The Orchid Shroud

by Michelle Wan

  “Three hundred or get stuffed,” said the woman.

  Vrac laughed, a sound like cawing crows.

  “All right, three hundred,” Julian conceded angrily as the dogs, flat-eared, came running past him. “But you have a damned funny way of bargaining.” Then he remembered. The Rochers never did play by the rules.

  18

  SUNDAY, 9 MAY

  The following morning, Mara watched anxiously for Julian through her front window. She lived in a handsome stone house, one of a handful of dwellings making up the hamlet of Ecoute-la-Pluie (Listen-to-the-Rain, so named because of a mill, dependent on a rain-fed stream, that had once operated there). The room where she stood was her showcase. Literally. Every item in it, except an Aubusson rug of floral design, was potentially for sale, so that the clusters of period sofas, chairs and tables, mirrors and fireplace accessories never remained the same. The Dordogne was filling up with expatriate year-round and summer residents who bought up farmhouses, abandoned mills, fourteenth-century towers, and decaying châteaux. The renovation of some of these structures fell to Mara, who was gradually establishing a reputation as a creative designer and a reliable coordinator of work crews. Work was patchy, however, and necessity rather than inclination led her to the add-on business of procuring the furnishings to fill these residences.

  Julian’s van pulled up with a groaning of brakes in front of the house. One leg followed the other as Julian himself climbed down. Mara hurried out to meet him.

  “Julian, I tried to call you, but you’d already left. You really should get a cell phone. You and Christophe.”

  “Hate the things. Playing silly tunes and going off all the time. Besides, you’re always losing yours.”

  “Well, I wanted to tell you, we have a problem.”

  “Problem?”

  “Cécile, as it turns out”—her voice was full of implication—“was an avid horsewoman. In fact, apparently she got on better with horses than with people.”

  He closed his eyes briefly and swore. He had pictured Cécile sticking to footpaths, at best hiking up her skirts and strolling through spring meadows when the grasses were low. On horseback, she could have ridden all over the valley. All over the region, for that matter. And seen the orchid anywhere.

  He cursed again. “Couldn’t you have told me this before?”

  “Well, I didn’t know before. And please don’t glare like that. Jean-Claude just called, and he happened to mention it.”

  “I’m not glaring. But you realize this changes my entire search strategy. We need to revise.”

  “Revise how? You don’t honestly expect us to continue, do you?”

  “Oh?” he said, purposely stupid, but his eyes held a sharp disappointment.

  “Julian, I know I said I’d help you, but this is hopeless.” She might have added that she had been charged by a sanglier, some kind of killer animal was on the loose, and her ankle hurt. “Be reasonable. You’ve searched the garden and the forests around Aurillac. We’ve searched around the meadows. This leaves what? The Sigoulane Valley? Most of it is planted over with vines. What hasn’t been is sheer rock face or forest. You honestly don’t expect us to find anything, do you?”

  Unhappily, he took her point.

  “So what else did Lover Boy have to say?” he inquired sourly.

  “His name’s Jean-Claude. There’s no need to call him Lover Boy.”

  “Sorry. I thought you said he tried to seduce you.”

  She ignored this. “He wants to meet with me again.”

  “You two seem to be having a lot of meetings lately.”

  “He’s supposed to report daily,” she replied, exasperated. “He said he discovered something new. In fact, he sounded quite excited.”

  Julian looked unimpressed.

  “You just don’t care, do you,” she burst out angrily, offloading at last the grievance she had with him, “about what happened to Baby Blue. For you, he doesn’t exist except as something your shawl was wrapped around.”

  He seemed taken aback. “Of course I care.”

  “No, you don’t. Nothing matters to you but your orchid.”

  “Oh, I get it. If that’s what’s bothering you, let me say I’m sorry as hell the kid was killed. But that was a long time ago, Mara. What am I supposed to do? Go into mourning?”

  “Please don’t be sarcastic.”

  “Well, please be reasonable. Has it occurred to you that you’re agonizing needlessly? You’re beating yourself up because you couldn’t prevent your sister’s death, so you’ve transferred your sense of guilt to Baby Blue, that sort of thing? There’s nothing you could have done to help either of them, you know.”

  Her head snapped up. “I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. If you want to engage in psychoanalysis, Julian, look at yourself. A child was murdered, and all you can think about is your damned Cypripedium. Is that normal?”

  They glared at each other.

  “So where does that leave us?” Julian said finally. “This isn’t just about Baby Blue or the orchid, you know. We agreed we’d spend more time together. As in tonight.”

  She looked him straight in the eye. “I’m sorry, Julian, I can’t.”

  He waited for more. Her face assumed a mulish expression.

  “I see,” he muttered finally, feeling another of his stress headaches coming on. “Well, in that case, I won’t take up any more of your time.”

  He climbed back into his van, slammed the door with unnecessary violence, and drove off.

  Mara spent the rest of the day in her studio, a detached building behind her house, which, unlike her front room, revealed her more natural environment: a clutter of objects salvaged from wrecking sites, old bolts of cloth, client files and accounts stored in sagging cardboard boxes. She was becoming increasingly convinced that Christophe’s gallery was doomed to remain unfinished. As a means of forestalling bankruptcy, she had decided to bid on the renovation of an ugly farmhouse near Meyrals. The new project failed to stir her imagination. Or was it that Julian kept intruding on her concentration? After many hours, she stamped out of her studio and returned to the house. She picked up a message on her phone: the stonemason she thought she had lined up for Christophe could not take the job on after all.

  “Merde,” cried Mara to no one but Jazz, who butted her with his head to tell her it was dinnertime. He had a very hard head.

  Dogs, she thought as she fed him, were easy compared with people. They were happy eating the same old thing every day. They were straightforward, took you as you came, and didn’t throw tantrums. Hadn’t someone once said, “The more I know people, the more I like dogs”?

  A clock, an antique pendule obtained from a dealer in Monpazier, sounded six. Its harsh, brassy chime was bearable only because it, like everything else, was a temporary acquisition. She headed for the bathroom, where she turned the tub taps on full-bore, pouring in a generous dollop of a product called Bain de Mer that turned your bath an improbable blue. She returned to the kitchen, where she found half a bottle of muscat in the frigo. She carried it to the bathroom. She tuned her radio to the classical station, but they were playing a modern opera that made her teeth shiver. She found something that was easier listening. It was only after she had stripped that she discovered she had forgotten a glass, so she made do with her tooth mug, filling it to the brim with cold, sweet wine. This in hand, she sank gratefully into the hot, bubbling ultramarine water.

  Minutes later, to the strains of Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday,” she lay submerged to the neck, in a drifting state of mindlessness.

  She awoke with a start. The cooling bath was no longer pleasant. It was ten to seven.

  “Damn,” she cried, scrambling up, slipping, and splashing water everywhere. She dried off hastily, using her towel to mop up the floor. In the bedroom she grabbed a change of underwear and yanked clothing out of the closet. Not that. Or that. Briefly she considered a long batik sarong skirt and a low-cut russet silk top that
complemented her strong coloring, but settled in the end for a tailored gray shirtwaist. Her wedge sandals were where she had kicked them, one under the dresser, the other in a corner of the room.

  She made quick work of her still-damp hair. Luckily, it was short enough that it required little grooming. Jazz. She had to remember to let him in. The last time she’d left him outside, his barking had put the neighbors in a rage. She hurried to the rear door, where he was waiting for her. He trotted into the front room, toenails clicking like castanets on the highly polished walnut floor, and settled happily on the Aubusson. She galloped back to the bathroom to make up her face.

  Moments later, she surveyed herself in the cheval glass, adjusted her collar, and twitched her hem straight. Then she searched about for her cell phone, which she eventually found in the kitchen, dropped it into her shoulder bag, and strode out of the house to keep her appointment with Jean-Claude Fournier.

  19

  SUNDAY EVENING, 9 MAY

  I wasn’t expecting this,” Mara said. They were standing by the low stone parapet of his terrace, admiring a fiery orange western sky. The earth dropped away below them, the ravine bottom already deep in shadow. A drinks trolley nearby held glasses, bottles, and a tray of cold shrimp hors d’oeuvres. She was sipping a Kir Royal, a blend of champagne and cassis. “When you said dinner, I naturally thought—”

  Jean-Claude laughed. “That we’d meet here for drinks and then go to some restaurant—a good one, of course, but out. Why not here? I can offer you”—his eyes glowed over the rim of his glass, or perhaps it was just that in that moment they reflected the setting sun—“all the comforts of home.”

  She found herself laughing, too, and once more caught the whiff of his sexy, musky odor. He was dressed this time in burgundy slacks to match his Gucci loafers and a gray ribbed silk pullover. His yellow hair, falling either side of a central parting, gave him an almost Renaissance look.

  They had dinner in his front room. He seated her at a table set with old silver, antique Sèvres dishes, and hand-cut crystalware. Mara sniffed the air appreciatively. It carried an intricacy of smells: the richness of oven-baked pastry, the enticing odor of pan-fried garlic. Against a background of flowers, soft music, and discreet lighting, he brought out the steaming first course: aromatic wedges of saumon en croûte.

  “Délicieux,” Mara murmured around her first bite, a flaky casing that crumbled exquisitely away from a core of salmon in a creamy caper sauce. “I mean, fabulous. I’m tremendously impressed.”

  “Why so? All the great chefs of the world are men, you know.” He gazed archly across the table at her.

  “Debatable.”

  “All right, name me one really famous woman chef. I’m not speaking about collectors of other people’s recipes, writers of cookbooks. I mean true culinary geniuses.”

  “Ma mère. It’s true. She’s a knockout cook. Comes from a little place called Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, near the Quebec–New Brunswick border. You should taste her six-pastry chicken pie, to say nothing of her moose steak.”

  It was Jean-Claude’s turn to laugh.

  She waved her fork over her plate. “But how did you learn to do this?”

  Jean-Claude shrugged. “My mother—god rest her soul—was an unmentionably bad cook.”

  Mara, in sympathy with Madame Fournier, shifted self-consciously in her chair.

  “Consequently,” he went on, “I insist on eating well. At least dining well. I don’t mind plain meals during the rest of the day as long as I can look forward to a really good dîner. A beautiful companion makes it all the more enjoyable.”

  “Jean-Claude, this is supposed to be a business affair.”

  “At least you admit the possibility of an affair?” He leaned forward, insinuating.

  “Not in the sense I think you mean. Really, I’m impressed all to hell, but hadn’t we better focus on Baby Blue? You said you’ve found out something more about the family. What?”

  “Ah.” He gave her a sly smile and rose from the table. “But first, the plat principal. One should always satisfy the appetites of the flesh before other things, don’t you think?”

  He had prepared his version of a Dordogne speciality, magret de canard, grilled duck breast, in a port-and-pepper sauce with a pear compote. Watching him as he served up, Mara thought he had the air—she swept her mind for fitting aphorisms—of the cat who’d swallowed the cream. Or maybe it was that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth? At any rate, his first course had been replete with both butter and cream, and he really looked as if he’d licked the spoon.

  “I am very fond of breast,” said Jean-Claude as he put an artistically assembled plate before her. “Of duck, I mean. It’s the best part because it’s covered with a delicate layer of fat that melts in the cooking. That’s what makes the meat so tender.”

  There were side platters of baked endive and pommes de terre sarladaises. Mara felt a guilty twinge at the sight of the last. It was Julian’s favorite dish, garlicky potatoes lightly sautéed in goose fat and sprinkled with parsley. The main course was followed by salad, local cheeses, and a plum tart purchased from the Boulangerie Méliès in Brames, which turned out some of the best pâtisserie in the region. They talked very little during the meal, both too absorbed in plying fork and knife.

  “Superbe,” Mara sighed at last, laying her napkin beside her coffee cup.

  He regarded her with satisfaction. “Then let me propose an exchange. The results of my research, which I think you’ll find interesting, for a great deal more of your company.”

  “I’m not your client, Jean-Claude,” Mara told him firmly but with a smile. The excellence of the meal had put her in a mellow mood. “Christophe is.”

  He gave an exaggerated sigh. “My efforts go for naught. With you Americans—”

  “Canadian.”

  “Canadians, it’s always le business first. Very well, I shall lay before you my findings to date with no strings attached. I need a smoke. Shall we go out on the terrace?”

  It had grown dark by then, but the warmth of the day lingered. Crickets chirped softly in the ravine below. He opened a packet of Davidoffs, tapped out a mini-cigar, lit up, and tossed the packet onto a wooden bench set into the terrace wall.

  “I have been forced,” he began, “to review my conclusions about the de Bonfonds. Thanks”—he swept her a small bow—“entirely to you.”

  “Me?”

  “Mais oui. You pointed out the inconsistency in the family devise. It set me thinking. I’ve already described to you the de Bonfonds in their unembellished state. But until now I had no idea how really nasty they were.” He exhaled smoke that hung about his head on the still night air. “After you pointed out the spelling discrepancy in the family motto, I did a little more research. Well, quite a lot, to be honest. First of all, I should say that I was able to determine that the painted motto on the scroll came first. The portrait was done in Xavier’s lifetime, probably sometime in the 1780s. However, the mantelpiece was purchased and carved after Xavier’s death—in 1831, according to the bill of sale I found. This led me to ask why the spelling was changed. Was it simply an error? Or a cover-up?”

  Mara’s eyebrows lifted. “A cover-up for what?”

  “Blood And My Right. Blood Is My Right. As you said, there’s a difference. In this case, a big difference. The more I probed, the more I began to wonder if the de Bonfonds didn’t have something even more horrific to add to their reputation.” He regarded her thoughtfully. “What do you know about loups-garous, Mara?”

  “Werewolves?” She laughed outright. “Only that they go hairy and bite people at the full moon.”

  “Don’t make light of it. France has a long history of loups-garous and a formidable record of werewolf executions.”

  “Ignorant superstition and mass hysteria,” she scoffed. “Like burning people at the stake for being witches.”

  He said, almost severely, “Everything has its strand of truth. Supposing I told you that I
’m convinced that many of the legends surrounding loups-garous are exactly what they purport to be: accounts of werewolf sightings and attacks.” Seeing her obvious disbelief, he ground out his cigar and strode swiftly into the house. He returned moments later, a long straplike object draped over both hands.

  “Here.” He held it out to her. “Since you’re so skeptical. This is a wolf belt. It was given to me by an old woman a number of years ago, when I was compiling material for my book on Dordogne folktales. Take it.”

  The thing was made from some kind of animal skin, greenish gray and supple, with a simple brass buckle. The stitching along the edges was frayed and worn. For some reason Mara felt unwilling to touch it. With a brief laugh she stepped away. “Is this supposed to be some kind of protection against werewolves?”

  He shook his head gravely. “Far from it. According to local beliefs, a wolf belt condemns the wearer to become a werewolf at each full moon for a period of seven years. The old woman claimed her grandmother bought it from an itinerant vendor. Against her family’s warning, she wore it to a festivity. The next full moon, she changed into a she-wolf and ran snarling from the house. She was found two days later, hiding in the bushes. Her hair was matted with dirt and leaves, and her nightdress was covered in dried blood. Nearby was a dead sheep. She had killed it by biting its throat out and had fed on the carcass. Go on, since you’re so sure this is nonsense, put it on. Nothing will happen to you if it’s just superstitious rubbish.” He pushed it into her hand, but she recoiled and threw it down. The feel of it made her skin crawl.

  “You see.” His eyes were mocking. “You claim to doubt what I’ve said, but when it comes down to it, you won’t even touch it.”

  “Jean-Claude, what does all this have to do with the de Bonfonds?” Mara asked angrily, but she was angrier at herself than at him for being so inexplicably shaken.

  With a smile—he had made his point—he picked up the wolf belt, rolled it up carefully, and set it on the drinks trolley. “Not a good idea to leave this lying around. These things have lives of their own.” He reached for the packet of Davidoffs and tapped out another cigar. “What does this have to do with the de Bonfonds? Quite a bit, as it turns out. You’ve certainly heard of the Sigoulane Beast. The media are full of it. But have you ever heard”—his face was suddenly illuminated by the flare of a match—“of the Beast of Le Gévaudan?”