Old Bones

In the thoughtful, evaluative quiet that followed this, Rene leaned toward Jules, who sat alone on a plump little sofa beginning on his third martini, served to him with three stuffed olives on a toothpick, as he had trained Marcel to do.

'Did you know all this?” Rene asked him.

Jules seemed about to deny it, then lifted his shoulder in a nonchalant shrug. “Yes, I knew.'

'I didn't know it,” Rene said without rancor.

Jules looked pityingly at him and sucked the first of the olives from the toothpick.

'Let's go back a little, Mathilde,” Ben said. “You buried Guillaume in the cellar? That's his skeleton they found?'

'Yes, of course,” Mathilde said crossly. “How many skeletons do you suppose are down there?'

Ray stared at her, his face gray. “But it was—it was dismembered!'

'Yes,” Mathilde said after a pause. “That's right. Marcel, I would like another vermouth after all.” When it was brought she swallowed some, drew herself more erect, and set her gaze on the middle distance. “We didn't know what to do with him,” she said expressionlessly, as if reading from a script in a language she didn't understand. “With the body. We couldn't believe it had really happened. We put him in the big stone sink in the kitchen and I helped Alain to—to begin dismembering him. Do you know the cleaver is still there? I was looking at it a few days ago.'

The hand that lifted the glass to her mouth wavered slightly; not enough to spill the vermouth. “Beatrice used it for the carbonnade flamande, I believe.'

'Oh, sweet Jesus Christ,” Ben breathed, the only sound in an otherwise electrified silence.

'We were going to burn him, you see, and we knew he wouldn't all burn at once,” Mathilde went grimly on, determined to finish. “We made a fire in the kitchen fireplace. But when we—” A tic jerked in the flesh below her eye and was brought firmly under control. “—placed a hand in the fire, there was a terrible smell, and it would hardly burn, and it—it sizzled, you see.'

'Mathilde, please stop,” Sophie said unsteadily. “It's enough.'

But Mathilde plowed ahead, eyes fixed stonily on nothing. “I said we should boil the—the pieces first to get rid of the fat, but Alain simply couldn't face it; he was at the end of his strength. So we wrapped them—the pieces—in packages we could lift, and took them down to the cellar . . .'

She was winding down, beginning to sag, a millimeter at a time, against the back of the chair. “And then we buried the packages under the stones,” she said, winding down. “It took us until dawn. Then Alain ran off and I went home.'

John had slid along the table to join Gideon while Mathilde had been talking. “Where the hell is Joly? She's ready to admit everything.'

Gideon nodded doubtfully. True, the mystery of the bones in the cellar was satisfactorily wrapped up, but he wasn't so sure how much progress had been made on what had been going on this past week: Alain's belated death in the bay, Claude's poisoning, his own near-murder. But a few ideas about those were beginning to work their way to the surface too. That lumber in the courtyard had set him thinking. Had he been barking up the wrong tree? Or the wrong branch of the right tree? He looked thoughtfully around the room.

Beatrice and Marcel, their English almost non-existent, were watching Mathilde impassively. Most of the others stared at her, half-fascinated, half-horrified, the way people at a zoo peer through the glass at a monstrous snake.

'Madame...” Claire said in her gentle voice. “Aunt Mathilde... did you kill my father?” Not an easy thing to say inoffensively, but from Claire it was not so much an accusation as a timid inquiry.

It was, however, enough to straighten up Mathilde's spine. She looked condescendingly at Claire. “My dear child, what an extraordinary idea!'

'Oh, yeah?” Leona said, this time resorting to her coarse and shaky English. Gideon's well-trained ear told him she had learned it in Naples; probably the streets of Naples. “Maybe you was afraid of what he would find out— Claude.” She was quite matter-of-fact now, he noticed. The idea that Mathilde might have murdered her husband didn't seem to bother her nearly as much as the thought that she might have bilked him (and by extension, her) out of the Domaine de Rochebonne. If anything, her estimation of Mathilde appeared to have increased.

'Find out?” Mathilde replied after a moment of convincingly astonished silence.

'Yeah, when he goes down there in the cellar—Maybe he sees something, finds out something...” Leona's English or her imagination failed her. “Who knows?” she finished lamely, and fell back against her chair.

Mathilde glanced around the room, then appealed to Gideon. “I have no idea what the woman's talking about.'

'Did Claude go down into the cellar?” Rene asked mildly. “I didn't know that.'

'He was going to go,” Leona said, resorting again to French. “To watch what he was doing.” She indicated Gideon by extending her fluorescent orange lips towards him.

Jules put down his glass with a peevish thump. “I must say, I don't see why we should have to sit here and listen to this,” he said querulously, his soft, babyish cheeks streaked with sullen red. “I mean, here's this woman, a guest in our house, and she has the, the...'

Gideon had stopped listening. A few more of the last remaining odd-shaped pieces that had been rattling disconnectedly around his mind had just dropped into their slots.

'...have to sit here and listen to this,” Jules concluded sulkily, back where he'd begun.

Gideon, thoughtful, looked towards the doorway. “Marcel?'

The servant started. “Monsieur?'