White Fire p-13

by Douglas Preston

  I watched it draw near, ready with my pistol should the beast get too close to Holmes. But then — when the animal was some hundred yards from my friend, and just as it came into view of Holmes himself — the most peculiar thing happened. The beast stopped short, creeping forwards with savage menace.

  “Good evening, Sir Percival,” Holmes said matter-of-factly.

  The beast greeted this sally with a vicious bark. I was by now out of my blind and approaching the wolf from the rear. The wolf abruptly reared up on its hind legs. Drawing closer, whilst trying my best to conceal the sound of my approach, I saw to my astonishment that the creature was, in fact, human: Sir Percival, dressed in what appeared to be a heavy bearskin coat. The soles of his leather boots had been fitted out with makeshift claws, and wolf pads dangled by large buttons from his gloves. One hand appeared holding a pistol; the other a large, claw-like implement with a heavy handle and long, wicked tines. His fair, thinning hair shone a pale, unnatural white in the light of the rising moon. I found myself almost paralysed by this bizarre and wholly unexpected turn of events.

  Sir Percival laughed again — a maniacal laugh. “Good evening, Mister Holmes,” he said. “You shall make an excellent repast.” And with a raving torrent of words that I could not begin to follow or understand, he cocked his pistol and raised it at Holmes.

  This extremity broke my paralysis. “Stand down, Sir Percival,” I cried from his flank, my own weapon raised. “I have you in my sights.”

  Caught off guard, Sir Percival wheeled towards me, aiming in my direction. As he did so, I squeezed off a shot, catching him in the arm. With a cry of pain, the man clutched at his shoulder, then fell to his knees. In a moment, Holmes was at his side. He relieved Sir Percival of his weapon and the grotesque device — no doubt, I realized, used to simulate the lacerations of a wolf’s claws — then turned to me.

  “I should be glad, Watson, if you could head into town as quickly as you can,” he said calmly. “Return with a dog-cart and several able-bodied men. I shall remain here with Sir Percival.”

  The rest of the particulars can be summed up in short order. After Sir Percival was taken up by the authorities and remanded to the police-court, we returned to Aspern Hall. Holmes spoke briefly, in turn, with the magistrate; young Edwin Aspern; and Miss Selkirk, and then insisted on our returning to London by the very next train.

  “I must confess, Holmes,” I told him as our carriage made its way along the road back towards Hexham just as dawn was breaking, “that whilst I have often been in the dark in past cases, this is your most singular surprise yet. Without doubt it will prove your coup-de-mâitre. How on earth did you know that a human, not a wolf, was behind these outrages — and how in particular did you know it was Sir Percival, if in fact you knew that at all?”

  “My dear Watson, you do me a disservice,” Holmes replied. “Naturally I knew it was Sir Percival.”

  “Then pray explain yourself.”

  “Several clues presented themselves, for anyone with the discernment to sift the important from the mere coincident. To begin with, we have the madman — the first victim. When there is more than one killing to reckon with, Watson, you must always pay particular attention to the first. Frequently the motive, and therefore the entire case, rests upon that particular crime.”

  “Yes, but the first victim was nothing but a mindless vagrant.”

  “He might have been so in recent years, but he was not always thus. Recall, Watson, that in his ravings, a single word stood out again and again: carrot.”

  I recalled this, and Holmes’s fascination with it, all too well. How it could have any significance seemed to defy credibility. “Go on,” I said.

  “Carroting, you must understand, was a process by which animal fur is bathed in a solution of mercury nitrate, in order to render the hairs more supple, thus producing a superior felt.” At this last word, he threw a significant glance in my direction.

  “Felt,” I repeated. “You mean, for the making of hats?”

  “Precisely. The solution is of an orange colour, hence the term carroting. However, this process had rather severe side effects on those who worked with it, which is why its use today is much reduced. When mercury vapours are inhaled over a long enough period of time — particularly, for our purposes, in the close quarters of a hat-making operation — toxic and irreversible effects almost inevitably follow. One develops tremors of the hands; blackened teeth; slurred speech. In severe cases, dementia or outright insanity can occur. Hence the term mad as a hatter.” Holmes waved a hand. “I know all this, of course, due to my long-abiding interest in chemistry.”

  “But what does all this have to do with Sir Percival?” I asked.

  “Let us proceed in a linear fashion, if you please. You will recall that Constable Frazier believed our vagabond to be a drunkard, citing as evidence the man’s slurred speech and impaired movement. And yet he detected no smell of alcohol on the man’s breath. I immediately assumed that the real cause of the man’s affliction was not drunkenness, but rather the effects of mercury poisoning. His mention of ‘carrots’ explained how this poisoning had come about: as an occupational hazard of making felt, from working as a hatter. I naturally realized that there could be no coincidence between Sir Percival’s former occupation and the sudden arrival of this curious fellow upon the scene. No: this man had clearly once been in business with Sir Percival. Recall, if you will, two things. First, how this man had raved about betrayal, about getting a judgement from a court of law. Second, how Sir Percival made his fortune by a unique felt-making process — a process, you may recollect, he refused to discuss with me when I broached the topic at Aspern Hall.”

  The carriage continued its jostling way towards Hexham, and Holmes went on. “Remarking on these facts, I began to consider the possibility that this man, now sadly reduced, had once been Sir Percival’s business partner — and, perhaps, the true author of that revolutionary felt-making process. Now, years later, he had returned to square accounts with his former partner, to expose and ruin him. In other words, this whole matter began as a mere business dispute; one that Sir Percival solved in a traditional manner — by murder. It seemed to me highly likely that when this fellow appeared in Hexham, Sir Percival had promised him amends, and had agreed to meet with him in a lonely spot at the edge of the bog. There, Sir Percival murdered his former partner, and — to keep any suspicion from ever redounding upon him — tore the body cruelly, even going so far as to leave some tentative bite marks, so as to make it appear the work of a large and savage beast, most likely a wolf.”

  “And in so doing, he seemed to have been entirely successful,” I said. “Why, then, kill again?”

  “The second person killed, you will recall, was a naturalist from Oxford. He was heard in the local inn debunking the rumours of a wolf, declaring that no wolves still survived in England. By killing this man, Sir Percival accomplished several goals. He silenced the man’s insistence on the extinction of the English wolf — the very last thing Sir Percival would want was attention returning to the initial killing. Also, by this time he had of course heard the rumours in Hexham about a wolf being the culprit in his partner’s murder. In case he was spotted, he had now had the opportunity to fit out a large bear coat, complete with wolf-paw gloves and boots that he — with his hatter’s skill — could make entirely convincing. He used this disguise to run to and from the second murder scene on all fours. I believe, Watson, he was actually hoping for a witness this time, in order to inflame the rumours of a man-eating wolf. In this, at least, he was fortunate.”

  “Yes, I can see a cruel logic in such a course of action,” I said. “But what, then, of the constable?”

  “Constable Frazier was, if not the world’s most accomplished investigator, a man of great doggedness and persistence. No doubt Sir Percival perceived him to be a threat. Recall how the constable hinted at certain suspicions about the wolf’s behaviour. Those suspicions, I would hazard, had to do with why th
e wolf tracks entered the bog but never came out again. The constable would have remarked on this after the second murder, if not before. I myself found this curious phenomenon to be the case after the constable’s own death, when I made a circuit of the bog. Wolf tracks entered the region from the east; only human tracks emerged from the west. Sir Percival, you see, would have entered the bog on all fours, as a wolf; he would have used the concealing vegetation to come out from the bog as merely himself, should anyone encounter him. The constable must have mentioned his suspicions to Sir Percival — remember, Watson, his remarking he’d been to the Hall just the day before, to warn young Aspern to cease his hunting of the wolf — and in so doing, signed his own death warrant.”

  Hearing these revelations, presented in Holmes’s complacent tone, was nothing less than astounding. I could only shake my head.

  “What clinched the case for me was Sir Percival’s cavalier, indeed encouraging, attitude towards his son’s hunting of the beast. He seemed to evince total unconcern for young Edwin’s well-being. Why? At this point in the game, the answer was obvious to me: he knew his son was in no danger from the wolf, because the wolf was himself. Then, of course, there was the manner in which Sir Percival spilt his brandy.”

  “What of it?”

  “He was making great pains to hide his trembling hands. That incipient palsy demonstrated to my satisfaction that he himself was well on the road to madness brought on by mercury poisoning, and that he would soon be reduced to the same pitiable state as his former partner.”

  By this time we had arrived at the Hexham station; we descended with our valises and mounted the platform, just in time for the 8:20 to Paddington.

  “Armed with these suspicions,” Holmes went on, “I went to London. It did not take me long to uncover the facts I was looking for: that, many years before, Sir Percival did indeed have a business partner. At the time, he accused Sir Percival of stealing a valuable patent, claiming it as his own. He was adjudged a lunatic, however, and was committed to an asylum — through the offices of Sir Percival himself. This poor unfortunate was released just days before the initial appearance of the raving madman in Kielder Forest.

  “I returned from London, secure in the knowledge that, not only was there no man-eating wolf, but Sir Percival himself was the murderer of three men. The only question remaining was how to catch him up. I couldn’t very well reveal the truth — that there was no wolf. No; I had to find a reason to manoeuvre Sir Percival into making me his next target, and to arrange it, so to speak, on home ground. Hence my dramatic announcement of having solved the case — and my nocturnal shortcut across the open countryside, between the bog and the forest edge, site of the previous killings. Unless I had made a mistake in my calculations, I felt certain Sir Percival would take the opportunity to make me his fourth victim.”

  “But you undertook that walk only because Sir Percival’s carriage broke an axle,” I said. “How could you have anticipated such an eventuality?”

  “I did not anticipate it, Watson. I precipitated it.”

  “You mean—?” I stopped.

  “Yes. I fear I committed an act of sabotage against Sir Percival’s brougham. Perhaps I should send down a cheque for its repair.”

  A faint whistle echoed out across the morning sky. A moment later, the express came into view. Within minutes we were boarding. “I confess myself astonished,” I said as we entered our compartment. “You are like the artist that outdoes his best work. There remains only one particular I do not understand.”

  “In that case, my dear Watson, pray unburden yourself.”

  “It is one thing, Holmes, to make a killing look like the work of an animal; quite another to actually devour portions of a body. Why did Sir Percival continue to do so — and, in fact, to an increasing extent?”

  “The answer is quite simple,” Holmes replied. “It would seem Sir Percival, in his growing madness, had begun acquiring a taste for his, ah, prey.”

  * * *

  The subject of the Hexham Wolf did not come up again until perhaps half a year later, when I came across a notice in The Times stating that the new owner of Aspern Hall and his fiancée were to be married in St. Paul’s the following month. It appeared that — in local opinion, at least — the atrocities of the father were more than compensated for by the son’s military success, and by the courage he had displayed in his hunt for the would-be wolf. As for myself, I would have wished to have spent more time, had the circumstances been more pleasant, in the company of one of the handsomest young ladies of my acquaintance: Miss Victoria Selkirk.

  On the lone occasion Holmes himself later referred to the case, he merely expressed a passing regret that the excursion had not furnished him with an opportunity to further his study of Sciurus vulgaris—the Eurasian red squirrel.

  48

  Corrie finished the story and looked up to find Pendergast’s silvery eyes upon her. She realized she had been holding her breath, and exhaled. “Holy crap,” she said.

  “One could say that.”

  “This story…I can hardly get my head around it.” A thought struck her. “But how did you know it was key?”

  “I didn’t. Not at first. But consider: Doyle was a medical man. Before starting his private practice, he had been the doctor on a whaling ship and ship’s surgeon on a voyage along the West African coast. Those are among the most difficult postings a medical man could experience. He had surely seen a great deal of unpleasantness, to put it mildly, on these voyages. A story that would send him fleeing from the dining table had to be far more repugnant than a mere man-eating grizzly.”

  “But the lost story? What led you to that in particular?”

  “Doyle was so unsettled by the story he heard from Wilde that he did what many authors do to exorcise their demons: he incorporated it into his fiction. Almost immediately after the meeting in the Langham Hotel he wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles, which of course has a few parallels to Wilde’s actual story. But Hound, while a marvelous story in its own right, was a mere ghost of the truth. Not much exorcism to be had there. One can surmise that Wilde’s story continued to work on his mind for a long time. I began to wonder whether, in later years, Doyle finally felt compelled to write something closer to the bone, with much more of the truth in it, as a kind of catharsis. I made some inquiries. An English acquaintance of mine, an expert in Sherlockiana, confirmed to me a rumor of a missing Holmes story, which we surmised was titled ‘The Adventure of Aspern Hall.’ I put two and two together — and went to London.”

  “But how did you know it was that story?”

  “By all accounts the Aspern Hall story was soundly rejected. Never published. Consider that: a fresh Sherlock Holmes story, from the master himself, the first one in ages — and it is rejected? One might surmise it contained something unusually objectionable to Victorian taste.”

  Corrie wrinkled her nose in chagrin. “You make it sound so simple.”

  “Most detection is simple. If I teach you nothing else, I hope you’ll learn that.”

  She colored. “And I was so dismissive of this lead for so long. What an idiot I am. I’m sorry about that, really.”

  Pendergast waved a hand. “Let us focus on the matter before us. The famed Hound of the Baskervilles merely touched on the grizzly story. But this tale: this incorporates far more of what Doyle heard from Wilde, who had in turn heard it from this fellow you found, Swinton. A commendable discovery, that.”

  “An accident.”

  “An accident is only a puzzle piece that hasn’t yet found its place in the picture. A good detective collects all ‘accidents,’ no matter how insignificant.”

  “But we need to figure out what connection the story has to the real killings,” said Corrie. “Okay: you have a bunch of cannibalistic murderers who are behaving somewhat like this guy Percival. They’re killing and eating miners up on the mountain, trying to disguise what they’re doing as grizzly killings.”

  “No. If I may inte
rrupt: the identification of the killings with a man-eating grizzly was originally made by chance, as you’ve probably learned for yourself. A grizzly bear passed by and masticated the remains of one of the early victims, and that clinched matters to the town’s satisfaction. Later random sightings of grizzlies seem to confirm the connection. It is all about how human beings construct a narrative out of random events, baseless assumptions, and simple-minded prejudices. In my opinion, the gang of killers you mention did not set out to disguise their work as the result of a man-eating grizzly.”

  “All right, so the gang wasn’t trying to disguise their killings. But still, the story doesn’t explain why they’re killing. What’s the motivation? Sir Percival has a motivation: he kills his partner to cover up the fact that he cheated him and stuck him in an insane asylum. I can’t see how that has anything to do with what prompted the killers in the Colorado mountains.”

  “It doesn’t.” Pendergast looked at Corrie a long time. “Not directly, at any rate. You’re not focusing on the salient points. One should ask, first: why did Sir Percival eat portions of his victims?”

  Corrie thought back to the story. “At first, to make it look like a wolf. And then later, because he was going crazy and thought he was developing a taste for it.”

  “Ah! And why was he going crazy?”

  “Because he was suffering from mercury poisoning as a result of making felt.” Corrie hesitated. “But what does hat making have to do with silver mining? I can’t see it.”

  “On the contrary, Corrie — you see everything. You must be bolder in drawing your inferences.” Pendergast’s eyes gleamed as he quoted the line.

  Corrie frowned. What possible connection could there be? She wished Pendergast would just tell her, rather than pulling the Socratic method on her. “Can we dispense with the teachable moment? If it’s obvious, why can’t you just tell me?”

  “This is not an intellectual game we are playing. This is deadly serious — particularly for you. I am surprised that you have not already been threatened.”