouldn't have been expecting a high tide until early evening. Whereas, actually...” He closed the bogus tide table and opened the one from Monoprix. “. . . it crested at five minutes after ten. a.m. A nasty little surprise. The same sort of thing happened to us, you may recall.'

John nodded grimly. “Okay, Doc, you win. I'm a believer. He was set up. So what do you think, Ben—'

'Not necessarily Ben. Any one of them could have doctored the thing for ‘Guillaume's’ benefit, and then Ben could have done just what he said he did: innocently picked up the table when he saw it in the car. I hope so.'

'Me too.” He shook his head. “Look, doesn't it seem a little odd that a murderer would leave evidence like this just sitting around in the car for a week?'

'Not really. Whoever did it probably never dreamed that anyone would get suspicious about Guillaume's death.