Skeleton Dance (7 page)

Gideon laughed along with her. "She's right, they get nervous when everybody has the same theory. They haven't even agreed on whether 'Neanderthal' should have an 'h' in it or not; there are the old-guard pro-'h' and the radical anti-'h' camps. You know, the institute's holding a public symposium at the community lecture hall tomorrow, Lucien. Why don't you come to it? You'll get some idea."

"What is the subject?"

"It's called 'Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon: Differences and Similarities.'

Joly pursed his narrow lips. "'Neanderthal' with or without the 'h'?"

"With, I think. They're traditionalists on that point."

"Even so, I'm sorry to say I have other business." His eyes lit up. "Ah, dessert. Prepare yourselves."

   The market town of Les Eyzies winds for half-a-mile along the east bank of the green, slow-flowing river Vézère, prettily situated at the base of an undulating, three-hundred-foot-high wall of honey-colored limestone cliffs. In the Middle Ages it had been little more than an unwelcoming cluster of mean stone houses huddled beneath the great, brooding chateau of the barons of Beynac, built into the very face of the cliffside, but today, with the lords long gone, the village hums with activity. Visitors come because of the region's celebrated prehistoric finds, the local gourmet shops and restaurants, and the refreshing mixture of commercial bustle and open-faced country simplicity that is the essence of village life.

Charming in the daytime, it is spine-tinglingly evocative at night, when the modern shops and cafés are dark, but the ancient, cobbled streets are lamplit, and strategically placed floodlights illuminate the bony ruins of the chateau on its rock-cut terrace, the medieval stone houses that still remain around it, and above, all, the dramatic cliffs themselves that rear up only a few yards from the main street, brilliantly lit at their base but disappearing into blackness above.

It had been light when they went into the restaurant; it was dark when they came out, and for a few minutes the three of them stood in the parking lot without speaking, their faces turned up to the light-bathed curves and hollows of the cliffs. Gideon and Julie turned down Joly's offer of a lift back to the Hotel Cro-Magnon, preferring to walk the quarter-mile, and started slowly on their way.

"Lucien speaks better English than I do," Julie said after a while. "It hardly seems fair."

"Well, his father worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Lucien spent most of his adolescence in London. "

"Ah."

"He sure knows how to order a meal too, doesn't he?"

"It was
wonderful
, but my God, I don't think I'll ever be able to eat again. Look at me, I'm waddling, not walking. You know, this answers a question I've had for years."

Gideon cocked an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Well, I couldn't help wondering why your on-site research has always focused on early man in Europe, especially here in the south of France, rather than on Africa, where the remains are so much more ancient. I think I'm finally beginning to see why."

"Well, of course," Gideon said. "It's pretty tough finding a three-star restaurant in the Rift Valley. I thought you figured that out a long time ago." He reached an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to kiss her soft, fragrant hair, and then they fell silent, walking hand in hand through the near-deserted streets.

When they came to the hotel, Julie started in but Gideon tugged her along. "Not yet, I want to show you something."

"In the dark?"

"I'm equipped," he said, taking out a pocket flashlight and flicking it on.

He led her to an unlit, nondescript alley that turned toward the cliffside half-a-block beyond the hotel, at the end of which, aided by the flashlight, they threaded their way between a couple of parked cars and pushed through a rusted, unlocked, waist-high metal gate, ducking their heads—or at least Gideon had to duck his—to enter a small, shallow
abri
, one of several that dimpled the base of the cliffs here, one beside the other. The next one over held a propane tank; the one after that, considerably larger, formed the rear wall of the Hotel Cro-Magnon. The one in which they stood, however, the smallest of the three, held nothing at all.

Julie looked around, puzzled. "This is what you wanted to show me?"

Gideon smiled. "Yes." He shone the flashlight onto a weathered marble plaque bolted to the stone immediately above the opening.

Ici furent decouverts en 1868 les hommes de Cro-Magnon par Francois Berthoumeyrou.

Julie's lips moved as she worked her way through the French. "Here… something… discovered in…" Her eyes widened. "Gideon, is this actually the original Cro-Magnon Man cave? This little place?"

That was exactly what it was, he told her, pleased with her reaction. They were on hallowed historic (or prehistoric) ground. It had been right there, right beneath their feet in that unremarkable, little-visited cavelet, that three thirty-millennia-old skeletons of a type never before seen in prehistoric burials had been uncovered by workmen during the construction of the Les Eyzies railway station across the road; the very place, so to speak, where modern humankind had made its entrance onto the anthropological stage.

"Wow," said Julie with something gratifyingly close to awe. "It sends goosebumps down your back, doesn't it?" She smiled at him. "Did you bring that flashlight all the way from home just so you could show me this place in the dark?"

He shrugged. "It doesn't weigh anything."

"You're a romantic, you know that?"

"Of course. I thought that was why you married me."

"You know, maybe it was at that."

"Gideon," she said on the short walk back to the hotel, "do you think my French is good enough to let me get anything out of that Neanderthal-Cro-Magnon symposium you were telling Lucien about?"

"You don't need French. It's in English."

"English? How come?"

The Institut de Préhistoire, he explained, was funded jointly by the Université du Périgord and the Chicago-based Horizon Foundation, and was by charter composed of both French and American scholars. Bilingual fluency was required for appointment, and papers and symposia might be in either language. This particular one was to be videotaped for use in American universities and would therefore be conducted in English.

"That's great," she said. "I'll plan on going, then."

"Good, but I have to tell you, if it's more goosebumps you're after, forget it. It's likely to be pretty dry stuff."

"That's okay," she said, standing on tiptoe to nuzzle at his earlobe as he turned the key to their room. "I have other sources for goosebumps."

   Inasmuch as the session wasn't scheduled until 2 p.m., however, they decided to take the morning off and relax. In the afternoon, while Julie attended the symposium, Gideon would finish up with the bones.

So for a few hours they acted like tourists. They had a leisurely breakfast in their room in the ivy-covered Hotel Cro-Magnon, which was every bit as rustic and pretty an inn as Gideon had remembered. Afterward, they strolled along the street, chatting about nothing in particular and looking in shop windows, but mostly simply passing the time together, peacefully, pleasantly, without event or object. A sort of jet-lag-decompression time.

They were heading into a café for a coffee stop when Gideon spotted a familiar figure coming diagonally across the street toward them, somewhat in the manner of a soft-bodied sea creature undulating over the ocean floor.

"Here comes Jacques Beaupierre," Gideon said.

Julie stared. "
That's
the director of the Périgord Institute of Prehistory? The old gentleman who just walked right in front of that truck?"

It was true, and it was typical. The plump, balding Beaupierre had just ambled directly across the path of a flatbed truck loaded with baskets of walnuts, which had been forced to pull up to a sudden stop. One of the baskets had tipped over, spilling nuts onto the truck's bed and into the road, and the driver was leaning out of the window vigorously making his objections known. Beaupierre, equally oblivious to truck, driver, and nuts, was placidly continuing his crossing, an amiably dreamy look in his blue, bespectacled eyes. He was, if the movements of his lips were any indication, deep in consultation with himself. Gideon guessed that if he were to be suddenly stopped and asked where he was, or where he was going, it would take a while for him to come up with the answers.

"Well, it's true, he's not the most focused guy in the world," Gideon said, "but"—searching for something good to say—"but he does know his Middle Paleolithic stone-tool technology."

"Oh, well, then."

Archaeology had been Beaupierre's whole life, Gideon knew. He had been born and raised in Les Eyzies, the son and grandson of local amateur antiquarians, and he had been immersed in local prehistory since the age of nine. At the same time, he was a man whose native keenness of mind had never been his forte, and it was common knowledge, or at least common belief, that his ascendance to the directorship after Carpenter's humiliating resignation had been based more on seniority than merit; the seventy-four-year-old Beaupierre had been with the institute since the day of its inception almost forty years before. He had already been passed over three times, most recently when he'd competed for it against Carpenter himself, and to the general surprise of the archaeological establishment, Carpenter, the new kid on the block, had been appointed. But with the all-too-colorful Ely Carpenter soon gone in a cloud of scandal, it was felt that the prudent, industrious Beaupierre's day had come. Besides, there wasn't much risk in it; by that time the directorship had become little more than an honorary post with a few routine administrative duties.

"
Bonjour
, Jacques," Gideon called, when the unseeing Beaupierre, lost in thought, or at any rate lost in something, came abreast of them.

Beaupierre stopped. "Eh? Mm?" He peered blinking at Gideon through his glasses—rectangular-lensed and framed in thick black plastic, a style last in vogue in the 1950's—and broke into a sweet smile. "Ah, it's Gideon, isn't it? You've arrived! Is it Tuesday then, or am I…"

"We got here yesterday," Gideon said, shaking Beaupierre's offered hand. "This is my wife, Julie."

"How delightful!
Enchanté
, madame. Gideon, these interviews of yours—when would you wish to begin them?"

"As soon as I can. I have this case I'm working on with the police, but I can fit them in whenever it's convenient for you and your people."

Beaupierre put his finger to his rounded chin. "I wonder, could you join us later this morning at our staff meeting? You could make your arrangements with them individually."

"Well…"

"Go ahead," Julie said. "I'll be fine, there's plenty to do. Besides, I've already gotten more quality time out of you than I was expecting for the whole trip."

"Excellent, most kind, madame," said Beaupierre. "Our meeting is at eleven, Gideon. Perhaps you could describe your purposes in coming in a little more detail. I've told them, of course, but it would be an opportunity for you to orient all of them yourself at a single sitting, and, mm… well."

"Sure, I'd like to."

"In the afternoon, however, we are taken up. There is a symposium at two." He turned to Julie. "Madame, if you have some interest in the Middle Paleolithic era, perhaps you would care to honor us by attending? It will be in English, you know."

"Yes, thank you, I'm planning to be there."

Beaupierre seemed genuinely delighted. "I look forward to seeing you and to introducing you to our fellows. And you, Gideon—we'll see you at eleven? You remember where we meet?"

"Is it still that café just down from the institute, on the square—"

"The Café du Centre, yes, that's the place. But only until next week," he added, beaming joyfully at them, "when we finally move into our new quarters, our wonderful new quarters, with our own full-size conference room at last, and a reception area, and the most modern storage facilities, and… and so forth. The dedication ceremony will be Monday morning. Will you still be here then? Can you come?"

"If we're here, we'll certainly come," Gideon said.

"We'd love to," Julie said.

"You have no idea how long it's been in coming, or what a difference it will make. Oh, the difficulties… ah, well, mm…" He bobbed to them individually and shook hands with Gideon. "Good day to you both. A great pleasure, madame."

"Actually, he seemed pretty focused to me," Julie said as the director continued on his way. "Once he got started."

"He did, didn't he? Maybe I've been giving him a bum rap. He's sharper than I remembered."

"Oh, Gideon!" Beaupierre had gone about ten paces and turned. "Which way was I going when we met?"

"Uh… the same way you are now."

"Ah, good," said Beaupierre, patting his belly. "Then I've had my breakfast."

   When he stopped off at the Hotel Cro-Magnon before going to the staff meeting, Gideon was told by the clerk at the desk that an Inspector Joly from Périgueux had telephoned, asking him to call.

"Lucien, what's up?"

"Ah, Gideon, a little news. I've been speaking with the prefect in Les Eyzies about a fellow named Jean Bousquet, who disappeared from the village three years ago—"

"Wait a minute, I thought you told me there weren't any unclosed cases."

"This is a little different. Bousquet was never reported to the police as missing, he was reported as a thief."

By his landlady, Madame Renouard, according to whom Bousquet had fled after removing from a secret drawer in her cupboard 60 francs in cash, an antique lapel watch valued at 180 francs, and a treasured cameo brooch; one of a pair that had belonged to her grandmother. He had also left with his rent four weeks in arrears, a matter of some 600 francs. The municipal police, under Prefect Marielle, had mounted an unsuccessful search for him, concluding after a week that he had permanently left the area, and there the matter had lain. A few months later there was a brief flurry of speculation that he might have returned; Madame Renouard, discovering that her grandmother's
other
cameo brooch was missing, was convinced that the rapacious Bousquet must have slunk back to complete the heist. But there was no other evidence to support this, and it had come to nothing. Bousquet, having disappeared once, was not seen again.