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spoons to make a silver bullet, because you claimed it was the only thing that could kill a werewolf. Where on earth did you come up with such a silly idea?”
    The doctor was going to deny it but then chuckled instead.
    â€œWell, I’ll be damned, the cheeky little gossip! Yes, I confess to melting the teaspoons. And if you’d listened to a word I’d said during these past few months, Chief Constable, you wouldn’t be asking me now how I came up with such a silly idea.” He turned away from him and addressed Clayton in a more measured tone, as if speaking to an equal. “The fact is, Inspector, a French colleague of mine, with whom I correspond, told me about a gruesome animal that terrorized the region of Gévaudan in the last century. Many claimed it was a werewolf and that they only succeeded in shooting it down with silver bullets. That is why I melted nearly all our cutlery, much to my wife’s displeasure.”
    â€œWell, you got a telling off for nothing, Russell,” the butcher laughed.
    â€œI am aware of that,” the doctor snapped. “But who would have imagined that the werewolf terrorizing our town was in fact Tom Hollister dressed in that ridiculous disguise?”
    Everyone looked toward the corner of the dining hall where the doctor was pointing, and a gloomy silence instantly descended on the room. Clayton watched the other guests shake their heads, each immersed in his own recollections as he gazed at the enormous wolf hide draped over a wooden easel, gleaming in the light of the candles dotted sparingly about the room. Sinclair had displayed it there like a trophy so the guests could examine it as they came in. And they had, with a mixture of horror and admiration, for the disguise was a work of art, worthy of an expert taxidermist. The enormous skin, which at first sight they had thought belonged to a giant wolf, was in fact made of several different pelts that had been carefully stitched together and then cut accordingly, with sections of it stuffed with hemp and straw to give the impression of a huge beast with bulging muscles. The forelegs had been stretched over a framework of jointed wooden bars until they vaguely resembled human limbs covered in thick fur, and each had tacked onto its end a glove that bristled with clawlike blades. The ensemble had been crowned with a wolf’s head whose mouth had been fixed into a hideously ferocious growl. It came as no surprise that Hollister, who was sturdy enough to support the cumbersome disguise, could transform himself into a terrifying werewolf in anyone’s eyes by draping it over his shoulders, fastening it to his arms and legs with special leather straps, and using the animal’s head as a helmet. Especially if he only appeared during the full moon, arching his back grotesquely and howling like a wild animal.
    Clayton had also been taken in when he first saw the creature standing before him, huge and terrifying, and as he and the others chased it through the dark depths of the forest, his blood pulsing in his temples, his heart pounding in his chest, it was the certainty that they were pursuing a real werewolf that had mitigated his suspicions. Yes, it was a werewolf they were pursuing because, despite Sinclair’s evasive answers when he had joined the Special Branch, Clayton knew that such fantastical creatures did exist. But the monster had turned out to be a hoax. Inspector Clayton could not help but feel that this cast something of a pall over his triumph, and he was no longer sure that joining the Special Branch had been the right decision. Perhaps he had been too hasty in accepting Sinclair’s offer, having done so in the belief that a world closed to other mortals would open up to him. And yet his first “special” case had consisted of hunting down a yokel wearing an assortment of animal skins. Not to mention falling in love with a woman who lived in a sinister