Free Murder in the Queen's Armes by Aaron Elkins

perhaps the least bit thin."
    Gideon doubted that he could taste anything at all. The cigarette in his other hand was his third one.
    "But," Robyn went on at his own leisurely pace, "how can we ignore the bizarre nature of his recent statements?…Well, you saw what was attributed to him in the newspaper. There are, I assure you, other even more outrageous and offensive examples." He crossed one leg over the other, first arranging an already impeccable trouser crease. "Nevertheless, I think I can speak for both of us in saying we would consider our mission successful if the man would simply give us his promise to restrain his outbursts and stick to the business of pursuing the excavation—which I must admit he does very well. Wouldn’t you agree with all that, Arbuckle?"
    "What?" Arbuckle asked with a start. He had been staring into the flames. "Sorry, I guess I was thinking about my own dig."
    Gideon smiled. When Paul was involved in research, his one-track mind never strayed very far from it.
    "Got something interesting going in France?" Gideon asked.
    "I do. I sure do." He thrust his stocky body forward, twisting his glass in stubby fingers. All at once, he was more alert, more alive, "It’s in Burgundy, near Dijon— Gideon, it’s been fluorine-dated at 220,000 b.c.—Middle Pleistocene! Just think, it’s as old as Swanscombe or Stein-hem! We’ve got Acheulian handaxes, cleavers… What are you laughing at?"
    "You," Gideon said, "It’s the first time this afternoon I’ve seen you really come alive. Poor Paul; there you are in the middle of a great dig, with the chance to learn something about the earliest Homo sapiens, and you have to break it off to get involved in a minor squabble over the Bronze Age."
    "Really," Robyn murmured in the manner of an actor delivering an aside, "I’d hardly call it a minor squabble."
    Arbuckle looked at Gideon, but it was hard to tell what he was thinking. The firelight bouncing opaquely off his thick glasses made his never-too-mobile face look more wooden than ever. Finally he laughed, something he didn’t do often.
    "You’re right. Who cares about the Bronze Age? All I want to do is get this thing over with and get back to Dijon. And don’t tell me you wouldn’t feel just the same."
    "I would," Gideon said, meaning it.
    "Now, see here," said Robyn. "I feel I must stand up on behalf of the Bronze Age. For myself, I’d rather deal with jeweled daggers and filigreed breastplates, and pendants of Baltic amber—all neatly tucked away for me in barrows—than go grubbing in muddy riverbeds for vulgar rock choppers and gnawed elephant bones left by coarse and unhygienic man-apes."
    Gideon was about to reply when he heard the front door of the hotel open and close, and then the welcome sound of Julie’s footsteps in the entry hall. (When had he learned to recognize them?) He half rose, but Robyn was even quicker, springing lightly to his feet.
    "Ah, my dear Mrs. Oliver," he said, oozing urbanity, "you are indeed a welcome sight. We’ve been discussing the most dreary sorts of things for far too long. Now I’d like to propose that you and Professor Oliver join us for dinner. I know a perfectly delightful old coaching inn at Honiton."
    He smiled engagingly, the lines around his eyes folding into a fan of handsome crinkles. "I won’t take no for an answer."
     
     
     

SIX
     
     
       THE restaurant was as charming as Robyn had promised, and they finished two bottles of wine, so the four of them passed a reasonably pleasant evening, during which the subject of Stonebarrow Fell never arose. Robyn was witty and gallant, and Paul made polite, vague conversation. He even managed to come out of his shell in his own blinking, resolute fashion when Robyn said that since the inquiry wasn’t until Thursday, why didn’t he and Arbuckle motor to Swanscombe the next day and have a look at the famous site where England’s oldest human remains had been discovered fifty years before?
    When