The Crowded Grave

could bedismissed as the ramblings of someone who had taken a little too much alcohol for the shock.
    Bruno took the shotgun to Sergeant Jules at the gendarmerie and then went to the general office in the
mairie
to make more copies of Maurice’s statement. He faxed them to J-J and Hervé, and to the general number at the magistrates’ office in Sarlat, with a covering note addressed to Annette. That gave Bruno an idea. Rather than call the lawyer in Périgueux, he went into his own office to track down a number for Annette’s predecessor.
    As a devoted hunter and an occasional customer of Sophie’s foie gras, the old chief magistrate was delighted to take the case. He assured Bruno he would be at Maurice’s house within the hour. Bruno read him Maurice’s statement aloud, and it was pronounced “most helpful.” The problem would be, the former magistrate noted, if someone reported having been shot. Bruno replied that he was making inquiries.
    He phoned both of the pharmacies in St. Denis and drew a blank each time. Where else would students, relative strangers to the area, try to find a pharmacy? The one other town they knew was Les Eyzies, where the museum was located. Bruno called the pharmacy there and was told that a tall, young foreigner had been waiting at their door when they opened. He’d bought bandages, antiseptic wipes and surgical gauze and had paid with a credit card. They gave Bruno the name and number, issued by a British bank, Barclays. Its owner was Edward G. Lloyd.

9
    By the time Bruno arrived at the site, Clothilde had installed a security guard from the museum, roped off a field for parking and announced a thirty-minute photo opportunity followed by a press briefing back at the museum. He was impressed. She was standing by the site entrance where the cell phone reception was better, talking fiercely into her mobile and dressed in another shirt that he remembered seeing on Horst. She’d been wearing a skirt the previous evening and was in khaki slacks now and work boots. Bruno found himself hoping she’d spent the night with Horst; he deserved it, after the triumph of the lecture. And so, perhaps, did she.
    “Congratulations,” he said as she slammed the phone shut and swore, looking around angrily at the site, where the students were all at work. Then she noticed him.
    “Oh, Bruno, those bastards at the ministry!” she said, giving him a resounding kiss on each cheek. “They demand to know who authorized me to lend the name of the National Museum to such a publicity-grabbing hypothesis. I told them it was the same people who gave me my doctorate and elected me to my chair, and if they gave me any more shit I’d take upYale’s offer of a professorship and triple my salary. That shut them up.”
    “You’ve taken care of everything: parking, security, photo op and press conference,” said Bruno. “You’ve done my job for me, as well as being part of the biggest breakthrough in history. And you look wonderful.”
    “Thank you,
mon cher
. I just did the things you said needed doing, while fending off those idiots in Paris and half the archaeologists in Europe. And who is this?” she asked, as Carlos came up the path, after parking his rented Range Rover behind Bruno’s car.
    Bruno introduced them briefly, describing Carlos simply as a Spanish colleague on liaison duties, and pointed Carlos toward the empty grave, still circled with yellow police tape.
    “I was most impressed by the lecture yesterday,” Carlos said. “It seems you have a historic discovery here.”
    “We hope so, thank you,” she said. Her phone rang again. She looked at the screen and ignored it. “Those idiots at the culture ministry again,” she said, fishing her car keys from her bag. “I have to get back to the museum.” She waved a vague farewell.
    Bruno led Carlos toward the fluttering yellow tape, but first he wanted to look at the pit where the three prehistoric bodies lay. Bruno recognized the Polish student Kasimir working on a subsidiary trench off to one side and nodded a greeting. Carlos gazed down into the deep hole where the three skeletons were now covered in a sheet of thick plastic. Two students were at work with brushes on one of the walls. Carlos looked up at the overhanging cliff and off to each side, as if trying to imagine how the place might have been thirty thousand years ago.
    “It might be an idea for the two ministers to come here,after the signing,” he said. “France