Skeleton Dance

Joly digested this. “Secretaries say whatever they're told to say; it's their job.'

Gideon laughed. “You haven't met Madame Lacouture. I'd be surprised if anybody tells her what to say.'

'She sounds something like my secretary, now that I think of it,” Joly said with a slow smile.

'And anyway, even if you're right, which I don't believe, what would Carpenter be escaping from? Let's say he actually killed whoever the bones belonged to. The body was safely buried, nobody knew about it—why would he want to disappear?'

'And what about his humiliation over the Old Man of Tayac, or have you forgotten that?'

'Oh, that, right,” said Gideon, who had in fact forgotten for the moment.

'Imagine further his state of mind,” the inspector said, removing a stray shred of tobacco from his tongue with the tip of his finger and discarding it in an ashtray after careful study. “He would have felt that the world was closing in, that his life was incapable of reconstruction. He was an intelligent, resourceful man; would a new identity have been so terrible a prospect?'

Gideon returned to his chair and lowered himself thoughtfully into it. Joly's doubts were getting through to him. “Maybe it wouldn't, at that. From what we've been finding out about him, he'd had several lives before.'

He drained the lukewarm remainder of his Coke, crumpled the can in his fist, and tossed it into a wastebasket already brimming with cans and paper cups. “Ely Carpenter still out there somewhere,” he said slowly. “Well, I grant you, it's an intriguing thought.'

'Yes,” Joly said, “but what are we to do with it? Where do we begin to search for him? It's a cold trail we have in front of us.'

'It's worse than a cold trail, Lucien; it's a dead end—two dead ends. Not just Carpenter, but the body in the cave too. Remember, we have no way of proving that he was or wasn't Bousquet; and with the bones gone, we're never going to have any.'

'Well, there you have—” Joly glanced up at the entrance of a blue-uniformed policeman, blonde, blue-eyed, and ridiculously young-looking, who had deferentially approached their table. Joly's visage stiffened to that of an inspecteur principal.

'Que vous desirez, Noyon?'

'I'm very sorry to interrupt, inspector,” the officer said in French, “but Prefect Marielle wanted me to ask you . . . what do you wish done with the bones?'

There was a moment's silence, and then:

'Bones?” said Joly.

'Bones?” said Gideon.

* * * *

'Yes, the bones,” Noyon repeated. “The dog's bones.'

Joly smacked his forehead—harder than he'd intended, judging from the wince that followed. “The dog's bones! I forgot completely. Where is my brain? Gideon, we do have some skeletal material for you to look at.'

Gideon stared at him. “Did I miss something there, Lucien? I mean, sure, I'll be happy to look at your dog bones if you want me to, but I don't quite see—'

'No, no,” Joly said, laughing, “not the ‘dog bones,’ the ‘dog's bones.’ Toutou's bones.'

'Umm . . . Toutou's bones . . .'

'Toutou!” Joly said impatiently. “The Peyrauds’ dog, the animal that first discovered the remains in the cave and brought home some of the bones. Marielle collected them—'

'Well, why didn't you say so?” Gideon said, jumping to his feet. “You expect me to know the damn dog's name? Where are they? Let's go.'

Joly rose more slowly, looking at his watch. “I believe I'll leave them to you, my friend; I have other things to pursue. I'll come back in an hour?'

'Fine,” said Gideon, who preferred working without an audience for a lot of reasons, not least among them that he liked to talk to himself. “Maybe I'll be able to tell you something by then.'

'I hope so, but I wouldn't get my hopes up. I've seen these bones; they don't look like very much.'

'Well, we'll see.” Turning to Noyon Gideon spoke in French: “Okay, Officer Noyon, lead on. Where are they?'

'They are in the evidence room, sir,” said Noyon. “If you would care to follow me?'

* * * *

In police parlance, “evidence room” usually referred to a secure area—perhaps a steel-barred cage or a locked room with a stout metal door—in which labeled bags and boxes were neatly ranged on shelves along with carefully tagged larger items of material evidence relating to crimes, such as rifles, axes, and ball-peen hammers. In the case of the Les Eyzies municipal police department, however, the evidence room was a paper-supply cubicle attached to the office of its prefect, Auguste Marielle.

Marielle, a bulgy man in a blue-and-white uniform, emerged from the cubicle with a thick red folder, the old- fashioned, expandable kind with accordion sides, held closed by a string wound around a couple of cardboard grommets. “I'm afraid you won't find much of use in these, professor.'

He placed the folder on his handsome teak desk and undid the string. “Of course, one can see at once,” he said in French, “that, except for a few mouse bones, they are human. There's little doubt about that much. Beyond that, however, I feel safe in saying no more than'—he cleared his throat: hm-hm-hhhmmm