"But wait a minute now. Didn’t you tell me that Jack Frawley said that Randy said…whew, I’m getting mixed up… that Randy told him that Nate had planted the skull himself?"
"That’s what he said, all right, and you’re not the only one who’s confused." Gideon pushed his chair back from the table. "I think I ought to go back up the hill and talk with a few people, starting with Leon."
"And leave me," Julie said, her voice rising, "with this"- she pointed at the rhythmically oinking archaeologist-"this body? "
"No, I’ll get him back to his place first. You stay and finish your Guinness. See you later, honey." He tapped Nate on the arm. "Ready?"
"Hoo," Nate said, "I feel lousy."
With Gideon’s considerable help, he got to his feet and managed a reasonably steady gait to the door. Once in the street, the fresh air seemed to revive him a little, and they proceeded in stately silence to the Cormorant, a graciously moldering old inn with some elderly potted plants on the sidewalk in front and a proprietorial ale sign swinging gently over the entrance. Courage, it said, as if offering solace or guidance.
Unlocking the door to Nate’s room presented certain difficulties, inasmuch as Nate insisted on doing it himself, but finally it was accomplished, and he looked gravely across the threshold at Gideon.
"Who… whom…you think murdered Randy?"
"It beats me, Nate."
"Me, too. You b’lieve I did it?"
"No."
Nate nodded with satisfaction and beckoned Gideon closer with a crooked finger. "Me neither," he whispered. Then he burped, yawned, and gently closed the door.
SEVENTEEN
It was apparent that Leon sensed something was wrong the moment Gideon told him he wanted to speak with him. Quietly, he stepped away from the group at the dig and trailed Gideon to the workroom with the anxious air of an eight-year-old following his father out to the woodshed.
"I want to ask you something about the Poundbury skull," Gideon said as soon as they sat down at the table, "and I think you’d better consider very carefully before you answer it."
Leon’s hand darted to his short golden beard, tugging at it under his chin. "The P-P-Poundbury skull?"
Gideon was finally onto something real. It was the first time he’d seen Leon genuinely ruffled. "Did you take the Poundbury calvarium from the Dorchester Museum," he said, sounding to himself very much like Inspector Bagshawe at his most orotund, "bury it here at Stonebarrow Fell, and then lead Nate to it?"
"Lead him to it? What do you m-mean, lead him to it?"
Gideon took the roll of Polos from his jacket pocket and slapped it onto the table. Leon’s left eyelid twitched and then began to quiver, and the color drained from his face as suddenly as if someone had pulled a plug. A muscle leaped at the side of his throat. It was extremely quiet in the shed. The metal walls creaked gently, expanding in the afternoon sunlight. Someone had been gluing pottery not long ago, and the air was sharp with acetone.
"Yes," Leon said, so faintly that the whispered, sibilant s was all that could be heard.
Gideon was surprised. He didn’t quite know what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t a flat admission.
"To make Nate look bad?" he asked quietly. "To get him out of your hair?"
"Yes," Leon said again, more audibly this time. His eyelid still trembled slightly, and now it drooped stubbornly halfway over the eye. He tilted his head slightly back to look out from under it. "W-what are you going to do?"
"Leon, there’s only one thing to do. Everyone concerned in this has to be told."
Leon lunged forward in his chair, his clenched fists coming down hard on the table. "Gideon, please! I n-n-never meant to go this far-I’m begging you…!"
"It’s got to be done, Leon."
"But what w-will happen to me?"
"I don’t know. When we’re done here, I’m going to go down and see Nate. I want him to know first, and we’ll see where he wants to take it from there." Assuming, of course, that he was sober enough to make any sense of it.
Leon dropped his head and massaged his eyes hard. "Oh, God," he whispered, "I can’t believe this is happening."
Paradoxically, Gideon was sorry for this intelligent, articulate, advantaged young man, now reduced to twitching and stuttering, who had cold-bloodedly and deceitfully tried to ruin his gullible professor. Nate’s career, it now seemed, might be salvaged, but Leon, with all his bright promise, was through in anthropology. An episode like this would never be forgiven. Nor should it, Gideon reminded himself sternly.
"Who else was in on this?" he asked on a hunch. Professor Hall-Waddington had mentioned an American student "slouching about" Pummy’s case, and that didn’t sound like the quick, graceful Leon.
"What?" Leon asked dully, his face still pale, his eyelid still drooping.
"Was anyone else involved?"
Leon sighed again. "Uh… no."
"I understand the ‘no.’ What does the ‘uh’ mean?"
Leon said nothing.
"Come on, Leon. Who else?"
Leon finally had his eyelid under control. "Randy Alexander," he said, not looking at Gideon.
Randy. Gideon didn’t know if he was surprised or not, or if it made sense or not. On the whole, he thought it did. If nothing else, it forged that missing link, that connection Abe had foreseen, between the Poundbury affair and the murder. But beyond that, Gideon was almost as much in the dark as ever. Just what was the connection? Had Randy been killed because he’d threatened to expose the hoax? Had he in fact threatened to expose it? Had he gotten cold feet, and then tried to lie his way out of it before he got into trouble, first with Frawley and then with Gideon?
Gideon made a slight head-shaking motion. The more he found out, the less clear-if that were possible- everything became. "Why was Randy in on it?" he asked. "The same reason you were?"
"Randy? No, he just did it for a lark, for the fun of it. I talked him into it. It was easy."
That fit in with what Gideon knew about Randy. "Leon," he said, "this throws a new light on Randy’s murder."
"His murder! I don’t-you don’t th-th-think I had anything to do with that? Jesus…" His voice petered out in a plaintive squeak.
"I’m not sure. Did you?"
"No!" Leon said. "I swear! I’m telling you the truth. How can y-y-y-you th-th-th…" In his frustration, he hammered on the table with his fist. This was no simple, frightened stammer, Gideon saw, but a profound speech impediment, hidden before, but now surfacing under pressure.
"All right, Leon, all right, but there’s a connection; I’m sure of that. Whether you know what it is I don’t know."
"I don’t. You’ve got to buh-buh-believe me!"
"Okay, calm down. That’s up to the inspector to look into, anyway."
"You have to tell him about it?"
"You better believe it."
Leon twisted restlessly in his chair, then jumped up and walked to the other end of the table, picking up a couple of as-yet-unglued pottery shards and aimlessly pressing them together while he stared out the window. Gideon could see he was trying to pull himself together as well, and he let him take his time. Leon’s surprising collapse into stuttering panic had unnerved Gideon, had made him feel unaccustomedly mean.
After a long time Leon spoke in a subdued, calm voice. "I’d like to be the one Nate hears it from."
Gideon hesitated, but the idea appealed to his sense of justice, or possibly of poetic justice. "All right. But I want to be there."
"Can I do it tomorrow morning?"
"No, I think it had better be today. This evening," he amended. That would give Nate a chance to sober up. "And the others are going to have to be told too. We’ll call a meeting after dinner, say seven o’clock, and get Nate there. You can tell everyone at once."
With his back still to Gideon, he nodded stiffly. "God!" he said with muffled fervor.