The Orchid Shroud (9 page)

“A bedroom.” Laurent’s eyebrows rose. “Any idea whose?”

“How should I know? Anyway, a wall has two sides, in case you’ve forgotten. The kid could have been put in from the little room next door just as well.”

The gendarme gave Stéphanie a look of such intense admiration that she turned quite pink. He asked Mara, “Your workmen didn’t notice by any chance which side of the wall had been tampered with?” It was a question no one had thought of.

Mara said that she doubted it. Smokey and Theo had worked simultaneously on both faces of the double-coursed wall, sledge-hammering away the plaster coating and prizing out the stones. They weren’t particularly observant fellows, and by the time they had found the baby, any evidence would certainly have been destroyed. Anyway, the room next door, being smaller and giving onto the stairs, had probably served as an antechamber or a cabinet of some sort, offering less privacy for digging holes in walls than a bedchamber.

Laurent turned back to Stéphanie. “You said there was furniture in here. Where is it now?”

The young woman shrugged. “There’s a whole lot of stuff downstairs.”

They clattered down the stairs. The two rooms immediately below were crammed with tables, chairs, commodes, chiffoniers, lamps, and carpets rolled up and standing on end. There were several beds, their faded canopies piled up in the middle of the mattresses, and three armoires lined up against a wall. Stéphanie, however, could not remember which bed and which armoire had been in the upstairs corner room. She stood around for a minute or two and then, with a shy, troubled glance at the gendarme, who seemed now to have forgotten her presence, left them.

Laurent looked at the beds. Then he looked at the armoires. He approached the first and opened it. It was empty. He studied the interior. He had trouble closing the door again because it had come slightly askew on its hinges. The second was redolent of the smell of naphthalene and full of women’s clothing of another era. He shoved aside beaded dresses and jackets with moth-eaten fur collars and peered inside.

The double doors of the third armoire swung apart with a grating noise. The space within was half filled with blankets. He pulled them out. Something about the back of this armoire caught his attention. It was a typical construction of loose panels slotted into a grooved retaining frame. The panel of the right-hand section had been broken and lodged imperfectly back into place. Leaning in, Laurent peered at it closely. He bent down and ran the nail of his forefinger along the bottom groove of the frame.

He stood up. “I think that’s how they did it,” he said with satisfaction. His nail had scooped up a small quantity of pale, gritty dust.

Mara put her head inside the armoire, too. “I see what you mean,” she said after a moment. “You think this thing stood in front of the spot where the baby was put in the wall?”

He nodded. “They forced the panel out. That would have let them work at the wall bit by bit through the back of the armoire, pulling the stones out to make the hole. This thing is big enough to have hidden everything. Then, after they stuck the baby in, all they had to do was shove the stones back in place, jam the panel into the frame again, and close the doors.”

Mara agreed. “No one would have known. They didn’t even have to do a very good job with the panel. And later, when the walls were plastered over, all trace of the break would have been covered up.”

They were silent for a moment. Then Laurent said, “It changes everything, of course.”

“How do you mean?” asked Mara.

The gendarme replied in his sternest tone, “The kid wasn’t just smothered and then put in the wall. Someone planned to kill this baby. And they had its tomb ready well in advance.”

T
hérèse found her staring in stupefaction at Laurent. Mara had accepted that the child had been murdered. However, that its death had been carefully planned and preparations for its entombment made in advance came as a shock.

Laurent addressed the housekeeper. “Madame Tardieux. Do you know which room this armoire came out of?”

Thérèse looked suspiciously at the piece of furniture and then at him. “It’s about that kid, isn’t it. Why can’t you leave it alone?” But she told him grudgingly, “Upstairs corner bedroom.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’ve worked in this house all my life. Of course I’m sure.”

“Okay,” said the gendarme. “Do you know who had that bedroom?”

“Vous êtes fou, non?”
Thérèse tapped the side of her head vigorously with a bony finger. “Do you have any idea how many generations of de Bonfonds have lived here? Anyway, this part of the
house hasn’t been used in my lifetime. It’s damp because of the northern exposure, and the chimneys are all blocked up. Even in my parents’ day, the family all had their rooms in the south wing. And it’s no good pestering him with your questions because he’s not talking to anyone. Except you.” The housekeeper thrust her chin at Mara. “He wants to see you. And he’s not in a very good mood.”

W
hat?” shouted Mara. “Talk to who? I can’t hear you. Christophe, will you open this door?” She turned to Thérèse. “This is ridiculous. Have him get hold of me when he feels like coming out.”

The door jerked open just wide enough for Mara to see Christophe’s nose and one bloodshot, angry eye. “Why should I? Why should I come out? Do you realize they’re saying someone in the family whelped a bastard? Or that a de Bonfond got a servant girl with child and had it sealed up in a wall? There are those who delight in tearing down the de Bonfond name, those wretched Verdiers not the least.”

“It’s true,” Thérèse informed Mara. “They’re cousins through the female line. They hate the family because all the money’s on this side. They’re putting it about that old crimes will out, and until someone is punished, bad luck will visit the valley.”

“Pure superstition,” hissed Christophe. “And spite. Guy and that odious wife of his rang up to say how terribly sorry they were. But I could hear the triumph in their voices. I’m not taking any more calls. Thérèse. Baby Blue, pah! I’ll give them Baby Blue.”

“All right,” said Thérèse. “No more calls.” She left them.

Mara was beginning to lose her temper. “Look, Christophe. You wanted to see me. I’m here. Get on with it.”

“I told you. Jean-Claude Fournier. Lives in Tirac. Number’s in the book. He’s the historian-genealogist fellow who helped me with the research for my book. Knows as much about the family
as anyone. Tell him I have another commission for him. He’ll like that because he knows I pay well and he’s usually short of cash. Tell him I want him to find out who this wretched baby belonged to and above all to clear the de Bonfond name!”

“Why can’t you talk to him yourself? Why involve me?”

“Have you found another team of stonemasons to finish tearing down my walls?”

“No, but—”

“Then you haven’t anything better to do, have you? I want him to start immediately. Thérèse can let him into the library whenever he likes. He’s not to remove any material, mind, but he has free run of the archives. I don’t care how he does it, just prove this infernal infant has nothing to do with me. And, Mara, he has one week to come up with something. Otherwise, I know him, he’ll take his sweet time.”

“And what if he doesn’t? What if this Jean-Claude Fournier finds that Baby Blue was a de Bonfond after all?”

“Impossible,” snapped Christophe. “He wouldn’t dare. He owes me. Arobas published his book on the Resistance. And his nonsense on fairy tales, silly drivel dressed up as social analysis. Did it as a favor to him. No one else would touch it, frankly. You might remind him of that.”

“I’ll do no such thing,” Mara snapped back, but Christophe was detailing further instructions that included daily progress reports. She was about to send him to the devil when she remembered that he had given her a hefty advance. Moreover, it was true, work was at a standstill. In fact, she had little better to do.

C
hristophe paced his bedroom, a large, old-fashioned chamber that he had occupied since boyhood. With the heavy curtains drawn, the room was dark and cavelike, filled with shadowy shapes of furniture, bulky as boulders. Christophe, as he moved from wall to wall, had the air of a trapped animal.

Once again he stopped to stare at his reflection in an ornately framed mirror. The glass was crackled with age, distorting his features. He brought his face close to it, peering anxiously. There was no doubt about it. His left eye, the one he had not shown Mara, had a definite yellowish cast. Its shape had changed. Normally round, it seemed pulled cunningly aslant. The skin of his face felt stretched and painful. A whimper of despair filled his throat as he backed away from the mirror.
Mon dieu
, he thought. Not this again. Then he looked down at his hands.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON, 1 MAY

M
ara left Aurillac, grumbling loudly that Christophe was not her sole client. For want of anything better to do, she went to see the only other client that she had active at the moment: Prudence Chang.

“If you’re here to see how things are coming, they’re not,” Prudence said as she opened her door to Mara and Jazz. “The fellow you sent out the other day spent half the morning looking at my walls. Didn’t do a lick of work. I haven’t seen him since.”

Prudence, a glamorous Chinese American ex–advertising executive from L.A., spent part of the year in a restored farmhouse not far from Mara’s own place. Most of the renovation of the farmhouse had been (badly) done by somebody else. The selective conversion back to its original state, such as stripping off cheap, ugly walling to reveal the original creamy limestone, was being organized by Mara.

“Oh?” Mara murmured, thinking with despair that this was one more thing going off the rails.

“You look awful.” Prudence tickled the top of Jazz’s head with a perfectly manicured fingernail while taking in Mara’s rumpled appearance with critical, slim-line eyes. Prudence wore designer clothes even in the country and never had a hair out of place.

“It’s Christophe,” Mara complained. “He really is impossible.” She elaborated on her grievances as she trailed Prudence into the kitchen, where she was given the choice of coffee or iced tea. Mara accepted iced tea. She needed to cool down.

“He acts like a spoiled baby. And he’s autocratic as hell.” Now she followed Prudence back into the front room. She flung herself onto a plaid settee, one of a pair.

Prudence arranged her Calvin Klein shirtdress before sitting down more gracefully on the other. “That’s because he’s a de Bonfond. The family’s rich as Croesus. He’s an only child, inherited all kinds of real estate in Bordeaux. And his cousin Antoine—he’s the Coteaux de Bonfond man—practically owns the Sigoulane Valley. Would own it all, if it weren’t for a few ragtag winegrowers who won’t sell out.” Prudence knew a surprising amount about almost everyone.

“The nerve of him sending me to run his errands,” Mara fumed. “He wants me to commission someone to prove Baby Blue has nothing to do with his family.”

“Oh, that’s because one of his cousins, Guy Verdier, is trying to cash in on the publicity by offering to sell the dirt on the de Bonfonds to the media. He’s a—what do you call them?
—avocat
. Lawyer. So I suppose he’d know how to avoid being sued for libel. Lawyers are generally good at that sort of thing. His father, Michel Verdier, is one of the winegrowers who won’t sell out to Antoine. There’s no love lost between the families. Maybe this is Christophe’s way of doing damage control.”

“Well, I damn well feel like telling him he can get hold of this Fournier fellow himself, especially since he fully intends to suborn the results.”

“Jean-Claude Fournier?”

“I suppose you know him, too?”

“I’ve met him.” Prudence toyed with a carved amber bracelet. “Drop-dead gorgeous and
très charmant
. Kisses your hand up to the armpit if you let him. He’s a practicing genealogist and a cultural historian, or so he calls himself. Writes things. That’s one of his.” She waved at a large book on the coffee table:
Le Visage de la Résistance en Dordogne (The Face of the Resistance in the Dordogne)
.
“And that’s another”—a smaller volume entitled
Contes folkloriques de la Dordogne (Folktales of the Dordogne)
. “Borrow them if you like. He spoke once at the Dordogne Women’s Society meeting. I never really figured out exactly on
what
, but it was all very interesting. I keep telling you, Mara, you really should join.”

“What, to get my armpit kissed?”

“Or any other body part. Speaking of which, how are you and Julian getting on?”

“Oh,” said Mara evasively. “We’ve both been pretty busy. He’s landscaping Coteaux de Bonfond, and as you know I’m renovating Christophe’s house.”

“You’re supposed to be renovating mine. You need a kick in the pants. You and Julian, I mean. You’re right for each other, you know. So when are you going to get it together?”

“We are. We do. Most weekends.”

“That sounds really thrilling,” Prudence said with patent insincerity. “You two remind me of a couple I used to know. They dated for years, even lived together on and off, but never got out of the starting gate. In the end he drifted off to Hawaii with someone half his age to raise macadamia nuts, and she set up her own software business in Anaheim.”