The House of the Wolf

by Basil Copper

  Coleridge shivered slightly. The retreating servant’s footsteps died out round the angle of the corridor.

  ‘The throat was torn out. I would put that as the cause of death. Coupled with shock and loss of blood, of course.’

  Abercrombie stood very still, his head on one side as though he were thinking deeply.

  ‘You know a wolf kills in a very noisy and messy manner,’ he said softly, an almost dreamy expression in his shadowed eyes. ‘And the idea of a wolf being able to penetrate the living quarters of this Castle is preposterous.’

  Coleridge stared at him without saying anything. The big man went on after a moment or two as though he were alone and delivering a monologue.

  ‘The idea of a werewolf is equally ridiculous.’

  Coleridge felt a sudden stab of amusement.

  ‘Is that not rather a strange remark for a folklorist?’

  The burly Scot shook his head, little sparks glinting in his eyes.

  ‘I thought we had already discussed this in general terms, Professor. We are folklorists, yes. Gathered at this Castle for the specific purpose of studying, exchanging ideas, and delivering learned papers.’

  Coleridge moved his feet uneasily on the floor. The flags seemed to exude a chill which was penetrating to the very bone.

  ‘You have not answered my question, Doctor.’

  Abercrombie cleared his throat with a deep rasping noise. The sound was an ugly one and appeared to rouse vibrating echoes in the dark, dusty corners of the long corridor.

  ‘We are dealing in folklore, Professor. Not folk-fact. You and I both know that most of these legends, as interesting as they are, are merely legends. Stories, if you like, handed down orally over the centuries from mother to daughter, father to son.’

  ‘But there is a basis of truth in many of them,’ Coleridge persisted.

  Abercrombie drew himself up to his full height and looked at Coleridge seriously.

  ‘I wonder you do not cast silver bullets for that pistol you are carrying in your pocket.’

  Coleridge smiled somewhat shamefacedly.

  ‘You noticed it, did you?’ he said lamely.

  Abercrombie nodded, his eyes hooded.

  ‘I am trained to notice things.’

  Then his manner softened, and he put a strong hand on the other’s arm.

  ‘But I do not blame you after such an experience. Only I should not make its presence too obvious. Some of our companions may be more nervous than I.’

  ‘No-one could describe you as nervous,’ Coleridge said. ‘But if a wolf did not kill Menlow, nor a werewolf, what are we left with?’

  Abercrombie displayed a strange twisted smile.

  ‘Murder, perhaps. The thought had no doubt crossed your own mind.’

  He started walking toward the far door.

  ‘But let us just try to find out, shall we?’

  CHAPTER 22: THE MAN FROM YESTERDAY

  It was quiet on the gallery. Coleridge went down the shelves, his nerves soothed by the mellow ticking of the clock on the floor below. He was on the flying gallery of the smaller library room where he and the Count and Nadia had spoken earlier. Like the others, he was awaiting the result of Abercrombie’s examination of Menlow’s remains.

  It had already been an hour, and there had been no word; the big Scot was nothing if not thorough, Coleridge mused. Colonel Anton sat as though sunk in deep thought at the circular walnut table near the fire below, but the professor could see that he was covering page after page of his notebook with scribbled annotations.

  Now and again the door would open as one or other of his officers came and went after making their reports. There were several of them within the Castle now, but their unobtrusive presence among the servants was not unusual where there had been a sudden death, and they all knew that an inquiry was pending.

  Coleridge had not quite caught the term, but he had gathered it was equivalent to an inquest in England and a coroner’s autopsy in his own country. It would not be for a week, at any rate; then the truth would have to come out.

  The Count was due to join them in the library as soon as Abercrombie had concluded his preliminary examinations. Menlow’s body had been covered and discreetly removed to an outbuilding. Abercrombie would find it cold work this weather, Coleridge thought, and then realised that an autopsy called for such conditions; his brain was not functioning properly at the moment.

  It was probably something to do with the shock to his nervous system of the events of the past few days. The amazing thing was that, remote from himself and Nadia, the normal life of the Castle went on about them, the true state of affairs unsuspected and unobserved by the staff and Coleridge’s colleagues.

  The Count was worried, of course, and horrified. Anton suspected murder; while to the others Menlow had simply died of heart failure. Of all the people within the walls of Castle Homolky, only Coleridge, Nadia, and Menlow had had a real glimpse of the truth. Homolky and Anton had been told, but they were sceptics: their minds would move within the orbits of accepted experience, their theories encompassed wild beasts or simple murder.

  Coleridge did not blame them. Madness might lie any other way, and he felt far from sane today. Abercrombie was another factor; with his vast knowledge of folklore and his undoubted skill as a doctor he might well penetrate to the truth of the matter, which would provide at once a working hypothesis and a plausible theory for Menlow’s death. Coleridge did not wish to think anymore. For a moment he was even sorry that the throbbing ache in his shoulder and ribs had stopped.

  At least the nagging pain took his mind off the black thoughts that had been crowding in over the past two days. The image of the girl, clear and bright, was the one sane and reassuring thing in the surrounding gloom.

  That and the strength and purpose of such people as Homolky, Anton, and Abercrombie, who would surely come up with some solution to this dark affair. And Rakosi, of course. He was at that moment organising another wolf-drive in the area surrounding the Castle, perhaps hoping to flush out the beast responsible for the local deaths in the wooded area immediately adjacent to the village.

  He might well kill the wolf. He was competent enough, Coleridge reflected, but even if he did, it would not lift the horror that was beginning to cloud the very air over Castle Homolky. That was a decidedly deeper and far more bizarre business altogether. He went down the bookshelves quietly, his feet making hardly any noise on the parquet, careful not to disturb Colonel Anton. He could not communicate with him in any event.

  But the Count had given Coleridge carte blanche to examine anything in his personal library, and the latter, intrigued with the legends of Ivan the Bold and the dungeons beneath the Castle, was glad to turn his thoughts in another direction. Even if the tales and myths were as equally bloody as the present events, at least they were comfortingly remote in time.

  He paused in front of a long set of elaborately bound volumes in brown leather with gold titles on the spines. They were in Hungarian, so Coleridge could not make them out, but a brief examination of the contents of one proved them to be on the Count’s own subject of folklore, for there were rough woodcuts of vampiric presences, autos-da-fé, witch-trials, and mass hangings.

  These were the commonplaces of Coleridge’s studies, and he examined the set with particular interest. He saw that they had been printed at Pest in the mid-eighteenth century, judging by the paper, typography, and style. They were extremely rare and would be priceless, though useless for his scholarship purposes unless one knew the language.

  He remained absorbed for some minutes, his mind diverted from the cruelties of the present circumstances to bygone cruelties of an even less tolerant age. He felt rather in limbo for the moment; he frowned at the drifting snowflakes which showed up clearly against the leaden sky as they fell
past the big windows set high in the opposite wall.

  On the gallery here they were on the same level, and he had a magnificent view of the sheer walls of Castle Homolky: sweeping buttresses, spires, turrets and crenellated battlements, with here and there a glassed-in arrow-slit, and the walls themselves falling breathlessly to the moat, for this portion of the Castle faced the entrance road and the huddled mass of Lugos at the foot.

  He replaced the big leather volume absently and moved on, his eyes roving restlessly across the shelves. The sheer weight and number of volumes here with hundreds of gold-embossed titles stretching to the far distance had a hypnotic effect, and Coleridge paused in a sort of embrasure between two sets of shelving. There was an ancient desk here, with an embroidered stool in front of it and on the wall faded photographs in silver frames.

  Coleridge sank down gratefully, and, after a glance at the absorbed figure of Colonel Anton at his table near the fire, he again idly turned his attention to the desk and the photographs. There were a great many of them, and they seemed to be old family pictures on which the owner put a great deal of value. Coleridge guessed then with almost absolute certainty that this portion of the gallery had been a favourite spot of the old Countess in earlier years.

  It commanded a spectacular view of both the library and the Castle and village beyond; it was quiet and secluded, and when the view tired she would have been able to settle down to her letter-writing undistracted. It did not take Coleridge long to reach these conclusions, for the photographs in the silver frames told their own story.

  They were of an earlier style and epoch, and the old Countess undoubtedly featured in many of them; as Coleridge had guessed she had been a great beauty. Here she was at the age of eighteen or so dressed in hunting costume, on horseback, with the frowning mass of the Castle in the background. Another, of the same period, showed a summer family picnic with the falls in the valley below as a striking setting.

  Coleridge wondered if the golden-haired little boy who appeared in a number of studies was their host in his tender years; it appeared entirely possible, though it was difficult to associate the two images. The pictures evidently covered a wide span of years, for here was a more sedate but still striking Countess driving a dog-cart; and another more formal study, with the family in front and the servants massed in the background, showed an unmistakable Count Homolky as a young man in a fashionable tweed suit and dark homburg, flanked by his mother and father.

  Coleridge wondered why Countess Irina still kept all these things here. Surely she would now be too old to mount the steps to the gallery. Then he remembered she had first received him in the library below, and perhaps there was some access to this gallery which did not necessitate using the spiral staircase up which he had just climbed. Normally, Coleridge would not have sat at someone else’s desk in this manner, but there were no personal documents or letters on its cool green leather surface; it was the pictures which absorbed him.

  Like a jigsaw puzzle only half-completed by its owner, their fading surfaces and brown pigmentation seemed to hold enigmatic secrets waiting to be solved. Coleridge then saw that there were several newer photographs which stood on a small ledge at the back of the desk. It was obvious they were taken more recently because of the styles of clothing, and the matter was clinched by the factor that the Countess looked a good deal older.

  There was one which particularly absorbed him. It showed a young man with a smiling face and a luxuriant beard who stood flanked by a young girl at his left hand and the Countess on his right.

  They were smiling into the camera lens as though the photographer had just said something that amused them; Coleridge could see the man’s shadow sharp-etched on the dusty ground at their feet. It might even have been the Count who had taken the picture. Or were the three of them sharing some secret joke? It was impossible to tell at this distance in time.

  Coleridge was still sitting there staring at the photograph when a shadow fell across the glass. He looked up with a start to find the tall figure of the Count on the balcony behind him. He looked like a ghostly metamorphosis of his youthful self until Coleridge had adjusted his eyesight. But Homolky merely sighed quietly.

  ‘Interesting, are they not, Professor Coleridge?’

  Coleridge felt a quick flash of the old embarrassment. He got up swiftly.

  ‘Forgive my idle curiosity, Count. I could not help admiring the desk and was passing the time by glancing at the photographs.’

  The Count smiled. It was a smile of peculiar sadness as well as sweetness, and once again the guest was struck by the sharpness of his teeth.

  ‘It is my mother’s desk, as you have probably guessed. She often used to sit here writing letters, particularly on summer evenings, when we would have the big windows open. A striking woman when young, was she not?’

  Coleridge nodded. He saw now that his earlier supposition had been right. Homolky had come from another room or corridor at the end of the balcony behind him, for the door giving access still stood half-ajar. That reminded Coleridge he had intended asking the girl to draw him a rough sketch-map of the Castle and its principal rooms.

  Its strange layout, with odd corners and unsuspected corridors, resembled a rabbit-warren and might be vitally important in the present circumstances when, as Coleridge suspected, deadly danger appeared to be overhanging the occupants.

  ‘She is still a handsome lady,’ he concurred.

  The Count smiled again, more naturally this time, glancing down at the police chief, who had not stirred; he went on methodically writing in his notebook at the table below.

  ‘And a wilful one.’

  His glance returned to the desk and the pictures.

  ‘You will forgive me for saying so, but you seemed inordinately interested in that photograph there.’

  He tapped with his forefinger on the glass of the study depicting his mother and the young couple Coleridge had already noted.

  ‘The young man’s face seemed somehow familiar.’

  Homolky shook his head, a spasm of what might have been pain swiftly passing across his mobile features, to be erased in a fraction as though it had never been.

  ‘I do not think so, Professor,’ he said gently. ‘That photograph has a tragic history. I do not really know why my mother let it remain there, unless as a sort of penance.’

  Coleridge felt his curiosity quicken.

  ‘Penance, Count?’

  Homolky put up his strong hand to stroke his jaw as the two men stood immobile at the edge of the balcony, the falling flakes of snow beyond the window making a bleak background to their conversation.

  ‘My mother was very fond of this young couple. The man was an English doctor, who was said to have a brilliant future. He too had an interest in folklore, particularly the dark legends of these mountains. He was engaged to be married to the young English lady in the picture.’

  A nerve twitched at the corner of the tall man’s mouth as he glanced again at the faded image.

  ‘One might almost say that this moment in time, captured by the shutter of my camera, was the end of happiness for the four people involved.’

  Coleridge felt all sorts of questions starting to his mind, but he discreetly kept silent, waiting for his host to go on.

  ‘There was a terrible accident,’ the Count continued without prompting. ‘The very day after the photograph was taken. It was summertime, and my mother was out driving in the dog-cart. She was coming very fast down the hill leading to the village, which was her way. Somehow she lost control, and the horse bolted.’

  He paused, licking his lips.

  ‘The doctor and his fiancée were out walking at the foot of the hill, on their way back to the Castle. He managed to jump aside. The young lady was killed.’

  There was a long silence on the balcony. Coleridge aver
ted his eyes from the Count’s, looked again at the blank, happy faces in the photograph.

  ‘You can imagine the effect, the remorse of my mother and the whole family. The reaction was even worse in the case of the young doctor. In the agony of his grief he accused my mother of murder. He swore vengeance, then collapsed. He had a nervous breakdown, and my mother paid his medical expenses and his fare back to England. The last we heard he was confined in a lunatic asylum. My mother specifically asked for that photograph when they arrived back from development, then had the frame made for it and insisted on placing it on the desk in front of her.’

  A faint shudder passed through Coleridge. He again had a quick flash of the Countess’s austere, ravaged face.

  ‘A dreadful story,’ he said quietly. ‘You have my deepest sympathy. I would not have asked had I known.’

  The Count shook his head impatiently.

  ‘It was twenty years ago, Professor. Besides, I volunteered the information. I would not have done so had the subject been taboo to me.’

  He looked grimly down at the police official working by the fire. He seemed as remote and efficient as though he were operating in another country altogether.

  ‘My mother has suffered, Professor Coleridge, make no mistake about it. But she has a tremendous sense of duty. And she feels it only just that she should have suffered so for a momentary act of carelessness which, you might say, destroyed three lives. Therefore, the photograph remains.’

  Both men were silent for long moments as though each were absorbed in thoughts of such a sombre nature that they could not be uttered aloud. Coleridge turned away from his host and again studied the photograph which was the subject of their conversation. The smiling, happy faces of the hostess and her two guests – one so soon to be dead, the other hopelessly insane – were cruelly ironic under the circumstances.

  Coleridge could still not quite see what obscure motives had driven the old Countess to have it framed and placed there where she could study it every day. It could not be remorse only, surely. But the human heart was like a series of interlocking membranes, on each of which was inscribed some dim and cryptic thought or deed, and the more one peeled off layer after layer the less one penetrated to the heart of the mystery.