"I’ll tell them if you don’t want to," Gideon said.
Leon shook his head. "No, let me, please. Really, it isn’t the way you think it is-not exactly. You’ll see."
"All right. But I still have a few more questions-"
"One more favor?" Leon interrupted. "Can I answer them tonight? I promise I’ll be there, and I promise to answer everything. I give you my word. I just…I need to psych myself up. But right now, I…I mean I can hardly stand to hear myself talk."
Gideon felt much the same. "Okay, Leon," he said after a moment’s hesitation. "Tonight."
"Thank you. You won’t regret it. Would I be pushing my luck if I asked you not to tell anyone about it before then?"
"Why not?"
Leon shrugged, turning the brown ceramic fragments over and over. "I guess it just feels right for me to… to ’fess up on my own." He smiled weakly. "And right after the meeting I’ll go to the police station with you. Or tomorrow morning if they’re not open. Please."
For the third time Gideon hesitated, and for the third time he acquiesced, this time against what he knew to be his better judgment. He knew why he was doing it too. At the back of his mind was an image of Randy asking for his help on the misty hillside and Gideon stiffly putting him off-and a second image of Randy the next time he saw him, on the mortuary table. Irrational as it might be, Gideon found it hard to be adamant with Leon.
"All right," he said. "I’ll keep it between us. But only until seven p.m. If you’re not there right on the button, then I tell them.’
"Fair enough. But I’ll be there. And thanks."
At the door, Gideon stopped Leon by placing a hand on his sleeve. "Leon, there’s something I don’t understand."
Leon turned mutely toward him.
"Why a Polos wrapper, of all things? Didn’t it occur to you someone might connect it with you?"
Leon’s smile, if it could be called that, reminded Gideon of the stiffened rictus sometimes encountered on a corpse. "I never meant him to find the damn thing. It was an accident, can you believe it?"
"I still don’t understand."
Leon sighed. "Look, Randy and I spent a whole night up there, getting the skull in the ground just right, you know? Then the next afternoon we were going to check it out again just to make sure it looked all right-no footprints or trowel marks, that kind of thing. And then we were going to leave some junk around to catch Nate’s eye-an old pop bottle, a milk carton-"
"So why the Polos?"
Leon made an impatient little clicking noise with his teeth. "I told you-it was just an accident. I must have dropped the thing there while I was working on the skull. I would have found it the next day when I checked things over, but Nate found it first-absolutely by accident."
He laughed wonderingly. "Still, it added up to the same thing, didn’t it? Nate found the skull and went off the deep end. Everything went just the way it was supposed to, until…" His eyes, which had been fixed on the floor, rose to meet Gideon’s. "Ah," he said softly, "what the hell. I guess I’ve got it coming." His eyes remained locked on Gideon’s. "But I didn’t kill anyone."
As soon as he walked with Leon back out to the dig and then took Abe aside, Gideon regretted his promise.
"You want to have an all-hands meeting at seven o’clock, but the reason is a secret?" There was real surprise in the old man’s voice. "From me, it’s a secret?"
"Well, it’s just…"
Gideon glanced down in the pit at Leon, who, with a rake in his hands, was watching him anxiously, his face still pale.
"It’s just that I made a promise."
"To who did you make a promise?" Up went a peremptory hand. "Hup! Never mind. A secret is a secret. Excuse me I should ask."
"Come on, Abe," Gideon said miserably, "it’s a promise. Give me a break."
Both of Abe’s hands went up now, palms toward Gideon, and the frail shoulders shrugged. "Not another word. Why should your old teacher-who taught you everything, and who helps you on your cases all the time, and who’s supposed to be running this dig-know what’s going on?"
"Good," Gideon said more firmly. "I’m glad you feel that way. We’re liable to have a problem with Nate, by the way. He ought to be there, and he was pretty well soused when I left him an hour ago."
"Nate?"
"Yes, indeed. He’s sleeping it off, I think."
Abe made a decisive little nod. "When we’re finished here, I’ll go down and fix him up. I’ll make him take a guggle-muggle."
"Come again?"
"An old remedy. You mix whiskey, hot tea, molasses, and raw eggs, and swallow it in one gulp."
Gideon made a face. "It sounds terrible."
"That’s why you got to drink it in one gulp. You call it a guggle-muggle because that’s what it sounds like when it goes down: Guggle, muggle. Believe me, by seven o’clock he’ll be fine."
He walked a few steps to the pit and called for attention, his voice thin in the crisp air.
"Hold it a minute, please! We need to have a meeting tonight at seven o’clock. I hope it doesn’t interfere with anybody’s plans."
Only Sandra appeared annoyed. "How long will it be?"
Abe looked at Gideon, who said, "An hour; maybe more."
"No problems?" Abe asked the group, and waited. Sandra sighed gustily. The others were quiet. "Let’s meet at the Queen’s Armes, in that room next to the lounge, with all the sofas."
"The sitting room," Gideon said.
"Right, the sitting room. I’ll see there’s something to nosh on; a little coffee and some Danish."
Gideon started for the shed to do some pottery sorting, but had gone only a few steps when he remembered his promise to Julie. He turned around.
"I just remembered. I can’t make it at seven. How about eight?"
No one objected. Leon gave him a small, pallid nod. Only Abe spoke. "And why not at seven?"
"Because…well, it’s just hard for me."
"A secret?" Abe asked drily.
"No, not a secret," Gideon growled. "I just promised my wife I’d walk out with her to Dyne Meadow and, uh, watch the moon come up. At seven-oh-four."
Everyone seemed to look at him for a long time before Abe clapped his hands together. "Okay, folks," he said, "let’s get the backfilling all finished up. Leon, you look a little green around the gills. You’re all right?"
"I… I’m not sure."
Abe nodded knowingly. "The fish paste. You want to lie down? Maybe you should go home early?"
"No-yes, I think maybe that’d be a good idea."
"Go ahead; get some rest. You’ll be at the meeting tonight?"
"Definitely." Leon’s grayish lips stretched in a sickly smile. "I wouldn’t miss it."
By four o’clock the rest of the crew had also left, and Abe and Gideon locked up the gate and walked down the hill together, "Abe," Gideon said as they approached the bottom, "I’ve been thinking about that femur."
"I’ve been thinking too."
"In spite of everything else, Nate seems to have run a pretty professional dig. That means that what ever it was Leon found, it would have been photographed right away. There must be photographs of it. I think we ought to look through the whole photographic file-"
"This I already did," Abe said. "Nothing."
"Huh," Gideon said.
They walked across the wooden footbridge over the Char, their feet making homely, muffled thumping sounds. Abe stopped suddenly.
"Wait a minute. Tell me something. The boy that got killed-Randy-he was the technician, right? He took the photographs?"
"Right."
"So, tell me, Mr. Skeleton Detective: If the police were investigating his murder, wouldn’t they develop any film he had in his camera? In case it should give them a clue?"
"I don’t know."
"Of course they would. I read it all the time in detective books. Randy got killed when?"
"November thirteenth, probably."
"And Leon’s card got filled out November first. So the pictures were maybe still in the camera. I think you should give Inspector Bagshawe a telephone call."