Michelle Wan - Deadly Slipper: A Novel of Death in the Dordogne

Wan hits her stride as a leading Canadian mystery writer. [She] shows a mastery of mystery and an unmatched flair for the genre.

Edmonton Journal

Laden with local color. A moody and elegant suspense story.

The Washington Post Book World

Full of vicarious thrills, offering sensory indulgences of the floral and culinary kind, with a dash of romance as spice. Lovingly written, with a sensuous style that lingers over the enticing ormouthwatering detail.

San Francisco Chronicle

Terrific Wans characters are well made and the story really clicks.

Margaret Cannon, The Globe and Mail

Transporting. A cross between Peter Mayle and The Orchid Thief.

Los Angeles Times Book Review

THIS BOOK IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED
TO TIM AND GRACE

I am grateful to the many people who helped me along the way by providing local insights and factual information. I wish in particular to thank Alex Skelton for her friendship and valuable comments on the manuscript draft; Frances and Bill Hanna, Stacy Creamer, and Maya Mavjee for believing in this book; and my sister, Grace Anderson, whose generosity, encouragement, and wonderful house, La Charmeraie, were the beginning of everything. Above all, I wish to thank my partner, Tim Johnson, for his love, support, and botanical expertise. We have walked many paths together, and I look forward to walking many more with him. Among the many references used, Pierre Delforges Orchids of Britain & Europe (HarperCollins, 1995) was my bible.

The Dordogne (pronounced dor- DOHN -yuh) is an administrative dpartement of southwestern France. Its landscape is diverse and dramatic; its history and culture rich; its people warm; and its cuisine justly famous.

This is a work of fiction, based in the Dordogne. All characters are imaginary. Invented places have been intermixed with or based on real locations. For example, the place-name Ecoute-la-Pluie was fashioned from the c Ecoute-sil-Pleut (Listen-If-It-Rains) because this one was simply too good to pass up. The geological, culinary, and botanical details of the Dordogne are accurate. Above all, the orchids (with one exception) exist and grow in the kinds of environments described. Their beauty is there to be admired, photographed, and, above all, respected. Wild orchids everywhere are endangered. Please dont pick, trample, or dig up the flowers.

The Dordogne River springs out of the central highlands of France and flows westward through the region that bears its name, nearly five hundred kilometers to the Atlantic. The river, in its middle reaches, runs lazily through a narrow flood plain patterned with small farms. Here and there it swings between deeply undercut limestone cliffs. Small villages and fortified towns dot the landscape. Medieval castles rise from rocky prominences. Everywhere the earth is densely clothed in trees, for this is the heart of Prigord NoirBlack Prigordnamed for the darkness of its great forests. Within their shadow, ancient footpaths wind over root and stone.

A young woman was walking on just such a forest path one day in the spring. Her stride was long, the stride of a seasoned hiker. On her back she carried a green canvas pack. She wore jeans and a blue windbreaker, the hood of which was pushed back, revealing dark, straight, shoulder-length hair parted in the middle and fastened at the temples with metal barrettes. Her ankle-high leather boots were caked with chalky mud. A camera hung unsheathed from one shoulder. Apart from the clatter of a nearby stream, the only other sounds to accompany the womans passage were her own soft footfalls, the slight, rhythmical swish of her nylon jacket.

Her way now led uphill to an elevated meadow sprinkled with yellow cowslips, violets, and pale bladder campion. The woman paused, eyes searching until she spotted a scattering of odd-looking, greenish-red plants with hooded flowers, each formed around a deep throat. She approached to study them more closely, then took up her camera, slipping off her backpack at the same time for greater ease of movement. Carefully, she composed her shot, squatting low over one of the flowers, adjusting the lens meticulously for light and distance: first a close-up of the full plant, including basal leaves and inflorescence; then, shifting back with a crablike motion and refocusing to take in the immediate growing environment.

She capped her lens, gathered up her backpack, and walked on. Her path wound steeply upward over stony ground. Below her spread a rumpled panorama of wooded hills and valleys. Farther on, at the edge of a small clearing, she saw something that made her catch her breath: a plant bearing a single, fantastic blossom on a slender stalk. Her eyes widened and her lips curved in a smile as she crouched to marvel and admire. She prepared to photograph the flower at close range, adjusting her lens again, carefully pressing down the surrounding grasses for a better view. As she rose to back up for the longer shot, somethinga streak of motioncut across her line of sight. Startled, she looked up.

Talons outstretched, the buzzard struck so swiftly that the rabbit at the far side of the clearing had no sense of danger until it was pinioned with violent force. A shriek, a brief struggle, and the small animal was borne limply up beneath a beating canopy of wings. Raptor and prey disappeared beyond the trees. A moment later, a single feather, turning brightly in the air, drifted slowly to the ground. The woman watched transfixed.

Other eyes watched her.

Maradonne, repeated the telephone voice. Ive been referred to you by someone who knows you, or knows of youMonsieur La Pouge.

The accent was what he called straight-up American. Not a laid-back southern drawl. Not in-your-face New Yorkese, where talk rhymed with squawk. But neutral, the tone slightly urgent.

Ah, said Julian Wood, pushing his glasses up onto his forehead. He did not know any Maradonne. Or any La Pouge person, either.

Because of your knowledge of wildflowers.

Julian thought hard. A fellow member of the Socit JeannetteDaffodil Societythe local wildflower amateurs club? Or an enthusiast who had come across his book, Wildflowers of the Dordogne/ Fleurs sauvages de la Dordogne, what he liked to think of as the bilingual bible on local flora?

He was standing in his slippers on the stone floor of his kitchen, which, since it was the best-lit and largest room of his ancient cottage, also served as his workshop. He fiddled with a sprig of dry-pressed pepperwort that he had been in the process of framing. He wanted to get back to it.

I have a problem, continued the voice, and I need your advice. That is, your expertise. I wonder if I could ask for an hour of your time? On a consulting basis, of course.

Consulting? Well, he could consult with the best of them, but what on earth was this woman on about?

Im afraidwhatumexactly is it that you want?