There was a pause. Gideon could picture him, head tipped back, lower lip extended, while he watched the smoke curl slowly upward from his mouth. "Why don’t we just say it focuses interest on those who were here?" Joly said. "Mathilde and Rene du Rocher, Marcel, Sophie-all of whom had ample reason to detest Claude. And then there’s Beatrice, Marcel’s wife; I wonder if she was in the area in 1942. You wouldn’t have any idea, would you?" he added dryly. "You seem to have a way of knowing these things."
"Not a glimmer," Gideon said, laughing.
"Well then, I suppose I shall have to find out for myself. Oh, finally-I understand you turned in a small package to the police in St. Malo this morning."
"Package?" He’d been hoping it wouldn’t get back to Joly. "Oh, yes, that. Well, the thing is I’d just been talking to this commissaire about-well, anyway, I left it with them. Just in case, you know."
"Yes, it’s a good idea to be careful. The bomb squad spent a good part of their afternoon processing it."
"They did?" Gideon laughed sheepishly. "All right, let’s hear it: What was in it?"
Joly emitted one of his quiet, mournful sighs. "A bomb," he said.
"Who the hell would want to kill you?" John asked, leaning back in the one armchair. He had brought a bottle of armagnac for nightcaps, but it stood unopened on the table.
"That’s what you said this morning," Gideon replied, standing at the window. As in many small French hotels, the Terminus’ inside rooms overlooked a small garden that was used in the summer as a breakfast area. "When you said I was paranoid," he added gloomily, looking down on the dimly illuminated tangle of winter-sodden plants yet to undergo their spring cleanup.
" You said you were paranoid. I just agreed with you."
"Well, we were both wrong. Someone’s really trying to get me." He laughed suddenly, dropped backwards onto the bed, and clasped his hands behind his neck, leaning against the covered bolster that took the place of pillows during the day. "All things considered, I’d rather be paranoid. You’re right," he added with feeling. "Letter-bombs suck."
"Yeah. What’d Joly think?"
"The same thing, I guess, but he didn’t put it in those words."
"Funny. I mean what’d he think it was all about?"
"He thinks somebody at the manoir doesn’t want me to find out something about the bones. The Marseilles postmark doesn’t mean anything except that it’s a good place to get that kind of thing done. He says if you know the right people, for two hundred dollars and a phone call somebody will make a bomb and mail it anywhere you want. You don’t know the guy who does it, and he doesn’t know you or the person he sends it to. Next to impossible to trace."
"Do you know what kind of bomb it was?"
"He called it an IRA special."
John grimaced. "Too bad; that won’t be any help. It’s the simplest kind there is. A kid can make one. A little package of commercial explosive, a plain detonator, and a needle. When you open the letter, it jabs the needle into the detonator and blooey. Sometimes. Half the time it doesn’t work."
"I’m glad to hear it."
It was odd; this morning when they’d just been guessing about the bomb, and more or less playfully at that, the idea had shaken him, even if he’d felt foolish about it. But now that he knew for sure that someone was actually trying to blow him up, he was more angry than anything else. One of the simpler pleasures of life-opening an unexpected package-was never going to be quite so simple or pleasurable again. And he was angry because it was almost certainly someone with whom he’d recently been chatting so affably at the manoir who had skulked to a telephone and done it, long-distance. It was so damned… unsporting.
"So what could somebody be afraid you’d find out?" John asked. "For instance."
"What I did find out. That Alain du Rocher’s buried in the cellar. That no matter what that plaque says, and the prefect of police says, and anybody else says, Alain’s body was buried-hidden-under the floor of the old family home."
"Let me get this straight. You think he wasn’t executed by the Nazis? You think somebody’s trying to cover up a murder in the family? How could that be? How could everybody have the facts wrong?"
Gideon rocked his head slowly back and forth against the bolster, gazing absently at the ceiling. "It beats me, but everybody is wrong. Alain’s in that cellar, not in some mass grave."
"Maybe they got the body back form the Nazis-to bury it decently, you know?"
"And chopped it into pieces and wrapped it up in butcher paper like so many veal cutlets?"
"No, I guess not." John was silent for a few moments. His chair, tilted onto its rear legs, tap-tapped softly against the wall. "But look: Realistically, why should anybody expect you to find out it’s Alain? I mean, who’d even know he had a sternal foramen?"
Gideon laughed. "Don’t you remember? I spent half an hour in the salon the other night-while you were gobbling up hors d’oeuvres-explaining what I was doing to anybody who’d listen; how I was sure the body wasn’t Kassel’s, how it was built like a du Rocher, how I could find out all kinds of things about it, and on and on."
"Oh, Christ, that’s right. Smart, Doc."
"Brilliant."
"Is Joly giving you police protection?"
"No, I’m just supposed to exercise reasonable prudence, was the way he put it. He said the kind of guy who’d send me a letter-bomb probably isn’t the kind of guy who’d take a shot at me in the street, or try to run me down with a car, or anything like that-"
"That’s true, he probably isn’t. But you know, he’s sure as hell the kind of guy who’d put cyanide in somebody’s wine, isn’t he?"
"I suppose he is. Or she." Gideon stretched and raised himself from the bed. There was a tightness at his temples and a throbbing at the base of his skull. He got headaches so infrequently that it took him a moment to realize what it was. Maybe he was shaken. Or maybe he was hungry.
"I think I’ll go get something to eat. I missed dinner. How about you?"
"Me?" John said, his surprised laugh indicating how ridiculous the idea was. "No, I had a steak a couple of hours ago." He tipped his chair forward and stood up. "I’ll keep you company though."
"That’s all right. I wouldn’t mind a walk in the fresh air to think things through."
John looked directly into his eyes. "Doc, let’s get something straight right now. The conference is over in just a couple more days, and we go home. Until then I’d be a lot more comfortable if you didn’t go anywhere without me. Nowhere. Okay?"
"John," Gideon said, bridling, "Joly said reasonable prudence, not-"
"Yeah, but I know you; you’re not reasonably prudent. You start poking around-"
"Goddammit, I don’t-"
"Look, will you just give me a break?" He chopped at the air, his voice rising. "Just humor me for once?"
For no reason he could think of, Gideon burst out laughing. "All right," he said tiredly, "I’ll give you a break." He clasped John’s arm briefly. "Thanks."
He pulled his windbreaker from the open coat rack near the door and tossed John his. "So I guess you’ll be coming to Mont St. Michel with me tomorrow after the session."
"What’s at Mont St. Michel?"
"The Romanesque-Gothic abbey. One of the wonders of the Western world. I wouldn’t want to leave without seeing it."
"Yeah, it also happens to be where Guillaume drowned, right?"
"Well, yes. I might like to have a look at the tidal plain too, out of curiosity."
"I’m coming, all right," John said. "Don’t look so glum. There’s a famous restaurant there.
Mere Poularde. One of the shrines of French gastronomy." John made a face. "Pancakes again?"
"Omelets."
"You know the first thing I’m going to do when we get back to the States?" John asked, slipping into his jacket.
"Buy a hamburger."
"Damn right."