Authors: Félix J. Palma
They had been assigned to the case after the first human remains were discovered, so brutally savaged that even the London press had printed the story. The grisly murders had begun to take place at each full moon, a few days after the cook had nearly poisoned the servants at the castle. Hitherto, the bloodthirsty fiend had been content to disembowel a few cows and sheep, as well as an occasional forest creature. But the beast's ferocity, previously unseen in any known predator, caused the inhabitants of Blackmoor to live in fear of the terrible day when it would finally decide to feast on human flesh. Perhaps that explained why Valerie de Bompard had found it so difficult to engage replacements while her own staff was convalescing. The majority of youngsters in the village had declined the offer, not only because the countess did not pay as promptly as one might expect of such a wealthy lady, but because the thought of working in the castle buried deep within the forest terrified them. Clayton could only sympathize when confronted for the first time with that sinister mass of stones that seemed to have been transported there from some infernal nightmare.
But he soon discovered that the inside of the castle was more daunting still. The dining hall, for example, was a gloomy chamber with lofty ceilings so immense that the fire in the hearth, above which hung a portrait of the countess, could scarcely warm it. In that imitation crypt, lined with tapestries and dusty coats of arms, the vast oak table not only made the guests feel somewhat isolated but forced them to project their voices like tenors on a stage. Clayton studied the four men whose unremarkable biographies could have been written on the back of a playing card: the stout Chief Constable Dombey, the cadaverous Father Harris, the prim Doctor Russell, and the corpulent town butcher, a Mr. Price, who had led the packs of hounds through the forests of Blackmoor. The day Inspector Clayton and Captain Sinclair had arrived from London to take charge of the case, none of these men had made them feel welcome, and yet now, three weeks later, they seemed anxious to help them forget this by smothering them with praise. Clayton glanced toward the end of the interminable table, to where the only person whose admiration he really wanted was sitting. The Countess de Bompard was studying him, an amused expression on her face. Did she consider him arrogant for accepting their praise with such disdain? Ought he to appear indifferent to his own exploits? How was he to know? He always felt terribly vulnerable when exposed to the countess's scrutiny, like a soldier forced during a surprise attack to leave his tent without his full armor.
Clayton glanced at his boss, who was sitting beside him, hoping to find some clue in his demeanor, but Captain Sinclair was busily devouring his roast beef, apparently oblivious to the conversation. Only occasionally would he shake his head distractedly, a stray lock falling across the sinister lens on his right eye, which gave off a reddish glow. It appeared that the veteran inspector had decided to remain in the background, abandoning Clayton to his fate. Clayton couldn't help cursing him for maintaining this stubborn silence now, when throughout their investigation he had talked endlessly, airing his wisdom and experience at every opportunity and adopting a new muddled theory each time a fresh aspect of the case arose. The worst moment of all had been when the captain gave Clayton advice on romantic matters, giving rise to a scene of paternal solicitude the inspector found excruciatingly embarrassing. All the more so because Captain Sinclair, who was incapable of plain speaking, had employed so many metaphors and euphemisms that the two men had ended their conversation without ever knowing what the devil they had been talking about.
“In a nutshell: young as you are,” Chief Constable Dombey was summing up, “you have a remarkable mind, Inspector Clayton. I doubt that anyone sitting at this table would disagree with that. Although, I admit that, to begin with, your methods seemed to me, er . . . somewhat impetuous,” he declared, smiling at Clayton with exaggerated politeness.
The inspector instantly returned his smile, only too aware that the chief constable was unable to resist ending his speech on a critical note, making it clear to everyone present that although these two gentlemen from London had succeeded in solving the case, they had done so only by resorting to unorthodox methods, which he considered beneath him.
“I understand that my actions might have appeared impetuous to you, Chief Constable,” Clayton said good-naturedly. “In fact, that was precisely the impression I wished to give our adversary. However, everything I did was the outcome of deep reflection and the most painstaking deductive reasoning, for which I am indebted to my mentor, Captain Sinclair here. He deserves all the credit,” Clayton added with false modesty, bowing slightly to his superior, who nodded indulgently.
“Why, I understood that from the outset!” Doctor Russell hastened to declare. “It is with good reason that a doctor uses science on a daily basis in the pursuit of his work. Unlike the chief constable here, I didn't allow your youth and apparent inexperience to put me off, Inspector Clayton. I know a scientific mind when I see one.”
The chief constable gave a loud guffaw, causing his enormous belly to wobble.
“Who are you trying to fool, Russell!” he protested, jabbing his fork at him. “Your scientific approach consisted in systematically suspecting all the townsfolk, including old Mrs. Sproles, who is nigh on a hundred and confined to a wheelchair.”
The doctor was about to respond when the butcher piped up.
“Since you're mentioning everyone else's failings, Chief Constable, you might recall your own and apologize for having so readily cast aspersions on others.”
“I assure you, had you owned a cat instead of that enormous hound, I would never haveâ”
But before the chief constable could finish, the countess spoke up from the far end of the table. Everyone turned toward her in amazement, for Valerie de Bompard's tinkling voice had risen above theirs with the delicacy of a dove amid a flock of crows.
“Gentlemen, we are all understandably exhausted after recent events.” She had a hint of a French accent that gave her words a charming lightness. “However, Inspector Clayton is our honored guest, and I am afraid we risk making his head spin with our petty squabbling. You will notice, Inspector,” she addressed Clayton with an almost childlike zeal, “that I say âour,' for despite having arrived in this country as a foreigner only a short time ago I already feel I am English. Not for nothing have the good people of Blackmoor clasped me to their bosom as if they had known me since birth.” Despite the countess's friendly tone, her mocking words fell upon the gathering like a cold, unpleasant rain. “Which is why I should like to thank you once more, on behalf of everyone here, for what you have done for us, for our beloved Blackmoor.”
She raised her glass between slender fingers, so daintily that it looked as if she had willed it to levitate. The others instantly followed suit. “Gentlemen, these have been evil and terrible times for all. For two years now, we have been living in fear, at the mercy of a bloodthirsty beast,” she went on in a theatrical tone like a storyteller before an audience of children, “but, thanks to Inspector Clayton's formidable mind, the nightmare is finally over, and the evil creature has been defeated. I don't believe anyone here will ever forget the night of the fifth of February 1888, when the inspector freed us from our curse. And now, for God's sake, gentlemen”âher mischievous grin twinkled irreverently behind her raised glassâ“let us once and for all drink a toast to Cornelius Clayton, the brave young man who hunted down the werewolf of Blackmoor!”
Since they were too far away from one another to clink glasses, they all raised their champagne flutes in the air. Clayton nodded graciously at the countess's words and forced himself to smile with a mixture of smugness and humility. The chief constable promptly proposed another toast, this time in honor of their hostess, and it was Valerie de Bompard's turn to lower her gaze with that shy expression that always made Clayton's heart miss a beat. It might be worth pointing out at this juncture that the inspector did not consider himself an expert with the ladiesâquite the opposite, though he did pride himself on knowing enough about human behavior to be able to claim with some authority that Valerie de Bompard had nothing in common with the rest of the female race, or indeed with humanity as a whole. Every one of her gestures was a fathomless mystery to him. The shy expression with which she had greeted the chief constable's toast, for example, reminded him less of the decorous behavior of a lady in society than the deceptive calm of the Venus flytrap before it ensnares the wretched insect alighting on its leaves.
As he sat down again, Clayton recalled the unease he had felt the first time he saw her. It had been as if he were in the presence of a creature so fascinating, it was hard to believe she belonged to the tawdry world around her. On that day, the countess had worn a sky-blue silk ensemble with matching gloves and had set it off with a wide-brimmed hat trimmed with an elaborate sprig of leaves and berries into which the milliner, in keeping with the fashion of the day, had tucked a miniature stuffed dormouse and several orange-winged butterflies, which seemed to embody the rebellious thoughts that must be bubbling inside her head. No, Clayton had not known what to make of the countess then, nor did he now. He had only succeeded in falling madly in love with her.
“So tell us, Inspector,” said the vicar, interrupting Clayton's daydream. “Was it clear to you from the start which direction your investigation should take? I ask you because I imagine that, when dealing with the supernatural, one can choose from an almost infinite number of possible theories.”
“Infinity isn't a very practical concept to work with, Vicar, unless our salary were to be augmented accordingly,” Clayton replied. This brought a few laughs from his fellow guests, including, he imagined, the sound of tinkling bells. “That is why, when confronted with events like the Blackmoor atrocities, which are difficult to explain in terms of the established order of the natural world, we must first eliminate all possible rational explanations. Only then can we deem something supernatural, an idea to which my department is clearly open.”
“That is what we should have done!” the doctor remarked ruefully. “Used a bit of common sense. Only, as in all small towns, Blackmoor is full of superstitious people, and we all knowâ”
“Oh, stop pretending you are any different, Russell!” the chief constable rebuked him once more. “I happen to know that you were more scared than anyone. Your maid informed mine that you were melting all your spoons to make a silver bullet, because you claimed it was the only thing that could kill a werewolf. Where on earth did you come up with such a silly idea?”
The doctor was going to deny it but then chuckled instead.
“Well, I'll be damned, the cheeky little gossip! Yes, I confess to melting the teaspoons. And if you'd listened to a word I'd said during these past few months, Chief Constable, you wouldn't be asking me now how I came up with such a silly idea.” He turned away from him and addressed Clayton in a more measured tone, as if speaking to an equal. “The fact is, Inspector, a French colleague of mine, with whom I correspond, told me about a gruesome animal that terrorized the region of Gévaudan in the last century. Many claimed it was a werewolf and that they only succeeded in shooting it down with silver bullets. That is why I melted nearly all our cutlery, much to my wife's displeasure.”
“Well, you got a telling off for nothing, Russell,” the butcher laughed.
“I am aware of that,” the doctor snapped. “But who would have imagined that the werewolf terrorizing our town was in fact Tom Hollister dressed in that ridiculous disguise?”
Everyone looked toward the corner of the dining hall where the doctor was pointing, and a gloomy silence instantly descended on the room. Clayton watched the other guests shake their heads, each immersed in his own recollections as he gazed at the enormous wolf hide draped over a wooden easel, gleaming in the light of the candles dotted sparingly about the room. Sinclair had displayed it there like a trophy so the guests could examine it as they came in. And they had, with a mixture of horror and admiration, for the disguise was a work of art, worthy of an expert taxidermist. The enormous skin, which at first sight they had thought belonged to a giant wolf, was in fact made of several different pelts that had been carefully stitched together and then cut accordingly, with sections of it stuffed with hemp and straw to give the impression of a huge beast with bulging muscles. The forelegs had been stretched over a framework of jointed wooden bars until they vaguely resembled human limbs covered in thick fur, and each had tacked onto its end a glove that bristled with clawlike blades. The ensemble had been crowned with a wolf's head whose mouth had been fixed into a hideously ferocious growl. It came as no surprise that Hollister, who was sturdy enough to support the cumbersome disguise, could transform himself into a terrifying werewolf in anyone's eyes by draping it over his shoulders, fastening it to his arms and legs with special leather straps, and using the animal's head as a helmet. Especially if he only appeared during the full moon, arching his back grotesquely and howling like a wild animal.
Clayton had also been taken in when he first saw the creature standing before him, huge and terrifying, and as he and the others chased it through the dark depths of the forest, his blood pulsing in his temples, his heart pounding in his chest, it was the certainty that they were pursuing a real werewolf that had mitigated his suspicions. Yes, it was a werewolf they were pursuing because, despite Sinclair's evasive answers when he had joined the Special Branch, Clayton knew that such fantastical creatures did exist. But the monster had turned out to be a hoax. Inspector Clayton could not help but feel that this cast something of a pall over his triumph, and he was no longer sure that joining the Special Branch had been the right decision. Perhaps he had been too hasty in accepting Sinclair's offer, having done so in the belief that a world closed to other mortals would open up to him. And yet his first “special” case had consisted of hunting down a yokel wearing an assortment of animal skins. Not to mention falling in love with a woman who lived in a sinister castle.