The Curse of the Singing Wolf by Anna Lord Page A

who had tormented them.
    “I wonder if the boy went on to
commit other murders,” mused Dr Watson circumspectly. “Having
succeeded early in life and finding murder an easy thing to get
away with, well, it might have gone to his young head.”
    “Yes,” said the Baron, “I see
what you are getting at – the next time the bright boy comes across
a despot he dreams up a clever plan to get rid of him too.”
    “Have there been a spate of
step murders in Europe?” asked the Prince with an ironic grin.
    “Dr Watson might be the best
one to answer that,” responded Moriarty drily, “since he worked
alongside the famous London consulting detective, Mr Sherlock
Holmes.”
    Astonishment was registered all
round and the doctor turned pink, not because he was embarrassed
about the association but because he was suddenly the centre of
attention, something that always made him feel uncomfortable,
moreover, he did not wish to discuss his time with Sherlock or
expound on the tragic incident in Switzerland. It was the Singing
Wolf who came to his rescue.
    “We are getting off piste. We
have not all had a turn yet. James, you go next.”
    The Irishman pushed to his feet
and moved to the fire where he prodded the embers with a poker.
“The men have been hogging the limelight all evening. It is
generally the rule that ladies should go before gentlemen and we
have two ladies present.”
    The two women insisted that he
go next. He resisted. They persisted.
    “In that case,” he said,
conceding defeat, “my story involves murder on a mass scale yet is
not half as interesting as the baron’s simple tale. A young radical
is filled with the zeal of the political revolutionary – there are
so many unhappy men roaming the streets, hungry for bread, hungry
for reform, hungry to overthrow the ruling elite. He decides to
punish the Jewish owner of a large glove factory who grows fat from
the sweat of his workers. He breaks into the factory one night and
sets up some amateurish homemade bombs. They fail to detonate.
Before he has time to check what had gone wrong he is spotted by
the night-watchman and must make a run for it. A few hours later
the workforce, mostly women, arrive. They settle at their
work-stations and the first bomb suddenly goes off. It sets off the
others. Those who are not blown to kingdom-come are burned to death
or trampled in the stampede to get to the exits which are all
bolted from the outside as is the normal practice in factories to
stop late-comers sneaking in. The Jewish owner is enjoying his
breakfast across town when the terrible news reaches him. He opens
a new factory the following year. The young radical is never
caught. He remains free to roam.”
    “The zealot didn’t actually
intend to commit murder,” pointed out the Prince.
    Moriarty cocked a blond brow.
“One may reason that making a bomb and planting a bomb inside a
large factory is likely to result in the death of many whether the
intention was there or not. Otherwise a murderer might argue that
he had his eyes closed when he pulled the trigger and thus cannot
be held responsible for the death of the man he shot at point blank
range. Actions have consequences. Idiotic actions have unintended
consequences.”
    “The only problem,” said Dr
Watson, “is that with the other stories there was one suspect who
was known to someone. In your story the culprit is unknown.”
    “I did not say he was unknown,”
replied the Colonel. “Only that he remained at large.”
    Dr Watson conceded the
point.
    The Singing Wolf thanked the
colonel and looked at the Countess. “Your turn,” she said.
    There was something in the dark
flash of the eyes that alerted the Countess to the fact her hostess
was looking forward to her story with uncommon interest. The
Countess had several murder stories she could pull out of her weird
grab bag of worldly adventures, having travelled widely and having
been exposed to situations both strange and dangerous. But