The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(15)
“I assure you, had you owned a cat instead of that enormous hound, I would never have—”
But before the chief constable could finish, the countess spoke up from the far end of the table. Everyone turned toward her in amazement, for Valerie de Bompard’s tinkling voice had risen above theirs with the delicacy of a dove amid a flock of crows.
“Gentlemen, we are all understandably exhausted after recent events.” She had a hint of a French accent that gave her words a charming lightness. “However, Inspector Clayton is our honored guest, and I am afraid we risk making his head spin with our petty squabbling. You will notice, Inspector,” she addressed Clayton with an almost childlike zeal, “that I say ‘our,’ for despite having arrived in this country as a foreigner only a short time ago I already feel I am English. Not for nothing have the good people of Blackmoor clasped me to their bosom as if they had known me since birth.” Despite the countess’s friendly tone, her mocking words fell upon the gathering like a cold, unpleasant rain. “Which is why I should like to thank you once more, on behalf of everyone here, for what you have done for us, for our beloved Blackmoor.”
She raised her glass between slender fingers, so daintily that it looked as if she had willed it to levitate. The others instantly followed suit. “Gentlemen, these have been evil and terrible times for all. For two years now, we have been living in fear, at the mercy of a bloodthirsty beast,” she went on in a theatrical tone like a storyteller before an audience of children, “but, thanks to Inspector Clayton’s formidable mind, the nightmare is finally over, and the evil creature has been defeated. I don’t believe anyone here will ever forget the night of the fifth of February 1888, when the inspector freed us from our curse. And now, for God’s sake, gentlemen”—her mischievous grin twinkled irreverently behind her raised glass—“let us once and for all drink a toast to Cornelius Clayton, the brave young man who hunted down the werewolf of Blackmoor!”
Since they were too far away from one another to clink glasses, they all raised their champagne flutes in the air. Clayton nodded graciously at the countess’s words and forced himself to smile with a mixture of smugness and humility. The chief constable promptly proposed another toast, this time in honor of their hostess, and it was Valerie de Bompard’s turn to lower her gaze with that shy expression that always made Clayton’s heart miss a beat. It might be worth pointing out at this juncture that the inspector did not consider himself an expert with the ladies—quite the opposite, though he did pride himself on knowing enough about human behavior to be able to claim with some authority that Valerie de Bompard had nothing in common with the rest of the female race, or indeed with humanity as a whole. Every one of her gestures was a fathomless mystery to him. The shy expression with which she had greeted the chief constable’s toast, for example, reminded him less of the decorous behavior of a lady in society than the deceptive calm of the Venus flytrap before it ensnares the wretched insect alighting on its leaves.
As he sat down again, Clayton recalled the unease he had felt the first time he saw her. It had been as if he were in the presence of a creature so fascinating, it was hard to believe she belonged to the tawdry world around her. On that day, the countess had worn a sky-blue silk ensemble with matching gloves and had set it off with a wide-brimmed hat trimmed with an elaborate sprig of leaves and berries into which the milliner, in keeping with the fashion of the day, had tucked a miniature stuffed dormouse and several orange-winged butterflies, which seemed to embody the rebellious thoughts that must be bubbling inside her head. No, Clayton had not known what to make of the countess then, nor did he now. He had only succeeded in falling madly in love with her.
“So tell us, Inspector,” said the vicar, interrupting Clayton’s daydream. “Was it clear to you from the start which direction your investigation should take? I ask you because I imagine that, when dealing with the supernatural, one can choose from an almost infinite number of possible theories.”
“Infinity isn’t a very practical concept to work with, Vicar, unless our salary were to be augmented accordingly,” Clayton replied. This brought a few laughs from his fellow guests, including, he imagined, the sound of tinkling bells. “That is why, when confronted with events like the Blackmoor atrocities, which are difficult to explain in terms of the established order of the natural world, we must first eliminate all possible rational explanations. Only then can we deem something supernatural, an idea to which my department is clearly open.”
“That is what we should have done!” the doctor remarked ruefully. “Used a bit of common sense. Only, as in all small towns, Blackmoor is full of superstitious people, and we all know—”
“Oh, stop pretending you are any different, Russell!” the chief constable rebuked him once more. “I happen to know that you were more scared than anyone. Your maid informed mine that you were melting all your spoons to make a silver bullet, because you claimed it was the only thing that could kill a werewolf. Where on earth did you come up with such a silly idea?”
The doctor was going to deny it but then chuckled instead.
“Well, I’ll be damned, the cheeky little gossip! Yes, I confess to melting the teaspoons. And if you’d listened to a word I’d said during these past few months, Chief Constable, you wouldn’t be asking me now how I came up with such a silly idea.” He turned away from him and addressed Clayton in a more measured tone, as if speaking to an equal. “The fact is, Inspector, a French colleague of mine, with whom I correspond, told me about a gruesome animal that terrorized the region of Gévaudan in the last century. Many claimed it was a werewolf and that they only succeeded in shooting it down with silver bullets. That is why I melted nearly all our cutlery, much to my wife’s displeasure.”