The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(28)
“No . . . ,” he murmured.
He contemplated the dead animal stretched out beside him as the pain from his left arm spread through his body like molten lava. Despite the fog clouding his brain, he realized the pain was too excruciating to be caused by a simple wound. Mustering the last ounce of his strength, Clayton managed to sit up straight enough to examine his arm. What he saw horrified him: there was no hand at the end of his left arm. Only a bleeding stump, from which hung a snarl of tendons. His hand was a few yards away, lying on the ground like a piece of refuse, like something that bore no relation to his body. Stifling the urge to retch, Clayton gazed from the errant hand to the bloody stump that had supplanted it, trying to convince himself that the fleshy lump belonged to him, that the discarded hand was his own.
When at last he managed to tear his eyes away from the hypnotic vision, he turned once more to the wolf, sprawled beside him in the pool of light cast by the lantern. Clutching the stump with his other hand, he studied the animal at length and saw that its forelegs were flayed and scarred. But after having looked straight into the wolf’s eyes, that clue seemed superfluous. The blood trickled from its right temple, and its eyes no longer possessed that mocking glint that the inspector had been unable to fathom. Now they possessed the absolute, incontrovertible aspect of death.
“You succeeded, didn’t you, Countess? You got what you wanted . . . ,” he heard himself utter in a plaintive voice, unsure whether he meant to condemn or applaud her actions.
The Countess de Bompard always got what she wanted, he thought resentfully. She had found a way of taking her own life without breaking the promise she had made to her husband, regardless of whether or not from now on Clayton had to live with his own curse. And, despite his anger, he had to admit she had been right when, just before hitting him on the head, she had told him there was no other way. Or did he honestly believe that their loving each other would suffice? What sort of life could they have had? He would not have been prepared to smile at her as if nothing had happened those nights when she returned home with a torn dress and the contented look of one who has sated her most secret appetite, nor would he have been able to stop his hand from trembling at breakfast the following morning as he read in the newspaper about some brutal murder, pretending there was no connection between the wretched victim and the woman he loved. No, he wasn’t prepared for that. And perhaps Armand de Bompard hadn’t been either. No doubt that was why he had left her, because he had realized that, in spite of all his knowledge, there was only one way to end her awful affliction. But Armand had loved her too much to do what Clayton had done.
He let out a terrible cry of rage, piercing the depths of the night with his suffering. He howled and howled until he had exhausted himself. It helped calm him a little. Almost out of apathy, he, too, thought of taking his own life on the spot. What did it matter in the end? All he had to do was press the gun to his head and pull the trigger. Again. His body would then topple over beside that of Valerie, and they would lie there, man and beast, shrouded in darkness, an unsolvable mystery. But instead, he began tearing at his jacket in order to make a tourniquet to stanch his bleeding stump. It seemed a futile gesture, like everything else he had done that night. He couldn’t understand why he didn’t simply let himself die, if what remained of his life wasn’t worth living, if the succession of days, months, years yearning for Valerie de Bompard would only seem like torture. No, he couldn’t understand why, and yet he wound the piece of cloth he had managed to tear off his jacket round his stump as tightly as he could.
As he did so, he remembered telling the countess at some point during the evening that he would give any part of his anatomy to understand who or what she was. Clayton smiled bitterly. Now he finally knew what Valerie de Bompard was.
4
CLAYTON’S LEFT ARM WAS eventually fitted with a hand fashioned from metal and wood, a sophisticated device with rivets and screws and bronze spokes extending from the wrist and tapering off into jointed fingers. It also contained a newfangled mechanism whereby each time the inspector tensed an arm muscle the gesture was translated into a movement of his mechanical hand. The invention had been a gift from Her Majesty, who had commanded her private surgeon, together with a celebrated master armorer and one of Prague’s greatest automaton makers, to join their skills with those of the Special Branch’s scientists to ensure that Captain Sinclair’s most promising novice needn’t go round like a useless cripple. Overwhelmed, Clayton had shown his gratitude the best way he knew how, by practicing for days on end to be able to clasp the monarch’s hand with his shiny prosthesis before planting on it the customary kiss. In spite of all that, it hadn’t been the most elegant of greetings, for his metal hand scarcely responded with the same precision as his original hand. And things had not improved much since then, he realized with regret each time he tried to carry out the simplest domestic task. He had just discovered he wasn’t very skilled at sealing windows either. Still, in time he would learn to use the thing more naturally, he reflected with a sigh. If he kept practicing, he would soon be able to hold a beer glass without smashing it, or take a queen’s hand without fracturing a couple of her fingers. After all, he had only had it just over seven months. Seven months since the Countess de Bompard had chewed off his real hand, leaving him mutilated in more ways than one.
“Are you all right, Inspector?” Sinclair asked, noticing Clayton gazing dreamily at the window it had taken him so long to seal.