Synopses & Reviews
Interior decorator Mara Dunn and orchidologist Julian Wood team up again to solve two murders in Michelle Wans charming new botanical mystery.Mara is renovating the manor house of the wealthy Christophe de Bonfond when she discovers the body of a murdered infant. The body, concealed for more than a century, brings to light unexpected and critical information on an elusive Lady's Slipper orchid that Julian avidly seeks. Christophe hires genealogist Jean-Claude Fournier to exonerate his ancestors, only to have the expert unleash even more terrifying suspicions. When violent death strikes in the present day, Mara and Julian begin an investigation of their own that leads them to uncover a trail of murder spanning many decades.
Synopsis
1
WEDNESDAY, 28 APRIL 2004
The first shattering blow echoed down the line of empty rooms. The big man stepped back, raised the iron mallet again. It struck home with another sickening thud.
Christophe de Bonfond recoiled at the first hit, turned away at the second. His normally cheerful face was pale.
"Je ne peux pas . . ." he murmured to his companion. "I can't. It really is too much."
"Then don't," Mara Dunn responded in French, drawing him away by the arm. She was a small, slim woman, forty-something, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that read in English: Outside of a dog a man's best friend is a book. Inside of a dog it is very dark. This was attributed to Groucho Marx. Her head was topped with short-cropped hair. She had dark eyes, straight brows, and a decisive chin. Her expression, normally vivid, was at the moment tightly composed. Why had he insisted on being there? She said in an even tone that belied her exasperation, "We'll leave them to it, shall we?"
The little man nodded, shuddering as the steady, awful cadence of blows continued. In his haste to be gone, he pulled free of her and scuttled through a doorway leading into a small antechamber that gave access to the stairs.
"Smokey," Mara called over her shoulder, "I'll be down on the terrace with Monsieur de Bonfond if you and Theo need anything."
Aristophanes Serafim, otherwise known as Smokey the Greek because he was from Thessalonika and a chain smoker, paused in the middle of his swing. A limp Gitane clung like a tubular growth to his lower lip. His sweat-stained T-shirt was stretched over a barrel chest and a large belly.
"What would we need?" He spoke French with an accent as thick as feta cheese. The blunt head of the mallet completed its arc. A large sheet of plaster crashed down around him in a cloud of dust, exposing roughly dressed stone that had not seen the light of day for more than a hundred years. Smokey's younger brother, Theo, equally big, sledgehammer in hand, stepped up to inspect the damage.
"Well, just in case." Mara's eyes lingered anxiously on the pair. She had not worked with the brothers before and was not reassured by what she had seen so far. Their setup had been casual at best; the necessary precision of the task they were undertaking seemed beyond their comprehension. "Please try to take things down as carefully as possible." She glanced up. "You're sure of the bracing?" Her greatest fear was the roof collapsing.
Both men regarded her with indifference. The Serafims were good at demolishing walls but didn't seem to care much what else came down with them.
***
The terrace ran across the back of the main part of the house, overlooking an expanse of geometrically clipped yews and boxwood: an eighteenth-century garden done in the Italian manner, for all that this was twenty-first-century southwestern France. In fact, everything about Aurillac Manor placed it more in the past than in the present. It was a large U-shaped structure, consisting of an original central block with wings, added on at later times, extending backward to enclose part of the garden. Built of local stone and along traditional lines, with Early Renaissance and Baroque touches, the overall effect was charming if s
Synopsis
Michelle Wan was born in Kunming, China, in the middle of an air raid. Her early years were spent in India, and she has subsequently lived in the USA, England, Paris, Harare, and Rio de Janeiro. Her passions include French food, Brazilian novellas, walking, and orchids. She and her husband, a botanist, visit the Dordogne annually to photograph and chart wild orchids. She speaks English, Portuguese, and French. She is a great-grand niece of Sun Yat-Sen. Her first Dordogne mystery, Deadly Slipper, which introduced Mara Dunn and Julian Wood, was published in 2005.
About the Author
MICHELLE WAN, the author of Deadly Slipper, was born in Kunming, China. She was raised in the United States and has lived in India, England, France, and Brazil. She and her husband, a tropical horticulturist, visit the Dordogne annually to photograph and chart wild orchids. They live in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.