The Orchid Shroud

by Michelle Wan

  Adjudant Jacques Compagnon of the Brames Gendarmerie was a big man with pockmarked skin, carroty hair, and bulging eyes which he kept fixed on Mara. She sat hunched on the wooden bench on the terrace while he loomed over her, rocking rhythmically, heel to toe. Nearby a stocky gendarme, Sergeant Albert Batailler, his foot propped on the stone parapet, took notes on a pad balanced on his knee. Members of the Criminal Brigade moved about methodically at the ravine bottom and inside the house.

  “I had dinner with Jean-Claude last night,” Mara said woodenly. “I left my cell phone on the terrace. I came back today for it.”

  “Dinner,” said the adjudant. “Do I take it you were on intimate terms with Monsieur Fournier?” His glance swept over the remains of last night’s entertainment.

  “No, I was not.” Minimally she explained Christophe’s commission regarding Baby Blue and her role as go-between. “Jean-Claude was supposed to report to me on a daily basis. And that’s what he did. Dinner was his idea.” He had invited her for seven-thirty, but she had arrived late, and had left maybe around eleven. Half past at the latest. Her host had been well and alive at that time.

  “How did the drinks trolley come to be overturned?”

  “I don’t know,” she lied. Or was she lying? She remembered Jean-Claude stumbling backward into the trolley, the sound of glass breaking, but not its actually going over. “I left him out here on the terrace. Maybe he knocked it over later.”

  Compagnon regarded her skeptically. She stared back. He reminded her of someone she didn’t like. Or maybe it was his increasingly aggressive tone that she found offensive.

  “You left him on the terrace? He didn’t bother to see you out?”

  “N-no,” she said, sensing quicksand. “Something came up. I—I had to leave in a hurry.”

  He arched thick orange eyebrows. “So, when you returned today, you saw signs of violence, smashed glass all over the terrace, the doors left open. It was very brave of you to go into the house. Or were you still looking for your phone?”

  “Yes. No. I mean, it wasn’t just the phone. I didn’t even know for sure where I’d left it. I’m always misplacing it. I—I thought something might be wrong. Jean-Claude might be sick. But he—wasn’t there.” He was at the bottom of the ravine.

  “Mon adjudant,” a familiar voice spoke behind her. Turning, she saw the round face and big ears of Laurent Naudet. His wrists, as usual, protruded from the sleeves of his navy pull. He gave her a worried glance of recognition. This time he did not shake her hand. He addressed his chief. “I’ve just talked with one of the neighbors, sir. A Monsieur Imbert. He insists on seeing you. Says he has important information.”

  “What?” Compagnon wheeled around. “Bring him—” But at that point the nosy neighbor burst onto the terrace, jabbing an accusing finger at Mara. “That’s the one,” he cried. “She was with him last night. They had a flaming row. I heard it all. Left in a hurry, she did. Nearly ran me down!”

  Slowly the adjudant turned back to her. A hard light came on in his eyes, which seemed to protrude even more from their sockets. “Is what this man says true? Did you have an argument with Monsieur Fournier last night?”

  “No,” Mara denied stonily. There had been no flaming row. Only a brief, unpleasant struggle. That much was true, and she had to hold to it. To admit anything more was to open up damning possibilities.

  “She’s lying. I heard glass breaking.” As he spoke, the little man’s mustache jerked about on his upper lip, like a caterpillar at the end of a twig. Mara repressed a desperate urge to rip it off his face, anything to shut him up. “She probably hit him on the head with a bottle.”

  “Madame Dunn.” Compagnon’s voice was almost a growl. “How did Monsieur Fournier come to fall off the terrace?”

  As in a nightmare, Mara saw her exit scene again, Jean-Claude’s flailing arms, the collision with the trolley. She stared in panic about her. “I don’t know.”

  Compagnon leaned in. “Did you push him? And then, realizing you had left incriminating evidence behind, did you come back today to get it?”

  “No,” she cried hoarsely. “No!” Cold doubt swept over her as she confronted an awful possibility. Could Jean-Claude, stumbling backward, have toppled off the terrace as she had run from his house?

  21

  MONDAY EVENING, 10 MAY

  Of course you didn’t do it, sweetie,” Prudence murmured. She sat beside Mara on a small settee in Mara’s front room. Paul, Mado, and Baby Eddie occupied an Empire daybed. Loulou and Julian perched uncomfortably on a couple of period chairs that seemed too small for them. Jazz and Bismuth lay on the Aubusson rug.

  “But the police think I did.”

  At the Brames Gendarmerie, Mara had been cautioned and had sustained three hours of intense interrogation by Adjudant Compagnon. He had not been impressed by her suggestion that Jean-Claude had taken her cell phone inside, proving that he was still alive after she left. Only one portable had been found in the house, and that belonged to Fournier himself. Mara began to doubt her own theory. It was entirely possible that she had taken her phone away with her after all, that she would eventually find it buried under a pile of clothing or between the seats of her car. She considered legal counsel, but, because she didn’t have a lawyer, in the end made her permitted call to Loulou.

  The ex-cop had carried the day, or so he told her: “I put it to Compagnon. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘if she had pushed this Fournier fellow over, why would she return, climb down into the ravine to discover the body, and then stay around to call the police?’” (To which Compagnon had replied, “Le diable chie toujours au même endroit”—The devil always shits in the same place—another way of saying, “A criminal always returns to the scene of the crime,” but Loulou didn’t tell Mara that.) As a result, she had been allowed to walk out, very shakily, on condition that she make herself available for further questioning.

  “Not us,” Prudence reassured her. “We know you’re innocent. Tell her, everyone.”

  “Of course she’s innocent,” Julian said energetically, their angry exchange on Sunday entirely forgotten.

  Paul grunted his assent. Mado, round-eyed, nodded over her baby’s fuzzy head.

  “No doubt about it,” Loulou agreed. Ever the Job’s comforter, he added, “Although you have to admit you make a good prime suspect. You had the means—a good, hard shove—and opportunity. You were with the deceased during the critical time. The médecin légiste—I have this unofficially, by the way—estimates time of death as somewhere between eleven last night and four this morning. It’s hard to be more precise because the body was in terrible condition. Moreover, there’s a witness. The neighbor said he heard you fighting with the victim.” He paused. “You didn’t have a motive, too, did you?”

  “No, I did not!” Mara shouted. “I told you. He tried to feed me that garbage about the de Bonfonds, and Christophe being a descendant of werewolves. I was annoyed. So would you have been. I told him off and left. I didn’t push him over and I didn’t r-rip his throat out!” She needed desperately to believe that Jean-Claude had been alive when she had left him. Her story ought to have improved with each telling, but she didn’t feel any more confident of her version of events now than when she had made her statement to Adjudant Compagnon.

  “That’s good,” the ex-flic responded cheerfully. “It’s always better to be clear on these little details.”

  “Well, if you didn’t do it,” said Paul, “someone did. Made a damned sorry mess of his insides as well—” He broke off as Mado shoved him with her elbow.

  Loulou tipped his head from side to side. “Provisionally, the cause of death was a broken neck, presumably sustained from the fall. The mess, as Paul calls it”—even he grimaced—“was caused by the depredations of animals. They identified the bite marks of foxes, sangliers—”

  “Sangliers?” echoed Prudence, dumbfounded.

  “They scavenge anything,” grunted Julian.

  “But,” continued L
oulou with meaning, “most of the initial damage was done by some kind of large canid, a very big dog or a wolf …”

  Mutely, they all stared at him.

  “The Beast,” whispered Mado, clutching Eddie tightly. “Mon dieu. You don’t suppose that’s what got him?”

  There was another moment of silence while all eyes swiveled to her.

  Julian was the first to recover. “You think it attacked him and knocked him off the terrace, then went down and ate him?” He looked doubtful. “Pretty bold to go for a person so close to the house. More likely an accident. Jean-Claude tripped on the trolley and catapulted over. That’s the trouble with these cantilevered terraces. They’re damned dangerous, to say nothing of impossible to landscape.”

  “What about robbery?” suggested Prudence. “Jean-Claude surprised the thief, there was a struggle—”

  “Compagnon ruled out robbery,” Loulou cut in. “Nothing was disturbed.”

  “Blackmail, then,” said Paul. “Jean-Claude threatened Christophe that if he didn’t cough up he’d unmask him as the Sigoulane Beast.”

  “Did you tell Adjudant Compagnon about this werewolf nonsense?” Julian asked Mara.

  She gave him a scandalized look. “Of course not. I was in enough trouble as it was without sounding like a fruit basket. I just said I’d had dinner with Jean-Claude, he reported on some further findings, and I—I left.”

  “I mean”—the bistro owner sat forward on the daybed, warming to his idea—“most people would be pretty upset to be accused of being a werewolf, let alone be told it runs in the family. Maybe Christophe didn’t mean to kill him, just lost control and—paf!—over he goes.”

  “Quelle merde,” Julian objected. “There’s no way Christophe would have taken Jean-Claude seriously. It’s ridiculous. Besides, Christophe’s simply not the type of person to knock people over walls. He hates violence.”

  “Unless it’s a full moon,” Paul suggested with relish.

  This time Mado slapped him.

  “Anyway, he’s not the only de Bonfond,” Prudence observed. “There’s Antoine and his lot as well. Besides, if Jean-Claude had just figured out his werewolf theory, how would he have had a chance to blackmail Christophe? The man’s been missing almost a week.”

  “Christophe made me his go-between,” said Mara, “but I wouldn’t put it past him to have been in contact with Jean-Claude all along. It’s just the kind of thing he would do.”

  “Thérèse thinks something’s happened to him,” Julian said.

  “My eye,” Mara retorted angrily. “He’s hiding out somewhere. Even if he’s completely innocent, I think it’s damned cowardly of him. He got me into this, and his disappearance has put me in a horrible position. The police have only my word that he engaged me to deal with Jean-Claude. Adjudant Compagnon would like nothing better than to hang a murder charge on me.”

  It was interesting, Julian thought, how their positions had changed. Mara had gone from fretting about Christophe’s well-being only a few days ago to treating his disappearance as a material inconvenience, not that one could blame her. Julian, on the other hand, was beginning to worry seriously, for he no longer believed that Christophe was simply lying low because of Baby Blue.

  “But look, Mara,” Julian continued to defend his friend, “according to you, Jean-Claude had already told Christophe plenty of unflattering things about his family. For pity’s sake, what can be more humiliating than the fact that the so-called de Bonfond title is bogus? He’s known that for some time. Why kill him now, and for such a fantastic reason?”

  Loulou cocked his head. “Nevertheless, the blackmail idea has possibilities. As a genealogist, our Monsieur Fournier must have uncovered a lot of family skeletons. Maybe he made a routine practice of selective chantage.”

  “He certainly lived well enough,” Mara put in.

  Loulou tugged thoughtfully at a loose lobe of neck flesh. “I think I’ll have a word—diplomatically, of course—with our good adjudant about checking into Jean-Claude’s client list.”

  “Well, thank god someone’s finally making sense,” said Julian. “That must be it. Jean-Claude was blackmailing someone else. That person got tired of paying through the nose. He or she turned up after Mara left. There was a struggle, and Jean-Claude either fell or was thrown off the terrace.”

  “He was also a womanizer,” added Prudence. “Maybe a jilted lover killed him.”

  “Cherchez la femme, eh?” snorted Paul.

  “I’m serious,” said Prudence. “He’s had affairs with women from Bordeaux to Bretenoux. They all talk about him. The perfect gentleman at first but kinky in bed. Some like it that way, apparently. He had a landmark relationship with what’s-her-name of Coteaux de Bonfond, Christophe’s niece, not long ago.”

  “You mean Denise?” Julian asked, taken aback.

  “That’s right. It ended like it started, fast and hard.”

  Julian fell silent. He could see Denise as a killer. But did she have a motive? Besides, he recalled, she had been with him last night. Or most of it. And then he remembered that, of the many past lovers she had told him about, Denise had not once mentioned Jean-Claude Fournier.

  “I’m still for the loup-garou thing,” said Paul. “Look, if this Jean-Claude made a hobby of collecting werewolf stories, he probably believed in them himself. What’s wrong with him really thinking he’d solved the Le Gévaudan Beast mystery?”

  “For heaven’s sake!” Julian exclaimed. “He was having Mara on. He promised her new information, so he had to deliver.”

  But Mara broke in. “Paul may be right. I know it sounds crazy, and I thought he was putting me on at the time as well. But I wonder now if Jean-Claude mightn’t have been serious. You should see his house. Full of occult objects. And then there’s his book. You’ve read it, Prudence. He believed those folktales were based on actual events. I think he was genuinely excited about making the connection between the Beast of Le Gévaudan, the Sigoulane Beast, and Xavier de Bonfond. Imagine what it would have meant to him to come up with the solution to a baffling mystery and a live descendant responsible for the awful things that have been happening.”

  “Bollocks,” Julian objected. “That Piquet fellow was killed by an animal. They know from the bite marks. Ditto for the woman who was attacked in Les Ronces. So, unless you seriously think Christophe turns into a werewolf, how the hell could he—or any human being—have been responsible?”

  “I don’t know,” Mara admitted unhappily.

  “Besides, even if that was what Jean-Claude tried to blackmail Christophe about, assuming he was crazy enough to do it, why would he have told you? Wouldn’t that be like giving away his line of credit?”

  She said doggedly, “He needed to brag. At the same time, there was no risk. He knew I wouldn’t believe him.”

  “Then neither would anyone else. Jean-Claude could never have gone public with such a daft theory. Or blackmailed Christophe with it.”

  Loulou cleared his throat. “Ah, but the threat of publicity might have been enough. That kind of daft theory, as you say, is just the sort of thing that would go down well in certain circles, with very embarrassing consequences for Christophe. He could have found himself the focus of an international cult. I think our Jean-Claude knew very well what he was doing.”

  “Right, then.” Paul slapped his thigh. “All the flics have to do is find Christophe. They’ll sort out soon enough whether or not he really is the Sigoulane Beast.”

  “Then hope to god they get him fast,” said Mado, looking very worried. “Before someone else gets eaten.”

  The others had gone. Only Julian remained. He reached out to draw her to him.

  “Look, Mara,” he murmured into her hair. “The police can’t really think you did it. You were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Her body felt small and unresponsive. She mumbled something into his shirtfront. He bent his head. “What’s that?”

  “I said I couldn’t admit it in front of the o
thers.” She looked him in the eye, but with difficulty. “And I was afraid to tell that awful adjudant. Jean-Claude tried to make a pass at me, Julian. Well, more than a pass. He came on in a very nasty way. I slapped him.”

  “Damn right,” Julian said indignantly.

  “You don’t understand. We struggled. And I—” She broke off and glanced away. Gently, Julian hooked his finger under her chin, turning her face back.

  “You what?”

  “I pushed him. Oh, Julian, I pushed him. Really hard.”

  He stood still, taking this in. “Are you saying you shoved him over the terrace wall?”

  “No!” She shook her head vehemently, and then muttered with less conviction, “I don’t know. I didn’t think we were that near the edge. The thing is, he stumbled backward into the drinks trolley. I didn’t hang around to see what happened next. All I wanted to do was get out of there.”

  “Okay,” he whispered, pulling her in to him again. “It’s okay.” But as he tried to reassure her, he wondered. Could Mara have unintentionally sent Jean-Claude sailing over the parapet after all?

  Mara’s hypersensitive antennae immediately picked up Julian’s doubt. She stiffened.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “Of course I do. Look, if anything, it was an accident. He assaulted you, there was a struggle. No one can blame you for running—”

  The monstrosity of what he was saying hit her hard. She broke sharply from him.

  “You think I did it!” Her voice rose in volume with every word. “You really think I knocked him over and then left him down there? That I would be capa-bu-ble of just leaving him for—for animals to eat?” She was close to tears. To her, that was his far greater offense: not just his suspicion that there had been more to the push than she remembered or wanted to admit, but that he thought her base enough to run away, knowing that Jean-Claude was lying, injured or dying, at the bottom of the ravine.