The Orchid Shroud (41 page)

“Does anyone really ever know another person? He’s—how should I put it?—multilayered. Friendly and generous on the surface,
very private underneath. I’ve never asked about his sexual orientation, and he’s never volunteered the information. But one thing I do know about him is that he’s genuine. I mean, he acts from the heart. If he’s in a flamboyant mood, he’s all grand gestures and largesse. If he feels petulant, he sulks. He can be difficult at times, but, damn it, I like him.”

Mara moved into the front room. Julian followed. They sat down together on an Art Deco settee, a new piece that Mara had recently acquired from a private sale. Jazz and Bismuth were already sprawled on the Aubusson.

“He has lots of friends, you know,” Julian went on, “of both genders, in case you wondered. In fact, he told me not long ago that he was coming to look on you as a friend.”

Mara chose to ignore this and blew instead on her drink. Frowning at its wrinkled surface, she stuck her finger in and lifted out the skin, which she offered to the dogs. Jazz rose, sniffed, and turned it down. Bismuth pushed forward and ate it. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as Julian sipped his drink, oblivious of a similar pale membrane clinging to his mustache. She fished a tissue from her pocket and wiped it off. He glanced at her absently, and picked a piece of fluff from her collar. Was this what their relationship was coming to? she wondered. Hot-milk drinks before bedtime and mutual grooming?

Restlessly Julian reclined against the settee back, found its unforgiving angles uncomfortable, and sat up again. “There’s someone else we don’t know a lot about. Jean-Claude.”

“We know he was a womanizer and probably a blackmailer. Also a genealogist, a cultural historian, and an author.”

“A man of many parts,” Julian said cynically.

“He wasn’t a bad writer. See for yourself.” Mara leaned across to pull Jean-Claude’s books across the coffee table toward them. Julian took them up and glanced through them. His interest was caught by
Le Visage de la Résistance en Dordogne
.

Jean-Claude’s text told in simple words the stories of men and women living in so-called Free France, but always under the crush of the Nazi heel. His selection of photographs portrayed the faces of a people fighting a dogged, clandestine war of resistance between the years 1940 and 1944. Many were of
maquisards
, posed singly or in groups, some grim, others cocky, a few of the younger men laughing, unaware or perhaps unheeding of the horror to come. Some photos were of prisoners of war, captured by the Germans and posed before execution or deportation for Nazi propaganda purposes. Others were simply dead, lying in broken heaps, impervious to the forward rush of events. Julian turned to the acknowledgments section to learn that Jean-Claude had gathered his material from municipal, regional, and national archives, newspapers, junk-dealers, family albums, and even Gestapo files. He soon found himself so engrossed that he took the book to bed with him. He was deep in it when Mara came out of the bathroom, smelling of sandalwood and toothpaste. The mattress dipped with her weight as she climbed in beside him.

“Good?”

“Mmm.”

“Learn anything more about our murder victim?”

“Mmm.”

“I take it Vrac still hasn’t found your orchid?”

“What? No. At least, I haven’t heard from him if he has.”

She sighed, slid more deeply under the covers, and closed her eyes.

“Mara, have a look at this.” Julian’s voice jerked her back from the first landing of sleep. “Who does this look like?”

She raised her head from the pillow and propped herself on her elbows to squint at the spot on the page indicated by his forefinger. It was the same curly mop of hair, the same round face, thinner perhaps. Definitely the same distinctively broken nose. But not laughing. The man in the photograph was walking, shoulders
slumped in an attitude of defeat, in a line of several other men. Prisoners of war. The date, according to the caption, was April 1944.

“Guillaume Verdier.” Mara twisted around to sit up. “Antoine’s father, Hérault de Bonfond, died in 1943.”

Julian nodded. “Which means that Guy was right. Guillaume survived Hérault.”

I
n her dream, they were standing, she and Julian, in a wood. Julian was talking urgently while she stared at something hidden in the trees.
Why here?
she asked, and jerked awake. The digital clock at her bedside read 4:03.

“Julian.” She shook him by the shoulder. “Wake up.”

“Hmm? What is it?”

“I think I know where Christophe is.”

Julian groaned and rolled over on his side. She was already out of bed and heading for the bathroom.

“What did you say?”

EARLY SATURDAY MORNING, 29 MAY

M
aybe you should slow down.”

Mara ignored him. The headlights of the Renault did not cut through the swirling mist so much as bounce back at them as a diffuse and eerie light. Black forest rose up on either side. Every now and then a pothole sent them flying. To save his head, Julian braced both hands against the car roof. They were coming to a bend in the road that he vaguely remembered. Mara took it too fast. The car went into a gouging skid. Julian shut his eyes as they slid sideways toward an immense pine. She regained control of the car just in time to avoid it.

“For Christ’s sake, Mara!”

To his relief, she slowed to a crawl. He thought the close call had made her cautious. Then he realized that she was merely getting her bearings.

“I thought it was around here somewhere,” she said.

“Farther ahead, I think. There.” Julian pointed to a slip trail running off to the right.

Mara eased the car onto it, and they bounced along for fifteen meters or so. When the trail ended in a wall of heavy brush, she cut the engine. They got out. Julian played a flashlight in a wide arc around them. The beam swept across low-hanging branches and mottled tree trunks before hitting a flash of metal. They scrambled through the undergrowth toward it. The gray car, well hidden, had been parked and reparked several times, judging from the numerous tracks and expanse of broken ferns around it.

“It’s the one we saw before,” said Mara. “The one you thought was Géraud’s.”

“Well, it can’t be his. The man loves orchids, but he wouldn’t be hunting them in the dark. You think it’s Christophe’s?”

“Whose else could it be?”

“Cunning bastard. I wonder if he’s been there all the time.”

T
hey left Mara’s Renault on the roadside near the trailhead and trekked through the trees up the back side of Aurillac Ridge, the beam of Julian’s flashlight cutting like a blade through the blackness. The forest at night presented itself as a palpable obscurity made up of large, unseen things and ghostly mist that twined silently about their legs. The bottoms of Mara’s jeans became quickly soaked as they pushed through wet bracken. In the silence, their muffled footfalls sounded heavy. Julian called out occasional warnings: “Watch it. Bloody great hole here.”

Gradually, Mara became aware of another sound. Not a small animal scurrying for safety. Something larger, she sensed, accompanying them, quietly, patiently. Then, as a breeze struck her face, she smelled it, a feral odor that aroused in her an atavistic surge of fear. She pulled Julian to a halt.

“Julian. There’s something out there.”

He did not argue. He had been hearing it for some minutes: the soft rustle of foliage, keeping pace with them, somewhere off to their left. He trained the flashlight in that direction. It served only to bring to life the trunks of trees that soared above them into a vast, cathedral gloom. Then he, too, caught its scent, riding on the damp air.

“Come on.” He pushed Mara sharply forward.

“This was stupid,” she said as she trotted rapidly beside him.

“Damned right. We should have brought a gun.”

“I don’t have a gun. I don’t like them.”

“Neither do I.”

She was falling behind. He seized her hand and dragged her along with him.

They broke with relief into a clearing. Julian turned to sweep the flashlight beam behind them in a wide arc, as if its rays had some power of protection. It picked up gray forms that lumbered off into the misty darkness. The feral odor was replaced by the comforting, familiar smell of wool fat on the wind.

“Whatever it was, it’s gone,” said Julian, more confidently than he felt.

They were in the southernmost meadow that they had searched three weeks previously. Since that time, sheep had been moved into it. They hurried on through the wet grass, through low-lying, drifting patches of mist. Then they were into cover again as they plunged into the woods at the top of the ridge. After some stumbling about, they picked out another path, twisting away among the trees. Mara thought it might have been the one she had come down with Didier. Even while her mind dwelled on what had been tracking them, she wondered how the morels were doing and if some enterprising poacher had discovered the gardener’s private crop. When they came out of the trees again, Aurillac Manor rose up as a black mass above them against a predawn sky.

They approached the back of the house by way of the garden. Julian guided them along one of many gravel paths running between the geometric configurations of boxwood hedges. Ahead, they heard the dreary splash of water. Then their light caught the stone dolphin, forever mid-leap. Suddenly Julian stopped, snatched at Mara’s arm, and shoved her behind him. Something in the shadows behind the fountain had moved. He was sure of it. He played the flashlight in that direction. His only thought, as a long shape detached itself slowly from the shadows, was that the thing, with frightening intelligence, had gone ahead to lie in wait for them.

“Arrêtez,”
said a deep voice. “Stop right there.”

A man stood in the wedge of light, holding a rifle level with Julian’s chest.

“Nom de dieu!”
Julian cried out in relief. “Point that thing somewhere else, will you?”

The man considered this briefly before allowing the nose of the rifle to droop a little. “Who’s with you?”

Julian answered, “Mara Dunn.” He said to Mara over his shoulder, “Antoine de Bonfond.”

“La canadienne,”
the winegrower grunted. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for Christophe,” Mara answered before Julian could stop her. “We think he’s been hiding out in the house all along. You know he’s wanted by the police.”

“That’s rich, coming from you.” Antoine’s voice had an edge to it.

Julian said, “We might ask you the same question. Why are you here?” He pointed to the weapon. “With that.”

Antoine took his time answering. “Maybe for the same reason.” Typically, the man was sparing with his words, giving little away. He jerked his head.
“Allons.”
He led them to a door giving access to the south wing of the house. “Light,” he commanded Julian as he bent to insert a key into the lock. “If he’s in there, he’ll be asleep. Better to take him unawares.”

So, Mara thought, Antoine had figured it out, too. She followed the two men into the still, dark house. The viticulturist flipped a switch, illuminating a long corridor. He stopped before a door—Mara recognized it as the one Christophe had hidden behind during her last, peculiar conversation with him—and turned the handle. The door swung silently inward.

Another switch brought the room to life: old-fashioned furniture, heavy curtains drawn across the windows. Antoine strode
to the bed and jabbed the muzzle of his rifle into the middle of it. A lumpy form stirred, uttered a sharp cry, and sat up.

“Quoi? Qui? Ah! C’est toi, Antoine.”

“And us.” Mara stepped forward, pulling Julian with her.

A low moan issued from the bed. Christophe, clutching the covers to his chin, stared back at them, like a hedgehog caught in a sweep of high beams. “How did you know?”

“We saw your car in the woods.”

“Oh.” The little man sighed. “Well, I suppose that’s that.” He gave them a defiant glare.

“The police are looking for you,” Mara said. “And I’ve been looking for this.” She snatched her cell phone from the top of a little cabinet beside the bed. “You took it from Jean-Claude’s terrace. After you killed him.”

“I did no such thing,” Christophe denied, but whether he was referring to the phone or to the genealogist was unclear.

“You’ve been hiding out here all the time.”

“Not at all. Only on and off.”

“You made nasty, threatening, dead-air phone calls to me—”

“I couldn’t have you spreading lies. Anyway, I never threatened you. Quite frankly, I didn’t know what to say. I’m not in the habit of warning people off—”

“You also frightened Thérèse with your impersonation of the Wailing Ghost to get her out of the house, and tried to scare me off the night I was in the library.”

Now he giggled. “All I had to do was moan into the heating ducts. The sound carries quite a way. I used to do it as a boy.”

“Very funny. And clever. Aurillac is so big no one knew you were here, as long as you kept out of sight. Until, of course, Didier saw you. Is that why you had to shoot him? And me, into the bargain?”