“He doesn’t, but I do.” Tony lay down on the floor and closed his eyes.

George peered into the hole again, shrugged, and went to the stairs. When he was out of sight Tony scrambled to his feet.

“Better you than me,” I muttered, as he slid into the pit and bent down, out of sight, below the lifted slab. For a while I could see only agitated but controlled movement as he worked. Then he poked his head out. He was in his shirt sleeves.

“Don’t look if you’d rattier not,” he said, eyeing me.

“Don’t be insulting,” I said, breathing slowly through my nose. “It was just the air down there that got me—made me dizzy for a minute.”

Tony lifted a dark bundle out of the hole and deposited it gently on the chapel floor. It was his jacket, rolled around something that bulged in peculiar places. Tony climbed out beside the bundle and started to open it. I spoke without premeditation.

“It isn’t—it isn’t the old count, is it?”

“No, he’s still resting peacefully in his coffin. At least I hope he is. This is a little something extra.”

He folded his jacket back. I braced myself, but there was no need. Disconnected and jumbled, the bones suggested an anthropological exhibit rather than a human being who had died in agony. But I knew I would not easily forget my first sight of the huddled shape, with its fleshless face turned up as if gasping for the air that had been denied it.

The skull was yellow but intact. A wisp of rusty hair hung over one side. There were other objects in the pile besides bones: bits of tarnished metal, a blackened silver ornament, some scraps of rotting cloth. And under a handful of ribs…

Then I heard footsteps echoing on the floor above and saw George appear at the top of the stairs, a featureless silhouette against the light. Blankenhagen followed him down.

“So you got it out,” George said.

“I felt better after you left,” Tony said blandly. “Grüss Gott, Doctor. Maybe you can tell us what to do with this.”

Blankenhagen knelt and began to finger the exhibits.

“He has been dead too long to profit from my services,” he said drily.

“He?” Tony’s nose quivered with curiosity.

“Definitely male. The occipital ridges…” Blankenhagen’s index finger pointed. “Also, the configuration of the pelvis is unmistakable.” He lost himself in professional meditation for a time. “Yes. A male of mature years, but probably under forty. The third molars are present, but not badly worn; the ilium and is-chium—”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Tony interrupted. “No way of telling how he died?”

“That would depend on where you found this.”

Blankenhagen lifted a dagger and balanced it on his palm. The blade was dark and rusted, the hilt elaborately carved.

“It was lying among the ribs.”