Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol: A Mystery (28 page)

‘You’re going to the governor’s ’ouse. You’re ’onoured, C.3.3.’

As we crossed the courtyard, on the far side of it, by the opening that leads towards D Ward, I saw a trio of boys walking past, accompanied by the comely wardress. It was dark now; I only saw their silhouettes; but the boy Tom seemed to be among them. I had not seen him for several weeks. He looked taller than I remembered. As I stared at him he turned and looked at me.

‘They’re out late,’ I said.

‘Punishment,’ answered Warder Martin. ‘They’ve been sluicing out the latrines. The governor won’t ’ave ’em beaten cos of their age, so they gets these little extra duties. Latrines before lights out.’

In the gloom I could see Warder Martin smiling. It was not a vicious smile, nor even a cruel smirk. It was a simple acknowledgement of the way of the world at Reading Gaol.

We reached the steps of the castellated turret that is the home of the prison governor. Warder Martin, with a touch of braggadocio, pulled on the bell. ‘I’ve not been ’ere before,’ he said.

‘Nor I,’ I said. ‘I forgot to pack my evening clothes, so I hope the governor’s not expecting us to dine.’

The heavy door – made of black oak panels studded with iron nails – swung slowly open. Both Martin and I, I sensed, anticipated an old retainer plucked from the pages of a Gothic novel. If so, we were disappointed. Dr Maurice, in waistcoat and shirtsleeves, stood on the threshold. The prison surgeon was wearing his spectacles once more, I noticed, and smoking a cigarette.

‘It is the butler’s night off,’ I murmured.

‘Remember where you are, C.3.3.,’ rebuked the doctor. He beckoned me into the hallway. He nodded to Martin. ‘Thank you, warder. Wait here while the governor sees the prisoner. He’ll not be long.’

With a bony knuckle the doctor knocked lightly on the door immediately to the right of the front door and, without waiting for an answer, took me into a small gaslit parlour where the governor stood by the fireplace with his back to us.

‘Take off your cap,’ ordered the doctor. ‘Remember where you are,’ he repeated.

As I did as I was commanded I glanced around the room. It was small, bare and comfortless. It was a front parlour, evidently, but beyond a rough Turkish rug on the grey stone floor and a plain wooden mantelpiece above an empty grate, it was bereft of both furniture and decoration.

The governor swung round on his heels. He was dressed for dinner, in regimental mess kit, sporting his decorations and smoking a small cigar. His black hair stood to attention, shiny like a bearskin. In the gloom of the ill-lit chamber, his lined face looked wan and weary. He smiled at me grimly.

‘They are dying all around you, C.3.3.,’ he said. ‘What’s going on?’

‘What do you mean, sir?’

‘The surgeon tells me you’ll know all about it.’

I looked round towards Dr Maurice. He was standing behind me, resting his long back against the parlour door. He nodded, as though encouraging me to speak, and drew on his cigarette.

‘I do not understand, sir,’ I said.

‘The doctor tells me that you and he have a mutual acquaintance – “the great Arthur Conan Doyle”, the celebrated creator of the “gentleman detective”, Sherlock Holmes.’

‘I knew Dr Conan Doyle,’ I said, ‘in younger and happier days.’

‘According to Dr Maurice, you more than knew him –
you
were the Holmes to his Watson! You unravelled mysteries together – real ones. You solved crimes, side by side – and all by means of keen observation and careful consideration. You saw, you pondered, you cracked the nut.’ He puffed on his little cigar and looked at me beadily. ‘Well, what do you say?’

I said nothing. I was uncertain what to say.

‘I have read your story,
Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime
,’ he went on, lifting himself up onto his toes as he spoke. ‘You clearly have a feeling for this kind of thing. Detection is your
métier manqué
, it seems.’ He pulled a half-hunter out of his waistcoat pocket and checked the time. He shook his head and looked at me again, raising his eyebrows enquiringly. ‘So, what’s been going on?’

‘I really know nothing, sir,’ I protested.

‘We’ll be the judges of that,’ said Major Nelson, turning to the fireplace and throwing the remains of his cigar into the grate. ‘I am dining with Mr Palmer tonight – or I hope to be. His bakery is next to the prison, you know.’

‘Mr Palmer of Huntley and Palmer?’

‘The same. He tells me that you and he were involved in unravelling a mystery a year or two ago. The police got nowhere, but you solved it – according to Palmer.’

‘I recall the adventure,’ I said, half smiling. ‘It afforded me my first visit to Reading.’ As I spoke I looked down and caught sight of the grotesque black arrows printed on my prison uniform. ‘My wife and Mr Palmer’s family are friends. If you think it will not embarrass him, please remember me to Mr Palmer when you see him.’

‘At this rate, I shall not be seeing him tonight, alas. Once I have heard what you have to say, if anything, I shall have to summon the police.’

‘They have not been called already?’ I asked.

‘No. The prison is my jurisdiction. I wanted to gather the facts myself first. I shall call them very shortly. The Prison Commissioners have recently endowed us with a telephone. I am told Colonel Isaacson never used it, but I shall.’

‘There may be no need.’

‘No need to use the telephone?’

‘No need to call the police.’

The governor rocked back gently on his heels and tucked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets. ‘The chaplain is dead, C.3.3. You do know that?’

‘I do, sir. And I know that the dwarf attacked him. And did so mercilessly. I heard it happen.’

‘He’ll be for the gallows – unless he can prove he’s mad.’

‘He is mad, no doubt, sir – or has been driven mad here by the cruelty meted out to him. He attacked the chaplain – brutally – but he did not murder him.’

‘The Reverend Friend is dead – beaten and kicked to death by the prisoner Joseph Smith. Five warders were at the scene within moments of the occurrence.’

I looked at the governor steadily. His face was open: not free of care, but free of guile. He was my gaoler-in-chief, but I liked the man and knew how much I owed to him. ‘The dwarf contributed to the chaplain’s death, no doubt, sir,’ I said, ‘but I do not believe he should be held responsible for it.’

‘We’ll let the courts decide whether or not he should be held responsible for his actions. If he is found guilty of murdering a prison chaplain, and he’s not judged insane, he’ll hang for it. Justice must be done.’

‘But if someone else is the murderer, sir,’ I persisted, ‘– someone quite else – and the dwarf merely compounded the felony, what then?’

‘What do you mean?’ Major Nelson stopped rocking to and fro and considered me carefully.

I spoke slowly now. I was unaccustomed to standing in a room before a fireplace having a rational conversation with a gentleman dressed for dinner. I was unaccustomed to speaking with my head unbowed. ‘If the dwarf had merely attacked the chaplain, in however brutal a fashion, and the chaplain had survived that attack, would it then have been a matter for the police?’

Major Nelson hesitated. ‘No. No, not necessarily.’ He tugged on his walrus moustache. ‘An affray within the prison, an assault on a member of the prison staff – that would be a matter of prison discipline.’

‘For you to decide – as governor?’

‘Yes – in consultation with the prison surgeon and, possibly, the visiting committee, depending on what punishment was considered to be appropriate in the circumstances.’

I turned to Dr Maurice. ‘You have examined the chaplain’s body, Doctor?’

‘Yes.’

‘What killed him?’ I asked.

‘What killed him, I would say – and will say when I sign his death certificate – is cardiac arrest. He had a heart attack.’

‘Provoked, you assume,’ I said, ‘by the pounding he received?’

The doctor drew on the remains of his cigarette. ‘Possibly provoked by the attack itself. Mr Friend may have suffered his seizure at the moment that the prisoner leapt upon him.’

I nodded. ‘I think that very likely, Doctor. It sounded to me as if the dwarf was kicking and punching a lifeless corpse.’

‘Are you saying it was not the beating that killed the chaplain?’ asked the governor.

‘The assault provoked the heart attack,’ I replied. ‘The heart attack is what killed him.’

‘And what provoked the assault, I wonder?’ pondered the governor, his hands in his pockets, jangling coins and keys.

‘A line of John Donne’s, I believe.’ I smiled. ‘Donne’s sermonising was ever contentious.’

The governor looked at me askance.

‘Pardon me, sir,’ I said. ‘I fear that the chaplain will have riled C.3.4. with a well-intentioned but ill-timed exhortation. It was his way.’

Major Nelson looked over to the prison doctor. Although the doctor was of lower rank, he was of higher social standing and I sensed the governor deferring to him. ‘Did Mr Friend have a weak heart?’ he asked.

‘He was sixty years of age,’ replied the doctor.

‘Were you his physician?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Did he have a weak heart?’ I asked.

‘Not that I had noticed previously.’

Major Nelson, chewing the fringe of his moustache, looked once more at his half-hunter. ‘Where is this taking us, C.3.3.?’

‘I hope it is taking you to dinner, sir,’ I answered, looking at him directly. ‘You need not trouble the telephone exchange tonight. This is not a matter for the police. Nothing need be done in haste. If you go now, even if you have missed the
bisque
you’ll catch the turbot. The chaplain is dead. God rest his soul. The poor dwarf is in his cell. You can decide his fate when you are ready to do so. He has infringed the prison regulations and whether he should be beaten once again or sent to a secure hospital is a matter for you to decide – and probably better decided on a full stomach than an empty one.’

The governor returned my gaze. ‘That is all very well, and I thank you for your consideration for my digestion, but I know my duty. Justice must be done.’

‘Oh, justice will be done, sir,’ I said quickly. ‘The chaplain’s murderer will hang. You can be certain of that.’

23
Sebastian Atitis-Snake

M
ajor Nelson left the parlour to make his telephone call.

I stood where I was, facing the empty fireplace. Dr Maurice stood behind me. I heard him lighting a second cigarette.

‘What killed the chaplain,’ I said, ‘killed Warder Braddle. And what killed Warder Braddle killed Warder Braddle’s brother, also. I am convinced of that.’

‘And what was it?’ asked the doctor.

‘Cantharides,’ I said. ‘I recognised the symptoms. When we have finished here, go back to the morgue and look at the chaplain’s face. You will see what I mean.’

‘The bulging eyes, the darkened skin, the blisters . . . I have seen them already.’ I listened as he drew slowly on his cigarette. (Oh, how I longed for one!) ‘What will you tell the governor?’ he asked.

‘What I know. At least, what I think I know. I owe him that. This is a cruel place and he has made it less so.’

‘You will tell him everything?’

‘It is remarkable how one good action always breeds another.’

‘You will tell him about the boy?’ he asked.

‘I used to make jokes about the truth,’ I answered. ‘I do not find them so amusing now. I will tell him everything that I can.’

‘You will tell him about the boy?’ The doctor repeated his question.

I turned to look at him. ‘For the governor to understand, I think that I must. You have not done so, Doctor?’

The prison surgeon contemplated the plume of white smoke rising from the tip of his cigarette. ‘I saw no need,’ he said. Still he considered his cigarette. ‘What was to be gained? Who needs the pain – and the shame – of what is past? It is all over now. The boy is safe – and getting better. He’ll be released before the month is out. And he has a home to go to. I have made enquiries. He can start afresh.’

‘I am glad to hear it,’ I said. ‘That is good news.’

‘And your news is good news, too, C.3.3. You are due to be released in six weeks, are you not? Your ordeal is nearly over.’ The prison surgeon stood upright, bracing his shoulders and looking me directly in the eyes. ‘Yes, tell the governor what you know. Tell him everything. You have nothing to lose.’