Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death (33 page)

Edward
Heron-Allen was standing just behind Daubeney, by the gas lamp in the corner of
the room. ‘Forgive me for speaking,’ he said, a little too loudly, ‘but my
uncle was a surgeon and I always understood that a single cut across a healthy
artery is not dangerous because an artery—unlike a vein— has an in-built muscle
that contracts to staunch the blood.’

‘Indeed,’
said Conan Doyle, studying Heron-Allen with interest. ‘That is correct. On its
own a single, clean cut across the wrist might not prove fatal—as many a
half-hearted suicide has learnt.’

‘And
whoever did this knew that much also,’ said Oscar, lowering himself with
difficulty onto his knees and squinting at the wrist-bands of McMuirtree’s
boxing gloves. ‘Hence the multiplicity of blades and the variety of angles.’

‘Yes,’
said Conan Doyle in a business-like way, sitting back and scratching his
moustache. ‘The blood vessels in this case have been sliced
repeatedly,
and—more
to the point—sliced
vertically
as well as diagonally.’

‘Would
he not have felt the pain?’ I asked.

‘No,’
answered the doctor, shaking his head, ‘not in the heat of battle.’

‘A man
can lose a leg in the heat of battle and not notice it,’ said Lord Queensberry,
curtly.

‘With
your permission, Inspector …’ Oscar, still on his knees, leant forward over
McMuirtree’s body and, with his right thumb and forefinger, picked out one of
the tiny blades and held it up. It was no more than three-quarters of an inch
long and an eighth of an inch wide. As he lifted it off the fringe of the
glove, we saw that it was attached to a second blade by a slender piece of
thread. The second blade was tied to a third, the third to a fourth, and so on.
Oscar held the chain of little blades aloft. There were seven of them in all.

‘It
looks like a charm bracelet,’ said Heron-Allen.

Oscar
looked at his wife’s friend without his customary, indulgent smile. ‘Of a sort,
Edward,’ he said coldly.

‘He’s
been … murdered?’ asked the Marquess of Queensberry falteringly, as though
the truth were only just dawning upon him.

‘Or
he’s taken his own life,’ suggested Oscar.

The
police inspector looked up at Oscar, incredulous. He held his hand out over the
boxer’s bloody corpse. ‘Like this?’ he demanded.

‘You
were in the room, Inspector, when he put on the gloves. One of your men helped
lace them up for him, as I recall—assisted by Wat Sickert. I distinctly
recollect McMuirtree asking you to pull the laces tighter. He made a point of
it. Perhaps Mr Heron-Allen is right: perhaps to David McMuirtree these were
charm bracelets of a kind. Perhaps he sought a public death …’

‘As a
form of absolution?’ asked the Reverend George.

‘Exactly,’
answered Oscar. ‘A public suicide—on a stage, in an arena, within “the Ring of
Death” …’

‘This
is absurd, Oscar,’ said Conan Doyle.

‘McMuirtree
was not a man for suicide,’ barked Lord Queensberry.

‘In
certain circumstances, is not suicide allowable, my lord? Laudable, even …
Nay, in certain circumstances, heroic?’ He paused and looked about the room. ‘There
is something heroic in this bloody scene, is there not?’

‘No,’
answered Conan Doyle abruptly. ‘Sometimes, Oscar, you go too far.’

Oscar
began to struggle to his feet. He seemed almost to be laughing to himself. As I
helped him up, he squeezed my arm.

‘I
agree with Dr Doyle,’ said Inspector Gilmour. ‘Suicide is out of the question.
We were all with McMuirtree before the fight. He was evidently in the best of
spirits. He did not appear in the least to be a man who was about to take his
own life.’

‘The
same could be said of Bradford Pearse,’ said Oscar.

‘
Why
should McMuirtree take his own life, Mr Wilde?’

‘Why
should Bradford Pearse, Inspector?’

‘Who is
Bradford Pearse?’ demanded Lord Queensberry. ‘What’s he to do with it? What’s
his involvement?’

‘None,
my lord,’ said the police inspector quickly. ‘He is a friend of Mr Wilde’s. He
has nothing to do with this matter.’

‘Are
you certain?’ asked Oscar, raising an eyebrow.

‘I am
certain, Mr Wilde. I am certain that David McMuirtree has been murdered—and
that his tragic and untimely death has nothing to do with you or any of your
friends, nothing to do with your dinner or your foolish game.’

‘What’s
this all about?’ grumbled Lord Queensberry impatiently, beating the side of his
own thigh with his whip.

‘Nothing,
your lordship,’ said the police inspector. ‘I simply want Mr Wilde to
understand that David McMuirtree has been murdered because he was one of
us—because he was on the side of law and order. David McMuirtree was a police
informer. Such men are necessary. Such men are brave. They put their lives at
risk and sometimes they pay the price. McMuirtree had enemies—hardened
criminals, evil men who sought to kill him for what he was, for what he knew.’

‘These
hardened criminals of yours are blessed with wonderfully theatrical
imaginations, Inspector,’ said Oscar mockingly. ‘You might expect a police
informer to be beaten to death with a cudgel, or knifed in a dark alley, or
even shot as he was alighting from a carriage—but to be killed, as McMuirtree
has been killed, by a pair of deadly bracelets sewn inside his boxing gloves
suggests a band of desperadoes that is—to say the least of it—a little out of
the ordinary.’

‘If you
will forgive me, Mr Wilde,’ said the police inspector, ‘we have work to do.’ He
looked around the room, widening his eyes and clearing his throat. He held his
hands out, palms open, as if to sweep us from the room. ‘I’d be grateful if Dr
Doyle could remain until the police surgeon arrives, but, otherwise, gentlemen,
you are free to depart. Thank you for your assistance.’

‘Do you
need me further?’ grunted Lord Queensberry, rubbing the back of his neck with
his whip and taking a final look at McMuirtree’s body lying on the floor.

‘No,
thank you, your lordship—you‘re free to go.’

‘But,
Inspector,’ said Oscar, ‘surely you want to ask Lord Queensberry about the
gloves?’

‘What
about the gloves?’ asked Gilmour irritably.

‘Who
gave McMuirtree the boxing gloves that he was wearing?’

‘I
did,’ said Lord Queensberry. A week ago. They were brand new—as required by the
Queensberry Rules.’

‘Did
you inspect them before you gave them to McMuirtree?’

‘I
did,’ said the Marquess. ‘They were in perfect condition. Made by Messrs Sims
and Pittam, the best boxing gloves that money can buy.’

‘And
you brought them here yourself, last Monday?’ The police inspector listened
impatiently as Oscar pursued his line of questioning.

‘I did,’
said Lord Queensberry. ‘In that box.’ With his whip the Marquess pointed to an
empty cardboard box that lay open on the floor in the corner of the room.

‘Did
McMuirtree inspect the gloves?’

‘He
did. He tried them on. He expressed himself well satisfied with them.’

‘Did he
then wear them during his training?’

‘No.
That would have been contrary to the rules. As far as I know, he left them here
in that box until today.’

Gilmour
was about to intervene, but Conan Doyle put his hand on the policeman’s arm to
stop him. ‘And between last Monday and this evening,’ Oscar continued, ‘who in
your view, Lord Queensberry, could have had access to this room and to that
box?’

‘Anyone,
so far as I know. At least, anyone who had access of any kind to the building.
There are no locks on the dressing-room doors.’

Oscar
smiled. ‘You noticed that?’

‘I
notice a good deal, Mr Wilde. You’ll find that there’s more to me than some
suppose.’

‘I
don’t doubt it, my lord,’ said Oscar graciously. He stepped towards the
dressing-room door and stood within the threshold. He turned and glanced from
left to right along the corridor. He turned back and surveyed the room. ‘There
are no locks on the dressing-room doors and the entrances to Astley’s Circus
amphitheatre are many and varied.’

‘We’ve
been watching them,’ said Inspector Gilmour sharply.

‘I’m
sure you have, Inspector. McMuirtree was one of yours, after all. May I ask: at
any one time, how many men did you have watching the building?’

Gilmour
hesitated.

‘Well?’
said Oscar.

‘Two.’

‘There
are six public entrances to this building, Inspector. Five of them are shut,
except on performance days. One of them is open every day when the box office
is open. There are, additionally, three tradesmen’s entrances. And there is a
stage door leading to an interesting passageway that runs directly from the
Thames embankment to the circus arena itself. Let us assume that the boy,
Antipholus, who guards the stage door is not part of the conspiracy and that
your two officers were not corrupt, that still leaves a multitude of entrances
and opportunities for anyone who wished to do so to slip into the building and
tamper with the gloves— assuming that it was not McMuirtree himself who did it …
I agree, Inspector. You have work to do. We must not detain you. We will be on
our way.

We
nodded our goodbyes and left the circus at once. Outside, in the darkened
street, as we stood on the kerb, we noticed, underneath a lamp-post, immediately
facing us, on the other side of the road, leaning against the embankment
parapet, a small, familiar figure in a shabby suit. The light shone brightly on
his yellow face. As we waited to cross the road, a police growler trundled past
and the little man scuttled into the darkness.

‘Is he
watching us?’ I asked.

‘Watching,’
said Oscar grimly, ‘or waiting … Waiting for his moment to pounce.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

OSCAR’S GRID

On the following
morning—the morning of Tuesday, 10 May 1892, when, according to my journal, the
streets of London were ‘damp and dismal’ and the sky was ‘overcast and
threatening ‘—I joined my friend Oscar Wilde in the oak-panelled dining room of
the Cadogan Hotel at a little after half past ten. I had gone in answer to his
urgent summons—a telegram that reached me in my room in Gower Street at nine
o’clock:

COME
TO THE CADOGAN AT ONCE. BRING

GALOSHES
AND INSPIRATION. OSCAR.

I found my friend seated
at a corner table, alone, the débris of breakfast all around him. In his right
hand he held both a pencil and a lighted cigarette; in his left he nursed a
glass of Portuguese Arinto wine. Before him lay a sheet of foolscap writing
paper, densely covered with lines and dates and names and emendations.

As I
approached, he looked up at me. His hair was well-brushed and he was freshly
shaven, but there were ochre circles beneath his red-rimmed eyes. ‘Has it
stopped raining?’ he asked, smiling at me gently and drawing slowly on his
cigarette.

‘For
the moment,’ I said. I sat down beside him and looked around the table for a
coffee cup. ‘How are you this morning?’ I asked.

He
closed his eyes and through his nostrils exhaled a long, slow, mistral of
cigarette smoke. ‘I am
exhausted,
Robert, utterly.’ Still holding the
cigarette and pencil, he picked up the coffee pot and poured me a cup. ‘I
thought that breakfast might revive me. I ordered kippers. The folly of it, Robert!
Kippers for breakfast are like cobblestones in a cathedral close—charming in
prospect, deuced hard work when you get to them. I have spent an hour picking
away at the tiny bones.’

‘What’s
this?’ I asked, indicating his sheet of foolscap.

‘This
is the reason for my summons, Robert. This is my grid.’

‘Your
“grid”?’ I repeated, puzzled.

‘A new
word to the language, Robert—a back-formation derived from the word “gridiron”.
Since the fourteenth century the gridiron has served as a simple grate for
broiling food upon. In the nineteenth century, the “grid” has become an
essential tool of scholarship.’ He waved to the waiter to bring me a glass of
wine. ‘You will recall, Robert, that in 1871 I was called to Trinity College,
Dublin, where I won the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek and was elected to a
Queen’s Scholarship. You will further recall that in 1874 I went up to Oxford,
taking a scholarship at Magdalen College and, in 1876, I achieved First Class
honours in Classical Moderations. Two years later I took a further First in
Literae Humaniores and, in 1878, my university career came to a fitting climax
when I read my Newdigate Prize Poem in the hallowed hall that is the Sheldonian
Theatre.’ He paused as the waiter poured me a glass of Arinto and topped up his.
Oscar sipped at the wine and then continued: ‘These scholastic accomplishments
were something, Robert, to be sure—at least my mother felt so—but they were not
enough, not nearly enough … I can dream dreams in Virgilian hexameters; I can
translate Homer on sight; I can unravel Thucydides in the twinkling of an eye;
but to get to grips with the case in hand, Robert—to
begin
to get to grips
with it—I need a grid!’