Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol: A Mystery (20 page)

‘The Indian? The half-Indian or whatever he is. I rarely see him. He will not see me. He is a Hindu or a Buddhist or somesuch. He is not a Christian.’

‘I am petitioning the Home Secretary. It is my right. I have been here long enough, among murderers and blackmailers. I must get out or I will go mad.’

‘Be patient,’ urged the chaplain, breathing heavily. ‘Think of all that you have been telling me just now; think of all that you have learnt thus far. A year from today you will be released – a better and a wiser man. It is not long.’

‘It is too long,’ I said, closing my eyes, suddenly exhausted. ‘I will petition the Home Secretary for my release. My mind is set on that. Pray for me, padre, and wish me well with my petition.’

‘I wish you well with your petition,’ said the chaplain, slowly. ‘It may even be granted,’ he added, ‘who knows? We have another prisoner here who is petitioning the Home Secretary and is hopeful of success. I have just come from him.’

I opened my eyes. ‘Who is that? The poisoner, Atitis-Snake? He, too, is desperate, I know.’

‘No – a new prisoner, by the name of Wooldridge. He arrived two days ago. He is in the condemned cell. He is destined for the gallows. He murdered his wife in a jealous rage. He slit her throat from ear to ear – with a cut-throat razor. Ugly business. He gave himself up to the police and now he’s here. It’s three years since we last had a hanging.’

‘And this man is seeking a reprieve?’

‘No,’ answered the chaplain, smiling. ‘Quite the reverse. He wants to be hanged. At his trial, the jury, when they brought in the guilty verdict, put in a plea for clemency. The judge ignored the jury and all sorts of committees have sprung up demanding that Wooldridge’s life be spared. But he wants none of it. He told me when I saw him just now that he wants to die to pay for the crime he has committed. A life for a life. He is petitioning the Home Secretary to ignore those who are pleading for him to be spared. I think the Home Secretary will grant his wish. I am not so sure, C.3.3., that he will grant yours.’

‘Will you pray for me, padre?’ I asked, earnestly.

‘I will pray for you. We are all of us in need of God’s mercy.’

On Thursday, 2 July 1896, I had a brief interview with Colonel Henry Isaacson, governor of Reading Gaol, at the conclusion of which he agreed to forward to the Home Secretary the petition I had drafted:

HM Prison, Reading

Prisoner C.3.3. – Oscar Wilde

2 July 1896

To the Right Honourable Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department.

The petition of the above-named prisoner humbly sheweth that he does not desire to attempt to palliate in any way the terrible offences of which he was rightly found guilty, but to point out that such offences are forms of sexual madness and are recognised as such not merely by modern pathological science but by much modern legislation, notably in France, Austria and Italy, where the laws affecting these misdemeanours have been repealed, on the ground that they are diseases to be cured by a physician, rather than crimes to be punished by a judge . . .

The petitioner is now keenly conscious of the fact that while the three years preceding his arrest were from the intellectual point of view the most brilliant years of his life (four plays from his pen having been produced on the stage with immense success, and played not merely in England, America and Australia, but in almost every European capital, and many books that excited much interest at home and abroad having been published), still that during the entire time he was suffering from the most horrible form of erotomania, which made him forget his wife and children, his high social position in London and Paris, his European distinction as an artist, the honour of his name and family, his very humanity itself, and left him the helpless prey of the most revolting passions, and of a gang of people who for their own profit ministered to them, and then drove him to hideous ruin.

It is under the ceaseless apprehension lest this insanity, that displayed itself in monstrous sexual perversion before, may now extend to the entire nature and intellect, that the petitioner writes this appeal which he earnestly entreats may be at once considered. Horrible as all actual madness is, the terror of madness is no less appalling, and no less ruinous to the soul.

For more than thirteen dreadful months now, the petitioner has been subject to the fearful system of solitary cellular confinement: without human intercourse of any kind; without writing materials whose use might help distract the mind: without suitable or sufficient books, so essential to any literary man, so vital for the preservation of mental balance: condemned to absolute silence: cut off from all knowledge of the external world and the movements of life: leading an existence composed of bitter degradations and terrible hardships, hideous in its recurring monotony of dreary task and sickening privation: the despair and misery of this lonely and wretched life having been intensified beyond words by the death of his mother, Lady Wilde, to whom he was deeply attached, as well as by the contemplation of the ruin he has brought onto his young wife and his two children . . .

For more than a year the petitioner’s mind has borne this. It can bear it no longer. He is quite conscious of the approach of an insanity that will not be confined to one portion of his nature merely, but will extend over all alike, and his desire, his prayer, is that his sentence may be remitted now, so that he may be taken abroad by his friends and may put himself under medical care so that the sexual insanity from which he suffers may be cured. He knows only too well that his career as a dramatist and writer is ended, and his name blotted from the scroll of English Literature, never to be replaced: that his children cannot bear that name again, and that an obscure life in some remote country is in store for him: he knows that, bankruptcy having come upon him, poverty of a most bitter kind awaits him, and that all the joy and beauty of existence is taken from him for ever; but at least in all his hopelessness he still clings to the hope that he will not have to pass directly from the common gaol to the common lunatic asylum . . .

There are other apprehensions of danger that the limitation of space does not allow the petitioner to enter on; his chief danger is that of madness, his chief terror that of madness, and his prayer that his long imprisonment may be considered, with its attendant ruin, a sufficient punishment, so that the imprisonment may be ended now, and not uselessly or vindictively prolonged till insanity has claimed soul as well as body as its prey, and brought it to the same degradation and the same shame.

Oscar Wilde

Five days after I had submitted my petition, on Tuesday, 7 July 1896, Charles Wooldridge was hanged in Reading Gaol. His petition was considered before mine and, in Wooldridge’s case, the Home Secretary was ‘pleased to accede to the prisoner’s request that there should be no reprieve in this instance and no delay to his execution’. The hanging took place, as was the custom, at 8.00 a.m., as the clock outside the prison walls struck the hour. According to Dr Maurice, who witnessed it, alongside the governor, the chaplain, the undersheriff and two warders on ‘special duty’ for the occasion, it was a ‘clean execution’: Wooldridge died instantly, his death caused by dislocation of the vertebrae. But a rumour ran round the prison that as the condemned man swung from the rope his neck stretched by eleven inches and his face was distorted beyond recognition.

At 8.00 p.m. on the same day, Sebastian Atitis-Snake, at his own request, was taken from his cell to the governor’s office and there, after making a full confession, was charged with the murder of Warder Braddle.

Interlude
Dieppe, France, 24 and 25 June 1897

In the small back dining room at the Café Suisse, Dr Quilp raised his glass of green chartreuse to his companion. ‘Bravo, Monsieur Melmoth, that’s quite a curtain line.’

As he spoke, in the dark far corner of the empty room, the cuckoo clock on the wall above the dresser juddered into life and, with a hideous whirring and callooing, struck the midnight hour. Lizard-like, Monsieur Melmoth slowly closed his eyes. ‘And timed to perfection, too, if I may say so,’ he murmured.

Dr Quilp put down his glass and closed the little notebook that lay on the table before him. He removed his spectacles, picked up his table napkin and, with it, carefully wiped his thin moustache and tiny beard. ‘Yes,’ he said, contentedly, ‘we can continue tomorrow. You have told me enough to tantalise our readers.’

‘I have told you enough –
tout court
,’ declared Melmoth, opening his oyster eyes and smiling balefully. ‘I have given you my all, Dr Quilp. I have earned my Perrier-Jouët ’92.’ He gazed at the litter of half-empty plates and glasses on the table. He reached for his cigarettes. With a trembling hand he put one to his lips and leant towards a guttering candle to light it. The stubble on his chin was grey as slate, but his face was flushed with drink.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Quilp, smoothly, ‘and your yellow wines and your reds. You have earned your entertainment tonight, Monsieur Melmoth – and left us wanting more.’

‘There is no more,’ declared Melmoth, breathing deeply on his cigarette. ‘You have all you require.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Quilp, contemplating his liqueur rather than his guest. ‘You have just told me that Sebastian Atitis-Snake, the poisoner, confessed to the murder of Warder Braddle.’

‘He did.’

‘But earlier you told me that Private Achindra Acala Luck had claimed to be the murderer.’

‘Indeed he had.’

‘Well, which was it?’

‘One? T’other? Both? Neither? Did the doctor do it? Or the priest? Or perhaps it was the beautiful wardress disguised as the dwarf?’ Melmoth laughed so that tears trickled from the corners of his eyes. He looked about the table for a half-filled glass and found one. ‘It won’t have been Warder Stokes. He was a decent fellow. He gave the murderer Wooldridge a pipe to smoke on the day before he died.’

Melmoth fell silent. Dr Quilp smiled at him indulgently. ‘If we are to make our fortune from your story, Monsieur Melmoth, we must tell it in its entirety – from start to finish.’

Melmoth drew on his cigarette. ‘I believe I have given you enough to work on, Dr Quilp. Remember, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’

Quilp pushed back his chair. ‘Shall we make for our beds, Monsieur Melmoth? We’ve worked enough for one night.’

Melmoth stubbed out the remains of his cigarette in a saucer. ‘I will need a pony and trap to get me back to my lodgings, I’m afraid.’

‘There’s no need for that,’ said Quilp agreeably. ‘I have booked us both rooms here for tonight.’

Melmoth sat back in his chair. ‘Here? Upstairs? That’s very generous.’

‘And to mark the Queen’s jubilee, by way of celebration,’ said Quilp, getting to his feet, ‘I’ve ordered us a couple of tarts – for dessert.’

Melmoth looked up at him, wide eyed. ‘You don’t mean
tartes aux fraises
, do you?’

‘No, monsieur,’ chuckled Quilp, rubbing his heavy hands together, ‘I mean
women
– girls, I hope – from the brothel next door.’ He looked towards the cuckoo clock. ‘It’s midnight. They should be waiting for us.’

Melmoth did not move. ‘You are very kind, Dr Quilp, but I have taken wine and I am not sure—’

‘Nonsense. This is just what the doctor ordered. Isn’t this the kind of Continental cure you promised the Home Secretary you’d be taking?’

Melmoth laughed. ‘I was a desperate man when I petitioned the Home Secretary – and it was a year ago . . . I am not sure now that I could rise to the occasion.’

‘I am an apothecary, Monsieur Melmoth. Remember?’ Dr Quilp pulled back his jacket and reached into his waistcoat pocket. He pulled from it a small twist of tissue paper. ‘I have a powder for you – a touch of Spanish Fly.’