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.”