Gideon admired the inspector’s patience. For himself, he was ready to kick the oleaginously reluctant Frawley in the shins if this went on much longer. "For Christ’s sake, Jack," he said.
Frawley started. "Okay. All right." But still he couldn’t get himself going. He put his unlit pipe in his mouth and frowned in thought, going puh, puh, puh softly around the pipe stem with moist lips. Bagshawe smiled encouragingly at him. Gideon looked impatiently out to sea.
"I think you can already guess what he told me," Frawley said, his eyes on his shoes. "He told me that the skull Nate was so excited about was a fake; somehow he’d found out that Nate himself had stolen it from Dorchester and secretly buried it here. He wanted me to stop Nate before he actually dug it out and announced it."
"And why," Bagshawe asked, all policeman again, "didn’t you tell us this before?"
Frawley pursed his lips and made the pecking, chinthursting motion that some men make when their collars are too tight, although his own sat loosely on his neck. "In all frankness, I was afraid that you’d jump to the conclusion that Nate had killed Randy to protect himself. And I didn’t want that to happen."
Gideon cut in. "If you knew Nate had planted the skull, why didn’t you stop him before he dug it up with all that fanfare?"
The question seemed to catch Frawley by surprise. "Why? Why didn’t I stop him? Well… speaking candidly…it wasn’t my place… I’m only…and how could I be sure Randy was telling the truth? Maybe he was lying."
"Wouldn’t that be all the more reason to go to Nate, or just to check it out yourself?"
"And why, Professor," asked Bagshawe, "did you not go to the authorities?"
"Authorities?" Frawley’s eyes were beginning to take on a hunted look.
"The Horizon Foundation, the Wessex Antiquarian Society… the police?"
"Well, gosh, I hope you fellows don’t think I’m some sort of criminal." He managed a gummy little giggle. "I was just trying to do my job. There are times," he said sanctimoniously, "when fidelity outweighs adherence to scientific research. Nate is my…my superior, and I believe I owe him my support and my loyalty."
And may no one ever be that loyal to me, Gideon thought, or that supportive.
"No, Professor," Bagshawe tolled, "I don’t think that’s the way it was."
"I beg your pardon?" Frawley said.
"Shall I tell you how I think it was?"
Frawley looked mutely at him and licked his lips. His cheeks glistened unhealthily.
"I think," the inspector said at his slowest, "that when you heard that Professor Marcus planned a hoax, you were only too delighted with the news, and the last thing you wanted to do was to stop him. You wanted him to bring off this dirty great fraud of his."
Frawley made incredulous noises.
"If you had stopped him in time," Bagshawe continued, "it would have been no more than an embarrassment, with no one the wiser, except for you, him, and the young man. All in the family, you might say. But
…if he was allowed to bring it off-and was then exposed-ah, then there would be hell to pay. His career would be finished. As indeed it is-as indeed you wanted."
"Wanted? That’s ridiculous! Why would I want such a thing?"
"Jealousy. Envy."
"Me jealous of Nate? " From somewhere he summoned a sort of soggy dignity. "I don’t think I should have to stand for this."
"Jack," Gideon said, "are you the one who gave Ralph Chantry his information?"
"What?" Frawley stared at him with convincing blankness. "Who?"
Barely pausing for this uninformative exchange, Bagshawe continued in his inexorable way. "I’ve looked into things, Professor Frawley, and I know that Professor Marcus was made head of a department of which you are the senior and eldest member. I know that he, a much younger man, was made a full professor while you remained an associate. I know that you advised in faculty council against his hiring."
Shielding his eyes against the sun, Frawley looked up at the massive policeman. "What has that got to do with anything? Just who do you think you are?"
Bagshawe went on remorselessly. "Now then, I ask myself: Might there not be another reason why you haven’t told us this before? And why, when you finally did tell us, you so carefully implied that Professor Marcus might be not only a hoaxer but a murderer as well?"
"I don’t know what you’re talking about," Frawley practically squeaked. "Why don’t you say what you mean?"
"I’m talking about the fact," Bagshawe intoned, "that by so very indirectly accusing Professor Marcus you were hoping that we would overlook your own motive for killing Mr. Alexander." His voice was like the doomful knell of justice. In it Gideon could hear the clank of chains, the bleak, muffled kerchunk of iron dungeon doors slammed home.
Frawley heard them, too. This time he did squeak. "Me? Why would I want to kill Randy?"
"Will you deny that Mr. Alexander, who liked his little joke, played one on you? Did he not once convince a group of equally playful Indians in Missouri to tell you that they were soon to hold a once-every-hundred-years secret dance during which they would dig up a sacred vulture egg that had been buried at the last ceremony? And to solemnly inform you that you were the only anthropologist they trusted enough to be present?"
"Christ," Gideon said. "And you bought it, Jack?"
Frawley made a motion with his head that was part denial, part assent, part frustration.
"He not only bought it," Bagshawe said, "he presented a paper on it to the Eastern Missouri Anthropological Society and was thereby made-so my informants advise me- an object of some ridicule."
Gideon felt a wave of compassion for the visibly sagging Frawley. That kind of joke was every anthropologist’s nightmare, and if Randy was in the habit of playing merry little pranks like that, it was a wonder he’d lived as long as he had.
"All right, Inspector, you’re right," Frawley said, seeming to drag the words out of himself. "I was jealous of Nate. I’ve behaved like a fool-but I didn’t kill Randy! As God is my witness, I never thought in my wildest dreams that Nate… that anybody…would murder Randy." As if he didn’t already look sufficiently abject, Frawley had taken off his hat and was crushing it in both hands. "I’ll try to make amends. Please believe me when I say you’ll have my complete cooperation in any way you want."
Bagshawe sucked his teeth and studied him. "I think it goes without saying, Professor Frawley, that I’d take a very dim view of it if you attempted to leave the vicinity of Charmouth without my permission."
"Yes, of course, Inspector. I wouldn’t think of it. I want to do everything I can to help solve this terrible tragedy."
Gideon felt like going away and washing his hands somewhere, but he asked another question. "Jack, before you go-we’ve found a discrepancy in the excavation records from November one. There’s a find card on a partial human femur, but it was never entered in the field catalog."
Frawley looked uncomprehendingly at him. "What?"
"You make the entries in the field catalog, don’t you?"
"Yes, every night; sometimes the next morning. A femur, did you say? That’s impossible. We’ve never found a human bone-not until Poundbury Man. We thought we had some ribs, but you straightened us out on that."
"You’re positive?"
"Of course I’m positive. I’d know about it if we had, wouldn’t I? No, we never found one. Ask anybody."
Gideon remembered the scrawled signature in the lower right-hand corner of the card: Leon Hillyer. He would indeed ask somebody.
GIDEON and Bagshawe remained near the edge of the cliff, looking out toward the water. The sea was a flat, summery blue, and a white, picture-book passenger liner steamed eastward from Plymouth, riding the horizon toward France.
Bagshawe took out his pipe and lit it with a wooden match, using his wide body to block the breeze. Then he sat down on a chair-high boulder, first arranging the skirts of his coat like the tails of a cutaway.