The Fabulous Beast Page 4

  ‘A woman?’ she looked thoroughly shocked. ‘Sir, a woman could not commit such a nasty crime. It had to be a man, surely?’

  ‘Women have murdered in the past. But I was not impugning your sex.’

  ‘A beast then?’ she said, looking about her as if expecting to see it. ‘Some sort of mad wild creature, escaped from a cage?’

  Could I tell her I was on the verge of suspecting supernatural causes? I decided not. She would laugh at me. I was inclined to laugh at myself. Perhaps lack of sleep had muddied my brain. There was circumstantial evidence there, if one believed that statues could come to life. To do that though one would have to throw away science and accept the power of the occult. Of course I was not prepared to do that. Should I be looking for another explanation which did not involve such strange departures from reality? Secret chambers and tunnels beneath the bases statues, for example, which might afford an escape route from the scene of the murder?

  ‘A beast? Possibly – but I don’t want to give too much away at present. You’ll forgive me if I ask you to wait until my formal announcement. I still have some facts to check. I need to go over my clues several times, extrapolate my findings. The truth in such cases does not easily reveal itself.’

  She raised her dark eyebrows – oh how I would love to lick salt from those perfect arches – and turned back towards the house without another word. I went back to my statues and stood behind Daphne, looking across at the bulky Heracles. He was staring back, a heavy expression on his face. She, saucy madam, was peering over Apollo’s right shoulder at her club-wielding giant. The entangled Apollo seemed ignorant of this capriciousness and was gazing fondly at the hair which curled about her left ear, his expression devoid of suspicion.

  ‘Oh you sorry myth,’ I murmured to him. ‘You don’t even seem to be aware you have been cuckolded. Heracles is but a man and you are a handsome god, one of the Twelve Olympian deities, yet even you cannot hold your woman. What chance do I stand, a mortal of plain bearing?’

  There were of course no tunnels or secret passages.

  All that day I wondered. What if? What if it were a murder of the preternatural? Could I accept such an idea? Could I abandon logic and accept that there was a dark fluid world which operated in camera? This was an enlightened age, but there had been earlier times when the count’s ancestors had been accused of witchcraft, of devil worship, though never brought to account because of their high rank. Yet, when I came to think of it, the count himself spoke of this history not with humour, but with a serious note to his voice, almost as if he were ashamed. Almost as if he believed it to be true and there were such a thing as black magic.

  And then I had to remind myself that I actually did believe in the supernatural. I was a Christian. I believed in the spirit world, a life after death, a hell where souls were punished. If all that were real to me then, what great step was it to the satanic arts, an offshoot of that belief?

  I studied Daphne once again: she once the laurel, now the minx. If she had killed, it was not out of malice, of that I was sure. Human flesh, blood and bones had simply got in her way, as she rushed back in the darkness, eager to be by her partner’s side before the morning light revealed her absence. She had simply trampled over bodies in the same way that she had squashed the flowers. A swinging marble arm catching a head or neck. A stone foot crushing the chest of a man she had knocked over in her flight. These were blind accidents, nothing more.

  That evening was a black as its predecessor.

  I went to the count and said, ‘I wonder if I might borrow that manservant you loaned me, count, for an experiment? I would like to leave him for the night on the spot where the murder took place.’

  The count regarded me with glittering eyes.

  ‘What sort of experiment is that?’

  ‘I myself was in the same place last night, while you all slept. I – I recorded certain sounds and observations. I would like them verified by another’s ears and eyes. They are little enough in themselves, but mysteries are often solved by gathering all the tiny pieces – as with a mosaic – and putting the pieces together to form a complete picture.’

  The count sighed and gestured with his palms. ‘As you wish, Herr Maurer, but do give me some sort of answer soon. I was led to believe you were the best in your field at this kind of thing, yet you have been here a month already and with what result?’

  ‘I feel I am getting close.’

  ‘Then use the man, what do I care?’

  I returned to the garden.

  In order that I should put Simon in the exact path Daphne would take I tied the end of a thread to Apollo’s finger. The other end I tied to the club of Heracles. I could now place the manservant anywhere beneath this line and when Daphne visited her true love, he would be in her way. She would crush him with her great weight, as she galloped headlong towards her Heracles. If my theory was correct this was Simon’s last evening on earth. I would go to Sofia in good time, comfort her, sympathise, become the older confidante, woo her slowly, and lure her to my chamber in her bereft state.

  When I sent for him, Simon was his usual audacious self.

  ‘Here? Stay out there all night? I will not,’ he stated.

  ‘Then,’ I said, sweetly, ‘you will go to the count and explain why you have disobeyed his orders.’

  ‘Damn you, sir,’ the youth growled at me, his face dark with anger, ‘you think you can get to her in a single night? Never. All right, I shall stay there, then, and be back in the morning. She will welcome me to her bed at sunrise and you, sir, will weep into your pillow yet again.’

  ‘You insolent swine,’ I thought, as I walked him down with a lamp to the place where he was to die, ‘you shall spend sunrise in Hell, if all goes to plan.’

  After leaving him I pretended to go back to the house, but snuffed my lamplight and skipped off the path early. I hid in the myrtle bushes nearby. I wanted to be sure Simon stayed where he was. I had provided him with blankets and had made sure he was bedded down amongst the lilies. My conscience, I was surprised to find, was not disturbed by the fact that I was about to witness a violent accident. I was not a murderer. I was simply failing to tell a manservant of a certain danger. I might have been an army commander, leaving a soldier to guard a place, knowing that he might be attacked. That was not murder. It was expediency. I needed to prove my theory correct and the only way to do that was to place an expendable manservant in the path of the danger.

  The darkness was impenetrable and I could do naught but listen hard for what might come.

  I awoke with a start. What? Had I fallen asleep? My scheming had obviously exhausted me. I had been unable to remain awake. My clothes were damp and I was shivering with the cold. It took me a good few seconds to decide where I was, before a chilling remembrance came.

  With a jolt I realised there was a dim shielded light out there, in the White Garden. Someone had brought a dark-lamp to Simon. I could hear noises coming from the lily beds. Horrible thrashing, groaning, sighing noises. Sounds which were ugly to my ears. A couple were indulging in sexual intercourse out there amongst the flowers. I could hear their unsavoury murmurs of satisfaction, their grunts and moans. Disgusting sounds that made me feel sick to my stomach.

  She had come to him. They lay together amongst the pale lilies and fragrant jasmine, making love on that deadly path. Yet where was the heavy form of Daphne? Why had these two fornicators not already been crushed to death, the pair of them? Surely Daphne should be with her own lover, grating stone against stone, sliding marble into marble? Daphne and Heracles should, like those floating-island rocks encountered by the Jason’s Argonauts the Symplegades, be clashing together in mineral passion. There were no such noises, no such boulder-to-boulder sounds, only those animal gasps coming from amongst the trampled lilies of the garden.

  Yet. Yet. Are not the sounds of ecstasy are similar to those of a dying man? What if those moans and groans, that thrashing noise, were the last convulsions of life in t
wo expiring forms? Had Daphne been and gone, smashed bones and flesh, left pulp in her wake? The thought almost choked me as the bile rose to my mouth and terror swept through me.

  ‘Oh my God!’ I cried. ‘I’ve killed her!’

  I rushed out of hiding. Expecting to witness tragedy. My most urgent desire was to reach the lovers and separate them. If I did not they would die in each other’s arms and that would be too bitter a blow to bear. Such a death would bestow immortality on their love: a memory that would haunt me all my remaining days.

  When I came to the spot they were indeed locked together, but unhurt. In their half-nakedness they looked up at me and laughed as I stood there in my clinging clothes, my sorry damp cap upon my head. Then Simon doused their dark-lamp and I heard them scurrying away, into the night, seeking another lover’s tryst amongst the maze of myrtle bushes.

  I could not move. Mortified, humiliated, brimming with shame and utterly desolate, I remained standing there a very long time, until a red dawn crept from a harlot’s bed and climbed the sky. A gardener found me, was concerned for me. I told him I was all right. I said I had heard someone crashing through the White Garden in the night and had come to investigate.

  ‘Oh no, that were in the evenin’, sir – while you was up at the castle fetchin’ master Simon. In the twilight. We had a vandal, sir, I think – who broke a statue. No one saw him, but we heard him from the orchard, came a-runnin’ too late, for he was gone off into the gloam. Leastways, we saw not a soul, but damage were done afore we got to it.’

  I looked towards the statues now, having been too excited by my schemes to notice anything untoward in the fading daylight of the previous evening.

  ‘Damaged one of the sculptures?’

  The cherubic silent musicians were all in their places, harp, trumpet, flute, none of them broken so far as I could see.

  I turned my attention to the Greeks.

  Daphne was in her rightful spot, but looking unusually glum.

  Apollo himself was intact but seemed less the trammelled cuckold, more the lover in control.

  I spun round.

  Heracles!

  Heracles had lost his head! It had been shattered, smashed to fragments by a heavy blow. Even now an under-gardener was sweeping up the pieces, tossing them onto the gravel path. What an humiliating end for a Greek hero, his face to be trodden into the ground by careless feet.

  It took me a little while to understand what had occurred. All those years, all those decades, those centuries, Apollo had missed his Daphne, but knew not which way she went in the darkness. He had guessed of course that she had a lover, but in the pitch darkness which of those others was he? Adonis? Heracles? Hermes? Zeus even? Or one of those who already had a lover by his side, but was dissatisfied? He knew not. He could only surmise. He could only wait and fume, hoping one night to learn the truth.

  That night had come, his waiting at an end.

  It was I who had shewn him, with a thread, his hated rival.

  Greek hero Heracles might be, but he was no match for the righteous wrath of an Olympian god.

  Stalking Moon

  The wolves talk to each other in the way that wolves talk to each other. Gestures, smells, the raising and lowering of hair, the baring of teeth, body postures, sounds and body direction. The order comes from the alpha female: the pack needs to move location. They are, at this time in the season, too close to the two-legged ones. An event is due and distance is needed between the wolves and their natural enemy.

  Wolves are not able see into the future, of course, but vague memories stir in their minds like gentle winds. And instinct. Instinct has always been sharper than intellect and more reliable. Instinct tells them something is coming, something bad. It’s not something they can’t deal with, so long as they take heed of the warning feelings that arise from somewhere deep within their bellies. It says move and so they move, heading up the slope and into the dense, dark forest of the mountainside.

  Each wolf has a scent-name: their primary identification. Once the scent-name has been recognised there are other aspects–coat markings, cowl-colours, size, length of hair and voice–which identify the individual and place him or her in a position in the pack. Every wolf knows its status, from the alphas down to the omega, the raven wolf, last in the line, tip of the tail, end of the pack. The alpha female leads. The raven wolf trails, bear bait or first to fall from the iron sticks.

  They move off that night, under a waxing moon, slipping through the trees like grey spectres, shadows of themselves. The pack is of medium size, though numbers only ever remain general in the heads of those who are in the least bit interested. Importantly, they always know when one or more of the pack is missing. A quick sweep of those around them registers any lost soul. Sometimes they wait for that member to find a way back them again by their howls or their smell, sometimes they will initiate a search, but they never ignore a missing wolf.

  Scouts move up front and outwalkers to the flanks. There are just three young, kept in the middle of the pack. This is an ancient and tried formation which insures the safety of the main body. Surprised bears can and do wreak havoc amongst them, though now in the time of snow and ice the bears are asleep. The two-legs are always awake though, whatever the season. There are several kinds of two-legs, but in the main docile ones that live in huge packs and run away at the sight of a wolf, and dangerous wild ones who kill with iron sticks. They point the iron stick at a living creature, there follows a loud storm-noise accompanied by a small flash of fire from the end of the stick, by that time the wolf is dead or is injured. The wild two-legs are to be avoided at all cost and even the docile ones can bring danger on a pack.

  The alpha female does her best to keep the trail easy, but sometimes they have to struggle through deep snow. Wolves can get lost in such conditions and a howl is never far from their throats. Snow-covered ice is circumnavigated. Wolves have been known to break through thin ice and drown or freeze to death.

  As the pack travel their souls go with them. The silent dark ones from the otherworld of canines. These are the link with death, these highly-respected black silhouettes. A reminder that there is a place to go once you leave the living pack forever. There is comfort in this thought, though no living wolf will acknowledge his shadow-spirit, and a glance at them always raises a slight shudder of fear.

  Although this night is for travelling, the pack also hunt on the move. A hare is caught, and a lost dog that smells of two-legs, provides food for the whole group. There isn’t a great deal of flesh on these two carcasses, so the raven wolf is only allowed to feed after the others have done so. Their bellies aren’t full, but they have eaten some, so they continue their journey until the morning, when they rest.

  The following day they begin moving around late morning, slipping up the slopes through the harder snows. Once they see a solitary two-legs in the distance, with harnessed dog packs pulling flat tree-branches, but the two-legs doesn’t see a single pack member and all is well.

  In the evening they rest, sing a few songs to lift their spirits. They nibble out the ice from their pads and lick any injuries. One wolf has a split paw, another a scratched flank. These aren’t serious pain-givers, but small sufferings compared with starvation or a broken leg. Broken legs often lead to death, though not always. Not so long back there had been a three-legged member of the pack, who had amputated his own back leg by gnawing at it until it had been severed at the joint. This wolf had been caught in an iron-toothed snapper left by trappers. Three-legs was a hero amongst his fellows and thereafter did not have to feed himself, but was fed by the younglings.

  The mornings begin with dawns that are as grey as the cowls of the wolves themselves. The pack is up and ready at the first hair of light to grow on the back of the sky. It’s important to get as far away as possible from the two-legs. No one really knows why, but senses that it’s a necessary move. The alpha female especially has this feeling deep down in her belly which tells her that something
bad is coming. The bad thing will still arrive –there is no thwarting it –but it can be contained so long as the pack are in the right place at the right time.

  It’s her job to see they get to that place before the event.

  Seven days they walk, trot, run. On the fifth day an elderly matron is left behind when she’s unable to keep up. The raven wolf, the pack sweeper, drifts by her without a glance. When they rest at the next halt, no one returns to look for her. She’s not a missing wolf, she’s a dying one. Once night came again the matron will freeze and the dawn will greet her stiff-bodied, stiff-haired carcass with the same welcome as the living wolves receives. She won’t respond as they will. Her time has come and wolves, like any other creature, all have to die alone. There is no company in death, even for those who die together in the same place at the same moment. All have to make the last journey alone. The blackness falls and there is an end to personal memories, for the spirit that lives on after death has no memory of life. For some this is even a happy thing, for others it is a melancholy fact.

  On the sixth day there’s a blizzard and the world is whiter than ever. The pack cluster around a tall monolith, the base of which keeps the wind at bay. The invisible spirits of departed wolves trapped in the winds are furious. They shriek and whine, and howl, and cry, telling how unfair it is that they’re nothing but cold shreds of sound while their descendants are warm as blood and can croon with a living throat. Stars surge around the heads of the pack in their millions. The earth and the sky rush together and swirl into each other, mixing until they’re one. When they finally separate again, the pack members are covered with cloud and they have to rise and shake themselves free of storm-dust. Then they’re on their way again, slowly, up to their belly-hair in new, soft-yielding snow. Youngsters disappear beneath the surface and have to keep up by tunnelling around the legs of the elders.

  That night they kill a weak stag, bringing it down by sheer weight of numbers, gripping its shoulders, biting its knees, until it finally falls in a cold, cloudy shower of snow to let out its hollow death moan. Even before the creature’s eyes have glazed the alpha male and female are guzzling the liver and heart with relish. Elders tear out the kidneys and intestines, while the rest chew happily on tougher meat. Fat is fought over and swallowed more readily than muscle or gristle, though the dead beast is as delicious in death as he had been magnificent in life. Brains are licked from the skull, eyeballs cracked between teeth, gonads crunched, nostrils gnawed by the younglings. The pack would have eaten the stag’s very soul if they could have found it amongst the bones.