Deadly Slipper

by Michelle Wan

  The only way through an impossible task, he decided, was to be systematic. He got a pad of paper and lined off the top sheet into three columns. In the first column, he listed the orchids in the photographs by common rather than taxonomical name and in order of their appearance. There were fourteen different species in all. The first seven—Helleborines, Limodorum, Common Spotteds, Military Orchids, Bird’s-nest, Butterfly, and Pyramidal Orchids—were followed by the pigeonnier. Then another seven: Marsh, Bee, Lizard, Man, Lady, Tongue, and Fly Orchids. Finally, the Lady’s Slipper. Next to each, in the second column, he jotted down what he knew of the growing environment. Orchids were habitat-specific. Each required well-defined growing conditions: sun, dappled light, deep shade, varying degrees of dampness and soil conditions. Some proliferated on hilltops and open meadows; others grew shyly in woodlands and forests. Some occurred in conjunction with certain trees; some were transitional plants, occupying the edges of clearings; still others could only be found in wetlands.

  When he had completed this task, he saw that the information, organized in this way, told more of a story than he had realized. In fact, he had created a specific progression of landscapes, like beads threaded on a string. However, the problem was locating where this particular combination of habitats was to be found. For the region in its entirety provided endless possibilities: pine and deciduous forests, grasslands, fields, swamps, seepage zones, scree, scrubland, all characterized by the calcareous, alkaline soils on which most of the species he had listed thrived. Again, he was ominously aware of the immensity of the undertaking ahead of him.

  His only recourse was to fall back on actual sightings. These were documented in field notes that he had made over the years, as well as hundreds of prints and slides, everything stored topsy-turvy in an old metal cabinet.

  He began by pulling out anything related to the orchids captured on the film and entering known locations in the third column. For most, he had numerous sightings, and in some cases this proved more problematic than helpful. For example, the purple Pyramidal Orchid, an aggressive colonizer, grew everywhere. Next to it he simply wrote: widespread, abundant.

  Then it occurred to him that he really needed to focus on sightings dating from around the time of Bedie’s disappearance in 1984. Here he met a more serious roadblock. In those days he had not been particularly systematic in charting floral distributions, except for the notations he had done for his book, and even these were casual scribbles on the backs of envelopes and so forth.

  “Merde!” he uttered, shoving his glasses up to the top of his head.

  Inevitably, his thoughts drifted to the Cypripedium. He rose to stare in fascination at a blowup of the print that he had pinned to his kitchen wall. There was now no doubt in his mind about the slipper-shaped labellum, although a more objective observer might have pointed out that the stain running across the print made identification iffy. A remarkable flower under any circumstances, magnified five times it seemed almost nightmarish. The deep-pink labellum looked swollen, veined, and slightly obscene, although some of these effects could have been owing to the graininess of the enlargement. Two wildly twisted lateral petals, springing stiffly away from the slipper, resembled fantastical, blackish-purple mustachios.

  “Merde!” he said again, turning away from the blowup in frustration. Why did this have to be the worst of the lot, and the only one to lack a habitat shot? Not that this in itself would have pinpointed a location, but at least the surrounding growth and leaf litter might have furnished him with something to go on. It occurred to him (he was in a maudlin mood) that it was all too emblematic of his life—doomed to clutch hopelessly at the things he wanted most, desired objects dangling just out of reach. More wine reconciled him to his fate.

  He was slumped in an attitude of defeat when Edith appeared in the open doorway. She looked at him speculatively. Julian considered the fag end of his dinner, congealing palely on his plate.

  “All right, you opportunistic bitch,” he muttered and scraped the remains into her dish. Watching the pointer gulp it down, Julian gave in and decided to call for help.

  •

  “Allo?” Géraud Laval’s voice thundered at him through the telephone.

  “Géraud? Julian. Julian Wood. What? No. Géraud—yes, yes, I know. Géraud, look, I’ve—er—got a problem. No, not personal, floral. I said floral. Are you and Iris busy? Well, I don’t want—Oh, all right, if you’re sure. Great. Be there in half an hour.”

  Julian did not like Géraud. Put plainly, the man was insufferable. He was also Julian’s main rival in the Société Jeannette’s Bring and Brag, as Julian called it. The club, which attracted wildflower enthusiasts from Mussidan to Rocamadour, met monthly in different locations. The end of each meeting was always set aside for members to show off important botanical finds. Julian vied bitterly with Géraud for primacy in this area.

  On the other hand, Géraud Laval was the only person who could help him. A vastly knowledgeable orchidologist, he bred tropicals in a hot room attached to his house and grew plantations of temperate species on his property near the village of Malpech. Géraud lived with Iris Potter, a cheerful woman from Lancashire whom Julian did like, in a long-standing but on-and-off relationship. That is, every now and then Iris declared Géraud to be impossible to live with and moved out. Her goings were always noisy, with everyone taking sides; her returns surprisingly uneventful, word simply going round that Iris was back. She had been back, as near as Julian could reckon, for nearly half a dozen years.

  Resignedly, Julian grabbed his notes and Mara’s photographs (imagining Géraud’s sneers at the poor quality) and headed for the door. Then a better idea struck him. A malicious grin spread over his face. He turned back and reached for the phone. There was no reason, he thought, why Mara shouldn’t help to bear the brunt of Géraud’s obnoxious personality.

  •

  Mara had spent a frustrating day. Wealthy American friends of Prudence had purchased a charming nineteenth-century manor house and were now complaining about the rudimentary state of just about everything, especially the water closet. Their problem was now Mara’s headache, since she had agreed to put things right. It came with the territory, she had to admit. Without people who bought things they ultimately couldn’t live with, she would be out of business. Her difficulty at the moment lay with Kranz, the plumbing whiz, who had stubbornly voiced several objections, mainly structural, to her redesign. Stare as she might at the sketch before her, she could see no other way of repositioning the narrow little recess that currently housed the toilet. She was glad, when Julian called, for a reason to quit her studio.

  Now she was crammed into the front seat of his van, feet on a coiled hose, knees jammed against a plastic sack of fertilizer, as they sped off in the direction of Malpech.

  “Géraud Laval’s a retired pharmacist,” Julian informed her. He swerved around a pothole. “And, to hear him talk, the world’s leading mushroom authority.”

  The edge in his voice made Mara look at him sideways. She had been in the region long enough to know that pharmacies routinely dispensed, along with pills and enemas, advice on the edibility of wild mushrooms. From late summer onward, the woods swarmed with people in search of apricot-hued chanterelles, black-capped têtes de nègre, and other edible cèpes. Every year, people got sick or even died from failing to distinguish an innocuous fungus from a deadly cousin. The easiest way of knowing was to consult your local pharmacist. So maybe this Géraud’s claim wasn’t as far-fetched as Julian made it sound.

  “He’s also as vain as a prima donna,” Julian went on. “And twice as temperamental.”

  “Then why are we going to see him?”

  “Because,” Julian admitted grudgingly, “he’s as good as they get where orchids are concerned. Breeds fancy tropicals and has a fine collection of European orchids right in his own backyard. Which he got from rootstock, not seed, I might add.”

  “Meaning?” His tone was ominous, but the significanc
e escaped her.

  “Meaning the bugger digs up wild plant material rather than gathering the seed and growing his orchids in vitro, as any”—Julian downshifted angrily—“decent conservationist would do. And by the way, Mara, while we’re there, it might be better if you let me do the talking.”

  “Let you—? Oh, be my guest!” Mara rolled her eyes. Really, if he wanted her to keep her mouth shut, why bother having her along?

  •

  Iris met them at the door, a short, dumpy person with a round, weathered face, very blue eyes, and wispy gray hair. She wore a paint-smeared smock over baggy trousers, and her broad, flat feet were strapped into leather sandals.

  “So glad you came,” she welcomed them in English after Julian made the introductions. She gave Mara a friendly but frankly curious once-over before adding, “Visitors. Always relieves the tension.” Not bothering to lower her voice, she informed them as she led them in, “He’s been absolutely awful these last few weeks, you know. Honestly, I really think it’s time I left him. What do you think, Julian?”

  “By all means.” Julian seemed to take the question in his stride.

  Mara did not know what to think. She focused instead on the walls of the front room, which were covered with bad impressionistic floral paintings that seemed to match the condition of Iris’s smock.

  “You’re the artist?” she inquired.

  The other woman giggled. “Awful, aren’t they? But they sell surprisingly well. Come on. Don’t want to keep his nibs waiting.”

  “Ha! Julian Wood!” roared a short, powerfully built man, emerging from the depths of a glassed-in area attached to the back of the house. “Entrez, entrez!” The space was crowded with moss-filled hanging baskets and clamorous with blooms.

  Iris left them, and Julian made more introductions, this time en français. Everything from that point on switched to French. Conversations in the Dordogne, which was rapidly filling up with English-speaking expatriates, were apt to be like that, a mix of languages according to the speakers.

  “Enchanté, madame,” Géraud boomed. He stared avidly at Mara, then bowed and kissed her hand. His prominent head, bald on top, was made fantastic by wild sprouts of white hair springing like horns from the sides. Tufts of darker hair grew out of his ears. Mara wondered if they impeded his hearing, causing him to shout the way he did. “Are you as well an orchid amateur?”

  “Débutante,” Mara admitted. “What lovely flowers. But why is everything hanging from the ceiling?”

  “Because,” said Géraud smugly, “these are tropical epiphytes. C’est-à-dire, in their natural jungle habitat, they grow on trees to get light, and their root systems are designed to capture airborne nutrients. I mimic here the same conditions. Whereas orchids that grow in the ground, such as our local species, put out tubers or rhizomes. Do you know,” he leered, “why I consider the orchid to be the most sexual of flowers?”

  “I have no idea,” said Mara, not liking the leer but enjoying the look of disgust on Julian’s face.

  “Why, because the tubers are—ahem—testicular in shape, hence the name ‘orchid.’ From the Greek, orchis, you see, which means testicle—”

  “Yes, yes.” Julian moved in to stem Géraud’s verbal foreplay. “While you’re at it, why not tell her that ‘orchidotomy’ means castration, and ‘orchialgia’ means pain in the balls?”

  Géraud glared at him. “Come.” Skillfully he steered Mara away. “Let me show you my new Paphiopedilum.”

  Proudly, he walked her over to a large, glossy flower rising imperiously from a slender stalk. A tropical species of Slipper Orchid, it had a greenish, tubular labellum, ripple-edged side petals, and a yellow dorsal sepal that flared up showily, like a sultan’s fan.

  “Que c’est beau!” Mara exclaimed, sincerely impressed. Julian’s expression as he trailed along behind was decidedly sour. Serve him right, she thought, for that crack about doing all the talking. She laid it on thicker. “Absolument magnifique. Did you—er—breed this yourself?”

  “But of course,” the other preened. “Bulldog hybrid. Just in bloom.”

  Their host took advantage of her show of interest to point out other of his botanical achievements. At one point, Julian simply left them. When, at last, Géraud led Mara out to a terrace at the rear of the house, Julian was already there, seated at a wooden table with Iris, a half-empty, sweating bottle of sparkling Vouvray between them. An unopened second was on standby in a bucket of ice.

  “So—what’s this all about, eh?” boomed Géraud, seating Mara with an excess of gallantry.

  “We need,” said Julian, “to draw on your knowledge of local flora to place a certain sequence of orchids.” He made a show of informing Mara, “Géraud’s terrifically knowledgeable about terrestrial as well as tropical orchids. If anyone can tell you what you want to know, it’s Géraud.” It was a shameless priming of the pump, and they all, including Géraud, knew it. Julian laid out the photographs in order on the wooden garden table.

  Their host squinted at the array. “What’s this? Terrible quality. Who took this rubbish?” He glanced at Mara, then turned on Julian. “And you expect me to tell you where this muck grows? What’s this all about?”

  “Treat it like a botanical puzzle,” Julian evaded. Mara caught the warning glance he shot her. Bringing Bedie into the conversation, the look said, would simply sidetrack the purpose of their visit. She raised a hand: Your show.

  “Oh, goody,” cried Iris. “A mystery. I love mysteries.”

  Géraud gave his visitors a suspicious glare.

  “Come on, Géraud,” Julian wheedled. “I just need some information from you. My notes don’t go back far enough.”

  Grudgingly, Géraud picked up the first photo, a composition of dainty white Helleborine florets springing from a single stem. The habitat shot included a cluster of similar plants against a shaded backdrop of beech saplings.

  “Cephalantheria longifolia,” their host declared, holding fussily to taxonomical names. “Bah. Impossible to place. Grows along every footpath in the region. You ought to know that.”

  Julian said with forced patience, “I was hoping to identify a possible location through all of the orchids, taken together.”

  “Hmmph. So you said. What’s next?” The older man frowned at a portrait of a dark, leafless stalk bearing deep-violet flowers tightly braided up the length of the plant. This was followed by a middle-distance view showing a trio of the same, blossoms beginning to unfurl. They stood in a light-dappled litter of conifer needles. “Limodorum abortivum,” he identified.

  “It’s growing here among what looks like Scots pine—”

  “I can see that for myself, thank you.”

  “—but my notes show it mainly in conjunction with oaks and chestnuts, especially along tree-root systems—”

  “Quelle merde,” scoffed Géraud. “You’re about to tell me Limodorum is parasitical.”

  “Who said anything about parasites? They’re saprophytes.”

  Iris leaned forward to peer at the photo. “Well, for that matter, I’ve only ever seen it growing near rotting stumps.”

  “You wouldn’t recognize Limodorum if it bit you,” Géraud snapped. “Look, take it from me, Limodorum’s mostly found, when it’s found, in mixed deciduous-coniferous woodland. That describes most of the Dordogne. So where does that get you?”

  Not very far, Mara acknowledged silently. Julian looked grumpy.

  Géraud grunted dismissively at the shots of Dactylorhiza fuchsii and Orchis militaris, but his attitude changed abruptly when he saw the Bird’s-nest Orchids. Startled, he reared a pair of tufted eyebrows. “Mon dieu!” he shouted. “Epatant!”

  “Thought you’d be interested.” It was Julian’s turn to look smug.

  The eyebrows waggled. “And why not? Neottia nidus-avis is not that common. A stand like this is entirely remarkable. Whoever took this photograph was damned lucky—not you, was it? No, couldn’t be. You wouldn’t be here picking my brains.
Well, as you undoubtedly know, Neottia likes damp shade, so this would have had to be found under forest cover, most probably deciduous.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen anything approaching this size?”

  Géraud stuck a lip out. “Well, not quite this big.” A quick look at Mara, as if assessing how much she knew. Then at Julian. “You?”

  “Oh, couple of sightings.” Julian’s tone was casual.

  “Wait.” Géraud appeared to think hard. “Maybe.”

  Julian grinned. “I’ll tell if you will.”

  The other glowered. Julian one, old fart nil, Mara marked the score with amused interest.

  “Go on,” rumbled Géraud.

  Julian referred to his notes. “One fair-sized scattering, Forêt de la Bessède, south of Urval, just below the junction of the main logging roads. And a small growth along the footpath north of Doissat. Your turn.”

  “Hmm.” Géraud rubbed his chin. “Abrillac Forest.”

  “You couldn’t be a little more precise, could you? Abrillac covers a big area, as you well know.”

  “Nearer Le Double, actually.” Géraud gave grudging directions.

  Mara felt a quickening of the pulse. She had once done a small job for someone near the hamlet of Le Double. “That’s just north of Beynac,” she broke in.

  “Date?” Julian persisted as if she had not spoken. “I’m interested in anything around 1984.”

  Géraud frowned. “Why?”

  “Oh, just curious.”

  “Very well. Nineteen eighty-two.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Julian objected. “Just a moment ago you said you didn’t have anything—”

  “Of course he has,” crowed Iris. “He has stacks of notes, all in Latin and Greek and teensy-tiny coded numbers so no one else can read them. He’s terrified someone will steal his precious information. Go on.” She gave her lover a hearty shove. “Show the lad.”