living high off the hog as Guillaume du Rocher, lord of the manor... while Guillaume himself lay moldering to dust and bones in the gloomy cellar. Gideon nodded with something like gratification. Not so much because he'd anticipated this (he had, but it hadn't been much more than a shot in the dark), but because it seemed to satisfy a certain daffy symmetry in the increasingly bizarre twists and contortions in the House of du Rocher.
'Yes, yes, I remember it very well,” Dr. Loti said in a settling-down-in-his-chair tone, clearly more inclined to reminisce than to return to his dinner. “An extremely interesting case...'
Gideon headed him off. “It certainly is. You've been very helpful, Doctor. Thanks very much.'
Gideon, foreseeing this reaction, had taken him outside before telling him what he'd learned. “You're nuts, you know that?” John raved to the black sky while they strode over the courtyard. “You're always doing this! You— Ouch!'
He had stubbed his toe on one of the beams for the kitchen garden's new retaining wall. “Damn it, why don't they have any lights out here?” he grumbled, and bent to rub his toe through the thin canvas shoe. “Look, how could Alain be alive all these years? The Nazis killed him in 1942; there were witnesses. The SS—'
'—marched him into the
'Okay, so what happened to him, then?” John demanded, straightening up. “How did he get away? Where was he between 1942 and 1944?'
'Who knows? He could have been anywhere.'
John snorted and made one of his spasmodic gestures of impatience. “All right, tell me, what's the theory supposed to be? That while he was in the hospital he suddenly comes up with this plan to kill the real Guillaume and take over his property?'
'I don't think so,” Gideon said. “I'm pretty sure Guillaume was already dead. Remember, he hadn't been seen in years either. He disappeared in 1942 too.'
'Jesus,” John said, starting them walking again, “this goddamn case is crawling with disappearing people.'
'In fact,” Gideon said, thinking aloud, “he disappeared within a day or two of the time Alain did—supposedly to join the Resistance. Only now it looks as if it was Alain who took off somewhere, while Guillaume didn't make it out of his own cellar. And when Alain came back after the Liberation, he decided that he could live a fuller, more productive, more meaningful life as his missing, rolling-in-money cousin than as himself.
'I suppose,” he added ruminatively, “this sounds a little fanciful to you.'
'A little? Sheesh.” They walked without speaking for a few yards. “So what do you think—that Alain killed the real Guillaume—back in 1942, I mean—buried him in the cellar, and just let everybody think he was off running around with the Resistance?'
'No, I don't see how we could go that far yet. Possibly—'
'Because,” John said, with a subtle change in his voice, “he would have had to kill him, wouldn't he? Or at least he'd have had to
As usual, John had quickly altered course after his first excitable response to an unexpected new hypothesis and settled down to constructive thinking.
'That,” Gideon conceded, “is a point.'
They had come to the tall stone pillars of the gateway and stood looking out into the darkness. The plane trees lining the road were dimly visible, a dense, pitchy black against the gauzy black of the sky. Gideon shivered as the night cold worked its way through his clothes, and they turned and began to walk back to the manoir.
When they came to the pile of lumber that John had stumbled over, Gideon stopped. Something stirred at the edges of his memory. “You know,” he said, “it's funny...” But whatever it was evaded him, like a speck in the vision that scoots away when you try to focus on it.
'What's funny?” John asked, then laughed. “Never mind. I don't think I want to know. I can only stand so much at a time. Hey, who else do you think knows this so-called Guillaume was really Alain? Assuming that he was.'
'My guess is that none of them do. Why tell them? The only ones who'd even remember the real Guillaume are Mathilde, Rene, and Sophie, and they were all teenagers or under in 1942. When Alain showed up two years later and claimed he was Guillaume, who could argue with him? He was the right age, he knew the ropes, he looked a lot like Guillaume to begin with, and he was such a patched-up mess that no one could possibly tell the difference— even Mathilde. Even though she'd been engaged to him, she was only a kid when he left, and it wouldn't be too hard for him to keep his distance.” He nodded approvingly at his own logic. “No, I'd bet no one's ever caught on to him in all these years.'
'Yeah?” said John, who had listened without comment to this lengthy exposition. “Well, you'd lose.'
Gideon paused with his fingers on the handle of the oak door. “Why?'
'Because somebody was so afraid you'd find out who that skeleton really was they tried to blow your head off. Or did you forget again?'
Gideon frowned, then laughed. “I forgot. Again.'
* * * *
PRE-DINNER cocktails were being served in the Louis XV Room, an upstairs sitting room full of musty, handsome eighteenth-century clutter: lush overstuffed bergeres, crystal pendant chandeliers, ormolu clocks, busy Beauvais tapestries after Boucher and Fragonard. Its delicate parquet floors and ornate, gilded wall moldings proclaimed it the centerpiece of Rochebonne but for more than four decades it had been little-used, being too sumptuous and grandiose for its dour owner. But it suited Mathilde just fine, and she was determined to return it to its onetime place of glory.
The knowledge that this was the last evening they would all be together seemed to add a sparkle, almost a conviviality, to the cocktail hour, so that for once they had abandoned their customary groupings to recombine in
