Deadly Slipper (27 page)

“Oh?” He glanced at Prudence, who only shrugged. Then he smiled. “No problem. I can always come back another time. I’ll leave you to it, shall I?

•

At the town of Le Buisson, the D25 swings away from the river, to run south through fields and forests. In May, traffic along it is sparse.

Along this stretch, a green Peugeot was coming to a coughing halt. The driver nosed the car as far as possible onto the grassy verge. The engine gave a final sputter and quit. In dismay, the driver, a prim, pretty woman named Arlette, stared at her fuel gauge and realized that she was out of gas. Only then did she remember that she had meant to fill up after leaving Toulouse. How stupid to have forgotten. But with so much on her mind … Her neatly packed suitcase lay on the backseat, silent witness to her flight.

Anxiously she checked the car clock against her watch. The car clock said six-thirty, her watch six-thirty-five. She always set her watch five minutes fast. But here she was, already an hour late because she’d missed a turnoff, and only
le bon dieu
knew how long it would take to get gassed up again.
Merde!
She couldn’t have that much farther to go, but with an empty tank, it might as well have been the other end of the earth.
Calm down
, she thought, and fumbled in her purse for her glasses and her cell phone.

Merde
again! Her phone card had expired. She yanked her glasses off, jerking loose a strand of blond hair from the tight little bun perched on the top of her head. Where was this godforsaken place she had gotten to? She could not remember the name of the last village she had passed. Everything here was trees. Trees and fields. She got out of the car, slammed the door in frustration, and gazed angrily up and down the road in either direction. She recalled passing a farm not too far back. Perhaps someone there could help her. She locked the car, hooked her purse over her shoulder, and set out on foot in the direction she had come. The rough verge made walking difficult, especially in wedge sandals. The shoes were new. She cursed as she stumbled more than once. Why in heaven’s name could she not have worn more sensible footwear?

But then, what she was doing was not sensible. Of course, she acknowledged as she trudged along, sense was what had kept her locked up within herself all these years, mutely complying with the expectations of family, friends, associates. Like a bad actor, she had gone through the motions of a role she had long ago ceased to want to play. Well, that was over now. All but the shouting. Suddenly she felt glad, despite running out of gas and her treacherous shoes, glad
she’d thrown convention aside, glad of her leap into the void.

A car with foreign plates swung around a bend, coming rapidly toward her. She waved frantically, but it whizzed by. Another, but this one, too, passed in a gust of wind. Once again the road lay empty. Futilely, she tried her cell phone once more. Dead.

A vehicle appeared ahead of her on the horizon. Momentarily, she lost it behind a bank of trees. Then it broke into sight again, moving at a leisurely pace. Standing as far into the road as she dared, Arlette semaphored her distress with outstretched arms. The vehicle rumbled past, and she thought that it, too, would continue on. However, to her great relief, and with a grinding of gears, it slowed, stopped, and began to back up. When it was even with her, the driver rolled down the window.

“Bonjour,” said Julian, sticking his head out. “Problems? Can I help?”

They were back at La Vieille Guinguette, eating an excellent confit of duck. Alain had listened gravely as she told him what she had learned from Commissaire Boutot. Now he leaned forward.

“Ecoute
, Mara, I have to be away for a few days this week. While I’m gone, I want you to be very careful. Do nothing until I get back. Do you understand me? Landscaping and orchids tie Julian in with Bedie and Julie Ménard. He could be a very dangerous man. I want you to promise that you’ll wait until I return before taking further action.”

Reluctantly, she agreed. “But where are you going? How long will you be away?”

His mouth turned down. “Paris. To negotiate another contract. I’m taking the TGV up on Wednesday. I’ll be back Sunday.”

“Another contract?” she echoed.

Alain nodded. “It’s a multiyear stint in Mauritius, starting in September.” He broke off to look earnestly at her. “I want to be honest with you, Mara. If I’m offered the job, I’ll have to take it. I’ve worked abroad for the past twenty years because—well, partly because it pays better than anything I can get in France, and Les Colombes requires a lot of upkeep. But I make you this commitment. I won’t go
until this matter of your sister is resolved.”

September, she thought with an unexpected feeling of impending loss. Three and a half months. So little time.

He reached out to cover her hand with both of his, blue eyes serious. “And when it is, when this is all over …” He paused, took a deep breath, and said huskily, “I want you to consider coming out to join me. No, don’t answer now. Think about it. It needn’t be right away. Just when you’re ready. You’ll like the scent of frangipani on the sea wind. I promise you.”

•

On Tuesday, Mara drove to Limeuil to pick up an order from the three elderly sisters who did all her custom-sewing commissions. The women had names, but were referred to by everyone as l’Aînée (elder sister), la Cadette (the younger), and la Benjamine (baby of the family).

As usual when she called, the trio seated her in their tiny parlor and treated her to a small but potent glass of la Cadette’s plum wine. They huddled around her, wispy and gray and smelling of mothballs, reminding her of a triplicate version of Jeanne de Sauvignac.

“Leslie Caron,” exclaimed l’Aînée, who was always comparing Mara to one or another film actress. Last month it was Audrey Tautou, whom they’d seen in
Amélie.
This time she drew inspiration from a rerun of an old American film they’d watched on television.
“My dear, you look so much like Leslie Caron. You know, in
Gigi. Très gamine.
Don’t you agree, sisters?” La Cadette and la Benjamine did.

•

On the return journey to Ecoute-la-Pluie, Mara’s mind strayed laterally to Jeanne de Sauvignac. The memory of her lopsided smile and gentle, kindly air of derangement unsettled Mara almost as much as the husband’s secretiveness and fear. Or was it something more concrete than that? Yes, Mara decided, sifting through her impressions of their meeting. In fact, it was something the old woman had said, words that at the time had been lost in her general oddity but that now plucked at Mara’s consciousness with a vaguely troubling resonance. Because one of the sewing sisters had said it, too. Or something like it.

That night she e-mailed Patsy Reicher.

•

On Wednesday, as Alain was taking his train to Paris, Mara drove to Toulouse to negotiate an order of tiles from Pablo. Instead of her usual quick
croque-monsieur
, she ended up having lunch with her supplier at the Brasserie des Beaux-Arts, overlooking the muddy waters of the Garonne. They opened with an apéritif of light, fruity muscat on ice. Pablo had an intense way of leaning his fat body across their little table when speaking. She half expected him to turn amorous, but his ardor proved to be reserved for food alone.

“Shall we say a half-dozen each of the number three?” he murmured huskily, referring to the oysters.

•

An hour later and an ocean away, as Mara watched Pablo climax on a dessert of
mousse au chocolat
, Patsy opened her morning and her electronic mail.

In her uptown office, Patsy popped a tablet of gum into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. She pushed away from her desk, leaning back in her chair and glancing through the window at an ugly Manhattan sky. The light outside had taken on a
peculiar greenish tinge. A sudden clap of thunder shook the building.

So much what?
Patsy sat motionless. The phone purred on her desk. She ignored it. Rain began to slash against the windowpanes. Yes, Patsy thought, that’s got to be it. She tapped out:

•

Parts of the puzzle were beginning to interlock, but the full picture was still incomplete, critical pieces missing here and there. Although Commissaire Boutot had talked of two separate perpetrators, Mara felt in her bones that one person—Julian—was responsible for the death of Hanneke Tenhagen and the disappearances of the other women. Yet the de Sauvignacs were also somehow involved. Madame had seen Bedie before; the expression of fear on Henri’s face was enough to tell Mara that the man was covering up much more than past sexual excesses; Alain had to know more than he was telling. And where did Vrac and la Binette fit in?

Confusedly, Mara grappled with the necessity of making some connection between Julian and the de Sauvignacs. Landscaping? She doubted it. Then she remembered something Gaston had said: “Madame walks in the woods every day, and Monsieur still likes to shoot the occasional rabbit.” Had Jeanne or
Henri witnessed the attack on Bedie? But why hadn’t they reported it? Perhaps the woman was so far gone she hadn’t realized what she had seen. Or, Mara pondered, reflecting on the lack of funds so evident at Les Colombes, perhaps Henri had been using the knowledge to blackmail Julian. It couldn’t have been for much. Julian was not a wealthy man. Unless, she concluded, a steady bleeding year after year was the reason.

If this was so, Mara knew that Henri would never talk. It was down to Jeanne, the link in the chain of lies and duplicity most likely to give. Mara’s plan, therefore, was simple: return to Les Colombes and ransack Madame’s knowledge for the missing puzzle pieces. To do that, Mara had to get her alone.

•

Thursday morning found Mara crouched in a thicket with a view of the rear courtyard of the château. Gaston had no idea when, between dawn and dusk, Madame’s walk in the woods took place. Mara came prepared for a long stakeout. The problem was which door to watch. Châteaux of the style of Les Colombes had many doors, most connecting directly with interior staircases linking the various levels of the house. She counted on Jeanne’s using the scullery door. In any case, Mara could not be in more than one place at a time.

By noon, Mara concluded that the worst of the exercise, not that she had any experience to go by, was the boredom. Apart from the listless waving of a
rag on a sagging clothesline and the PTT—Gaston’s substitute was a young, dark-haired fellow who left the mail on the scullery-door stoop—Les Colombes seemed devoid of life. Only a series of dormer windows, serving to light and ventilate the high loft of the château, seemed wakeful, peering down at her like quizzical, deep-set eyes. One of them, she noticed, had been blocked off at the bottom.

By three o’clock, Mara was cramped and stiff from sitting on the hard ground. Her sandwiches had long ago been eaten, her thermos of tea drained. In the valley below, a cuckoo voiced its lonely, intermittent call. The utter stillness of the place made her wonder if the de Sauvignacs were even there. She decided to risk a reconnoiter. As she pushed through wilderness that had once been formal garden, a tall, shadowy form suddenly barred her way, arm outstretched accusingly. She choked back a sharp yell of fear as she realized that she had come upon a small park of statuary, lost in the shrubbery.

Late-afternoon shadows were filling the courtyard when Henri de Sauvignac emerged from the scullery door. He carried a shotgun, broken at the barrel—off to bag his rabbit, no doubt. Mara held her breath as the old man paused, gazed up at the sky, and finally stepped off the stoop. With a stiff gait, he crossed the courtyard, walked down the lane running past the back of the château, and disappeared into the forest.

Swiftly, she darted from her hideout. She had anticipated intercepting the wife away from the house.
With Alain in Paris, this would do as well. The scullery door opened into a vast kitchen where old and new mixed oddly: a massive hearth, big enough to roast an ox; a white enamel stove where a simmering pot of soup gave off an aroma of celery and onions; a deep stone sink; a portable dishwasher; and, near the old-fashioned larder, a small refrigerator, gurgling faintly, like a hunchbacked and displaced dwarf.

She made a quick search of the pantry and the ancient
lavoir
, the wash area. No one was there. Stone steps, concave with use, led her up to the main floor. She passed through a progression of vast, empty chambers, each giving onto another. In one salon, where the smell of mold was particularly strong, the walls were covered in stained, yellow brocade that hung in tatters, like the ruined finery of a dead queen. Eventually, she found herself at the library where she had interviewed the de Sauvignacs. It was unoccupied.

Mara took the steps of the great central staircase two at a time. The first-floor landing gave onto a wide, windowed gallery that ran the entire width of the building. At the near end of the gallery was a narrow archway. A quick look told Mara that it accessed a dimly lit spiral stairway that wound up to the loft and down to the lower story of the château. The servants’ staircase, no doubt.