by Michelle Wan
“But the photos were taken with her camera,” Mara cried impatiently. “Her initials are on the case. How much more do you want?”
“Ah.” The old fellow cocked his head at her with a knowing look. “Always we return to the initials. I’m afraid, mon amie, you did not help your own cause there.”
She paled. “What do you mean?”
“B.D. Presumably for ‘Beatrice Dunn’?”
“Well of course!”
“But written over the accumulated deposit of dirt and mold. A more recent addition, don’t you think?”
Julian started. “A more recent addition? Are you saying someone added those initials at a later time?” He turned to stare unbelievingly at Mara, who flushed a deep red.
“You knew all along!” she burst out furiously at Loulou. “All right. You caught me out. I wrote them myself.” Unrepentantly, she glared at Julian, whose eyebrows were hovering near his hairline. “Don’t you see? It was the only way I could make the police take me seriously.”
“Au contraire,” Loulou said gravely. “I can tell you that those of us, myself included, who still remember the case would have liked nothing better than to take you seriously. After all, we still have the unsolved murder of the Tenhagen woman and several disappearances on the books. But we needed more than supposition and—pardonnez-moi—flimsy chicanery! It doesn’t do”—he wagged a fat forefinger in her face—“no, it doesn’t do at all to try to trick the police!”
“So you’re saying this camera could have belonged to someone else?” Julian asked.
“No, it did not,” Mara almost shouted. “Forget the initials. That camera was Bedie’s. I’d know it anywhere. Oh, why won’t anyone believe me?”
The two men regarded her in silence. She looked near to tears.
Julian drew a deep breath. “Okay.” He turned to Loulou. “It seems to me you do have proof of a sort. First, Mara recognized the camera as her sister’s, even if she did falsify the initials. That ought to count for something. Second, whoever took those photos knew orchids, how to identify and film them. According to Mara, Bedie was an experienced documenter of orchids. Taken together, I’d say these things argue strongly in favor of the camera’s provenance.”
Heartened, Mara persisted. “And there’s something else. We told you the pigeon house is on a farm called La Binette. What we didn’t tell you is that it’s also just up the road from the spot where the facteur, Gaston, had his accident. He was asking around about the pigeonnier, you know, showing the photocopy to everyone on his route. Don’t you find it odd that he crashed just there? Besides, we got a look at the farmer. He’s …” She hesitated. How could she say that he was the embodiment of the nameless terror of her nightmares? “There’s something horrible about him—brutal, ugly. Maybe you won’t be convinced by gut feeling, but I tell you, I know he had something to do with my sister’s disappearance. Can’t you persuade the police at least to question him?”
Loulou shook his head, clicking his tongue softly against his teeth. “Mara, you must understand that your credibility with the lads in Périgueux is not—how shall we say—particularly famous. They see you as someone who has already tried to doctor evidence and who is quite capable of doing so again. Moreover, you bring me nothing more than highly circumstantial information, an argument based, as you put it, on a reaction of the viscera. A pigeonnier and an ugly farmer do not make a case. Supposing this man is questioned and denies all knowledge of your sister, as he most certainly will. What then?”
“Ask questions. Make people talk. The police can do that. Someone is bound to know something, to remember something.”
Loulou smiled indulgently. “For you it seems so simple. But you don’t understand how the rural mind works. Make people talk. Ma foi! The locals will simply close ranks. This man is one of them, and the tendency is always to cover for one’s own, regardless. Besides, what you need is something much more concrete than local gossip, Mara. A solid link tying this man to your sister. That’s what you must establish, don’t you see?”
Mara rose, chin set firm. “Loulou, all I can see is that the only thing that will convince you is finding Bedie’s body on that farm. Well, if that’s what it takes, that’s what we’ll do!”
Julian, who found himself hurrying out the door after her, wished, not for the first time, that she would be more sparing in her use of the first person plural.
TWELVE
Gaston felt like his hero, Marshal Ney. Or, rather, what he imagined Marshal Ney must have felt like as he planned and directed the victorious battles of Friedland, Smolensk, and Borodino. The son of a barrel-maker from Saarlouis, Ney had risen to fame and glory in the days of the Empire. Gaston was also from a line of barrel-makers, from Bordeaux.
First, there was the triumphant moment when Mara had presented him with a check for one thousand euros. This had been in the recovery ward in the presence of his wife and daughters. Now that they understood the situation, they had forgiven him and embraced Mara enthusiastically. Even the once-disapproving doctor shook Mara’s hand. The other ward patients thought Gaston had won the lottery. Although his eyes were bruised and bloodshot, tubes still ran out of nearly every orifice, and most parts of his body, including his nose, were heavily bandaged, it had been the best day of his life.
Then followed a deeply gratifying conference with Mara and Julian, both of them hanging on his lips, as it were.
“So you see,” Mara appealed to him, “what we need is a way of getting information on those La Binette people without arousing suspicion.”
“It’s more than that,” said Julian. “We need to be able to get onto their land.”
“Hrrr,” Gaston spoke with difficulty around his tubes. “You ha’ to be ca’ful. I heard sub preddy fuddy stories aboud dem.”
Mara and Julian nodded. Their sighting of Vrac—the man on the bicycle could have been none other—made them alive to this advice.
In the end, Gaston advised them to talk with the people in the château on the hill, Monsieur and Madame de Sauvignac. He knew them personally, having delivered their mail for nearly thirty years. If there was anything to be gotten on those La Binette folk, the de Sauvignacs would have it. He then gave Mara and Julian a barely intelligible version of the history of the de Sauvignacs as he knew it: the early death of one son, the estrangement of the other, the mother gone right off her head. He finished by describing the present melancholy state of affairs in which the old couple lived out their days alone, rattling about in a great cave of a mansion.
The nurse came in to warn Julian and Mara not to tire her patient.
“Good lug,” Gaston gurgled happily after them as they departed. “Leb be doe wha’ habbens.” And he touched the side of his bandaged nose knowingly with his good hand.
•
When Mara telephoned Henri de Sauvignac, she mentioned only her interest in the pigeonnier. The old gentleman was courteous but wary and surprisingly evasive. From this she judged that Gaston must have, at some previous time, given the de Sauvignacs his undoubtedly gruesome version of la canadienne disparue. To them, she was only a stranger with unpleasant questions to ask. Henri de Sauvignac made the excuse that his wife was not well, apologized, and said they could not possibly receive her at the moment. However, if she would be good enough to leave her number … She did so.
She was extremely surprised when, the following morning, Henri de Sauvignac telephoned and suggested that she come out to the château at four o’clock that afternoon.
•
Les Colombes stood high on its prominence, surveying a great sweep of rumpled hills and valleys. As Mara drove up the steep, winding approach, she could barely make out the dimensions of the château, so overgrown was it with shrubberies. Then she rounded a bend and found herself in an empty, dusty forecourt giving onto a broad, ivy-covered facade. Once grand, no doubt, Les Colombes now had a shabby, forlorn air. The roof looked in bad condition. Many of the tall upper-story windows were shuttered. The broad
front of the château was dominated by a central portal above a balustraded terrace. A crumbling pair of Baroque staircases curved down from either end of the terrace.
Mara parked in the shade. Jazz looked hopeful and then disappointed at being left. As usual, he hung his head out the window and moaned disapprovingly at Mara’s retreating back.
Henri de Sauvignac must have been watching for her, for as she climbed the weed-choked steps the great front door swung back. He stood in the opening, tall and gaunt.
“Madame Dunn?” His voice was suave, like old velvet, his deeply lined face still handsome. He wore a tired but well-made suit of an old-fashioned cut, a shirt of dubious whiteness, and a paisley cravat.
“Monsieur de Sauvignac?”
Gallantly, he stooped to brush the back of her hand with lips as dry as autumn leaves.
“How good of you to come at such short notice.” His practiced regard, wandering covertly over her body, revealed a libertine beneath the gentleman. “And how clever of you to find us. Rather out of the way, I’m afraid.”
“Your directions were excellent.”
Her host stepped back to admit her into an echoing vestibule. An impressive stone staircase rose at the back of it to the upper reaches of the house. Passing near him, Mara caught a whiff of eau de cologne, suggestive of a still-potent sexuality but underlain by a faint smell of decay that he seemed to share with the house itself. It was an odor that Mara recognized from her own work in restoring dank places long uninhabited.
“I think the library will be most comfortable.” He ushered her through a pair of handsomely paneled doors opening off to the right. “Please. Sit down. May I offer you something? An apéritif?”
Mara preferred tea but accepted vermouth because she thought it would be easier for him. She somehow doubted that the de Sauvignacs kept domestic help. With a small bow, he withdrew.
She had been invited to sit, but Mara remained standing, glancing curiously about her. The library, he had called it. Certainly it contained books, but it looked more like a furniture warehouse—Louis XVI armchairs pushed against the walls, an antique armoire, a dainty Restoration console, an eighteenth-century ebony escritoire. There were little touches of domesticity, too, suggesting that the de Sauvignacs spent much of their time there: a pair of worn velvet settees drawn up to an oil heater; a small television on a scarred mahogany stand; a sewing basket full of scraps of material. The back of the room was entirely taken up by a baronial dining table, set about with sixteen chairs (Mara counted them). It was stacked with papers and bric-a-brac, but a telltale litter of crumbs at one end told her that this was where the couple took their meals.
The paneled doors creaked. Mara turned. It was not Henri de Sauvignac; instead, a tall elderly woman clad in a dress that hung unevenly at the hem, a voluminous green, fringed shawl, and dressy high-heeled shoes.
“Ah,” said the woman, fixing Mara with vague kindliness before wobbling toward her in a clattering, jerky gait, like a marionette in the hands of an inexpert puppeteer.
“You must be Madame Dunn? I am Jeanne de Sauvignac. How very kind of you to call.” Her rusty voice was pleasant, and she spoke with almost childish pride, as if she had initiated the meeting. She extended her hand to touch Mara’s with formal courtesy. “Do sit down.” Up close, she emitted the same musty odor as her husband.
Mara seated herself on one of the velvet settees, Jeanne on the other, drawing her shawl about her with care, smoothing its shiny nap with the palm of her hand. Mara studied her with interest. The old woman’s clothing was like the room, a gathering of oddments from better times, the dress of fine but much-worn gray silk jersey, the scuffed satin pumps dating from another era and too big now for the bony feet. The grayish-yellow hair was swept up at the sides and held haphazardly in place by two tortoise-shell combs, giving the woman’s head a flyaway look. The shawl struck a curious note. Mara realized with a mild sense of shock that it was in fact one of those souvenir tablecloths that one bought at seaside resorts; the word “Biarritz” was emblazoned down one side.
Jeanne was also staring at her, not just curiously but with a hungry interest that made Mara uncomfortable.
A slight, wondering crease crumpled the old woman’s brow. “You are so much—” she began eagerly and then broke off.
So much what? Mara wondered, but at that point the husband returned with a small tray bearing glasses and a bottle of Martini & Rossi. He seemed momentarily surprised to see his wife in the room, but merely said as he handed Mara her drink, “Ah, my dear, here is Madame Dunn, who has come to see us.” He served his wife and then himself before sitting down beside Mara.
He raised his glass. “A votre santé, madame.”
“A la vôtre aussi,” Mara toasted them both in return.
“How nice to have a visitor.” Jeanne de Sauvignac favored her with a crooked smile of naive and vacant sweetness. “We often used to have visitors in the afternoon. For tea, you know. I always liked to take afternoon tea, in the English manner, is that not so, Henri?”
“Of course, my dear,” murmured her husband. He delved in his pocket and drew out a thin black marocain case, snapping it open with a thumbnail. “Do you smoke, madame?” When Mara declined, he said, “I hope you will permit?” and applied himself to removing a cigarette, striking a match, lighting up, and placing the burnt matchstick in a plastic Cinzano ashtray, each movement carried out with fastidious care. His smoking fascinated her: both greedy and precise, as if he hungered for the taste and smell of the tobacco but apportioned each drag sparingly. With every inhalation, he tapped the ash carefully into the ashtray.
They were clearly waiting for her to begin. For the moment, Mara really had no idea how to go about it. Gaston had not prepared her for such penurious eccentricity. In the end, de Sauvignac saved her the trouble.
Clearing his throat, he said, “You expressed an interest in the pigeonnier, I believe?”
“Yes, of course.” It was her ostensible reason for coming.
“Unfortunately, I don’t know how much I can tell you.” He tapped the cigarette. “It was built sometime after this house, probably in the late 1600s, and at one time stood on land that belonged to my family.” Momentarily, his voice took on a ring of pride. “In times past, the Seigneurie of Les Colombes extended some ten leagues east to west, farther than a man could walk in a day. In fact, until the last century, Les Colombes was one of the most important holdings in the region. Of course, things are now—how should I put it—much reduced.”
“I see.” She did not know what else to say.
“However, to return to the pigeonnier. But perhaps you are not aware of the historical importance of pigeons in France?” Once more he sucked deeply on the cigarette. Twin trails of smoke streamed thinly from his nostrils. “For centuries they were valued for meat, eggs, and fertilizer, especially here in our southwest, where we have little livestock. In my grandfather’s, even in my father’s day, pigeon dung was so precious that it was given as dowries and passed down from generation to generation.
“It’s not surprising, therefore”—a wave of the hand—“that there are thousands of such structures scattered throughout the Dordogne. However, ours is one of the largest.” Again the note of pride. He craned around to frown at the bookshelves. “I believe somewhere there is an architectural drawing showing it in cross section so that you can see the niches set into the interior wall for the birds to nest. At one time we may have had over one thousand nesting pairs. I remember there was a tall, pivoting ladder in the middle for the keeper to climb up. In my father’s time, however, the bottom nests were blocked off to reduce the number of birds. Pigeons”—he gave a sardonic smile—“eat a lot of grain.”
He paused reflectively. “It no longer belongs to us, of course. The land was sold a long time ago, the pigeonnier with it.” His gaze traveled to the windows and beyond. “You know, I haven’t set eyes on that dovecote in years. I didn’t even recognize it when Gaston showed us the pictu
re.” His eyes returned to Mara. “Is this sufficient information? I’m really not sure how much more I can tell you.”
“Yes. At least where the pigeonnier is concerned.” Mara hesitated, then plunged. “Monsieur de Sauvignac, I haven’t been exactly open with you. It’s not so much the pigeonnier that I want to talk to you about, although that does come into it. I expect Gaston has already told you something about me …” She drew breath. De Sauvignac waited for her to go on.
“My real reason for being here, as you’ve probably already guessed, is—I’ve come for my sister.” She was putting it awkwardly, yet she was there for Bedie, because of her and on her behalf.
If Henri regarded her impassively, the effect on his wife was electrical. The smile slipped completely from her face. Jeanne gaped at Mara in acute alarm, bordering on panic, as if Mara were a madwoman accusing them of body snatching. “But she’s not here!” she cried, appalled.
“I mean,” Mara corrected, feeling her cheeks go hot, “it’s about my sister that I’ve come.”
Quickly, to cover her gaffe, she gave them her version of Bedie’s disappearance and the link, through the photograph, with the dovecote. Throughout the telling, the deepening crease in Madame’s brow hung like a question mark in the air. When Mara finished, wife and husband were silent for a long moment.
De Sauvignac ground out his cigarette. “Terrible for you, of course, but I don’t quite see how we can help you.”
Mara explained. “I’d like to approach the people who own the farm below you, where the pigeonnier stands. The woman known as la Binette and her son, Vrac. I’d be extremely grateful if you could assist me in this regard.”
He frowned. “La Binette and Vrac?”
“I understood from Gaston that you have some influence with them.”
“Influence?” De Sauvignac gave a dry laugh, like a cough. “Only in the sense that we are, how should I put it, long acquaintances. I’m afraid those two keep very much to themselves. They don’t like strangers, and one has to respect their privacy.”
