Authors: Michelle Wan
He waved at an arrangement of flattened flowers and leaves laid out on a sheet of corkboard on his kitchen table. “It’s my off-season trade. In summer”—he rinsed out a couple of mugs—“I’m a landscape gardener.”
He eyed her warily as she approached his work-table to pick up a stiff cluster of pale-yellow blossoms.
“Cowslips,” he told her. “What the locals call coucous. An early-spring bloomer found along hedgerows and shady footpaths.”
“Oh!” Dark eyes swiveled to fix him intently. “Can you identify it like that? Where certain kinds of flowers grow, I mean?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Well, yes and no. Most plants are habitat-specific. However, there are lots of hedgerows and footpaths around here. What do you have in mind?”
She took a deep breath, a diver about to plunge.
“Mr. Wood—”
“Julian.”
“Julian. I’ll get right to the point. If I showed you some photos of flowers, could you tell me—would you have any idea where they were taken?”
For a moment he entertained a suspicion that this was some crazy kind of test.
Quickly, she dug into her handbag and pulled out a thick brown envelope. “Please.” She held it out to him.
With a sigh he slid his glasses down onto his nose and took it from her. It contained colored prints.
“But this is Beynac Castle,” he objected, as the first shot revealed a fortified hulk perched on a cliff. It was a well-known local tourist site. “A few years ago, from the look of the cars.”
“Yes. I left that in because it comes at the beginning of the roll. I thought it might give a general indication. There’s also a
pigeonnier.”
She fingered through to a print of a tall stone dovecote standing like a gaunt tower in the middle of a field. “But the rest of the photos are all flowers.”
He frowned and flipped through them.
“Well,” he said finally, “they’re field orchids.”
She waited, watching him tensely.
He shrugged. “Temperate species. Cousins to the more dramatic tropical varieties most people think of when you mention orchids. These are more modest plants, but every bit as beautiful, in a smaller way. And damned easy to miss unless you know how to spot them. But look here, these photos are in terrible condition. Some are almost impossible to make out. You want me to tell you where these things grow?”
“If you can.” She had moved close enough for him to feel the dampness rising out of her hair and clothing, to catch a faint scent of sandalwood. He found the proximity slightly disturbing. He cleared his throat.
“Well, I can’t. That is, not specifically. I mean, most of these, from what I can make out, are pretty widespread throughout the region. Beyond the fact that some like shade, others sun, and most grow in calcareous soils, it would be hard for anyone to tell you exactly
where.”
“But,” she insisted, “you just said a certain kind of soil. Couldn’t that be a clue?” She was not going to be put off.
“Calcareous?” He gave a harsh laugh. “Chalk. Pretty well describes the entire Dordogne Valley, certainly all of the middle reach, which is entirely underlain by chalky limestone.”
The look of determination drained from her face,
to be replaced by something like desperation. “You’re absolutely sure there’s no way?”
“Look,” he said dryly, “I’m not a psychic.” He returned the photographs. Her insistence was becoming irritating.
“No. Of course not.” She slumped heavily into a chair.
Julian saw that, whatever her reasons, his visitor had placed a lot of hope in him. Now she was disappointed. More than disappointed. Crushed.
The kettle rattled on the burner. He turned away to make the tea, feeling mystified and thrown off by their exchange.
“Milk? Sugar?”
She did not answer. He put the teapot down and eyed her again. “Or something stronger?”
She stirred, looked up dully. “No. Thanks. Look, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll pass on tea. Anyway, I’m interrupting your work.” She rose jerkily, dropped her bag, picked it up, and fumbled in it. “Can I—can I pay you something for your time?”
“Good god, no.” He felt insulted.
“Well, if you’re sure … ?” She regarded him uncertainly. “Then I’ll be on my way.”
She did not wait for him to help her with her coat. He stood by as she struggled into it, feeling somehow that he had failed this odd, impulsive woman with her unreasonable expectations. She shook his hand stiffly.
“Thank you. You’ve been very kind.”
Through the bull’s-eye window in the vestibule Julian could see rain sheeting off the overhanging roof.
“Er—do you want an umbrella?”
She forced a brittle smile. “I’ll sprint.”
He opened the door for her. She pulled up her collar and stepped out. In the next instant something struck her full in the chest. With a scream, she skidded backward, threw up her arms. Her handbag flew, hitting the ground for the second time. Before Julian could catch her, she landed hard on the wet flagstones. A large, writhing form straddled her while a vigorous lash repeatedly struck the rickety coatrack, knocking it from side to side until it, too, went over with a splintering crash.
Julian waded in, lunging and grabbing.
“Dammit, Edith,” roared Julian Wood, finally getting a hand on the collar of a large, very wet, exuberant dog. “Get off, you bloody beast! Get off!”
•
She had twisted her right ankle and had to be helped, carried by him really, back into his front room. It was an awkward, bumpy trip, and Mara was intimately aware of Julian’s long, angular body, his thick pullover smelling slightly of damp wool, his rough, badly trimmed facial hair. She recalled his look of dismay—or was it shock?—when she had first entered his house, dripping water, mascara undoubtedly running down her face, and acknowledged with embarrassment that her attempted exit was even less graceful.
He deposited her on the sofa. Edith, a black-and-white short-haired pointer, was dragged away and shut up. Mara could hear her barks, whines, and frantic scrabbling from the back of the cottage.
“Better get that up.” Julian swept away several days’ accumulation of newspapers from the sofa so that she could raise her leg. Then he was gone again, retrieving her bag, placing it beside her, darting away into the kitchen, calling as he went, “Sorry about the dog. She just wanted to get inside. She hates the rain. I was wondering when she’d turn up.”
He reappeared moments later with ice cubes wrapped lumpily in a tea towel. “Here. Get the swelling down. Nothing broken? Do you want a doctor?”
“No, no, I’m fine,” Mara lied. Her ankle throbbed. Edith’s howls were making the pain worse. “You ought to do something about her, you know.”
“What? Let her out?”
“I meant, get her under control,” Mara told him severely. “She’s a liability.”
He grinned, a sudden, attractive, boyish grin that illuminated his saturnine features. “Not guilty. Not my dog. Belongs to a farmer down the road, old Hilaire. Lets her run loose. She lives with me when she feels like it, and when she doesn’t she buggers off somewhere else.”
He shot away again. Mara closed her eyes. His comings and goings were making her dizzy.
However, the improvised cold pack was dulling the sharpness of the pain. She adjusted it around her
ankle and looked about her: a low, small room full of mismatched furniture, threadbare carpets, and lots of litter. Pots of flowering plants crammed the window ledges. The walls were entirely taken up with books. Their worn spines suggested that all were well read.
He was back with a mug of tea and a couple of aspirins. “Here. Take these. When you feel better, if you can’t drive, I’ll run you back wherever you want to go.”
Mara managed a smile. “Thanks. I’ll be okay.”
“No problem, really. Where are you staying?”
“Ecoute-la-Pluie.” She opened her bag and gave him her card:
Mara Dunn—Interior Designer/ Décoratrice ensemblière.
Julian looked surprised. “You’re not a tourist?” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I should have made that clear. I’m Canadian, but I live here.”
“Ah,” he said, as if that explained something. “Of course.” He lowered himself into a leather easy chair—obviously his favorite since the arms and seat were badly worn. “And the photographs? Look,” he said, against his better judgment, “don’t you think you’d better tell me what this is all about?”
Wearily Mara let her head fall against the sofa back so that she gazed past him at an indeterminate spot on the ceiling. “Yes,” she said at last. “The photos.” Briefly she closed her eyes. “You see, nineteen years ago, my sister Bedie—Beatrice Dunn—I think my sister may have taken those pictures.”
He stared at her blankly, waiting for her to go on.
“In 1984, my sister, Bedie, disappeared in the Dordogne.” Mara had told this story many times. With each telling, the recital became bleaker, more mechanical, reducing the people in it to mere essential facts. “She’d come over with her boyfriend, Scott Barrow, for a hiking holiday. They were camping not too far from here at a place called Les Gabarres. It was early May, and they’d had a lot of rain. Scott wanted to push on. Bedie wanted to stay. They had a fight about it, and Scott packed up and took off.” Mara was silent for a moment. “When he came back to the campsite a couple of days later, Bedie was gone. Scott waited around for a few more days. He was sure she’d be back because, although she’d taken her backpack and camera, a Michelin guide, and a book on flowers, the rest of her things were still in the tent. We—none of us—ever saw her again.”
Her eyes wandered to the windows. Darkness, the early darkness of remnant winter days, was closing in, but the rain was letting up. “The police launched a massive search. It was in all the papers. They questioned everyone in the area and followed up with campers who’d left during the critical period, anyone who might have seen her or given her a ride. A German family said they saw her go out of the campsite the morning after Scott left. Alone and on foot. No one else knew anything.”
Throughout this narrative, Julian had been regarding his visitor with an increasingly troubled gaze. Now he stirred, rising to poke mechanically at
the dying fire. He spoke with his back to her. “What about the boyfriend? Surely he must have had some idea where she might have gone?”
“No. In fact, for a time Scott was a prime suspect. The police were sure it was a crime passionel. They put him through hell, poor guy. Why did he leave? Why had he waited so long before reporting her missing? Scott told them that he had simply hitched a ride to Bordeaux and back, and that he hadn’t been particularly worried about Bedie, at least not right away, because, as anyone who knew her could tell you, Bedie was perfectly able to look after herself. The police didn’t believe him. On the other hand, they had no proof of foul play. There was no body, you see.
“My parents and I came over as soon as we were notified. We stayed on for three months, looking for her. Scott stayed, too. We showed her picture to everyone—hikers, campers, waiters, shopkeepers, farmers. My father offered a reward for any information about her. We had dozens of leads that went nowhere. Finally, the police told us we were complicating things by trying to run our own investigation. They told us to go home.”
“And then?” Julian turned back to sit down again.
“And then, a couple of months later, in the fall, the French police contacted us again. Someone had found a woman’s body in a wood near Carennac, over in Quercy. Her skull had been bashed in. They wanted dental records. But it turned out not to be—
to be someone else. The woman was later identified as a Dutch tourist. Bedie just went on … missing.”
Julian scratched his beard. “It could have been an accident. The entire region is full of underground fissures and pits. She could have fallen down one of them. Or—or drowned in the river.”
“We went through all that. We thought of mental breakdown. Amnesia. I pictured my sister wandering mad and nameless through the streets of Marseille. For years we all hung on to the hope that somehow she would just turn up. Eventually, my parents just found it easier to accept that she was dead.”
“And you?” His tone was tentatively probing.
She shook her head. “It hasn’t been that simple for me. You see, we were very close. Closer than ordinary siblings. We’re twins.”
She fumbled in her bag for a photograph, cracked and ragged at the edges, encased in a plastic sleeve. It was Mara’s face, the same oval shape, straight brows, and pointed, determined chin. But taken long ago, frozen in time. The hair was different, longer and worn pinned severely back at the temples by metal clips. The eyes gazed out at the world with a challenging, quizzical stare. Find me, they seemed to say.
“I see,” Julian spoke quietly. Unlike most people to whom she had shown this photograph, he did not display intense interest, merely glanced at it, then back at her, before placing it with a hint of distaste on the low table between them. He cleared his throat. “And so you came back to look for her?”
Mara shook her head. “Not right away. I got on with my life. I married, I divorced, I moved around. Finally, I realized I couldn’t go on like that. I had to find out what happened to her. That’s when I decided to make the move. My parents loaned me the money to set myself up in business here. I pushed to have the case reopened. The police haven’t been very helpful. I tried myself to follow up old leads, but most were cold by then. The campground at Les Gabarres doesn’t even exist anymore. People we had talked to at the time were dead, or moved away. It was hopeless, after so many years. But at least I was doing something. It made me feel somehow closer to Bedie, that I wasn’t letting her down.” She paused.
“And then, a few weeks ago, I found the camera.”
He raised his head sharply. “The camera?” She nodded. “Last month I stopped off in Villeréal to check out a brocanteur I sometimes use—I’m always on the lookout for antiques for my clients, to go with their renovated barns and farmhouses. They like the genuine thing, or at least the appearance of it. Anyway, there was a big basket of junk. Dishes, figurines, books, and a camera, an old Canon. It was in pretty bad shape, the leather case all mildewed, like it had been stored for a long time in a damp place. It caught my eye because it was exactly like the cameras our parents had given my sister and me for our high school graduation. I looked at it more closely, and I realized, incredibly, that it was in fact the twin to mine!”