Deadly Slipper

by Michelle Wan

  “It’s down to this one,” Mara said, studying the map.

  Julian leaned over to peer at the final dot, situated in forest.

  “Hmm. I make it about five or six kilometers north of Géraud’s Neottia. I suggest we go back to Le Double and hike in for the orchids first and continue from there on foot.”

  He let out the clutch, and they started off down the road. As they approached the hamlet, Mara read out Julian’s scribbled notes of Géraud’s directions. “‘Bark’—no, ‘park bend in road.’ Slow down. I think this may be the spot we’re looking for.”

  Julian pulled off onto the narrow shoulder and set the hand brake with a jerk.

  “‘Path N,’” Mara continued, squinting at his cryptic scrawl, “‘2 k. Function’—? Oh, ‘junction—W 2 k.’ Then something ‘oak.’ ‘BN 100 m S.’”

  “We have to look for a footpath on the north side of the road,” Julian interpreted. “We follow it for two kilometers until we hit a junction of trails. Then we branch off west for another two kilometers until we find a very large oak tree. The Bird’s-nests are off-trail, about a hundred meters in a straight line south.”

  A beige Deux Chevaux was parked farther down from them. At the roadside, a big man in a blue jacket was stringing a length of orange plastic tape around a framework of wooden stakes. The man looked up, recognized Julian, and waved.

  “Salut!”

  “Bother,” muttered Julian. “I’ll have to say hello.”

  As they approached, Mara could see that the framework surrounded a clutch of what she was pleased to be able to identify as Lizard Orchids. They were tall plants, most still tightly in bud, but two had already begun to unfurl gaily twisted labella, like pale-pink party streamers, to the breeze. It was the first time Mara had seen them in the leaf, as it were, and she was impressed by their dramatic oddity.

  Julian introduced the man as Maurice Bourdon, secretary of Les Vigilants, dedicated to the protection of endangered flora.

  “The mowers will be coming through next week,” Maurice explained for Mara’s benefit. “The barrier alerts them to leave the orchids. Trouble is, they don’t always cooperate. You see,” he went on, his broad red face earnest, “one has to act. Orchids are vanishing from our woods and meadows. Most people don’t care, so it’s up to the few of us who do to do something. With force, if need be.” And he cited instances of violence, of greed and corruption driving the development of lands where protected species grew. “I tell you, these canailles will stop at nothing. You don’t believe me?” He rolled up a trouser leg. Mara beheld a massive, hairy shin cut across by a jagged weal.

  “See this? Last year, three of us were guarding a pair of Summer Lady’s-Tresses. They’re dying out everywhere, you know. We were taking it in turns, just until they had time to bloom, because roadwork was going on, and we were planning to move them to a safer spot. Construction crew came through, trucks and earthmovers. I told them to bugger off. Cracked me on the leg, the bastards did, with a shovel.”

  Julian cut off the flow of further tales by asking Maurice about the Bird’s-nest and the pigeonnier.

  The other shrugged at the photocopy of the dovecote. One was much like another. As to the Neottia nidus-avis, he thought they might find a few plants round about, but nothing like what they were looking for.

  “Your trail head is over there.” He directed them about twenty meters farther down. “It’s marked by another one of those damned bornes.” The entire region was criss-crossed by ancient cart tracks and paths. Some, like the one Julian and Mara sought, had been designated with markers as hiking trails by the Dordogne Tourism Service, a phenomenon that Maurice vigorously cursed. “It’s just inviting more destruction of orchid habitat by hikers and those fichu all-terrain bikes.” He waved his arms to take in the surrounding countryside in a gesture of despair.

  They left him to his taping.

  •

  Their trail ran between pastures and newly planted fields that shaped themselves to the contours of the surrounding hills. The air was rich with the smell of overturned earth and dung. Cattle stared placidly at them from the other side of electrified ribbon fencing. Jazz rushed them, and they lumbered off, hooves squelching on the muddy ground. Along the way, Julian was surprisingly chatty, pointing out common wildflowers for Mara’s benefit. The tall flower there, looking like a tiny purple candelabra, was tassel hyacinth. That was wild sage; if she crushed the leaves between her fingers, she could smell its pungent aroma. Buttercups she knew, but she didn’t know that the locals called them boutons d’or, or gold buttons. Mara warmed to his brisk authority, his long, swinging stride, and hurried to keep pace with him.

  They entered a meadow awash with Pyramidal Orchids, hundreds of purple cones made up of small, tightly packed blossoms balancing atop single stems. Mara knew the flowers—they grew plentifully in fields near her house—and wondered that she had never before stopped to admire their beauty. She bent to pick one. Julian’s hand closed over hers swiftly.

  “Lesson number one, Mara.” His face was very near hers. A vein in his temple flickered. “Never pick an orchid. Look, photograph, but don’t touch. Ever.”

  “Sorry.” She backed away. “But there are so many of them. And you pick flowers. What about your herbarium samples?”

  “I only take common plants,” he said coolly. “Never vulnerable species.”

  Farther ahead, as they clambered over a fallen tree, he waved despairingly at a cluster of withered Lady Orchids.

  “This is what we’re up against,” he complained. “Things are going fast. In a few more weeks we may not see much in bloom.”

  “Think positively,” she grinned, to lighten things up. “I need you at your very best.”

  He glanced at her slyly. “Botanically speaking?”

  “Of course.”

  They walked on. Then something caught his interest. “Look.” He grabbed her arm and pointed to the top of an embankment.

  She saw a scattering of slender plants topped with plump, dark blossoms. “What is it?”

  “Ophrys apifera.” He climbed up, placing his feet with care, beckoning her to follow. “Bee Orchids. You have some on your film. Here, if you look closely you can see why they’re called that.” He selected a flower, cradling the labellum gently, almost intimately. Standing close beside him, Mara made out a furry, blackish-brown lobe with yellow markings.

  “But,” she marveled, “it looks exactly like a bumblebee.”

  “Exactly.” He uncapped his camera. “And there’s a reason for that. It’s—Wait!” he broke off tensely. “Don’t move!”

  For a panicky moment Mara thought she was about to tread on a snake—she had heard there was some kind of poisonous viper in the Dordogne. But it was only a bee, the real thing. Hastily, she waved it away.

  “For Christ’s sake, Mara,” Julian hissed furiously. “Don’t do that! Look, just stand back, will you?” He scowled and crouched, camera at the ready, waiting for the circling insect to return. After some moments, it alighted on an orchid. Waggling its body, it mounted the fleshy labellum, probing its head down the flower’s throat, tiny feet treading busily. She heard the snick of the shutter. “Got it!” Julian exclaimed.

  “Got what?” she asked resentfully. It was an aspect she didn’t like about him, this overbearing, downright tetchy underside to his congenial surface.

  “Pseudocopulation. False mating. Well, you said you wanted me at my best botanically.”

  “Oh, absolutely,” she replied. “Do go on.”

  He gave her a searching look. “All right. You see, the sexual reproduction of orchids is very complex. Some orchids try to appear like other kinds of nectar-bearing flowers in order to attract pollinators. In fact, you often find them growing among the flowers they model. Now, with the Bee and Fly Orchids, which belong to the Ophrys genus, it’s different. They’ve evolved flower parts that not only mimic the bodies of female insects but also put out pseudopheromones to lure males into false copul
ation. The live insect lands on the fake one, gets covered in pollen, which it carries to other orchids, which of course is the whole point of the exercise. Am I boring you?”

  “Not at all,” she told him coldly. “It’s fascinating, all this pseudocopulation and fake pheromones. Makes one quite dizzy. Tell me, are the orchids that do the attracting male or female?”

  “What? Oh, both. That is, orchids are hermaphroditic. In fact, they’re quite capable of pollinating themselves.”

  “Now, that,” said Mara softly but with meaning, “is boring.”

  •

  They set off again. This time Julian did not bother to help her over logs but strode ahead, leaving her scrambling to keep up. Jazz ran, nose to ground, back and forth between them. The sun, riding high overhead, was hot. She found herself lagging behind. She wished she’d thought to wear a hat.

  “Julian. I need a rest.”

  He allowed her a brief pause and a swallow from his canteen.

  Then he was off again. “Come on,” he called over his shoulder. “Chop-chop. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

  “Look, I’m going as fast as I can.”

  “Well, don’t complain. This was what you wanted.”

  She was grateful when they plunged into shady woodland. Helleborines, each plant bearing clusters of delicately nodding white bells, embroidered the shoulders of their path. Eventually, beech and pine gave way to a dense forest of oaks and chestnuts whose branches met overhead, creating a greenish net of light that shivered down through the leafy canopy. Here great vines hung like curtains, and ferns carpeted the forest floor. The air was fresh and cool, redolent of leaf mulch and growing things. Mara leaned against a tree, breathing hard. Julian drew up beside her.

  “Forests,” he murmured softly near her left ear. “Mystery, creation, and evolution.” It was poetically, almost seductively said, and she turned to him in surprise. His eyes, brown flecked with gold, held hers for a moment. He placed his hands on her shoulders. Her heart gave a leap.

  “Look,” he whispered, turning her about, and pointed out purple spears of Limodorum abortivum, rising from the litter of the forest floor. “You see how they follow the root system of this old beech tree? One up on old Géraud.”

  •

  Their chief difficulty lay in finding Géraud’s landmark oak. There were so many, all clotted with balls of parasitic mistletoe, but not a Neottia in sight. An hour of off-trail searches into likely growing areas produced nothing more interesting than a giant bracket fungus adorning a tree like a huge, fleshy lip.

  “We’re not going to find it, are we?” Mara said, seating herself wearily on a rock. Jazz flopped down panting beside her.

  “Wouldn’t put it past the old fox to have purposely misled me,” Julian fumed.

  They abandoned the search and ate their sandwiches. It was a bizarre kind of investigation they were conducting, Mara thought, taking in her leafy surroundings. One in which the sole witnesses to Bedie’s disappearance were silent and ephemeral, their only evidence the existence of a pigeonnier and a certain pattern of plants. How, she wondered in bemusement, do you question a flower?

  “Do you suppose,” Mara mused aloud after a long silence, “that what Maurice said is really true?”

  “What?” Julian, deep in his own reflections, surfaced.

  “That people commit violence over orchids?”

  He replied cautiously, “It’s been known to happen. I’ve heard worse stories than Maurice’s—double-dealing, even murder—but mainly to do with tropicals, the showy ones that collectors go mad over. Avid fanciers can get pretty unbalanced. Why?”

  “Well, supposing it wasn’t a serial predator that Bedie met but an orchid fanatic. Supposing this person never really meant her any harm. Only she did something, accidentally, to an orchid that he was trying to protect…”

  “What, stepped on it?” Julian was incredulous.

  “Or say Bedie found a rare species, like the Cypripedium, that this person wanted to keep secret. Bedie might not have been exactly cooperative if she thought the world should know about it. This person could have seen red, struck out blindly—”

  “You mean Géraud?” Julian looked interested. “Admittedly, he’s bloody obsessive about his favorite stands …” He trailed off, frowning, then shook his head. “I don’t see it,” he concluded regretfully. “Géraud’s a right prick, but not even he would go to that extent. Anyway, what you’re saying puts every amateur orchidologist in the region under suspicion. In fact, every bloody member of Société Jeannette—I can give you the subscription list—to say nothing of Maurice’s Vigilants lot.”

  “Well, there is something else. Iris says she leaves him periodically.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “The four-to-five-year cycle. Adverse life changes. Her departures could set him off.”

  “What are you saying, every time she walks out he goes on a rampage?” Julian gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Oh, he’s impossible to live with, I’ll give you that. In fact, I don’t know how Iris puts up with him. But that doesn’t make him a serial killer. And anyway, you keep saying ‘he.’ It could just as easily have been a woman. Females can be pretty violent, too.”

  Mara sighed and took off her shoe to examine a developing blister.

  “It was just a thought,” she said.

  Julian opened the map and took a bearing with his compass, orienting them toward their final dot.

  “Rather than go all the way back to the main trail, what say we save time by angling through the woods and picking it up farther ahead? It’ll mean some crashing through the bush, if you think you’re up to it.”

  “Sure,” Mara agreed, although she was quite certain she wouldn’t enjoy the crashing part.

  Farther on, as they plunged deeper and deeper into forest, Julian remarked, “You know, peasants used to give this area wide berth. It’s full of swamps and once had a bad reputation as the hideout of brigands and wolves. Even werewolves.”

  “Brrr.”

  “Of course, that was a hundred years ago. Still”—he paused to glance back at her—“even today you wouldn’t want to get lost here.”

  “No. I would not.”

  But she did get lost. It was after Julian had led them over a ridge and down into an extensive bog. Dragonflies hovered thickly in the air. The earth was spongy and full of standing water. As usual, he strode ahead of her. Soon he had vanished behind a gray-green wall of willow bushes. Jazz, off on business of his own, was nowhere to be seen. Mara found herself struggling through high swamp brush that obscured her view, cursing the ankle-deep, sucking mud, and falling farther and farther behind.

  It was an eerie, claustrophobic place full of rustling vegetation. A frog erupted suddenly in front of her, landing on her foot. She choked back a yell of alarm as she shook it off. Not, of course, that Julian would have heard her. Where was he? She fought her way forward. Quite unexpectedly and with a feeling of immense relief, she broke through into an open water meadow.

  “Julian?” she called, shading her eyes to look around her. “Jazz!”

  The meadow grasses rippled in the wind. She was utterly alone.

  “Julian,” she shouted, louder this time. She stood still to listen. Silence. A slight feeling of unease gripped her. On the far side of the meadow, a dense wood rose up. A gap in the trees revealed a path. Dammit, she thought, he could have waited. Furious, she made for the trailhead.

  “Julian?” she called doubtfully, peering into a tunnel of greenery that led uninvitingly into a twilight world.

  “Bastard,” she muttered and started unwillingly down it. Suddenly a brownish blur exploded in front of her. She screamed and ducked. The thing passed so close to her head that she felt a great rush of air lift her hair. She had an impression of rapidly beating wings, an open beak, cruel, bright eyes. Seconds later, she realized that she had startled a buzzard from its perch. She saw it now, through a gap in the trees, lofting powerfully
, angling sharply against the sky. Shaken, she stumbled back out into the sunshine.

  “Shit!” It was as much an exclamation of fear as of real anger with herself for being afraid. Anyway, it was ridiculous to think she was lost. Somewhere along the way, Julian would find her. In fact, he was probably looking for her at that moment. And if he didn’t, well, screw him, all she had to do was to return the way she had come until she found the path they’d taken when they branched off in their search for the Bird’s-nest Orchids. Working back through the swamp, as much as she disliked the hissing world of towering reeds, would be easy. She could simply follow the swath broken by her original passage. But finding her way through the uncharted forest to rejoin the signposted main trail might not be so simple. She had not paid particular attention to the way they had come, merely followed Julian as he pushed through the understory of the trees.

  “Shit,” she cried again and recrossed the water meadow.

  She almost stumbled on him, crouching behind a thicket of willows.

  “Julian,” she cried out, half in relief, half in exasperation. “Where were you?”

  He peered up at her. “What do you mean, where was I? I was here.”

  “Well, I was lost. Didn’t you hear me shouting for you? You—you left me behind!”

  “I did no such thing.” He sounded indignant, but she thought he looked a little guilty. “And no, I didn’t hear you. Or, if I did, how was I to know you were lost? I mean, how could you get lost? All you had to do was follow me. Anyway, look what I’ve found.” He pointed triumphantly to a pair of tiny, green spires rising bravely out of a saturated patch of moss.

  “Hammarbya paludosa,” he said with satisfaction as he uncapped his camera lens. “Bog Orchids. Very early on. Won’t flower for another month or so. This species is special because the edges of the leaves put out tiny bulblets that eventually grow into new plants. It’s an unusual form of vegetative propagation. Bog Orchids are rare. I’ve only ever seen them once before, around Le Bugue.”