jawbone, that this tooth would be missing. I confess, with shame in my heart, that I doubted you.'
'You mean I was
But he couldn't keep a straight face, and they all burst out laughing. It had been a long time they'd had anything to laugh about, and as they saw Joly off the three of them were still chuckling.
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Chapter 21
* * * *
The next morning Audrey was appointed acting director. Her first formal action was to declare the institute closed until the following Monday out of respect for Jacques (and, Gideon thought, to give herself a three-day weekend to pull herself back together before taking over the director's chair). The break suited Gideon and Julie, who agreed over breakfast that they could both stand some time off from bones, murders, hoaxes, and Paleolithic prehistory—all of which were placed off-limits for the long weekend. Gideon didn't quite see why Paleolithic prehistory had to be included, but he was game to go along anyway.
They rented one of the plastic kayaks lined up at the foot of the bridge and paddled happily on the Vezere, going nowhere, until mid-afternoon, when the unusual humidity and a developing warming trend strengthened to the extent that any form of physical effort lost its appeal. Afterwards, when the darkness cooled things down and revived their appetites they ended the day feasting again at the restaurant Au Vieux Moulin, where they'd eaten with Joly that first night.
The following day, Saturday, was largely taken up with Jacques’ funeral, held a bare twelve hours after his body was released by the police, (Madame Beaupierre, who seemed more consumed with embarrassment than with grief over her husband's murder, wanted it over with as quickly as possible) and with a stilted, uncomfortable funeral buffet at the Beaupierre's house near the Font de Gaume cave. Although Jacques’ colleagues, along with the Olivers, had been invited to both functions, they were treated with icy reserve by the widow.
After these strained and uncomfortable events Gideon, who was feeling the lingering effects of the concussion more than he wanted to admit, slept away the afternoon while Julie drove a few miles up the Vezere to tour the celebrated Grotte du Grand Roc with its stalagmites, stalactites, and other natural grotesqueries.
On Sunday a huge, black thundercloud began to build up in great, roiling columns a little after dawn. They took one look at it from bed, closed their eyes again and slept late, not awakening until 9:00, when Audrey telephoned to tell them that the dedication of the institute's new quarters, which had originally been scheduled for the next day but had been tentatively postponed upon news of Jacques’ death, would take place as scheduled after all. It had been decided that the new building was to be designated the Centre Prehistorique Beaupierre in honor of its fallen director. Dignitaries from the Universite du Perigord and the Horizon Foundation would be in attendance, and Gideon and Julie were cordially invited to the ceremonies.
Gideon cordially accepted for both of them, after which they went downstairs for a satisfying “English” breakfast of bacon and eggs, then set themselves up in the Cro-Magnon's downstairs lounge, a cozy, overstuffed room that looked as if it should have had Charles Dickens—or more appropriately, Gustave Flaubert—seated at the writing desk, lost in reflection and chewing pensively on his quill.
Instead it was Julie who took over the desk to work on a quarterly report on park security problems that she'd brought with her while Gideon worked on his laptop, polishing his chapter on the bizarre case of “George Psalmanzar” the eighteenth-century “Formosan” who had flummoxed the British scientific world of his day by inventing not only himself but an entire, highly detailed
With the lounge all to themselves, rain thrumming on the windows, a pot of hot coffee on a nearby sideboard, and a mantel clock ticking lazily away, they looked forward to passing a quiet and companionable Sunday.
* * * *
For the Greater Cincinnati Elderhostel's “Footloose in France” tour group, Sunday was day nine of a twelve-day hike through the French countryside, and with 100 dusty miles on towpaths and country lanes behind them, they were a tanned, fit, seasoned crew of twelve. Still, with the morning temperature approaching eighty, with a median age of sixty-nine, and with all of them still damp and steaming from the rain shower they'd passed through an hour earlier, no one objected when Yvette, the French tour leader (looking cute as a button in her leather hiking shorts and mountaineer's boots), signaled that the mid-morning break was at hand.
'This place, how you like to stop here?” she asked in her delightfully mangled English. (Only the resolutely negative Mrs. Winkelman—at 83 it was allowable—contended that Yvette's accent was put on.) “The coffee and the juice, they wait themselves in the van, and also some nice French snacks. If you like, we go and sit beside the river, where there is a most nice view of Les Eyzies, the place of lunch for today. Then I tell you some of the facts of this most charming village.'
But practiced open-country hikers that they were, they first split into two groups, the men making for the copse of stunted oaks on the left, the women for the one on the right. Five minutes later, perceptibly more relaxed and expansive, they lined up at the supply van, which had gotten there before them and had their juice, coffee, and pastries ready and waiting.
'Joe.” Merle Nichols put her hand on the arm of her new friend Joe Pfeiffer, recently widowed, recently retired from the Dayton police department. “Is that a person down there?'
'Down where?'
'Nah, it's just a bundle of clothes or something,” somebody said. “It probably washed up from somewhere.'
Someone else thought it might be a drunk, someone else a hiker taking a nap. But no one moved any further down the gentle slope. They all stood there holding their cups and pastries, looking doubtfully at Joe, their expert in such matters.
