Deadly Slipper Read Online Free PDF

the crumbling stone wall between his land and the walnut plantation of Madame Léon, from whom he got his eggs. The cherry tree at the bottom of his garden was in full and glorious flower. A cuckoo rang out in the valley.
    He should have been feeling satisfied with life. The sale of two dozen herbarium frames to a hotel in Le Bugue had replenished his bank account. The prospect of a new landscaping client (referred by Mara Dunn, and rich from the sound of it) made his immediate financial situation look even better. But he was restless.
    First there was the
Cypripedium.
Its weird, beguiling beauty haunted him. Orchid fever, he had called it. Where tropical species were concerned, it drove a multibillion-dollar industry. Nice, ordinary people were compelled by a dark-side lust to possess these plants, to engage in the costly, competitive, and secret business of searching for and breeding them. For two centuries, European and American orchid hunters had trekked, at no little risk to their necks, into the jungles of the Amazon, Borneo, Sumatra insearch of new, undiscovered species. Temperate-clime orchids commanded a less extravagant piece of this botanical market. All the same, the fanaticism of fanciers and collectors was no less acute. The possibility that a totally unknown species of Lady’s Slipper grew in some hidden corner right there in the Dordogne made Julian almost frantic with desire. If it still existed, he knew he had to find it. But where to begin?
    And then there was Mara Dunn. He recalled the flicker of firelight on her face, her dark eyes, the set of her chin. Not the kind of person, he sensed, to leave things as they were. He had been surprised and then relieved when several days had passed without a phone call from her. Nevertheless, he felt her looming ominously on his horizon. The thought brought on an unpleasant pressure behind his eyes, which always foreshadowed a headache.
    He had been toying with a plan, more out of self-defense than a desire to help her. Now seemed the time to put it into action. Except that he wasn’t sure if he should venture seeing Paul so soon. He hesitated, then made up his mind. Not bothering to lock his door—he rarely did—he set off down the road.
    It was a brisk, fifteen-minute walk from Julian’s cottage to the village of Grissac. Along the way, Edith loped up to join him. Pleased to have company, he gave a token scratch to her silky ears—much her best feature in his opinion. The vagabond bitch was exactly the kind of female that suited him: handsome,wayward (she came and went as she pleased), but constant (she always turned up at mealtimes); full of her own plans, yet often willing to give him the pleasure of her company for long rambles or drowsy winter evenings by the fire. Best of all, she was not his. Not his responsibility, not his blame.
    Grissac consisted of a few dozen houses built in the style typical of Périgord Noir: tall, two-storied structures of warm, honey-colored limestone, narrow windows flanked by heavy wooden shutters, and roofs steeply pitched to bear the immense weight of overlapping layers of
lauzes
, rough-hewn limestone slabs, the traditional roofing material. Its main features were an incomplete thirteenth-century central arcade surrounding a grassy square, which doubled as municipal parking lot and marketplace (Thursday mornings), an elementary school, and the Chez Nous bistro. It was Friday, past noon, and, apart from the voices of children behind the high playground wall, there was little sign of life.
    Chez Nous, a large, square building on a deep plot of land, was situated just off the
place.
Julian found his friend Paul Brieux at the front, washing winter’s grit from the windows.
    “Missed a bit there,” Julian observed, playing the jolly kibitzer. His French was good, although it bore remnant traces of his English background. At the moment he was unsure of his welcome. In last Saturday’s friendly rugby match (there had been