TWENTY-ONE
ABE put down his cheese-and-pickle sandwich and leaned back in the chair. "Let me get this straight. It was Leon who killed Randy, and Paul who killed Leon?" He lifted his eyes to the ceiling. "Oy, I can’t believe I’m saying such things. And it was really Paul Arbuckle behind the hoax with Pummy?"
"That’s right," Gideon said.
"That much I can follow," Julie said, working on a ham-and-cheese sandwich. "Where I get lost is why."
Gideon had been having a little trouble with that part too, but he had just concluded a mutually informative telephone conversation with Bagshawe, who had called at 11:30 p.m. after witnessing a confession from Arbuckle, which had been made over the objections of a solicitor obtained in his behalf. While Gideon had been downstairs talking at the desk telephone, Hinshore had delivered a midnight meal of sandwiches and beer to Abe’s room, and they had fallen on it hungrily.
"I guess it would help if I started at the beginning," Gideon said.
"I guess it would," said Julie.
Gideon, who was ravenous, washed down the last of a roast-beef sandwich with a swig of lager from the bottle, and picked up a sandwich of sliced cucumber and butter. "Okay, the beginning was November first. Leon was working alone in the test pit and he turned up that femur."
"And wrote up a find card," Abe said, "like he was supposed to."
"Right. And Randy photographed it, not having any idea of what it was. But Arbuckle, who was wandering around on his audit, saw the thing and realized exactly what it was—not Bronze Age but Middle Pleistocene. He got Leon to give him the bone—I’m not sure whether he paid him, or just talked him into it, or what—and he took it away with him, back to the hotel. That’s when Andy saw him gloating over it."
"I see," Abe said, putting down his own bottle of beer. "The find card just got left quietly and forgotten. Frawley never saw it, and the bone neither, so it never got put in the field catalog. About that at least he was telling the truth."
"Well, I don’t see," Julie said. "What could he do with the bone anyway, no matter how important it is? And what does it have to do with the killings? And the hoax? And—"
"Let’s start with Pummy," Gideon said. "First of all, you have to remember that Paul is fanatically interested in Middle Pleistocene Man—it’s his whole life. Well, here he is, marking time, moping around this Bronze Age site—"
"Boringly recent by his standards."
"And he can hardly wait to get back to his own Middle Pleistocene dig in Dijon. Then, out of the blue comes a two-hundred-thousand-year-old bone not even two feet below the surface—and he and Leon are the only people in the world who know they might be standing on the most important early-man site ever found. So—"
"Let me guess," Abe said. "Paul found out that Leon had it in for Nathan because of his dissertation problems, and he convinced him that it would be very nice if it should come to pass that Nathan gets fired—in a hurry." With a finger, he pushed the final corner of his sandwich into his mouth. "So they stole Pummy from the museum, and Leon buried it and fooled Nathan—not the smartest man in the world, I’m starting to think—into proclaiming his wonderful discovery, and so on and so forth."
"That’s it. Paul wanted the dig terminated as quickly as possible, before someone stumbled on another early-man bone or artifact. Then, in a year or two, when it had blown over, he was going to reopen the site under his own direction, and step right into the very first rank of Middle Pleistocene archaeologists."
"So my idea about Nate being set up was right?" Julie asked.
"Oh? Was that your idea?" said Gideon. "Really?"
"You’re darn tootin’. I believe you thought it was unnecessarily rococo."
"A simple question," Abe said. "What’s all this got to do with Randy getting murdered?"
"Well, it was Randy who actually stole the skull from Dorchester. Leon was smart enough to keep his hands clean of that. He talked Randy into it for a lark, and then, later on, when Randy had second thoughts, they argued about it up on the fell. Randy told him he was going to tell me about it that night, and I guess they got into scuffling. The mallet was right there, and Leon broke his arm with it—accidentally, maybe; who knows? Then, in a panic, he grabbed him by the throat to keep him from screaming and wound up strangling him. After that he rolled him over the cliff. In the fog, nobody saw a thing." Gideon shrugged. "The whole thing’s guesswork, you realize, since the two of them are dead, but it sounds like the truth to me."
Julie shuddered. "So Paul had nothing to do with that?"
"Not in a direct way, no. He claims he was horrified."
"But horrified as he was," Abe put in, "it sure didn’t keep him from killing Leon."
"It sure didn’t. That part’s still a little confused, but from what Bagshawe could make out, Leon started to get panicky tonight—again. This was after they thought the dog had taken me out of the picture, you understand"—a sudden contraction around his heart made him reach out to squeeze Julie’s hand—"and you, too. They argued in the Tudor Room, and when Leon started going to pieces— which I can believe, because he was pretty close to it when I pinned him down this afternoon—Arbuckle panicked too and hit him with the poker."
Abe oscillated his head grimly back and forth. "I’m sure he was horrified all over again."
"I think he was," Gideon said. Suddenly drained, he sat heavily back against his chair. Merrill had given him some codeine earlier, but his bruises had begun to ache again, and his scrapes to burn. "Anyway, that’s the whole story."
"No, it isn’t," Julie said. "I still have questions. Right after that business with the dog, you were sure Leon had sicced it on us. But then, in the living room, you seemed to think it was Paul. Or did I misunderstand?"
"No, you’re right. I started thinking about the timing, and it was obvious. Whoever stole that sneaker had to have done it this afternoon, because we didn’t decide to go out Barr’s Lane until about two. Well, the hotel was locked up all afternoon because the Hinshores were in Bridport and nobody without a key could get in. That let out Leon, but it didn’t let out Paul, because he was already here."
"But how could he get hold of your tennis shoe?" Julie said, her brows knit. "I was in the room all afternoon." She touched a finger to her lips. "Oops. Except for twenty minutes or so, when I went across the street for some stamps. I guess that’d be long enough."
"More than long enough, what with my key hanging on a peg in the entry. I guess Leon called Paul and told him we were going to go into the woods, and the two of them hatched the idea." He began to stretch, then stopped with a wince. "Ouch. I think I’m about ready to call it a day."
"Me, too," Julie said, putting down her half-finished sandwich. "Just one more question. Was it Paul who was giving all that information to the Times?"
"That’s right. He figured the more pre-publicity it all got, the worse it would be for Nate when it blew up."
"Yes, I can see that. But—not that it matters—how in the world did he ever find out you were coming to Stonebarrow Fell?"
"That I still haven’t figured out."
"That’s easy," Abe said. "I told him."
"You?" Gideon said. "But I asked you—"
"You asked me did I tell anybody on the dig. Paul’s not on the dig; he’s an administrator from Horizon. Why shouldn’t I tell him?"
"For Christ’s sake, Abe, maybe if you’d told me that, we’d… Hell, never mind."
"Maybe if you would have told me why you wanted to know," Abe said, made testy by Gideon’s tone, "I could have told you."
It was rare for them to snap at each other, and Gideon was immediately contrite. "I’m sorry, Abe. I’m obviously not at my best. There was no way for you to know it was important. I didn’t know, myself."
"That’s all right," Abe, too, hurried to patch up the small rift. "It’s my fault. I just forgot."
"No, my fault," Gideon said. "Boy, am I ready for bed." So ready that he couldn’t quite find the energy to gather himself up and go.
"Oh yeah," Abe said, "something else I forgot. From back home."
A certain familiar lilt made Gideon look up, to find Abe grinning widely, at Julie as much as at him.
"I was talking to Michaelis at the university," he went on, "and he was telling me they’re thinking of starting a graduate anthropology department at the Port Angeles campus next year. So he says to me, do I know a good physical anthropologist who’d be interested in teaching up there, maybe with a full professorship if he’s got the right experience."
"I appreciate it," Gideon said tersely, "but I don’t want any strings pulled for me. I can find my own jobs."
"Strings?" Abe repeated, appealing to Julie. "Who’s pulling strings? Boy, this guy has a temper!" He leaned agilely forward with more vigor than Gideon had at the moment, and clapped him gently on the knee. "What kind of strings? You’re not a good physical anthropologist? You wouldn’t be interested in teaching on the Olympic Peninsula? Is it my fault he’s interested in you? Why wouldn’t he be interested?"
Julie leaned over and put her hand on his other knee. "Gideon, it would solve all our problems. I could work at the Park Service in Port Angeles." She sounded breathless and softly excited. "There was a house I saw for sale, with a view of Hurricane Ridge on one side and Ediz Hook on the other…."
"And also," Abe said, "Port Angeles isn’t so far from Sequim. To me it doesn’t matter so much, but I know Bertha would like to see you sometimes…."
Gideon nodded. It must have been the grueling and extraordinary day that made him not quite trust himself to speak.
"You’ll fly up and talk to him?" Abe said.
Gideon nodded again. "I sure will." He rubbed his hand over his forehead and finally forced himself to stand, a surprisingly drawn-out process. "And, Abe, thank you."
"Perfectly all right." Abe was beaming. "My pleasure."
"And what will happen to Nate?" Julie asked Abe. "Will Horizon reinstate him?"
"Oh, I think so, at least if I have anything to say about it. To finish up the Bronze Age excavations anyway. Nathan’s a good boy at heart, and I think he learned a good lesson here. As for Frawley, the shtunk, we’ll let Nathan figure out what he wants to do about him."
With Julie, Gideon had made his painful way to the door before he turned around. "And the Second Interglacial stratum, what about that? There could be a hell of a Middle Pleistocene site here, Abe, and it ought to be dug too."
"Absolutely. I was thinking of organizing an exploratory dig for the foundation next summer—for a couple months, maybe—and bringing in some first-rate prehistoric archaeologists: Hernandez, Passarelli, Ingraham….And of course I might lend a hand myself. It would be a nice place to spend the summer."
It certainly would, Gideon thought with ungrudging envy. "That’s great, Abe; you’ll be right back in the thick of things."
"I certainly will. The only thing I’m missing is a grade-A physical anthropologist." He reached for a pickle slice on his plate and popped it into his mouth. "Listen, Gideon, I was thinking…"
