by Michelle Wan
“Don’t forget, la Binette and Vrac are still around. Oh, my Christ,” Julian burst out as an unpleasant thought struck him. “What if he’s left them to finish us off?”
The possibility—which quickly took hold in their minds as a strong likelihood—made them both go cold. It stood to reason that Henri would employ Vrac and his mother to do his dirty work. Both realized how vain their plans were for escape. It was no longer a matter of overpowering two elderly people, one armed with a shotgun. At the appointed time, la Binette and Vrac would mount the stairs. The door would open. Against those two, they had no chance.
Forgetting caution, Julian turned on the light and, using a piece of the chamber pot, began to dig frantically at the wood around the lock fitting in the door. After a long time, he saw that he had managed to gouge out only a small trough along the edge of the metal plate. The wood, seasoned oak, was extremely hard. At the rate he was going, the job would take him days.
•
They sat on the floor, one on either side of the door, anticipating their fate. They both expected it to happen sometime that night. Now Julian knew the heightened awareness achieved by people awaiting execution. Every sensation was magnified tenfold, the pumping of his heart as loud as thunder. He imagined that Vrac could break his neck with a single, effective blow.
While Mara slept, Julian forced himself to stay awake. He preferred to meet death ready rather than have it take him unawares. At last, he, too, slipped into unconsciousness. He dreamed that he was standing on a windy ridge. The Cypripedium, enormous and grotesque, rose beckoningly before him. As he reached his hand out to it, he saw that the plant was broken just below the flower head. A poisonous blue exudate dripped from the damaged stem.
TWENTY-ONE
“Julian.”
“Hmm?”
“Wake up.” Mara was kneeling by his side, shaking him. He opened his eyes. She looked pale and frightened. A somber morning light slanted into the garret.
“Something’s happening.”
Lightheaded and disoriented, he struggled to sit up. His entire body hurt.
“What?”
“I don’t know. But I can sense it.”
She was right. Something had occurred or was about to occur. The atmosphere, the very stillness of the place, held a kind of dreadful expectancy, of breathless waiting, as if past events had collected there and were waiting for their final resolution. He rose unsteadily to his feet.
Then he heard it. A sound at the bottom of the stairs. Two sets of heavy footfalls, their cadence unhurried, fateful as the knell of doom. This was it. The unholy pair were coming to finish off what Henri de Sauvignac had started. Heart pounding, Julian gestured Mara to the other side of the door. They stood, backs pressed against the wall, listening. The footsteps stopped. The key turned in the lock. The door swung open.
Julian brought la Binette down with a flying tackle that would have done his team proud. The woman crashed to the ground, but, with the agility and strength of a wrestler, slipped from his hold, overturned him, and pinned him with her full weight. He beheld the frightening spectacle of one deep-set eye glaring balefully at him out of a vivid splash of purple. At that point Mara fell on la Binette’s back. The woman struck out, sending Mara crashing against the wall. Julian seized the moment to drive her off with his knees, but she grabbed him by the throat. He was on his back, crushed beneath her big, unwholesome body. He clawed at her face. She slammed his head against the floor so hard that he saw stars, punched him until blood spurted from his nose. He choked on his own blood. Someone was shouting. Another body moved across his line of sight. He managed to roll free, but the woman was on him again, slamming and punching. The walls and ceiling of the garret spun before his eyes.
“Assez! Enough!” bellowed Loulou, struggling to separate the two. His normally cheerful face was red, and the tail of his shirt trailed out of his trousers.
La Binette stood up and dragged Julian to his feet. He hung limply in her grip. With a grunt of disdain, she dropped him. He fell heavily to the floor.
“Sacrebleu, you two are prepared to sell your lives dearly,” Loulou panted. He helped Mara up and then bent over Julian. “Ça va, mon vieux? That was quite a welcome you provided. Didn’t think you had it in you.”
•
Julian attended to his bleeding nose at the kitchen sink while la Binette stood grimly by, arms folded, watching his every move.
“I’m not going to pinch the silver, if that’s what you think,” Julian snapped.
La Binette thrust her jaw out, but Loulou stepped in quickly to prevent another eruption of violence. “Doucement. Madame is only carrying out instructions.”
“What, to break my head?”
“You did go for her first,” interceded Mara, who seemed to have a better grasp of the state of things than he.
“Wait a minute,” Julian objected. “I thought that was the idea. And what the hell are you doing here?” he demanded of the ex-flic.
“Ah,” said Loulou, looking pleased with himself. “I was sent to collect you.”
“Collect—!” Julian stopped trying to staunch his bleeding nose and stared warily about him.
“That’s right, connard,” snarled la Binette, hurling two sets of bright, metallic objects at them. They fell noisily to the stone floor. Their car keys. “Your dog’s outside. Now get lost.”
“It’s all right,” said Mara. “We’re free. We can go.”
“Exactly,” crowed Loulou. “My friends, Henri de Sauvignac is in custody at Périgueux Police Headquarters right now. He has confessed.”
•
For the third time in as many months, Mara was in the commissaire’s office, sitting on a hard chair, watching Boutot roll a pencil between his palms. As before, Loulou strolled about the room. Julian was elsewhere, being interviewed by Boutot’s second-in-command.
“You’re saying he simply turned himself in?” Mara was incredulous.
The commissaire nodded gravely. His mustache drooped. The pouches under his eyes were blue. He looked as if he hadn’t slept the night before. “He had no choice. You had learned the truth about your sister, his son was about to return, and Monsieur Wood had found a skeleton on his estate.”
“Just walked in and handed across a written statement,” declared Loulou from his position behind her at the bookshelves.
“However,” continued Boutot, “he claims it was an accident.”
“He’s lying!” Mara cried.
“According to him, nineteen years ago, your sister found herself in the forest adjacent to Les Colombes—”
“Courtesy of la Binette’s taxi,” snickered Loulou, coming into view.
Mara was uncomprehending. “La Binette’s taxi?”
“That’s right,” Loulou grinned. “De Sauvignac said Bedie had been hitchhiking and the Rocher woman had given her a ride. However, reading between the lines, this ties in with complaints we’ve received over the years about a pair resembling Madame Rocher and her son who like to pick up hitchhikers, drive them to inconvenient places, demand a fee, and leave them to find their way back.”
“In any case,” resumed Boutot wearily, “Mademoiselle Beatrice was in the forest, and that is where she met Madame de Sauvignac. We assume your sister’s interest in orchids was strong enough to offset any inconvenience she had suffered at the hands of the Rochers. Madame, who is herself a serious amateur, recognized a fellow enthusiast. She directed your sister onto the estate, telling her about an orchid walk, created by Madame and her late father-in-law, that runs along their land.” The commissaire put down his pencil. “I’m given to understand that it was old Monsieur de Sauvignac’s ambition to plant Les Colombes with every wild orchid native not only to the Dordogne but to all of Europe.”
“I see,” murmured Mara, a piece of the puzzle slipping into place.
“Henri de Sauvignac happened to be out hunting that day. He says he ran into Mademoiselle Beatrice, fell into conversation with her, made a
pass, and she resisted.”
“Always looking for a bit of frou-frou,” elaborated Loulou. “A real skirt-chaser in his day.”
“Quite,” the commissaire murmured dryly. “He says there was a struggle, she stumbled, fell backward, struck her head on a stone—”
“No,” Mara cut in hotly. “I think it was an intentional, brutal assault.”
“Hmm. De Sauvignac’s version might be difficult to disprove after so much time.”
“Not if you have a body,” said Mara. “Don’t forget Julian’s skeleton.”
“She’s right,” Loulou contributed. “Forensics can check the skull for injuries consistent with a fall as opposed to, say, a crushing blow to the head.”
“Possibly,” Boutot conceded. “At any rate, Henri claims he was horrified at what had happened. He says he brought your sister to the château.”
“Why didn’t he call a doctor?” demanded Mara.
Boutot nodded. “Indeed. This is where the man accepts full blame. He admits he made no attempt to get your sister medical attention. First, because he didn’t realize at the time how badly she was injured. Second, because she was a foreigner and he was afraid that it would not be so easy to buy her family off, as apparently he was accustomed to doing whenever his sexual excesses caused a local scandal. He hoped instead that he and his wife could nurse Mademoiselle Beatrice back to health themselves.”
“But fourteen years!” Mara cried. “And his son? Where does—where was Alain when all of this was going on?”
“In Abidjan. Working on a water-containment project. That, of course, can be checked. Alain knew nothing of your sister’s injury or incarceration. In fact, Monsieur de Sauvignac said that he had to forbid him access to the château, except for brief visits home, while your sister was alive, for fear that he would discover her presence.”
Mara let her breath out softly.
“Even now Monsieur Alain has no idea of what has transpired.” Commissaire Boutot referred to a note on his desk. “He’s returning from Paris this evening. Two of my men will meet his train. He’ll be informed, and we’ll need to take a statement from him as well. His mother, unfortunately, is in a state of collapse and can’t be questioned. The Rocher woman is caring for her.”
Mara shook her head. “Jeanne de Sauvignac is tougher than she looks, believe me. And Julian?” She thought tardily of the man she had so recently denounced. “I take it Henri’s confession clears Julian?”
“Ah,” said the commissaire. Something in his voice caused Mara to sit up.
“That one’s not so simple,” pronounced Loulou, pulling up a chair and plumping his fat bottom onto it. His expression was bland, but his complexion had gone pink with suppressed excitement. “De Sauvignac’s confession clears Julian of involvement with Mademoiselle Beatrice, certainly. But there’s still the little matter of Julie Ménard.”
“But surely Henri—”
Loulou wagged a finger back and forth. “Nothing sure about it. De Sauvignac claims to have no knowledge of any of the other missing women. And we have no evidence linking him to them.”
“What have you said to Monsieur Wood about your suspicions?” asked Boutot.
“Well, very little,” replied Mara uncomfortably. “I mean, it’s not the kind of thing one wants to talk about.”
“Just as well,” chuckled Loulou. “Because there’s more. Tell her, Antoine.”
Boutot sighed and blinked lugubriously at Mara. “One of my men just took a statement from a neighbor of the late Madame Charlebois. It seems that this person remembers a gardener who used to work for the old woman. She thinks it might have been around the time Mariette disappeared, and she had the impression that he only came a few times and then stopped. Described him as a foreign chap, English, she thought. Her description of this man fits Monsieur Wood almost exactly.”
“Julian?” Mara murmured, all her old doubts reviving.
“But the final straw”—Loulou jumped up, no longer able to contain himself—“is that another woman’s gone missing!”
Mara gaped at him.
“Arlette Cousty,” Boutot informed her. “Legal secretary, forty-five years old, married, no children, resident of Toulouse. Her husband reported her missing last week. She hasn’t been seen or heard of since. Her car was gone, some of her clothes as well. The husband admits to their having marital difficulties but believes that even if she had left him something must have happened to her subsequently because she would not have failed to contact him. She was a very responsible type, you see.”
Mara shook her head. “But Toulouse is in the south. It’s a hundred and fifty kilometers away. How can this tie in?”
“Hear me out. The interesting thing is that Madame Cousty’s credit card was used to purchase gas on the evening of the day she went missing. Can you guess, Mara, where this purchase was made?”
Beynac, Carennac, Souillac, La Bique. The place names came back to Mara.
“Somewhere along the D703 or D25?” she hazarded.
“Exactly. At a station just outside of Beaumont. Shortly after seven on the evening in question, somebody purchased thirty-seven liters of gas at a Total station. Unfortunately, the cashier was one of these young cretins with earphones plugged into his head. Couldn’t recognize his own nose, let alone identify a photograph of Madame Cousty as the bearer of the card. Nevertheless, you see what this signifies, don’t you? Beaumont puts Arlette Cousty’s last known location right within our zone of interest!”
Mara stared first at one man and then the other. “What’s being done about it?” she asked at last.
Boutot fingered his pencil. “It’s being treated it as a case of domiciliary abandonment. So far.”
“Ha!” barked Loulou. “But you realize what all this means for Julian? He already has some explaining to do regarding Julie Ménard. Now, supposing he’s identified as the man who worked for Madame Charlebois, and if he just happened to be cruising the area around Beaumont on the night in question, I’d say he’s still very much in the frame!”
TWENTY-TWO
Mara wrote to Patsy.
> They’ve made a positive identification of the skeleton based on old dental records. So that lays Bedie to rest. Although I’d always hoped somehow to find her alive, at least this gives me closure, me and everyone who loved her—Mum, Dad, and especially Scott, who’s suffered as much as any of us from all these years of not knowing. Henri’s sticking to his story that it was an accident, but I don’t believe him. He insists that Bedie’s eventual death was “natural.” Since there seems to be no evidence to the contrary, I guess I can at least be grateful that Henri and Jeanne let Bedie die in her own time. The police have reopened investigations on Julie Ménard and Mariette Charlebois, and they’re checking into the latest woman to go missing, Arlette Cousty. So far, they haven’t questioned Julian directly. Loulou says they’re purposely playing their fish until—tac!—they have enough evidence to pull him in. Meantime, Commissaire Boutot has asked me to stay clear of Julian and take basic precautions, although I think he’s less concerned about my safety than worried that I’ll give something away. At any rate, it hasn’t occurred to him to offer me any armed protection. For the rest, I’m just getting on with my work and trying to put Bedie behind me … <
Mara glanced out the window at trees, a blue sky, and sunshine. There seemed nothing more to say. She signed off, got up, and wandered restlessly about her studio. The unfinished plans for a kitchen renovation (another of Prudence’s referrals) lay on her workbench. In a corner stood a recently acquired nineteenth-century cheval glass mounted in a beautifully carved walnut frame. She had bought it quite reasonably from a brocante in Monpazier with another client in mind. Now she wasn’t sure she wanted to part with it. She stood before it, staring at her slightly tarnished reflection. Her eyes met those in the mirror. My face, she thought sadly. Bedie’s face. Hesitantly, she reached out to trace the contours of her image with a fingertip that met only the flat, cold hardness of
glass.
My god! she whispered as the realization hit her.
Rushing back to the computer, she logged on again.
> Patsy, I’ve just thought of something. It’s a minor detail, but if it means what I think it means, it could turn everything upside down … <
A shadow fell into the room.
“Hello.” Julian stood in the open doorway.
“Oh,” said Mara and sat very still.
Jazz, who had been snoring on the floor, gave a grunt, heaved himself up, and ambled over to greet their visitor. Julian scratched the dog’s ear. He did not come farther into the studio but spoke from where he stood.
“We have unfinished business, Mara.”
“What—what do you mean?” She snapped her fingers for Jazz to return to her side. The dog ignored her.
“The Cypripedium.” Julian seemed exasperated at having to spell it out. “I mean, you’ve got what you—that is …” He trailed off awkwardly.
“I’ve found my sister but you still haven’t found your orchid. Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Well, I wouldn’t have put it quite like that. But we did have a deal.”
“So?”
He looked a little surprised at her ungraciousness. “Look, I’m not asking you to hike the forest with me. Unless, of course, you want to. But I need your help.”
“How do you mean?”
“Jeanne de Sauvignac and her late father-in-law tried to establish a plantation of Cypripedium calceolus at Les Colombes. I think the mystery Lady’s Slipper was a mutant of this attempt. There’s a slim chance that it continued to propagate. I have to find this plantation. Jeanne is the only person who can tell me where it is. I understand she’s pretty incoherent right now, but time is running out fast. I mean, the flowering season, and without a flower, I haven’t a prayer of proving my theory. I thought if you could ask Alain to get some sense of the location from his mother, even generally, it would narrow down my search tremendously. I happen to know that Géraud is also on the hunt, and I’m damned if I’m going to let that voyou beat me out again.”
