by Michelle Wan
“No.” He tried to frame another denial. “That’s not what I meant.”
But she shouted him down. “You bastard! You really think I did it. Oh, leave me alone. Just leave me alone!”
If there had been a ledge handy, Mara really thought she would have shoved Julian off it.
Mara sat at her kitchen table, head in her hands. It was one of life’s bitterest ironies that the people you trusted most did not, when the chips were down, trust you. Julian had gone, protesting ineffectually. He, Loulou, Prudence, Mado, and Paul—all of them were secretly convinced of her guilt. And her cowardice. They were just too polite, or unwilling, to say so. She blew her nose. Miserably, she acknowledged that they, Julian included, were probably reflecting her own terrible self-doubts which, as the night wore on, grew increasingly greater. Over and over, she played through the scene: the struggle, the push, Jean-Claude staggering backward. It now seemed to her that she really had caused him to fall over the parapet. But she had not knowingly left him to die. Of that she was certain. Could she get off on a claim of self-defense? Or would she spend the rest of her life in a French prison? And then there was the mess the animals had made of him, eating him as he lay at the bottom of the ravine. The thought made her physically ill.
Jazz, sensing her despair, moved in to sit beside her. Also, he wanted his dinner. He ventured a low sigh. Then a sharp bark. She filled his feed dish and watched him woodenly as he gobbled his food. She herself had no appetite.
Well, at least she had the measure of him. Julian, that was. Not there in the crunch. Also, she was sure she’d surprised a guilty look on his face when Prudence had mentioned Denise. How hollow his protestations about permanence now seemed. Maybe it was her fate to get entangled with men with short shelf-lives. If she had thought of Julian as turning in circles, going nowhere, she now saw herself for what she was: a log in high water on which all manner of undesirable debris snagged and clung.
What she needed was a long, stiff drink, but she only had a bottle of supermarket Sauvignon Blanc in the house. She uncorked it and drank it at room temperature since she had forgotten to chill it in the frigo. It tasted sour, and it went straight to her head. By the time she had finished the bottle, it was nearly midnight and she was feeling slightly sick. She was tired to the bone, but knew she would not sleep. With a sigh, she rose and stumbled out to her studio. Her garden was filled with dark shapes, shrubbery in need of trimming and oversized statues (Patsy’s) from the time when sculpturing had been her friend’s second avocation. May as well get it over with, she thought, flipping on the studio light and zigzagging through the obstacle course of litter on her way to the computer.
Patsy’s reply to her last message was waiting for her, cheerful and unperturbed by the latest developments:
>Hey, kid, you’re doing the right thing. Dump the project, dump de Bonfond, and especially dump Hands Fournier, who sounds like a date rape waiting to happen. If you have to retrieve your cell phone, make it up with Julian and take him as backup. In fact, make it up with him anyway. He may be kooky about orchids, but deep down he’s a sweetie.
What do I know about werewolves? Apart from the fact that they go all snouty with teeth at the full moon and are tougher to deal with than vampires because they handle sunlight fine and don’t have to sleep all day in a coffin, not much. Although I’m told one way of spotting a werewolf is that their pee is purple, assuming you can get close enough to check. Is this what you wanted to know? Or are you talking about the other kind of werewolf?
By the way, I really hope you dealt with Jean-Claude, as in smashed the bastard’s balls. I mean, hard enough to give him a permanently funny walk.<
With wooden fingers, Mara typed:
>I did, in a matter of speaking. In fact, I think I killed him …
It took her forty minutes to complete her message. She almost forgot to ask, and therefore had to append as a postscript, the question that Patsy’s e-mail had raised:
P.S. What other kinds of werewolves are there?<
22
TUESDAY MORNING, 11 MAY
Rain thundered on the roof of the car. Like a frantic heart, the wipers beat their rhythm across the windshield, thudding at the bottom of their arc, squealing on the return. Christophe slowed. It had just gone six in the morning, but it was as dark as night and almost impossible to see. His headlights illuminated dancing puddles in the road immediately before him but scarcely penetrated the heavy sheets of rain that drifted diagonally across his view. Finally, he pulled onto the shoulder and cut the engine. He sat for a moment, staring out into the moving wall of water. Fumbling above his head, he flicked on the interior light of the car. A newspaper lay on the passenger seat, folded to expose the morning’s headlines: Beast Strikes Again? He opened the paper and scanned the front page to read again the part that had so disturbed him: “… An unidentified Canadian woman who was with the deceased prior to his death was questioned and released … dined with Fournier and discussed a business matter, claimed to have left him alive and well … treating the case as a suspicious death …”
With a rush of anxiety that made him almost nauseated, Christophe crumpled the paper into a ball. If he had foreseen the ghastly way things would turn out, he would never have involved Mara, would never have engaged that cunning bastard Jean-Claude. But now, even if Jean-Claude was no longer in a position to talk, Mara had seen him prior to his death, had discussed with him a “business matter.” Which meant that the two of them had probably been in it together. Or at least that there was a risk that Jean-Claude had told her everything.
You can’t be sure of that, a voice in his head reasoned. But can you take the chance? another voice, the voice of the eye, argued. If Mara had the information, what would she do with it? What could she not do with it? Christophe stared into the rearview mirror. His left eye, the yellow one, looked slyly back at him. You must, both voices rang out at once, stop her from talking. With a groan, he plunged his face into hands that he no longer recognized as his own.
23
TUESDAY MORNING, 11 MAY
If France ever held a contest for Most Glamorous Boulangère, Marie-Sylvette, née Méliès, of the Boulangerie Méliès in Brames, would have won hands-down. She was an imposing woman in her fifties who wore her hair swept up at the sides in two silver wings. She had a neat chin, full lips, dark, lustrous eyes, and exquisitely plucked eyebrows that expressed with the slightest twitch an impressive range of emotions. Her bosom thrust like a ship’s prow beyond a tightly controlled tummy, for she never appeared without a girdle, and the whole of her moved grandly about on slim legs that ended in small feet shod in smart mid-heeled shoes.
Marie-Sylvette handled the shop front. Her husband, an enormously fat man named Thierry, did the baking. Thierry had started out as Madame’s father’s apprentice and had been a part of the establishment so long that most people forgot that his surname was not Méliès but Potdevin. Thierry rose at three every morning to make the day’s pastries in a big electric oven: gâteaux and fruit tarts and colorful macaroons. He baked his bread—his speciality was a sourdough loaf that people from the surrounding area queued up to buy—in a great, traditional wood four, using as his fuel of preference walnut hulls, which imparted, according to him, a special flavor.
The lineup of patrons at the Boulangerie Méliès was larger than normal on that rainy Tuesday morning. Everyone wanted to talk about the ghastly murder. Also, everyone knew that Laurent Naudet, who was a distant cousin of Madame Méliès, came in first thing from the Gendarmerie where he was quartered to buy his breakfast croissants.
“I can’t talk about it,” the young man said, looking flustered as people crowded around him.
“They’re saying he was killed by the Beast,” a little man in carpet slippers shrilled. “They say it tore him open and ate his heart and liver. Just like it did that Piquet fellow.”
“Dieu du ciel!” exclaimed a woman in a housecoat. She crossed herself, nearly letting slip the baguet
tes she held clamped under her arm.
Other voices chimed in:
“Ringuet’s old spaniel has been missing for weeks, and Chabanas lost a lamb last week.”
“It’s the Sigoulane Beast, I tell you. We’re not safe in our beds!”
“Non, non, et non!” Laurent cried loudly, throwing up his hands. “This is all nonsense. There is no Beast.”
“So you say,” boomed a deep voice. “Our lives could be in danger. And what are you lot doing about it? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“I assure you, Madame Barrage”—Laurent found himself sweating, although the morning was cool—“there’s absolutely no danger to you.” Madame Barrage, big, with arms like a logger, was more than a match for any beast.
“Oh, do leave the boy in peace,” interceded Madame Méliès, taking pity on her young kinsman. “He has his job to do like the rest of us. Now, who’s next? Un demi-pain au levain, did you say, Madame Vignot?”
Later that morning, Adjudant Compagnon looked up from his desk to see Laurent hovering in the doorway. The gendarme held some typed sheets in his hand.
“What is it, Naudet?” Compagnon barked. He had been up most of the night, had not shaved, and exuded a bitter smell of sweat and frustration. On top of having to assign personnel to help rout out this damned animal that was running amuck, he now had a murder on his hands. It never rained but poured. Or, as the French put it, trouble never arrived alone.
“Procès-verbal on our interview with Madame Tardieux, mon adjudant.” Laurent put the report on Compagnon’s desk. The previous evening, he and Albert Batailler had been dispatched to Aurillac Manor to take a statement from Christophe de Bonfond because of his association with the dead man. The housekeeper had informed them that her employer was away. “She said he left last Tuesday, sir. She doesn’t know where he is or when he’s coming back. She said he often takes off without telling her.”
Compagnon frowned. “What do you make of it?” He indicated a chair. Laurent sat down. The chair as usual was too low for him. He did not like to sprawl in the presence of his superior officer, so he perched on the edge of it with his knees rising up before him like two bony peaks.
“He could be off on business. He runs a publishing house. Editions Arobas. But I think it has more to do with the baby. De Bonfond locked himself in his room after they found it”—Laurent prudently omitted to say how he knew this—“and he may have just gone away to avoid the publicity.”
“Well, I want to talk to him, Naudet. Get on to Editions Arobas. If he’s really off on business, somebody’s bound to know where he went. He was one of Fournier’s clients, and that uncle of yours”—Compagnon said it grudgingly—“suggested we look into the possibility of blackmail. I think it’s a bit premature myself, at least until I’m sure this Dunn woman isn’t at the bottom of everything, but it doesn’t do to leave stones unturned.”
“People are awfully nervous about this death,” Laurent thought it necessary to say. “Because of what happened to the body.”
“No thanks to the media!” Compagnon shoved a copy of the morning paper—Beast Strikes Again?—across the desk.
Laurent shared his superior officer’s sentiments. He believed in the feral-dog theory. Most people of sense did. He couldn’t imagine Stéphanie, for example, going along with any of the other rubbish. But there were always those, like the patrons of the Boulangerie Méliès that morning, who were genuinely convinced that something worse was out there. Irresponsible journalism like this didn’t help.
Laurent cleared his throat. “I also came to tell you, sir, that hunters are taking it on themselves to patrol the woods. There are groups of them operating in the Sigoulane Forest and Aurillac Ridge. They’re practically tripping over each other.” He made a rolling gesture with his hands to describe the willy-nilly nature of their activities.
“Putain!” groaned Compagnon. “That’s all we need. Those morons pose more of a threat to public safety than any damned Beast.”
The rain had stopped. Julian and Bernard were debating the placement of the electrical cable for the water pump when Denise and Antoine came down from the pavilion to inspect the work. It was the first time Julian had seen Denise since their recent strenuous coupling, and he greeted her with a certain amount of constraint. With her, however, it was business as usual. Sunday night might never have been.
“I thought this thing was supposed to be a waterfall,” she snapped, taking in Bernard’s efforts. “It looks like a mud puddle to me.”
“This is the basin,” Julian explained patiently. “Where the water collects to be recycled. The pump will be installed here and will drive the water up through rocks that we’ll set in place to create the impression of a natural spring.” He glanced at the father.
Antoine’s quick eyes took in everything. “When will this be up and running?”
“End of the week. No problem.”
“Bon,” said the winemaker. He gave a jerk of the head that passed for a nod and strode off toward the parking area. A moment later, he drove off in the Twingo.
Denise, looking unconvinced, headed back to the pavilion. Julian took the opportunity to walk with her.
“Terrible thing, this Fournier business,” he remarked. “Who do you think would have wanted him dead?”
“Lots of people, I expect. Your petite amie, for one.” Denise said it without breaking stride. “I take it she’s the Canadian woman who was with him the night he died?”
Julian was still stinging from Mara’s anger of the night before, but he rose to her defense. “That doesn’t mean she killed him. In fact, if I know Mara, she’s probably doing everything she can to find out who did.”
“Beating the gendarmes at their own game?”
“Maybe. She thinks the answer is somehow tied up with something Jean-Claude found out about Baby Blue.”
Denise seemed amused. “They say she pushed him off the terrace in a lovers’ quarrel.”
He parried, “Was Jean-Claude the kind of person one had lovers’ quarrels with?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Oh? I heard you were pretty friendly with him yourself at one time.”
“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.” Denise’s cold, flat eyes gave nothing away. “Anyway, I was with you the night he died, if you recall.”
Julian steeled himself. “But not all night. Where did you go, Denise, after you left my house?”
She faced him coolly. “Home,” she said. “I have to start my day early, and I prefer to do it from my own bed.”
As Denise walked away, Julian realized that, with eyes like hers, it was hard to know if she was lying or telling the truth.
24
TUESDAY MORNING, 11 MAY
Mara got out of bed, still swamped by the depressing thought that she really had been responsible for Jean-Claude’s death. The sleeping pill she had taken the night before hadn’t helped her sleep, it had simply made her brain fuzzy. She walked unsteadily into the kitchen, filled the coffeemaker, spooned grounds into a cone filter, and flipped the switch to “On.” She leaned against the counter in a kind of stupor, staring unseeing as the dark liquid trickled into the receptacle. Gradually, she became aware of the coldness of the flagstone floor on her bare feet and the fact that the phone was ringing. It was Prudence, asking how she was. Awful, she told her truthfully, and, no, she didn’t want company. She just needed to be alone. To put her life, which had been blown apart in the last twenty-four hours, back in order.
The coffee, hot and bitter, made her feel somewhat better. She poured herself a refill and drank it while she dressed. She slipped on a pair of rubber clogs and ran out over the wet grass to her studio. Patsy’s reply, waiting for her when she switched on her computer, gave her a much-needed morale boost:
>My god, Mara. Of course you didn’t kill the bastard. Did you hear him scream? Most people do when they fall from a height, you know. So if you didn’t hear him scream, you didn’t push him off. Perio
d. Don’t even consider a case of self-defense. It didn’t happen like that. If the cops thought it had, they’d have you in custody. So keep your lid on, kid. A lot could have happened toJean-Claude between your leaving and his hitting the bottom of the ravine. I’ll call you tomorrow. This needs voice-to-voice. Or, if you want hands-on, say so. I’ll get on a plane and be there.
Patsy’s commonsense assurance—Jean-Claude had not screamed—and unconditional offer of support was as good for the soul as chocolate cake, as comforting to the heart as hot pancakes in maple syrup on a frosty morning. Patsy went on:
As far as the other kind of werewolves are concerned, I’m talking about lycanthropes. These are real people who believe they transform into wolves. This means they see themselves as wolves and act like wolves, including howling, biting, and predation. The condition, called lycanthropy, is a clinically recognized psychiatric disorder. If you want to know more, get in touch with Dr. Nathalie Thibaud at the psychiatric hospital near Cahors. She’s France’s leading authority on the subject. I’ve met her at a couple of conferences, and I’m sure she’ll be willing to talk to you if you mention my name. She can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the breed. Meantime, hang in there, kid. Don’t let the gendarmes grind you down. Hugs, Patsy.<
Mara wrote back:
>Patsy, thanks for the offer, but no need to hop a plane. I’m fine. Really. However, I wish I could be as sure as you about the cops. I was there, and I was seen leaving Jean-Claude’s house in a hurry at the critical moment. I’ve got to be their prime suspect. If they haven’t manacled me yet, it’s only because Adjudant Compagnon, an awful man with bad skin and pop-eyes, is building his case. To be honest, you’re the only one who doesn’t believe Ikilled Jean-Claude—or at least pushed him off the terrace and left him to be eaten by animals—and that includes Julian.