Skeleton Dance

'He gave you some pain pills too; want them?'

'No, I don't want to get dopey. God.'

'Gideon, are you sure you wouldn't rather be in bed?'

He shook his head, a mistake.

'Should I have some food sent up? Or we could go downstairs if you feel up to it.'

'No, I just want to sit here and whine.'

She was quiet for a while. Then she said: “I think I know what your problem is. It goes back to your college days, when you used to box. You got knocked out four times, after all—'

'Three,” Gideon growled. “Two, if you don't count TKO's.'

'—and you're probably just wondering how many more brain cells you can afford to lose. Am I warm?'

She said it lightly, a throwaway pleasantry accompanied with a smile, but her voice was taut, and Gideon was abruptly aware of how drawn her face was, how anxious her eyes, how flat and yellowish the area under them. Until now he'd been too wrapped up in his own misery to notice, but he noticed now. He'd taken a knock on the head, yes, but it was Julie who'd gotten the telephone call that told her her husband had apparently had some sort of seizure and was in the hospital undergoing head X-rays, Julie who'd had to make the frightened taxi ride to St. Cyprien, Julie who'd held his hand and made small jokes while he lay with his head immobilized in a metal cage, waiting to be slid into the ominous, clanking MRI machine. And since then it had been Julie who'd continued to make small jokes and small talk in that strange, tight little voice, jollying him along while he'd sat ungratefully around, first in the hospital, and now in their hotel room, doing little more than grumbling that he felt rotten.

My God, he thought, ashamed and guilty, what if the situation had been reversed? What would he be feeling if it had been Julie who'd been hurt and he who'd received the call. . .?

He waited for the thickening in his throat to ease, and then he gave her a smile of his own, his first in a long time. “Don't you worry about it, I have brain cells you wouldn't believe; plenty to spare, enough for two people.'

It was a pleasure to see her eyes come snapping alive again. “Now that,” she said, “sounds more like the modest fellow I know and love.'

She leaned over to kiss him, and as she did, they heard the sound of a car pulling up to curb below. Julie went to the window, came back, and kissed him again. “Maybe you ought to get some shoes on. L'inspecteur est arrive.'

* * * *

The Cro-Magnon's upstairs lounge was situated on a stairway landing in a corner just big enough for three comfortable armchairs and a coffee table. Being at the rear of the building, directly against the cliffside, it lacked, as did many of the other houses and shops, a conventional back wall. Instead, the smooth, curving limestone of the cliff itself served as the rear of the hotel. The effect, especially when coupled with the subdued lighting from two low-wattage table lamps, was of a cave, an abri with modern conveniences.

It was in this pleasant, restful niche—easy on Gideon's throbbing eyes— that they met with Joly over a pot of tea and a plate of fruit tarts brought upstairs by Monsieur Leyssales, the hotel's proprietor.

'The man you describe,” said Joly, gravely stirring a second teaspoon of sugar into his second cup of tea, “is not Dr. Roussillot.'

Gideon smiled, or tried to. “Gee, why am I not surprised?'

'He was completely unfamiliar to you?'

'Absolutely.'

'You have no idea who he might be or why he was there?'

'Who, no. Why . . . well, why seems pretty obvious. To get the bones out of there.'

'Gideon,” Julie said tentatively, “don't get upset now, but who seems pretty obvious too—or rather who was behind it. It had to be somebody from the institute; somebody who was at the staff meeting.'

'Well, no, I wouldn't say—'

'Yes, you would. There wasn't time for the word to get around to anybody else. You walked into that morgue just one hour after the end of that meeting, and this fake Roussillot was already there.'

'Yes, but he wasn't at the meeting,” Gideon said doggedly. “Or anywhere in the cafe; I would have remembered.'

'Well, of course not. But whoever it was must have been afraid someone might recognize him if he showed up at the hospital himself, so he got somebody else—maybe a friend, maybe somebody he hired, who knows—to get rid of the bones for him. How hard would it have been—'

'All right, okay,” Gideon said dejectedly, “you're right, I agree with you. I guess I just don't like to say it, even to myself.'

'But what I find myself wondering,” Joly said, “is how this person knew enough to pretend to be Dr. Roussillot. How would he know who Dr. Roussillot is?'

'Oh, that wasn't hard,” Gideon said. “I walked right up to him and told him that's who he was: ‘You must be Dr. Roussillot.’ He was happy to go along.'

'Ah.” Pause. “And he struck you with the leg bone, the femur? There, behind the left ear, where that remarkable protuberance is?'

'I assume so. The last I remember, he had the bone in his hand. And that's where the lump is, so I suppose that's where he hit me—twice. There are actually two remarkable protuberances, not one.'