The Orchid Shroud Read online

  Hugo’s father, Dominique, was confined to a sofa throughout the event, his gouty foot propped up on a padded tabouret. He was an older, more dissipated version of his son, a fleshy man with pale-blue bulging eyes draped by loose curtains of flesh and a speckled scalp patchily covered in reddish hair. Irritably he waved aside the ministrations of his manservant and called instead for his daughter-in-law. She came to him very prettily, bringing him a forbidden cup of mulled spiced wine and stooping to change the position of his leg. How meekly she bent her head to him as he clutched her arm to draw her close.

  “What’s that damned son of mine been up to, eh?” He ogled her through a blast of unwholesome breath. “Pretty filly like you, should’ve filled your belly by now.” His fat fingers fumbled to pinch her bottom through the folds of her gown.

  How she smiled as she hissed into his ear: “Touch me again, you filthy old goat, and I’ll tell the world what goes on in this family, which would shock the devil himself. I have found out many of your nasty secrets, you know, and I will air them in such a way that even you will not be able to hold your nose against the stench.”

  Dominique blenched, not just because his new daughter-in-law had contrived to knock his bad foot sharply as she pulled away. He had that afternoon spent an unpleasant hour closeted with Maître Caillaud. The notaire had purposely come in advance of the other guests in order to converse seriously with Dominique, man to man. The squire’s way with every willing wench in the valley, and particularly the heavy expenditures constantly required for the upkeep of a changing tableau of mistresses in Bordeaux and Toulouse, were threatening to empty the de Bonfond coffers. Parcels of land had been quietly sold to support his excesses. It had to stop. Dominique was not a man with an easy conscience, and Henriette’s threat had hit him in a vulnerable spot.

  From her post at the other end of the chilly salon, Odile noted the brief but telling exchange between her husband and her daughter-in-law. Odile knew about the mistresses.

  Cécile, Hugo’s youngest sister, also watched Henriette. Cécile despised Henriette because her mother did, but she also envied her sister-in-law with a kind of lugubrious wistfulness born of the knowledge that, apart from a single dalliance, she had never been and never would be admired by any man. A moment later, Henriette was at her side. Flustered, Cécile turned away: she had been instructed by Maman not to speak to the Parisian trollop. That was when Henriette had said—almost gaily, as if imparting the latest gossip—“Blue doesn’t suit you.” And that was when Cécile’s face had reddened to match the roots of her unfortunate hair.

  “Women with your kind of complexion should stick to brown,” Henriette instructed in a high, clear voice, giving Cécile to understand with no uncertainty that the shimmering, sky-blue shawl made a mockery of her red skin and freckles and that her best dress of drab olive silk would not do. But the shawl was the only pretty thing she had. Trimmed with tassels of darker blue and nicely embroidered, it would have complemented Henriette’s gown admirably.

  “You can’t have it,” Cécile said with childish directness. She was twenty-six, more at home with horses than with people, and unskilled in conversation. Words tumbled out of her like rocks—rough, unformed, and heavy.

  “Ma chère,” Henriette replied coolly, “I wish nothing of yours. I say this only for your own good. No doubt, living like savages as you people do, you have no concept of fashion. You look a fright.”

  Cécile’s blush was now spreading in ugly splotches down her neck. She stared miserably at Henriette, tears forming in her pale, rather protuberant eyes. “I hate you,” she cried hoarsely, to the consternation of those about her.

  “I know,” Henriette said with a smile.

  6

  FRIDAY EVENING, 30 APRIL

  A male baby, European type, six to eight weeks old.” Loulou, who had his contacts in forensics, gave them advance information from the médecin légiste’s report. “But how it died, mes amis, that is the interesting part.”

  Mara and Julian exchanged glances. They were sitting after hours at the Chez Nous bistro in Grissac with friends and owners, Mado and Paul Brieux. The usual crowd of diners had gone, but the small resto, which served some of the best food in the region, still seemed crowded. That was because, in addition to the humans, three dogs were milling about. One of them was Julian’s rangy mutt, Bismuth. The second was Mara’s Jazz, a powerful tan-and-white animal of pit-bull extraction. The third was the local bitch, a handsome black-and-white short-haired pointer named Edith.

  “Was it what everyone’s been saying?” Mado, a statuesque redhead with golden eyes, asked. The story on the mummified child had broken with the force of a summer storm. For want of a name, the media had dubbed it Baby Blue, after the color of its wrapping. Another baby, the Brieuxs’ five-month-old offspring, Eddie, gurgled sleepily on his mother’s lap.

  “They’re saying,” Paul put in, “the kid was throttled.” He was a big man with forearms the size of Parma hams. It was hard to believe he had the lightest touch with pastry in the region.

  Loulou dipped his head from side to side. “Death was not”— he probed the interior of his mouth delicately with a toothpick, seeking remnant shreds of Mado’s lamb ragout—“due to natural causes. Of course, I never thought it was.” His round face had the smug, glossy look of an egg pudding. The freckles on his scalp resembled raisins.

  “Well, get on with it.” Julian found the ex-cop’s well-known fondness for keeping an audience dangling very irritating.

  Loulou put the toothpick down. “According to Lamartine, X-rays of the skull turned up a number of things.” He held up one, two, and three fingers in turn. “Primo, dislocation of the mandible. Secundo, massive crushing of the nasal bones. Tertio, cracking and displacement of the maxillae. Not throttled. Smothered. Pressure was applied directly downward and with far more force than was necessary with an infant of that age. As if”—he tugged pensively at the wattle under his chin—“whoever had done it had been in a towering rage.”

  “Mon dieu,” whispered Mado, drawing her son tightly to her.

  “Postpartum depression.” Paul rocked back in his chair. “Mother off her head, kid screaming all the time, pillow over the face.”

  They all fell silent, contemplating the scene.

  Then Paul asked, “How did it come to be mummified?”

  “Oh, it can happen, given cool, dry conditions.” Loulou reached across to share out the remains of a bottle of red—a Coteaux de Bonfond Domaine de la Source 1998, as it happened. “There are many examples of naturally occurring mummies in crypts, for example. And a wall’s not so different. But one thing Lamartine said, it was a healthy baby, well fed.”

  Mado looked surprised. “How could he know that?” She shifted Eddie in her arms.

  “Because there was evidence of saponification.” Loulou scooted his bottom forward in his chair, the better to deliver his information. “That only happens with fat corpses, you see. The fat mixes with water to produce fatty acids that draw the moisture out. The dehydration slows down bacterial growth and the body is preserved. Now, the baby’s fattest parts—its stomach, buttocks, and thighs—were literally turned into a waxy substance like soap. The upper parts of the body were more vulnerable and simply dried out. It was a good thing Lamartine had the X-ray evidence to go on. Otherwise, he would have had to rehydrate the body before he could have examined it.”

  There was another silence while his audience took this in.

  Julian cleared his throat. “Any idea when it died?”

  “I’m coming to that. Lamartine puts it certainly after 1860 and provisionally as late as the outbreak of war in 1914.”

  “That’s a fifty-four-year span,” Julian complained.

  “Bien, with mummies it’s hard to be precise. In fact, the science and tech lads had to rely on the baby’s trappings to pin things down. It was wrapped in a woman’s shawl. Silk. French manufacture, probably Lyon, factory-produced in bolts throughout the latter half of t
he nineteenth century and sold by the measure through the better shops in Paris and places like Tours and Bordeaux. However, one of the threads used in the embroidery was colored with a synthetic dye that came into use in France only after 1860. So that establishes the anchor date. The outside date of 1914 was based on the style of the child’s clothing and the material, a kind of Egyptian cotton generally not available in France after Egypt became a British protectorate. As for the embroidery itself, done by hand to suit the customer, or, because many women did embroidery in those days, even by the wearer herself.”

  “But who she was remains the big question,” muttered Julian darkly. Absently, he tossed bits of bread to the dogs.

  Mado pointed out, “Anyway, the shawl could have lain around for years before being used as a shroud. What’s going to happen with the body?”

  “It’ll be released to Christophe for burial,” Loulou told them. “Eventually.”

  Mara, whose thoughts had been elsewhere, stirred. “Julian’s taking care of the arrangements,” she said.

  “You?” Mado’s leonine eyes widened as she swung about on him. She shoved him with a sandaled foot. “Why you? You’re not a member of the family. You’re not even Catholic.”

  Mara, who saw the shove, and who half suspected Julian of nursing an old crush on Mado and Mado of encouraging it, said wearily, “You may as well tell them, Julian.” And when he shot her an annoyed look, she shrugged. “He’s doing it for the shawl. The embroidery on it is of an orchid that’s the same as the one Bedie photographed. Christophe said he could have the shawl, as long as the police don’t need it as evidence, if he took on the funeral arrangements.”

  “Why is it,” Julian cried out indignantly, “that nothing around here can be kept secret?”

  Paul said with a small explosion of breath, “Bigre! I don’t believe it. You’re still after that crazy flower?” The Brieux knew all about Julian’s elusive Lady’s Slipper. “T’es fou.” The restaurateur tapped the side of his head.

  “Of course I’m after it,” retorted Julian testily. “It’s the botanical mystery of the century. How do you expect me not to be after it? It’s as if someone were reaching out of the past to give me a vital clue.”

  “How the devil are you going to trace an orchid from a bit of embroidery?” Paul waved his arms.

  “Why not? If someone embroidered it, they had to see the original growing somewhere.”

  “They could have imagined it.”

  “No, they couldn’t. It’s too precise structurally. It’s a botanically accurate reproduction. In fact, it’s better than Bedie’s photo because it’s complete.”

  “So what?” Paul challenged, banging the table with the flat of his hand. “You’re still left with the problem of finding the thing. That shawl could’ve been embroidered—what?—over a hundred and forty years ago.”

  “Ah”—Julian shook a finger in Paul’s face—“but you’re overlooking one important fact. That shawl is associated with Aurillac Manor. That’s my starting point.”

  “Starting point? Nom de dieu, that’s where it ended up. You have no idea where it came from, and that’s what counts. All this for a flower?”

  Julian scowled stubbornly. “Not just any flower. Look, how can I make you understand? The discovery of a new species of wild orchid is an important event in the botanical world. The rediscovery of an ancient European orchid lost to modern science, especially one as morphologically rare as this one—well, it’s like finding Atlantis. You simply have no idea what this could mean. To me. To every living orchidologist.” Julian broke off. Paul, Mado, and Loulou were looking unconvinced. Mara’s expression was carefully neutral. Julian folded his arms across his chest and slumped down disgustedly in his chair.

  “Just promise me one thing. Don’t tell Géraud.”

  “Of course not,” murmured Mado, making a mouth at her son.

  “Why don’t I feel reassured?”

  On their way out of the bistro, Julian said to Mara, “Sometimes I find Paul can be incredibly dense.” He added hopefully, “Your place or mine?”

  She did not answer. He took that to mean his place. Since he had come on foot, his cottage being only a short walk from Grissac, he climbed into her car. Bismuth and Jazz jumped into the back, while the pointer bitch, Edith, disdaining a lift, trotted off on business of her own. Mara started up and backed onto the road.

  “Well, at least I know the shawl was made and embroidered in France,” he sighed, “instead of on the other side of the world in China and imported here. But I was hoping Loulou could get a bit more out of forensics than that. Not that I expected them to turn up anything on the habitat of Cypripedium incognitum, of course.” He knew from Bedie’s photograph that the orchid had once grown somewhere on the grounds of Les Colombes. The shawl now gave Aurillac Manor as a second point of reference. That was valuable. However, he still had no information on the specific conditions under which the plant grew, which was what he really needed if he was going to find it. “So I’m stuck making a lot of guesses. Do I assume my Mystery Orchid behaves like the European Lady’s Slipper?” Cypripedium calceolus liked cool shade and alkaline soil and attracted a specific pollinator, a bee called Andrena. He tugged his beard. “I mean, what if incognitum needs deeper shade or a wetter environment? Also, it looks like a whacking great flower, bigger than calceolus and with an even larger pouch. So does it attract a larger insect, or a wider range of insects? What?”

  He turned the possibilities over in his head as Mara drove out of the sleeping village.

  “You know,” he said eventually, “at bottom, everything about orchids boils down to sex. In fact, the ancient Greeks considered the orchid as a symbol of sexuality. The word orchis means—”

  “Balls,” Mara cut in dryly. “Orchis means balls. Because orchid roots look like testicles. Géraud told me.”

  “Oh.” They were now bumping down a gravel road, past farms where only occasional lights showed, or here or there the blue glow of a television in an unshuttered window. “Well, did he tell you that orchids are some of the most ingenious plants in the world when it comes to reproduction?”

  “We didn’t get that far.”

  “Then he missed the most important part.” Julian waved his hands enthusiastically. “They go to incredible lengths to attract pollinators. Some orchids put out a scent like rotting meat to lure a certain kind of fly. Others produce a fermented nectar that gets visiting insects drunk in order to increase the chance of cross-pollination. Others have evolved physically to resemble the pollinators they want to attract. Take the Fly Orchid. Its labellum looks like a certain kind of female wasp, even down to the development of pseudo wings and eyes—” He broke off to glance at Mara. She drove, staring straight ahead. “The—er—male wasp tries to mate with it,” he finished lamely, “gets covered in pollen, and then goes off to try it on with another Fly Orchid, which it pollinates in the process.” It was hard to read her expression in the dark.

  A minute later, Mara pulled up in front of his cottage. He reached across to stroke her cheek. “I’ve been looking forward to this all week,” he said, really meaning it. “Time with you.” She was unresponsive, and he found it necessary to explain, “Us alone. Coming in?”

  She seemed to struggle out of a reflective mood. “Sorry, Julian. Not tonight.”

  “Oh? Something wrong?”

  If there was, she clearly didn’t want to go into it. “I’m just beat,” she said. “Rain check?”

  “Okay. If that’s what you want.” He paused, then added, “I suppose I could do with an early night myself.” Stuffing down his disappointment, he tried at least for a lingering kiss.

  She pecked him briefly. “I’ll call you.”

  Julian stood with Bismuth at the roadside, watching her car disappear into the night, feeling stunned. Friday-night dinners at Chez Nous, weekends together, lovemaking, it was the rhythm that he measured his life against nowadays. He sensed that her leavetaking had been more cool th
an tired. Things had been running along so well. Now he wondered uneasily if Mara was going off him. His throat constricted with a feeling of dismay as the vision of a piece of elastic, suddenly gone limp, free-floated before his eyes.

  For Mara, one of the things that was wrong was Baby Blue. The little corpse haunted the corners of her mind, demanding—what? Justice? Retribution? Truth? Because someone in the past had got away with murder. Later that night, she tried to spell out her feelings in an e-mail to her best friend, Patsy Reicher. Once resident in the Dordogne, now returned to her native New York, freckle-faced, gum-chewing Patsy was a psychoanalyst, erstwhile sculptor, and Mara’s personal touchstone.

  >… I suppose we’ll never know who killed him. But what bothers me even more, Patsy, is everyone’s attitude towards this baby. We all call him “it” for a start. Christophe treats “it” like an unwanted parcel that he’d like to return to sender because he’s so frantic about protecting his precious family name. Loulou, with his flair for crime, seems delighted that “it” was smothered—with unnecessary violence. Mado and Paul are shocked, probably because they’re thinking how awful it would be if the same thing happened to their own son. As for Julian …

  That was the other thing that was wrong: Julian. His obsession with orchids. Cypripedium incognitum filled his vision, sucked up all his passion. It also made him shockingly callous. He didn’t seem to care that Baby Blue had once had a life, albeit short, that the child had struggled vainly to live against a stronger force intent on ending his existence.

  … What can I say other than for Julian Baby Blue seems to be nothing more than a lucky break in the hunt for his damned Lady’s Slipper? …

  There was also the fact that she was grappling with the realization that they had been stalled in the same routine for months. Dinners at Chez Nous, weekend sex, no commitment. Mara felt that love affairs, like water, ought to have a natural flow. She wanted things to move on. Where their relationship was concerned, Julian seemed perfectly happy to turn in the eddy of indecision, going nowhere. Only Cypripedium incognitum galvanized him. To put it simply, she felt sidelined. It was silly and demeaning to be jealous of a flower, but Mara, who found herself unexpectedly drawn to this eccentric, earnest, single-minded man, was.