Authors: Michelle Wan
The Orchid Shroud (10 page)
“And the moral is?”
“You tell me.”
Mara sighed. “The trouble is, Julian might be just as happy doing that. Raising macadamia nuts. If he weren’t so busy looking for orchids.”
“So that’s where it’s at, is it?”
In truth, Mara did not know where it was at, except that their parting the night before had not forecast romantic success. He had asked her to stay. She had turned him down. If he had pressed her, maybe she would have told him what was on her mind. They could have talked things out. But it hadn’t happened like that. Were they, like Prudence’s friends, fated to go their separate ways,
he to his botanical pursuits, she, endlessly, to renovating other people’s bathrooms? Her last sight of Julian had been in her rearview mirror, as she left him standing by the roadside outside his house: a tall, indistinct form, lonely in the darkness. The thought of him like that made her swallow hard.
Prudence, who had been studying Mara, broke the silence. “Tell you what. You read Jean-Claude’s
Contes folkloriques
. It’s full of tales of folks who make pacts with the devil. You could try selling your soul to Satan in return for Julian’s love.”
“No thanks.”
“Oh, it’s not as bad as it sounds,” Prudence reassured her cheerfully. “Around here, people always get the better of the devil, poor dope. Typical Périgordine cunning.”
M
ara sat up in bed, pillows stacked behind her, drinking fruit juice straight from the container and squinting through a pair of newly prescribed varifocal glasses, which meant that she couldn’t see anything properly, near or far.
Le Visage de la Résistance en Dordogne
was balanced on her knees. It was a photo-documentation of the local Resistance effort against the Germans in the years 1940–1944. She was surprised, given Prudence’s description of the author, to find it a serious, well-assembled work.
An hour later, she got up, dumped her juice carton, punched her pillows into shape, resettled, and opened
Contes folkloriques de la Dordogne
. This was a collection of stories, interlarded with the author’s comments. One, a tale told by a farmer from Liorac, was described as part of an oral tradition still very much alive in the region and representative of the typical werewolf “encounter” tale:
A farmer coming home from a housewarming late at night was walking along the bank of a stream. The moon was full, and he could see almost as well as in bright daylight. He saw a strange man on the other side of the stream, bathing in the water. When
the strange man realized he had been observed, he transformed into an enormous wolf. The terrified farmer fell on his knees and prayed to the Virgin Mary. When he opened his eyes, the werewolf had vanished.
“Would’ve done better to swear off drink,” Mara muttered to Jazz, who lay snoring at her feet. She read on:
… If we accept that all legends have their roots in the reality of a people, we must ask why the Sigoulane Valley offers such a particularly rich store of werewolf stories. Perhaps this is partly explained by the fact that in times past wolves roamed freely in the forests surrounding the valley. However, it is also possible that the tales took their origin from a series of gruesome deaths that occurred in the last quarter of the 1700s and again in the middle of the 1800s. Eyewitnesses claimed that a wolflike creature able to walk upright like a man was responsible for the killings. Fact or fantasy? There are many who believe the Sigoulane Beast, as it came to be called, was no figment of the popular imagination …
Mara was growing sleepy. The books gave her a curious picture of the man she had been instructed to meet: the competent historical documentarian sat oddly with the legitimizer of werewolf stories. She yawned.
Folktales
soon joined
The Face of the Resistance
on the floor.
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 2 MAY
J
ean-Claude Fournier was slim, mid-thirties, and movie-star handsome. He had an aquiline nose, bright-yellow hair parted in the middle above a high forehead, and disturbing gray eyes, the kind that, because of their clarity, seemed to look right into you. His eyes at the moment were piercing Mara with a teasing discernment that made her thoroughly uncomfortable.
“Mais oui,”
he said, smiling. He sat next to her on a velvet settee, watching her with interest. His hand on the cushion between them was nicely manicured. Incongruously, the strong, long fingers were sprinkled with dark hairs. “I put together an enormous amount of information on the de Bonfonds for Christophe over the past two years. Genealogical research is one of the things I do.”
Very profitably, Mara thought, from the look of him and his elegant, almost
bijou
, environment. His house was a beautifully restored eighteenth-century cottage. A large back terrace offered a panoramic view of forested hills and valleys. It was cantilevered over a ravine which, she was informed, served as a run for deer,
sangliers
, and foxes.
“Then you’ll take it on?”
“C’est logique
. Although my notes are all at Aurillac. Christophe insisted on it, but as long as I can access them there should be no trouble.” He paused thoughtfully. “A most interesting commission.”
He had served her a peach wine apéritif, lightly brushing her
fingers as he gave her the glass. In her nervousness, she had gulped down the contents.
“Another?” he suggested.
“What? No.
Merci.”
She focused on a Louis XVI armchair. She also noticed a collection of pentagrams, a phrenological skull, a crystal orb, a plaster hand, and wondered if, in addition to hair-coloring, Jean-Claude dabbled in the occult. “You do understand that Christophe wants the work done as quickly as possible, and quietly? He said absolute discretion.”
“That goes without saying. May I call you Mara?”
“Of course.”
“And you must call me Jean-Claude.” He exuded a subtle scent of aftershave that somehow matched his Nile-green shirt. “I’m fascinated by your accent. Where did you learn your French?”
She laughed outright. “I’m French Canadian. From Montreal. We drawl and flatten our vowels and say things like
‘y faire des gnangnangnan,’
meaning to talk stupid, and
‘il tombe des clous’—
it’s raining nails—but it’s our way of speaking, and we hold to it.”
“But your name. Dunn is not a French name.”
“My father’s Scottish.”
“And Maman?”
“Québécoise
. What we call
pure laine
. Dyed-in-the-wool.”
“Formidable,”
he breathed and leaned in.
Mara returned to her commission. “Christophe believes the baby was the illegitimate child of one of the servants. I don’t need to tell you that he would be highly gratified if that’s what you in fact discover.”
“Understandably.” His gaze lingered on her. “It would be easier for all concerned. Although,” he added after a pause, “improbable.”
It was what she already knew: the child’s trappings really were too grand for the bastard of a servant. She sighed. “I suppose that leaves the family.”
Jean-Claude refilled Mara’s glass anyway. He did it in such a way that she was barely aware of it. “Unfortunately, yes. In fact, during the period in question—1860 to 1914, I believe the newspaper said—the de Bonfond family had several unmarried females of childbearing age living in Aurillac Manor.”
“Why focus on unmarried women?”
Jean-Claude smiled, a not altogether pleasant smile. “Because a child for any one of them would have meant a bastard and social stigma. Sufficient motive perhaps to suppress the unfortunate infant’s existence? Whereas the married women of the family could have simply passed the baby off as a legitimate son.”
She took a deep breath and said, “All the same, I believe Christophe wants to know the truth.” It was a lie, of course. The only one who wanted the truth was Mara herself. Christophe fully expected Jean-Claude to cooperate, in return for a handsome fee, by producing a plausible explanation for Baby Blue that left the family honor unsullied.
Jean-Claude cocked an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She downed the second drink as quickly as she had the first. “He—er—thinks the only way to put an end to the gossip and the bad press is to identify Baby Blue and release the story himself. In a controlled way, of course. But he’s in a hurry. Apparently some people named Verdier are trying to profit from the circumstances by selling the dirt on the de Bonfonds to the media.”
Jean-Claude nodded. “Michel Verdier and his son, Guy. Cousins on Christophe’s great-great-grandmother’s side, if my memory serves me right. What about Antoine and his family? They’re de Bonfonds as well. What do they say?”
“I don’t know. I’m here representing only Christophe. And, oh, Christophe also said that if the Verdiers try to contact you, you’re to let me know. He was very insistent that you remember at all times that you’re working for him and no one else, particularly anyone who might try to … let’s say, co-opt your services.”
“Naturally,” Jean-Claude murmured.
“When can you begin?”
“Right away.”
“Formidable
. I’ll tell Christophe—”
“It will allow me to get to know you all the sooner.” He smiled suggestively.
“I’m here strictly as a go-between, Jean-Claude,” Mara said coolly. Prudence had called him
très charmant
, and he was. Mara’s ex-husband, Hal, a talented architect with a drinking problem and a skyscraper ego, had also been
charmant
. Since Hal, she had steered clear of the type. Jean-Claude was also, she figured, a good ten years younger than she. Her few experiences with younger men had only made her feel old. “I think it will be better if we keep to business.”
“But you’re Christophe’s representative,” he argued reasonably. “Isn’t it normal that I should want to know with whom I’m dealing?” His clear gray eyes locked on hers in an amused challenge. “Come. You’re not married. At least”—his glance swept her left hand—“you don’t wear an
alliance
. Do you have a friend who would object?”
“Yes,” said Mara, thinking of Julian. “No.” And wondered which it was.
MONDAY MORNING, 3 MAY
J
ulian had risen to another glorious day, but his morning was quickly turning into a waking nightmare. His interview with Antoine de Bonfond the previous Wednesday had gone extremely well. Too well, perhaps, because it had set him up to believe that the landscaping of the sales pavilion would run smoothly.
The pavilion, an octagonal structure of glass and stone, had been built directly onto the old
chai
. The
chai
, where the wine was processed, aged, and bottled, had also been expanded. The conjunction allowed visitors to pass from reception straight into the areas where the art of winemaking would be explained and where they would hear the history of Coteaux de Bonfond and be impressed by the blend of tradition (hand-picking of choice grapes) and modern technology (the state-of-the-art methods of wine-processing, the new stainless-steel vats) before returning to the pavilion and the object of it all: the point of sale. Julian’s role was to do something with the space fronting the pavilion and surrounding the parking area. From what he could tell, it was practically solid limestone. Had it not been, he was sure that Antoine would have planted it with vines rather than waste good land, for everywhere else the rows of vines came right up to the buildings. In addition to the centerpiece water feature, Julian had proposed an informal rock garden. It was the only thing that could be done with the difficult piece of ground he had to work with.
“Excellent,” Antoine had said. “Do it.” A decisive man, he had spent a lifetime developing a modest winery into one of the leading
vignobles
of the Bergerac zone. Having mastered his calling, he seemed to be willing to let others get on with theirs if he thought they knew what they were doing.
Not so his son. Pierre was a pudgy individual approaching middle age. His black eyebrows grew together over small, mean eyes. He also had a way of breathing in through his mouth and out his nose with a minute, whistling sound that Julian found intensely annoying. Unfortunately, now that the preliminaries were over, it looked as if Pierre was the person Julian was going to have to work with. Unlike Antoine, Pierre had a slow, distrustful way about him and a strong preference for what he called
le parking
over vegetation. Julian found this strange in a man who derived his living from the soil. Until he learned that Pierre dealt strictly with the winery accounts.
