2007 - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders (25 page)

“Did he give his name?”

“I did not ask him his name.”

“Was he not the same officer who took you to identify poor Billy’s body?”

Without warning, Susannah Wood let out a piercing scream and turned violently from Oscar, suddenly raising her fists to her face and beating them against her temples. “Why do you torture me like this?” she cried.

Oscar leant towards her and whispered to her urgently, “Believe me, dear lady, I am your friend. I would not hurt you for the world. It was thoughtless of me to remind you of the horror of what you have seen. Forgive me.”

“I have seen nothing!” she shrieked.

“What?” cried Oscar. “Did the police not take you to the morgue?”

Mrs Wood turned back to Oscar, her tear-stained face now contorted with anguish. “Are you telling me that Billy’s body has been found? Where? Where is it? Where is my boy that I may go to see him? He is dead, I know. I know he is dead,” she wailed, “but may I not take his body in my arms and cradle him one last time? He was my son.”

The poor woman had struggled to her feet and was pulling her coat about her. Oscar, now utterly confused, had risen to his feet also and put his arms about her to restrain her. “No, no,” he cried, “you misunderstand me. I did not mean to raise your hopes. I confused you. I confused myself. I thought a police officer might have called on you to enquire after a likeness of your son—a photograph to help with the identification of his body in the event that it is found…” He released his hold upon her. “In the event that it is found,” he repeated.

Susannah Wood sat down once more. She wiped the tears from her eyes. “So his body has not been found,” she said.

“No,” said Oscar, seating himself again, “no. I expressed myself poorly. Please accept my most profound apologies.” Mrs Wood took Oscar’s hand in hers and, drawing it to her cheek, held it there.

The railwayman filled the silence that followed by throwing some coals onto the fire and announcing that there was just time for him to brew fresh tea before the arrival of the midday train from Dover Priory.

“Might I be permitted a further nip of your station-master’s special reserve?” asked Oscar, lowering his hand from Mrs Wood’s cheek and feeling in his pocket for another coin.

After the railwayman had refilled our teacups, he left us to go about his duties. When Oscar had taken several further nips of brandy (“It was vile, Robert, but necessary”), he turned again to Mrs Wood. “Mr Sherard and I must return to London,” he said. “We came to find you and to question O’Donnell, but it seems we came too late. We will return to London now and endeavour to discover what is happening to your husband. We will keep you posted. You can trust us. We are your friends.” Susannah Wood, with tears still in her eyes, smiled at Oscar and reached out for his hand once more. “Will you be able to return to Broadstairs on your own?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, “thank you. I will be quite safe. No one can harm me now.”

Oscar got to his feet. “May I ask you something?”

“Of course, Mr Wilde. You are my friend. Anything.”

“Why did you marry him? Why did you marry Edward O’Donnell?”

Mrs Wood paused before she answered. She turned and gazed at me for a moment. I was embarrassed by the pencil and notebook in my hand. She turned away and looked, not towards Oscar, but into the fire. “I married him because I had lain with him,” she said. She blushed. The birthmark on her neck turned scarlet. “I married him because I felt I must.”

“When was this?” asked Oscar.

“Almost two years ago now, not long after his return from Canada. He forced himself upon me. He claimed me as his own. He said I was his—by right. I tried to beat him off. I screamed. I scratched his face. I spat at him. But with one hand he seized my wrists and held them, effortlessly, above my head and with the other he covered my mouth to silence me. I bit his flesh until the blood ran, but I could not fight him. He was too strong. He took me—and, having taken me once, came back, night after night. At first, I resisted him, resisted him with all my might, but then…I succumbed, I acquiesced. And strange as it may seem, over time, I even found some comfort lying with the man—brute that he was.” She looked up at Oscar. “I married Edward O’Donnell because he was William O’Donnell’s brother. I lay with Edward and thought of William.”

“I understand,” said Oscar.

“And when he was not in drink—which was not often, I grant you that—there was something about him, about the way he walked, about his laugh, that almost brought my William back to life. I despised him, but I came to love him, too. I despise him still, and yet I love him, even now…Can you understand that, also?”

“Oh yes,” said Oscar. “Often we despise the most what we love the most. And we despise ourselves for loving where we should not, for loving those we know to be unworthy of our love. I understand completely.”

She turned towards me and, smiling, added—as if offering up something that I might also understand, “I married him, too, for Billy’s sake.”

“For Billy’s sake?” I repeated, not certain what she meant.

“To protect him,” she said.

“O’Donnell was jealous of Billy?” Oscar asked.

“Insanely so. He was jealous of my love for Billy. Billy was everything to me. I could not hide that—but I thought that if I agreed to marry Edward it might make him less jealous of the boy, it might lead him to leave Billy alone more.”

“And did it?” I asked.

“For a while, yes—but not for long. As Mr Wilde will tell you, Mr Sherard, Billy was an exceptional child. He had the beauty of an angel, but he had the spirit of a boy, and such quickness and such sweetness too. Billy was perfection. I know I am his mother, but it is true! Billy was perfect—that is why Edward sought to corrupt him. He took him to London and sold him into a life of degradation.”

Oscar said nothing. He drained his teacup of the last of the stationmaster’s brandy before picking up his hat and cane in readiness to depart.

“Did Billy go willingly to London?” I asked.

“Not at first,” she said. “A man called Bellotti stayed at The Castle one summer and took a fancy to Billy. He said he’d give Billy work in London. Edward said Billy should go. Billy was uncertain, but Edward forced him. The boy was only fourteen. He had no choice, he was afraid of his uncle. Edward O’Donnell is a violent man, Mr Sherard. Billy went to London in fear, I know that, but, over time, I believe he came to like his life there. He made friends, other boys of his own age, and good men, decent men, such as Mr Wilde…and others.”

Oscar, now wearing his hat and gloves, was standing by the door leading from the snug to the ticket office. “Did Billy ever mention the name Drayton St Leonard to you?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said, “often. He said Mr St Leonard was like a father to him. He said Mr St Leonard was going to take him on holiday with him.”

“Did he say where?” Oscar enquired.

“No—abroad;, I think.”

“And were you happy about that?” I asked.

“I wanted Billy to be safe,” she said, “and I sensed that with Mr St Leonard he would be. I knew that with Edward—my Edward, my husband, God help me! His own father’s brother—he was never wholly safe. If Billy did not do his uncle’s bidding, if Billy crossed his uncle even for a moment, Edward would beat the boy.” She closed her eyes at the recollection of it. “I am so ashamed,” she whispered.

I shut my notebook and got to my feet. “Mrs O’Donnell,” I said, “according to your own testimony, your husband is a man given to violence, to insane jealousy, to acts of unspeakable cruelty…Could not so violent a man have murdered your son?”

“Yes, Mr Sherard,” she said, “he could have done so. Often, I feared that he would. That is why I longed for Billy to escape. That is why I came to think of Mr St Leonard as his saviour. Edward O’Donnell at his best is a pale ghost of his brother William. At his worst, he is certainly capable of murder. But he did not kill Billy, Mr Sherard—that I know.”

“And how do you know it, Mrs O’Donnell?” asked Oscar.

“Because it was you, Mr Wilde, who told me that Billy was murdered on the afternoon of Tuesday 31 August last…”

“Yes,” said Oscar, “that was the fateful day.”

“Is there any doubt about the date?”

“None whatsoever.”

“And there is no doubt either that on the afternoon of 31 August, when my poor Billy was in London being murdered, Edward O’Donnell was with me, in Broadstairs, at The Castle.”

“Are you certain of it?” I asked.

“I am not likely to forget the day, Mr Sherard. As Mr Wilde says, it was a fateful day. It was the day I lost both my children.”

I was about to speak, to say I did not understand, when Oscar raised his hand to silence me. “You were with child?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, “only by a few weeks, but I was with child—with Edward’s child, the child of the man I both love and despise.” She looked up at Oscar. “He did not know it. I had not told him. Had I told him, he might have been gentler with me—who knows? He was in drink that day, at his worst. At his most terrible. We argued.”

“About Billy?”

“Edward said that Billy was going to run away—to leave the country with another man, a friend of Mr Bellotti’s. I said I was glad of it. I said I hoped he would. I said I wanted Billy as far away from Edward as possible. He accused me of loving Billy more than I loved him. I told him it was true. I told him I loved Billy more than all the world. He laughed and told me he would put a stop to that. He threatened to go London to find Billy. He said he would find him—and murder him. And, once Billy was dead, I would be his, properly his. He raved—like a lunatic. It was madness, brought on by drink and jealousy. We struggled on the stairs. He pushed me and I fell. It was a fatal fall. Later that night I lost the baby I was carrying. Edward threatened to kill his brother’s child. He threw me down the stairs and killed his own.”

27-28 January 1890

O
n our return from Kent, we took a cab from the railway station directly to Scotland Yard. There, as we arrived, as we were clambering out of the cab in the yard, we encountered Aidan Fraser’s colleague, Inspector Archy Gilmour, a red-headed, red-faced Scotsman, who recognised Oscar at once and greeted us effusively. “It’s good to meet you at last,” he boomed. “I have heard a deal about you both—and your skills as sleuths.”

I liked Archy Gilmour at once; he had an openness about him that put me in mind of Conan Doyle. Oscar was less certain. “Men over forty with red hair are a problem,” was a favourite Wildean maxim.

Inspector Gilmour—clearly intrigued to be encountering Oscar; he looked at him as if he were appraising a controversial work of art—told us that if it was Fraser we had come to see we had just missed him. “He went home not five minutes ago and in high spirits. He’s nabbed your murderer, Mr Wilde. Another triumph for our Aidan, the Met’s very own ‘infant phenomenon’!”

Oscar mumbled a cursory pleasantry and ordered our cab to take us on to 75 Lower Sloane Street without delay.

“Why, Fraser?” Oscar demanded the moment the inspector opened his front door to us. “Why have you arrested Edward O’Donnell?”

“To charge him with murder, Oscar,” said Fraser, calmly. “O’Donnell killed Billy Wood. I have no doubt of it.”

“Has he confessed?”

“Not yet, but I believe he may—in the fullness of time. And if he does not, no matter. We have evidence enough to convict him.”

“I do not believe you.”

Aidan Fraser smiled at Oscar. “You will, Oscar. You will…” The inspector stepped back and invited us over the threshold. “Come in now and have a glass of wine. Let us not forget that we are friends.”

He led us through the hall and into the drawing room. It was shortly after six o’clock. There was a light in his eye and an energy in his movements that I had not seen since our first encounter with him all those months before. “I have wine here with which to tempt you—and we all know, Oscar, that you can resist everything except temptation! It is one of your favourite Moselles, chilled, as you’d say,
comme il faut
.”

“Were you expecting me then?” enquired Oscar, hanging his coat on the hallway coatstand and following our ebullient host into the drawing room.

“No,” laughed Fraser. “I was expecting Conan Doyle—and it is one of his favourite Moselles also!”

“Arthur is expected?” remarked Oscar, mellowing a little. “I am glad of that.”

“Alas,” said Fraser, “he was expected, but it is not to be.” He poured us each a glass of the pale green wine.

“Arthur has just wired me to say that he is detained in Southsea—‘pressure of business’— an outbreak of the measles. Bad news for the victims, good news for his depleted bank balance. It is a great pity. He and Touie were due to join us on an expedition to Paris.”

“To Paris?” said Oscar, in amazement. “You are leaving the country?”

“Only for a week.
Un petit sejour?
that’s all. A touch of Paris in the spring.”

Oscar rolled the wine around his mouth. “Only a Scotsman could think of a rainy day in late January as the spring,” he said.

“We’re going because it is Veronica’s birthday on Monday,” Fraser added. “I’m sure Robert has not forgotten.”

I had not forgotten. I had a manuscript copy of one of my great-grandfather’s favourite poems to present to her: ‘I travelled among unknown men’.

“Miss Sutherland’s birthday is 31 January?” said Oscar, as Fraser replenished his glass. I noticed his eyes were darting about the room as he spoke. “That is a curious coincidence, is it not?”

“A coincidence?” asked Fraser. “How so?”

“You each have your own St Aidan.”

“I’m sorry,” said Fraser, replacing the Moselle in the wine bucket, “I do not follow you.”

“Your birthday falls on 31 August, as I recall—the feast day of St Aidan of Lindisfarne.”

“Yes,” said Fraser, “hence my name.”

“And your fiancée’s birthday falls five months later, on 31 January—the feast day of St Aidan of Ferns.”

“Goodness me,” said Fraser, “a coincidence as you say—but a happy one.”

“Indeed,” said Oscar. “I am surprised you did not know. They did not teach you your saints’ days at Fettes?”