Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (13 page)

‘In
that case, I had better throw myself among them. Come, Munthe, let us mingle
with the Englishwomen of Rome. I imagine many of them are your patients already
and those that aren’t soon will be.’

‘We
will catch up with you later,’ said Oscar.

‘Of
course,’ replied the Monsignor. ‘I must introduce you both to Father Bechetti.
He’s very frail, but he’s here tonight. He’s a great anglophile. He speaks
perfect English — when he speaks. He will want to meet you, I know. We will see
you anon and you must come up to the Vatican. We take English afternoon tea in
the sacristy, you know, with cucumber sandwiches.’

With
benign smiles, Monsignor Felici and Dr Munthe took their leave of us and moved
towards the nave to join the milling throng.

‘I must
find Martin,’ said Catherine English. ‘He’ll be hiding in the vestry.’ She
touched each of us lightly on the arm. ‘Wait here, would you? I don’t want to
lose you. I think we should do the readings sooner rather than later. You are
reading first, Mr Wilde — from the pulpit. I thought you wouldn’t mind.’

‘I am
always at home in a pulpit,’ said Oscar. ‘And I must find you some sherry — if
there’s any left.’ ‘And some Italian cheese, I hope,’ added Oscar. Miss English
looked across the church and shook her head. ‘It’s all got a little out of
hand. We invited everybody and everybody’s come.’ She laughed and raised her
eyes to heaven as she moved away. As she went, she turned and waved to us with
her fingers.

‘She’s
smitten, Arthur,’ whispered Oscar, grinning at me wickedly. ‘Congratulations,
man.’

‘Don’t
be absurd, Oscar.’

‘And
you’re a little in love, too. Don’t deny it.’

‘I do
deny it, absolutely.’

‘When
one is in love one begins by deceiving oneself. And ends by deceiving others.’

‘That’s
not my way, Oscar,’ I protested. ‘I am wholly faithful to my wife and you know it.’

‘I am
sorry to hear it, Arthur. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what
consistency is to the life of the intellect — simply a confession of failure.’

‘You
are preposterous.’

‘I am
in earnest.’

‘Then I
do not like your philosophy. And, most certainly, I do not share it.’

Oscar
smiled and looked around the crowded church. It was well lit, both by candles
and by electric light. ‘Do you share my estimation of Munthe’s friend, the
bonhomous Monsignor?’

‘That
he’s no murderer?’

‘He’s
too stout for murder. But he holds the key, don’t you think? He wears the ring.’

‘Yes, I
saw a rose-gold band on his finger. But if he’s
wearing
the ring, it
cannot be the ring that was sent to Sherlock Holmes on the severed finger.
That’s in your wallet, Oscar.’

‘It is
a ring exactly like it.’

‘There
could be scores of rings exactly like it.’

‘Possibly,
but I doubt it. By the pricking of my thumbs, something tells me His Holiness’s
Master of Ceremonies is the man to lead us to the heart of the mystery.’

‘I hope
so,’ I said, touching the side pocket of my jacket. ‘This dead hand weighs on
me heavily.’

Oscar
smiled. ‘I am glad you are keeping it about you, Arthur — it’s wise to do so.’
He touched the pocket of his own jacket. ‘Since sherry is being served in
church, would it be bad form to smoke, do you think?’

‘Most
certainly.’

‘They’re
eating cheese in the transept and I’m sure I can smell incense burning
somewhere,’ he said, looking about him as he pulled a silver cigarette case
from his pocket.

‘Put
your cigarettes away, Oscar,’ I said firmly.

‘Remember
where you are.’

‘You
know I smoked a cigarette on the stage of the St James’s at the opening of
Lady
Windermere’s Fan.’

‘For
your curtain speech — you told me. You wore a green carnation in your
buttonhole and held a lighted cigarette in your mauve-gloved hand. I remember.’

‘My
enemies were not amused.’

I
smiled. ‘Do you have enemies, Oscar?’

‘Yes,’
he said, snapping shut the cigarette case and slipping it back into his pocket,
‘and I have just seen one of them on the far side of the nave.’

I
turned quickly to look in the direction indicated by my friend. I saw no one I
recognised, except for the Reverend Martin English pushing his way to the edge
of the crowd.

‘My
apologies,’ he called out, as he came towards us. ‘I am an appalling host.’

‘You
have your flock to attend to,’ said Oscar, pleasantly. ‘They must be
entertained.’

‘They
are entertaining themselves. Listen to them. The House of God has been turned
into a house of gossip. I cannot hear myself think above the hubbub. The
sherry’s all gone.’

‘And
the cheese?’ asked Oscar.

‘They’ve
gobbled the lot.’ The clergyman shook his head despairingly. ‘It’s our moment
to take to the stage — if you can face it, gentlemen.’

‘We are
at your service,’ said Oscar.

‘A poem
from you, Mr Wilde? And a Sherlock Holmes story from you, Dr Doyle: is that
correct?’

‘I had
something else in mind,’ I said, crisply.

‘Oh. No
matter. We are very grateful. Come this way, please.’ He led us from the side
aisle towards the pulpit steps. ‘I’ll say a few words — very few — then introduce
you as our surprise guests.’ He looked at us both with troubled eyes. ‘It is
not easy for me here. Thank you for agreeing to this, gentlemen. I am very
grateful. Tonight the ladies can talk about you, instead of me. It will make a
pleasant change.’

Anxiously,
he shook each of us by the hand. I was clutching the manuscript of the story I
proposed to read: it was a Highland adventure, as yet unpublished.

‘I
wonder if this will be too lengthy?’ I asked.

‘If it
was about Sherlock Holmes,’ said Oscar, playfully, ‘they’d think it not nearly
lengthy enough.’

‘Do you
have your poem, Mr Wilde?’ enquired the clergyman.

‘I have
it by heart,’ said Oscar. ‘It is by John Keats.’

‘Ah,’
said the Reverend English, widening his eyes, ‘very good.’ He took a long, deep
breath. ‘Let us do what we must.’

He
turned and made the sign of the cross and, with a steady step, climbed the
narrow stone stairway to the pulpit. As he went, Oscar pointed approvingly at
his well-polished black boots.

‘Your
friend looks after her brother well,’ he whispered.

From
the pulpit, the vicar called the multitude to order. ‘Good evening, ladies and
gentlemen, may I have your attention for a moment?’

The
tentative, seemingly troubled soul that had left us a moment before, now
appeared in full command of himself and his congregation. His voice was clear
and resonant: the people fell silent almost as he spoke. Peering round from our
vantage point behind the pulpit we could see half the nave.

‘What
do those faces tell us?’ asked Oscar.

‘It is
difficult to say,’ I replied.

‘Exactly,’
whispered Oscar. ‘They do not know what to make of their man — and neither do
I.’

The
only joyful face that I could see belonged to Monsignor Felici. He stood no
more than ten feet from us, in pride of place, at the front of the crowd,
surrounded by a cluster of English ladies of riper years. The papal Master of
Ceremonies beamed beatifically as he gazed up at the Anglican vicar of All
Saints.

‘He
exudes the complacency of the righteous, does he not?’ whispered Oscar. ‘How I envy
his certainty.’

Dr
Munthe stood on the Monsignor’s right hand and an elderly priest, wearing a
black cloak and black biretta, stood on his left. The old man was tall and
thin, but his pallid face was wizened and his body bent like a weeping willow.
He wore round spectacles with darkened lenses.

‘Is
that Father Bechetti?’ I asked.

‘Is he
blind?’ asked Oscar.

The old
priest held on to the Monsignor’s arm with one hand. With the other he held out
his empty sherry glass as if he was about to propose a toast.

‘Is he
simple?’ I wondered.

‘Is he
our murderer?’ asked Oscar, laughing softly as he spoke. ‘Look at his fingers,
Arthur. Look carefully.’

‘I see
nothing.’

‘Neither
do I. Father Bechetti wears no rings.’

‘In the
name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,’ declared the Reverend English
from the head of the pulpit, ‘welcome to the soon-to-be-consecrated church of
All Saints, our new and beautiful Anglican parish church here in the heart of
Rome — the Eternal City. Let us stand where we are, humbly before God,
recalling the eternal verities and bowing our heads in prayer.’

English
spoke with an unassuming authority and the assembly did as it was bidden. The
brief prayers done, he thanked those gathered before him for their prompt
attendance and their generosity, ‘some of it already manifested, much of it
still eagerly anticipated’. (This pleasantry was met with silence. The
congregation gazed up at English quite impassively.) When he went on to welcome
‘our honoured guests’, notably the First Secretary from the British Embassy,
representing His Excellency the British ambassador, and ‘our friends and
neighbours’ from the Vatican, there was a murmur of apparent approval, but news
of ‘the surprise presence in our midst of one of the most dazzling literary personalities
of our time, Mr Oscar Wilde’ provoked no response at all.

There
was an eerie silence as English climbed down the pulpit steps and, slowly,
Oscar mounted them. I felt for my friend as he reached the summit and surveyed
the sea of sullen faces that gazed up at him.

‘I have
been asked to share a poem with you tonight,’ he began, lightly. ‘I am honoured
to do so. It is one of the most beautiful poems ever penned — yet, you may be
surprised to learn, it is not one of mine.’

Dr
Munthe smiled. Monsignor Felici laughed. I heard an English voice close to the
pulpit hiss, ‘The man’s beyond the pale.’

Oscar
glanced behind him and smiled. ‘Nevertheless, here is the poem … It is called
“The Eve of St Agnes”.’

St Agnes’ Eve
—
Ah,
bitter chill it was!

The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;

The hare limp‘d trembling through the frozen
grass,

And silent was the flock in woolly fold:

Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told

His rosary, and while his frosted breath,

Like pious incense from a censer old,

Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death,

Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer
he saith.

He
spoke the poem beautifully, liltingly, the words flowing from him like music
played upon a cello. Almost at once — before he had spoken even four lines — he
held the assembly in his thrall. I watched the fat Monsignor looking up at him,
smiling in admiration.

But as
Oscar embarked on the second stanza of the poem and reached the end of the
line, ‘His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man’, the old priest standing
next to the Monsignor suddenly lurched forward, throwing down his sherry glass
so that it smashed violently on the ground. The old man cried out as if in
agony, ‘No, no!’ and then he fell, pathetically, in a heap, onto the marble church
floor.

9

‘The Wilde effect’