Deadly Slipper (17 page)

•

There remained only Julian’s final sighting in the Bessède Forest.

Julian was not free again until Thursday. He suggested they meet at four at the Intermarché in Siorac-en-Périgord. The supermarket parking lot, when
Mara pulled in, was full of shoppers trundling grocery carts. Many had the pale look of English summer residents just arrived to open up holiday cottages. Behind the parking lot, the grounds of the Camping Municipal showed a sprinkling of tents and
caravanes
—the early phase of the tourist invasion. The day had turned cool and overcast, threatening rain.

Julian bumped up in his old Peugeot a few minutes later. He climbed out of his van, looking tired and dusty. In addition to trying to complete Prudence’s courtyard before her party deadline, he complained, he was putting in a rockery at the back of her house.

“Does that have to be finished in time for the party, too?” Mara asked.

“No,” he said grumpily, “but it involves shifting about a hundred tons of Mediterranean stone.”

They went in Mara’s car this time. Jazz, relegated to the backseat, once again made his presence felt by driving his chin painfully into Julian’s shoulder. Julian was too knackered to push him away. He directed them west out of the town on the D25 and then south. En route, they viewed three out of five dots circled on the map by Mara, none of which were
pigeonniers.

“We’d better leave the rest and go after the Bird’s-nest,” Julian said, squinting pessimistically up at the sky, “while the light lasts.” He was beginning to feel the pressure behind his eyes that preceded a headache.

A few kilometers past the village of Urval, he pointed her onto a logging road that cut straight into the heart of the Bessède Forest.

“Look, Mara,” Julian warned as they lurched along, “I don’t want you to get your hopes up. This stand of Bird’s-nests dates from quite a few years back. There’s been a lot of logging in this area. Chances are it’s been totally wiped out.”

“It’s the only sighting we have left,” she said, unnecessarily and a little desperately.

He made no reply.

“Stop here,” he ordered eventually. He got out and peered up and down the road. Tall trees rose up around them, admitting a fitful, livid light. He got back in the car and slammed the door. “This isn’t it. Keep going.”

A few minutes later, he said again, “Stop here.”

He got out once more and this time walked a little way forward. He returned and spoke to her through the car window.

“Pull up a bit. There’s more space to park farther ahead. I think this might be it.”

The way was so narrow that Mara had to nose the Renault into a ditch. She wondered if they would ever get out again.

From there, they went on foot. Twenty meters or so down the road, they found a trail opening to their right.

“Is this what you were looking for?” Mara asked.

“Yes,” said Julian dully.

He’s fed up with this
, Mara concluded to herself.
With me. I’m making him look for something we both know we’ll never find. It’s hopeless.

She followed him dispiritedly along a scree-covered path that wound uphill through tall pines. At one point Jazz routed a badger. The animal held its ground, snarling ferociously and showing jagged yellow teeth. Julian prevented a bloody scene only by a timely grab at Jazz’s collar.

“Look, can’t you leash him?” he roared, hauling at her lunging dog while the badger disappeared into the bushes. “And for pity’s sake, Mara, mind where you walk.” He freed a hand to gesture irritably at a couple of pale sprigs poking up through the grass.

“Well, excuse me!” Angrily she secured Jazz. “What rare species did I nearly tread on?”

“
Listera ovata.
Common Twayblade,” he informed her sulkily. “Better get a move on. This weather’s not going to hold.”

And then there’s my dog
, she went on to herself.
But really, the man’s impossible. He lives, thinks, and breathes orchids.
Seconds later, she realized that it was why she had come to him in the first place.

•

“It ought to be right around here somewhere,” said Julian, scanning the forest floor. He pivoted slowly around. “Damn!”

“How can you be sure this is the place?” Mara gazed about her at the dense, undifferentiated wall of
trees and bushes. “It must all look the same, and after so many years.”

“I would have sworn this was the spot. The problem is, my notes weren’t terribly exact in those days. I was less systematic, didn’t take compass bearings.”

“Oh. Then what?”

“We’ll have to keep searching, won’t we? If the stand survived, it’s got to be around here somewhere. As I recall, it was a thin, extensive scattering that I thought might have been the remnants of a bigger stand. We’d had a series of dry years, and I figured a lot of the plants had probably died off.”

He gazed glumly into the middle distance. “Look, we have to be systematic. We’ll take this beech as our reference point.” He indicated a tall, smooth-barked tree. “Imagine a guide line running north and south of it. What we’ll do is walk out together along the line ten paces to the south. Come on.” He led them the required distance. “Okay. Now we split up. You go ten steps to your right, then right again twenty, so you’re heading back in the direction you came, and right again another ten. That’ll bring you back to the guide line, ten paces to the north of the beech. I’ll do the same on the left, so that we each pace out half a twenty-by-twenty square. Scan for the Bird’s-nests on either side of you as you go—you know what they look like from the photos. If they’re still here, you won’t miss them. We’ll meet up at the top of the square.”

They did it.

“Okay. We’ll have to expand the square. Out another ten, and this time you go to your left twenty paces, thirty back down the way you came, and twenty in again. Are you with me?”

She was.

“That’s the problem with orchids,” he complained after they had completed a second, more lengthy interval of scrambling through the bush. “They’re among the most highly evolved and specialized of all flowering plants but bloody temperamental. They can bloom in strength one year and put out only a few straggling plants the next.
Neottia
are the worst. They’re sporadic. Sometimes they even flower underground, in which case we won’t see anything.” He looked deeply offended.

Something on the run shot suddenly across their path. Jazz, off leash again, gave a single, sharp “gruff” and set off in immediate pursuit. There ensued a diminuendo of barks and crashing sounds followed by ominous silence.

“Jazz!” Mara yelled. “Here!”

The dog did not return. “It’s all right,” Mara said, avoiding Julian’s accusing eye. “He always comes back.”

Julian looked about to say something, but didn’t. Instead, he pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. The throbbing in his skull was starting. He cursed himself for not bringing his pills with him. But, then, his headaches usually gave him a couple of days’ warning. This one,
dammit, was moving in fast and promised to be a thumper.

“Try again?” she asked, with a false brightness that irritated him beyond bearing.

“Of course we’ll try again!” His voice came out hoarse in his effort not to shout at her.
Stupid cow. Stating the obvious.

He saw her startled reaction and muttered, “Another ten, and this time thirty, forty, and thirty.”

“Are you all right?” Mara asked, but he was already striding away.

Mara pushed off through the brush, pacing out her segment of the square, scanning from side to side as she had been instructed. Julian, she thought, looked appalling. His face was drawn, and he had ugly dark shadows under his eyes. Or maybe it was the light in this damned forest. Everything had a dead, greenish cast. Once or twice she thought she heard Jazz. She called and whistled. The dog did not come.

At the point where she expected to meet up with Julian, she found herself in a small, gloomy dell, hip-deep in bracken. She waited. The air was muggy. Clouds of gnats began to swarm about her head. In the distance she heard a faint rumble of thunder. Julian was taking his time getting there.

A noise in the bushes alerted her.

“Jazz!”

No dog appeared. Only the gentle rustle of a quickening breeze, bringing with it the smell of rain, broke the stillness. She gazed about her. She was
surrounded by a wall of trees, towering, ancient, and faintly ominous. Was this the kind of place Bedie had gotten to? she wondered. And then what?

A twig snapped. She swung around sharply.

“Jazz? Come, boy!”

Silence.

“Julian? Is that you?”

If it was, he made no reply. A slight prickling of alarm tickled her scalp. There was another soft movement in the undergrowth, off to the right this time. Slowly Mara turned her head in the direction of the sound. She saw nothing but leaves and branches. Pushing down her growing fear, she began to walk very quickly out of the dell. The sounds of something stepping quietly through the undergrowth followed her.

“Who’s there?” she demanded, turning to stand her ground. Then, as her gaze swept the dark understory of the forest, she saw a pale blur, there one moment, gone the next. It took only a split second for her to realize what it was—a face, featureless except for a pair of glittering eyes. The shock of it left her momentarily paralyzed. Then her lips parted in a thin cry. She wheeled about and ran.

Whatever it was ran with her, unseen but keeping pace easily, tracking her as she zigzagged through the trees. With no sense of direction, she clawed her way through the tangled brush, dodging trees, tripping over roots. A large fallen pine blocked her path. She veered, running around the great upheaval of roots at
its base. In that moment, a dark shape stepped out suddenly before her. She screamed. Hands grabbed at her as she stumbled and pitched forward. She went on screaming.

“
Calmez-vous, madame,”
a deep voice addressed her. “I have you.”

She found herself being lifted and steadied just as Julian broke into sight a little way behind her.

“Mara, are you all right?” he demanded, out of breath. “What’s going on?”

The man who held her was tall and strongly built. He had sandy-brown hair, and his eyes were a blue so dark they seemed almost black. As he stared intently at Mara, reading her fear, an odd expression came over his face. Slowly he raised his gaze, to address Julian in fluent if slightly accented English. “I could ask the same thing of you, monsieur.” And to Mara, “Are you all right, madame?”

“Yes.” She was shaking but standing unsupported now, and she moved a little away from both men. “I’m all right.”

“I heard you shouting,” Julian said. He looked pale and agitated. “What—what happened?”

She stared at him, breathing hard. “There was someone back there,” she spoke finally. “Watching me through the trees.”

Julian peered about him. “I don’t see anyone.”

The sandy-haired man asked more helpfully, “What do you mean, madame, when you say someone was watching you?”

“A—a face. I saw a face.”

“For pity’s sake, Mara,” Julian cried impatiently, “this place is riddled with public footpaths. Look.” He pointed to a break in the trees that she had not noticed. “There’s one right over there. You saw someone on the path. People come and go in the woods all the time.” He came forward and drew her toward him. She resisted at first, but finally let him put his arm around her. Her body, however, was stiff, unyielding. Julian spoke over her head to the man, who watched them curiously.

“Look—er—everything’s fine. Thought she was lost. Got panicked. It’s happened before.”

The man looked unconvinced. “But perhaps madame requires some assistance?” He regarded Julian with slightly narrowed eyes.

“Oh—no.” Mara gulped. “I—I’m fine. Thank you.”

“Not at all. As long as you’re sure you really are all right.” The man spoke with careful insistence. He waited for a moment before raising a hand to them in a gesture of parting and moved off through the trees and down the trail. However, he glanced back once, his expression doubtful.

Mara pushed roughly away from Julian. “I did
not
think I was lost,” she said through gritted teeth. “And there was someone—or
something”
—she waved her hand angrily—“following me.”

He shrugged. “Probably a deer. Their tracks are everywhere. Get hold of yourself, Mara. You’re letting your imagination run away with you.”

“I suppose so,” she relented. “I’m sorry. I feel quite stupid.”

•

Julian was leading Mara back in the direction they had come when she clutched his arm.

“Listen.”

“What?”

“Barking. Over there.” She pulled him toward the sound.

“That dog’s a bloody nuisance,” Julian grumbled. Hurrying in her wake was making his head worse. He was about to add something sarcastic about the protection of wildlife when Mara stopped so suddenly that he bumped into her, knocking his mouth sharply on the back of her head.

“Shh,” she warned. “He’s got something cornered.”

They found Jazz whining frantically at the base of a tall oak while an enraged marten hissed furiously from the safety of a branch. At that point, Julian forgot his headache and forgave the dog everything, even his rapidly swelling lower lip, for carpeting the forest floor around the tree was a splendid stand of Bird’s-nest Orchids, proof that, if left alone, nature went about its procreative business as it should.

“Amazing,” he marveled. The swarm of fleshy flowers was almost ghostly in the gloom. Each plant rose from an erect stem, the upper half of which bore an elongated cluster of brownish-yellow blooms. “This is it. This is really it. I thought this colony was a goner. It’s come back triple the size!
And a lot denser. This is bloody magnificent!”

“Do you think it’s the same one Bedie photographed?” Mara, ever practical, asked.

“What? Oh, right.” Julian scratched his beard. “Well, it’s hard to say. She didn’t give us much of the surroundings. Otherwise I’d have been able to place it straightaway. And, of course, the stand as I originally saw it was a mere shadow of what she found and certainly bears no resemblance to what it is now. But is it the same?” He puffed out his cheeks. “Based on the law of probability, I’d say yes. Almost certainly yes. A stand this big is rare, Mara.
Neottia
propagate slowly. Something this extensive would have taken years to establish, and the chances of there being two like it are low.”