Old Bones Read Online Free PDF Page B

worry about? He seems fine to me."
    "But he’s so—well, he’s like an old maid, and he’s not even thirty-five. I don’t suppose he’ll ever get married now. I don’t know if he even likes women. I’m not sure he
knows
about women."
    "Maybe not, but hell, he’s happier with those dusty old books than most men ever are with wives, and that’s what counts, isn’t it?"
    "Yes, of course," she said, unconvinced. "Still—" ;
    "Sophie, don’t worry about him." He pulled open the door for her. "You know, ol’ Ray reminds me of what my Uncle Bobby Will used to say about p’fessers…."
     
     
       WHEN Ray joined them almost an hour later there had still been no word from their host, and Sophie was beginning to worry. "It’s not like Guillaume—No, thank you, Marcel."
    Ray and Ben also turned down the coffee being wheeled around on a tray by the quiet, dark servant. As he had moved on to the Fougerays, whom Leona had icily rejoined but not yet favored with speech, the telephone on a side table near the door chirred softly. The servant stopped, bowed gravely to Claude, who was ignoring him, and went into the study to pick up an extension telephone.
    In a few moments he emerged, his demeanor for once shaken, his olive face gray. Something in the air made everyone stop talking and look at him. Marcel licked his lips and glanced uneasily around the room.
    "Well, what is it, for heaven’s sake?" Mathilde demanded.
    Marcel seemed grateful for the prompt. "It’s the police, madame. There seems to have been an accident at Mont St. Michel. Monsieur du Rocher has been, ah, drowned."
     
     
     

FOUR
     
     
       RAY steeled himself for a violent outburst of emotion at this news, but the reaction around the room was one of quiet disbelief. It was as if word had come of the death of a distant, godlike figure whose mortality was not heretofore assured. And so, he supposed, it had.
    Claude, as the nearest living relative, was asked by the police to go that afternoon to the mortuary at Pontorson, the little town separated by a mile-long causeway from Mont St. Michel, to identify the body. When it came out, however, that he had not seen Guillaume in over forty years, he and René went together, driven by a mournfully respectful
gardien de la paix
who called for them at the manoir.
    Everyone would stay on for a few days to attend the funeral. This caused some more-than-customary grumbling on the part of Beatrice Lupis, Marcel’s wife, a large woman with swollen ankles, who wore tent-like, dun-brown housedresses and was easily aggrieved. Her dissatisfaction over cooking and cleaning for the nine family members for several additional days contributed to an unpleasant scene with Claude Fougeray, whose muttered demand for
un pichet
of wine was met with a muttered response to the effect that he would just have to wait until she was good and ready, and that he had already had more wine than was good for him.
    Unfortunately for her, Madame Lupis’ penchant for instant irritation, impressive though it was, was no match for Claude’s, and his sudden explosion rattled the leaded windows of the salon. An imminent physical confrontation was headed off by Ben Butts, whose retelling of what his Uncle Willie Joe used to say about drinking wine ("Makes you feel fit as a fiddle when you’re tight as a drum"), while rendered senseless by translation, managed to muddle the situation long enough for Marcel to appear with the requested carafe.
    "I will see to it, monsieur," he said, his face as usual expressionless, "that there is a full
pichet
on the sideboard at all times for your pleasure."
    "And a glass," Claude said sullenly.
    "Of course. Monsieur enjoys red wine?"
    "Monsieur enjoys Château Haut-Brion," muttered Claude.
    "I’m sorry, monsieur—"
    "I know, Guillaume was too cheap to stock anything but crap." He snatched the carafe and retreated to his room, talking to himself as he climbed the stone steps.
    At dinner the same day,