The Crowded Grave

campaigns.”
    Annette stopped in her tracks, her expression horrified and her voice suddenly shrill. “You searched her private computer?”
    “No, I looked at the public computer she used in the tourist center,” said Bruno equably. “She hadn’t cleared the cache. No privacy was breached, and the computer is owned by St. Denis, so I have every right to consult it.”
    Annette nodded, but still looked troubled. Then she looked at him challengingly. “But if you have a case against somebody, why give them a warning like that? It’s not as though you share their sympathies about animal rights. And I should let you know that I do, and if there are any cases of wanton cruelty to animals, there are statutes against it that I would want to enforce.”
    They were walking side by side, amiably enough, although there was a sharper tone in her voice. But she seemed ready to listen. Bruno was reminded of times in the army when a new officer had come to take over the squad. It was always Bruno’s job as sergeant to educate him, buff away the officer-school polish and teach him how to make forty tough young soldiersobey their orders cheerfully. He wondered if Annette would be amenable to some gentle coaching, after making such a disastrous entry into St. Denis. He’d have to try. Nobody would benefit from a constant tension between town and magistrate.
    “I want to stop it now before it gets any worse,” he said. “You must have seen angry farmers on TV, dumping cartloads of manure on the steps of a
mairie
, blocking roads with tractors, throwing bureaucrats into the river. That’s what could happen here unless we can defuse the situation. It would hurt the museum and mean trouble for my friend Horst, a German professor who runs the dig.”
    “He wasn’t there today?”
    “No, he’s giving a public lecture at the museum tonight so he was probably preparing that. I’m looking forward to it. He’s a good speaker, he’s passionate about this prehistory, and I’ve been getting some hints that he has something big to say. If you have nothing better to do, you might want to come along and listen, meet some of my friends and start to understand what’s so special about this valley.”

6
    Bruno recognized the image on the giant screen, the deep pit he had seen that morning at Horst’s dig, the flat stone with the strange cup-shaped depressions and the smoothness of bone. A small ruler, in red and white with gradations for each ten centimeters, lay alongside what Bruno could now identify as a human femur. The red spot of Horst’s laser pointer picked out the details he chose to highlight on the enlarged photograph as he spoke.
    “A new prehistoric burial site in this region is always a remarkable discovery and this one with its two adults and child may be very special indeed,” Horst was saying from the podium.
    The auditorium at the new National Museum was filled, with some of Horst’s students standing at the back and more listening to his lecture through a loudspeaker in the hall. Bruno counted well over a hundred seats, another score or so against the walls and with the overflow there must have been two hundred people in attendance, the largest audience Bruno could remember. Nor did he recall ever seeing TV cameras at the back of the hall before, and for once Philippe Delaron from the local
Sud Ouest
newspaper was not the only reporter present. Bruno sat between Pamela and Fabiola, with his tennispartner, the baron, next in the row and the new magistrate beside him. Annette had changed into jeans and a white silk shirt that looked expensive. Pamela was wearing a light green sweater that Bruno guessed was cashmere. It set off the hints of red in her bronze hair.
    The skeletons, Horst was saying, were around thirty-three thousand years old. That meant they came from the pivotal period when the Neanderthals were being replaced by the Cro-Magnons, modern mankind. Horst paused, then stepped out from behind the podium toward the front of the stage, his face suddenly illuminated by the light from the projector. His shadow fell thick and long on the screen behind him. It was a deliberately theatrical move. His eyes must have been blinded by the projector light, but he swiveled his head slowly as if to look at each part of the audience before he spoke again.
    “This is the great mystery of modern man. How did our ancestors live and prevail while the Neanderthals disappeared? Was it war or disease that wiped them