Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death (23 page)

‘The
tears aren’t real,’ added George Daubeney.

‘I
trust not,’ said Oscar, examining the photograph closely. ‘I imagine they are
drops of glycerol. He’s a clever young man, Master Archer.’

‘Who?’
I asked.

‘The
photographer,’ said Oscar, pointing to the imprint in the bottom right-hand
corner of the picture. It read:
John Archer, Battersea Park Road, London
S.
‘I know him. He comes from Barbados, by way of Liverpool and Ponder’s End. He’s
a bright spark, full of intelligence and invention. Every other photographer
makes one look like a stockbroker facing a firing squad. Archer’s taken my
likeness twice—and Bosie’s—and, to our mutual amazement, on both occasions we
almost liked what we looked like. We appeared quite human. To be natural is
such a very difficult pose to keep up. Master Archer knows how to contrive it.
The boy will go far.’ [He did, in 1913, aged fifty, he was elected mayor of
Battersea and became Britain’s second black mayor.]

Oscar
returned the photograph to Bertha, who handed it to George Daubeney, who
slipped it into the inside pocket of his elegant knee-length frock coat. ‘Did
you mention a celebratory drink, Robert?’ he asked, circling his index finger
in the air, and looking at me while winking at Oscar out of the corner of his
eye. ‘Shall we get him to take us somewhere rather grand, Oscar? It’s not often
that one becomes a wealthy widower without having had to experience the
miseries of matrimony. I think a glass or two is in order, don’t you?’

‘I’m
spoken for, alas,’ said Oscar, bowing his head towards Daubeney. ‘Robert will
look after you—and Antipholus will take care of me. He’ll roll me a cigarette
while we talk of old times and then he’ll find me a cab—won’t you, my friend?’

The
black boy stood to attention once more and gave Oscar a brisk salute.

‘We’ll
go to Gatti’s in the Arches then,’ said Daubeney. ‘You can pay for the
champagne, Robert. The entertainment’s free. Come.’ The merry cleric shook
Oscar by the hand once more, playfully boxed Antipholus on the ear,
ceremoniously kissed Bertha on the forehead and put his arm through mine. ‘I’m
free!’ he cried as we turned and set off across Westminster Bridge.

‘Take
care!’ called Oscar as we departed. ‘I’ll send you a wire later, Robert. The
game’s afoot. I’ll need you tomorrow morning—sober!’

In the event I did not
drink heavily that night. In fact, I was back in my upstairs room in Gower
Street before ten o’clock, enjoying a solitary glass of bottled beer. Daubeney
was not diverting company. As we walked arm in arm along the embankment, from
Westminster Bridge towards Charing Cross, he entertained passers-by by singing
a selection of his favourites from the Anglican Hymnal. I tried to distract
him—and cover my embarrassment—with earnest conversation, but he would have
none of it. ‘Sing up, Robert!’ he cried. ‘Praise the Lord! Hallelujah!’ From a
pocket in his frock coat—a different pocket from the one in which he had secreted
the photograph of Bertha—he produced a leather-cased hip flask and, between
hymns, he pressed me to join him in taking a libation.

‘It’s
altar wine, customarily kept about me in the event that I am called upon to
administer the blessed sacrament in an emergency—but you may take a swig,
Robert. Indeed, you must. The Lord wants it. Praise the Lord!’

When we
reached the pier below Charing Cross Station, by the corner of Hungerford Lane,
quite suddenly, he calmed himself. He slipped the hip flask back into his
pocket and, with his long, thin fingers, carefully wiped the saliva from the
corners of his mouth and slicked back his hair. ‘Do you know the hall beneath
the railway arches?’ he asked.

‘The
music hall?’ I said. ‘Yes. I’ve been here with Oscar and with Wat Sickert. It’s
one of Sickert’s regular haunts. He’s painted it often.’

‘Have
you been backstage?’ asked Daubeney, leading us up the lane and into Villiers
Street.

‘No.’

‘You’re
in for a treat. For a modest payment, if you’re a gentleman, Mr Corazza, the
manager, allows you to spend the evening in the chorus girls’ dressing room.
Armchairs are provided. You can watch the girls as they dress. And undress. You
may even play with their titties. With the young ones, you may swallow them
whole like peaches.‘

Beneath
the broadest of the railway arches, at the front entrance of the hall itself,
the evening’s audience was gathering. The Hungerford Palace Music Hall (better
known as Gatti’s in the Arches) attracted a universal crowd—butchers, bakers,
clerks and costermongers, shop-girls and matrons, noisy swells-about-town and
diffident young lovers new to the West End. Other than George Daubeney,
however, there appeared to be no one else in holy orders. I followed the
frock-coated cleric as he pushed his way through the throng and led us into the
shadows, to the arch beyond.

‘Here
we are,’ he said, knocking conspiratorially on an unmarked door.

‘I
think I’ll leave you to it,’ I said, ‘if you’ll forgive me. It’s been a long
day.’

‘As you
please, Robert,’ he replied, as, slowly, the door opened and a pretty young
woman, with close-cropped red hair and a painted face, looked out.

She
recognised Daubeney at once and smiled and opened the door further to let him
in. ‘Is your friend coming, Georgie?’ she asked, wrinkling up her nose and
glancing at me with amusement. Beneath her chemise I saw the outline of her
breasts.

‘No, I
must be going,’ I said quickly. ‘Take care, George. Goodnight.’

‘We’ll
look after the padre, mister,’ said the girl, laughing and pulling him across
the threshold. ‘We’ll take care of Georgie, never fear.’

At nine o’clock the
following morning—Friday 6 May 1892—as, alone in my room, I breakfasted on a
cold pork sausage and a slice of bread and dripping (and thought back to the
glories of Mrs Fletcher’s goose egg, sliced ham and mutton cutlets of
twenty-four hours before), the telegraph boy arrived with Oscar’s promised
summons:

MEET ME
AT GILMOURS OFFICE AT TEN.

OSCAR.

I was not in funds. I was
writing my novel, but had not yet sold it. I had sold two articles that month,
but had not yet been paid for either. My landlord was pressing me for rent that
was overdue. My estranged wife’s solicitor was pressing me for maintenance
payments ‘on account’. As Oscar liked to say (and said in different ways on
different days):

‘Young
people imagine that money is everything; when they grow older, they know it.’

I was
not in funds, so I took neither the bus nor a cab, but walked in well-worn
shoes the three miles across town from Gower Street to Great Scotland Yard. In
consequence I did not reach the offices of the Criminal Investigations
Department of the Metropolitan Police until gone half past ten.

I found
Oscar already ensconced in Archy Gilmour’s room and in full flow. The room was
gloomy and airless, small and sparsely furnished. My friend was perched
uncomfortably on the edge of a hard-backed office chair, dressed in one of his
more flamboyant summer outfits—the jacket and trousers were dove grey; the
high-fastening waistcoat was canary yellow; over grey ankle boots he wore
yellow fabric spats; his buttonhole comprised a golden hibiscus laid against a
sprig of lavender; he held a straw boater and yellow kid gloves upon his lap.
When Gilmour’s sergeant showed me in, the detective inspector (dressed, much as
I was, in a workaday brown worsted suit) was facing Oscar, half standing,
leaning against a heavy oak desk, his arms folded across his chest, listening
attentively.

‘Good
morning, Mr Sherard,’ he said agreeably (I was gratified that he recalled my
name), ‘take a pew.’ He did not move: he nodded towards the hardback chair adjacent
to Oscar’s. ‘Mr Wilde tells a tale as few men can. I’m gripped. He should be
writing for
Police News and Law Courts Weekly Record.’

‘I have
confessed all, Robert. I have broken the Socrates Club solemn oath of secrecy.
I have told the inspector all about our dinner at the Cadogan Hotel on Sunday
last and about our foolish game of “Murder”—my foolish game of “Murder”! He has
listened with exquisite courtesy, despite appearing to be familiar already with
all the salient details.’

‘We had
George Daubeney in for questioning, as you’ll recall,’ explained the inspector.
‘He was very forthcoming—co-operative to a fault. He came clean at once—told us
all about the dinner and the game and how he’d named his former fiancée as his
intended “victim”.’

‘Do you
think, in fact, he might have murdered her?’ I asked.

Gilmour
shook his head. ‘Murdered her? Having first advertised his desire to do so? I
think not.’

‘He’s a
drinker,’ I said. ‘Men do wild and unexpected things in drink.’

The
inspector laughed. ‘They walk into walls, not through them. At Number 27 Cheyne
Walk the doors at front and back and down below were all locked and bolted from
within. The Reverend Daubeney was on the outside looking in. He witnessed the
fire. He didn’t start it. Miss Scott-Rivers was alone when she died.’

‘What
did you make of Daubeney?’ asked Oscar, turning his straw boater around slowly
on his lap. ‘As a man, I mean? Did you like him?’

‘No,’
said the inspector emphatically. ‘I did not like him. He’s an odd fish. He’s a
drinker, as Mr Sherard says—you can see it in his face. And he’s weak. When
we’d finished questioning him, he sat there—in that chair where you’re seated
now, Mr Wilde-and he wept. He wept like a woman. Not a pretty sight.’

‘Weeping
is always ugly,’ said Oscar.

The
red-headed policeman sighed. ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said, standing upright and
rubbing his hands together. ‘I’m grateful to you for calling-and, of course, we
must keep in touch-but, candidly, I don’t think that anything that has
occurred this week suggests that there’s a new and unknown murderer in our
midst.’ He began to move towards the door. It was evident our interview was
over.

‘Look
at the list!’ pleaded Oscar, waving his yellow kid gloves in the direction of
the sheet of folded foolscap that was lying on the inspector’s desk.

Gilmour
stepped back and picked up Oscar’s list of ‘victims’. ‘I have,’ he said. ‘I
do.’ His eyes scanned the paper. ‘Elizabeth Scott-Rivers died in a fire caused
by accident. That’s the coroner’s verdict. Lord Abergordon was an elderly
gentleman who died in sleep. That’s his doctor’s opinion—and mine also. The
actor, Bradford Pearse, appears to have taken his own life. He was in debt; he
was pursued by creditors; his spirit was low. The correspondence you’ve shown
me confirms as much. He has thrown himself off Beachy Head. It’s a common
enough occurrence, alas.’

‘What
about the parrot?’ asked Oscar. ‘What about poor Captain Flint?’

‘Killing
wild birds is not yet a criminal offence in England,’ replied Archy Gilmour.

‘Indeed,’
said Oscar, getting to his feet. ‘Among a certain class, it is a national
pastime.’

Gilmour
chuckled. ‘I do feel for poor Captain Flint,’ he said kindly, ‘but there’s
nothing I can do.’

‘You’re
a feeling fellow,’ said Oscar shaking the inspector by the hand. ‘You are a
vegetarian, of course.’

The
inspector looked suitably surprised. ‘How do you know?’

‘By
looking at your teeth, Inspector. There’s a tiny fleck of lettuce and a crumb
of bread and butter on either side of your left incisor. Only a truly committed
vegetarian would breakfast on a salad sandwich.’

Gilmour
burst out laughing and pulled open his office door. ‘You’re a wonder, Mr
Wilde—a prince of party tricks. You’re your own detective. You don’t need any
help from me.’

‘Oh,
but I do, Inspector.’ Oscar stood his ground as Gilmour hovered by the door.
‘Look at the next name on that list of potential victims, Inspector … Would
you be so kind?’

Gilmour
glanced at the paper once more. ‘Mr David McMuirtree.’

‘He’s
an interesting fellow,’ said Oscar. ‘A well-connected boxer. A fine figure of a
man. He works at Astley’s amphitheatre. Four people chose Mr McMuirtree as
their “victim”. I believe his life might be at risk, Inspector. I have come
here to ask you to give him police protection.’

‘We
already do,’ said Archy Gilmour. ‘He’s one of us, you see.’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

AN APPOINTMENT IN BAKER STREET

‘I stand amazed,’ said
Oscar. ‘David McMuirtree is a serving officer with the Metropolitan Police?’

‘No
longer,’ said Gilmour, still holding open his office door and standing by it in
evident anticipation of our imminent departure. ‘He was.’

Oscar
put down his hat and gloves on the inspector’s oak desk. ‘When was this?’ he
asked.

‘In the
‘seventies,’ answered Gilmour, running his tongue along his gums to clear the fleck
of lettuce from his teeth. ‘He joined up soon after leaving Ireland. It’s no
secret. He was the Metropolitan Police boxing champion for six years in a row.
You’ll find his name in gold letters on a board downstairs. You’ll have passed
it in the entrance hall. With your eagle eyes, Mr Wilde, I’m surprised you
missed it.’