The Orchid Shroud

by Michelle Wan

  Mara regarded him warily. “No, I have not.”

  “Then let me tell you.” He drew the cigar to life. It’s fiery tip glowed like an angry eye in the darkness. “Between 1764 and 1767, some kind of creature roamed the hills of Le Gévaudan, which, if you don’t know it, is a mountainous region at the foot of the Massif Central. For three years it left a trail of mutilated bodies. Those who saw it said it was a large, wolflike creature. Some said it had the ability to go on two legs like a man. Others claimed to have met it in human form as a hairy stranger who tried to lure them into the woods. Many believed it was a werewolf.

  “The thing was killed. Twice. In both cases, its carcass was displayed to quiet the fears of the local population. The attacks ceased after 1767. The records of these events have been preserved, and nearly two dozen books have been written trying to explain the mystery of the Beast. None, to my mind, satisfactorily.” He paused. “Did the Beast die? Or did it simply change territory?”

  “What are you saying, Jean-Claude?” Mara’s chin went up skeptically.

  “Just this. Xavier de Bonfond came from Le Gévaudan, from the village of Paulhac, in the very area where the attacks were concentrated. At the time of the Beast, he would have been in his thirties. Apart from that and the fact that he served as a gabelou, we know little else about his early life. He first appeared in the Sigoulane Valley in 1770, three years after the Gévaudan Beast was allegedly killed. Parish records in the Sigoulane Valley show that in 1772 some kind of savage creature began killing a large number of sheep. In 1775 the first human attacks began. People who saw the thing claimed it was not a wolf, although wolves roamed the forests in those days, but a hairy wolflike creature that had the ability to walk upright. The first references to the Sigoulane Beast date from that time. The attacks in the valley peaked in 1787, tapered off in the late 1790s, and stopped entirely after Xavier’s death in 1810. For the next forty-nine years, there were no more sightings of the ‘thing that went on two legs.’

  “Xavier did well for himself after he came to Sigoulane, although he was feared more than respected. Not only did he have a reputation for violence, he also had a spooky knack of disappearing from one place and reappearing somewhere else with almost supernatural speed. Still, as I told you, he married into a good family and acquired the trappings of social respectability. But I think the one thing he could not, or would not, obscure was his true nature.” Jean-Claude moved to stand uncomfortably close to Mara. “I think the motto as you spotted it on Xavier’s portrait is the right one. The carving on the mantel, Sang E Mon Drech, Blood And My Right, is a later version that was altered by the simple suppression of the letter ‘s’ for the sake of appearances, as was the creation of the fake family tree. The real motto is Sang Es Mon Drech. Blood Is My Right. You understand the meaning of it now, don’t you?”

  Mara took a deep breath. “You want me to believe the Gévaudan Beast and the Sigoulane Beast were one, and that Xavier de Bonfond was a werewolf? I think I’ve heard quite enough.” She turned to walk away. He caught her arm.

  “Wait. I’m not finished. We have to fast-forward to 1859, when Xavier’s great-grandson Hugo was in his twenties. Another rash of ‘happenings’ began about that time. Again, it’s all documented in parish records. Over the next thirteen years, several children went missing and two other children and an old woman were found with their throats bitten out. Hugo died in 1872. The attacks ceased after that date.”

  “Unless you count the maquisard sans tête,” Mara said, seizing on anything to jam a stick in the smoothly turning spokes of his narrative. “Thérèse seems to think it was the work of the Beast as well. Hugo was long gone by then.”

  Jean-Claude shook his head. “That was a wartime atrocity.” He spoke with certainty. “The man was decapitated by a human agent, not a werewolf. Which brings us to the present.” He paused, tipping his face up to contemplate the sky, where the moon, just on the wane, rode high above the treetops. “Things seem to be starting up again.”

  Mara stepped back, incredulous. “Are you talking about the feral dog? Oh, come on, Jean-Claude.”

  He leaned in. His eyes were serious in the light from the open terrace door. “Is it a dog? There are many who believe that werewolfism is a heritable condition, Mara. Not necessarily passed from parent to child, because there are quiescent periods which suggest the condition skips generations. Xavier was Hugo’s greatgrandfather. Hugo is Christophe’s great-grandfather.”

  “Are you suggesting Christophe is behind these recent attacks?”

  Jean-Claude took a last drag on his cigar, stubbed the butt out on the parapet, and flipped it over the side. “You said it, not I.”

  “But you certainly implied it!”

  He raised both hands. “Hear me out. While I was working with Christophe on his book, I became aware of something odd in his behavior. Every now and then he shut himself in his room, wouldn’t talk to people, or simply left without warning. Thérèse always put it down to ‘one of his moods.’ Yesterday I went back through my old work diaries. Over the period of twenty-five months, there were at least half a dozen times when he canceled meetings with me owing to ‘indisposition.’”

  “He could have been sick. It happens, you know.”

  “Each instance occurred a few days before the full moon. He always remained unavailable for a week or so, and then everything returned to normal. Last month, when that man was killed by the so-called feral dog, the moon was full. Last week, when Christophe locked himself in his room, the moon was again full. Doesn’t it seem strange to you that he delegated you to see me when he could have very easily done so himself? Is it coincidence that the very night he went missing something broke into a henhouse and attacked the Dupuy woman?”

  “I’m finding this in very bad taste, Jean-Claude.”

  “Very well. If you don’t believe me, ask Thérèse. She knows Christophe better than anyone. Ask her if what I’ve said isn’t true.”

  “Good idea.” Mara dug her cell phone out of her bag. “Let’s call her right now. You can tell her your crazy—” She broke off, thinking she saw his lips twitch. “Now, look,” she shouted and slapped the phone down. “If this is your idea of a joke, I am not amused.”

  He threw up his hands. “I swear to you, Mara, this is no joke.” He seemed in earnest, but were his eyes slightly mocking? “Everything I said is absolutely true. The dates and events all mesh. Christophe does go into seclusion at the full moon. Something is out there that’s killing and mauling people. Would I joke about something as serious as this?”

  “I think”—Mara glared at him in disgust—“you’d do anything to make a point.” She almost said “score a hit.” He had given her the impression that he had discovered something important about the de Bonfonds. This load of rubbish was nothing more than a flimsy excuse for an intimate dinner à deux, intended to lead no doubt to other things. “And Baby Blue?” she inquired coldly. “Without the werewolf sideshow, if you don’t mind.”

  He shrugged, weathering her disbelief. “As I said. Cécile’s bastard. She killed him. Or someone in the family did. Whatever, it really doesn’t matter.”

  He was right. Mara subsided, thinking of the sad little bundle of dried-out flesh, the manner of its death. For Baby Blue, it really didn’t matter.

  Gently, he traced the prominence of her collarbone, leaving his finger to rest lightly on the pulse point of her throat. “You know, I find it strange that such a desirable woman as yourself is unattached. Why don’t we forget about Baby Blue and the de Bonfonds and focus on more interesting things? Us, for example.”

  “No thanks.” She pushed away from him, sick of his constant foreplay, his innuendo, his physical encroachments. “I’ve had just about all the focus I can take. Merci for dinner and the entertainment. I’m afraid I have to be on my way.”

  “But you can’t go. It’s early yet.” He sounded deeply offended.

  “You forget. I’m a working girl.” She hooked her bag ov
er her shoulder, waggled her fingers at him, and turned to leave.

  His attack was swift and brutal. He grabbed her roughly from behind, spun her around, and jerked her in close.

  “Come on, Mara.” His voice rang harshly in her ear; his breath was fumy with alcohol and tobacco. “Quit the teasing. I don’t like women who play hard to get.” His mouth came down on hers so forcefully that his teeth cut her lower lip. His free hand groped her breast. Mara gave a muffled cry against the invasion of his probing tongue and did the only thing she could—kneed him hard, aiming for the groin. He took the blow on the inside of the thigh. She broke free and slapped him across the face.

  “You bastard!” she screamed.

  “Admit it, you like it rough. Most women do.” He came at her again, his face ugly with intent.

  Using her purse as a weapon, Mara swung it at him. The blow caught him on the side of the head. She followed up with an almighty shove, sending him reeling, arms flailing, backward into the drinks trolley. Amid the sound of crashing bottles, she fled through his house, out his front door, and to her car. With shaking hands she started the motor, killed it in her haste, started it up again, and shot backward down the driveway.

  A yell brought her foot down hard on the brake. A figure surged forward out of the darkness: an elderly man with a dog.

  “Oh god, I’m so sorry,” she cried, rolling down her window. Her voice sounded unnaturally high to her own ears.

  Outraged, the man told her what he thought of her and her driving. He was still hurling insults at her as she gained the road and swung her car around, heading for home.

  That night Mara e-mailed Patsy:

  >Patsy, “Hands” Fournier has proven himself an all-out, giant-sized prick. I’m not speaking anatomically. Tonight the bastard actually assaulted me …

  She paused. Had she led him on? She was quite certain she had not.

  … It seems Christophe has badly misjudged his man. Far from clearing the de Bonfonds, Jean-Claude makes them sound like the family from hell. Not only are they bloodthirsty, grasping, and not noble, two of them were werewolves, one of them the actual Beast of Le Gévaudan, would you believe, who made himself over as the Sigoulane Beast when he moved to the Dordogne. Moreover, the condition runs in the family because the feral dog I told you about isn’t a dog at all, according to Jean-Claude, but Christophe, who is the most recent de Bonfond to terrorize the Sigoulane Valley. As for Baby Blue, he was probably the illegitimate kid of Christophe’s great-great-aunt Cécile, who smothered him, or someone in the family did.

  Christophe is still missing. I’m now inclined to agree with Julian that the little twerp is probably happily perched in a three-star hotel somewhere while I do his dirty work. Well, he can deal direct with Jean-Claude from now on. I no longer care if I lose the Aurillac project. In fact, I’ve decided to send a letter of resignation to the house (since I don’t know how else to communicate with Christophe) and return his deposit. My only other problem, apart from the fact that I’m very low on funds, is that I think I left my cell phone at Jean-Claude’s, and I really don’t want to go back there to collect it. Unfortunately, I’ve had a bit of a misunderstanding with Julian, otherwise I’d ask him to get it for me, and I can’t ask Prudence because she’d want to know why. I can’t exist without my portable, so I suppose I’ll just have to march up to Jean-Claude’s door and demand it back. I’ll take Jazz with me this time. Baying at the moon,

  Mara

  P.S. What do you know about werewolves?<

  20

  MONDAY MORNING, 10 MAY

  Julian stood in the open doorway of his kitchen, downing a double dose of headache tablets with hot, sweet tea. Glumly, he stared out onto his garden. The grass was wet, and a thin mist hung over everything. A pale morning light struggled to filter through the trees.

  He had woken with one of his thumpers, the result of too much wine the night before. The ground all about him was covered in patches of worm-turned soil. His brain felt like that, heaved up, dark, and soggy. Of course, it wasn’t just the wine. It had been Denise, too. Reeling from what he could only call the snap end of the elastic, he had turned to Denise and got what he’d asked for: a monumental one-night stand during which Denise had laid him, not the other way around, at least three times. He had found her lean, muscular body extremely sensuous and a little intimidating. Shuddering, he remembered strong legs clamping around his middle with such force that he’d had difficulty drawing breath. It had been like making love to a python.

  In between bouts, for it had also been a bit like wrestling, Denise had told him about the many other men she had laid, just so he wouldn’t get ideas about a long-term relationship. If her count was right, she’d had it on with practically every eligible male in the Dordogne. He in turn had complained to her about this fellow Jean-Claude Fournier, suggesting that the man was a phony, reeling Mara in with the bait of further revelations on Baby Blue. While he talked, Denise had run circles with her finger on his chest, making it clear that she was interested in other things.

  Sometime in the night, she had left him. He wasn’t sure when, because after the third round he had simply lost consciousness. He had come to in the morning with a sore back, a bad head, and a pressing need to urinate.

  Damn Mara. True, he hadn’t made Sunday night with her a firm date, but you’d think, after their understanding—at least, he thought they had one—it would have gone without saying. Instead, she had stood him up for that prat Jean-Claude, he was sure of it. All of this made their future look about as hopeful as a bomb crater.

  The bushes by the side of the house parted. Bismuth emerged. Absently, Julian fondled the dog’s head, seeking the comforting, silky roll of his floppy ears. The shrubberies rustled again. Edith, Bismuth’s mother, also appeared. Both dogs looked at him, pleading for breakfast. Momentarily, Julian considered ignoring their needs since he was quite sure they had already cadged successfully from every farm along the road. His tea, however, was cooling, and he needed a top-up.

  “All right, you two,” he sighed, and went for the can-opener.

  The man with the dog stared hard at Mara as she turned into Jean-Claude’s driveway.

  “He’s not home,” he called out. “I’ve just been there.”

  No doubt to complain about dangerous drivers in the night, she thought, climbing out of her car. The man, now that she could see him in daylight, was small, with a fussy-looking toothbrush mustache under a pointed nose. His dog, a fat black spaniel, barked furiously at Jazz, who ignored it and went to cock his leg copiously against a corner of the house. After which he disappeared into the bushes. So much for canine protection, she thought.

  But Toothbrush Mustache—a nosy neighbor, she assumed—was right. Jean-Claude did not answer her knock. The neighbor watched her suspiciously as she went around to the back of the house.

  There was a chance that her phone might still be outside on the terrace where she thought she had left it. With any luck, she could take it and go. It wasn’t. But the drinks trolley was. It lay overturned, broken glass everywhere. A crow that had been pecking at a leftover shrimp hors d’oeuvre flapped ponderously away. The mess, Mara thought, seemed disturbingly uncharacteristic of a man who wore designer clothes and Gucci shoes. She turned troubled eyes to the French doors leading into the house. They stood partly ajar. Reluctantly, she put her head in. The table was as they had left it—cups with the dregs of last night’s coffee, rumpled napkins lying where they had been tossed. The lamps were still on, glowing anemically in the corners of the room. The flowers looked tired.

  “Jean-Claude?”

  The silence in the house was broken only by the persistent thudding of a hornet against a windowpane. He had not answered her knock or, presumably, the neighbor’s. So, obviously, he really was not there. But there was the wreckage on the terrace. And the open doors.

  Had he been taken ill? She stepped fully into the room.

  “Jean-Claude?”

  In the k
itchen, soiled dishes were stacked on the counter. The bathroom off the entry hall was tidy and clean. And empty. The adjoining WC was also unoccupied.

  She stopped at the bottom of the stairs, gazing with apprehension into the darkness of the narrow stairwell that led to the upper story of the house.

  Jazz’s barking outside aroused her. Really, she should not be there after what had happened the night before. She turned and almost fled back into the sunlight of the terrace. A flock of crows circled overhead, cawing harshly. They settled with a great deal of flapping in the trees. The barking, urgent, sharp, sounded somewhere below her. She went to the parapet and looked down. Jazz was at the bottom of the ravine, some ten meters below, hidden by shrubbery. Only his tail, extending in a rigid line from his rump, was visible, then his head, as he moved backward, whining now. Mara looked around for a way to reach him. At the edge of the terrace, stone slabs set into the hillside formed rough steps. She descended, hanging on to a rickety wooden railing.

  The bottom of the ravine was heavily overgrown. A thin droning, as if someone were humming, came from behind a screen of bushes. She pushed through the branches. What she saw made her mind go numb. Then she gave a choked cry, lurched back, crashed into Jazz, who was nosing about uneasily behind her, and sat down hard on the stony ground. The jarring did something to restore her senses. She got to her feet and ran, stumbling up the steps, hauling herself up by the rotten wooden railing that twice came away in pieces in her hand. When she reached the terrace, she doubled over and vomited.

  Jean-Claude lay on his back on a bed of broken vegetation. His right arm, flung out to the side, ended in a bloodied stump. His blackened throat and abdomen seemed to writhe. Disturbed by Mara’s intrusion, the whining swarm of flies that covered the gaping parts of his body rose in a cloud. Iridescent, they roiled and hovered, then settled down again to their busy feasting.