The Crowded Grave

Annette standing on the steps of the gendarmerie, doused in manure. Below it was Papa’s lunch bill in full. More than half the total was for wine. Bruno could not take his eyes off it. He had paid over ten thousand euros for a case of champagne, Krug Clos du Mesnil 1985, followed by a 2006 Puligny-Montrachet Chevalier at over three hundred euros a bottle, and twelve thousand euros for a case of the 1992 Cheval Blanc. Bruno had always assumed that some people lived like that, but he’d never seen it spelled out in black and white. And Papa wanted a tax deduction for it! He felt the kind of anger at the ways of rich financiers that was probably being felt all across France as people read their paper in disbelief.
    “Papa will not be pleased,” said Bruno.
    “On the contrary, he’ll probably be delighted,” she said as they turned into Pamela’s courtyard. She braked hard and sat with her hands clasped on the wheel, staring straight ahead, much as she had done on the day Bruno had first seen her.
    “It’s good publicity,” she went on. “A hedge-fund magnatehas to show how successful he is. And he’ll be just as pleased at my humiliation. He never wanted me to go to Africa, nor to be a magistrate, nor to have any kind of job except working for him. I suppose he wanted a son to inherit the business and he got me instead. He even hates my being a rally driver.”
    She closed her eyes and let her head sink forward to rest on the steering wheel, as if the contact with her car gave her comfort.
    “And now I suppose I can never have a life of my own after this. People will never forget it.”
    “They will,” he said, patting her shoulder. “It doesn’t seem like it now, but people have short memories. And it doesn’t matter what they think. It matters what you do, what you achieve, what you think. It also matters how you bounce back from this.”
    He persuaded her to go into Fabiola’s house, where she had coffee ready. She hadn’t seen the paper but knew all about it from the daily press review on France Inter’s morning news show. But instead of the sympathy that Bruno had expected, Fabiola stood with a wide grin on her face and a glass of champagne in each hand.
    “Well, that’ll teach you to call the neighbors barbaric,” she said. “Come on, cheer up and join in a toast to the most notorious woman in France for the next fifteen minutes—and you didn’t even have to sleep with a politician to get the title.”
    Annette froze, then shook her head, clenched her fists above her head and laughed. She took a glass from Fabiola and downed it fast.
    “Thank the Lord for you, Fabiola,” she said. “You’re right. There’s nothing to be done about it now so we might as well drink champagne.”
    “I pinched it from Pamela’s cellar,” Fabiola said. “I thought it probably counted as an emergency.”
    “I think she’d approve,” said Bruno. “If not, I’ll buy the replacement bottle.”
    Bruno downed his champagne and his coffee and wolfed his croissant before heading to his car to get to the château for the morning security meeting. After Isabelle’s late-night message, he planned to corner her to explain before the committee gathered. But as he slowed for the turn at Campagne, his phone rang and he answered automatically without looking at the screen. As soon as he heard the note of vengeful triumph in the mayor’s voice, he responded with a single word.
    “Overkill,” he said. “I’m worried it’s the kind of demolition that can do more harm than good. Hell, even I’m feeling sorry for her now.”
    “Is that why you were having breakfast with her?” the mayor asked, his voice grumpy at Bruno’s reaction.
    “No, I had breakfast with Fabiola,” Bruno said patiently, silently cursing Fat Jeanne, a woman he usually adored for her endlessly cheerful nature. “I’m staying at Pamela’s to look after the horses. Pamela’s mother had a stroke so she flew back to Scotland. Annette happened to be staying with her new friend Fabiola. She wanted to buy the papers, I wanted to buy the croissants.”
    “You think the
Libé
story was over the top? Everyone else thinks it’s wonderful, particularly after France Inter picked it up this morning.”
    “We wanted to isolate her, not destroy the woman. Anyway, I think she might have been ready to withdraw from the case even before this. If you get asked about this, you might consider taking the high ground, no visiting the sins of the