Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (2 page)

1

Homburg, Germany, July 1892

From the unpublished memoirs
of

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I
am
a details man. I can tell you that in 1892, my thirty-third year, I wrote a
total of 214,000 words, all too many of them concerned with the adventures of
Mr Sherlock Holmes. My industry was well rewarded. My income for that year
amounted to £2,729 — a substantial sum, an
outrageous
sum, you may
think, at a time when a schoolmaster was earning, at most, £150 per annum and a
housemaid no more than £40.

On
account of Sherlock Holmes I was prosperous. On account of Sherlock Holmes I
was becoming famous. On account of Sherlock Holmes I was exhausted. The public
could not get enough of ‘the world’s foremost consulting detective’: I was
weary of his very name. Halfway through that year, at the start of July 1892,
having completed seven Holmes stories in the space of six months, and having
settled my wife and baby daughter in our new home in the London suburb of
South Norwood, I decided to take a break. I wanted ten days (no more) of rest
and recuperation. I needed, as the phrase now goes, to ‘get away from it all’.
I took myself off to the foothills of the Taunus mountains, to the German spa
town of Homburg. I went to catch up with a backlog of paperwork, undisturbed. I
went in search of peace and quiet and solitude. As I arrived at my hotel on
Kaiser Friedrichs Promenade, I came face to face with Oscar Wilde.

Do not
misunderstand me. In the hurly-burly of the metropolis, in the crush bar at the
opera house or a drawing room in Mayfair, there could be no better companion
than Oscar Wilde. He set every room he ever entered on a roar. I never knew a
wittier man, and he was wise as well as witty. And his wit sparkled and soared:
it was never mean or cruel, never exercised at a lesser man’s expense. But
Oscar Wilde was not a quiet person. He was Irish and he would not — could not —
stop talking. His was a talent to amuse, excite, delight and stimulate, not to
soothe. He had genius and charm, and in the years that I first knew him, before
his terrible downfall, he was, at all times, a perfect gentleman. But he was
not
restful
company.

Even as
I came through the doors of the hotel, even before the hall porter had relieved
me of my bags, I heard Oscar’s voice calling out to me.

‘Arthur?
Arthur Conan Doyle! Is that really you? Heaven be praised. Thank the Lord you
are here.’

My
friend was bounding towards me. He appeared distraught. His pale-blue eyes were
red-rimmed and shiny with tears. His putty-like features were flecked with
beads of perspiration. He did not look well.

He
offered me no formal greeting, but simply cried: ‘I need cigarettes. Do you
have some, Arthur? Turkish for preference. Or Algerian. American, even.
Anything will do.’

I gazed
at him bemused. ‘Cigarettes? What for?’

‘To
smoke, of course!’ he expostulated.

‘But
you never travel without your cigarettes, Oscar.’

‘I
arrived with a dozen tins,’ he wailed, ‘but I have exhausted my supplies and in
this godforsaken town there’s not a tobacconist to be found. They have been
outlawed by the burgermeister.’

I put
down my cases and felt in my coat pocket. ‘I believe I have some pipe tobacco,’
I said, laughing.

He
seized the tobacco pouch from my hands and kissed it reverently. ‘You are my
salvation, Arthur. There’s a Lutheran bible in my room — a poor translation but
printed on the most delicate rice paper. I shall use its pages to roll my own
cigarettes.’

‘It’s a
rough tobacco,’ I warned him, apologetically.

‘No
matter, it’s tobacco and I shan’t overwhelm it. I shall begin with Hosea and
confine myself entirely to the minor prophets.’ Bear-like, he put his arms
around me. He was a big man: over six feet. ‘Thank you, Arthur. You are a good
friend. Welcome to Bad Homburg. Dinner as my guest shall be your reward.’

I
looked about the cheerless hotel hallway. There were no pictures on the walls,
no flowers in the pewter vase that stood on the heavy oak sideboard. ‘What on
earth are you doing here, Oscar?’ I asked.

‘Suffering,’
he sighed. ‘And mostly in silence. The other guests are German. Conversation is
limited. I find it is so exhausting not to talk.’

I
laughed. ‘Are you here for the cure?’

‘Yes,’
he answered bleakly, ‘and it is killing me. I go over to the spa every day and
drink the waters. The taste is utterly repellent. It takes a bottle and a half
of hock to recover from it. I have never felt so unwell in my life.’ He grinned
and waved my tobacco pouch in the air. ‘But your shag will set me right,
Arthur. And over dinner you’ll tell me why you’re here.’

‘I’m
escaping Sherlock Holmes,’ I said.

‘You’ll
never do that, Arthur. You cannot deny your destiny. No man can. Besides, we
may need Holmes’s counsel over dinner. We must discuss the sorry business of
the murder of the pastry chef.’

I stood
amazed. ‘The hotel’s pastry chef has been murdered?’

‘Not
yet,’ smiled Oscar, holding the tobacco pouch above his head as he made his way
towards the stairs, ‘but it is quite inevitable. When you see the dessert trolley
you will know why.
A tout à l’heure, mon ami.
We’ll meet in the dining
room at eight.’

I
settled myself into my room on the hotel’s top floor, but at the back of the
building, low-ceilinged, airless and sparsely furnished. My narrow window
overlooked the hotel’s kitchen yard. My narrow bed faced a whitewashed wall
adorned with the room’s only piece of decoration: a heavy crucifix carved from
Black Forest oak. As soon as I had unpacked my bags, I changed for dinner and
lay on the bed, disconsolate, gazing alternately at the crucifix and my pocket
watch, willing the minutes to pass. As I reflected on the austerity of my
surroundings, the prospect of dinner with Oscar seemed ever more enticing.

My
friend did not disappoint. On the stroke of eight, I made my way into the hotel
dining room. The room (oak-panelled and candlelit) was filled with diners, yet
felt deserted. At every table, mature couples sat face to face in accustomed
silence.

‘You
notice,’ whispered Oscar, as I sat down before him, ‘how they study their
plates and their water glasses and the vacant middle distance just beyond their
spouse’s left or right shoulder. Will it be like this for us in years to come?’

‘No,’ I
said, smiling, ‘we are both happily married men. We can look our wives in the
eye with a clear conscience. We talk to them and they talk to us. We are
blessed.’ I gazed about the room as the waiter unfurled my napkin and, with a
heavy hand, laid it across my lap. ‘Is there anything worse than a loveless
marriage?’ I pondered.

‘Oh
yes,’ said Oscar. ‘A marriage in which there is love, but on one side only.’

Despite
the Lenten surroundings, my friend entertained me royally that night. Oscar
Wilde was, as another Irishman observed, the greatest talker of his time
—perhaps of all time — but he was not a monologue man. He was a
conversationalist: he listened attentively before he spoke. He took as well as
gave, and what he gave was unique. He had a curious precision of statement, a
delicate flavour of humour and a trick of small gestures to illustrate his
meaning, which were peculiar to himself.

We had
first met three years before, in London, introduced to one another by an
American publisher who sought from each of us ‘a murder mystery’ for a monthly magazine.
I had obliged with my second Sherlock Holmes adventure. Oscar had written
The
Picture of Dorian Gray.
As writers we were very different. As men we were
dissimilar, too, in age (Oscar was five years my senior), appearance (he was
taller, stouter and not a man for a moustache) and outlook (Oscar was an
aesthete: I was a medical and a military man), but from that first encounter we
were immediately in sympathy. Ultimately, I believe it was an arrogance akin to
madness that brought him low, but in the heyday of our friendship Oscar seemed
to me to be among the best of men. I liked him and admired him. I was awed by
his high intelligence, intrigued by his fascination with detective fiction and
amused by his fondness for aping Sherlock Holmes at every possible opportunity.

When
the waiter had served us our turtle soup and poured us each a glass of excellent
Moselle wine, Oscar remarked: ‘I feel sorry for the fellow, don’t you? He’s
unhappily married, as you can see, and it must be humbling for a once-proud
Bavarian officer to be reduced to this.’

‘Are
you talking about our waiter?’ I asked.

‘I am.’

I
smiled. ‘Has he confessed all this to you, Oscar, or have you deduced it?’

‘You
know my methods, Arthur,’ answered my friend, playfully tapping the side of his
nose with his index finger. ‘We can tell that he’s unhappily married because,
though he wears a wedding ring, there is a button missing on his jacket and
his waistcoat is both stained and poorly pressed. His wife no longer cares for
him. He was evidently a soldier because of his bearing. He is stiff and
heavy-handed. And his accent tells us he is Bavarian.’

‘What
tells us that he is a “once-proud officer”?’

‘His
cufflinks and the duelling scar on his left cheek. The cufflinks bear the black
and yellow badge of the German Imperial Army. As he poured your wine, you could
clearly read the motto on the Imperial cross:
Gott Mit Uns.’

‘I
noticed the cufflinks,’ I said, ‘but not the duelling scar.’

‘It’s
dark in here. They keep it deliberately crepuscular to prevent you from seeing
too precisely what’s on your plate.’

I
laughed and looked once more around the gloomy dining room. ‘Why on earth are
you here, Oscar?’

‘It was
my darling wife’s idea. Constance wishes me to lose weight. I have put on two
stone in two years. Here at Bad Homburg, I am advised, I can lose two stone in
two weeks.’

He said
this with a mouth full of bread and butter, as the soup was being cleared away
and a dish of turbot in mushroom sauce was being laid before us. Wiener schnitzel,
boiled potatoes and sauerkraut were to follow, then cheese, then blancmange,
then fruit and nuts.

‘I am on
the strictest regimen,’ he declared. ‘Morning and afternoon, religiously, I
cross the road to the bathhouse and take the repellent waters. At the end of
the day a remarkable specimen of humanity named Hans Schroeder comes to my
room. He has the body of a Greek god and the hands of a Teutonic prize-fighter.
He is my personal masseur and he knows me better than I know myself. For an
hour each evening he pushes, pummels and pulverises me, without remission. He
is ruthless, remorseless — and in the pay of the hotel. His ministrations
leave me so enfeebled that I haven’t the strength to venture out to find a
decent restaurant. I am forced to rebuild my strength as best I can in this
dismal dining room.’ He drained his wineglass, shook his head, sighed and closed
his eyes.

‘The
wine is very good,’ I said.

He
opened his eyes and grinned. ‘I agree. It’s exceptional. I think we need
another bottle right away.’ He waved towards our waiter. ‘We must toast your
arrival, Arthur. You have heard my sorry tale. Now it’s your turn. Why are you
here? You don’t need to lose weight.’

‘I’ve
come to clear my head,’ I said. ‘And to clear my desk.’

Oscar
raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve brought your
desk
with you?’

‘I have
brought a portmanteau of paperwork with me, yes. I am overwhelmed with
correspondence, Oscar. No one told me this was the author’s lot. I have
hundreds of letters demanding a response.’

My
friend looked alarmed. ‘Are these from creditors, Arthur? Are you in trouble?’

‘These
are from readers, Oscar.’

‘You
get
hundreds
of letters from your readers?’ Oscar sat back wide-eyed in
amazement and, I sensed, a little in envy.

‘No,’ I
reassured him. ‘I get only a handful, fewer than you do, I’m sure. It is
Sherlock Holmes who gets hundreds of letters—thousands even.’