"Go ahead.” Earlier, Abe had asked him not to smoke around the codex, but it was gone now, and the flammable celluloid-acetone fumes had been cleared away as well.
The inspector lit up with unusual thoroughness, taking two long pulls while he held the match to the end of the cigar. The first honest-to-God cloud of smoke Gideon had ever known to emerge from his mouth emerged. He waved the match out, put it in a little box, and slipped the box into a pocket of his guayabera.
"That,” he said quietly, “is not possible."
"No, it's true, all right."
"We have had two letters from Howard Bennett,” Marmolejo said patiently, “as you and your colleagues explained to me last night. One in 1982, one last week. Someone has just been murdered with what is almost certainly his revolver, the revolver he took with him five years ago. He was-"
"The fact that some letters were typed on his typewriter hardly proves he typed them.” As Julie had tried to tell them. “And just because a bullet came from his gun doesn't prove he pulled the trigger."
"Of course not, but-"
"And there hasn't been a reliable sighting of the man since this place caved in. Now we know why."
Marmolejo grunted, about a quarter convinced.
"Look, Inspector, there are a lot of indicators here. The size is right. So is the age; Howard was pushing fifty. The race, the big-boned build, those are right too. And then Howard was right-handed, as I remember.” He gestured at the skeleton. “So was this guy, apparently."
Marmolejo frowned at the hand bones and seized on a specific. “How do you know? The right hand is larger than the left?"
"As a matter of fact, no. There are ways to tell, but hand size isn't one of them. For now I'm just going by-"
"The watch,” Marmolejo said. “Obviously, it was on his left wrist. So you conclude that a person who wears a watch on his left wrist must be right-handed?” The cigar end glowed. This was the kind of reasoning he could have confidence in. “I would conclude the same thing."
"Right."
"But I would not trust my conclusion absolutely. There is no law that prohibits a left-handed person from wearing his watch on his left hand."
"Right again. It's a question of probability. But there are some shoulder-girdle measurements that should tell us about handedness for sure, and I'll do them tomorrow."
Marmolejo drew on his cigar and made an annoyed sound at finding that it was out again. A quarter of an inch shorter than it was before, it was rolled out of the way once more into the left corner of his mouth. “Now, look, Dr. Oliver, this is all very well, but it's hardly proof. You also are Caucasian, you also are large-boned and a little over six feet tall, I think. You also are righthanded, you also are the right age-"
"The right age?” Gideon protested. “I'm only forty-one. “
"Close enough,” Marmolejo decided for himself. “And with it all, does it prove that this is you lying here?"
"The age is wrong,” Gideon maintained, “and anyway, I haven't been missing since this place fell in. And…well, there is one other thing."
Marmolejo grinned toothily at him, as if he'd known all along that Gideon was eventually going to pull a three-foot rabbit out of the hat.
As indeed he was. But he wasn't showboating, as the inspector thought; he was following the lessons of past experience. When you're going to present something to a policeman that requires more disposition to believe than he's shown so far, it's best to lead gradually up to it, to ready him for it step by progressive step, before hitting him with the clincher. He hoped Marmolejo was prepared.
"Did you know that Howard was a woodwind player?” he asked.
If he was surprised by the question, the policeman's dark face didn't show it. “No, I didn't know."
"He did, expertly. He used to play jazz clarinet with a group in a Merida nightclub every Saturday."
"Ah. And the fact that Dr. Bennett played a woodwind, this is in some way relevant?"
"Very. This guy"-Gideon indicated the crushed skeleton-"did too. For years."
Marmolejo's mouth opened slightly with a faint popping noise. Fortunately the cigar stub remained pasted to his lower lip.
"And if you put it all together,” Gideon continued, “I don't think it leaves a lot of room for coincidence. We've got a white male here, around fifty, righthanded, about six-one, who's played woodwind for ten years at least…all of which also happens to fit Howard Bennett perfectly. And since Howard was last seen right here, at just about the time this skeleton was deposited, I don't think there's much doubt-"
Marmolejo found his voice. "How do you know he played the clarinet?” It wasn't quite a squeak, but it was as close as he was likely to come.
Gideon made it simple. The tubercles, of course. The other time he'd come across them, as he'd finally remembered, it had been during an examination of the scant remains of a firebombing victim in Pittsburgh. The man, a clarinetist with the Pittsburgh Symphony, had been tentatively identified by the police before Gideon was shown the bones, and Gideon, knowing nothing about him, had wowed the homicide detective in charge by casually asking what woodwind instrument he'd played.
But, really, it hadn't been a wildly difficult deduction once it occurred to him that the frequent, strong thrusting forward of the lower jaw might be connected to something other than eating. Playing a woodwind, for example. Perhaps there were also other possible causes for the tubercles, but he had yet to find one.
Marmolejo took this with better grace and more credulity than Gideon had expected. “All right,” he conceded, “who am I to argue with the Skeleton Detective?” He made a clicking sound, tongue against teeth. “But where are our fine theories now? Who killed Ard, if Dr. Bennett didn't? Who attacked you?” He paused and laid his hand on Gideon's arm. “I don't want anyone on the crew to know this. Let them think we still believe it's Avelino Canul."
"That makes sense."
"And I'm afraid it would be inadvisable for anyone to leave after all,” Marmolejo added to himself. “Mr. Partridge's permission will have to be revoked. I hope he's not too disturbed about it."
Worthy would never trust another small person, Gideon thought.
Marmolejo stood for a while, peering down at the earth-stained skull. “Howard Bennett,” he said quietly. “Here all this time with his precious codex, killed trying to remove it by a cave-in he himself caused. I think the gods, of Tlaloc must be laughing."
"Oh, I'm sure they're laughing,” Gideon said, then pulled his last rabbit out of the hat. “But it wasn't the cave-in that killed him. He was already dead when the roof came down."
Marmolejo turned slowly to Gideon. “Murdered?"
"Murdered."
"How could you tell?” Julie asked. “Was he shot? With that Smith amp; Wesson?"
"No,” Gideon said, “clubbed. Probably with the sledgehammer. The left side of his head was knocked in."
"But all that rubble caved in on him. How do you know that isn't what did it?"
"Because he was on his left side, and the damage to the rest of his body shows the debris landed on his right side. In other words, he was already lying there, in that position, when it hit."
"Oh.” She pulled the toothpick from a quarter of the chicken-salad sandwich before her and thoughtfully sucked the pickled onion from it.
They were on their balcony. Neither of them had been particularly hungry when he had gotten back from the site, and they had had sandwiches and milk sent up. Abe and the rest of the crew were in the restaurant, celebrating the finding of the codex with a champagne dinner insisted on and paid for by Dr. Villanueva, who had arrived at the Chichen Itza airstrip with several other Institute officials about an hour earlier. In the morning there would be a group breakfast, with speeches and congratulations, and then the codex would be borne in pomp to Mexico City for years of study and an eventual place of honor in the Museum of Anthropology.