Other Tales: Stories from The Ballad of Gregoire Darcy

by Marsha Altman

  That meant Georgiana was a distraction. Was she intended to be? That did restore some of his fortitude – he was being played like everyone else, by her and including her. She was charming him by being confounding. It was a trap and he had fallen into it when he should have been looking for the Wolf.

  Start at the beginning. That was what he had been taught; that was what always worked. The first night, he went to a party, and met a crowd of people. Many were fat or spineless nobles, who stayed to play murder? He wrote the names down so he could see them. The marquis. Lady Littlefield. Georgiana. He crossed that out. Miss Bingley, he wrote in its place. Lord and Lady Rousseau. Sir DuBois. Georgiana, who agreed to be the murderer; DuBois, who agreed to be murdered.

  DuBois, who he’d forgotten all about, by focusing on the obvious: the marquis, Miss Bingley, Simon Roux, Sophie. Mrs. Bernard, he was convinced that sadly, she was just a victim of a larger scheme. In fact, he hadn’t investigated any of the local notables.

  What was wrong with him?

  Simon Roux had been a suitable distraction at the same time being a murder victim. How much else had been plotted? Was Sophie really pregnant? Was that wolf today trained?

  I’m getting paranoid.

  He needed a good night’s rest, after a couple of drinks. It didn’t matter, he could hold his liquor. He was French! Half, anyway. He fell asleep to the sound of a wolf howling, which he consciously decided to ignore.

  ~~~

  The next morning, Inspector Audley did something that he had never been called upon to do before in the course of any investigation. He inspected livestock. Dead livestock.

  “Four.”

  “What?” the constable said, annoyed by the inspector’s lack of concern. “What did you say?”

  “There are four of them.”

  “So? Who cares how many it killed?”

  “He.”

  “What? What is this nonsense?”

  He straightened his hat to protect himself from the morning sunlight. “No animal did this.” He knelt beside the body of the first cow. “First, no animal would take the time to perfectly line up four dead cows in a neat row. Second, no animal killing for food would just leave it after one slash, uneaten. Third, these wounds – ” and he probed the neck slash, already knowing what he would find, “ – are identical to those on the neck of Simon Roux.”

  “And Mrs. Bernard.”

  Audley decided not to contradict him. “Four is also the number of wolves that were killed yesterday.”

  “You think – ”

  He stood up, not wanting to blather on with this man. “Where is the man who owns these cattle?”

  “He is inside – I told him to fix us something.”

  “The man has just lost a fortune and you asked him to serve us?”

  The constable shrugged.

  The farmer’s name was Monsieur Javier. While his wife cooked in the kitchen, the farmer sat at his table, counting a stack of francs in amazement. Beside them was a small leather pouch.

  “What is this?”

  “I – have been paid,” Javier said. “The amount four cattle would bring from the market. I found the pouch tied around the big one’s neck.”

  “He paid you?”

  Javier shrugged in his own confusion. “And if you think it is not poisoned, I can sell the meat – make more. I am tempted to say that the Wolf should have killed more.”

  “I think you may sell them – but leave the areas where they were slashed,” Audley said, sitting down opposite him and putting his hat on the table. “When did you discover them?”

  “This morning, when I went out to feed them they were not in the barn.”

  “You keep them there each night?”

  “Oui, Inspector.”

  “Is there a lock on your barn door?”

  “Non, Inspector. Just a latch. It was opened this morning.”

  “Damage?”

  “None.”

  So the Wolf let four cows out, slaughtered them quickly enough to not have the others make a sound to alert someone, and positioned them so it would be obvious something was amiss. And he paid the poor farmer for his loss – making it a harmless crime. The meaning, however, could not be clearer. “Did you tell anyone?”

  “There were some field workers passing by earlier – I imagine it has spread to the town by now. Or it will soon enough.”

  Exactly the intention. “I do not think any more cattle will be harmed, unless we hunt wolves again. You are probably safe.”

  “Safe? I’d rather be rich,” said the farmer, overwhelmed by the amount of money in front of him. He had probably never seen that amount in his life, not all at once. “Hunt all you can.”

  Audley smiled. “I am afraid it does not work like that.”

  “Too bad.”

  He doffed his hat and took his leave.

  ~~~

  Audley had plans for the day, but it seemed they were not in the cards. In the morning it was sunny, but by the time he returned to town it was dark, and when he was finished with his quick lunch, the downpour had begun. Normally he was not terribly averse to a spring shower when he had business to take care of, but this was no spring shower. He wiped the dust off the window and stared out it. He couldn’t see past the courtyard.

  “Sorry, Inspector Audley,” Camille said from behind him. “You will have to wait with the rest of us.”

  He sighed and wandered over to the bar, where Anton was cleaning glasses with a dirty rag. “What do you know about Sir DuBois?”

  “Am I under interrogation?”

  He smiled, his sudden exhaustion sapping his desire to be serious. “You would know if you were. What do you know of him?”

  “I don’t think I know much more than everybody else, Inspector – can’t be of much help there,” Anton said. “He has some land and a house – nothing like the Maret Manor, but respectable enough.

  “Is he nobility? Descended from?”

  “Nobody knows. Folks like us don’t see much of him. All we really know is he was knighted by Napoleon.”

  “For what?”

  “Sharp-shooting, I think. I heard that he survived Russia.”

  Anyone who survived Napoleon’s disastrous campaign probably deserved a medal. “So he’s not from here?”

  “No. He could have been anybody before he was in the army.”

  “And he’s not married.” That was odd – Sir DuBois was in his forties, easily. “How long has he lived here?”

  “Since about 1816 – and he’s a widower.”

  “Widower?”

  “Wife died last year. Clarisse, I think her name was.”

  Now Audley’s attention was more focused. “He doesn’t seem as if he’s in mourning.”

  “You never met his wife. Married for a long time – since before the war. I think he enlisted to get away from her. When she died last summer, nobody was wailing at that funeral.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Hard to talk to. Very insistent, very mean. Died by swallowing a chicken bone. Somebody once said to me that she choked on her own bile.”

  Audley nodded. “I know the type. So Sir DuBois is on the marriage market?”

  Anton shrugged. “Might be why he’s cozying up to the marquis. Having rich young ladies around, even if they’re English?”

  “Lady Littlefield is engaged to the marquis. Surely he can have no serious intentions there.” He said it mainly because he knew Lady Littlefield had no intentions on DuBois – otherwise, he would have come into the picture much earlier. She did not seem smitten by anybody.

  “But there’s the other one, isn’t there? The red-haired one? She must be worth a fortune.”

  Audley pounced on it. “How do you know Miss Bingley?” His heart was racing again. “I thought the students weren’t allowed in town.”

  Anton stopped his cleaning motion, a little embarrassed. “You’re not going to tell the headmaster, are you?”

  “No! N
ow tell me how you know Miss Bingley!” he said a little too insistently for his own liking.

  “All right. But – ‘s just between us, Inspector.”

  “Of course.” Get to the point, man.

  Anton leaned in, lowering his voice. The only other patrons were far off from the bar, but he whispered nonetheless. “Some nights the ladies sneak out. Must be awfully stuffy there. And sometimes they come here. Nothing serious – I don’t give them the heavy stuff. They just like the atmosphere. The thrill of doing something wrong, you know.”

  Of course. British ladies of their class were like caged birds. “I know. Go on.”

  “Well, Miss Bingley comes with them sometimes, whoever’s going.”

  “Lady Littlefield?”

  “Nah, other girls. Doesn’t matter – the point is, Miss Bingley goes with them but she doesn’t sit and chat. She sits at her own table and just watches them.”

  “Does she drink?”

  “Almost nothing.”

  Audley was now in full interrogation mode, and he didn’t care who noticed it. “I assume she talks to you.”

  “She has ... on occasion.”

  “About what?”

  “I ... don’t think I should tell you, Inspector. Private conversations and all that.”

  “May I remind you that I am an – ”

  Anton put his hand up. “Fine. You don’t have to get out your papers – I know who you are. So she talks to me, but like you – she just asks questions. About the town, the marquis – everybody. She asks about the men sitting at the bar. Wants to know who they are.” He paused, biting his lip. He was weighing whether or not to give out this information. “She got in a fight once.”

  “Over what?”

  “A man – name of Peter – was getting a little too forward with one of her schoolmates. Miss Bingley stepped in, and he tried to slap her.”

  “Tried?”

  “She caught his hand and broke his arm.”

  Audley said nothing.

  “Anyway,” Anton said nervously, “that was it. The girls left and she paid me ten francs not to say anything to anyone. I think she meant her Headmaster, but I still don’t feel great about telling you.”

  “I’m sorry to inconvenience you,” Audley said, even though he wasn’t. They sat in silence for a moment, until he continued, “There isn’t any hot water about, is there?”

  “Plenty of water, none of it hot. We can get something ready for you, if you want.”

  “I would be most appreciative,” he said, wondering what kind of bill he was running up with this case. “Thank you, Monsieur Anton.” He let Anton make his escape. Audley made his own, retreating to his room as they readied water for a bath. He needed to think.

  ~~~

  He woke the next morning to howling. Or, as he was later able to assess when his mind was clear, he woke from a dream about wolves howling to the pounding of rain on the roof. It was not the most pleasant way to wake, but it signaled that he had no need to hurry about his business, as there was nowhere to conduct it, unless his suspects showed up at the tavern and had a roundtable discussion of his case for him.

  Robert Audley was tired, and he didn’t know why. It was a complicated case, each scratched layer revealing another one like an onion, but that should not be so draining. He’d been working almost without sleep on the dock strangler case when he had been pulled off it to come here into the misty woodlands for some dead body found in the woods. This was practically a vacation. So why did he go to bed every night exhausted, only to wake up more agitated and lonely than he had been before?

  Well, he needed a vacation from this vacation, something the rain afforded him. He put away his notebook and opened the Maddox book, starting again from the beginning. He was soon lost in the narrative – either Brian Maddox had had a most exciting life or he was quite a weaver of tales.

  An Englishman with huge gambling debts and a wound that crippled his leg from a fight with a creditor, Brian Maddox left his native land to marry an Austrian princess after losing a bet with her father, a count of Transylvania. His wife was a beauty beyond pearls, but her father was overbearing and eager for her to marry. Political alliances against him prevented any local stock to come forward.

  ‘And here, my readers, I will close the curtain,’ Maddox wrote, after spending some time describing Romanian custom. ‘Suffice it to say, I remain besotted with her as much today as I was on the day I married my princess.’ Mr. Maddox often left out names, dates, and personal information. He mentioned that he had a younger brother in England who was a physician and had married into a wealthy family. Most of the book, he explained in the introduction, had originally been written in the form of letters composed to his brother, Danny, never sent because he was on the run. He kept them instead and delivered them two years later.

  When they produced no heir (he left out why, but it was obvious enough – she was barren), the count became restless and threatened ‘to put my head on a spike, in so many words. I’d seen him do it often enough with criminals, so I had no doubt of his delight in the demented spectacle.’ But he could not leave without his wife, whom he loved beyond measure, and they fled – not north or west to England as the count would suspect, but east to Russia.

  ‘And there we lived the life of fugitives – though it was an unexpected pleasure to be free of spying servants and my father-in-law, may God rest his soul.’ Eventually the count’s men did catch up with them, so the couple fled even further, boarding a ship with no known destination. Everyone on the ship became ill with some kind of plague, and he decided it was best to take his wife on a boat and row to the nearest landmass. They washed up in Northern Japan, though they had no idea where they were at the time. ‘I could not find myself on a map. Even today I must estimate where we might have landed.’ The book had a map on the next page, with a dotted line from the port town in Russia to the top island of the islands of Japan. Again, Maddox did not name the village, but went on to describe the culture of the ‘Ainu.’ They realized they had to get to Nagasaki, the only port in Japan where foreigners were permitted to live, much less come and go, and so they began their epic journey down the length of the country, in heavy disguise under the protection of a hired warrior with a name Audley found unpronounceable.

  His tales were too wild to be believed at first. Men who were allowed to kill anyone as freely as they pleased, and with no reason, if they were born into the right class; high-class whores who commanded great respect and people who paid just to eat with them; and a thorough bureaucracy surrounding the warlord who ruled Japan (the ‘shogun’) that they were constantly avoiding. ‘As gaijin, our lives were always forfeit if we were discovered.’

  Maddox’s tone was at times mystified, at times sympathetic, and at times removed with a sense of humor. (‘They crucify Christians here. How ironic!’) He had drawings of hairstyles, dress, armor, swords – but no guns. They did not believe in them. Having written the book later, the author could look back on his adventures with perspective and decide what tone he would take, but it was clear that he and his wife came, over their year-long journey, to respect this blood-thirsty and un-Christian way of life. ‘A Japanese would rather die than lose his honor. Often they will commit suicide if they have been shamed, or to avoid a shameful situation. This is considered an act of great honor and courage.’ This paired well with the ending, and the muddled description of their protector’s suicide. The author was too emotional about it to discuss it in detail, or he had some part in it. His last section, written on the ship back to England with the Dutch East India Company, was a long treatise on bushido, the way of the warrior. It was more all-encompassing than any knights’ tales that Audley had read as a child, even the Arthurian ones.

  Sadly, there did not seem to be any other secrets. Brian Maddox never discussed wolves, or anything wolf-related. He did not translate all of the Japanese script in his book, admitting that he was no expert. The postscript by the editor of the edi
tion noted that Mr. Maddox now was partial owner of an import company that brought Japanese and Chinese silk to England. The other partner was his sister-in-law’s brother, the wealthy man from the north. Once again, no names or places. Audley knew there was a sequel, just released, but not available in France yet.

  What was he supposed to learn? Or was it just another distraction? Forget this case. He had spent a useless day enjoying a good book and he had no regrets. He turned on his side and went to sleep.

  ~~~

  “Inspector! Inspector!”

  Audley did not dream of Japanese warriors or Austrian princesses. He dreamt of the same thing he’d dreamt of every night for three nights now. It was almost painful to be pulled from that, and he ignored the banging on his door as long as he could. “What?”

  “Inspector Audley! You must come!”

  Groaning, he pulled off the covers, put his vest on over his shirt, and opened the door. “What is it?”

  It was the constable. “Another body, Monsieur Inspector. By the Murrell farm.”

  Audley, still half-caught in a wonderful dream now slipping away from him, was instantly awake. “Animal or human?”

  The constable swallowed. “Man.”

  CHAPTER 8

  “How is this possible, Inspector?”

  Audley sighed. He knew how. “There are two killers, Constable. We seem to have found one by way of the other.”

  Indeed they had, without any effort on their part. A bearded man who had not yet been identified had been found in the fields next to the Murrell house, his throat slashed and his body bloated from the rain. He had been there for at least a day, but not having left their home, the Murrells said they had not noticed it, or so the constable told him. The most interesting thing was his hands, which had swollen around two metal weapons that looked like claws. He had to tug at the flesh to pull one off and stepped away with it. The claws were metal and hastily-assembled, little more than hooks molded to a set of metal knuckles. Still, they were sharp – drawing blood when he held one point to his finger – and could kill.