2007 - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders (23 page)

BOOK: 2007 - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders
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“Perhaps.” He stood gazing about the empty room. “It is curious how little we remember, even of experiences that seemed so vivid at the time. The mind’s eye is not a camera; it is an artist’s brush. It provides no photographic record, alas. It can bring back the colour of the day, the feeling of the moment, but the detail is all gone. It’s an adequate instrument for poets and painters, but for detectives—useless!”

He walked slowly to the window and peered down into the street.

“What do I recall of the afternoon of Tuesday 31 August 1889? Not enough, Robert, not enough!” He turned and fixed me with his gaze. “At approximately three-thirty that afternoon, I stood in the doorway to this room, where you are standing now, and what
precisely
did I see?”

“You saw the body of Billy Wood.”

He moved towards the centre of the room. “He was lying here. His head was where my feet are now. He was naked. His arms and legs were white—so white—but his body was awash with blood. So much blood. Where were his clothes? I don’t recall. There was a rug—a Persian rug. That I remember. And candles here, guttering but still alight, in candlesticks, in a half-circle about his head. But how many? Four certainly—possibly six.”

“There was a knife. You said there was a knife.”

“Yes, a small knife. Or it might have been a razor. The blade shone. It gleamed. I remember that.”

“Is that significant?”

“If it had been the murder weapon it would have been mired in blood.”

“Could it not have been used as the murder weapon and then wiped clean?”

“It could,” said Oscar, “it could indeed.” He walked around the imagined outline of the corpse and came to stand at my side. He took out a cigarette and lit it from the candle I was still holding. We stared at the bare floorboards.

“What is your most vivid recollection of the scene that afternoon?” I asked.

As he answered, the cigarette smoke drifted slowly from his mouth and nostrils, forming a grey cloud about his head. “The horror of it,” he said, “the purple of the blood…and how beautiful he looked, how innocent. His body was soaked in blood, but his face was clean, serene. His eyes were closed. He looked at peace, Robert. He had been butchered to death and yet he looked at peace. How is that possible?”

“And how is it possible that when we returned to the scene of the crime—not twenty-four hours later—there was no trace of any of this horror? It had all been cleaned away.”

“Except for Arthur’s spot of blood!” Oscar broke away from me and went to examine the room’s right-hand wall. “Where is it, Robert? Where is the blood?” He scanned the wall with care, running his eyes and hands along it. “Bring the candle—it is getting dark.” I took the candle to him. We stood where Conan Doyle had stood. “It was somewhere here, was it not?”

“I believe so.”

“Divide up the wall into squares, Robert—as friend Millais does when planning one of his larger canvases. Now, carefully, consider each square: first vertically, then horizontally. Take your time…Where is the blood, Robert?”

“I cannot see it,” I said.

“Nor can I,” said he.

We stood in silence, gazing at the wallpaper. He drew on his cigarette and smiled.

“Hideous, is it not, this wallpaper? So grotesque that I imagine it is the manufacturer’s most popular design.” I laughed. He turned to me, still smiling, but with a sweetness in his smile. “The wall hangings will not have troubled poor Billy. He paid little heed to his surroundings, as I recall. He was happy in himself. Indeed, I now think that he may never have been happier than at the moment of his death. “If it be how, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come…” Are you ready, Robert? Let us inspect the other rooms and be on our way.”

Oscar took the candle from me and led us out of the room, without a backward glance. He now seemed to be in haste to get away. Our inspection of the rest of the house was almost cursory. There were two rooms on each floor, plus a water-closet, a cloakroom beneath the stairs, and a scullery and washroom adjacent to the kitchen. He opened the door to each, held up the candle, muttered, “Nothing here,” or words to that effect, and moved swiftly on. The house, from what I could see, was exactly as it had been when we had visited it last: empty, unlived in, almost completely bare.

“When Bellotti’s club met here,” I asked, as we came up from the kitchen and moved back towards the front door, “was the house unfurnished then?”

“Yes,” he said. “Bellotti is a travelling showman—he takes his costumes and his properties with him. When you rent a room in a house such as this, it comes as it is: with a table and a chair, perhaps a bare bedstead, a kettle in the kitchen, nothing more. When I came to the house in August, it was as you see it now—except…except…” We were standing in the hallway, at the foot of the stairs. Suddenly exultant, he spread his arms wide. “Bravo, Robert!” he cried. I looked at him, uncomprehending. “Except that here,” he said, “just here,”—he indicated the wall by the foot of the stairs—“there was a chest, a long wooden chest.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he said, kneeling down, with difficulty, to examine the floorboards. “There are no scratch marks that I can see, but there was a chest just here, I’m certain of it…”

“Certain of it?”

“Where else would I have placed my hat and cane? I would hardly have dropped them on the floor, would I?” He got to his feet, helping himself up on my arm. “Thank you, Robert, thank you! You have unlocked another of the gates along our pathway.”

“Have I?” I laughed.

“You have, my friend. Dr Watson could not have done more. By enquiring about the furniture that is not here, you reminded me of the one piece of furniture that was. When I came into the house that afternoon, I brushed past the housekeeper in my haste, but as I did so, I automatically removed my hat and, as I made to climb the stairs, I laid it down with my cane. And I laid them here—on a wooden chest—the chest in which the Persian rug, the candlesticks and whatever other paraphernalia was required were brought to the house—and in which the body of poor Billy Wood was borne away! I salute your genius, Robert! I shall reward it with tea and muffins at the Savoy—or perhaps a hock and seltzer. What time is it?”

By the time we reached the Savoy Hotel and had been served with tea and muffins, plus buttered crumpets and anchovy toast, not forgetting the hock and seltzer, too, it was after five. On the way, Oscar had halted the cab by the flower-stall at Charing Cross and bought us each a buttonhole: a camellia set against a sprig of fern.

“A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature,” I remarked as he climbed back into the cab. “A gentleman should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.”

“Who said that?” he asked.

“You did,” I replied, “as well you know.”

“Really?” he said, his brow furrowed. “Are you sure it wasn’t Whistler?…No doubt it will be.”

He was in exuberant form. And when taking afternoon tea at his favourite table at the Savoy—“No cakes, Cesari! We are in savoury mood and on the strictest diet!”—he was, in every sense, in his element. “We have made progress today, Robert,” he said, mopping butter from his chin. He had impeccable manners, but he was not the daintiest of eaters. “And very soon,” he said with relish, “we shall make more.”

I pondered what he meant by ‘progress’. “Did you believe Bellotti,” I asked, “when he said that the dwarf was his son?”

He reflected for a moment before answering. “Yes,” he said, slowly, putting down his napkin, “I believed him. I was taken aback, but I believed him. There was no need for him to lie about that.”

“I do not trust Bellotti,” I said.

“And I know it to be true,” Oscar continued, “that the dwarf visits the women’s asylum at Rochester on a Tuesday afternoon. I’ve had Jimmy and another of my spies follow him there.”

“I do not trust Bellotti,” I said again, with emphasis, “and I do not like him.”

“He is not likeable,” said Oscar, smiling at me. “But what did you make of Canon Courteney and his crew?”

“I liked them,” I said.

“I am glad. I like them, too. One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead—the life one imagines, or hopes for, or might have led. Within the confines of their curious club, Canon Courteney and his quaint companions are free to live their lives as they would wish. Between twelve and four on the last Tuesday in the month, they become themselves. They come alive. I envy them.”

“Could one of them be our murderer?” I asked.

“You mean Aston Upthorpe?”

“Yes,” I said. “He loved Billy Wood, but Billy Wood loved another…”

Oscar examined his muffin contemplatively. “They say each man kills the thing he loves…I wonder? He had a motive, that’s true. And he had the opportunity.”

“But they all say they were together all the time, so he also has an alibi.”

“Were they all together all the time today, when we were with them?”

“I believe so. Were they not?”

“No. Upthorpe went to relieve himself, twice. So did Bellotti. And Stoke Talmage went once. But you did not notice. Or, if you did, you assumed—rightly—that they were answering a call of nature and thought no more about it. Upthorpe—or any of the others—could have been away from the room for a few minutes on 31 August without anyone noticing. Time enough to cross the street and commit a murder, I suppose.”

He did not sound convinced.

“Tell me about the man who wasn’t there,” I asked.

“Drayton St Leonard?”

“You know him?”

“No.”

“But you knew his name.”

“I
guessed
his name,” said Oscar.

“Guessed it?”

“It was not difficult. Aston Upthorpe, Aston Tirrold, Sutton Courteney, Berrick Prior, Stoke Talmage…Drayton St Leonard. They are all the names of villages in Oxfordshire, probably in the parish where ‘Canon Courteney’ was rector before he was defrocked. Don’t look so shocked, Robert. A
nom de guerre
does not make a man a criminal. Henry Irving’s real name is John Brodribb, after all.”

19

27 January 1890

“M
oods don’t last,” Oscar liked to say. “It’s their chief charm.”

Certainly, the mellow mood in which I had left my friend after our tea together at the Savoy Hotel on Tuesday afternoon had wholly evaporated by the time I joined him on the nine o’clock train to Broadstairs on Thursday morning. He sat in the corner seat of our first-class carriage, huddled in his coat, with the astrakhan collar pulled about his ears, gazing disconsolately at the greasy raindrops as they chased one another down the dirty window-pane. “This is not cosy, Robert,” he muttered. “Not cosy at all.”

I realised too late where the problem lay. He had forgotten to bring his cigarettes. I had none either, and our train was on the move.

“There’s a tobacconist on the platform at Tonbridge,” I said.

“Tonbridge!” Oscar sighed. “That’s an hour away, longer than Stainer’s
Crucifixion
! And as mortifying. I am sorely tried.”

As our train rumbled sluggishly through the suburbs of south London, Oscar drummed his fingernails on the lid of the metal ashtray affixed to the carriage door.

“Divert me, Robert,” he commanded. “Distract me. Tell me about your divorce.”

“There is nothing to report,” I said.

“There must be
something?

“Foxton, the solicitor, has gone quiet. I’ve heard nothing from him for weeks. Or from Marthe. I am content to let sleeping dogs lie. There really is nothing to report, I’m afraid.”

Oscar sighed once more and closed his eyes. Between Coulsdon South and Nutfield, we travelled in silence. At Godstone, when the train stopped briefly, I had hopes of procuring a cigarette from a young man whom I noticed on the platform. He was dressed in a glengarry cap and cape, and his face was shrouded in an encouraging cloud of smoke. He had just lit a cigarette and was still holding his cigarette case in his hand. At first he looked as if he might be about to join us in our compartment, but when he reached the door and saw us he moved on. As the train juddered out of the station, Oscar stirred. He stifled a yawn and gazed at me reproachfully.

“How long have you known John Gray?” I asked.

“That’s a curious question,” he answered, slowly sitting forward. “Why do you ask?”

“For no reason,” I replied, immediately regretting that I had not broached the subject in a more roundabout way.

“There must be a reason, Robert,” he said, tetchily.

“No reason,” I protested. “I was just making conversation.”

“Asking after Henry living’s
Richard III
, or the weather in Dover, or the consequences of the abolition of slavery on the economy of Cuba, is ‘making conversation’, Robert. Asking when one gentleman met another gentleman is ‘making enquiries’. Why do you ask?”

“It’s unimportant,” I said, waving my hands about in front of my face in the hope that they might waft the subject away.

“The answer to the question is unimportant, to be sure,” said Oscar who was now on the edge of his seat and leaning directly towards me, “but the fact of the question is significant. You ask it in the way that you ask it—directly, unadorned, of a sudden—because it has been preying on your mind. You have been waiting to ask it. I suspect that you ask the question because Aidan Fraser has been asking it, has he not? Am I right?”

I said nothing. I did not wish to lie to my friend.

Oscar began to tap the lid of the metal ashtray once more. “Inspector Fraser is an odd one,” he said, quietly. “He is handsome, he is intelligent, he is a friend of Conan Doyle’s—he and I should get on so well and yet…”

“What?” I asked.

“It’s evident that he neither likes nor trusts the company I keep, Robert.”

I began to protest.

“No, Robert, it’s true. With the exception of Arthur and yourself—and possibly the Prince of Wales, the prime minister and the poet laureate, and maybe, at a pinch, Mr Irving and Miss Ellen Terry—Inspector Fraser is profoundly suspicious of the associates of Oscar Wilde. He as good as told me so. Were you not there when he tried to warn me off our case? He sees my friends as ‘the enemy’. I believe Fraser despises John Gray because he suspects that he is musical.”

BOOK: 2007 - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders
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