Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death (44 page)

‘It’s
good to be back,’ said Bradford Pearse warmly, stretching out his left arm and
resting a large hand on Oscar’s shoulder.

‘And
what about your money worries?’ enquired Bram Stoker, with a furrowed brow.

‘Let
the world slide, let the world go!’ cried Wat Sickert, reaching for his wine
glass. ‘If I can’t pay, why I can owe—and death makes one the high and low!’

Bradford
Pearse looked across the table at Bram Stoker. ‘They’ve been sorted,’ he said.
‘By a generous benefactor.’

‘They
were not that great,’ said Oscar. ‘They just seemed so.’

‘Oscar
has cleared my debts,’ said Bradford Pearse. ‘He’s given me a cheque for
thirteen guineas.’

‘I’m
expecting a modest windfall,’ said Oscar, smiling.

Sickert
was on his feet. ‘Be merry, friends,’ he cried. ‘Let’s drink to the prodigal’s
return, gentlemen. Be upstanding. Are your glasses charged? I give you:
Bradford Pearse!’

We got
to our feet and raised our glasses to the barrel-chested actor who stood before
us with shining eyes.

‘Your
health, Bradford,’ said Oscar, draining his glass.

‘And
yours, Oscar, my dear good friend.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THIRTEEN GUINEAS

‘Now I’m on my feet,
Oscar,’ said Conan Doyle firmly, ‘I must be on my way. We can’t all let the
world slide. I’ve business to attend to in the morning.’ He held his Hunter out
towards the guttering candles. ‘It’s nearly midnight, way past my bedtime.’

‘Stay
till twelve, Arthur,’ said Oscar, coming round the table to his friend and
placing his hands on either side of the good doctor’s shoulders. ‘That’s all I
ask. Stay till the clock strikes. At least see if I manage to live out the day.’

‘You’ll
live out the day, Oscar,’ Conan Doyle laughed. ‘You’ll live for ever.’

‘Oh,
no,’ cried Oscar, confronting his friend with an open palm. ‘The life-line
stops abruptly. Mrs Robinson has seen untold horrors in my unhappy hand.’

Conan
Doyle pushed Oscar’s hand away. ‘You should not put your faith in fortune
tellers, Oscar,’ he said earnestly. He breathed deeply and raised his shoulders
and looked about the table, nodding his farewell to the rest of the company.
‘Goodnight, gentlemen,’ he murmured.

All but
the police officers and Alphonse Byrd had resumed their seats. Bradford Pearse
and Wat Sickert had taken charge of the drinks and were circulating decanters
of port, madeira and brandy around the table. Bosie Douglas was lighting
another of Wat’s cigars. Charles Brookfield was scribbling a note to himself in
a pocket-book. At the sideboard, Byrd was preparing dishes of fresh fruit and a
tray of English cheeses.

‘We
must be on our way, too, Mr Wilde,’ announced Inspector Gilmour. ‘Duty calls.
We must see Daubeney to his cell.’

‘You
promised to stay until midnight, Inspector,’ said Oscar. ‘You promised.’

‘I
think you’re quite safe now, Mr Wilde,’ answered the policeman, with a chuckle.
‘I don’t think you’re about to be murdered in our midst.’

‘Don’t
you?’ asked Oscar, raising an eyebrow. ‘I’m not so sure.’

‘Goodnight,
sir,’ said Inspector Ferris crisply, offering Oscar an outstretched hand.

Oscar
ignored the policeman’s proffered hand and made his way back to his place at
the head of the dining table. ‘You promised to remain until midnight,
gentlemen,’ repeated Oscar. ‘I’d be obliged to you both if you would keep your
word.’

‘And
you can’t go, Dr Doyle,’ cried Lord Alfred Douglas,‘ or we’ll be thirteen at
table again!’

The two
police inspectors returned to their seats in silence. Shaking his head wearily,
Arthur Conan Doyle pocketed his watch, straightened his waistcoat and sat down
in his place once more.

Alphonse
Byrd laid the fruit dishes and cheese on the table and returned to his seat
between Charles Brookfield and Archy Gilmour. Simultaneously, four of the
table’s candles flared for a moment and abruptly died. The smoke-filled room
darkened and fell silent.

‘Thank
you for your indulgence, gentlemen,’ said Oscar quietly. ‘I’ll be brief. I’ll
cease upon the midnight hour, I promise you.’

‘I’m
pleased to hear it, Oscar,’ said Conan Doyle, drumming his fingers lightly on
the table in front him. ‘What more have you to tell us?’

‘The
truth about David McMuirtree,’ said Oscar simply.

‘We
know all about McMuirtree, Mr Wilde,’ said Archy Gilmour. ‘Remember—he was one
of ours.’

‘You
know much about McMuirtree, Inspector, but I suspect not all.’ Oscar called
down the table to Alphonse Byrd, who sat facing him. ‘Do you have your watch
with you, Byrd? What time do you make it—precisely?’

The
club secretary replied: ‘I don’t have a timepiece on me, Mr Wilde, but I can
see the clock on the wall behind you well enough. It’s ten to midnight, exactly.’

‘Keep
me in order, would you, Byrd? Let me know when my allotted time is drawing to a
close.’

‘As you
please, Mr Wilde,’ said Byrd, bringing the tips of his fingers together and
resting them against his lips. His beady eyes narrowed. Steadfastly he gazed at
Oscar. I let my own eyes roam around the table. Every man there was looking
directly and intently towards our host. Once again, Oscar Wilde held us in his
thrall.

‘I
sometimes think,’ he began, examining the plume of smoke that slowly rose from
his cigarette as he spoke, ‘that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated
His ability. David McMuirtree was blessed with many of the Almighty’s greatest
gifts. He was born in Dublin, for a start. He had a keen mind and an easy
charm. He had physical strength, physical courage and—after a fashion—physical
beauty, too. As a personality, he had individuality— originality even. As a
boxer, he possessed power and prowess. But as a man, he had a singular failing.
He lacked all feeling.
He cared for no one but himself.

‘David
McMuirtree was, in turn, as we know, a magician‘s assistant, a magician, a
fairground entertainer, a policeman, a champion boxer and a police informer. He
was also—by instinct and by calling—a pitiless and indiscriminate blackmailer.’

Archy
Gilmour shifted in his chair. ‘Are you sure of that, Mr Wilde?’

‘Oh,
yes,’ said Oscar lightly, drawing on his cigarette. ‘He could not help himself.
He showed his true colours to my friend Robert Sherard on the first occasion
that they met—repeating to him a sad and sordid story concerning my wife’s
father … He sought to frighten my friend Lord Drumlanrig here by inviting him
onto Westminster Bridge to pour poison into his ear …’

‘Primrose-scented
poison, was it?’ murmured Charles Brookfield.

‘Indeed,’
said Oscar, ‘it was. The more outrageous the rumour, the readier McMuirtree was
to peddle it. He knew everything about everybody. He knew more about me than I
knew myself! And he used what he knew, at first to charm and then to terrify.

‘McMuirtree
was a man who
used
other men, who exploited their weaknesses for his own
profit—and his own pleasure. And in his life he used no one man more cruelly
than the unhappy creature who sits facing me now the night manager of this
hotel, our club secretary, my time-keeper, Mr Alphonse Byrd.’

The
eyes of the room turned and fell on the cadaverous figure of Alphonse Byrd,
hunched forward at the foot of the table, his fingers, joined as if in prayer,
pressed tightly to his lips. He remained as he was, staring fixedly at Oscar,
motionless.

‘It was
Byrd, of course, who murdered David McMuirtree. Byrd, who’d been born a
gentleman, but never lived as one. Byrd, the skilled magician who lacked what
the great John Maskelyne termed “the immortal spark”. Byrd, who’d been
McMuirtree’s friend and partner, until McMuirtree abandoned him to pursue his
own career. Byrd, the “gentleman”, who, from first to last, was humiliated by
“half-a-gentleman”.

‘When
they were young, David McMuirtree used Alphonse Byrd—casually, carelessly,
without consideration. Twenty years later, Byrd—night manager at a fashionable
hotel and privy to the secrets that come the way of all night managers-was
being used by McMuirtree still, when it pleased him, as a means of useful
introductions, as a source of helpful hearsay.

‘In
time, the worm turned—as it is wont to do.

‘When,
in this room on that fateful Sunday night, we played my foolish game of
“Murder”, Alphonse Byrd named David McMuirtree as his victim of choice—of
course he did.

‘And
when, as club secretary, collecting the slips of paper from around the table,
Byrd discovered that two others had also chosen McMuirtree as their murder
victim, an idea began to form in his mind … If others despised McMuirtree …
If others wished to see him dead …

‘Byrd
collected the slips from around the table. He placed them in his little magic
bag. And as he did so, he saw that two of the slips were blank. On the spur of
the moment—as no more than a whim—he decided to take a risk. As, to the
assembled company, he read out the names on the slips of paper—not necessarily
in the order in which he drew them from the bag: sleight-of-hand is part of
Byrd’s stock in-trade—he decided to announce that the second blank slip of
paper was, in fact, another—a fourth!—that named McMuirtree. Byrd sought to
suggest that McMuirtree—his friend—was a man surrounded by enemies …’

‘That
evening as we played our game, in his mind Alphonse Byrd played with the idea
of murdering David McMuirtree. On Sunday night, I imagine, it was little more
than an idle fancy—a dangerous and delicious dream. But on Monday morning, when
Byrd learnt of the death of Elizabeth Scott-Rivers, and on Tuesday when he read
of the death of Lord Abergordon, Byrd saw that his dream might become a
reality. He sensed that, suddenly, his destiny was calling. And he seized the
moment. He claimed the hour. He killed his own parrot.’

‘Hardly
a crime,’ muttered Bosie Douglas. ‘It was a revolting creature—fractious,
repellent.’

‘But
Byrd loved that parrot,’ I said, addressing Oscar. ‘Everyone told us that.’

Oscar
smiled at me. ‘And because Byrd loved his parrot, and because the parrot loved
and trusted him, he was able to take it in his hands and wring its neck without
the parrot making a single sound—without the least flapping of wings, without
the merest fuss.’ Oscar looked about the room complacently. ‘I knew that it
must have been Byrd who killed the parrot because only Byrd could have killed
it silently.’

Charles
Brookfield leant forward and rested his notebook on the dining table. ‘You are
telling me that it was Mr Byrd who killed the parrot, are you?’

‘I am,
Charles,’ said Oscar, sucking the last out of his cigarette. ‘That’s why I
seated him on your right tonight. I felt it was the least I could do.’ Oscar widened
his eyes and extinguished his cigarette. ‘After all, you’re paying thirteen
guineas for the privilege.’

Brookfield
turned in his seat and sat back and gazed fixedly on Alphonse Byrd, tilting his
head slowly to one side and then the other—as a man might apprise an auction
lot or study an unfamiliar piece of sculpture. Byrd did not flinch. His
immobile features betrayed nothing. Inspector Gilmour began to ease himself
away from the table.

‘My
time-keeper is silent.’ Oscar glanced over his shoulder at the clock that hung
above the dining-room door. ‘Three minutes more, and then I’m done.’ He raised
his voice a little and quickened his pace as he resumed his story. ‘Alphonse
Byrd murdered Captain Flint in his office on Tuesday morning, the third of May.
He killed the parrot with his bare hands, tore the feathers from its back and
then squeezed some of the poor creature’s blood into a silver hip flask—just
such a flask as I have here.’

With
one hand he held open his jacket; with the other, from an inside pocket, he
produced an elegant silver drinking flask. ‘Never forget, gentlemen, that
Alphonse Byrd is a magician trained by the great John Maskelyne. Byrd may lack
the immortal spark, but he was tutored by a master. He secreted the bird’s
body, blood and feathers in a drawer in his desk until he needed them. At a
little before three o’clock that afternoon, when the coast was clear, he
slipped from his office into the hotel lobby and—in a matter of moments, in the
twinkling of an eye—he created the macabre scene of carnage that, minutes later,
my wife and Edward Heron-Allen discovered there.

‘Byrd
is, as McMuirtree was, a showman. But, unlike McMuirtree, Byrd, by his own
admission, lacks courage. He set himself on the path to murder when he killed
Captain Flint, but he did not truly commit himself until later in the week—when
he heard the news of the disappearance and presumed death of Bradford Pearse.
It was then, and only then, that Byrd decided that the gods were indeed on his
side. But, of course, it is when the gods wish to punish us that they answer
our prayers …’

Oscar
picked up the silver hip flask from the table and slowly turned it over in his
hands. ‘Alphonse Byrd may lack courage, and
panache,
but he does not
lack ingenuity. He murdered David McMuirtree in a manner most ingenious. He
might have killed him in Tite Street at our magic show—but that would have been
too obvious, too dangerous: Byrd himself would have been on the scene and the
first to be suspected. No, Byrd contrived to kill McMuirtree at one
remove—surrounded by admirers, in the Ring of Death at Astley’s Circus, while
Byrd himself was here, at the Cadogan Hotel, surrounded by witnesses, a mile
and more away. Like all the best magic effects, the murder of David McMuirtree
was achieved with beautiful simplicity. The concept was all. The execution,
next-to-nothing. All Byrd had to do was tamper with McMuirtree’s boxing gloves
and send his victim on his way …’