Deadly Slipper (15 page)

In all, they found a dozen candidates. Several Julian rejected straightaway. “Too big for a pigeon house. Things may not be labeled, but they’re more or less to scale. And these are probably cottages. You can tell by their orientation to the road. Luckily, we’ll be able to check most of these out by car, or with the aid of binoculars. Except this one.” He tapped a spot on the map. “It’s in the middle of woodland. Have to walk in for that.” He eyed her severely. “You’d better come prepared to trek, you know. Even if we’re lucky
enough to find your pigeon house among this lot, we’ll still have to hike in for the
Neottia.”

“I don’t see why, if we have the
pigeonnier,”
she objected. “Why not just go from there? Look for the orchids that come after it?”

“Because finding both will help us establish that Bedie took these photos in a single walk, which, don’t forget, is the critical assumption. The other orchids, except the Lady’s Slipper, are simply not rare enough to go on. Also, the pigeon house and the
Neottia
together will give us the direction of Bedie’s approach, since we know the Bird’s-nest is before the
pigeonnier.
Any evidence of orchids that come after the
pigeonnier
, say, like the Marsh Orchids in the water meadow, will help us fix her forward path.”

Mara was silent for a moment. Finally, she said, “It all boils down to the Lady’s Slipper, doesn’t it?”

Julian frowned. “Unfortunately, yes. Without that, we can’t really know where she ended up. We’re always faced with the possibility that your sister began the roll of film in this area, and finished up somewhere else, like in the Lozére.”

She said somberly, “I don’t think you understand what I mean, Julian. You told me Bedie was systematic about photographing her orchids. She took them close up and at a distance, right?”

“Sure. It’s standard practice.”

“Except the Lady’s Slipper. She only took one shot of it. I’ve been asking myself why. There were at
least a couple of frames left on the film. It occurs to me that the only explanation is that something must have interrupted her. Julian, I think the reason Bedie didn’t take any more photos was that she couldn’t.” Mara paused. “By then she may have been dead.”

They agreed to meet at eight the following morning behind the Parc Archéologique in Beynac. Mara arrived first. She parked her car and let Jazz out to mark trees while she leaned against the front fender of the Renault. A thin mist, rising from the river, hung delicately in the air. Below her, the town, stacked against the face of a jutting cliff, still slept. The tour buses would not appear for another two hours. A fat woman in slippers came out of one of the houses, threw open the ground-floor shutters, and waddled inside again.

Above Mara soared the massive ramparts of Beynac Castle. French stronghold during the Hundred Years’ War, the fortress glared upriver in the direction of equally hulking English Castelnaud. Both fortifications had played key roles in the bitter fighting. At Castelnaud, Mara had once seen a full-scale working model of a
trébuchet
, a giant medieval catapult, with which the English had once hurled boulders at the French. She had found the brutish engine of war daunting, even at a remove of five centuries.

Mara wondered how the day would go. She felt energized, finally having something concrete to focus on: Géraud’s
Neottia
and a scattering of black dots.
At the same time, she was wary of entering Julian’s turf, his world of leaves and flowering plants. Julian had a deadly seriousness and quick irascibility where botanical things were concerned. Would he tell her to keep her mouth shut while he stared at the ground? Make her walk until she dropped? Would he even notice? She was sure that the only thing that mattered to him was his damned Lady’s Slipper. Fixated, that’s what he was. And, curiously, alone. Like her, she had to acknowledge. Her world was bound by work, the reconstruction of dank water closets and primitive kitchens. And Bedie, nineteen years gone. It occurred to her that, viewed from this perspective, she and Julian had a lot in common after all.

He came roaring up twenty minutes late with a bump and a screech of brakes. He jumped out, looking harried.

“Sorry I’m late.” He traded quick pecks with Mara and sidestepped Jazz’s snout, directed at his crotch. “Had to get Bernard started on some digging for Prudence. The lad works hard, but he’s got a very short attention span.”

He wore jeans, sturdy boots, and a wide-brimmed hat. He bristled with equipment: binoculars, camera, compass, canteen, rucksack. She wore cotton slacks and light canvas running shoes. Her only provisions were a tube of sunscreen and a couple of ham sandwiches that she stowed in Julian’s pack.

They left her car and went in Julian’s van, Mara navigating them along the edge of the Abrillac
Forest, down bumpy lanes, past wood lots and pale-green fields of newly planted maize. It took them over an hour to locate six dots, all of which they could see from the car. Two were in
fact pigeonniers
, but square structures unlike the one they sought. The others were a barn, a couple of sheds, and a conical shepherd’s hut built of darkly weathered stone.

“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 copulation. 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.”