Deadly Slipper (30 page)

“Tell Madame Dunn,” he called to the
femme de ménage
through the front door, “I’ve taken Jazz.”

She gave him a look that said he could go to the devil for all she cared, the dog with him.

•

“Count yourself lucky,” Julian snarled at Jazz as he started the engine and roared out of Ecoute-la-Pluie in the direction of Les Colombes. For want of information from Jeanne de Sauvignac, he had to make assumptions. He had already guessed that the ridge on which the château stood offered the kind of soil and the cool, wooded environment that
Cypripedium
liked. That’s where he would have chosen to establish a plantation of Lady’s Slippers if it had been up to him.

He had come away without any of his usual hiking paraphernalia, but at least he had his compass and maps, which he normally carried in his van. Using a Série bleue, he found a road that allowed him to approach the estate from the east. That way he could avoid crossing La Binette land, which lay to the west of Les Colombes. He had no desire to be caught trespassing by Vrac or his hulk of a mother.

He parked at the roadside near a scattering of tiny Burnt-tip Orchids. The high tree canopy offered him no view of his destination, so the first thing he did was to set a westerly bearing on his compass that would orient him roughly in the direction of the château and the ridge. Since there was no path, he would have to break his own trail, and he estimated that he had a good hour’s hike ahead of him.

He set out. Jazz vanished immediately (Julian had also not thought to bring a leash). Slightly alarmed, Julian called him back. The dog took his time coming but eventually returned. This happened repeatedly. Finally, Julian got tired of calling and left the animal to his own devices. When he came across a mass of pink Heath Orchids growing in a clearing, he forgot entirely about the dog. Later he found a fine stand of
Limodorum abortivum.
The tall, handsome plants were in peak condition, with their mauve blossoms spiraling up each individual stem. He made a mental note of their location.

After about twenty minutes, Julian stumbled on a path that seemed to be trending in the right direction.
He followed it. It took him past a crudely fenced pasture where a nervous huddle of ewes and lambs broke apart at his approach, skittering away before wheeling around from a safe distance to stare at him sideways with stupid, squarish eyes. At this point, he had no idea whose land he was on. The pasture sloped down to a stream so heavily overgrown with willow brush that although he heard the sound of water he could not see it until he nearly fell into a narrow, deeply cut rivulet that rushed away at his feet.

His path ended there. A network of faint tracks led off in several directions. Referring again to his compass, he chose one that snaked along the water’s course. He had not gone far when a shrill, inhuman scream brought him to a startled halt.

“Bloody hell!” he uttered. “What was that?” His first thought was that Jazz had seized on some poor, unwary animal. The sound had come from farther along the watercourse. He ran forward, breaking through a heavy screen of willows. What he saw caused him to pull up in sheer terror. Vrac stood below him on the other side of the stream, bare arms spattered in blood. In one hand he grasped a knife, in the other the thing he had just slaughtered. It was a lamb, which he secured by the hind legs while he disemboweled it. Bluish intestines spilled onto the mud. The water of the stream ran a ghastly shade of red.

For a moment Vrac stared stupidly up at Julian. The mono-lens sunglasses blanked out one eye, but the look in the other turned quickly ugly. Julian took
two involuntary steps backward, spun about, and fled.

Counting on speed he did not really have, Julian crashed through the trees. Behind him he heard a fearsome bellow and the thud of heavy footsteps. The realization that Vrac had been merely poaching someone’s livestock, probably for his evening chops, did not make Julian less inclined to put distance between him and his pursuer. Poaching was a serious offense in those parts, and Vrac clearly resented being caught at it. Julian did not like to think what Vrac could do with that knife of his.

Dodging branches, Julian found himself at another section of the stream, where it curved off in a wide, shallow bend. He flailed across it. The splatter of water in his wake told him that Vrac was not far behind. Gasping for breath, Julian scrambled up the steep, wooded embankment on the other side. Small avalanches of scree rattled down behind him as he surged over the top of the rise. The land fell away precipitously before him. He galloped down recklessly.

A root caught his foot. He spun sideways, rolled wildly, and came up hard against the base of a tree. The impact knocked the wind out of him. He lay fighting for air. Painfully he dragged himself on his elbows into the cover of a dense bed of ferns. Pressing himself flat against the ground, he listened. The only sound he heard was the hammering of his own heart.

Cautiously, Julian raised his head. Small white butterflies danced over a gray-green sea of bracken that
spilled thickly down the slope. Light filtered lazily through the treetops. All about him the woods were quiet. He lay still for a few moments longer, then congratulated himself on a close escape. Vrac appeared to have abandoned the chase and was probably going back for his lamb. Julian judged that he would finish gutting it and make for home as fast as possible.

Julian pushed himself upright, reoriented himself, and set off again, scrambling along the steep side of the embankment. A break in the trees gave him his first, distant glimpse of Les Colombes, or, rather, its chimneystacks. It stood high on its prominence across a broad, wooded valley. He took another compass reading and headed down into the valley floor, pushing his way, often with difficulty, through the tangled undergrowth. When he came across another network of trails, he chose one trending in a westerly direction. It took him through a gloomy pine forest.

Now the land began to rise before him. Pines gave way to beeches, old-growth chestnuts, and oaks. After another fifteen minutes, he found himself in a hornbeam grove at the base of the ridge. The château stood high above him to his left. The trail veered off toward it. To his right, the ridge continued on for a kilometer or so before coming to an abrupt end in a spectacular hanging cliff.

He decided to begin his search by working diagonally up the slope face, away from the château and toward the cliff, sticking to tree cover as much as possible until he was out of sight of the château.
There was no path, and large boulders frequently blocked his way. One, as big as a house, rose up before him. He was edging around it when the ground suddenly gave way beneath him. With a startled cry, he found himself dropping into a void and managed only just in time to catch himself with his outflung arms. Panicked, he kicked about to find some purchase with his feet, which only caused him to slip farther. A shower of earth and stones struck bottom somewhere ominously far below him. He now dangled over nothingness, supported only by his hands and forearms. Gradually, as the friable soil crumbled beneath his weight, he lost even this precious hold. In a minor avalanche, he plunged down into a pit of darkness. It was as if the earth itself had swallowed him up.

•

Mara awoke to daylight. She was on the floor, where she had collapsed the night before. She felt cold and clammy. Then the sour smell of her own mess hit her. Miserably she rolled away from it and found herself staring into the dim, dusty space beneath the bed. Something shiny was wedged in a gap between the floorboards just by one of the legs of the bed. Frowning, she scooted forward and picked it out with her teeth, dropping it out in the open where she could study it better. It was a plain, narrow metal band, slightly pitted with rust and bent tightly in upon itself. A hair clip of some kind, too flimsy to be of use to her. Disappointed, she rolled away. Then
faint recognition stirred. She closed her eyes and struggled to visualize. Hair. Bedie’s hair, pinned back at the temples.
This was a woman’s hair clip such as Mara had seen in every one of her nightmares for nineteen years:
Bedie’s barrette.

Her brain in turmoil, Mara struggled to understand how it came to be there. She fought to concentrate, staring at this terrible and yet precious token of her sister. Her mind went back to the knobless door, the deadbolt lock, the dormer window that had been altered to let light in but blocked any view of the outside world. The garret was fitted out like a prison.

I know a lot about head injuries
, the old woman had said. Bedie—who had been struck on the head, but who had not died, at least not right away—Bedie had been there once. Mara was sure of it. The bed bore the impression of her body; the walls, the enclosed space of the garret held her presence like a bottled ghost.

She struggled to rise, ignoring the pounding in her head. Hobbling on her knees to the barrier of the door, she fell against it, pivoted around, and hammered at it with her feet, shouting with all the force she could muster.

“Get up here, you monsters! Get up here and tell me what you’ve done with my sister!”

•

Julian landed heavily. Instinct told him not to move. In the dimness, he saw that he was on a limestone shelf only slightly wider than himself. It was, in fact,
what had saved him, for it projected out over a chasm, the depth of which he could only guess at by the rattle of debris still on its way down. He was in an
edze
, a typical geological feature of the region, where rifts in the calcareous mantle of the earth, dissolved by rain, opened out into deep pits underlain by subterranean rivers. He sat up carefully. Apart from being stunned and shaken, he did not seem to have broken anything. Above him, he saw a ragged patch of daylight, the hole through which he had fallen.

Julian’s horror and revulsion at encountering Vrac at the stream were now replaced by a strong desire to see the man again, for there was no way he could climb out without help. The mouth of the
edze
was perhaps five meters up, more than twice his own height. The shaly sides offered no hand-or foothold. To make things worse, the pit interior was wider at the bottom, sloping inward at the top. Despite his belief that Vrac was capable of slitting him open like a hogget, Julian got to his feet and began to shout.

He shouted until he was hoarse. Exhausted, he slumped down against the wall of his prison.
Get a grip
, he ordered himself and set about studying his situation. Although the
edze
was vase-shaped, he saw that it narrowed at one end. By bracing his back and feet against the opposing faces, Julian thought he might just be able to work his way to the top. However, he was also aware that the ledge he was on extended only partway across the gap. Between it and the far wall lay a maw of blackness. The rocky
projection had saved him once. If he slipped, would it catch him a second time?

He rolled over onto his stomach and peered down into the darkness below. As his eyes adjusted, he discovered to his relief that the fissure, although undoubtedly deep, was not as sheer as he had thought, for the opposite wall sloped outward, forming another shelf not far below him. All kinds of rubble had accumulated on it. He made out a dark jumble of shapes. Maybe there was even something down there he could use.

Carefully, he lowered the top half of his body over the side of the ledge, extending one arm down in a sweeping motion. His fingertips brushed something. He wriggled as far forward as he dared to go and closed his hand on a hard, rough object. He brought it up, a wedge-shaped thing that he flung away immediately, for it was horrific, studded with teeth and trailing stiff shreds of woolly hide: the lower jaw of a sheep.

Julian sat back, shaken. For the first time in his life, he earnestly wished he had a cell phone.

“
Vrac hit her on the head!”
Mara screamed at Henri, who stood in the doorway. Behind him, fluttering in her shawls, was Jeanne. Mara struggled to her knees to confront them. “But she was alive, wasn’t she, when you brought her here! Was it was your wife, who isn’t competent to care for a dog, who finished her off?”

“Shut up,” Henri de Sauvignac ordered curtly, seizing her under the arms and dragging her roughly back to the bed.

“The police will come looking for me.” Mara fought against him as he lifted her and shoved her facedown on the mattress. “What story will you concoct for them? It’ll have to be good because they’ll find evidence of me everywhere—hair, blood, vomit—it’s all over the floor. Or will you simply tell them that, having covered up the murder of one sister, you thought you’d finish off the other?”

“Stop that.” Jeanne hurried forward to aid in holding her still while Henri checked her bonds. “No one is going to finish you off. We just want to help you, make you better.”

“Like you did my sister?”

The other woman cried indignantly, “I gave her the best of care!”

“Jeanne,
tais-toi!”
the husband ordered sharply, but the words were out.

It was like a boulder dropped from a great height into a deep pool. Mara lay still as the admission sank and lodged in the depths of her consciousness. She rolled over to stare up at Jeanne.

“And how was that, madame?” she began softly, but her voice became quickly shrill. “How exactly did you care for her? By tying her up here and refusing her medical attention? Because you wouldn’t have wanted to risk a doctor, would you? By feeding her stale bread dipped in slop? How long did she last before she choked on her own vomit or died of a hemorrhage of the brain?”

“Since you insist,” said Henri, with a savage jerk at her knots, “fourteen years.”

Mara went limp beneath his hand. It was as if her known world had suddenly shattered like glass, sending jagged shards flying in all directions, exposing a void in which nothing made sense.

“Fourteen years? In this garret? You locked my sister up here for fourteen years?”

“You must understand, my dear,” Jeanne’s voice wavered apologetically above her, “it was necessary. She was terribly damaged. She couldn’t speak, she couldn’t care for herself. I had to do everything for her, feeding, baths, cleaning up her messes.”