2007 - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders (27 page)

Apart from a passing reference to Bellotti and ‘the loucher members of his luncheon club’ (“Are not some of their practices against the law?” asked Veronica; “We are mid-Channel, dear lady,” Oscar replied, “I cannot tell you; in England, most probably they are; in France, according to the Code Napoleon, most certainly they are not; what a difference twenty-one miles makes!”), throughout the entire journey the case of the murder of Billy Wood was not raised once.

At Veronica’s instigation, Oscar talked much about Paris, which he and I knew well, but which she and Aidan Fraser knew hardly at all. Fraser was eager for us, during our visit, to make a pilgrimage to the city’s new sensation: Gustave Eiffel’s recently completed tower.

“Spare us Monsieur Eiffel’s Tower!” cried Oscar.

“But it is extraordinary,” protested Fraser. “It rises nine hundred and eighty-five feet above the ground!”

“And still gets you no closer to heaven!” said Oscar. “Turn your back to the Eiffel Tower and you have all Paris before you. Look at it—and all Paris disappears.”

“The Tower is a phenomenon, Oscar,” I protested. “You can’t deny it.”

“I don’t deny it,” he said, “and you should not be denied it either. Go to your tower. Enjoy! I’ll leave you to it. While you are scaling the heights, I shall take myself off to wander in the foothills of Mount Parnassus…”

“And what do you mean by that, Oscar?” Veronica enquired, an eyebrow gently raised. “Do you have mischief in mind?”

“No,” he answered, easily, “far from it. I simply mean that, while you are all busy inspecting Monsieur Eiffel’s monstrosity, I shall go to Montparnasse and take a stroll through the cemetery there. I have a grave that I am minded to visit. I shall pay my respects to an old friend. I have been thinking of her much of late—and I have news to share with her. For once the words of Mercury will be sweet after the songs of Apollo.”

Paris in the Spring

T
hat night, Oscar talked much of Marie Aguetant. We reached our hotel—the Hotel Charing Cross, in the
huitième
, in rue Pasquier—soon after seven o’clock. It was terrifically modern, wonderfully chic. There was a deal of marble on the walls, scarlet carpeting on the stairs and, in the public rooms, ornate electric chandeliers in the centre of every ceiling. Oscar was not impressed. He stood in the foyer, shaking the rain off his shoulders and sniffing the air suspiciously.

“It is very new, Aidan, is it not?”

“It is brand-new, Oscar.”

“It is very shiny—like a new coin. I am always wary of things that are too shiny.”

“Do you want us to look elsewhere?” Veronica asked. “We will be guided by you and Robert.”

“No, no,” said Oscar. “We have journeyed far enough and I am sure the facilities here will prove excellent.” He smiled at the hovering bellboy. “Ignore my foolish prejudice. I’m one of those who warms to a man because his cuffs are frayed. It’s not rational, I know. Let us find our rooms and change for dinner. Where shall we eat?”

“I thought we’d dine here,” said Fraser. “The restaurant is said to be first class.”

“Now, there I do draw the line,” said Oscar. “It’s a rule of life that you must never dine in the hotel in which you are staying. When I dine at the Savoy, I sleep at the Langham. When I sleep at the Savoy, I dine at the Criterion. Between his
digestif
and his pillow, a gentleman should always glimpse the stars. May I propose dinner at the Grand Cafe? The
soles soufflées à la mousse d’homard
are the best in Paris, and Rigo and his gypsy orchestra never fail to find music to match your mood.”

The facilities at the Hotel Charing Cross did indeed prove excellent. There was a bathroom attached to each bedroom (a great novelty in those days) and, at the mere turn of a dolphin-shaped tap, an abundance of flowing water, pale brown but piping hot. The food at the Grand Cafe when we reached it—almost two hours later; neither Oscar nor Miss Sutherland rushed their toilette—was exceptional. I was less certain about Rigo and his gypsy orchestra, however. As we arrived at the restaurant, bizarrely, they were playing a selection from Gounod’s
Faust
. As we were shown to our table, they struck up what sounded like a Hungarian funeral march. As we took our seats, I enquired of Oscar, “What is your mood now?”

He cocked his ear and listened intently to the music. “Melancholy, it seems. I had not realised. But Rigo never gets it wrong. He has mystic powers.”

We ordered—or, rather, we permitted Oscar to order on our behalf:
soupe au cresson
and
truffes fraiches sous la cendre
to lead into the
soles soufftees
, with
carré d’agneau
to follow (‘Let us proceed gently; we must do justice to the
tartes
and
crêpes
’). When the first of several fine wines had been served (a Perrier Joue’t, 1880, by way of aperitif—“I have simple tastes; I am content to settle for the best”), Oscar took his cue from Rigo. He spoke of death. And, in particular, the death of children. He talked of Billy Wood and of the boy’s natural sweetness and eagerness to please. He said, contemplating his saucer of champagne as he spoke, “I imagine poor Billy’s desire to please was his undoing. It is for many.” He invited us to raise our glasses and drink to the lad’s memory.

He spoke, too, of his own younger sister, Isola, “taken from us when she was ten—how we loved her!” I knew how much he loved her; he carried a lock of her hair in an envelope in his pocket. “I can see her still,” he said, “dancing like a golden sunbeam about the house. She was everything to me…Heaven must be a very happy place if Isola and Billy Wood are there.”

As Rigo’s mood-music lifted a little (the funeral march giving way to a gypsy aubade), Veronica asked him who was the friend that he proposed to visit in the cemetery at Montparnasse.

“Her name was Marie Aguetant,” he said, tucking his napkin into the top of his waistcoat. “Robert knew her too—though not, perhaps, so well as I.” He smiled at me knowingly. I answered his smile, but with some awkwardness. Beneath the tablecloth, Veronica, who was seated on my right, had taken hold of my hand and she held it tight. “Is the soup not to your liking, Robert?” Oscar enquired.

“I am letting it cool a little,” I said, pressing my fingers into Veronica’s palm.

“Very wise,” he replied, his smile transmogrifying into a smirk.

Fraser—Veronica’s fiancé, God save the mark!—appeared oblivious to what was going on beneath the tablecloth, beneath his very nose. That evening his focus remained, as it had done throughout the day, entirely upon Oscar. “Marie Aguetant,” he said. “I know the name.”

“It is notorious,” said Oscar.

“Was she not murdered by her pimp? He was a Spaniard, I seem to recall. Polo? Pablo? Something like that.”

“Yes,” said Oscar, mopping his lips. “The police did indeed arrest the Spaniard. He was tried. He was found guilty. He was sent to the guillotine. He was quite innocent, of course.”

“Oh, come now, Oscar!” Fraser protested. “I remember the case. I read all about it. Whatever his name, he was a bad man.”

“Undoubtedly, a very bad man. I knew him. He was evil. But he was innocent of the murder of Marie Aguetant.”

Fraser had turned directly towards Oscar now. He also had abandoned his soup, but for different reasons. “How do you
know
he was innocent, Oscar? How can you be so certain?”

“Because I have met the murderer of Marie Aguetant, just as I have met the murderer of Billy Wood.”

Beneath the table, Veronica released my hand. “Oh, Oscar,” she cried, leaning imploringly towards him, “don’t let us speak any more of that tonight. We are in Paris, and this is my birthday treat…”

“Quite right, dear lady,” said Oscar, and as he spoke—I may have imagined this, but I do not think so; I noted it in my journal at the time—he glanced towards the
chef d’orchestre
and, the moment his eye and Rigo’s met, the orchestra broke into its first mazurka of the night. Oscar reached across the table, took Veronica’s hand in his and kissed it. “Your hand is very warm, my dear,” he murmured.

“But Oscar,” Fraser continued, now using his soup spoon to add emphasis to his argument, “if you believe that you know the true identity of Marie Aguetant’s murderer, you should take the information to the police.”

“No,” said Oscar, shaking his head, “Marie would not have wanted that.”

“But she is dead,” said Fraser. “How can you know what she would have wanted?”

“Because she told me before she died,” said Oscar, simply. “I knew her well. I loved her. We understood one another. She was one of the few human beings who have understood me. I am grateful for that.”

“And yet,” said Veronica, quietly, her hands now held together under her chin, “she was what Robert coyly calls ‘a daughter of joy’…She was a lady of the night, was she not?”

“A prostitute,” said Fraser.

“A courtesan,” I corrected him.

Oscar appeared quite unperturbed. “She was indeed—all that and more. But I loved her, not on account of her calling, or of the company she kept, but because of her personality, which was unique. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law and yet be worthless. He may break the law and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realise through that sin his own perfection…”

The soup had been cleared away. The truffles were being served.

“And speaking of perfection…” Oscar surveyed his plate complacently. The music had stopped; the orchestra had paused between numbers. Oscar looked at each member of our little party. Every one of us was smiling. “I hope Le Grand Cafe is to your liking,” he said. “In some Parisian restaurants, there’s a certain surliness about the service. Here, they put themselves out to please.” As he spoke, giving the sommelier a smile and the Burgundy his blessing, across the crowded room, by the doors leading to the kitchen, two waiters collided and there was a mighty crash—like the clashing of cymbals—as a pair of trays piled high with crockery and silver cascaded to the floor. There was a beat of silence in the room, followed by laughter from half a dozen tables and then a general smattering of applause. “Do you see what I mean? They do that entirely to please their British clientele. They know that an Englishman’s idea of a joke is a jug of water balanced on top of a half-opened door.”

We laughed; we tucked into our truffles; we quaffed the Burgundy, Beneath the table, Veronica laid a hand upon my thigh. “This is wonderful, Oscar,” she said, smiling at our host. “Thank you.”

“Do not thank me,” he said, “thank your fiancé. Paris in the spring was his idea. Thank Fraser. And thank France. The English have a remarkable capacity for turning wine into water. Here it is different.”

“It certainly is,” said Fraser, revealing his line of fine white teeth and raising his glass to the room. “This is a far cry from the officers’ mess at Scotland Yard, no doubt about it.”

Oscar smiled and followed Aidan Fraser’s eyes as they ranged around the room and came to rest on Rigo. The maestro was playing his violin
con brio
, bobbing up and down in time to the music, looking directly at us as he played. We were being treated now to a selection of lively polkas, interspersed with lyrical gypsy love songs. “Listen to the music,” said Oscar, “by turns plangent and rhapsodic Rigo sees into our souls, does he not?”

Later that night, when Oscar and I were lying side by side in our separate beds (“You may take the bed nearer the bathroom, Robert; that would have been Mrs Doyle’s privilege”) and, in the heavy darkness relieved only by the burning glow of my friend’s last post-prandial cigarette, in hushed tones, like schoolboys telling tales in the dormitory after ‘lights out’, we were reviewing the pleasures of the evening, I asked Oscar whether I might tell him a secret.

“By all means,” he whispered, comfortingly. “We are in Paris. In London one hides everything. In Paris one reveals everything. That is the rule.”

“I am in love with Miss Sutherland.”

“And…?” he asked, softly, turning his head towards me.

“And?” I repeated. “And nothing,” I said. “That is my secret.”

Softly, Oscar began to chuckle. Gradually, his chuckle turned into a rumble and then into a roar. “Robert, Robert, Robert!” he cried, now coughing and wheezing through his laughter and struggling to sit up in bed to catch his breath. “That cannot be your secret! All the world knows you love Miss Sutherland! Tonight you missed much of the finest food in Paris because your hands were locked in hers beneath the tablecloth when they should have been above board and about their proper business with your eating irons! That you love Miss Sutherland is no secret!”

I felt very foolish. My face burnt with embarrassment. “Is it that apparent?”

“If you had hired a balloon from Monsieur Montgolfier and dropped leaflets all over Paris announcing your betrothal, it could not have been more apparent.”

“Do you think she will marry me, then?”

“Robert, you are absurd! You are not yet divorced—and she is engaged to Fraser. Let us face it: your banns are not about to be called.”

“But would she marry me, were I free? Were she free?”

“Ah,” he said, subsiding onto the pillows once more, “that is a different question, Robert. Now we are delving into Miss Sutherland’s secret, not yours.”

“What are her true feelings towards Fraser?”

“A good question.”

“And what are his feelings towards her? Why does he allow her so much freedom—so much
licence?
”

“Indeed.”

Silence fell between us. His raillery ceased. He dropped his glowing cigarette end into the glass of water on the bedside table. There was a tiny hiss and the darkness in the room was complete.

“Do you think she does not love me?” I whispered.

“She is fond of you, I am sure,” he answered, kindly.

“But does she love me? She allows me to make love to her. And tonight it was she who first placed her hand in mine.”

“Yes,” said Oscar, gently, “she succumbed to that temptation.”

“But why—if she does not love me?”