Deadly Slipper by Michelle Wan

Author:Michelle Wan [Wan, Michelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-385-67344-0
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2005-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

Gaston felt like his hero, Marshal Ney. Or, rather, what he imagined Marshal Ney must have felt like as he planned and directed the victorious battles of Friedland, Smolensk, and Borodino. The son of a barrel-maker from Saarlouis, Ney had risen to fame and glory in the days of the Empire. Gaston was also from a line of barrel-makers, from Bordeaux.

First, there was the triumphant moment when Mara had presented him with a check for one thousand euros. This had been in the recovery ward in the presence of his wife and daughters. Now that they understood the situation, they had forgiven him and embraced Mara enthusiastically. Even the once-disapproving doctor shook Mara’s hand. The other ward patients thought Gaston had won the lottery. Although his eyes were bruised and bloodshot, tubes still ran out of nearly every orifice, and most parts of his body, including his nose, were heavily bandaged, it had been the best day of his life.

Then followed a deeply gratifying conference with Mara and Julian, both of them hanging on his lips, as it were.

“So you see,” Mara appealed to him, “what we need is a way of getting information on those La Binette people without arousing suspicion.”

“It’s more than that,” said Julian. “We need to be able to get onto their land.”

“Hrrr,” Gaston spoke with difficulty around his tubes. “You ha’ to be ca’ful. I heard sub preddy fuddy stories aboud dem.”

Mara and Julian nodded. Their sighting of Vrac—the man on the bicycle could have been none other—made them alive to this advice.

In the end, Gaston advised them to talk with the people in the château on the hill, Monsieur and Madame de Sauvignac. He knew them personally, having delivered their mail for nearly thirty years. If there was anything to be gotten on those La Binette folk, the de Sauvignacs would have it. He then gave Mara and Julian a barely intelligible version of the history of the de Sauvignacs as he knew it: the early death of one son, the estrangement of the other, the mother gone right off her head. He finished by describing the present melancholy state of affairs in which the old couple lived out their days alone, rattling about in a great cave of a mansion.

The nurse came in to warn Julian and Mara not to tire her patient.

“Good lug,” Gaston gurgled happily after them as they departed. “Leb be doe wha’ habbens.” And he touched the side of his bandaged nose knowingly with his good hand.

•

When Mara telephoned Henri de Sauvignac, she mentioned only her interest in the pigeonnier. The old gentleman was courteous but wary and surprisingly evasive. From this she judged that Gaston must have, at some previous time, given the de Sauvignacs his undoubtedly gruesome version of la canadienne disparue. To them, she was only a stranger with unpleasant questions to ask. Henri de Sauvignac made the excuse that his wife was not well, apologized, and said they could not possibly receive her at the moment.

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