The Crowded Grave

the distance, taking thirty-six long steps. He sighed in relief. At that range, the bird shot would have spread. Then he went back to the cold frame.
    There wasn’t much blood, a small patch roughly four inches across. It was maybe thirty feet from the woods. At the spot where the vegetation was trampled down he found some more blood on the crushed leaves. The trail continued through the woods toward the track that led up the hill to Coumont. Attached to the thorns of a bramble bush he found a crumpled copy of the leaflet he had first seen at the Villatte farm. Using his handkerchief, he removed it from the bush, and noting some smears of dried blood on the paper, he placed it carefully inside a plastic bag. On a small pile of dead leaves nearby he found two more smears of blood. He tied his handkerchief toa twig to mark the spot, and then called Maurice to examine them.
    “If that was a deer, what would you say?” he asked Maurice.
    “I’d say it wasn’t badly hurt, maybe a flank shot.”
    Bruno nodded. “So put your mind at rest. You haven’t killed anybody. It was an accident, and you can’t even be sure it was human.”
    Maurice nodded dully, and Bruno saw that he was feeling too guilty to be reassured.
    “I’ll have to take the gun, they may need to run tests,” Bruno said, thinking that even at a range of over ninety-five feet bird shot could do a lot of damage. “I’ll borrow your hunting permit, make a copy and get it back to you. Don’t worry, Maurice, the gun’s legal, your permit’s in order, and you very reasonably believed you were shooting at a fox to protect your property.”
    “What about those cuts in the fence?” Maurice asked, his voice quavering. He suddenly looked very old.
    “Nothing about them in the statement. I’ll add a note to say we just found them and patched them now.”
    “I don’t like this, Bruno. It feels like deception.”
    “Trust me, Maurice. This could turn out badly unless you do what I say and never utter a word that’s not in your statement. And make sure Sophie does the same.”
    Back at the house, Bruno asked Sophie to write out a copy of both statements. He and Maurice went out and put a saucepan over the patch of blood to protect it for the likely forensic tests. Back inside, Bruno signed and dated the statement copies. Then he called the medical center and asked for Fabiola.
    “Anybody been brought in with gunshot wounds?”
    “No, and I was on night call for the whole district, so I’d have heard. Why, should I expect somebody?”
    “Looks like some animal rights people got up to their tricks last night and the farmer thought they were a fox. There’s a small bloodstain, about the size of a saucer.”
    “Doesn’t sound too bad. I’ll keep my ears open. You might want to try the pharmacies, see if anybody’s buying bandages.”
    “Bandages and tweezers—they’re probably trying to pull out bird-shot pellets right now.”
    “Some girls carry tweezers to pluck their eyebrows. Stick with the bandages and surgical gauze. And maybe bleach or something, to get the bloodstains out of clothes.”
    Bruno scribbled down
“Pharmacie”
in his notebook, then added the names of the baron, J-J, Jules, the mayor and Hervé, the insurance broker. He was that year’s president of the hunting club, which paid an annual insurance premium in case its members needed legal assistance. J-J could recommend a good lawyer, which Maurice would probably need.
    The first call was to the baron to come and sit with Maurice and Sophie and be prepared to stand up to the gendarmes and to Annette if they turned up while Bruno was elsewhere. J-J reported that the case did not sound too serious to him, if nobody had reported being hurt, and gave Bruno the name of a reliable lawyer in Périgueux. In any event, the incident had now been officially reported to the Police Nationale, which meant that the gendarmes would not have jurisdiction. Nonetheless, Bruno called Sergeant Jules on his personal number, who told him to bring in Maurice’s shotgun for safe keeping, and he promised to warn Capitaine Duroc that the Police Nationale had taken over the case. He rang the mayor and gave him the details, and finally told Hervé, who confirmed that the club’s insurance was both up-to-date and well funded.
    The baron arrived in his veteran Citroën DS, greeted them all and proceeded to distribute more cognac, on the inventive principle that anything Maurice might say thereafter