Art by mgkellermeyer
"For my own part, I ascribe the death of William Prescott, of Archibald Reeves, and of John Barrington Cowles to this woman with as much confidence as if I had seen her drive a dagger into their hearts."
— Robert Armitage
Published in 1884, "John Barrington Cowles" is one of Arthur Conan Doyle's forays into werewolf fiction, generally overlooked compared to "A Pastoral Horror". As with it and "The Adventure of the Creeping Man", Doyle refrains from committing to actual therianthropy and instead presents a tale of a dangerous dual identity. Yet unlike the two later stories, "John Barrington Cowles" does not resolve all its mysteries, leaving room for the literal werewolf such as it is recalled by a reference to "The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains". Doyle's story is told from the perspective of Robert Armitage, a close friend of the titular John Barrington Cowles and witness to the supernatural events that led to the latter's death.
John Barrington Cowles is a kind man who has to do without emotional support from his family during his stay in Edinburgh. Because of this, he forms a close friendship with his fellow student Robert Armitage, who thinks highly of him. Misfortune sets its trap when the men meet the beautiful Kate Northcott. She and John are mutually smitten, but she's engaged and so that's that.
In the months that follow, Robert discovers that the engagement has been called off and that being one of Kate's former fiancés is possibly dangerous. He is therefore disturbed when John announces his engagement to Kate, but reasons he should give Kate a fair chance. In getting to know her, Robert learns that she's an imperious and ruthless woman with supernatural willpower who is very good at hiding all that. But he has no proof and John is in love. About three weeks before the wedding, a distraught John ends the engagement after paying Kate a visit earlier that night. He seeks company with Robert, but refuses to disclose what happened. When John's health declines in the following weeks, Robert takes him on a vacation to the Isle of May. It does him well until one night he spots Kate near the cliffs. Robert can't stop his friend from rushing to her and falling to his death.
Tropes found in this story include:
- Astral Projection: There's a possibility Kate possesses this power as well. When John sees Kate beckoning him on the Isle of May, that may be her mesmerism at work. But Robert sees "a shimmering form" too. Maybe Kate's mesmerism was strong enough to give him a residual taste, but just as well, maybe part of her was truly there.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Only mentioned in one scene is a small Scotch terrier named Carlo that belongs to Kate. During said scene, she beats it with a heavy dog-whip. Her explanation as to why she punishes the dog so badly for what she admits to be minor misbehavior reveals a disturbing authoritarian mindset in which she subtly assigns herself a divine right to punish man and animal as she sees fit.
- Dark Secret: Kate has one and it is not revealed what it is. Every time she is engaged, she invites her fiancé to her home at midnight shortly before the wedding date to reveal this secret. Not a man has come away from that in anything less than distress and fright. The only clue provided about the secret's nature is that John indirectly compares Kate to Christina from "The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains". Christina is a mountain spirit whose true self is a wolf but who can take on the appearance of a human. In her wolf form, she killed two children, whose graves she dug up later and whose flesh she consumed in her human form.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Archibald Reeves goes from being an impeccable gentleman to a filthy drunken wreck after breaking up with Kate. He sort of admits that he drinks to drown out his visions of Kate, which are always with him and driving him mad.
- Ethereal White Dress: Mrs. Merton is a monotonously pale woman, who is decribed as having snow-white hair, an extremely pale face, bloodless lips, eyes so faintly blue "that they hardly relieved the general pallor," and wearing a matching dress made of grey silk. Merton is alive, but as the associate of Kate, who may or may not be human, she's not truly part of human society.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Knowing Kate's secret has this effect, although the madness isn't deep enough to be incurable. A couple of weeks of rest to get all the delirious raving out of your system would do the trick, if not for the fact that Kate guards her secret well.
- Hope Spot: After breaking off the engagement with Kate, John becomes delirious and grows weaker and weaker. Upon his mental recovery, Robert takes him on a trip through Scotland that ends on the Isle of May, where they stay for a bit so that the isle's peace and quiet can work their magic on John. Just when Robert thinks his friend will make a full recovery, Kate shows up and leads him to his death.
- Horror Hunger: Something of the like may be the case for Kate. There's nothing about her that leads to this possibility, but when John just learned her secret, he calls her "a fiend", "a ghoul from the pit", and "a vampire soul" before specifically speaking about werewolves and the one that devoured her own (step)children in "The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains".
- Hypnotic Eyes: Kate is a mesmeriser of exceptional talent, which Robert discovers during a lecture by Dr. Messinger, a renowned mesmeriser himself. John and Kate are among the audience and by chance Messinger selects John to demonstrate the power of mesmerism on. Kate is having none of that and fixes her own gaze on Messinger to make him let go of John. Messinger eventually collapses and deduces that someone in the audience has a stronger will than he and is sabotaging him, though he has no clue who it is.
- In the Blood: Upon seeing a daguerreotype of Anthony Northcott, Kate's uncle, Robert blurts out that he's "[Kate's] prototype". Aside from their physical likeness, which is distinct from the "ordinary mortal"-look Kate's parents possessed, both Anthony and Kate harbor undisclosed dark secrets. There were rumors that Anthony was a devil-worshipper, while Kate gets likened to a werewolf.
- Never Found the Body: Subverted, as while John's body is never found, having fallen some two hundred feet to disappear below tempestuous waves, there's no question he's dead.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: If it weren't for the mention of Christina from "The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains", there'd be nothing to specifically identify Kate as a werewolf (and even with the mention it is ambiguous). Supposing Kate is truly and well a werewolf, the first small hint would be that upon introduction she wears a dark dress with white fur. Others would be her difficult relation with her dog, the observation her psyche contains masculine and feminine elements as well as something else, and her sadism.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Despite that he's positioned himself as her enemy, Kate doesn't ever target Robert. Presumably that's because she's got nothing to gain from it. What he knows he can't prove or make into a damaging rumor.
- Proud Beauty: Kate's beauty draws the attention of many men when she and Archibald visit the Royal Scottish Academy. Archibald is called away for a bit, during which time Kate turns to regard the crowd and doesn't give any sign that being the center of attention is something out of the ordinary for her.
- The Renfield: Mrs. Merton, who is introduced as Kate's aunt but could very well be unrelated, is Kate's servant through fear and violence. Her use to Kate seems to be that of a fake chaperone so that Kate is free to move about as she pleases while maintaining the image of a proper lady.
- Rule of Three: Within the timeline of the story, Kate Northcott goes through three fiancés: William Prescott, Archibald Reeves, and John Barrington Cowles. All of them died "mysteriously" when they rejected her for her secret.
- Sadist: Between her whipping of Carlo and her justification for doing so, Merton's absolute fear of Kate, and Kate's happiness over Archibald's approaching death, it's clear that Kate enjoys "correctively" hurting others. It's suggested that Merton warned John that Kate "takes pleasure in inflicting pain", but he refused to listen.
- Secret-Keeper: None of Kate's former fiancés ever revealed what her Dark Secret was, even though they knew they'd be killed anyway for breaking up with her. John explains that still he loves Kate too much to expose her.
- Self-Made Orphan: Kate is an orphan and while the circumstances of her parents' deaths aren't addressed, plenty about Kate raises the suspicion she had a hand in it. Kate doesn't tolerate any authority above her and her sense of love is conditional. If the conditions aren't met, she takes delight in tying up the loose ends. Having her parents around would get in the way of her cosmopolitan lifestyle and risk her secrets being spilled. Furthermore, it's all but confirmed that Kate's parents didn't share her gift and she remarks that she always thought that her uncle Anthony was "worth all of [the rest of the family] put together", so she was stronger than her parents and didn't think highly of them.
- When the Clock Strikes Twelve: Kate's MO for sharing her Dark Secret is to have her fiancé come over at about 11 o'clock and then the man isn't seen again until about 1 o'clock, suggesting that Kate's secret has something to do with midnight.
- Villain Has a Point: Robert confronts Kate with his knowledge of her powers. Her reply is that Robert has disliked and distrusted her from the start despite that she's done her best to make herself pleasant company. Robert has to admit that's true.
- Woman Scorned: Kate is a monster, but also just a little tragic in that none of her romances work out. Every single time, she's rejected over the secret that she feels compelled to reveal prior to the wedding. Obviously, she can't let the men live if they know but won't commit to her, but as she demonstrates with her mirthful reaction to the news that Archibald is dying, there's a strong vengeful element to the murders too.
