The Crowded Grave by Martin Walker Read Free Book Online Page A

hope she’s not going to get into trouble.”
    “What would you do to her, Gabrielle, if you were sure it was her? You know the Villattes, decent, hardworking people.You know their boy, Daniel, good little tennis player. What happens to him if his parents lose their livelihood?”
    Gabrielle looked at him, considering. “I’d make her go and confess to them and say she was sorry. I think she should put it in writing. Then I’d make her pay for the birds and repair the damage and then pay some more compensation for their trouble. And I’d hope she learned her lesson.”
    Bruno pondered the difference between Gabrielle’s thoughtful reply and the blunt avowals of vengeance that he’d heard that morning from Alain. Maybe the difference was that Alain was thinking of some anonymous, faceless enemy; Gabrielle knew the Dutch girl and had warmed to her.
    “She’s very young,” Gabrielle went on. “Maybe she just got carried away. You know young people and their causes. And some of this animal cruelty business is nasty stuff. It turns my stomach to see those poor whales and those baby seals that get clubbed on TV.”
    “Well, we don’t eat baby seals,” Bruno replied. “We do eat duck and foie gras and a lot of our neighbors make their living from it, and they’re the ones who pay my wages. And yours, come to think of it. They’ve got rights too. Thanks for your help, Gabrielle. I’ll let you know how this develops.”
    The municipal campground of St. Denis had a pleasant location beside the river. The town’s open-air swimming pool flanked one side, and the rear opened onto a large sports field with a running track and a playground for children. Between the campground and the main part of town were some of the tourist attractions of St. Denis: a small aquarium that was closed for repainting, a wildlife museum and a beach where canoes were rented in summer. Behind them were the town’s handsomemunicipal gardens, a less ambitious attempt to repeat the gravel walks and checkerboard lawns and topiary of Versailles. It wasn’t greatly to Bruno’s taste.
    He walked quickly through the gardens to the iron-studded wooden door in the garden wall that was partly hidden by a boxwood hedge and used one of the many keys on his belt to let himself in. Bruno always enjoyed this place, where time seemed to slow a little and in summer butterflies gathered in unusual numbers. He paused as he relocked the door and gazed around at the walled garden with peach and apricot trees espaliered symmetrically against the old bricks, faded now from their original red to a dusty orange that made a pleasing backdrop to the bright green of the new leaves. Inside the walls were herb gardens and beds for unusual plants, continuing an old tradition that went back to medieval times when there had been a nunnery on this land and when Jean Rey, a local natural philosopher, had written an early book on using plants as medicines. St. Denis was the only commune Bruno knew that employed its own herbalist, who turned a decent profit for the town by selling seeds and plants to the homeopathic trade. There was no sign of Morillon, the old gardener. But Bruno was only using the garden as a shortcut to the town’s campground and let himself out quickly by the rear door.
    Dominated by the shower block at one end and the reception building at the other that housed office, shop and bar, the campground was a large field crisscrossed by gravel paths and parking stands. In one corner stood perhaps a score of multicolored tents, one very large but the rest mostly small, huddled together close to the riverbank. There was no sign of life except the thin sound of radio music leaking from the office, where Bruno found Monique. She was sitting and smoking while she toyed with the crossword in that day’s
Sud Ouest
and hummed along to the pop songs on Périgord Bleu. Married to Bernard, who managedthe campground and did whatever odd jobs were required, Monique looked