The Orchid Shroud (31 page)

“Lycanthrope,” Mara corrected. “I’m saying Xavier suffered from lycanthropy, and he passed the condition on. He really believed he was a wolf, and he took on the behaviors of one. So, yes, in a way, Xavier was a werewolf, and he was the true Gévaudan Beast. But he expressed his sickness in an unusual way. He didn’t attack people directly. He used a trained, vicious animal to do his work. It was his alter-ego and his killing machine. It’s the only way of reconciling conflicting eyewitness accounts. People described the Beast as some kind of wolflike creature, but others swore it went on two legs. Many said it was invulnerable to injury, and a few claimed the thing wore some kind of leather cuirass that buttoned underneath. A wolf in a protective jacket? Or a man in a wolf suit? Or both, working together? And then there was the way
the bodies were left. Clothing was removed—not torn away, as an animal would do it. Heads were severed, not ripped off with tooth and claw. I think the animal carried out the attacks, but the master, maybe dressed in a wolf skin, was on hand to direct its movements and participate in the eating and despoiling of human flesh. This went on for three years. Then, when his beasts were killed—I say beasts because two were shot—and things got too hot for him in Le Gévaudan, Xavier shifted to the Sigoulane Valley, where he trained up other generations of wolves or wolf-dogs. One of them went for him in the end.”

“Gee!” exclaimed Prudence.

“Wait a minute,” said Julian. “All this evidence simply points to a nutter with an attack dog. Why do you assume Xavier was a lycanthrope?”

“Because of the psychology of the case. The killer chose to hide behind the identity of a wolflike creature. That’s significant. You saw the dog in the portrait, Julian. It’s painted in such a way that it almost merges with Xavier himself. I think that was how he wanted it. The de Bonfond motto, ‘Blood Is My Right,’ was probably created by Xavier and sounds like the declaration of someone who saw himself as a predator. A wolf, in fact, because Xavier would have believed himself to be one. He might even have used Julian’s orchid as a drug to enhance his delusion, because Julian says that some Lady’s Slippers have hallucinogenic properties. But to me the most compelling thing is something I didn’t tell Dr. Thibaud. I was afraid she’d think it silly.” Mara glanced around her. No one seemed in a laughing mood. “You see, Jean-Claude told me Xavier’s title of ‘le Baron’ was a purposeful corruption of the surname ‘Lebrun.’ But I found out that the word for werewolf in Occitan is
leberon
. I think ‘le Baron’ was actually a different play on words.
Leberon
. Lebrun. Le Baron.”

Paul whistled.
“Leberon
de Bonfond! The
con
was having everybody on.”

“Gee-hee!” uttered Prudence again, the sound this time seeming to emanate from the depths of her Giorgio Armani shoes.

“There’s more,” Mara went on. “I think Hugo inherited the condition, except he didn’t use an animal. But like Xavier, he may also have hopped himself up on a tincture of
Cypripedium incognitum
to heighten the effect of his ‘transformations.’ He had a reputation for drinking the blood of game he brought down while they were still kicking. He probably did the same with his human prey.” She paused. “And then there was Baby Blue.” They all turned questioning faces to her. Everyone had forgotten about him. “I don’t believe his killer was simply eliminating an embarrassing bastard. I think whoever smothered him was trying to end a tainted bloodline. We have to remember, with Cécile and Hugo as parents, that kid had it in spades.”

“Hmm,” said Loulou. “Which would account for the secret way he was disposed of. Makes sense. Despite the rosary and the crucifix, if it’s as Mara said, there was no way Baby Blue could have been given a Christian burial.”

“Mon dieu,”
said Mado, and poured herself another tot of plum brandy.

“Which brings us to the present,” said Mara, “and Christophe.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Julian declared.

“Look, Dr. Thibaud seems to think lycanthropy might be hereditary. There’s exactly a three-generation spread between Xavier and Hugo and again between Hugo and Christophe. Maybe it means nothing, but it does seem curious. Also, Thérèse confirmed that Christophe disappears periodically. I had to pull worms from her nose, but I finally got her to admit that he might have been away around the time that man was killed in Colline Basse. We also know he went off the same day the Dupuy woman was hit outside her henhouse. Pretty coincidental, don’t you think?”

“There you go again,” objected Julian. “What you’re suggesting is preposterous. It was an animal that went at those people, not a
human being. Unless you seriously think Christophe is able to grow fangs and claws?”

“No, of course I don’t. But I feel somehow there’s a link. Something I’m missing.” She paused. “You don’t know if Christophe has a dog, do you? I know he doesn’t keep one about the house. I mean a dog or dogs that he kennels elsewhere on the property?”

“No, he doesn’t,” snapped Julian. “He has an allergy to fur. And Didier doesn’t like them. In any case, Jean-Claude wasn’t killed by an animal. He was pushed off the terrace and strangled.”

“I think by Christophe,” said Mara. “As a lycanthrope, Christophe would have taken an accusation of werewolfism seriously because it came too close to the truth. That’s why he had to silence Jean-Claude. Who else had as good a motive for murder?”

Julian thought of Denise’s flat, black eyes, the way she had coolly dismissed his question about her whereabouts on Sunday night. She was a woman who, he had no doubt, could hate intensely. “Denise,” he hazarded. “She had an affair with Jean-Claude, don’t forget. Maybe it was a lovers’ quarrel after all. They fought, and she pushed him over.”

“Hmm.” Mara was gratified to hear him suggest it. “That takes care of means and motive”—a nod at Loulou—“but what about opportunity? You’d have to place her at the scene of the crime during the critical time.”

“If she did it,” Prudence observed, “you can bet she’s the kind who would have organized a convincing alibi.”

She tried to
, Julian thought.
Me
. He couldn’t acknowledge the fact openly, and he couldn’t prove where she had been during the early hours of Monday morning. But he sure as hell knew where she hadn’t been.

“And then,” Mara went on, “she would have had to climb down afterward and strangle him with the wolf belt. Can you see her doing it?”

“Yes,” said Julian very seriously. “I think I could.”

T
he question of Whose Place was simply decided. Mara drove Julian and their dogs back to his cottage and opted to stay. A light rain was falling by then, and the air was chill and damp. Julian hustled around, opened a bottle of wine, set it aside to breathe, and tried to get a fire going in his front room. It was smoky work. His chimney drew badly, undoubtedly because it was clogged with soot and swallows’ nests. He kept forgetting to get it cleaned. Eventually, he achieved a promising flare. The dogs flopped down in front of it, and he pushed the sofa forward to be nearer the warmth that the fire was not yet giving. They sat together in comfortable companionship, the first they had shared in days. Julian poured the wine.

“Nice,” Mara said appreciatively, noting the label, a Coteaux de Bonfond Domaine de la Source 2000.

“Their Gold Medal Vintage.” He did not mention that Denise had brought over half a case on the occasion of their one-night stand. “Not bad for a small Bergeracois winery.” He swirled the liquid slowly in his glass and sniffed, allowing his mind to range through the hyperbolic phrases that wine-promoters indulged in. A serious bouquet, underlain by a darker whiff of—what?—autumn leaves, the gardener in him decided. Wet ones. He took a mouthful, sucking in noisily to let the aeration do its thing and holding it long on his tongue. Very smooth, with a good balance of sweetness, bitterness, and astringency. A lengthy finish that made him think of chocolate and—to his surprise—a hint of well-aged manure. Suspiciously, he held his glass up to the light, studying its color and body. It was a clear ruby-red with good visual texture, measured by the time it took for the glycerine and alcohol in the wine to coalesce into droplets and slide down the interior of the glass. In English they called it legs. He thought of Denise’s legs and cleared his throat.

“You know, the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced
it’s a mistake to leave Denise out of the equation.” By then he had reconciled himself to the manure, in fact quite liked it. “I’m not saying this just because Christophe’s my friend. I really think the woman’s pathologically ambitious and capable of anything, especially where the winery is concerned. Sometimes I wonder who really runs Coteaux de Bonfond, she or Antoine. He’s a master winemaker, but she’s the one who’s positioning them for the bloodletting that’s happening in the French wine industry. I think she’d cheerfully eliminate anyone who stood in her way.”

Mara considered this. She liked the notion of Denise as murderer, but one thing didn’t fit. “I got a threatening, anonymous phone call from someone last night. And maybe the night before as well. Using my cell phone. Trouble is, I’m pretty sure it was Christophe.”

“What?” Julian sat up so fast that he almost spilled his wine. “What did he say?”

“Nothing. That was the threatening part.”

“Then how do you know it was him?”

“Julian, someone found my
portable
on the terrace and took it, probably after he killed Jean-Claude. Christophe is the only person in the world, apart from you, who doesn’t have his own cell phone and who wouldn’t know how to key in the block for caller ID.”

EARLY SATURDAY MORNING, 15 MAY

V
rac pushed cautiously through the dripping branches. It had stopped raining sometime in the night, but the world was soaked, and an early-morning mist blanketed the ground so that the trees in the field below him looked as if they were floating. Squinting through the gray light, he assessed the lay of the land. A skilled poacher, Vrac knew sheep firsthand, how to approach a flock and move, despite his bulk, among them. He even smelled like one of them. It was true that his mind, damaged at birth, was barely capable of more than simple thought. In the prison of his skull, ideas sparked on and off like faulty wiring; more complex concepts were condemned to darkness. He operated instead by instinct and well-established action sequences, deeply channeled by repetition into the muddy delta of his brain. Catch sheep, kill sheep, gut sheep, and there you had your evening chops.

The trick, Vrac had learned over time, was never to come up on a sheep directly—it was also better if you didn’t look at it—but to close in by moving alongside it at an ever-decreasing angle. This maneuver he called “the shears,” because to him it was like bringing the blades of a pair of shears together, slowly, slowly, until the sudden, swift cut.

Moving away from the trees and across the wet, tussocky grass, he held his knife at the ready. Usually he chose a yearling, one resting slightly apart from the others that could be taken unawares and with the minimum of fuss. But this time, in the predawn, when most creatures still slept, the flock seemed restless. From
where he stood, he sensed their movement even before he heard them snorting and stamping. Skittish, they were. And that was odd, because he was approaching them downwind. He paused, crouching low. Then he realized that the wind had shifted. They had got his scent, all right. He sat tight. The wind would shift again.

J
oseph Chabanas, a sheep-farmer for most of his sixty-two years, awakened with the sense that something was disturbing his flock. They grazed in this season on the eastern flank of the hill adjacent to his farm—not his hill; he rented it from a neighbor. Call it a sixth sense or just a hunch. Without knowing exactly what was wrong, Joseph was out of bed and into his boots, pulling a jacket on over his pajama top, calling for his dog, Voltaire, and his son, André, who, with his wife, slept in another part of the house.

André, who had spent the previous evening at the Astro Bar in Brames playing
belote
with pals and drinking red wine, arose to the summons, looking and feeling bad-tempered. However, one glance at his father loading his shotgun told him the matter was serious. He, too, pulled on his boots, dragged a rubberized poncho over his head, and grabbed his gun.

“Go back to bed,” André ordered his wife, Marthe, who had followed him into the kitchen, her hair in pink curlers.

“Mon dieu,”
muttered Marthe, clutching her housecoat to her throat.

Grimly the two men left the house, the dog racing ahead of them. They drove their truck to the field, encircled by a thin blue ribbon of electrified fencing, where the sheep were pastured. As father and son jumped out of the truck, they sensed immediately the restlessness of the flock. It was hard to see in the misty light, but they could make out movement at the far end of the field. André hoisted the dog over the fence. Voltaire ran off barking. The
men followed, stepping over the ribbon, ignoring the prickle of the electric charge, and hurrying in the direction of the flock.