White Fire

48

Corrie finished the story and looked up to find Pendergast’s silvery eyes upon her. She realized she had been holding her breath, and exhaled. “Holy crap,” she said.

“One could say that.”

“This story…I can hardly get my head around it.” A thought struck her. “But how did you know it was key?”

“I didn’t. Not at first. But consider: Doyle was a medical man. Before starting his private practice, he had been the doctor on a whaling ship and ship’s surgeon on a voyage along the West African coast. Those are among the most difficult postings a medical man could experience. He had surely seen a great deal of unpleasantness, to put it mildly, on these voyages. A story that would send him fleeing from the dining table had to be far more repugnant than a mere man-eating grizzly.”

“But the lost story? What led you to that in particular?”

“Doyle was so unsettled by the story he heard from Wilde that he did what many authors do to exorcise their demons: he incorporated it into his fiction. Almost immediately after the meeting in the Langham Hotel he wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles, which of course has a few parallels to Wilde’s actual story. But Hound, while a marvelous story in its own right, was a mere ghost of the truth. Not much exorcism to be had there. One can surmise that Wilde’s story continued to work on his mind for a long time. I began to wonder whether, in later years, Doyle finally felt compelled to write something closer to the bone, with much more of the truth in it, as a kind of catharsis. I made some inquiries. An English acquaintance of mine, an expert in Sherlockiana, confirmed to me a rumor of a missing Holmes story, which we surmised was titled ‘The Adventure of Aspern Hall.’ I put two and two together — and went to London.”

“But how did you know it was that story?”

“By all accounts the Aspern Hall story was soundly rejected. Never published. Consider that: a fresh Sherlock Holmes story, from the master himself, the first one in ages — and it is rejected? One might surmise it contained something unusually objectionable to Victorian taste.”

Corrie wrinkled her nose in chagrin. “You make it sound so simple.”

“Most detection is simple. If I teach you nothing else, I hope you’ll learn that.”

She colored. “And I was so dismissive of this lead for so long. What an idiot I am. I’m sorry about that, really.”

Pendergast waved a hand. “Let us focus on the matter before us. The famed Hound of the Baskervilles merely touched on the grizzly story. But this tale: this incorporates far more of what Doyle heard from Wilde, who had in turn heard it from this fellow you found, Swinton. A commendable discovery, that.”

“An accident.”

“An accident is only a puzzle piece that hasn’t yet found its place in the picture. A good detective collects all ‘accidents,’ no matter how insignificant.”

“But we need to figure out what connection the story has to the real killings,” said Corrie. “Okay: you have a bunch of cannibalistic murderers who are behaving somewhat like this guy Percival. They’re killing and eating miners up on the mountain, trying to disguise what they’re doing as grizzly killings.”

“No. If I may interrupt: the identification of the killings with a man-eating grizzly was originally made by chance, as you’ve probably learned for yourself. A grizzly bear passed by and masticated the remains of one of the early victims, and that clinched matters to the town’s satisfaction. Later random sightings of grizzlies seem to confirm the connection. It is all about how human beings construct a narrative out of random events, baseless assumptions, and simple-minded prejudices. In my opinion, the gang of killers you mention did not set out to disguise their work as the result of a man-eating grizzly.”

“All right, so the gang wasn’t trying to disguise their killings. But still, the story doesn’t explain why they’re killing. What’s the motivation? Sir Percival has a motivation: he kills his partner to cover up the fact that he cheated him and stuck him in an insane asylum. I can’t see how that has anything to do with what prompted the killers in the Colorado mountains.”

“It doesn’t.” Pendergast looked at Corrie a long time. “Not directly, at any rate. You’re not focusing on the salient points. One should ask, first: why did Sir Percival eat portions of his victims?”

Corrie thought back to the story. “At first, to make it look like a wolf. And then later, because he was going crazy and thought he was developing a taste for it.”

“Ah! And why was he going crazy?”

“Because he was suffering from mercury poisoning as a result of making felt.” Corrie hesitated. “But what does hat making have to do with silver mining? I can’t see it.”

“On the contrary, Corrie — you see everything. You must be bolder in drawing your inferences.” Pendergast’s eyes gleamed as he quoted the line.

Corrie frowned. What possible connection could there be? She wished Pendergast would just tell her, rather than pulling the Socratic method on her. “Can we dispense with the teachable moment? If it’s obvious, why can’t you just tell me?”

“This is not an intellectual game we are playing. This is deadly serious — particularly for you. I am surprised that you have not already been threatened.”

He paused. In the silence, Corrie thought of the shot at her car, the dead dog, the note. She should tell him — clearly he would find out sooner or later. What if she confided in Pendergast? But that would only result in him putting more pressure on her to leave Roaring Fork.

“My first instinct,” Pendergast went on, almost as if reading her thoughts, “was to spirit you away from town immediately, even if it meant commandeering one of the chief’s snowcats. But I know you well enough to realize that would be futile.”

“Thank you.”

“The next best thing, therefore, is to get you thinking properly about this case — what it means, why you are in extreme danger, and from where. This is not, as you put it, a teachable moment.”

The seriousness of his tone hit her hard. She swallowed. “Okay. Sorry. You’ve got my attention.”

“Let’s return to the question you just asked, which I will rephrase in more precise terms: what does nineteenth-century English hat making have in common with nineteenth-century silver refining?”

It came to her in a flash. It was obvious. “Both processes use mercury.”

“Precisely.”

All of a sudden, everything started to fall into place. “According to the story, mercury nitrate was used to soften fur for the making of felt for hats. Carroting, they called it.”

“Go on.”

“And mercury was also used in smelting, to separate silver and gold from crushed ore.”

“Excellent.”

Now Corrie’s mind was racing. “So the gang of killers was a group of miners who must’ve worked in the smelter. And gone crazy, in turn, from mercury poisoning.”

Pendergast nodded.

“The smelter fired the crazy workers and hired fresh ones. Perhaps a few of those who were fired banded together. Without work, totally nuts, unemployable, they took to the hills, angry and vengeful, where they went progressively crazier. And, of course…they needed to eat.”

Another slow nod from Pendergast.

“So they preyed on isolated miners up at their claims, killing and eating them. And like the man-eating lions of Tsavo — and Sir Percival — they began to develop a taste for it.”

This was followed by a long silence. What else? Corrie asked herself. Where did the present danger come from? “All this happened a hundred and fifty years ago,” she finally said. “I don’t see how this affects us now. Why am I in danger?”

“You have not put the last, crucial piece into place. Think of the ‘accidental’ information you told me you’d recently uncovered.”

“Give me a hint.”

“Very well, then: who owned the smelter?”

“The Stafford family.”

“Go on.”

“But the history of labor abuses and the use of mercury at the smelter are already well known. It’s a matter of historical record. It would be stupid for them to take steps to cover that up now.”

“Corrie.” Pendergast shook his head. “Where was the smelter?”

“Um, well, it was somewhere in the area where The Heights is now. I mean, that’s how the family came to own all that land to turn into the development.”

“And…?”

“And what? The smelter’s long gone. It was shut in the 1890s and they tore down the ruins decades ago. There’s nothing left of…Oh, my God.” She clasped one hand to her mouth.

Pendergast remained silent, waiting.

Corrie stared at him. Now she understood. “Mercury. That’s what’s left of it. The ground beneath the development is contaminated with mercury.”

Pendergast folded his hands and sat back in his chair. “Now you are starting to think like a true detective. And I hope you will live long enough to become that detective. I fear for you: you have always been, and still remain, far too rash. But despite that shortcoming, even you must see what is at stake here — and the grave danger you have placed yourself in by continuing this most unwise investigation. I would not have revealed any of this to you — not the lost Holmes story, not the Stafford family connection, not the poisonous groundwater — were it not, given your, ah, impetuous nature, necessary to convince you to leave this ugly place, as directly as I can make arrangements.”