Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 5. Whole No. 777, May 2006

The Night of the Wolf by Paul Halter

We try not to repeat authors in Passport to Crime so that we may bring as many different voices to you, from as many countries, as possible. But Paul Halter’s stories have a special combination of atmospheric setting and brilliant classical plotting that makes them irresistible. A Frenchman from Alsace Lorraine whose most famous fictional protagonist is an Englishman called Dr. Alan Twist, Mr. Halter appears in our pages here for the third time.

“Daddy, Daddy, tell us a story.”

The chieftain looked at the little group that was devouring with gusto the deer that had been killed a few hours before. He pricked up his ears and glanced in exasperation at his son.

“Yes, Daddy, please,” insisted another of his children.

“Another one?” he growled. “You’d do better to occupy yourselves with more important things! You’re old enough to hunt now. The winter’s been hard and spring is still a long way off. How many times do I have to tell you that to live you have to eat, and to eat you have—”

“Yes, we know, but please, Daddy, please tell—”

“Now you’re bothering me! I don’t know what else to tell!”

His companion trotted through the snow to rub herself against him: “You can tell them the story of Wolf.”

“The story of Wolf!” he bristled. “But they’re much too young.”

“Yes, tell us the story,” his turbulent offspring clamoured in unison.

He bared his teeth in anger, but he soon relented; he knew that, one way or another, he would not be able to escape the daily chore. And after all, if they were old enough to hunt, they were old enough to know.

He gazed for a long time at the plain covered in snow and, in the distance, the dark line of the pine trees bowing to the wind. With his red eyes fixed on his sons, he began:

“It’s a very sad story. Most among us claim that ‘those things’ only exist in the minds of a few crazy creatures. Unfortunately, it’s not true. Wolf was a friend...”

The snow was falling in large flakes on Malmort, a small town in the Lorraine, nestled in lonely isolation in the foothills of the Vosges. The sad gray houses that clustered around the church seemed gradually to become engulfed by the thick white blanket, as if seeking to be forgotten: to blend into a landscape more desolate here than in the rest of the Lorraine. Even the mountain range itself, a twisted rock barrier dotted with firs, appeared to loom more ominously in this part of the region than anywhere else. It was only eight o’clock at night, yet already the inhabitants had locked and bolted their doors. Terror, rather than the rigors of winter, was what chilled their hearts. Only two days had gone by since the murder of old Pierre Wolf. A particularly grisly murder, yet — curiously — it was not so much the ferocity of the crime that worried the villagers, but what it implied. “He is back,” they could be heard whispering. “Mon Dieu, what will become of us? Our women? Our children?”

Commissaire Jean Roux, in charge of the investigation, had hardly slept since the tragedy. That evening, he was pacing up and down in front of the fireplace, racking his brains for any glimmer of a solution to the extraordinary puzzle, when someone knocked on the door.

He went to open it. An old man of smallish stature stood there, covered in snow and obviously numb with cold, claiming to be lost and looking for an inn in which to spend the night. A short while later, sitting in front of the fire with a stiff grog, he explained to his host the circumstances that had led him to lose his way. Totally preoccupied, the policeman only listened with one ear. One phrase, however, caught his attention:

“...There’s always an explanation for everything.”

Jean Roux studied the visitor carefully. His gnarled and twisted hands and his face like parchment spoke of a great number of years on this earth. His eyes, by contrast, were striking for their sparkling vitality, youth, and intelligence. Roux was unsure what to make of him. Where had this old man come from anyway? Why had he been wandering out in the open at this time of night, in the swirling snow? His clothes appeared to be of good quality; there was nothing of the tramp about him. The detective began to regret not having paid enough attention to what he had been saying. But good manners prevented him from asking his companion to repeat his words.

“For everything? Do you really believe that?” he remarked with a disillusioned smile. “Monsieur... Monsieur...?”

“Dieudonne. Noel Dieudonne. Yes, I believe there is always an explanation for everything.”

Jean Roux shook his head disapprovingly as he stared at the wolfhound sleeping on one corner of the carpet. M. Dieudonne frowned.

“Would there be a connection between that animal and your reluctance to believe?”

“Yes, in a way. I took in this hound because his master was murdered nearly two days ago. And there isn’t an explanation for the death of that man. No ‘rational’ one, at least. It has been proven that only this beast could have been responsible, but it’s beyond the bounds of credibility that it could have administered the fatal dagger wound.”

“The animal looks harmless enough to me, in spite of its size,” M. Dieudonne observed calmly.

“I think so, too, even though the body of his master, M. Wolf, was lacerated by claw and fang marks.”

The old man looked at him, wide-eyed.

“Stabbed, bitten, and slashed? What kind of a monster...”

“Have you ever heard tell of the werewolf, my dear sir?” asked the policeman.

The visitor looked at him incredulously.

“There’s always an explanation for everything, you say,” Jean Roux continued bitterly, and with a note of sarcasm. “I think you’ll change your mind after I’ve told you what happened the night before last, as well as certain events which occurred about twenty years ago. One of the two people who discovered the victim is none other than my predecessor, ex-Commissaire Maurice Mercier. A level-headed witness, in other words, with a trained eye.

“It had snowed the night Wolf was killed, between nine o’clock and midnight. It was a little after that when Mercier was awakened by shrieks and growls. Then, around one o’clock, there was a knock at the door. It was his old friend and neighbour Dr. Loiseau, standing there with a torch in one hand and his walking stick in the other, come to ask him whether he had heard screams coming from the forest. Anxiously, and for good reason, they went straightaway to Pierre Wolf’s house.

“Mercier and Loiseau both lived practically at the edge of the forest. They only had to follow a path through the woods to reach Wolf’s house, which was situated in the middle of a clearing. A house made entirely of wood, with a carpenter’s workshop adjoining, although Wolf had not set foot in the shop for several years, having given up his hobby.

“It was not long after one o’clock that Dr. Loiseau and Mercier reached the clearing. A thin coat of fresh snow covered the frozen ground all around. The beam of Dr. Loiseau’s lamp picked out a strange set of prints which appeared to originate in the Wolf house, standing about fifty yards ahead of them. They were not the footprints of a human, but of a large dog — or a wolf!

“Almost indistinguishable under the trees and bushes, the prints finally petered out quite close to them, not far from the path. In the light of the lamp they traced the prints back, which led them to the front entrance of Wolf’s house, open in that weather and at that late hour! They found Wolf slumped in front of the fireplace, swimming in his own blood, a dagger planted in his back and his face and limbs lacerated with slashes. The body was still warm. Dr. Loiseau estimated that death had occurred within the half-hour, forty minutes at most, which placed it at about twelve-thirty. An assessment confirmed later by the medical examiner. Do you see the problem? The crime occurred after the snow stopped. Now, apart from their own and those of the ‘beast,’ no other footprints were found anywhere around the house — which they searched from top to bottom, only to prove that nobody was there, other than themselves and the victim. Even the victim’s wretched dog had disappeared. They were probably its prints that they had noticed outside, and while it may have been responsible for the vicious attack on its master, under no circumstances could it have stabbed him with a dagger. How, then, had the murderer escaped without leaving a mark in the snow?”

M. Dieudonne nodded his head, deep in thought. He drained his grog, savoring the last drop, then declared:

“Interesting. But how much time had elapsed before your arrival on the scene?”

Commissaire Roux smiled ironically as he answered:

“I understand what’s behind your question. Actually, we got there very quickly. Dr. Loiseau came immediately to find me, leaving Mercier to stay with the victim. It’s the business about the footprints that intrigues you, isn’t it? I can assure you that was where we focused our attention, because Dr. Loiseau had pointed out their curious nature straightaway. It just so happened that among my officers there was a specialist in that area, who knows more than an Apache Indian about the tricks that can be played. None of the sets of tracks had been tampered with. Not those of the ‘beast,’ not Mercier’s, not Dr. Loiseau’s. Nobody had marched backwards, nobody had covered anyone else’s prints with his own. And I repeat, there were no other prints around the house, nor anywhere on the snow-covered surface of the clearing. We also went through Mercier’s house with a fine-toothed comb. Nothing, and — needless to say — no secret passages. Are you beginning to get the picture?”

“It certainly limits the possibilities. What did the medical examiner have to say about the wounds?”

“He was fairly cautious. Wolf’s face and hands had been shredded, not bitten; in fact, there were no marks anywhere that could be said with absolute certainty to be bite marks. It was the work of a wild animal, there’s nothing more to be said. As for the dagger wound in the back, that was without question the work of a human. A precise blow, straight to the heart, causing instantaneous death.”

M. Dieudonne thought for a moment, then pointed to the wolfhound sleeping on the carpet. “When and where did you find him?”

“He reappeared during the morning. We examined him carefully, of course. He seemed to have been in a fight, but there was nothing to show whether it had been with his master or another animal in the area. The problem is there had been another fall of snow since the night, so we couldn’t compare his prints to those leaving the front entrance of the house.”

“But those prints must have been made by the dog, surely?”

“Perhaps. But in that case, what about the murderer? A winged assassin, not subject to the laws of gravity, do you think? Whether it was this beast or some other animal that shredded his master’s body doesn’t affect the problem, as I see it! How could whoever had struck the fatal blow have escaped? By the way, this dog doesn’t strike me as being particularly aggressive... Otherwise, believe me, I wouldn’t be keeping him here.”

There was a silence, broken by M. Dieudonne asking:

“Apart from what you’ve told me, are there any other clues?”

“Clues? No. There was something bizarre, however, although I can’t see what it could have to do with the murder. On the bench in the workshop there were some fresh wood shavings, which apparently had come from a lath that had been removed from the roof, and which we found on one of the shelves, the only bit of freshly cut wood in a place covered with dust and cobwebs.”

“That’s certainly bizarre. But what’s even more bizarre is the conclusion you seem to have drawn from all this. If I’ve understood you correctly, you think M. Wolf’s killer was half-man, half-wolf, in other words a werewolf, which would explain the claw marks and the bites, as well as the dagger and the prints in the snow.”

Jean Roux nodded, somewhat shamefacedly.

“I assume, my dear sir, that you must have good reasons for making such an assumption?”

The commissaire’s face darkened and his voice dropped.

“You’re not from these parts, I take it? You don’t know about the legend that hangs over this village. The werewolf has always haunted this region. A monster, half-man half-wolf, as you say, which has its own particular way of killing its prey: tearing the flesh apart with its fangs before plunging a dagger into the heart. About twenty years ago, nothing had been heard of the werewolf for some time. Then, out of the blue, it struck twice. Old Timothee saw it with his own eyes when it attacked Henri, the little boy he had adopted and who, by some miracle, survived. The old man’s dog, like his master, tried to defend the child against the monster and followed it into the forest, where it was found in agony, its body lacerated by dagger thrusts. Incidentally, the tragedy was seen by another witness, none other than Dr. Loiseau, whose own wife would be a victim of the beast a week later.”

For a few seconds, the only sound to be heard was the crackling of the fire. The two men stared sightlessly at the sleeping wolfhound. The smooth and shiny fur of its flank rose and fell steadily with the rhythm of its breathing.

It was Roux who broke the silence:

“Have you any other explanation to offer, my dear sir?”

The old man avoided the question.

“You told me that M. Mercier and Dr. Loiseau went to M. Wolf’s house because they had reason to be concerned. I don’t really understand that. Admittedly they both heard growls coming from the forest, but that was hardly reason enough for a nocturnal excursion. Especially since the werewolf had not been seen for about twenty years!”

“Obviously,” replied Jean Roux, turning his armchair around. “It wasn’t only the noises which caused them to be concerned about old Wolf. Several days before the tragedy, Mercier and Loiseau had spent the evening with him. Henri was there, too. Yes, the very same Henri who had been attacked by the beast in the past. This kind of get-together was unusual, quite exceptional, in fact, because Wolf had lived practically as a recluse since he had stopped working. I say since that time, because before then he had been a busy bee, dipping into every flower. He was an unrepentant skirt-chaser, to the point that he had no friends left among the males of the village, a state of affairs which had made him bitter and even hateful. Although surprised by the invitation, Mercier and Loiseau accepted, assuming that the hermit’s life was beginning to weigh on him. And that night, the discussion turned to the werewolf.”

Roux stopped and looked his visitor in the eye to get his full attention.

“I imagine you are well aware that the werewolf is a human of normal appearance, male or female, who only turns into a wild beast during certain nights. Are they complete transformations? Are they partial? Are they frequent? Do they only happen at full moon? I’m not going to dwell on the subject, which is in any case very controversial. As is the way to combat them. Only silver bullets that have been blessed and marked with the cross are supposed to be effective. The question of the ‘transmission’ of the evil is of particular importance, in my opinion. Some believe that a simple bite is sufficient to give birth to a new ‘wolf.’ Then there is also the question of what symptoms allow us to identify our werewolf when he is not in a period of transformation. They say that, despite the human appearance, two things can betray him. First, his body will show the marks of any wounds and any scratches sustained during his wild wanderings in the forest. Second, there will be hairs on the palm of his hand. Mercier, Loiseau, and Wolf were discussing the matter when the conversation became quite heated. It was about Henri, in fact, who had actually been bitten by the monster, and who had suffered the consequences. He’s a good and honest lad, but he has the mental age of an eight-year-old. In the village, he is called upon to perform only the most menial tasks, at which he often incurs cuts and scratches. He has no hairs on his palm, but his body and arms are covered in a veritable fleece. It’s not difficult to guess the drift of the discussion: Henri, having been bitten by the monster, must surely run the risk of becoming a werewolf one day. Mercier and Loiseau pressed the point and that, apparently, riled Wolf. He suddenly announced, with a sneer, that the time had come to tell Henri the ‘truth’; and not just Henri but the whole village. What truth was he talking about? The doctor and the ex-policeman failed to get it out of him, but they formed the distinct impression that Wolf was intent on pouring derision on the werewolf legend. They pointed out that his attitude might cause him grief if the werewolf got wind of what he was saying. Whereupon there was a minor incident: Dr. Loiseau made a sudden movement; the dog had an unfortunate reaction and bit him in the ankle. Nothing serious, but afterwards Loiseau had been obliged to walk with a cane for a few days. From that moment, things went from bad to worse, not helped by the amount of alcohol that had been consumed. Mercier and Loiseau left, threatening the old man with another visit from the monster, in view of his cynical disdain. Wolf, sarcastic and sneering, kept repeating that everyone would soon learn the truth.”

Once more, M. Dieudonne nodded his head approvingly in amusement and satisfaction.

“Very well,” he said after a while. “So we’re dealing with a werewolf. A werewolf that visited M. Wolf by night and killed him with bites and a blow from a dagger before exiting the house, leaving behind his footprints in the virgin snow. All we need to do is to find his identity, the human face behind which he is hiding. Have you an idea? Any suspects? Personally, I would lean towards one of the three people with him that night. And you?”

Jean Roux cleared his throat.

“Yes, I’m also suspicious of those three. Particularly since none of them has an alibi. At the time of the crime, in other words around twelve-thirty, Mercier and Loiseau were both at home alone, and Henri was sleeping it off in a barn after an anniversary dinner for the farmer who employs him. Regarding Henri, I think I should tell you that all of Wolf’s estate comes to him, so he inherits the house and any savings the old man had. Did Mercier and Loiseau have a similar motive for murder? I don’t know. But I’ve always suspected that Mercier held a grudge against Wolf: It appears that his wife left him shortly after they came to live here. Could it be that she had an affair with Wolf and then, full of remorse, left the scene? All that is pure speculation, of course. And, as for Dr. Loiseau, all we have is conjecture. The doctor remarried after the tragic disappearance of his first wife. A happy and tranquil union, apparently, marred only by the poor state of health of the new Mme. Loiseau, who left us several years ago. Since then, he has lived alone, his only company a young dog, much sought after by the animal that you see lying in front of you.”

Roux’s voice trailed off, so surprised was he by the sudden change in the old man’s expression, which had gone from a deep frown to a broad smile. He turned towards the policeman:

“We’re looking for a monster and you talk to me about motives for murder? I have the impression that you are not as convinced as you would have me believe in the existence of this famous werewolf. M. Roux, I believe that, deep down, you have never really believed in the legend. And I still maintain there’s always an explanation for everything.”

“Am I to understand from what you say that you have solved the mystery? That you are in a position to explain how a human can cross an expanse of snow without leaving behind any trace other than that of an animal?”

“Yes,” replied M. Dieudonne simply.

There was an icy silence.

“It’s impossible,” spluttered the commissaire. “I’ve studied the problem from every angle and—”

“Don’t forget the wood shavings.”

“The wood shavings! What the devil can they have to do with it? And the werewolf that attacked Henri nearly twenty years ago! Two witnesses saw it! How do you explain that?”

“The facts, M. Roux, just consider the facts! Try for a moment to empty your mind and reconstruct the scene from what is known: A young boy is found with serious bite wounds, and nearby is a dog writhing in agony from knife cuts. Who bit the young boy? The dog, clearly! And who took it on himself to stab the dog to death? The adult who was there at the scene, obviously, who wanted to put down the crazed animal who had attacked his adopted son.

“Old Timothee must have thought for a moment that little Henri was dead; that he hadn’t been able to save him; and that he might even have struck him during his ferocious attack on his own dog. Beside himself with grief, weighed down by a sense of guilt, he felt he was losing his reason. It’s not surprising that he regarded his dog as a sort of monster, nor that he started talking about the terrible beast of the legend.

“Once you accept that as the starting point, it’s child’s play to work out what happened next. I can only see one explanation for the lie that Dr. Loiseau told. As witness to the tragedy, he confirmed the old man’s ramblings in order to be able to blame the werewolf for a crime that he had been planning for some time: disposing of his wife, who had deceived him with Wolf. The affair is pure speculation on my part; he may well have killed his first wife for some other reason. I also have the feeling that Henri is the fruit of another one of Wolf’s amorous adventures. If we make that assumption, it explains a lot of what happened. If Wolf had been Mme. Loiseau’s lover, he could well suspect that her death was actually a murder motivated by jealousy and that, in the shadow of the wild werewolf, there lurked the good doctor. If Wolf was the father of Henri, that would explain why he left him his estate and why he did not appreciate, at that notorious dinner, Mercier and Loiseau’s assumption that Henri could be — or become — a werewolf. It must have been even more galling for him in view of what he suspected about Loiseau. No prizes for guessing why the doctor continued to foster the legend twenty years after. Wolf flew into a rage and let Dr. Loiseau know that he had discovered his secret and did not intend to keep quiet about it much longer, not realizing that, in doing so, he was signing his own death warrant.

“In order to get rid of Wolf without attracting suspicion, Dr. Loiseau needed to make it look like a new manifestation of the werewolf. So the following day, even though the wound inflicted by Wolf’s dog was minor, he started walking with a cane. And a few days later, when a light snowfall was anticipated, he put his plan into action. That evening, as the snow started to fall, he walked to the clearing, taking with him his young dog, which he attached to a tree. He knocked on Wolf’s door. He stabbed him and lacerated his skin with the same special tool he had used on his first wife some twenty years earlier. Then he went into the disused carpenter’s workshop and fashioned a rudimentary pair of stilts from the roof lath, shaping the tips so that they matched the end of his cane. Or possibly he made them sometime before, even in the presence of Wolf, who was completely oblivious to the intended purpose of the stilts.

“The snow having stopped, the killer unleashed his dog and watched it hurtle towards the edge of the forest to meet its mate in joyful reunion — which was the cause of the noise that became ‘shrieks and growls’ in Mercier’s words. In turn, the doctor himself left the scene on the stilts. Of course, these were not full-size stilts — which would have left widely spaced marks; in this case, the chocks which supported the feet were nailed close to the base of the stilts, in other words only a few inches from the ground, which would result in a very short stride and hence closely spaced marks in an almost straight line, similar to those made by a cane. After having released his dog, Loiseau alerted the ex-commissaire Mercier. Then, arriving on the scene in the company of his friend, he immediately shone his light on the dog’s prints, while walking next to those left by the stilts, and pretending to press down on his cane.

“The policeman in charge of examining the prints did his job very thoroughly, I have no doubt. I’m sure he carefully examined all the prints left in the snow by Mercier, Loiseau, and the dog. But the marks left by the cane?”

The commissaire’s ears were ringing and his brain was in a swirling fog. He could not believe it. This providential visitor had solved, in less than a quarter of an hour, a puzzle he had been racking his brains over for two days and almost two nights. He could only hear the voice off and on, in snatches:

“The fresh wood shavings were quite clear, after all... I kept telling you there’s always an explanation for everything... Look! It’s stopped snowing! I’ll be on my way soon... No, doggie, down... Stay... You’re staying here... What’s his name, by the way?”

“Wolf,” murmured Roux, “like his deceased master. I never understood why he called him by his own name.”

“There’s always an explanation for everything, my dear sir...”

Night started to fall. A few flakes of snow swirled in the biting cold. Nothing remained of the deer except the carcass lying in a pool of blood-red melted snow. Still, some of the group were not yet sated, but continued to feast on the last scraps of flesh, tearing at them with unabated ferocity.

“You understand,” said the chief as he concluded the story, “that it was not the right solution.”

“Personally,” growled his eldest son, “I find the story grotesque. Particularly the bit about being transformed into half-man half-wolf.”

“Unfortunately, my son, it happens. But in the opposite sense, naturally. That was precisely the case with Wolf. Because it was he, of course, who killed the old man during one of his many fits. I once saw him in that condition. You cannot imagine anything more hideous! He lost his beautiful fur and his paws lengthened and spread apart. His heavy furless head became round, his ears shrank, and his snout — I don’t even want to think about it — almost disappeared. Truly a monster. But that’s enough for tonight. We have to break camp.”

A long howl rent the silence. At the chief’s call, those who were still feasting withdrew their blooded snouts from the deer’s entrails. And the pack disappeared into the depths of the forest.

Copyright © 2006 Paul Halter. Translated from the French by John Pugmire and Robert Adey.