Deadly Slipper Read Free Page B

missing person case nearly two decades old. However, I finally persuaded them to examine the film and have it processed in their lab.”
    “And these,” he surmised grimly, “were the photos you showed me?”
    She nodded. “It was a roll of thirty-six, intact, although in pretty bad condition, as you saw.”
    “Well, did the police at least try to trace the camera? What about fingerprints?”
    “There were residual prints on the film, but they were too deteriorated to be analyzed. The police did try to trace the camera but got no further than I had. The
brocanteur
in Villeréal could only say that it hadcome from a clear-out of someone else’s stock, an old junk dealer named la Camelote who died last year. The police kept the negatives but gave me back the camera and a copy of the prints. They aren’t willing to take it further.”
    Julian grunted. “I suppose to them it’s an old incident. Cold file.”
    “That’s right. Most of them weren’t even around when it happened. However, there’s one man I’ve had contact with on and off. Lieutenant La Pouge. He’s retired now, but he actually worked on Bedie’s case. I looked him up again. He wasn’t very encouraging, though. He dismissed the initials as coincidence and said the photos could have been taken by anyone who’d done the usual tourist circuit and who liked wildflowers.”
    “He may have had a point.”
    “But that’s just it,” Mara cried, her frustration breaking through. “That was the most important part. Once I found out what the flowers were, I realized that was the link.
Bedie, you see, loved orchids!
She was what you’d call an orchid freak.”
    “I see,” said Julian. He thought a moment and then nodded his comprehension. “Sure. Orchid fever. Gets in your blood. With some people it’s an obsession, especially the tropicals. Fanciers spend big money on them. The field varieties you get around here are free but, for my taste, just as addictive. I know a Dutchman who hikes around France every spring with a donkey, just orchid hunting. His wiferemains in Amsterdam. I’m not even sure they’re still on speaking terms.”
    “Well, I’d say Bedie was obsessed. I tried to explain the importance of this to the police. I got nowhere. And that was when he thought of you.”
    “Who?”
    “Lieutenant La Pouge. He’d heard you were something of a local authority.”
    “Oh well!” Julian lounged back in his chair.
    “So, you see, I thought if you could help me …” She locked her gaze on his. “Julian, I’m not only convinced these photos were taken by my sister, I believe that somehow they’re a clue to where she was before … before whatever happened to her.”
    He looked startled, almost aghast. “But they’re just photographs of flowers. There’s nothing in them that could indicate—”
    “Maybe not directly. But I was hoping they could serve as a—a kind of signpost…”
    She trailed off, not saying to where, but she could see him thinking it: a shallow grave?
    “Please,” she said after a long silence, “these photos are the only lead I have. Won’t you have another look at them?”

TWO
    There were thirty-four of them, each numbered on the back in order of exposure. Julian sat down next to Mara on the sofa and laid them out in a line on the coffee table. He put his glasses on and scanned the array. As he had noted before, all showed some degree of damage, streaks and staining, as if by light or moisture. Not surprising if they really had been taken by Mara’s sister, with the camera lying about god knows where for nineteen years. It was a bloody miracle that the film had survived at all.
    He was able to identify most of the flowers easily: dainty Helleborines; pink, conical Pyramidals; frilly Lady Orchids; white Butterflies. The final frames were the hardest to make out. They had suffered the greatest deterioration because they had formed the overlying tail of the film.
    “What do you think?” Mara asked.
    He