Deadly Slipper (33 page)

“Henri?”

“Yes, my dear?”

“I’ve nothing for the soup.” Her voice was thin and plaintive.

Her husband turned his gaze from the panorama of the valley, where trees huddled like beasts in anticipation of rain. “Not to worry, my dear. I think we can forgo our supper tonight.” He gave his wife a bleak smile, took her elbow and turned her gently into the house. “Go back in now, Jeanne. I have some things to take care of.”

Alone again, he descended the stoop steps, crossed the courtyard, and stood looking down the lane. The wind brought with it a dusty smell. He felt rather than heard the muffled thunder bulging in the air. Eventually, Vrac materialized from the trees.

“Ah. Vrac, m’boy” Henri paused. He was a long time gazing at his bastard son, as if seeking to relate the clumsy body, the heavy, swollen features to himself. Vrac bore the inspection impassively, hands dangling loosely at his sides, mouth slack. Pale stubble, like stalks on a winter field, sprouted from his large, misshapen jaw. In the fading light his expression was unreadable.

“Give your mother a message, will you?” Henri said. “Tell her there are things I need her to do for me.”

•

Their plan was simple: wait for Henri or Jeanne to return and make the most of what would probably be their only opportunity to fight their way to freedom.

Mara said, “If we stand on either side of the door, we can be ready to tackle whoever comes through it.
If it’s Jeanne, and if she’s alone, the important thing is to prevent her from warning her husband. We’ll have to knock her out or something. And we’ll have to be quick about it. There can’t be any struggling or crying out. He’ll have to think she’s feeding us as normal.”

Julian assumed it was up to him to do the knocking out. He was not sure he was equal to it. For one thing, he was weak from lack of food. For another, the only weapon he had was the chamber-pot shard, and he couldn’t see any way of silencing Jeanne apart from slitting her throat. The last thing he wanted to do was kill the woman. She was the only real lead he had to the mystery
Cypripedium.

“If he comes in with her,” Mara went on, “you tackle him, I’ll deal with her. If we can get his gun away from him, everything should be easy.”

“Unless, of course, the pair from hell are hanging around at the bottom of the stairs.”

Mara stirred fretfully. “I can’t think what’s keeping her. So far she’s been coming up every three or four hours to check up on me. I don’t like it. Something’s happened.”

Rain began to patter softly on the roof, growing heavier until it drummed overhead in a steady tattoo. Night fell. Jeanne de Sauvignac did not come.

•

By Mara’s watch, it was approaching ten. They sat in darkness in order not to alert their captors. The rain had slowed to a steady drizzle. Still Jeanne de
Sauvignac did not come. This made them almost more uneasy than the thought of the husband bursting in on them suddenly and blowing them to pieces with his shotgun.

“You don’t suppose they’ve decided to let us starve to death?” Julian speculated anxiously. Food, or the lack of it, was becoming a serious issue for him.

“He might, but I don’t see her doing it. The feeding instinct is very strong with her. You should have seen her, spooning slop into me like a surrogate baby.”

Julian was silent for a moment. “I wonder how long it would take.”

“What?”

“Dying of starvation. I’ve heard of people surviving for weeks without food.”

“I think it’s the dehydration that gets you first,” offered Mara.

A few minutes later Julian observed, “Things are awfully quiet.”

“The château is solid stone throughout. You wouldn’t hear a bomb go off.”

“I was thinking maybe they’ve done a run.”

Mara frowned. Then she added hopefully, “Julian, if they’ve really gone, all we have to do is hang on until Alain returns and shout for help.”

“Don’t forget, la Binette and Vrac are still around. Oh, my Christ,” Julian burst out as an unpleasant thought struck him. “What if he’s left them to finish us off?”

The possibility—which quickly took hold in their
minds as a strong likelihood—made them both go cold. It stood to reason that Henri would employ Vrac and his mother to do his dirty work. Both realized how vain their plans were for escape. It was no longer a matter of overpowering two elderly people, one armed with a shotgun. At the appointed time, la Binette and Vrac would mount the stairs. The door would open. Against those two, they had no chance.

Forgetting caution, Julian turned on the light and, using a piece of the chamber pot, began to dig frantically at the wood around the lock fitting in the door. After a long time, he saw that he had managed to gouge out only a small trough along the edge of the metal plate. The wood, seasoned oak, was extremely hard. At the rate he was going, the job would take him days.

•

They sat on the floor, one on either side of the door, anticipating their fate. They both expected it to happen sometime that night. Now Julian knew the heightened awareness achieved by people awaiting execution. Every sensation was magnified tenfold, the pumping of his heart as loud as thunder. He imagined that Vrac could break his neck with a single, effective blow.

While Mara slept, Julian forced himself to stay awake. He preferred to meet death ready rather than have it take him unawares. At last, he, too, slipped into unconsciousness. He dreamed that he was standing on a windy ridge. The
Cypripedium
, enormous
and grotesque, rose beckoningly before him. As he reached his hand out to it, he saw that the plant was broken just below the flower head. A poisonous blue exudate dripped from the damaged stem.

“Julian.”

“Hmm?”

“Wake up.” Mara was kneeling by his side, shaking him. He opened his eyes. She looked pale and frightened. A somber morning light slanted into the garret.

“Something’s happening.”

Lightheaded and disoriented, he struggled to sit up. His entire body hurt.

“What?”

“I don’t know. But I can sense it.”

She was right. Something had occurred or was about to occur. The atmosphere, the very stillness of the place, held a kind of dreadful expectancy, of breathless waiting, as if past events had collected there and were waiting for their final resolution. He rose unsteadily to his feet.

Then he heard it. A sound at the bottom of the stairs. Two sets of heavy footfalls, their cadence unhurried, fateful as the knell of doom. This was it. The unholy pair were coming to finish off what Henri de Sauvignac had started. Heart pounding, Julian gestured Mara to the other side of the door. They stood, backs pressed against the wall, listening. The footsteps stopped. The key turned in the lock. The door swung open.

Julian brought la Binette down with a flying tackle that would have done his team proud. The woman crashed to the ground, but, with the agility and strength of a wrestler, slipped from his hold, overturned him, and pinned him with her full weight. He beheld the frightening spectacle of one deep-set eye glaring balefully at him out of a vivid splash of purple. At that point Mara fell on la Binette’s back. The woman struck out, sending Mara crashing against the wall. Julian seized the moment to drive her off with his knees, but she grabbed him by the throat. He was on his back, crushed beneath her big, unwholesome body. He clawed at her face. She slammed his head against the floor so hard that he saw stars, punched him until blood spurted from his nose. He choked on his own blood. Someone was shouting. Another body moved across his line of sight. He managed to roll free, but the woman was on him again, slamming and punching. The walls and ceiling of the garret spun before his eyes.

“Assez!
Enough!” bellowed Loulou, struggling to separate the two. His normally cheerful face was red, and the tail of his shirt trailed out of his trousers.

La Binette stood up and dragged Julian to his feet. He hung limply in her grip. With a grunt of disdain, she dropped him. He fell heavily to the floor.

“Sacrebleu
, you two are prepared to sell your lives dearly,” Loulou panted. He helped Mara up and then bent over Julian.
“Ça va, mon vieux?
That was quite a welcome you provided. Didn’t think you had it in you.”

•

Julian attended to his bleeding nose at the kitchen sink while la Binette stood grimly by, arms folded, watching his every move.

“I’m not going to pinch the silver, if that’s what you think,” Julian snapped.

La Binette thrust her jaw out, but Loulou stepped in quickly to prevent another eruption of violence.
“Doucement.
Madame is only carrying out instructions.”

“What, to break my head?”

“You did go for her first,” interceded Mara, who seemed to have a better grasp of the state of things than he.

“Wait a minute,” Julian objected. “I thought that was the idea. And what the hell are you doing here?” he demanded of the
ex-flic.

“Ah,” said Loulou, looking pleased with himself. “I was sent to collect you.”

“Collect—!” Julian stopped trying to staunch his bleeding nose and stared warily about him.

“That’s right,
connard,”
snarled la Binette, hurling two sets of bright, metallic objects at them. They fell noisily to the stone floor. Their car keys. “Your dog’s outside. Now get lost.”

“It’s all right,” said Mara. “We’re free. We can go.”

“Exactly,” crowed Loulou. “My friends, Henri de Sauvignac is in custody at Périgueux Police Headquarters right now. He has confessed.”

•

For the third time in as many months, Mara was in the
commissaire’s
office, sitting on a hard chair, watching Boutot roll a pencil between his palms. As before, Loulou strolled about the room. Julian was elsewhere, being interviewed by Boutot’s second-in-command.

“You’re saying he simply turned himself in?” Mara was incredulous.

The
commissaire
nodded gravely. His mustache drooped. The pouches under his eyes were blue. He looked as if he hadn’t slept the night before. “He had no choice. You had learned the truth about your sister, his son was about to return, and Monsieur Wood had found a skeleton on his estate.”

“Just walked in and handed across a written statement,” declared Loulou from his position behind her at the bookshelves.

“However,” continued Boutot, “he claims it was an accident.”

“He’s lying!” Mara cried.

“According to him, nineteen years ago, your sister found herself in the forest adjacent to Les Colombes—”

“Courtesy of la Binette’s taxi,” snickered Loulou, coming into view.

Mara was uncomprehending. “La Binette’s taxi?”

“That’s right,” Loulou grinned. “De Sauvignac said Bedie had been hitchhiking and the Rocher woman had given her a ride. However, reading between the lines, this ties in with complaints we’ve received over the years about a pair resembling
Madame Rocher and her son who like to pick up hitchhikers, drive them to inconvenient places, demand a fee, and leave them to find their way back.”

“In any case,” resumed Boutot wearily, “Mademoiselle Beatrice was in the forest, and that is where she met Madame de Sauvignac. We assume your sister’s interest in orchids was strong enough to offset any inconvenience she had suffered at the hands of the Rochers. Madame, who is herself a serious amateur, recognized a fellow enthusiast. She directed your sister onto the estate, telling her about an orchid walk, created by Madame and her late father-in-law, that runs along their land.” The
commissaire
put down his pencil. “I’m given to understand that it was old Monsieur de Sauvignac’s ambition to plant Les Colombes with every wild orchid native not only to the Dordogne but to all of Europe.”

“I see,” murmured Mara, a piece of the puzzle slipping into place.

“Henri de Sauvignac happened to be out hunting that day. He says he ran into Mademoiselle Beatrice, fell into conversation with her, made a pass, and she resisted.”

“Always looking for a bit of
frou-frou,”
elaborated Loulou. “A real skirt-chaser in his day.”

“Quite,” the
commissaire
murmured dryly. “He says there was a struggle, she stumbled, fell backward, struck her head on a stone—”

“No,” Mara cut in hotly. “I think it was an intentional, brutal assault.”

“Hmm. De Sauvignac’s version might be difficult to disprove after so much time.”

“Not if you have a body,” said Mara. “Don’t forget Julian’s skeleton.”

“She’s right,” Loulou contributed. “Forensics can check the skull for injuries consistent with a fall as opposed to, say, a crushing blow to the head.”

“Possibly,” Boutot conceded. “At any rate, Henri claims he was horrified at what had happened. He says he brought your sister to the château.”

“Why didn’t he call a doctor?” demanded Mara.

Boutot nodded. “Indeed. This is where the man accepts full blame. He admits he made no attempt to get your sister medical attention. First, because he didn’t realize at the time how badly she was injured. Second, because she was a foreigner and he was afraid that it would not be so easy to buy her family off, as apparently he was accustomed to doing whenever his sexual excesses caused a local scandal. He hoped instead that he and his wife could nurse Mademoiselle Beatrice back to health themselves.”

“But fourteen years!” Mara cried. “And his son? Where does—where was Alain when all of this was going on?”

“In Abidjan. Working on a water-containment project. That, of course, can be checked. Alain knew nothing of your sister’s injury or incarceration. In fact, Monsieur de Sauvignac said that he had to forbid him access to the château, except for brief visits
home, while your sister was alive, for fear that he would discover her presence.”

Mara let her breath out softly.

“Even now Monsieur Alain has no idea of what has transpired.” Commissaire Boutot referred to a note on his desk. “He’s returning from Paris this evening. Two of my men will meet his train. He’ll be informed, and we’ll need to take a statement from him as well. His mother, unfortunately, is in a state of collapse and can’t be questioned. The Rocher woman is caring for her.”