Skeleton Dance

'So did I . . . because that is what you told me.” He smiled sweetly. “But the plane, having apparently gone down, not on land but in several hundred meters of water—'

'What? But—'

Joly exhaled twin jets of smoke. “Gideon, are you going to permit me—'

'But he did go down over land,” Gideon said hotly. “Over Brittany. That's what everybody said.'

But if that was what everybody said, then everybody was wrong. Carpenter's plane, a single-engine Cessna 185, had gone down off Brittany, or so the authorities had concluded. He had taken off at night from the small airport at Bassilac, near Perigueux, heading north along the French coast to Brest, some 320 miles away. Not long afterward, however, he put in an emergency call to the air route traffic control center at Lorient, saying that his engine was faltering, his gauges were malfunctioning, and he was rapidly losing altitude over the Bay of Biscay. A brief, hurried communication, cut off in mid-sentence, ensued, and Ely Carpenter was never seen or heard from again. A search for his plane produced no results. The reasonable inference—and the official verdict—was that he had plunged into the great bay in darkness, somewhere near the sparsely inhabited Isles de Glenan, about sixty miles short of his destination.

'. . . reasonable inference . . .” Gideon echoed. “I had no idea . . . I was sure . . . “

'So you can see,” Joly said, “there's plenty of room for doubt. How can we know that he didn't merely pretend to crash his airplane into the sea and then continue, in darkness, to some isolated farmer's field along the coast at which, with a little advance preparation, he might easily have landed so small a craft in secret?'

Gideon got up and went thoughtfully to the window, leaning on the sill and looking over the town square and the main street, directly on the other side of which the cliffs loomed in the slanting sunlight, white and pocked with shadowed abris for the first few hundred feet, then darkening to gray-brown and curving outward into their picturesque, protective overhang. Little wonder all those Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons had found this temperate valley such a comfortable place to live.

'Now wait a minute, Lucien. I don't know anything about flying airplanes, but even I know that if they're within range of air traffic control, they're on somebody's radar screen. There's a gizmo on the plane that sends out some kind of identifying signal—'

'A transponder, yes,” said Joly, grinding out his cigarette while he arranged his thoughts. “Imagine this. Carpenter leaves the Bassilac airfield fully in accordance with a previously filed flight plan. Then, once out over the sea he begins to descend and, in apparent distress, informs the air traffic control center at Lorient that he is inexplicably losing altitude. Their radar confirms that this is so. Carpenter continues his descent, utters his heart- rending ‘last’ words: “Dites-leur—'

'—que je suis desole,” said Gideon.

Joly looked at him. Gideon shrugged. “Pru McGinnis told me. This morning.'

'Utters his last words,” Joly continued, “drops to thirty or forty meters above the water, and turns off his transponder. The radar signal disappears, contact is lost. To all appearances, the worst has occurred, the airplane and its pilot are no more.'

'But in reality he just keeps going?” said Gideon, who was beginning to think Joly was making a pretty good case.

'Precisely. He continues flying at this low altitude and lands his craft at some prearranged site he has chosen. Even if he were to be detected in flight again, his Cessna would be so low and so small that it would appear as no more than a fleeting image for one or two sweeps of the radar antenna—and in any case, with the transponder deactivated it could not be identified. You understand?'

Gideon turned back from the window, impressed. “You've really been looking into this, haven't you?'

'Is it so preposterous to wonder,” Joly continued, “whether this was his way of escaping from his difficulties, his way of leaving his troubles behind and starting a new life?'

'Well—'

'And remember this: Carpenter's ‘tragic’ communication with the air traffic control tower was recorded on the night of September 25. Less than seventy-two hours later, on September 28, Madame Renouard made her report to the police asserting that Bousquet had not been seen for several days. Doesn't this bring us back to the possibility —'

'No, it doesn't. You keep harping on that, but on that score you're off-base, Lucien. Ely didn't kill him. It's impossible. He—'

Joly held up a finger. “Do you recall telling me that when Carpenter was working in these boondocks of yours— these remote, isolated boondocks, with the rifle so very close at hand—that he sometimes had an assistant, a single assistant, working with him?'

'Sure.'

'Do you know who that assistant was?'

'I have no—you're not going to tell me it was Bousquet?'

'But I am. Bousquet was frequently with him, serving as a manual laborer and paid from Carpenter's own pocket.'

Gideon, surprised, slowly shook his head. “But they hated each other. Why would Ely hire him?'

'Apparently he had little choice. Jean Bousquet was the only worker available with some experience of archaeological sites.'

'Well, all right, so they were working together. That doesn't mean anything. Remember, he was still alive two months after Carpenter left. He called.'

'Yes, so say the fellows of the institute. But it has yet to be independently confirmed.'

'It's been confirmed, all right. Madame Lacouture, Beaupierre's secretary, remembered it too. She had it in her logbook. I saw it. Sorry to spoil your theory, Lucien.'