The Crowded Grave

stood where he was, uncertain how to react, looking around for Fabiola and some explanation when she bustled in from the kitchen, an apron around her waist and the light of battle in her eye.
    “You can do better than that, Bruno,” she said firmly. “This is my house and I have invited friends whom I like. I really don’t care what arguments you have outside these walls, but in here you’ll be courteous with each other.”
    “Today she tried to get me fired …,” Bruno began, but Fabiola cut him off.
    “I know all about it, and I think you’re both behaving like a pair of idiots and I don’t want to hear any more about it this evening. That’s an order. And you owe Annette a favor, anyway. She helped me ride the horses this evening, then she cleaned the stables so that I could get on with the cooking.”
    “And she helped me bathe the children. She’s made the salad and the first course, and she brought a nice bottle of wine,” said Florence. “She and I may have gotten off on the wrong foot when she drove into town, but we’ve put that behind us. She’s even driven me around the motor-cross course she uses to practice her rallying. So now it’s up to you.” Florence moved to stand beside Annette as if to demonstrate a common front. Florence and Fabiola had planned this, he thought.
    “Fabiola’s right, Bruno,” Florence went on. “I don’t know all the details of what has passed between you, but I like you both too much to let it go on. And Fabiola feels the same way. So imagine that the two of you are meeting for the first time.”
    Bruno took a deep breath and looked from Florence to Fabiola, two women he respected just as much as he liked them. He grimaced and then slowly nodded. They were probably right; this feud with Annette had gotten out of hand.
    “Bonsoir, Annette, and thank you for cleaning the stables,” he said, stepping forward and holding out his hand. She was clutching a napkin in one hand and a tablespoon in the other, and she looked down at them as if unsure what to do with them. Then she put them down on the table beside her, set her small chin and came forward to take his hand and to offer her cheek to be kissed. Bruno complied, catching a pleasant scent from her fair hair.
    When he stepped back, Annette handed him a glass of white wine. “It’s from the Domaine,” she said. “I thought we ought to support our local winemaker.”
    “A good choice, since you’re also supporting me.” He grinned. “I’m a shareholder, and so is Fabiola and lots of other people around here. Has she told you the story of how we saved the vineyard from an American company and how it’s now a kind of communal vineyard for St. Denis?”
    Annette said she hadn’t, but would like to hear it. Bruno could almost hear the ice breaking as he told the story and saw the tension in Fabiola’s face relax.
    “You haven’t mentioned the crime, and my part in it,” said Fabiola. “It was my forensic work that cracked the case. And I saved Bruno’s life, when you were going to suffocate in that wine vat.”
    With that, Fabiola had to start the whole story again from the beginning, with the arson and the genetically modified crops and the Canadian girl who worked in the wine store. Then Florence began her own tale of the fraud in the truffle market at Ste. Alvère where she had worked and how she had helped Bruno solve the case by getting hold of a vital logbook. By this time they had drunk the first bottle and Annette had opened a second and they were seated convivially around the table and tucking into Annette’s vegetable terrine.
    “I thought somebody told me you didn’t drink,” said Bruno, after praising her terrine and taking a second helping.
    “You must have been talking to people who took the magistrates’ course with me,” said Annette. “I stopped drinking for a while because I was too nervous about failing. I’d been out of university and away from studying for too long, and I found it really hard to get back into the discipline of it. But when Fabiola and Florence invited me to dinner, I thought how I’d really missed drinking wine with friends. Of course, I didn’t know until this evening that you were coming …” She put her hand to her mouth in embarrassment. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
    “So what happened between university and starting the magistrates’ training course?” he asked.
    “Médecins Sans Frontières, first in Paris,