Deadly Slipper (6 page)

“I can’t begin to thank you—”

“Yes, you can,” he said, taking a deep breath and stepping back. “Because I want something in return.”

“Oh?” She was suddenly wary. “What?”

“A full set of these prints.”

She looked surprised. “But the photos are awful. You said so yourself. Oh … I suppose you’re interested in the Lady’s Slipper?”

“Be crazy not to be,” he admitted. “Something like this is a botanist’s dream.”

She frowned. “But why do you want… Wait a minute, I thought you said it was impossible to use these photos to trace my sister.”

“Well, yes, there’s really no way—” he began, but she cut him off.

“But you’re going to try to find this
Cypri
—this flower. Using Bedie’s photos. That means—”

“Now, hold on, Mara,” he broke in. “No one said anything about trying to
find
the
Cypripedium.
After all, what are the odds? It’s probably a mutant that bloomed once a long time ago and died. I just want a photo of it for, well, call it scientific curiosity.”

“Fine,” she said coolly. “If that’s all you want, then you can have it. I’ll make you a copy. But only this one. You don’t need the rest. Not if, as you say, you’re really not trying to track this orchid down.”

He felt a sudden spike of anger. “For heaven’s sake, this is ridiculous. It’s not a lot to ask, and I would have thought—”

“You help me,” she said, her awful chin snapping up, “and I’ll help you. After all, in a way, we’re looking for the same thing, aren’t we?”

The admiring light in her eyes had hardened to a bargaining glare. The pulse in her throat pumped aggressively.

She had him.

“All right,” he gave over. Bloody woman. At that moment, he felt like strangling her.

•

Julian got out of bed the next morning feeling terrible. He had slept badly, and the shadow headache of the day before, taking on substance, seemed to be trying to hammer its way out of his skull. A real thumper. Strictly speaking, his headaches were not typical migraines. He did not have, thank god, the nausea, the incapacitating pain, but they were bad enough. He stumbled blindly into the bathroom, groped for his pills, and swallowed them down with tap water. Seeking Mara out had been a big mistake, like dropping a rock into the placid puddle of his existence. Grudgingly, he had to hand it to her. She had seen through him pretty damned quickly. With a sigh he shambled unsteadily into the kitchen to make himself a mug of tea. Stirring in four sugars, he squinted dizzily at his list of appointments—there was only one, but he wondered if he really would feel well enough to make it. It also occurred to him that Edith hadn’t been around for her morning snack. In fact, he hadn’t seen her for a while. She was in heat. Probably off coupling with every dog in the valley, the slut.

By eleven o’clock, the pills had kicked in and Julian was feeling better. He slicked down his hair, put on a clean shirt, and drove out to meet the new client whom Mara had referred. She proved to be a glamorous, retired Chinese American advertising executive named Prudence Chang. Looking over her property, Julian cheered up considerably. He fervently hoped the woman had money to burn. If he
was given his way, her renovated farmhouse, fronted by a wonderful walled-in cobblestone courtyard, was about to become
la plus belle site de la région.

The client, standing with him in the sunny courtyard, listened while he enthused over the microenvironment of walls, the characteristics of
Rosa gallica
versus heady floribunda. He was developing a theme of wisteria over the archway of the double gate when she tipped down designer sunglasses and looked at him with tired, slim-line eyes.

“Look. Julian. I’ve got two questions. How much is this gonna cost, and do I get to see any of it before I die?”

Sadly, he realized that what she really wanted was instant garden—hostas, bedding plants, and
pret-à-porter
hanging baskets. It was like that with most Americans. She read the disappointment on his face and offered a compromise.

“Okay, listen. I’m giving a bash here next month. You get things looking nice—I don’t care what—just whip it into shape—in time for my party, and you can plant roses up the ying-yang for all I care.”

“Fair enough,” he said. But he wondered what “whipping into shape” meant to a woman like Prudence Chang.

•

There was a message on his
répondeur
when he returned to his cottage:
Julian, Mara. I’ve made two dozen color photocopies of the
pigeonnier.
Can I bring them over?

She turned up at the end of the day, accompanied inevitably by Jazz. They went straight round to Chez Nous, where they found Paul working in his
potager
, turning the soil carefully around herbs that had wintered over, and setting out tomato and lettuce seedlings with a delicacy that belied his size. He gave Mara a muddy fist to shake, scratched Jazz’s ear, and jerked his head toward the house.

“
Apéro”
he stated rather than asked, and led the way inside.

Mado was within, talking at the bar with Gaston, the fat, big-nosed postman, who was finishing up his rounds with his usual
coup de blanc.
Lucien Peyrat, as thin as the baguettes he sold, was also there, eating a solitary ice cream at the back of the room.

“Her husband’s in the hospital,” Gaston was saying. “Liver. It’s serious.”

“Ah, Paul, did you hear? Yvette’s old man is dying.” Mado pecked Julian and sized up Mara before saying briefly,
“Bonjour, madame.”

They sat down near the window. Julian had a pastis, Mara accepted coffee, Paul drew himself off a pression, Mado smoked a cigarette, and Gaston, who himself looked like a candidate for a serious liver complaint, joined them for another
coup.

Mara gave them a shortened version of her sister’s disappearance and her discovery of the photos, more for Gaston’s benefit, since Paul and Mado had already had it from Julian. It was the first time Julian had heard her speak French. She was fully fluent,
although he found that she had an oddly flattened accent and a way of swallowing her vowels that he could not immediately place.

“Wait a minute.” Gaston scooted forward in his chair, his beetroot nose quivering with emotion. “I remember! Years ago.
La canadienne disparue—c’est ca?”

“Yes, that’s right,” cried Mara eagerly. “The Vanished Canadian. That’s how the papers described her.”

“And she was your sister? A terrible business, madame. To come all the way from Canada to disappear like that. Montreal, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” replied Mara. “We’re from Montreal.”

“Ah,” said Mado knowingly. “Montreal.”

Gaston went on, “I remember because all of us
facteurs
were told to be on the lookout for her. Or anything suspicious. For me, that was the bad part. I have daughters, you see. It could have been someone from around here. It made me think, I tell you.”

“The countryside is full of cretins and perverts,” snapped Mado, drawing hard on her cigarette.

They all looked at the photocopies of the pigeon house that Mara handed round.

“It’s a very bad photograph,” said Gaston. “Eh, Lucien,” he called to the thin man as he slid past on his way out. “You seen this?”

Lucien, who had pale eyes set very wide apart, giving him the look of a startled horse, stared at Mara rather than at the photocopy that Gaston held
out. He shook his head, left money on the bar, and slipped like a shadow through the bead curtain.

“Scared of his own farts, that one,” Gaston grinned, as Lucien’s battered vehicle shot off in a spurt of gravel.

Paul, who had been studying the photocopy intently, blew out his cheeks. “Needle in a haystack,” he concluded. Absentmindedly he fondled Jazz’s massive head. The dog gazed up at him adoringly, great jaw agape in an idiotic grin. A moment later, however, something on the wind caused the animal to tense and shoot out the door.

Mara said, “Isn’t there anything—those poplar trees, for example—that could give you a clue?”

Paul said, “There have been half a dozen big windstorms in the past ten years alone. Poplars grow fast. Then they rot. They could have all blown down. Or been cut for firewood.”

“Nothing at all distinctive about the
pigeonnier
?”

Gaston pushed his lower lip out. “Plenty like it. This one might not even be still standing.”

“Or recognizable,” added Paul. “Big ones like this are being converted into holiday homes nowadays.”

Mado had been studying one of the copies with slit eyes through a cloud of smoke. She tapped it with a red-enameled nail. “That’s a sheep.”

They all craned forward. The object she indicated was faintly outlined and could have been anything because it was largely obscured by a stain.

Julian had to admit that he hadn’t spotted it
before. “Looks more like a goat to me.”

“Sheep, goat. So what?” said Paul.

“Not everyone raises sheep,” said Mado.

Paul said, “It’s
one
sheep.”

Mara asked, “Is there any record of—of sheep farmers in the region?”

“Are you kidding?” This was from Gaston, who had slumped back in his chair.

“You have to find someplace with a
pigeonnier
, poplar trees, and sheep—nineteen years ago. It won’t be easy,” Mado concluded, not unsympathetically, nodding in Mara’s direction.

“I’m prepared to offer a reward.” Mara sounded desperate. “One thousand euros.”

“Seriously?” asked Gaston, sitting forward again.

“Seriously.”

Gaston’s bulbous snout twitched. “Not bad, that.”

Paul shrugged. “Still a needle in a haystack.”

Gaston drained his glass and stood up. “Well, I’m off.” He held up a copy of the print. “Can I take one of these? I’ll ask around. You never know.”

He saluted the company and went out, also leaving money on the bar. They watched as, a moment later, his canary-yellow minivan, with
La Poste
scripted on the side, trundled down the road.

“Poor Gaston,” said Mado. “He has seven kids. All girls. On a postman’s salary.”

Julian and Mara rose to leave. Paul walked out the front with them and around to the side of the house, where Mara had parked her Renault.

“Look, I’ll show my father this picture. He may come up with something, or one of his cronies may remember this
maudit pigeonnier
—” He broke off abruptly. For a moment he stared unbelieving at what was happening in his beloved
potager
, then stuffed the photocopy into his back pocket and gave an outraged bellow.

Jazz was humping Edith lustily among the newly planted lettuce and tomatoes. For her part, the bitch, tail flagged coquettishly to one side, appeared to be trying to walk away, requiring Jazz to hop athletically behind her and causing a widespread trampling of young seedlings. Human attempts to move or separate the coupling dogs—the scene by then had attracted a small but interested crowd—only resulted in worse damage. There was little to be done except stand back and let nature take its course. It lasted nearly half an hour, during which time the dogs wound up end to end before Jazz finally came free. He was panting hard but looking smug.

“Oh, Paul, I’m so sorry,” Mara moaned, surveying the wrecked garden in dismay.

Paul seemed to come out of a trance. Slowly he shook his head.
“Quel dogue!”
he breathed in admiration.

“Swine,” muttered Julian.

•

“I’m going to have to persuade Prudence to hire Mado and Paul to cater her party,” Mara said as she drove Julian back to his cottage. “It’s the only way I
can make it up to them for their garden.”

Jazz, tongue lolling, lay splayed out across the backseat. Edith, who had never in her life accepted a ride home, had trotted off on business of her own.

“Oh, don’t worry about Paul,” said Julian tartly. “He’ll get over it. Besides, he liked you. Did you notice the way he wouldn’t look at you? Whenever he refuses to look at a woman, it means he fancies her.”

“I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in all my life!” Mara laughed. “However,” she said after a moment, “Mado has her eye on you.”

“Eh? What makes you say that?”

“The way she checked me out. She regards you as her property. You two haven’t got something going, have you?” Her tone was bantering.

“I hunger for her cooking, not her body.” Julian replied with mock dignity. Nevertheless, his conscience twanged as he spoke the words. There had been one or two occasions, usually when he had drunk too much on a Saturday night after rugby, when he had found himself swirling like a drowning vole in the vortex of Mado’s powerful attractions. “Besides, Paul’s one of my best friends, practically family.”

“That’s why they call it a
ménage à trois,”
Mara said.

•

“She’s French Canadian,” Mado said to Paul when they were alone. “Did you hear her accent?”

“What accent?” Paul sat on one side of the bar, studying rugby scores in the local daily, while Mado
dried glasses on the other. In a region where people spoke a lazy patois and where all words were drawled out to end in “ng,” an accent was hardly a thing to be remarked on.

“Joual.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Joual.
She speaks
joual.”

“What
joual?”

“It’s the Montreal argot. That’s how they say ‘horse.’ They eat their words, so
cheval
winds up sounding like
joual.
I think she’s got her eye on Julian.”

“About time somebody did.” Paul buried himself more deeply in his paper.

Mado watched him. “Are you going to show that photo around?” she asked a moment later.

“Sure. Why not?”

“Well, like Gaston said, it could have been anyone around here. You’ll want to go carefully. Don’t forget, the man was never caught.”

“How do you know for sure it was a man?”

“Use sense. It had to be.”

“Well, who?”

“Anyone. Lucien Peyrat, for example. It’s usually the repressed type.”

Paul looked up. “For Christ’s sake, he’s a bread man, not a murderer.”