Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (11 page)

‘A
nd
had he murdered her?’ asked Oscar.

Munthe
did not answer directly. He held the ring towards the candlelight as he spoke
and studied it intently. ‘He was her lover, of course. That I do know.’

‘Why do
you say “of course”?’ I asked. ‘He was a priest.’

‘These
things happen, Dr Conan Doyle — all the time.’

‘How do
you know that he was her lover?’ asked Oscar.

‘She
told me and I believed her. She was dying of tuberculosis. She had no reason
to lie. He was her lover and she was expecting his child.’

‘Ah,’
murmured Oscar.

‘Yes,
he had motive, means and opportunity. He was with her at the end, alone. She
was very weak. He could have killed her simply by holding a pillow across her
face.’

‘But
why would he murder her if she was already dying?’ I asked.

‘Because
he feared a deathbed confession. She carried his child — and his secret. So
long as there was breath in her body it was a secret she might share.’

‘And
this notion that he’d murdered her: when did that come to you?’

‘As I
entered her room. He’d sent for me. His message said that she was fading and
that I should hurry. As I arrived, I saw at once that she was dead. She was
dead and he was kneeling at the foot of her bed in prayer. ‘‘He was a priest,’
I said.

‘He was
also her lover. I would have expected him to have been at her side.’

‘The
picture was too perfect,’ said Oscar.

‘Exactly,
Mr Wilde. She lay in peace, with her arms folded across her heart and her eyes
closed. He knelt silently at her feet in prayer. The scene was contrived.’

‘And
the ring?’ asked Oscar, taking it from Munthe’s fingers and holding it up to
the candlelight between his own.

‘I saw
it on the bedside table, next to the girl’s rosary.’

‘What
of that?’ I asked.

Dr
Munthe turned to me and smiled. ‘Why had he removed it, Dr Conan Doyle?’

Oscar
answered, ‘Because it was a priest’s ring, a sign of his calling. He removed
the ring while he committed the mortal sin of murder.’

‘Exactly
so, Mr Wilde. As I entered the room and approached the bed, I saw the ring on
the bedside table. I noticed it because of its colour — rose-gold — and because
of its size. It was clearly a man’s ring. Moments later, it had gone. I next
saw it on the priest’s hand. While I attended to my patient, he had retrieved
the ring and slipped it back onto his finger.’

I
tugged at my moustache. ‘It’s a fine story,’ I said.

‘You
should write it up, Doctor — it would appeal to the readers of
Blackwood’s
Magazine.’

‘Do you
think that your priest
was
a murderer?’ asked Oscar.

‘No,’
said Munthe, sitting back and folding his napkin carefully.

Oscar
laughed. ‘And why do you say that, just as you’ve convinced me otherwise?’

‘Because
of his demeanour in the months since the young woman’s death.’

‘Has it
changed?’

‘No,
not at all. I know the man quite well. He is a patient also. And since the
woman’s death, he has appeared to me to be exactly as he was before. You would
expect murder to leave its mark upon a man, would you not?’

‘Not if
the man was in the habit of murder,’ said Oscar. ‘Not then.’

‘Now
who is being fanciful?’ I asked.

Oscar
laughed and dropped the ring onto the apricot-coloured handkerchief that lay on
the table before him. ‘Isn’t it time for a glass of grappa, gentlemen?’

We
packed away the ‘evidence’ (as Oscar termed it) and adjourned to a far corner
of the hotel’s candlelit lounge where one of the waiters brought us our drinks
and we sat, in semi-darkness, talking of mortality, late into the night. Dr
Munthe spoke of death with a fascination bordering on reverence.

‘Death
is not a god,’ said Oscar. ‘Death is only the servant of the gods.’

‘What
can any of us know of death as mere observers?’ asked Munthe. ‘As your hero
Keats says, “Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.”’

It was
gone three when we saw our new friend out into the Via del Babuino once more.
The street was deserted. The air was still and warm. In the sky there was
already the hint of dawn. Dr Munthe bowed quite formally to each of us as he
shook our hands and took his leave. ‘I have had a most memorable evening,
gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

‘We
shall see you again very soon, I hope,’ said Oscar. ‘And you must introduce us
to your friend, the priest —the one with the ring.’

‘He is
a patient more than a friend,’ said Munthe, ‘and no ordinary priest. But I will
do what I can for you. I want Dr Conan Doyle to write up the story for
Blackwood’s
Magazine.’

Oscar
and I retired at once to our rooms and I slept more soundly than I had done for
many months. It was one o’clock in the afternoon before I awoke. As I opened my
eyes, I found Oscar standing at my bedside, looking down at me. His huge head
was at its most leonine: his hair was newly washed, his cheeks were pink, his
eyes were shining.

‘We’ve
missed breakfast,’ he hissed. ‘Now we’re missing lunch!’ He was dressed all in
black, with a black silk tie held in place with a diamond tiepin.

‘What’s
happening?’ I asked, still half asleep.

‘You are
sending your telegram and I am meeting you in the piazza in half an hour.’

‘You
are dressed in mourning,’ I said, sitting up.

‘We are
visiting the dead,’ he replied.

He had
drawn back the curtains: warm sunshine was flooding the room. I threw off the
bedclothes and dressed hurriedly, wording the wire to my wife in my head as I
did so. I limited myself to twenty words. I wanted to keep the message simple: NOW
WITH OSCAR WILDE IN ROME RESEARCHING NEW STORY FOR BLACKWOOD‘S. ALL WELL.
MISSING YOU AND OUR PRECIOUS DAUGHTER. ACD.

Within
the half-hour, I had joined my friend in the Piazza del Popolo. I found him
waiting at the cab rank, engaged in earnest conversation with the two street
urchins we had encountered the night before.

‘I
warned you this would happen, Oscar,’ I said.

‘These
boys are natural philosophers, Arthur,’ he replied. ‘They know that generosity
is the essence of friendship.’

‘I can
see what you are giving them,’ I said, shaking my head as Oscar handed each of
the grinning ragamuffins another silver coin. ‘What are they giving you?’

‘Devotion!’
he answered, triumphantly. ‘I do not ask for anything more.’

‘Or
less,’ I said, with a gentle jeer, as we climbed aboard the
carrozzina.
‘Where
are we going?’

‘To the
gates of Rome — to the Porta San Paolo. We are making a pilgrimage to the
Protestant Cemetery.’

‘Are
your disciples coming too?’

‘They
live close by, apparently.’

The
journey took half an hour. Barefoot, bare-chested, the broken-toothed,
olive-skinned boys ran behind our carriage all the way, along narrow side
streets, across wide-open piazzas, down dusty lanes to the southern edge of the
city. At first, as they ran the boys chatted to one another and called out to
Oscar, but as the pounding got harder they fell silent and concentrated on their
running.

Oscar
gazed upon them lovingly. ‘What wonderful lives they lead!’

‘Do you
think so?’ I asked.

‘They
know freedom, Arthur.’

‘They
know poverty, Oscar. The sunshine and their youth mitigate the worst of it,
perhaps, but they are dressed in rags all the same. They’re beggars.’

‘It is
safer to beg than to take,’ he declared, grandiloquently, waving the midges
away from his face, ‘but it is finer to take than to beg. Don’t you agree?’

‘That’s
too deep for me, my friend. I am just a general practitioner from South
Norwood.’

‘You’re
the man who created Sherlock Holmes,’ he cried. ‘You’re set to join the
immortals!’

As he
said this, our carriage came sharply round a bend in the road and, with a jolt,
we were confronted by the most remarkable sight: a mighty pyramid set
immediately alongside the highway. Oscar called out to our driver,
‘Basta!
Basta!
Whoa!’ and put out his arm to stop me from falling forward as the
carrozzina
juddered to a halt.

‘This
is extraordinary,’ I gasped.

‘This
is the tomb of Gaius Cestius,’ said Oscar. ‘He’s joined the immortals too —
thanks to this.’

The
pyramid stood a hundred feet tall at least. It was faced in pale-grey marble,
but the early-afternoon sun shone upon it so brilliantly its surface shimmered
like gold. We clambered down from the carriage and stood gazing across the road
towards the ancient monument.

‘Gaius
Cestius.’ I repeated the name. It meant nothing to me. ‘Who was he?’

‘A
Roman, from not long before the time of Christ. A tribune of the people. As I
recollect from the inscription on the tomb, a member of the college of priests
known as the Septemviri Epulones. They organised the great religious
ceremonies, the feast days, public banquets and the like. Cestius was an
impresario. He had flair, as you can tell from his creation. He built it in
anticipation of his own demise — in just three hundred and thirty days. He was
very proud of that.’

‘And
his claim to fame?’

‘The
pyramid, nothing else. But it’s enough, don’t you think?’

I stood
marvelling at the scale and grandeur of the edifice and reflecting on the
vanity of a man who could create such a monument to himself.

‘And
young Romulus and Remus live hereabouts — so they say.’

The two
street urchins stood on the far side of the road, at the foot of the pyramid.
They were panting from their exertions and their torsos glistened with sweat.
Seeing us look towards them, they waved and beckoned us to follow them.

‘Let’s
inspect their living quarters,’ said Oscar. ‘Let’s see if they’re as poor as
you think.’

‘Aren’t
we on our way to the Protestant Cemetery?’ I asked.

‘It’s
only a hundred yards further on. Let’s follow the boys for a moment, since
we’ve come this far.’

Oscar
gave instructions to our driver to wait and then, urging me to ‘stop dawdling
and keep up’, strode purposefully across the road towards the urchins.

‘You’re
not normally one for a country hike,’ I remarked.

He paid
no attention. ‘Youth is the one thing worth having,’ he said, his eyes fixed on
the two street boys. ‘Youth is everything.’

The
boys ran ahead of us, along the eastern side of the pyramid, towards a stone
wall that abutted the monument and separated the bank alongside the roadway
from a field and woodland beyond. We followed them.

‘This
is the old city wall,’ said Oscar. ‘There are steps, of a sort.’

The
boys scampered up the rough stone steps that jutted out from the wall and
disappeared over the top. Laboriously, now sweating profusely ourselves, we
followed on.

‘Where
are we going?’ I asked.

‘I have
no idea,’ said Oscar, gasping for breath, ‘but it’s an adventure — there’s no
denying that.’

The
boys were now running across a short expanse of scrubland, away from the
pyramid and out of the sunlight, towards a clump of trees at the edge of the
wood. There they stopped and turned towards us, grinning, arms outstretched.

As we
came close, the scene became less charming and more sinister.

Immediately
beneath the trees, in the shade where the boys were standing, was a wooden
shelter, about fifteen feet long and ten feet deep, but no more than six feet
high. It was a ramshackle affair, insubstantial, dilapidated, open to the
elements, with a sloping roof and a back wall, but no sides or front or floor.
It might have been a refuge for sheep or a pigsty. On the ground within the
shelter, strewn about, were three worn-out mattresses, filthy blankets, torn
sheets, piles of newspapers and rags, and the detritus of the beggar’s life: broken
bottles, old tin cans and the remains of scavenged meals. At the far end of the
shelter, by a small, low-burning fire, was a mound of bones and, alongside the
bones, lying on the ground, was the curled-up figure of an old man. His body
was shrouded in a blanket. His face, clearly visible, was vicious. He had the
sallow skin and the beak-like nose of a corpse, and I might have taken him for
dead but for his beady, watchful eyes.

Oscar
did not appear to see any of this. He was looking steadily at the two boys who
stood before us smiling.

‘God
save us,’ he muttered. ‘I spy entertainment.’

‘What
do you mean?’ I asked.

‘I see
the leer of invitation,’ he said.

The
boys looked at us and laughed and pulled down their ragged trousers to reveal
their nakedness.