these policemen. Touchy too.
"Any ideas who it could be?" John asked as the car swung onto the N137 and the city buildings began to thin out. "Unclosed homicides? Missing persons?"
"We’re making inquiries of the local prefect of police," Joly said, "but you have to remember this is an old house, built in the fifteenth century. The bones may have been there for hundreds of years. Besides, well…"
"Besides?" Gideon prompted.
"Well, whenever something like this turns up, there’s always the Occupation to consider. You know, there was a lot of Resistance activity in Brittany. And the village of Ploujean was the scene of a mass execution in 1942. That sort of thing—It makes for very strong emotions."
"I’d expect so," Gideon murmured.
"No, not just against the Germans. I mean villager against villager.‘If you and your brothers hadn’t blown up that SS motorcycle, my mother and father wouldn’t have been shot.’ That sort of thing. And—I’ll be frank—there
were collaborationists as well as Resistance heroes. There were a lot of unsolved deaths; a lot of mysterious disappearances at that time."
"And that’s what you think the bones are?" John asked. "A wartime murder?"
Joly extended his lips and shrugged, looking very French. "Who knows? We haven’t even seen them. But that would be my first guess, and if it’s right, it may be that you won’t see the OPJ at its vigorous and unflagging best. I suspect we’ll resolve the matter in the quietest way possible, bury these bones again, and leave them in peace."
John was shocked. "But it’s a murder! You don’t have a statute of limitations on
murder,
do you?"
"It isn’t that, my friend," Joly said. "After the war there was a terrible time of retribution. I was no more than ten, but I remember the killings, the trials, the parading of people naked through the streets, the spitting… Ah, my God, once—"
But that was as close to revealing his emotions, Gideon realized, as Inspector Joly was likely to come. He closed his mouth, then went on more impassively. "Well, it’s been almost fifty years now. The old wounds are closed. No one wants to open them again." He smiled thinly. "And our good German friends fill our hotels as paying guests."
They sat in silence as the Breton coast’s wide sky and low dunes gave way to the rolling hills of the Rance estuary, and then to the somber heaths and dark little forests of the interior. At an intersection with a narrow, graveled road, a primitive wooden sign with the word "Ploujean" pointed left. Joly turned, and in two or three miles they came to a metal plaque at the entrace to a still narrower road lined with old plane trees:
"Manoir de Rochebonne, XV ème Siècle, 1000 m. à Droite."
"You’re kidding!" Gideon exclaimed. "Is that where we’re going? Rochebonne?"
"You know it?" Joly said, surprised.
He did indeed. A couple of years before, while he was still teaching at Northern California State, he’d spent most of the summer working on an Upper Paleolithic dig in the Dordogne, near Les Eyzies. At the invitation of Ray Schaefer from the Comparative Lit Department, who was passing the summer "on the family
domaine,
" he’d driven up to Brittany to join him for the weekend. He’d gone somewhat reluctantly (he was rarely comfortable staying at other people’s homes, and the picture Ray had drawn of his Uncle Guillaume was highly forbidding), but to his surprise it had been a relaxing and stimulating two days.
The elegant old building, deserted except for the three of them and two servants, had been a great place to loll around in after the dusty cave site in the south. Ray had been his shy, likable self, and Guillaume du Rocher, once his aloof and frigid shell had been cracked, had turned out to be fine company.
Unlike many shell collectors, he was a well-read student of marine biology and biology in general, and over dinner the second night he and Gideon had had a table-thumping, highly entertaining
"Any ideas who it could be?" John asked as the car swung onto the N137 and the city buildings began to thin out. "Unclosed homicides? Missing persons?"
"We’re making inquiries of the local prefect of police," Joly said, "but you have to remember this is an old house, built in the fifteenth century. The bones may have been there for hundreds of years. Besides, well…"
"Besides?" Gideon prompted.
"Well, whenever something like this turns up, there’s always the Occupation to consider. You know, there was a lot of Resistance activity in Brittany. And the village of Ploujean was the scene of a mass execution in 1942. That sort of thing—It makes for very strong emotions."
"I’d expect so," Gideon murmured.
"No, not just against the Germans. I mean villager against villager.‘If you and your brothers hadn’t blown up that SS motorcycle, my mother and father wouldn’t have been shot.’ That sort of thing. And—I’ll be frank—there
were collaborationists as well as Resistance heroes. There were a lot of unsolved deaths; a lot of mysterious disappearances at that time."
"And that’s what you think the bones are?" John asked. "A wartime murder?"
Joly extended his lips and shrugged, looking very French. "Who knows? We haven’t even seen them. But that would be my first guess, and if it’s right, it may be that you won’t see the OPJ at its vigorous and unflagging best. I suspect we’ll resolve the matter in the quietest way possible, bury these bones again, and leave them in peace."
John was shocked. "But it’s a murder! You don’t have a statute of limitations on
murder,
do you?"
"It isn’t that, my friend," Joly said. "After the war there was a terrible time of retribution. I was no more than ten, but I remember the killings, the trials, the parading of people naked through the streets, the spitting… Ah, my God, once—"
But that was as close to revealing his emotions, Gideon realized, as Inspector Joly was likely to come. He closed his mouth, then went on more impassively. "Well, it’s been almost fifty years now. The old wounds are closed. No one wants to open them again." He smiled thinly. "And our good German friends fill our hotels as paying guests."
They sat in silence as the Breton coast’s wide sky and low dunes gave way to the rolling hills of the Rance estuary, and then to the somber heaths and dark little forests of the interior. At an intersection with a narrow, graveled road, a primitive wooden sign with the word "Ploujean" pointed left. Joly turned, and in two or three miles they came to a metal plaque at the entrace to a still narrower road lined with old plane trees:
"Manoir de Rochebonne, XV ème Siècle, 1000 m. à Droite."
"You’re kidding!" Gideon exclaimed. "Is that where we’re going? Rochebonne?"
"You know it?" Joly said, surprised.
He did indeed. A couple of years before, while he was still teaching at Northern California State, he’d spent most of the summer working on an Upper Paleolithic dig in the Dordogne, near Les Eyzies. At the invitation of Ray Schaefer from the Comparative Lit Department, who was passing the summer "on the family
domaine,
" he’d driven up to Brittany to join him for the weekend. He’d gone somewhat reluctantly (he was rarely comfortable staying at other people’s homes, and the picture Ray had drawn of his Uncle Guillaume was highly forbidding), but to his surprise it had been a relaxing and stimulating two days.
The elegant old building, deserted except for the three of them and two servants, had been a great place to loll around in after the dusty cave site in the south. Ray had been his shy, likable self, and Guillaume du Rocher, once his aloof and frigid shell had been cracked, had turned out to be fine company.
Unlike many shell collectors, he was a well-read student of marine biology and biology in general, and over dinner the second night he and Gideon had had a table-thumping, highly entertaining
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