The Curse of the Singing Wolf (31 page)

“While you were waiting did you
see anyone?”

“Oc, after Almaric and Hortense
fell asleep I crept out of bed. I saw the ugly black girl in the
kitchen dipping some bread into the little dish of aioli and
drinking a cup of cold tea. She had terrible manners. She stuffed
the bread into her big fat mouth and slurped her tea so loudly I
could hear it from my hiding spot.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

“Oc, I saw the Spanish servant
go up the stairs to the great hall. While he was gone I saw the boy
with the knife in his sock come to get some bread too. He cut the
bread with his knife; he cut two slices. He dipped it in the aioli
and chewed with his mouth open. He had even worse manners than the
black girl. He wiped his chin with his sleeve. I did that once and
got a smack on the head from Hortense.”

“What else happened?”

“The boy went to the stairs and
listened as if he heard something.”

“Which stairs?”

“The round stairs to maman’s
bedchamber. I thought maman was coming to get me. But no one
came.”

“Did you see what the boy did
next?”

“He went back to the bread and
cut another slice. This time he cut it really thick. He dipped it
in the aioli and tore it with his teeth and swallowed it without
even chewing.”

“And then?”

She thought for a moment. “He
must have heard a noise that gave him a fright. He put his knife in
his sock and hurried back to his bed.”

“What happened then?”

“The Spanish one came
back.”

“Did he go into the room of the
black girl?”

She puckered her little
forehead and shook her golden locks. “No, he went into the room of
the pretty one. I heard her tell him to get out.”

“Where did he go then?”

“Back to his own room that he
shared with the boy.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oc, I waited a little time
then I crawled into bed with Hortense and fell asleep. In the
morning I woke up back in my own cot and that’s when Almaric told
me we had to play hide and seek.”

Who was lying? Milo, Desi,
Inez, Velazquez or Lalique?

Although lying might be too
harsh a term. A lapse of memory, a bit of hedging, a slight
dissimulation might be more to the point. Milo didn’t mention
getting anything to eat. He didn’t mention hearing a noise on the
back stairs. Were these just innocent oversights or deliberate
obfuscations? Desi said Velazquez went to Inez’s room first and
then after being rebuffed came into her room. But Lalique said he
went to his own room after being rebuffed by Inez. Was Desi
speaking out of jealousy? Was it all fantasy? She was a fifteen
year old girl and Velazquez was a handsome toreador – why not dream
a little. Was Milo killed because he saw somebody that night? Did
he confront them and pay the price? Did Lalique really remember
what happened in such perfect order? Or was she just making it up
the way a child makes up a fairy story? She was certainly
precocious enough to invent things and here at Chanteloup in the
heart of the Pays d’Oc where troubadours refined the art of
story-telling and the word
trobar
meant
to invent
she
had been constantly surrounded by vivid fabliaux from which to draw
inspiration. Prior to dinner she had entertained them with Occitan
folk songs and had even managed to recite a couple of stanzas from
Le Roman de la Rose
, and if her mother had been the black
rose, the daughter was the yellow.

Dinner consisted of cassoulet.
This was a tasty white bean stew with meaty chunks of pork cooked
in a
cassole
which was carried steaming hot to the table to
be served into large bowls. It was best eaten with a soup
spoon.

The cassoulet smelled divine
and Dr Watson was starving. “Where’s von Gunn?” he asked as he
measured out libations of Gaillac wine to go with the meal,
skipping his own glass.

“He’s probably sleeping,” said
the Prince. “I left him on the ramparts when the wind kept blowing
out my cigar. He said he was going to walk a bit further and then
have a rest in his room. His head was pounding.”

“Let him sleep. We can start
without him,” decided Moriarty, who was also feeling hungrier than
usual.

They discussed the rockslide
and agreed it was likely to be cleared by tomorrow. That meant they
would be able to leave. They had a disappearance and a death to
contend with but it was unanimously agreed to leave it to the
gendarmes in Lourdes. They did not expect the brigands to be a
problem. Their numbers were depleted and if they had any sense they
would have high-tailed it east ahead of the winter snow.

Dessert was a clafoutis of
black cherries. It was followed by coffee and a few favourite
cheeses, including a Roquefort and a Bleu Auvergne.

After dinner, feeling sated and
secretly relieved that their sojourn at Chanteloup was coming to an
end, they lit some cigars and decamped to the comfortable chairs by
the fire. The Countess read a chapter of
Le Roman de la Rose
in fluent French while Lalique mimed the actions, proving once
again that she was a natural born actress.

At ten o’clock the girl kissed
everyone goodnight, and in case she had not yet endeared herself to
the men, that sweet gesture cemented her adorableness. Off she went
to sleep in the big bed in the south tower. After she’d skipped out
of the hall thoughts turned to the German.

“I’ll go and check on him,”
said the Prince, echoing the concerns of the others. Under normal
circumstances they would have left him to sleep until morning, but
nothing at Chanteloup could be considered normal.

Prince Orczy returned a few
moments later to say that von Gunn was nowhere to be found. He had
checked the garderobe and looked quickly into all the bedrooms,
even though their doors had been bolted from the outside. The door
at the end of the corridor was also bolted. That meant von Gunn was
still outside. Storm lanterns were organized and everyone bar the
Countess set off to scour the ramparts. When the ramparts came up
empty they searched the stable and outbuildings, courtyards and
baileys. They were about to move the search inside when Dr Watson
noticed the main gate was open. It stunned them all. Von Gunn was
found nearby. The portcullis had been raised and had come down on
top of him. A couple of wolves were prowling around the body.
Moriarty grabbed a flaming torch to scare them off. It allowed the
others to drag the body in and secure the gates. Von Gunn was
dead.

The body was carried into the
armoury and placed on a table. With the aid of several lanterns Dr
Watson managed a cursory examination. A single deep gash in the
chest indicated the German had been stabbed before being positioned
under the portcullis to make it appear as though he had been
crushed and speared by the medieval gate. It would have taken
significant strength to debar the gate, raise the portcullis, move
the body into position and then lower the portcullis – and for
what? The theatrical effect? The dramatic pose? The sense of horror
and fear it created in the hearts and minds of those who found it?
If not for the deep gash they might all have assumed the German had
been attempting to flee. That he had opened the gate and raised the
portcullis just high enough to squeeze under and had met with a
fatal accident, but the stab wound to the chest disproved that
theory. Von Gunn had been murdered.

They were back to square one.
Was Sarazan able to come and go at will? Was there a lunatic at
large? And then the terrible realization they did not wish to voice
– was the Singing Wolf orchestrating the bizarre set of events? Was
she a murderess? Was she seeking revenge against the four men for
the fathering of her child?

Xenia had been charged with
keeping watch over the sleeping girl. All was safe there.

The Countess retired to the
quiet of her bedroom to think about this latest murder while the
men interrogated the servants. She summoned Inez to her room a
short time later. The sultry flamenco dancer had been crying
bitterly and looked scared to death. She fell gratefully into the
chair the Countess waved her to when her long legs appeared to give
way.

“Did you know your mistress had
a child?”

Inez shook her head firmly.
“No, no, never! When I saw the girl at the dinner table I thought
she was an angel from heaven. Desi thought the girl was a ghost.
Her black face went white and she trembled all over. She could not
speak for hours and hours. It was like she had lost the power of
speech. I think she is very easily frightened by things she does
not understand. She grew up in an orphanage and she told me once
that the sisters were cruel. They were especially cruel to her
because of her black skin. Every noise makes her jump now. I
thought the old couple was behaving strangely from the first day
the mistress went missing but I thought maybe they had killed her.
I never thought they might be hiding a child.”

“Was Velazquez the lover of the
Singing Wolf?”

“No, the mistress could pick
and choose the men she wanted in her bed and she chose men who were
both rich
and
handsome.”

“Was Velazquez your lover?”

“No.” She bit her lip and
twisted the damp handkerchief in her lap.

“No? Why not? You are young and
lovely. And he was a hot-blooded toreador. There is no shame in
passion. Did the Singing Wolf not approve?”

Inez dropped her gaze. “It was
not like that. Velazquez, well, he preferred men. He went to the
bed of men who liked to sleep with men. Sometimes he went to the
beds of the ladies who came to the hotel, but there were not many
ladies, and he did not like it much.”

“He was a male gigolo?”

Inez looked up quickly, a fiery
flash of defiance in her dark Spanish eyes. “No! No! He was not
like that. He was shy. It was his -”

The Countess waited while Inez
bit her lip some more. “It was his…what?”

“Duty.”

The Countess repeated the
broken phrases for her own benefit. “He slept with the guests who
came to the Hotel Louve because it was his duty. In other words,
the Singing Wolf instructed him to sleep with the guests. If we had
stayed there longer he would have slept with me, though he would
have preferred a man. But if he is not a gigolo then – oh, I see,
it allowed the Singing Wolf to blackmail her guests
afterwards.”

The penny dropped, or in this
case, two pennies – a handsome toreador and a beautiful flamenco
dancer!

“It was your job to sleep with
the men who came to the hotel, the men who preferred women!”

Inez flushed dark red and
dropped her gaze once more.

“If we had stayed longer at the
hotel you would have slept with Dr Watson? You slept with the four
men who are here at Chanteloup right now? Am I right?”

“No! Never! They belonged to
the mistress!”

The Countess began thinking out
loud, ordering her thoughts, groping for meaning. “You slept with
the ones the mistress did not want. But what shame is there if the
men have slept with you? This is a foreign country. Such things are
permissible. Some men would even brag about it back home with their
friends. It could only be Velazquez who could be useful for
blackmail – oh, hang on, of course! The story-telling! You extract
secrets from the men you bed during moments of intimacy. Perhaps
they have had too much to drink and you ask them certain questions
about their past. You pass the information onto your mistress and
she then blackmails them. That is what happens!”

“Yes,” admitted Inez and this
time there was no dark red flush. “The men I sleep with they have
committed some bad deed – robbery, murder, forgery - they must pay
for their sin. It is right and fitting in the eyes of God to atone
for sin on this earth and then later in heaven. I helped the
mistress to bring justice before the Day of Judgement.”

“You were doing a good
deed?”

“Yes, yes, it is good in the
eyes of God to confess sin and pay for wrong-doing.”

“I see. After the mistress went
missing, do you think Velazquez decided to do some good deeds in
the eyes of God for himself?”

Inez shook her head fervently.
“No, no, he is not brave, he is timid, and he does not know any
stories about the sins of the four señores.”

“Only the mistress knew about
the four señores – is that what you swear?”

“Yes, yes, not me and not
Velazquez. He only goes to the bed of men who like to be with men
and the two fat English ladies who came one time to the Hotel Louve
by mistake. They are dead three years last summer and there is no
more chantage to pay.”

The Countess pondered this
fresh information. It meant Velazquez could not have been
attempting to blackmail the four men. That meant they had no reason
to kill him. But they had plenty of reason to kill the Singing
Wolf. Did Velazquez inadvertently spoil their murderous plan? Was
he in the wrong place at the wrong time that night? He was
certainly terrified of them. To run out of the gate and take his
chances in hostile territory was an act of sheer terror. So what
did he really hear that night? It was looking less and less likely
that it was Sarazan. It had to be one of the men making love to
their hostess prior to killing her. Velazquez’s explanation
concerning the heavy breathing seemed genuine. He had been
genuinely embarrassed to have to say it in front of her. He had
believed it. What happened afterwards was anybody’s guess. All four
men may have been involved with the disposing of the body.

“Did you believe Velazquez when
he said he went to get a drink in the middle of the night?”

“Yes, he went often to get a
drink in the night. Everyone knew that.”

“Were you awake?’

“Yes, I sleep badly because the
bed is lumpy and I am sore from riding the horse all day and the
noises are strange. I hear the wolves howling. I hear the wind
crying. I am frightened of more rockslides. I hear when Velazquez
goes past. I hear when Desi goes to the kitchen for food. I hear
when Milo goes to the kitchen for -”