The Orchid Shroud (34 page)

It was at this point that the doors to the terrace flew open, admitting a cold blast of air. Hugo entered, a dazed expression on his face. His boots were muddy, and his neckcloth and the front of his hunting jacket were covered in blood. He must have made some attempt to wash himself, however, for most of his face was clean, except for some faint smears around his mouth and under his chin. His hands were also moderately clean, although the nails were rimmed in red. The horrified company stared speechless from the father, lying in the ruins of the boar’s head, to the son
.

“Heaven save us,” gasped Madame Caillaud. “The child—”

Madame Velveteen Jacket crossed herself and began to weep. Odile went pale and gripped the table’s edge. Hugo’s uncle half rose and sat down again. His wife let out a low moan
.

Henriette salvaged the moment and what remained of her husband’s reputation. “For heaven’s sake, Hugo,” she said coolly, “come and sit down. What was it this time? A stag or a
chevreuil?”

Crazily, Cécile laughed
.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON, 15 MAY

M
ara closed the last folder of Cécile’s diary and checked her watch. They had been at it over four hours. She pulled off her glasses and rolled her neck. Then, with a puzzled frown, she said:

“You know, Julian, it’s really odd. If Cécile did have it on with her army captain in Paris, she should have given birth sometime around February or March of 1871. I don’t remember seeing a mention of her pregnancy anywhere, do you?”

He shoved his glasses to the top of his head. “Come to think of it, no.”

She scanned the pages of the 1871 folder again. “You’d think she would have written about something as important as that. I mean, the woman’s existence was utterly bleak. Apart from seeing animals slaughtered, nothing happened in her life. And of course there’s no official record of a birth.”

“Well, there wouldn’t be, would there? I mean, if she or the family killed the kid. Maybe that applies to the diary, too. Perhaps parts of it are missing.”

“Someone destroyed the bits that referred to the baby? I suppose that’s what they would have done. The problem is, it’s hard to tell if there are gaps because most of the entries aren’t dated. The organization of the material is entirely Jean-Claude’s guesswork.” She took up the 1870 folder from Julian’s stack and began riffling through it. “The only hint of Cécile being in a family way is this comment in Eloïse’s letter about ‘given your circumstances.’
And I’m not even sure about that. The woman sounds so self-righteous, you’d think she’d have delivered a full-blown moral lecture, given the chance.”

“I didn’t see a thing about my orchid, either.” Julian’s tone was aggrieved. “In fact, Cécile made no mention of flora of any sort. I’m beginning to wonder if the damned woman had any feeling at all for nature, let alone flowers. I mean, even her horse was called ‘Money.’ Or I suppose ‘Argent’ could have meant ‘Silver.’ Anyway, I doubt if she ever embroidered so much as an initial on a handkerchief, let alone an accurate depiction of a
Cypripedium
on a shawl.” He stood up. Hands in his pockets, he strolled slowly past the paintings of the de Bonfond ancestors. Mara had earlier given him the family tour. He paused before Henriette, Odile, and Cécile. “Quite frankly, none of them looks like a flower-lover or an embroiderer.”

“No,” Mara agreed. “They don’t.”

She joined him in a second circuit around the room.

“Nasty-looking beast,” Julian commented, stopping before Xavier’s portrait. He meant the dog. “I could see it as a man-killer.”

Mara, scowling up at the baron’s features, sucked her breath in sharply. “Julian, I just realized who Adjudant Compagnon reminds me of. Xavier de Bonfond. He has the same red eyebrows and sticking-out eyes.”

“Hmm. Well, seigneurial rights and all that, you know. And his grandson Dominique seemed to have been a skirt-chaser in his own right. Maybe they both spread the family genes about a bit.”

Then Mara said, “You know, maybe we’re not getting the full picture. If Eloïse wrote to Cécile, then surely Cécile must have written to Eloïse. Jean-Claude said something about the Verdier family papers.”

“You think we should pay a visit to Christophe’s Verdier cousins and find out if they have any of Cécile’s letters?”

“Right. Come to think of it, I suspect that’s exactly what Jean-Claude
did. Even though he promised not to deal with them, I think he talked his way into the Verdier archives and discovered something that got him killed.”

T
he house was a large stone structure located just off the square in Sigoulane Village. Guy and Mariette Verdier received them with a mixture of wariness and affability. Both knew that Mara was working in some capacity for Christophe, and that Julian was landscaping the Coteaux de Bonfond pavilion. Both seemed to regard their visitors as emissaries of the enemy who could be persuaded, with the right treatment, to switch allegiances. Julian found himself staring at the wife. He could have sworn Mariette had been a brunette when he last saw her. Her hair was now a brassy blond. Maybe she had dyed it to go with the banana-skin-yellow spandex halter top she wore.

“You’re lucky you caught me in.” Guy waved the visitors over to a fake zebra-hide sofa. “I usually golf on Saturday afternoons.”

“And Sundays,” Mariette mouthed to Julian. “I’m a weekend widow.” Julian half suspected she would have dug her elbow into his side if he had been within digging distance.

The plump, pink-faced lawyer gave a whinnying laugh to show that he knew his wife to be a great kidder. Mara caught a glint of gold in one of his back molars.

“It’s really your father we came to see, Maître Verdier,” said Mara, careful to use his title. The pair lived with Michel Verdier, or perhaps it was the other way around. “We really don’t want to trouble you.”

“Oh, I’m sure I can answer any questions you may have about the de Bonfonds just as well.” He obviously preferred it that way. “Anyway, Papa is out with the vines right now. Now, how about some coffee?”

Mariette laid on the works: a silver tray with a silver pot, porcelain demitasses and saucers, a plate of pastel-colored macaroons.
Since she assumed they were there to talk about Baby Blue, she launched right into the matter as she poured.
“C’est une très mauvaise affaire
. The villagers are very upset about it. You were there that morning”—a nod in Julian’s direction—“you saw how worked up they were. Why, if it hadn’t been for my husband, I think they would have torn Antoine and Denise apart.”

“That may be putting it a little strong,” said Guy in the careful manner of his profession. “At any rate, it’s been most distressing. For us, too. We Verdiers, you see, are related by marriage to the de Bonfonds through my four-times-great-aunt Odile. An infanticide in the family. Well, you can imagine. Naturally, we want to find out the truth.”

“So do we,” said Mara in a tone that made the husband pause momentarily to look at her.

“Our concern, of course,” Guy went on, “is that the de Bonfonds will attempt to sweep things under the carpet.”

“Christophe would much rather Baby Blue had nothing to do with his family,” Mara conceded. “But then, since you’re related, I suppose you feel the same?”

“Pas du tout
. Crime must out,” cried Mariette, smug in the knowledge that it was someone else’s crime. “You do know he’s gay, don’t you?”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Julian objected. In fact, the little man had somehow always struck him as asexual.

“Oh,” she said, “not that
we
care. It’s nobody’s business, is it? But it just shows the kind of person he is.”

Julian found himself disliking the nouvelle-blonde.

Guy made a noise, a judicial clearing of the throat. “All we’re saying is, the child was obviously murdered, and it would be best for all concerned—I speak for everyone in Sigoulane—if the child were identified once and for all as a de Bonfond—”

“—bastard,” inserted Mariette.

“—and the matter laid to rest.”

“Of course, it will blacken the family’s reputation around here even more, if that’s possible.” Mariette leaned across confidentially toward Julian, offering deep cleavage. “You saw how much the villagers hate them.”

“I saw that someone broke a window and had a go with spray paint. It all seemed a bit over the top to me.”

“Ah”—the lawyer wagged a finger in the air—“that’s because you don’t understand the underlying dynamics.”

“I understand the other winegrowers in the valley, your father included, wanted the de Bonfonds to expand their
chai
to give them local processing and storage, and the de Bonfonds turned them down.”

A gruff voice spoke behind them. “It was a reasonable offer.” Guy’s father, Michel, had come quietly into the room. Julian remembered him as the wiry old fellow he had seen talking to Antoine in front of the pavilion. He was wearing the same clothes: dungarees, a plaid shirt, and a floppy black beret which he now took off and tossed onto a table. “We said we’d help build the addition and pay a lower fee for use, or they could build it and we’d pay a higher usage fee. They were expanding anyway. Would have been worth their while to add a few square meters.”

“Except that Pierre and that sister of his wanted it all their way,” said Guy with feeling. “They wanted the growers to contribute to capital costs
and
pay the higher fee. It’s their way of squeezing people out because they want the land.”

It wasn’t what Denise had told him. Julian wondered which was the true story.

“For some people, land
—le terroir—
is a commodity,” Michel said. There was anger in his voice. “Especially Denise. She has no feeling for it, no respect. The character of a wine comes from the soil. She thinks with the right tinkering she can produce something the land was never meant to give. Antoine understands
terroir
, but he’s not the way of the future. Nor am I,” the winegrower
added with an overlay of bitterness. It was the age-old conflict between nature and technology, in which some survived and others got buried.

Introductions were made. Michel Verdier shook hands with Mara and Julian without any real show of friendliness. He helped himself to coffee, preferring a mug to a demitasse, and sat down in a rocking chair by the window.

“It seems to me,” Julian said bluntly, “that no love is lost between the Verdiers and the de Bonfonds, however you view it.”

Guy, looking cagey, opened his mouth, but Mariette upstaged him. “The de Bonfonds have done despicable things.” She fairly bounced with outrage. “Land-grabbers, all of them. Tell them, Guy.”

Michel cut in. “
A quoi bon?
Why rake over old history?” The rockers of his chair grated harshly on the floorboards.

The lawyer said, “What my wife said is true. The treachery of the de Bonfonds goes back a long way. You see, in the 1800s, because of a reversal of fortune, the Verdiers came to owe the de Bonfonds a large amount of money. When Tante Odile married Dominique de Bonfond, the de Bonfonds agreed to settle both the debt and the dowry in return for the Verdier house, although we retained the lease on the property. Stiff terms, but still acceptable to our family, if only the de Bonfonds had kept to the agreement.”

“Ha!” scoffed Mariette.

“The agreement was that Odile and Dominique’s eldest son would marry one of his Verdier cousins—Hugo and Eloïse, as it turned out.”

“They were engaged until that
putain
Henriette entered the scene,” Mariette cut in.

Guy shot her a severe look. “Had they married,
their
children would have inherited both properties. It would have brought the two families and the estates together in a very satisfactory way.”

Thereby getting back for the Verdiers what went out with Odile, Julian thought. It was somehow always about land and property.

“Our family brought an action against the de Bonfonds for breach of promise, but the ruling went against us. We always suspected that Dominique de Bonfond bribed the court. Tante Odile was on our side of course, but by then Hugo had already married Henriette, there was nothing she could do, and a settlement at that point would have meant money out of hand for the de Bonfonds.”

“But that’s not all,” interrupted Mariette. “Tell them about the
tontine
.”

“Water under the bridge.” Michel favored his daughter-in-law with a look of distaste.

“At least let me put the record straight, Father,” Guy said. “You see, before the war, my grandfather Guillaume Verdier and Hérault de Bonfond, Antoine’s father, bought a parcel of land together. Twelve hectares—”

“On the west side of the valley, which just so happens to be the most productive part of the Coteaux de Bonfond
vignoble
today,” put in Mariette with a sniff.

“They bought it
en tontine
, which, if you’re unfamiliar with the term, is a simple arrangement whereby the property, on the death of one party, goes to the survivor. During the war, both fought in the Resistance. My grandfather was caught trying to blow up a German supply depot. He was sent to a detainment camp in Périgueux and reportedly shot in March 1943, so the land went to Antoine’s father as the survivor. Then Hérault was killed in a skirmish outside Allas-les-Mines nine months later, in December. However, the next year we got word that my grandfather had not been shot. He had been deported but had managed to escape and was still alive.”