The Curse of the Singing Wolf (2 page)

Dr Watson noted the lack of
epaulets and warmed to the man at once. “
Bon-jour
,” he
returned in his best schoolboy French.

“I may perhaps you help?” the
man said, switching at once to English, guessing that the
tired-looking, wheezy, older man and the attractive young lady who
had just entered minus baggage might be
les Anglais,
touring
le phare,
and now in need of directions to the popular
Bellevue Casino.

Full of renewed optimism, Dr
Watson addressed the man with none of the bitterness that had
soured his tone less than half an hour ago. “
Oui, oui
,
mon-sieur
, I am enquiring if you have a vacancy?”

The concierge didn’t often get
it wrong. He scanned the curious couple a second time. The
tired-looking man with the puffy pillows under his eyes and the
badly trimmed moustache, dressed in tweed wool under a brown
herringbone coat with a brown wool scarf that looked like it had
been hand-knitted by a great-aunt a hundred years ago, and the
jeune femme
, much more cosmopolitan, wearing a charming
costume Chasseur in velour de laine, fur-trimmed, and carrying a
fur muff that looked like genuine mink which matched a Slavic-style
mink hat, defied classification.

Vacancy –
quelle
surprise
!

“
Monsieur
, will be
requiring a double suite?
Non
?
Chambres ensemble
?
Separate
salles de bain
? Is that what
monsieur
would
prefer?”

“Oh, I should have clarified,”
muttered Dr Watson, feeling slightly embarrassed, “just the one
room with
salle de bain
and if possible,” he finished
slightly less hopefully, “a view of the sea and the lighthouse or
perhaps a window overlooking the courtyard garden.”

The concierge cocked a thin
dark eyebrow and smiled at the Countess. “Madame will not be
requiring a room of her own?”

The Countess felt the welcoming
ambience of the foyer tug at her heartstrings. It was a homely
establishment and the last thing she expected to find in a popular
seaside resort brimming with glitz, glamour, and bourgeois
trimmings.

“I have a perfectly adequate
suite at the Hotel du Palais but your establishment has a welcoming
ambience and it would be most convenient if I could stay at the
same hotel as my travelling companion and good friend, Dr Watson.
If it is possible to have a suite on the same floor –
une
chambre avec salle de bain donner sur le mer
- I will arrange
to transfer my belongings
toute de suite
.
Cependent, j’ai
besoin de deux chambres pres de moi pour deux servants. C’est
possible?
”

“
Certainement, madame
,”
obliged the concierge, slipping once more into his native tongue.
“
Nous avons deux chambres, deux salles de bain, donner sur le
mer et le phare, avec le balcon et le petit salon tres joli sur le
troisieme etage. Pas problem! Nous n’avons que quatre personnes
actuellement. Ce n’est pas le haut saison.
”

The Countess bestowed a
luminous smile on the concierge that never failed to find favour.
“
Je vous remercie. Je suis la comtesse Volodymyrovna
.” She
swapped back to English for the benefit of Dr Watson. “My two
servants will be along shortly with our luggage. I will pay for all
four rooms in advance – let us say a sojourn of one week. Your
hotel serves breakfast and dinner?”

“
Le petit dejeuner, le
dejeuner et le diner, la comtesse
.
Il y a chef
formidable!
”

She turned to her companion.
“Did you catch all that?”

Dr Watson was beaming.
“Breakfast, lunch and dinner - let’s go back and arrange to
transfer our luggage at once. But I must insist on paying for all
four rooms. And please don’t argue. It is my treat!”

Waiting discretely in the
shadows but listening attentively to the exchange was a lobby boy,
not much more than twelve or thirteen years of age. He wore the
standard uniform of lobby boys with shiny brass buttons, a trim of
gold gimp and a cap like a fez. The tightness of his trousers
indicated that like most boys his age he was growing out of his
uniform rather rapidly. The trouser hem sat above his ankles,
revealing a pair of thick woollen socks and a pair of spit-polished
lace-up boots. It was a good profession for boys from impoverished
families and some of the cleverer lads could even rise to the role
of concierge in the course of time.

The concierge clicked his
fingers and the boy snapped to attention. He stood as stiff as a
ramrod while being addressed.

“Milo, tell Desi to prepare the
twin chambers on the third floor at once, plus the two small
chambers in the west wing for two servants.”

The boy moved like the mistral
but without any of the destructiveness.

The Countess arranged for the
cost of all meals to be charged to her account and for her servants
to have their meals in their own rooms to avoid other guests
getting their noses out of joint. She and Dr Watson would
not
be taking lunch for she had already set her heart on
lunching at the
crêperie
overlooking the Plage Miramar, but
they reserved a table for two for dinner in the hotel dining
room.

As they turned to go, the door
flew open, letting in a gust of icy cold Atlantic wind, a fine
flurry of Basque sand and a tall, thin, angular, immaculately
groomed gentleman. He crossed the foyer with buoyant steps, moving
briskly straight toward them, taking in the pair of mismatched
interlopers at a glance and briefly meeting the Countess’s gaze
with an appraising glint in his sky blue eyes, before breaking off
abruptly and veering adroitly toward the desk of the concierge.
Some ruffled flaxen curls contrasted with a well-trimmed triangular
wedge of golden fluff sprouting from a pointy chin. One couldn’t
help thinking that he had been born into the wrong century for he
had the air of a Regency dandy and moved with the dandified swagger
of a minor aristocrat born with a silver spoon in one hand and a
cheroot in the other from which he supped and smoked with equal
pleasure - the sort of gentleman who would have cut an equal dash
in a saddle as on a dance floor.

The concierge addressed him as
Prince Orczy.

A blustery breeze whistled
around the rock and stung their faces, playing havoc with the sign
above the door which swung back and forth in violent protest. There
would be a squall by nightfall, possibly a storm. The doctor and
the Countess had just gone a few steps down the path when the
she-wolf broke loose. Had they been standing on the front step the
sign might have cracked a skull or two. The Prince and the
concierge came rushing out to check on the destruction.

Anxious to get on with
transferring their luggage before rain set in, our two sleuths
walked quickly down the rocky steps to the point where the path
curved, then paused and looked back to see how the men were faring
with the broken sign. The sign had been taken down and the two men
had disappeared back inside the hotel.

A woman wearing a black
peignoir was now standing on the balcony that opened out from the
topmost room in the tallest tower. Long black hair was blowing back
from her face as she faced toward the open sea. The blown-back hair
was held aloft by the wind, giving it the appearance of the plumage
of a bird in flight, wings extended, effortlessly riding the
thermals - not a common rook or an old crow, but a black eagle,
glorious and majestic…l’aigle noire.

Plage Miramar ran into the
Grande Plage and finished at the pretty Port des Pecheurs. Along
one side unfurled a path like a silk ribbon - the Quai de la Grande
Plage Allée – which was the promenade of choice for those who
wished to be seen since it skirted right past the Belle Epoque
edifice known to all and sundry as the Hotel du Palais.

Dr Watson and Countess
Volodymyrovna had decided to work off their crepes and beat the
storm by walking to the Port des Pecheurs straight after lunch
rather than returning to the Hotel Louve to see how Fedir and Xenia
were faring with the luggage when they bumped into an acquaintance
of the Countess, or rather an old acquaintance of her late
step-aunt. It was the Princess Roskovsky.

The frail, white-haired, old
lady, who looked as fragile as a flower, was on her way to the
Eglise Orthodox on the rue de russie just behind the Hotel du
Palais to light a candle for her long deceased son when she
immediately latched onto the arm of the Countess like a barnacle
and beseeched her to accompany her so that she could catch up on
all the latest news concerning the step-child of her dear departed
friend, Countess Zoya Volodymyrovna.

Dr Watson, hiding his
disappointment rather badly, continued the promenade to the Port
des Pecheurs alone.

The two women walked arm in
arm, chatting about the tragic death of dear Countess Zoya, bitten
by a tiger snake in Australia and buried so far from her Ukrainian
homeland before moving on to the Countess’s short-lived marriage to
an Australian who took his own life after a tragic horse-riding
accident that left him crippled.

Russians loved nothing more
than a rich tragedy and the old Princess was in maudlin heaven with
her shuddering sighs. After they had said a silent prayer and lit a
candle for Prince Dmitri and several dozen dear departed souls,
they decamped to the nearest Viennese coffee shop where the
Countess decided to lighten the tone.

“What can you tell me about
Prince Orczy?”

Princess Roskovsky’s
barely-there blonde eyebrows registered her surprise. “Are you
searching for a new husband?”

The Countess laughed.
“Certainly not!”

“Then why the interest in
Orczy?”

“He is staying at the same
hotel and I just wondered about his background.”

“Are you not staying at the
Hotel du Palais?”

“No, I checked out this
morning. I moved into the Hotel Louve.”

The Princess gave a shocked
gasp. “You are not serious?”

“Yes, quite, why do you
ask?”

“It has a certain
reputation.”

“Reputation?”

“Hardly any women stay there,
by that I mean none that would be welcomed into decent society, and
it attracts the most - how shall I put it? - radical men.”

The Countess was intrigued.
“Radical?”

“Men of dubious character, men
who flaunt convention, men who tear up social rules and then
proceed to rewrite them to suit themselves as if none of it
matters, men like Anton Orczy. He is Montenegrin, related to
several royal families on his mother’s side - a black sheep, no,
worse, a wolf in sheep’s clothing; they say he killed a man in cold
blood. A duel - can you credit it! – in this day and age! He
behaves like a character from a Dostoyevsky novel. He moves from
one baccarat table to the next. His poor mother is always settling
his bills, paying off his creditors, hushing things up. Monte
Carlo, Alexandria, Constantinople, Biarritz – he goes wherever
there is a casino and a clutch of dull, ugly, American heiresses he
can charm. But why on earth are
you
staying at the Hotel
Louve?”

The Countess explained about
the unfortunate mix-up with Dr Watson’s room.

“Surely there are other
hotels?” the Princess lamented, rolling a pair of rheumy old eyes
that still had spark, wondering why a cosmopolitan Countess would
choose as her travelling companion a provincial Scottish doctor
sans title and wealth.

“With the World Spiritualist
Congress in full swing, decent rooms are hard to come by. Besides,
the Louve looks utterly charming.”

“Just like Orczy,” the old
Princess sneered sardonically.

“It has a tranquil ambience and
only four other guests.”

“That says it all, my dear
Varvaruchka!”

“By the way, who owns the
hotel?”

“Ah, good question! It is owned
by a woman who goes by the name of the Singing Wolf, an ex-opera
singer as dubious as her guests. No one really knows anything about
her, and what they think they know cannot be verified. I’ve heard
her called everything from Portuguese to Catalan; Syrian to
Persian; Corsican to Moroccan; Sardinian to Sicilian; the list goes
on and on. People will swear she is this or that but when you press
them they cannot say why they think so or who told them.”

“Is the hotel her only source
of income?”

“Oh, hardly, she’s fabulously
wealthy, but that is the other thing – no one knows where her vast
fortune came from. There are rumours, of course, but nothing you
can believe. She couldn’t have earned it singing. She wasn’t at it
for long enough. She was a truly brilliant soprano, a real diva,
for it is only sopranos who can be called
diva
, but she
cannot be much more than forty and she has been retired at least
six or seven years now. I heard her sing Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto
in St Petersburg many years back. Her performance was stupendous –
the Tsarina was thrilled. That little maritime fort perched on that
windswept rock facing the full force of every Atlantic gale would
lose money, not earn it, and who would put up with the glare from
le phare
burning through the windows all night long – I hope
you requested a room on the garden side! On a brighter note, I’ve
heard she does occasionally perform an impromptu aria to the
delight of her paying guests, so I suppose that’s why she hangs
onto the hotel - once a diva, always a diva.”

The Countess decided to
backtrack. “You mentioned rumours about her wealth?”

The old aristocrat waved a
suede-gloved hand in the air like someone fanning a fly. “There are
so many rumours they become a blur. I can hardly distinguish one
from another. The only one that comes to mind is the one that tells
how she discovered a cache of gold buried by the Cathars –
le
tresor cathar!
- in some mountain stronghold not far from
Lourdes. A romantic fairy tale! I wouldn’t be surprised if she put
it about herself to add to her own mystique. And I seriously doubt
it for another reason - her jewellery is all shiny and new. There
is no old gold or antique silver. It is that horrible modern
rubbish. She is never seen without some hideous new bauble designed
by that talentless Rene Lolloque.”