The Orchid Shroud Page 6

  … As for me, I’m no better. All I can think of right now is finding another stonemason to work at Aurillac. If Christophe cancels this project, I’m cooked because I turned away all other work to concentrate on giving the silly twit his gallery in time for the launch of his history of the effing glorious de Bonfonds. It seems crazy that no one really seems to care that a healthy infant boy had crushed out of him. Has the world gone mad? Write soon. Send sanity.

  Mara.<

  7

  SATURDAY MORNING, 1 MAY

  Sergeant Laurent Naudet cared. He was a pleasant young man who took his job seriously. It bothered him that the case on Baby Blue, now that the cause of death had been determined, seemed headed for the inactive files. No one wanted to waste time, especially with a killer animal on the loose, investigating a crime going back god knew how many decades. He felt that the murdered child deserved better than that. The Sigoulane Valley was part of his beat, and so, even though he had no further business at the manor, he decided to return there on his own time, at least to have another look at the room where the dead baby had been found. What he was doing was strictly against the rules, but, he rationalized, so far everything having to do with the case ran counter to regulations.

  At the moment, he was zipping along on the pride of his life, a classic Kawasaki KZ1 that he had bought five years ago as a wreck, therefore cheaply, but still for far more than he could afford. Bit by bit he had painstakingly restored it. All legs and arms, he crouched atop the bike, resembling a large, rapidly moving mantis. His black helmet and the dark wrap-around glasses he wore to keep the wind out of his eyes enhanced the image. His heart swelled with satisfaction as the retooled 900cc engine easily took the steep climb up Aurillac Ridge. Now he entered the long, tree-lined lane leading to the house.

  He drew within sight of it just as a red BMW pulled in ahead of him into the graveled forecourt. Another car, a green Renault with a dog in it, was already parked there in the shade.

  “Hé!” An old man in dungarees came trotting around a corner of the house. He brandished a pitchfork at the BMW. The driver, a toothy man with slicked-back hair, put his head out the window. There were other people in the car. Laurent slowed and veered onto the verge of the lane. He pulled off his helmet but kept the bike idling, balanced between his legs.

  “Filez!” Didier yelled, stabbing at the air. “Get lost!”

  The driver ignored the threat. “Say, old fellow, is it true they’ve uncovered a whole crypt of bodies in there?”

  “You’re trespassing,” shouted Didier. “Fsst! Move it or I’ll call the cops.”

  The driver laughed at the gardener’s ineffectual jabs.

  “He said beat it.” A strapping lass with big arms and muddy knees appeared from another direction. She wore shorts, a tank top, and ankle boots and carried a bucket.

  “Don’t get your knickers in a knot,” said the toothy driver. He swung his door open and got out. “I’ll give you twenty euros—Hey!” The contents of the bucket—a soggy mixture of coffee grounds, vegetable peelings, and fish bones—hit him in the face.

  “Now shove off, you ghouls!” shouted Didier’s granddaughter, Stéphanie. She grabbed the pitchfork from her grandfather, who stood by cackling, and prodded the intruder with authority. “Unless you want to wear this up your backside.”

  There was a moment of shouting and arm-waving before the driver stumbled back into his car. The BMW shot forward, swung around, and roared away down the lane, nearly clipping Laurent’s bike in passing.

  “You, too!” Stéphanie yelled, striding toward him. “Push off.”

  “I’m a cop.” Laurent switched off his engine, hung his helmet on a handlebar, and dug into his pants pocket. “Laurent Naudet, Sergeant.”

  “You don’t look like one.” She barely glanced at his identification. “Anyway, he’s not seeing people.” The young woman was tall, although still a good head shorter than he. Her fair skin was covered in a dusting of freckles, and she wore her maize-yellow hair in two short braids. Her legs were as stout as a rugby-player’s. Laurent admired the way her knees locked, showing the muscle definition of her thighs.

  “I don’t need to bother him. Monsieur de Bonfond, that is. I just wanted to have another look at the room where the baby was found.”

  Stéphanie wheeled around to her grandfather. “Says he’s a cop.”

  “I am a cop,” Laurent insisted firmly. “I’m the one who came out on Wednesday.”

  But she had walked away and was conferring with the old man. Laurent stamped down the bike’s kick and went after her.

  “Okay.” She gave him an unfriendly head-to-toe with wary blue eyes. “I’ll take you up. But make it fast. Some of us have work to do.” She did not bother with the servants’ stairs but led him, almost at a jog, across the forecourt and up the steps to the big front entrance.

  “What’s your name?” Laurent asked, following in her train.

  “Stéphanie,” she said without turning around.

  They crossed an echoing vestibule. Laurent had an impression of tall paneled doors and a large expanse of black and white tiles. He knew that a sharp cop would be soaking up every detail, checking for clues. Somehow, his vision remained glued to his guide’s solid posterior as it bobbed, roughly at eye level, up the grand stone staircase ahead of him.

  Someone else was already up there. It was the woman he had questioned the other day, the one who had been hired to tear down the walls. She wore the same jeans and T-shirt (he didn’t know English, but he recognized the words “book” and “dog”) as on the day he had met her. Laurent experienced a momentary alarm, thinking that she and her men had resumed work. But she was alone, standing in the middle of the litter of stones and broken plaster, gazing at the wrecked wall. She turned at their approach.

  “Madame Dunn. What are you doing here?” Laurent addressed her severely. This was mainly to impress the girl in pigtails at his side, but he then ruined the impression by coming forward to shake Mara’s hand. His few years chasing criminals had not yet stripped him of his innate courtesy. He would have shaken hands with anyone he was not actually about to arrest.

  Mara said, “Just looking. I didn’t touch anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Her eyes strayed thoughtfully to the wall, and then returned to him. “I was just trying to imagine how it must have been … for the baby …”

  Laurent nodded, feeling an immediate sympathy. He was there for the same reason. Even Stéphanie looked sobered. The three of them gazed wordlessly at the dark cavity.

  After a moment Laurent asked, “Why were you tearing it down?”

  “What? Oh, you mean the wall.” Mara explained about the elevated gallery.

  “Daft, silly idea if you ask me,” said Stéphanie. “Look, if you don’t mind—”

  “Don’t go. I mean, not just yet.” The gendarme faced her with an earnest pleading. “It-it’s just that I might need to ask you a few questions.”

  Stéphanie stayed but found it necessary to stare hard at her muddy boots.

  Laurent went back to his study of the wall. “What I don’t understand is, why put the baby in there? Wouldn’t it have been easier just to bury it in the woods?”

  “That’s a dumb question,” muttered Stéphanie. “Whoever it was wouldn’t have wanted to be seen carrying a dead baby through the house, would they?”

  “If I needed to hide something in a hurry, breaking a hole in a stone wall wouldn’t be the first thing I’d try.”

  She tossed her braids. “All you’d need is a crowbar.”

  “Better a cold chisel,” said Mara, and went on to talk about drystone construction.

  Laurent scratched his head, looking around him at the rubble-strewn space. “What would this room have been used for?”

  Mara considered. It was a corner room, the end chamber of the central block of the manor. Its windows faced west, with a view of the forecourt, and north, looking out over a small orchard at the side of the house. S
he said, “I never saw it furnished, but it’s a big room, so it could have been put to a lot of uses over the years. At a guess I’d say a bedroom.”

  “There was a bed in it,” Stéphanie confirmed. “With a canopy thing. I remember seeing it when I was a kid. And a great monster of an armoire.”

  “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.”

  Thérèse 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.”

  What?” 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.

  Christophe 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.

  8

  SATURDAY AFTERNOON, 1 MAY

  Mara 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.”