“Why not?”
“She was quiet and thoughtful. She avoided others. It was so long ago, I don’t even remember how she left for the Darringfords. You would find everything in our records, but...”
She did not finish her sentence and inadvertently pulled the scarf over her face. The old memories had reawakened her pain.
“After the hell fire nothing remained.”
“Naturally, I understand,” said Holmes. “But I am more interested in the circumstances under which she came to you.”
“Yes, of course. It is shrouded in so many strange things that cannot be forgotten.”
She paused and poured us some weak tea before continuing with her tale.
“It was at night in the autumn or winter of 1883. I remember it was raining dreadfully. I was roused out of bed by a mighty banging on the door. Behind the door I found Alice. She was twelve years old. She was brought by her father, or at least that’s who he introduced himself as. He begged me to take in the child and hide her. He said that he was haunted by a diabolical enemy who would stop at nothing. He was more worried about her than about himself; she was everything to him.”
“What was his name?”
“He did not say. He was terrified; I could see the panic in his eyes.”
“Can you describe him?”
“He was tall, about your height, with a high forehead, not much hair, and an intelligent face. He was older and well-dressed. And he had very good manners. His daughter too was well brought up.”
Holmes listened to the description of the mysterious man with bated breath.
“Cleary he came from a well-situated family. When I took the girl in he immediately disappeared and never appeared again. Neither he nor the girl ever mentioned the mother. For months she cried every night. But they had not forgotten her entirely; they sent her packages and letters. Nevertheless, Alice suffered the whole two years that she spent with us. She was not accustomed to such simple conditions and always wanted to have a candle or lamp next to her. She longed for her father. She was very close to him.”
“But he had found a place where his enemy would not find her,” said the detective.
“Perhaps. In any case, the Darringfords were a liberation for this poor girl.”
A fine liberation indeed, I thought to myself, aware of how she had repaid them.
“That is all I know,” said Donovann. “She vanished as suddenly as she had appeared. About six years after her departure the convent burned down.”
“This happened in the autumn of 1891?”
“Yes.”
“You are certain?”
“The year is branded on my face,” she said.
We thanked the old woman for talking to us and got up to leave. She and the dog walked us back to town.
Holmes whistled.
“Watson, I believe that this visit has been most useful! We now finally have Alice’s full life story, thanks to which I can now analyse her motives for these horrible crimes.”
“How did this shy girl become so vicious?”
“The key is the father,” said the detective. “He hid Alice in the convent. The girl was unhappy here and she came to know a world without men.”
“Thus her suffragette sympathies?”
“They were no doubt strengthened by the fact that the rival who took her father away from her in childhood was also a man. But this still does not make of her a murderer.”
“Then what?”
“During the Bloody Sunday demonstration in 1887 she was merely a zealous feminist; a few years later she would kill. We know her modus operandi, which is fire. She befriended it here in Anges, when it lit her lonely nights. In 1891 she burned her adopted parents and set fire to the convent, in order to remove all trace of her origins. It proved successful, and so she continued to use it on her criminal path and in the building of her munitions empire. But in 1891 something must have happened that changed her, something that inflamed her desire for revenge and power.”
“What could have shaken her so profoundly?”
“It is elementary my dear Watson,” said Holmes. “The death of her father!”
As always he was right. From the psychological point of view it made absolute sense. I wondered how we could determine the identity of her father, but nothing occurred to me.
We returned to the inn, where that evening the last act of our adventure began to be written.
XIV: The Black Hand
In the afternoon following our visit to Donovann, as we sat by the fireplace discussing how to proceed, a surprising number of people began to congregate in the sleepy inn. Until then Anges had been the quietest and sleepiest of places. Holmes could not resist inquiring about the reason for the commotion.
“Today we have a ceilidh,” the innkeeper explained jovially.
“I suppose you would call it a party,” he added, seeing our uncomprehending looks. “Guests will come, musicians will play and there will be dancing and drinking. And I have something special planned for the men, just you wait, gentlemen. You will see something you won’t soon forget!”
Indeed we did not.
The pub that night was full to bursting. People pressed together, leaving space only for a dance floor in the middle of the room. The whiskey and beer flowed and there were roars of laughter and boisterous conversation, as the men told their wild stories. Pairs danced on the wooden floor to the rhythm of bagpipes. But Holmes and I plugged our ears.
Most of the men were dressed in tartan and kilts. The detective and I were among the few wearing trousers and we felt rather conspicuous. But the locals accepted us with the same ease and good cheer as they had the day before. As the ceilidh continued, they invited us to join them for the evening’s main event.
This was in a barn behind the pub and was chiefly for the men. I went there with great curiosity, but was shocked by the bloody carnage that I found.
In the middle of the barn there was a pit about three feet deep and around it a three-foot high fence. Dozens of men crowded around it on the hard-packed dirt floor, watching with excitement a gruesome spectacle by the light of a kerosene lamp below. Those in the back stood on upturned crates, craning their necks in order to see.
In the ditch a furious little terrier of indeterminate colour was surrounded by a teeming multitude of large rats. The dog darted among them, catching them up in his jaws and breaking their necks with a jerky movement of his head. The rats squealed in terror, but gave as good as they got, biting the dog, the bloody wounds making him even more enraged.
The spectators wagered on how many rats the dog would bite and on whether the rats might kill him. Judging by the chanting this particular terrier was the champion of this disgusting spectacle.
“People come here from far and wide,” said the innkeeper proudly.
“How barbaric,” I said.
A fat bookmaker shoved his way through the crowd to the innkeeper.
“Boss, Lassie made us a bundle,” he said, holding up a crumpled wad of banknotes. “What odds should I put on Green Danny?”
“How does he look?”
“Like a bloody mess. But there’s no stopping him when he smells blood.”
“All right Fibbs,” the innkeeper said, rubbing his hands, “place the same bet as last time.”
My blood boiled at the sheer callousness of this entertainment. I sought an advocate in Holmes, but I knew that he was not paying any attention to the bloody fight in the pit. He was staring at spectator man who was standing off to one side against the railing.
He was not a Scot and stood out just as much as we did, with his dark complexion perhaps even more. He was well dressed and clean-shaven. His black eyes under their massive eyebrows watched the fighting in the pit with interest. The match was drawing to a close, there were hardly any rats left alive, and the dog’s growls were less fierce.