The House of the Wolf

by Basil Copper

  No doubt Herr Eles and selected members of his staff were even now waiting at the head of the steps to join the procession and pay their own respects. The cortège had reemerged from the front entrance of the Castle; there was a short delay while the coffins were loaded amid long lines of bareheaded Castle employees. Then, the pawing horses showing their impatience with the cold, the Count and his parties swiftly entered two covered vehicles, and the cavalcade set off with a loud cracking of whips and creaking of wheels over the hard-packed ice.

  Coleridge was about to turn away when he was aware that another image had joined his own in the wide quadrant of the window. He found the girl beside him; she looked pale and diminished by the tragedy in the family. Her eyes were turned incuriously to the far vista where the dark procession wound its way down the precipitous road; the same along which the old Countess had once so imperiously driven her dog-cart with such tragic results.

  Coleridge felt cool fingers shyly touching his palm, and he quickly closed his own over Nadia Homolky’s as they stood there, quiet and rigid, as though in some predetermined compact, until the melancholy file of humans, vehicles, and animals had turned the bend in the road.

  For a long time, though they could not see it, they could hear the progress of the cortège, echoed, reechoed, and magnified by the narrow confines of the houses and by the height at which they were receiving the sounds. Instinctively Nadia moved closer to Coleridge, and the two stood in unspoken sympathy for what seemed like a long while.

  In the circular window Coleridge could see something gleaming in a corner of the girl’s eye that resembled a reflection of the frozen icicle on the cornice outside. They were held by an intangible bond there, in the gathering dusk, and did not return to full consciousness of their surroundings until darkness had descended.

  Coleridge parted from her outside her mother’s sitting-room; the two still had not spoken of their various thoughts and fears, but neither now needed speech. They seemed to sense all the nuances of emotion of which they were individually composed. As he left the girl and mounted rapidly through the dusky corridors to the upper house, Coleridge’s feelings were an amalgam of hope and despair; he dare not give visible expression to the former, but the latter was gathering like some unseen force, permeating every fibre of consciousness.

  He gained the library at last; the staircases, landings, and corridors were empty of everything except small everyday comforting sounds. The soft tread of well-trained manservants on the lower floors, the clink of tongs as a maid replenished coals on one of the ever-rapacious fires, a faint snatch of concerned gossip in a foreign tongue at the intersection of a passage, the sound of glasses being washed from some distant pantry, and, once, the clatter of cutlery laid on bare boards, possibly for some servants’ hall meal.

  They were comforting in their way, being universal in application, and the professor lingered a moment, his hand on the door. Then he proceeded directly inside. He did not switch on the electric light; there was enough shimmer from the snowy rooftops spilling in through the high windows and from the fire for him to see by. He went up the small staircase, cautiously and catlike; once on the balcony he moved quietly along, adjusting his eyes to the gloom.

  He was at the old Countess’s desk now, anxiously searching the faces in the framed photographs. He felt a tense quickening of excitement, as a man fronts a situation not entirely unexpected.

  For the photograph which depicted the young doctor, his fiancée, and Countess Irina had vanished.

  CHAPTER 37: REFLECTIONS ON DEATH

  Coleridge checked the pistol and replaced it in his pocket. It had been a trying day, perhaps the worst since he had come to Castle Homolky. The Count had excused himself from company after returning from the funeral service and had disappeared to his own quarters, presumably to comfort his wife.

  The tea-hour had been a melancholy affair, taken this afternoon in the great chamber used as a breakfast-room, the guests served by soft-footed servants whose strained faces and frightened demeanour bespoke their secret fears.

  Nadia had not put in an appearance since he had left her at the sitting-room entrance, and Father Balaz had presently retired to his refectory following the service. Coleridge had said nothing to Abercrombie of the missing photograph, but he had kept a discreet watch on Parker and the remainder of his colleagues, uneasily aware that he too was the object of their own scrutiny.

  Colonel Anton had returned to the Castle with Rakosi, and both men had taken refreshment apart with the Count’s family in their private quarters, no doubt to discuss the general situation and to compare notes. Coleridge knew that Anton intended to question him and his colleagues again after dinner, and he wondered idly, as he prepared for the meal, what the phlegmatic Chief of Police made of it all. No doubt he was treating it merely as a murder investigation.

  Coleridge smiled wryly at his use of the word ‘merely’; one could not imagine more horrific circumstances than those prevailing at Castle Homolky, but the truth as suspected by Coleridge himself was almost too fantastic to be borne.

  He turned as there came a tap at the door. It was the Countess’s voice which came to him through the thick panel. He eased the pistol back into his pocket, going quickly across to open the door. Countess Sylva had her injured arm and shoulder in a sling and looked pale, but she was otherwise composed and calm.

  She was dressed in black, which made her pale complexion stand out like an oil painting in the subdued yellow light from the lamps in the room. She held out her hand, a sad smile curving her lips. Once again Coleridge was taken with the astonishingly deep blue of her eyes and the perfect teeth, just failing to achieve perfection through their sharpness. Her fingers were cool and soft to the touch.

  ‘I just came to thank you for my life, Professor.’

  Coleridge gave her an awkward little bow.

  ‘I only did what anyone would have done, madame.’

  Despite himself, he was inwardly touched at her gesture and the vehement shake of her head at his disclaimer. She seated herself in front of the fire with a gracious movement, at his extended invitation, and he was reminded of their earlier interview under such dissimilar circumstances.

  ‘I was sorry I could not take you into my confidence,’ he went on quickly. ‘But I presume you understand everything now.’

  She nodded, keeping her eyes down toward the fire.

  ‘My husband has told me. We shall be eternally grateful to you.’

  She raised her head and looked the professor frankly in the eyes.

  ‘What do you make of Dr. Raglan’s disappearance? You do not imagine he can be responsible for these awful murders?’

  Coleridge shook his head.

  ‘I think he has been murdered too. Like Dr. Menlow, for the knowledge he possessed.’

  ‘Exactly,’ the Countess said calmly.

  ‘And Colonel Anton?’ Coleridge ventured. ‘He does not seem very forthcoming.’

  Countess Sylva laughed softly, but there was little humour in the sound.

  ‘Colonel Anton is a remarkable man, Professor. Do not underestimate him. His imagination does not run to lycanthropy and werewolves in the night. But he understands murder and the criminal mind. I think he has his own theories, but he will say nothing until he is certain.’

  Her slim fingers tightened on the arm of her chair.

  ‘And he will strike when the time is ripe, you can be sure of that.’

  Coleridge looked at her for a long moment.

  ‘He has a difficult task,’ he said at length. ‘Ought he not to have mounted a search for Raglan outside? I know the weather is severe . . .’

  The Countess shook her head.

  ‘He and Captain Rakosi have done everything necessary. They are certain he is still within the Castle. The weather will simplify things.’
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br />   Coleridge was puzzled.

  ‘The weather? I do not understand.’

  The Countess gave a thin smile.

  ‘The blizzard, Professor. It may last a week, and we shall be isolated here just as though we were in some peasant cottage a mile or so within that mountain range opposite. It suits the colonel, of course, because he could not let anyone leave until he has cleared the matter up.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘We are all suspect, are we not?’

  Coleridge gave her grudging assent.

  ‘It is not a very pleasant prospect. Cooped up with a murderer. And with Colonel Anton suspecting everyone.’

  The Countess again smiled bleakly.

  ‘You are right, Professor. It has its ironies, does it not, for the murderer cannot escape, either. My husband has a score to settle for poor Mother. And if it should be this man Sanders . . .’

  Her eyes were burning and very hard now.

  ‘Unless he be truly supernatural. And I do not think he has finished with us yet.’

  Dinner was only a slightly less sombre affair than the hour of tea. There had been another alarm in the course of the afternoon, this time from the village. A message had summoned Colonel Anton from them under the most appalling weather conditions. He had taken over an hour on foot to reach Lugos, where a young girl, venturing only a few yards to bring fuel from the family woodshed, had been seized and half-eaten by an enormous wolf.

  Later it had been seen by several people, watching nervously from their windows, and had actually been fired at by some courageous villager, apparently without effect. Anton was convinced that the beast was the large black one which had led the pack and was not connected with events at the Castle. The tracks were already covered with drifting snow, and he had given up the impossible task of tracing the beast and had returned, half-frozen, to the Castle.

  He now sat at the Count’s right hand at the head of the table and regaled those nearest with his clipped account of this latest tragedy. But as horrific as the incident was, he was still more concerned with the heart of the mystery at the Castle.

  Coleridge recalled something which had been told him; or had he imagined it? Something almost as disquieting as the other matters which concerned his disturbed mind. That the Count himself benefited enormously from his mother’s death. The thought was too base to contemplate, Coleridge felt; but he had to weigh it in the balance against the other probabilities in this dreadful affair.

  The suspicions against Parker were growing inside him. As Abercrombie had pointed out, there was a marked resemblance between the young doctor in the photograph and his middle-aged colleague; as he had already learned, their ages coincided; Parker had certainly been hanging about the library when Coleridge and Abercrombie were discussing the matter; and now the picture, which might have established a connection, had disappeared.

  Like Raglan, in fact; as though neither the human being nor the inanimate object had ever existed. Coleridge had still not told the Count about the missing photograph; it would do no good and he already had enough on his mind.

  Now the professor listened dully as his colleagues discussed the matter and argued among themselves. Some had ingenious theories regarding Raglan, but none that made any sense. The professor himself remained convinced that the incredibly cunning, not to say diseased, brain which had perpetrated these horrors had been responsible for Raglan’s death as well as Menlow’s.

  Both had been silenced for the information which might have threatened or revealed the identity of the monster, and Raglan’s body was probably concealed somewhere about the Castle. There were hundreds of places in such a vast conglomeration of buildings where it could lie for months undisturbed. There were still more important factors involved, however.

  The grudge against the Count’s family would not end there. The attack might be renewed upon the Countess, who had escaped with her life only because of the servant’s presence of mind in fetching Coleridge.

  The Count himself was at risk; and, most important of all now to the professor, the girl’s life could be in deadly danger. Coleridge guessed that the invisible avenger could be destroying the Count’s family one by one and might preserve the Count till last, in order to prolong his agony.

  All along Coleridge had known that he himself was a prime target. But he was an expert shot, armed and known to be armed, and two attempts at least by the wolf-creature had been turned aside by his vigilance.

  That reminded Coleridge of another complication. He had not noticed Shaw limping lately; he seemed to have made a remarkable recovery. He remembered Abercrombie saying something about the cold compresses having done wonders and that the swelling had gone down overnight.

  He knew the doctor’s thorough examination of Shaw’s leg probably absolved him from suspicion, but he would keep an eye on him, nevertheless. One strange factor from the previous night had returned to him during this dreary and austere day. He could understand something tapping on the younger Countess’s door, causing her to open it.

  But the old Countess had been attacked in her bed. Surely she could not have slept with the door unlocked during the present circumstances? But that was apparently what she did. The Countess Sylva had told him – and the Count had since confirmed it – that she was absolutely without fear and had refused to lock her bedroom door in her own house, as she termed it.

  As Coleridge had suspected, this might well have saved Countess Sylva’s life, as the beast had evidently entered the old Countess’s unlocked room first and killed her before turning to the daughter-in-law.

  Which had given time for Coleridge to arrive on the scene. He sipped absently at his glass of wine, wearying of these endless thoughts which tumbled and revolved in his brain.

  Anton was talking now, the Count quickly translating. The Chief of Police would hold a conference later in the evening, in an adjoining room. Neither the girl nor her mother had appeared at dinner, and Anton and Rakosi would question the Count, Coleridge, and his surviving colleagues in an attempt to arrive at some definitive solution to the mystery.

  Coleridge caught Abercrombie’s eyes on him as he rose from the table. He read them as being as sceptical as his own.

  CHAPTER 38: SETTING THE TRAP

  ‘I have a scheme which may bring this business to a conclusion,’ said Abercrombie.

  He regarded Coleridge sternly.

  ‘It is one not without some risk and rather resembles what we British, in respect of our Indian Empire, refer to as staking out a goat.’

  The two men sat in a strange octagonal chamber which the Count had designated as a smoking-room. It was comfortably furnished with leather divans and armchairs, and the richly panelled walls were hung with weapons and trophies of the chase. A tremendous fire roared in the chimney, and from the way it bellowed one minute and then appeared to damp down the next, Coleridge inferred that there was a great gale blowing outside, even though camouflaged by the immensely thick walls of the Castle.

  In fact the blizzard was at its height, as the Countess had predicted, and Coleridge did not relish being trapped here for another week or more with someone who seemed intent on taking further lives. He shifted uneasily in his comfortable wing-chair as he stared at his companion, blinking in the light of the electric chandelier overhead which denoted that the room was one of the Count’s more important and favoured apartments.

  They were alone for the moment; dinner had been early at the Count’s special request. It was still only nine o’clock, and they were due to meet for the colonel’s conference at ten. The rest of the party had dispersed temporarily to their rooms, but Coleridge guessed that they would soon reassemble, as none of them now liked to be alone. Not that he blamed them. Even the servants were affected by the general atmosphere, though there was no reason to think any of them were at personal risk.


  ‘I am not quite sure I understand,’ Coleridge said in answer to Abercrombie’s remark.

  ‘I was referring to tiger-hunting,’ Abercrombie went on. ‘A goat is used, generally tethered at night with the hunter in a tree above, ready to shoot the tiger when he appears to kill the animal.’

  His eyes seemed to burn with great intensity. He rubbed his thick hands together. Coleridge’s cigar-smoke went up straight and even to the richly carved ceiling of the panelled room.

  The doctor gazed broodingly into the fire as though he could see the creature they sought somewhere in the flickering flames. Coleridge had noticed there were two of the massive wolf-head firedogs here. They seemed to glare mockingly at the two men as the firelight caught their polished surfaces.

  ‘We are dealing with a wild beast, if your theories are correct,’ Abercrombie continued after a short silence.

  ‘And cunning as he may be – wolf or werewolf, if you insist on your extravagant thesis – he will not be able to avoid taking the bait.’

  ‘Which is?’ Coleridge prompted.

  Abercrombie crossed his legs, clasping his thick fingers together across his knee.

  ‘The solution to this whole mystery, including the identity of the murderer,’ he continued calmly. ‘The announcement of vital evidence which has come into our hands, preferably at the colonel’s conference tonight.’

  Coleridge tapped out the ash from his cigar in a carved onyx tray at his elbow.

  ‘Which is what? We have no such evidence.’