The Crowded Grave

his father?”
    “No, that never came up,” Jan said. “How do you know about this? Did he ever tell you about it?”
    “I can’t remember him ever saying a word about his own past,” Bruno said. “That’s odd when you think his entire life as an archaeologist was about the past.”
    “So how did you find out?” Jan said, looking sharply at Bruno. His big hands were twisting the rag he’d used to grip the hot bar.
    “Looking around his house today when he was reported missing, I found a photo album with lots of snapshots of Horst as a young man and as a boy. And there were pictures of his mother and father and brother. I can’t imagine either of his parents is still alive so I’ll have to get in touch with the brother back in Germany. Would you have an address or a phone number?”
    “I didn’t even know he had a brother,” said Jan, with a quick glance at the young man beside him.
    “I’ll have to go through his university, they should have something on his next of kin,” said Bruno, and then added in a casual tone, but watching Jan closely to assess his reaction, “If not, I’ll have to go through the German police.”
    There was no reaction from Jan. He was looking down at the iron bar in the brazier, its tip glowing a fierce red. There was sweat on Jan’s face, but there usually was from working so close to the brazier. There was nothing to put his finger on, but Bruno felt Jan was hiding something. It could just bethe understandable worry of a foreigner confronted with the French police, but Jan had been here too long for that.
    “I’ll get the embassy onto it, since Horst was an eminent man even before this latest discovery of his,” Bruno added, still probing to get some reaction from Jan.
    “If I hear from him, I’ll let you know,” said Jan.

16
    Bruno had never paid much attention to birthdays, since nobody had ever deemed his own worthy of attention. As an orphan, he had been left at the door of a church and then raised by cousins with too many children of their own and too little money ever to bother about anniversaries, so such events had never marked his memories of childhood. So he was partly delighted and partly alarmed by Pamela’s insistence that he present himself at her house, showered and shaved and neatly dressed, at 7:00 p.m. sharp. This time, she had announced when he confided that he had never blown out a birthday candle nor ever had a birthday cake, his birthday was going to be properly celebrated. Especially, she had declared while standing at the foot of his bed clad only in a very small towel and brandishing a toothbrush, a Big birthday.
    But the casual comment from the mayor that he would see Bruno that evening had triggered a certain concern. Bruno had assumed that Pamela’s idea of a proper celebration meant a splendid dinner for two, followed by a particularly romantic evening. With this, he would have been more than content. The presence of the mayor, however, suggested something less intimate and probably more formal, two reasons fordisappointment. Moreover, Bruno had not the slightest idea how the English marked their birthdays. He had been stunned to learn from Pamela that the French song “Joyeux Anniversaire” had been stolen from their neighbors across the Channel.
    Apprehensive behind the bunch of flowers he had thought it wise to bring, Bruno counted an unusual number of cars parked in the courtyard and along the lane that led to Pamela’s house. He noted that there was no welcoming light in the courtyard, no comforting glow in the windows and indeed no sign of any life at all. Was this some English joke that he would have to pretend to understand and appreciate?
    The kitchen door was locked, and he groped his way along the rosebushes, calling out the occasional
“Allô,”
until he reached the front door that neither he nor Pamela ever used. Its handle turned at his touch, but the hallway within was dark. Sounds of “Shhhh” and smothered giggles led him into the main room, when the lights blazed on and champagne corks popped and a score or more of people erupted from behind chairs and sofas to call out “Surprise” and begin singing “Joyeux Anniversaire.”
    Pamela, looking magnificent in a long green dress, was first to embrace him. Fabiola and Dominique were quick to follow, then Florence and the wives of Stéphane and the mayor and Sergeant Jules and Albert the chief
pompier
, who were quickly replaced by Françoise from the