Deadly Slipper Read Free Page A

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!”
    Julian regarded her doubtfully, eyebrows jacked up to the top of his head. “How could you be so sure? There must have been thousands of tourists with cameras like that coming through the Dordogne in the past—what did you say?—nineteen years.”
    Mara hesitated, then gave him her proof: “There were initials written on the inside of the case.
B.D.
Beatrice Dunn.”
    “Ah.”
    She set the ice pack aside, swung her feet to the ground, and sat facing him squarely. “But that wasn’t all. Needless to say, I bought the camera. After I got it home, I found there was still film in it! I didn’t try to have the film developed myself. I didn’t want to risk a commercial lab. After all, it might be evidence, and the film was bound to be in a fragile state. I took everything to the police in Périgueux. They weren’t very interested in reopening a