White Fire

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 the 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 fiancee 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?”