Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol: A Mystery (21 page)

Melmoth raised his eyebrows and smiled. ‘As recommended by the Marquis de Sade.’

‘Exactly so.’ Quilp handed the twist of paper to Melmoth. ‘And Casanova,’ he added encouragingly.

Melmoth accepted the gift and carefully put the paper inside his coat pocket. ‘When do I take it?’ he asked.

‘For the best results, about twenty minutes before the act. Take it all. Half-measures will go for nothing.’

‘I understand,’ said Melmoth, raising his glass to his companion. ‘Thank you for your thoughtfulness.’ He picked up his wine glass and contemplated the dregs. ‘What time is it?’ he asked.

Quilp peered through the gloom at the cuckoo clock. ‘A quarter past twelve.’

‘That’s late,’ said Melmoth.

‘Don’t worry, there’s no rush. We have the girls for the night. All paid for.’

Melmoth pushed back his chair and, with a flourish, drained his glass. He took a deep breath and, a touch unsteadily, got to his feet. ‘To get back one’s youth one has to repeat one’s follies, I believe,’ he said, smiling. ‘
En avant
.’

The following day the sun shone brightly in the street outside the Café Suisse. Sebastian Melmoth and Dr Quilp met, as they had arranged, at 2.00 p.m. for a late breakfast of eggs and ham and cheese, and coffee and Perrier-Jouët ’92, at a table in the shade beneath the café’s blue-and-white striped awning. Melmoth was dressed in the clothes he had worn the night before, but he had shaved carefully and washed his hair and looked, he had felt as he considered himself in the looking glass on the landing outside his bedroom, like an ageing Botticelli cherub. Quilp, also newly shaved, and freshly powdered, wore new linen and looked, to Melmoth, vulpine, and (for such a lovely day) oddly tense, on the
qui vive
, like a Prussian officer readying himself for a duel.

As Melmoth took his place at table, Quilp, adjusting his spectacles and peering down at his open notebook, asked: ‘Were you surprised?’

Melmoth settled himself. ‘By my prowess, do you mean?’

‘No, that’s not what I mean, but since you mention it . . .’

‘Your aphrodisiac was efficacious,’ announced Melmoth, pouring himself a cup of coffee. ‘You clearly know your business, Doctor.’

‘And the girl?’ enquired Quilp.

Melmoth smiled ruefully: ‘The first these ten years, and it shall be the last. It was like chewing cold mutton.’

‘I am sorry,’ said the apothecary, running a thumb and forefinger lightly over his moustache.

‘But tell it in England,’ continued Melmoth, happily, sipping his coffee. ‘There it will entirely restore my reputation.’

Quilp laughed. ‘Yes – and that may help in securing the right price for your prison memoir.’

‘I do need money,’ said Melmoth, earnestly. ‘Like St Francis of Assisi, I find I am wedded to Poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success. I hate the bride that has been given to me. I see no beauty in her hunger and her rags; my thirst is for the beauty of life; my desire for the joy. I appreciate a proper breakfast.’ He gazed about the table before taking up a fork and skewering a slice of ham. ‘Money I must have. At the moment, for bread, for board, for everything, I am entirely dependent on the munificence of friends and the generosity of my dear Constance.’

‘Will you and your wife be reconciled?’ asked Quilp.

‘Perhaps,’ said Melmoth, laying down his fork. ‘If it were not for my friends and her family, I think certainly.’ He looked at Dr Quilp. ‘My friends appear determined to indulge my weakness. I must resist them or I shall be lost. If I return to a certain individual, and it becomes known, my wife’s family will cut off my allowance – completely. They will be within their rights. My agreement with my wife’s lawyer clearly states that I must not be “guilty of any moral misconduct” or “notoriously consort with evil or disreputable companions” . . .’

‘I hope last night’s adventure will not compromise you.’

Melmoth laughed. ‘Oh no, I think the word “notoriously” protects me there. I imagine I could take as many women as I liked. It’s boys they are frightened of.’

‘And it was because Private Luck taunted you with the boy Tom that you thought you would go mad? Is that it?’

‘Yes, Dr Quilp. You are a psychologist as well as an author and an apothecary, it seems.’ Melmoth scooped a spoonful of scrambled eggs onto his plate. ‘I knew that if I returned to the sexual perversity that had brought about my downfall I would be left without a penny to my name. And I would never see my wife or sons again.’

‘So – were you surprised?’

‘Surprised?’ Melmoth raised his eyebrows and began to eat.

‘Surprised that Atitis-Snake confessed to the murder when – to you, at least – Luck had already done so?’

‘I did not then know all that I would come to know about Private Achindra Acala Luck. And I did not know whether or not Atitis-Snake had murdered Warder Braddle, either alone or in harness with others, but I could see that he might claim to have done so.’

‘In Heaven’s name, why? Why confess to a murder you’ve not even been accused of? A murder, in fact, that you may not even have committed? You’d have to be mad to do such a thing. Atitis-Snake was not suspected of Braddle’s murder, was he? No one was pointing an accusing finger at him? And the governor was clearly content for Braddle’s death to be taken for an accident. That’s what he wanted.’

Melmoth grinned. ‘Oh, yes, Colonel Isaacson was all for the quiet life. But Atitis-Snake was a desperate man – and an instinctive risk-taker. He was desperate – frantic – to escape the hell of his life sentence. After a year at Reading Gaol, the prospect of a
lifetime
of incarceration – ten, twenty, thirty years – had dawned on him. And overwhelmed him. I can understand that.’ Melmoth reached for the iced champagne and poured his companion a glass. ‘He had to get out. There was no other way.’

‘But he put his life on the line.’

‘When you put your head above the parapet, you do. Remember the famous last words of General Sedgwick at the Battle of Spotsylvania? “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist—”.’

Quilp did not laugh. Slowly he raised his glass to his lips. ‘I am still puzzled,’ he said. ‘By confessing to a murder – and the murder of a prison warder, no less – Atitis-Snake was putting his head directly into the hangman’s noose.’

‘Not if he managed to skip the country between his arrest and his trial.’

‘An unlikely prospect.’

‘Agreed, but not impossible. There’s much coming and going between courtroom and prison cell. And not if, at his trial, he were to be found “guilty but insane”. To do as he did, after all, you’d have to be mad – you said so yourself. Perhaps the jury would be made up of men like you.’ Melmoth took a draught of champagne: his pale face was gaining some colour: he was warming to his theme. ‘“To be detained in safe custody until Her Majesty’s pleasure be known” – there are worse things that can happen to a man. They dine quite well at Bedlam, I believe. And they are given canvases to paint on and any number of books to read. And according to my friend, Dr Conan Doyle, who knows about these matters, it is five times easier for a lunatic to escape from an asylum than for a convict to escape from gaol.’

‘Atitis-Snake took a calculated risk?’

‘Exactly so.’

‘And was he mad?’

‘He did not seem it to me. I hardly knew him, of course, but what I saw I rather liked. I liked his name very much. And the boy Tom liked him – that was clear. When I found them smoking together by the potting shed I saw that at once. And a boy is like a dog – he can sniff out who to trust.’

‘And what about you, Monsieur Melmoth – were you mad? How did the Home Secretary receive your petition?’ Dr Quilp had his pencil hovering over his notebook.

‘Ah, yes, was I mad? That is the question. Mammon must be served. We must go on with the story.’

‘We must finish it,’ said Dr Quilp pleasantly. He looked towards the café door and waved to the waiter. ‘And we shall have another bottle of the Perrier-Jouët while we’re about it.’

10 July 1899

Inquiry, held at HM Prison Reading, by direction of the Prison Commissioners, on Prisoner Oscar Wilde, in regard to a Petition made by him to the
Home Secretary dated 2 July 1896

1. The Committee do not consider from the inquiry that there is danger of the Prisoner becoming insane, but as this Prisoner’s petition is based upon the fear of insanity, always a difficult subject, the Committee think an expert Medical Inquiry may well be held upon his case, in which an examination of his hearing and eyesight could be added.
   
2. The Committee consider that the Prisoner has been well treated. He himself states that his treatment has been good and the diet sufficient. He has been relieved of oakum picking, has been allowed more books, and more exercise than the other prisoners. He has increased eight pounds in weight since he entered the prison. Prison life must of course be more internally severe to a prisoner of his educational achievement than it would be to an ordinary one.
   

A. W. Cobham

C. Hay

H. Hunter

H. Thursby

G. W. Palmer

16
The Reichenbach Falls

W
as I mad?

One morning, during the first week in July 1896, in the room adjacent to the governor’s office in Reading Gaol – the room in which I had had my last meeting with my wife – I was interviewed by a committee of middle-aged men of nondescript appearance who left no impression on me whatsoever. I answered their questions as honestly as I was able, and because I sensed that they were dull men leading dreary lives I did what I could to cheer them up. When one of them enquired whether I had ever found myself talking to myself in the solitude of my cell, I answered, foolishly, ‘I like talking to a brick wall: it’s the only thing in the world that never contradicts me.’

There are things that are right to say, but that may be said at the wrong time to the wrong people. The committee all laughed at my little joke and concluded that I clearly had my wits about me. I was not mad, in their opinion. When I protested that it was the
prospect
of madness that was driving me towards insanity, they told me that the future was beyond their remit and promised that a medical examination would be conducted to assess the likelihood of my becoming lunatic with the passage of time.

They were as good as their word.

In due course, the prison surgeon came to see me in my cell. It was at the end of one of my wheelbarrow days in the prison garden. ‘Good afternoon, C.3.3.,’ he said affably. ‘I have come to look at your eyes and your ears and to tell you that you are not mad, nor likely to become so.’

I stood to greet my visitor. ‘Good afternoon, Dr Maurice,’ I said. ‘I had hoped to see you before this. Where have you been?’