Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death (17 page)

‘If you
see Bradford Pearse before we do, Mr Triggs,’ said Sickert, shaking the theatre
manager by the hand, ‘be sure to tell him that we called. Ask him to make
contact as soon as may be.’

‘Naturally,’
said Triggs, ‘I’ll tell him you were here. But I’m sure you’ll find him
yourselves without difficulty. For a moment Mr Wilde alarmed me with his talk
of understudies, but if Pearse is not at The Devonshire Arms, he’ll be at The
Cavalier or The Prince Albert—or the Lamb inn. You’ll find him. I know you
will.’ He shook my hand warmly, though his fingers were cold as ice. He turned
to Oscar and looked up at him in awe. ‘Mr Wilde,’ he said, his eyes glistening
anew, ‘it has been such a deep honour …’

‘The
honour—and the pleasure—has been all ours,’ said Oscar, bowing to our host and
handing him a visiting card. ‘Make use of that address, Mr Triggs,’ he added,
as he stepped away from the stage door, ‘if you’d be so kind.’

Mr
Triggs took Oscar’s card and held it to his lips as if it had been a
sacramental wafer. ‘Goodnight, gentlemen!’ he called to us as we moved off down
the street. As we went we turned back and saw that the little man had produced
a large white handkerchief from his coat pocket and was waving it above his
head. He kept on waving until we reached the corner of the street and turned
out of his sight into the main road.

‘Standen
Triggs is a good man, is he not?’ said Oscar.

‘An odd
man,’ said Sickert.

‘You
wrote something on the back of your card, Oscar,’ I said. ‘What was it?’

‘The
name of a physician, a specialist, a colleague of my late father’s. I believe
Mr Triggs suffers from a condition known as Graves’ disease. He may not be
aware of it, but he has all the symptoms, poor fellow—starting with the
protuberant eyeballs. I fear he is not long for this world.’

‘I am
sorry to hear it,’ I said.

Wat
Sickert stopped in his tracks. ‘You are a phenomenon, Oscar Wilde! You appear
to know
everything.’

‘Alas,’
said Oscar, stopping also and putting an arm on Sickert’s shoulder, ‘I do not
know the whereabouts of your friend, Bradford Pearse.’

Sickert
laughed. ‘At least we know that he wasn’t murdered in the last act. At least we
know that he left the theatre alive.’

‘Yes,’
said Oscar, absently, ‘so the doorman said.’

‘Do you
doubt it, Oscar? We’ll find Pearse in one of the local hostelries, for sure.’

‘I
think not,’ said Oscar, feeling for his cigarette case. ‘I doubt very much that
we will find Bradford Pearse tonight.’

‘But we
must search for him, must we not?’ insisted Sickert.

Oscar
lit a match and Wat’s white face and piercing eyes were suddenly illuminated.
We stood together in a small circle on the deserted roadway. Up the hill to the
left were the lights of the town; down the hill to the right was the road to
Beachy Head.

‘What
time is it?’ asked Oscar.

‘I
heard a clock strike just now,’ I said. ‘It must be a little after eleven.’

Oscar
turned to me and smiled and, narrowing his eyes, held my gaze in his. It was
his way when he was about to ask a favour. ‘Robert,’ he said, ‘if Wat and I
trawl the taverns of the town, can you stand sentinel here? I’ll give you
cigarettes to smoke— you’ll not be idle. Should Bradford Pearse plan to lodge
at the theatre tonight, he will return before midnight. If he turns up, which I
doubt, bring him to The Lamb in the High Street. We’ll take rooms there.’

‘Are we
going to The Devonshire Arms first?’ asked Sickert.

‘Yes,’
said Oscar, ‘briefly, if the landlord will admit us at this hour. And to The
Cavalier and The Prince Consort and whatever other inns we pass along the way.
We’ll do it, Wat, to ease your conscience—to help you to feel that “something
is being done”. But we’ll not find Bradford Pearse tonight—alive or dead.’

‘Do you
think he’s dead?’ asked Wat Sickert, suddenly alarmed.

‘I know
no more than you do, Wat. If he’s alive, as I pray, he’s in hiding—for reasons
we do not yet know. If he’s dead already, killed in the past half-hour, poor
wretch, and lying in a ditch or in some dismal Eastbourne alley, it’s too
late—we’re too late—and too dark by far for us to find him now. To please you,
Wat, we’ll stay on the case till midnight. And tomorrow, when it is light, we
can resume the search in earnest.’

Oscar’s instinct was sure.
Until gone midnight, I loitered on the corner of Compton Street and Hardwick
Road, smoking Oscar’s cigarettes and watching the stage door of the Devonshire
Park Theatre. A solitary dog—a limping cocker spaniel— and two drunkards came
shambling past, but I saw no sign of Bradford Pearse. As the church clock began
to strike twelve, I saw the stage door open and the stage doorkeeper emerge. He
was taller than I had expected him to be—and fitter. To my surprise, he wheeled
a bicycle out of the theatre with him and when he had turned back and attended
to the locks on the stage door, and looked both ways down the street, he
mounted his two-wheeler and rode briskly on his way.

I
lingered outside the theatre for fifteen minutes more. No one came, no one
went. Sensing my duty done, I made my way up the hill to the High Street. I
found Oscar and Wat standing together, smoking, on the front steps of the Lamb
inn.

‘We’ve
not found him either,’ said Oscar. ‘He’s well-known to the local landlords, and
well-liked by one and all it seems, but not a soul has seen hide nor hair of
him tonight—they’re all sure of that—and no one no one at all—has the least
idea where he might be.’

‘I am
anxious,’ said Wat. ‘Pearse is my friend.’

‘We’ll
find him,’ said Oscar, casting his cigarette into the gutter and gazing up into
the blue-black sky, ‘but not tonight.’ He put a comforting arm around Wat
Sickert’s shoulders. ‘The stars are weary and so are we. Let’s to bed,
mes
amis.’
He put his other arm through mine. ‘We have rooms here, Robert—and,
according to Wat, “they’re clean and cheap and welcoming, like the best
daughters of joy”. And our landlord’s wife, Mrs Fletcher, God bless her, is a
saint. Leave out your linen and she promises she’ll have it laundered and
pressed by break of day. This is Eastbourne, gentlemen, where the age of
miracles is not past.’

I did not sleep long, but
I slept well, and I awoke at 6.30 a.m., surprisingly refreshed, to find our
saintly landlady at my bedside with a kindly smile, clean linen, warm towels
and a bowl brimming with boiling shaving water. Mrs Fletcher was indeed a
paragon: when she had drawn back the curtains and opened the bedroom window, I
saw that she was no more than my age and, though a little plump, as pretty as a
Watteau milkmaid. I lifted my head from the pillow and said good morning. She
simply bobbed a curtsy, said, ‘Breakfast will be ready shortly—Mr Wilde has
asked for goose eggs,’ and went about her business. (Why had I gone to Paris
and married a tiresome Polish blue-stocking like Marthe Lipska when I could
have come to Eastbourne and found myself a wholesome English girl like Mrs
Fletcher?)

I got
up and went to the window. Thursday
5
May 1892 offered as bright and
fresh an English early summer’s morning as you could wish for. The sky was pale
blue and cloudless; the breeze was gentle and scented with wallflowers. I
shaved and dressed and tied my tie with special attention, thinking of Mrs
Fletcher and smiling at the recollection of one of Oscar’s favourite axioms: ‘A
well-tied tie is the first serious step in life.’

Oscar
and Wat had reached the breakfast table before me. They, too, looked remarkably
refreshed. Oscar was in especially ebullient form. As I appeared, he rose to
his feet, swept to the sideboard and began lifting the lids from the breakfast
dishes like a magician producing bouquets of paper flowers or white rabbits
from a hat. ‘Let me serve you, Robert. You will not be disappointed. Mrs
Fletcher has fresh herrings, local ham, devilled kidneys and mutton cutlets to
offer you. She also has eggs. An egg is always an adventure, Robert—one is
never certain what to expect. But a goose egg …’

‘I will
have one of Mrs Fletcher’s goose eggs, if I may,’ I said, handing Oscar my
plate.

My
friend was clearly in a teasing frame of mind. He turned to Wat and whispered,
‘Did you hear how Robert said her name? “Mrs Fletcher” …’ He rolled the words
around his mouth as he ladled a fried goose egg onto my plate. He winked at me.
‘Robert is in love again!’ he declared. ‘One day away from Constance and my
dear wife is quite forgotten. He’s a fickle one, this Robert Sherard …’

I added
a slice of Sussex ham to my plate and took a crust of bread and sat at the
table. ‘Don’t be absurd, Oscar. My affection for Constance, while profound, is
entirely gentlemanly, as well you know.’

‘Whereas
that of Edward Heron-Allen …’ said Oscar, grinning wickedly.

‘Don’t
mention that man’s name,’ I interrupted. ‘In my opinion, his interest in
Constance is unhealthy.’

Oscar
laughed. ‘He’s harmless, Robert, I assure you. Constance is flattered by his
attention and I’m grateful to him. Women give to men the very gold of their
lives, but invariably they want it back in small change. Heron-Allen helps me
out with the small change.’

Wat
Sickert tapped the side of his breakfast plate with his knife. ‘Gentlemen,
gentlemen,’ he cried, ‘Isn’t it a bit early in the day for this amount of
banter? I thought only dull people were supposed to be brilliant at breakfast.’

Oscar
smiled. ‘There are exceptions to every rule,’ he murmured. He sipped his coffee
and contemplated the table. ‘But you are right, Wat. Let us concentrate on the
feast Mrs Fletcher has laid before us.’

‘I’m
thinking about Pearse,’ said Wat.

Oscar
put down his coffee cup and paused. ‘I am, too,’ he said eventually, taking his
napkin and slowly wiping his lips. ‘I care for you, Walter, I care for you deeply,
so I care about Pearse. He is your friend. And I do not forget: he was my
guest. His life was threatened last Sunday—at my dining club, at my table,
during the absurd game we played at my instigation. I am conscious of my
responsibility.’ He put down his napkin and looked at me. ‘And have no doubt,
Robert, that I care for Constance more than I do for my own life. I will let
nothing harm her. Her life was threatened also. She, too, was named as a
“victim”. I’ll not rest until we have unravelled this mystery.’ He opened the
palm of his left hand and ran his right forefinger over it. ‘I see a sudden
death in this unhappy hand,’ he said. He looked at each of us in turn and
smiled. ‘Eat up, gentlemen. I have ordered our carriage. It will be here at
eight.’

We ate
up and we ate well. Sickert was especially delighted that Mrs Fletcher served
us Keiller’s Dundee marmalade. ‘It’s the only brand for artists,’ he explained,
spreading it lovingly onto his toast. ‘Degas, when he is in England, will eat
nothing else.’

‘Degas
is a great man,’ said Oscar. ‘I don’t doubt it.’

Our ‘carriage’, when it
arrived, turned out to be a small pony-and-trap. When Oscar had settled our
account at The Lamb and we had bidden Mrs Fletcher a fond adieu, we climbed
aboard. Oscar and Wat sat side by side within the trap. I perched up front with
the young driver. The accommodation was not spacious.

‘Where
are we going?’ asked Sickert as our little party, somewhat unsteadily, set on
its way.

‘Down
the hill,’ said Oscar, ‘to the edge of town, towards the west—to the headland.’

‘To
Beachy Head?’

‘Yes,
Wat. Prepare yourself. I fear the worst.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

BEACHY HEAD

We reached the headland
within the hour.

I had
been there once before, taken as a child by my mother. She was the granddaughter
of the poet William Wordsworth (as she never forgot!) and she took me to Beachy
Head when I was a small boy because my great-grandfather had taken her there
when she was a little girl. She was eleven years of age at the time; he was
seventy. He told her, so she told me, that with ‘its great green sward, its
high white cliffs and God’s blue sky above, there is no prospect more majestic
in all England than that of Beachy Head’.

It
would certainly have taken a poet of my great-grandfather’s ability to do
justice to the stark beauty of the place that Thursday morning when Oscar
Wilde, Walter Sickert and I were taken up onto the promontory in search of
Bradford Pearse. Our little open carriage climbed the long, steep, deserted
approach path haltingly, stopping every fifty yards or so to allow our pony to
regain her strength and us to admire the view. Oscar sat upright in the trap,
wrapped in his crimson cape, surveying the scene.

‘The
name “Beachy” comes from the Old French for “beautiful”,’ he announced, as if
he had been a tour guide escorting us through the side-streets of Florence.
‘This beautiful headland has been so-called for nigh on a thousand years. Beauty
is timeless. As we learn from life and art and nature, all beautiful
things—these chalky cliffs, that azure sky, the frescoes of Giotto, the music
of Mozart, the profile of the young man who is driving us so expertly this
morning—belong to the same age …’