Deadly Slipper (31 page)

“You kept her caged like an animal!”

“Not at all!” The woman sounded deeply offended. “I nursed her like my own child. I used to put her
head on my lap and brush her hair. I always had to pin her hair back, out of her eyes, you see. She became very agitated if her hair was in her eyes.”

“And then what? At what point did you get tired of playing jailer? Were people starting to ask questions? Or were Alain’s home leaves getting too much for you to manage?” Mara rolled away from them and propped herself up on her elbows, the better to see their faces as she worked out the truth for herself. “That’s why you couldn’t let him live here, isn’t it? Why your ‘poor boy’ has to work abroad. You were terrified he’d learn your secret. Or was he becoming suspicious? Was that when you decided to get rid of her? How did you do it? Hold a pillow over her face? Or did you simply let her starve to death up here?”

“No, no!” Jeanne wailed, her hands flying up around her face as if warding off Mara’s accusations. “It wasn’t like that at all. I did my best to make her comfortable. And happy. She was happy here with me. Until”—the old woman’s voice cracked, and Mara realized that she was crying—“one day, one morning, I brought her coffee up to her. She was lying on her stomach. I couldn’t wake her. I rolled her over. Then I saw that she was dead. She had simply died in the night, you see.”

“It took her long enough,” Henri cut in brutally.

Fourteen years. Dully Mara’s mind began to compute. For at least two of those years, she had lived and worked in the Dordogne, not more than twenty
kilometers from the place where her twin had been held a mindless captive. For fourteen years her nightmares had been not of a sister dead but of a sister living, feebly signaling for rescue from a twilight existence. And then, like a light exhausted, all signals had ceased. A wrenching sadness filled Mara as she realized that Bedie Dunn had slipped away, had dropped her end of the string that bound sister to sister, while she, Mara, had been unable to pull her back from the brink.

“But why?” The question rose again to her lips, for the improbability of the de Sauvignacs’ motive weighed once more on her. Why would a family like the de Sauvignacs take such risks to shield a bastard? And how had Bedie come to Les Colombes? For, if Julian had really reconstructed her path, then it had brought her right onto the grounds of the château. She could not have been dragged there struggling because she had stopped to take photographs along the way. Would she have willingly gone with a monster like Vrac? Or, more likely, have accompanied someone comme il faut, as Loulou had suggested, someone presentable? Not Julian, she knew that now. Someone else. Someone who was able to move about the region with ease and for whom places like Limoges, Bordeaux, and Biarritz, where other women had gone missing, were within striking distance. A man whose wife wore a souvenir of Biarritz as a shawl. Thing-in-his-pocket. The stallion in rut.

“It was the other way around, wasn’t it,” Mara hissed at Henri in a slow release of breath. “Not Vrac. But you.
You
hit my sister on the head.”

Nineteen years ago, Henri would have been a vigorous man in his fifties. Had it begun as a simple grope that escalated into a struggle and accidental death? Or a vicious, planned attack? Just as he had struck Mara herself down, had he also smashed the butt of his gun into Bedie’s skull? How many others had de Sauvignac disposed of in his need to assert his seigniorial rights? The noble rot applied to more than grapes.

“And you caught him in the act, didn’t you.” Mara twisted about to accuse the wife. “That’s why he didn’t finish her off and simply bury her in your woods. Why you had to keep her here. Not to shield Vrac, but to protect your husband’s precious skin.”

Jeanne was staring at her haggardly, wordless, not denying. Mara now realized that there was no limit to what Henri would do to save himself. She also realized that her own danger was made more acute by Alain’s planned return. Henri would make sure his son did not find her there.

“Leave us, my dear.” Henri turned to his wife and ushered her quickly from the room.

“Let me go,” Mara bargained desperately when he returned to stand over her. “I won’t make trouble. Even if I went to the police, what can I prove? If I haven’t been able to make a case against Vrac—and I’ve tried, believe me—who will credit that Henri
de Sauvignac,
seigneur
of Les Colombes, is a serial killer?”

“Fool!” Henri spat furiously.

“I may be a fool, but you are a monster.” Mara’s anger surged as she saw that all pleading was futile. “Your victims trusted you, didn’t they. You, with your aristocratic air, your fine courtesy. How did you lure my sister onto your land? With orchids? With promises to show her a place where rare species grew?”

Henri laughed outright. “Madame, I have never been particularly knowledgeable about orchids and would not, if given the opportunity with a young woman, have ever wasted time talking about flowers.”

“Who else, if not you?” Mara challenged, galled by his sneering indifference.

He regarded her cynically, as if assessing how much information to divulge. Finally, he spoke, with an upward curling of the lip: “My wife.”

She stared at him, speechless.

“It was she, you see,” he said, as he turned to leave, “who met your sister in the woods.”

•

Young Carlos, the
rouleur
filling in for Gaston, swung by the house in Le Coux at the end of his Saturday-morning round of deliveries.

“How’s it going, old man?”

“Hmm.” Gaston pulled a face and flipped his good hand back and forth to indicate so-so. “You? What’s new?”

“Didn’t you hear? The patron’s made a dog’s breakfast out of everything. He’s split your route between René and me. So now I have to do your half in the morning and somehow finish up old Geneste’s in the afternoon.” Carlos ran a hand through his thick, black hair. “Worst fucking roads in the region. No wonder your van kept breaking down.”

“Tell me,” said Gaston, highly gratified.

“Oh, by the way, looks like those old birds of yours got themselves a new car.”

“What old birds?”

“Them. In Les Colombes.”

“Monsieur and Madame de Sauvignac to you,” said Gaston severely, offended to hear his favorites treated so offhandedly. But he was curious. “What kind of car?”

“Renault Clio. Green. Well, not new, exactly. Used, by the look of it. Saw it parked around the side the other day when I made my delivery. Finally traded in that old thing of theirs, I guess.”

Gaston sniffed. “That ‘old thing’ of theirs was a genuine antique. Probably fetched a few sous. I tell you, Carlos, you treat the de Sauvignacs right and they’ll treat you right. Always good for a
coup.
Quality shows.”

•

With the first light of day, Julian began again to try to work his way out of his prison. In between unsuccessful attempts, he shouted for help. Although his body ached and he was hungry and thirsty, his head
had remained surprisingly pain-free. It was the only upside to his horrible predicament.

At the moment he was stretched horizontally across the
edze
, back and shoulders pushing against one face of it, feet against the other. It was, it seemed, his thousandth attempt.
Come on
, he urged himself as he squirmed his way upward, gasping with the effort. On each of his previous tries, his progress had been checked by crumbling shale that had given way beneath his weight, causing him to slither painfully, sometimes head-first, back down onto the ledge. Each time, the small avalanche of rock and soil loosened by his efforts ricocheted off the rift walls below him, ending at some greater depth in a series of faint splashes.

He was doing better this time, had managed to work his way more than halfway up his prison wall. Already he could see the ragged edge of the pit mouth clearly above him, full of brilliant light.

Back and shoulders. Feet. Centimeter by centimeter. Then he slipped. He fell amid a shower of dirt and stones, landing heavily on his side. His legs flopped over the edge of the ledge, and the rest of his body, driven by the momentum, followed, tipping him into a void. He tried to save himself by throwing out his arms but was unable to prevent himself from tumbling down onto the lower shelf.

Julian lay still, feeling sick at the thought of how much farther he could have fallen if this second outcropping had not caught him. He was lying on top of a pile of wool and bones. The sheep’s jaw no longer
held any terrors for him. He realized that it was the sheep’s carcass that had broken his fall.

He sat up gingerly, rubbing a painful shoulder, thankful that he was still in one piece. He judged that, with a certain amount of scrambling, he would be able to hoist himself back onto the upper ledge. As he pushed himself unsteadily to his legs, his fingers touched something. Fur? Some other kind of animal pelt? It came away in his hand. A pale hank of longish fibers. Hair. And then he saw it: wedged up against the
edze
wall and overlaid by the jumble of sheep bones, the rounded cranium with its blank eye sockets. Pushing the sheep’s carcass aside, he uncovered first the entire skull, then the rib cage and long bones of a human skeleton.

•

Back and shoulders, hands clawing behind him at the sharp layers of shale. Feet. Digging the heels of his boots in, scrabbling for any niche, any irregularity in the damp, slippery rock that would gain him one more centimeter. Julian concentrated on the spot, higher up, where the
edze
narrowed. Once he passed that point, it would be easier. His best attempts so far had taken him only slightly more than halfway up before he had lost his hold and fallen in a shower of debris. This time he would not fall. He did not like what was waiting for him at the bottom.

Inevitably he fell, sliding down the interior rock face of his prison, crashing onto the top ledge, barely managing to keep from tumbling off it a second
time. He lay stunned and shattered. The bright mouth of the
edze
might have been a galaxy away. He closed his eyes. Exhausted and weak, he slid into unconsciousness.

He dreamed that he was lying on an island of bones. A blood-red tide roared over him in waves of deep, rhythmical sound. The roaring was accompanied by a dribble of soil that fell into his open mouth. A pebble, striking him hard on the nose, brought him to. A shower of pebbles. The
edze
was collapsing, and he was being buried alive. He groaned and rolled over. The hail of stones and earth accelerated, bouncing off his hair and neck. Something was tearing at the mouth of the pit. A cacophony of noise echoed in his ears. He began to make sense of it: loud, anxious barking resonating all around him.

Julian staggered up, steadying himself against the rift wall.

“Jazz!” he yelled with all the force he had remaining. “Jazz!”

Back and shoulders. Brace with arms and hands. Now feet, sliding them upward one at a time, heels digging in. The dog’s vociferous presence overhead gave him renewed strength. Back and shoulders. Feet. He was two-thirds of the way to the top. Already he felt the greater purchase afforded by the smaller space his body had to bridge. He could drive now with all the strength remaining in his legs and back, progressing a hand’s breadth at a time. Soon he was able to make out in clear detail the trailing roots of plants
dislodged by his original fall. Above him, barking a frantic encouragement, Jazz raced around and set up a powerful digging with both front paws. Earth and vegetation flew, showered down on Julian, blinding, choking him, destroying the very handholds he needed in order to surface.

“Jazz!” he bellowed. “Get off it! Down, dammit, down!”

The dog obeyed, whimpering perplexedly somewhere over Julian’s right ear. Back and shoulders. Feet. The pit perimeter was just above eye level. He could make out individual blades of grass, trembling in the breeze. His head emerged into blinding sunlight. He wanted to shout aloud with joy. Then something beneath his heel gave way. Wildly, Julian threw up an arm as his left leg lost purchase and his right threatened to follow. Just as he slipped, a powerful clamp closed down on his collar. Jazz had taken hold and was pulling mightily, as only a dog of his size and strength could pull, dragging Julian up the remaining distance until he lay, half in, half out, and was able at last to crawl to safety. He sprawled, Jazz panting by his side, in warm sunshine on the sweet surface of the earth.

•

“Get up.”

Julian breathed deeply. Never had the soil and its vegetation smelled so good to him.

“Get up.”

A large, booted foot dug at his ribs. Jazz whimpered
and moved away. Julian raised his head, too weak to defend himself. La Binette, in her straw-colored wig, her face congested by its disfiguring stain, towered over him. Next to her stood Vrac. Mother and son regarded him impassively. Jazz, a little off to one side, looked on but was not inclined to come to Julian’s aid.

Between the two of them they dragged him. He made no resistance, merely allowed them to seize him under the arms and pull him along. At one point, as they crossed a source flowing from the hillside, he begged for water. They dumped him into it. He drank greedily. After that he was able to croak, “Where are you taking me?”

La Binette’s basilisk eye, set in a creased and leathery face, fixed him stonily. She jerked her head over her shoulder. “To him. You’re on his land.” She turned to her son. “Where is he?”

“Pond,” Vrac grunted and with one hand hauled Julian up again.

•

The pond lay in the forested valley bottom. Reeds grew thickly at its margin, except where, here and there, they had been broken down by the passage of water rats. In the middle of the pond was an island where irises still showed their withered yellow flags.

Henri stood at the muddy edge, staring into the still surface of the water. He carried his shotgun under his arm. A freshly killed rabbit lay in the grass at his feet. He turned as two people, dragging a third
and followed by a dog, broke through the trees. Mother and son dumped Julian unceremoniously at the
seigneur’s
feet.