Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (30 page)

I told
Oscar that I would be happy to eat and drink whatever he cared to order. He
told the waiter that, despite the weather, we wanted wild goose — ‘well
roasted, with all the trimmings’. The waiter apologised, but wild goose was not
on the menu. Oscar insisted he must have it. ‘We have been chasing wild goose
for days,’ he said earnestly. He reiterated the line in English, French, German
and Italian, then declared that his father had been right: ‘One should never
make jokes with waiters’ — and ordered fresh asparagus followed by trout
stuffed with sultanas, zucchini, garlic, chervil and dill. He instructed the
sommelier to bring us whatever wine he pleased and the wine the sommelier
brought us pleased us very much indeed.

As we
dined we talked about all manner of things, except the case in hand. ‘A serious
meal calls for frivolous conversation,’ Oscar explained. He seemed especially
eager to cross-examine me on the subject of the young ladies I had known in my
life, ‘both before you met your darling wife — and after’.

‘There
have been none after,’ I told him. ‘I do assure you of that.’

‘I am
sorry to hear it,’ he said. ‘You have so much to offer, Arthur.’

‘You
say wicked things, Oscar.’

‘I dare
to speak the truth. There is only one real tragedy in a woman’s life, you
know. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future invariably her
husband.’

After
we had laughed (a great deal) and wined and dined (if not wisely, certainly too
well) and, through the foliage that surrounded our alcove, had spied Rennell
Rodd leaving the restaurant, Oscar announced that he would take to his bed for
an hour to prepare himself for Mass in the chapel of the Holy Sacrament. ‘I’ll
read Butler’s
Lives of the Saints.’

‘And
I’ll try to make some inroads on my correspondence,’ I said. ‘It is why I came
away, after all. Touie will expect it.’

‘Don’t
do any work,’ cried Oscar. ‘Tuck yourself up with Mark Twain. Read his
description of the Capuchin church of the Immaculate Conception. We must go
there. The burial crypt was a favourite haunt of the Marquis de Sade.’ He
pressed the book on me. ‘Or read
The Sign of Four
— it’s a rattling good
yarn and rather deep at times. ‘He riffled through the pages before passing the
slim volume to me. “‘The chief proof of man’s real greatness lies in his
perception of his own smallness.” I am still mulling over that one.’

While
Oscar went to his room to take his siesta, I did not go to mine. I left the
books he had put in my care with the hall porter and decided to venture along
the Via del Babuino for a stroll. I thought I might wander as far as the
fountain in the Piazza di Spagna, or even go beyond it up the Spanish Steps to
the Pincio Gardens, but as I passed the Anglican church of All Saints I noticed
that the main door was wide open and, on the spur of the moment, I decided to
step inside.

It was
three in the afternoon: across the street, the clock on the bell tower of Sant’
Atanasio dei Greci was striking the hour. Outside, in the narrow Via del
Babuino, it was baking hot; inside the darkened church, it was wonderfully
cool. As I walked down the nave, looking up at the rafters and the
stained-glass window above the altar, I breathed in the Anglican scent of
beeswax polish and fading flowers, and was overwhelmed by a longing for home.

I found
Catherine English and her brother standing close together at the foot of the
pulpit. With her right hand she was soothing her brother’s brow.

‘Hello?’
she said, turning at the sound of my footfall.

‘Forgive
me,’ I said.

‘What
for?’ She smiled at me.

‘The
church is always open,’ said the Reverend English, coughing to clear his throat
before running his hands stiffly through his curly hair. ‘And I am always late
— for something. I must go.’

‘You
are never late for evensong, brother.’

‘I will
see you then,’ he said. He coughed again and, with a friendly grimace, nodded
to me as he retreated towards the vestry door.

‘Poor
Martin.’ Catherine English sighed. Her face looked drawn. ‘His sermon was not
to everybody’s liking. His devotion to the Virgin Mary is a little too intense
for Anglican tastes.’ She laughed sadly. ‘Thank you for coming to see me,’ she
said, taking my hand.

‘Your
brother left a message …’

‘I
know.’

‘You
wanted to see me?’

‘Yes.’

I said
nothing.

‘I
wanted to see you,’ she continued, breaking away from me and walking towards
the altar steps. ‘But for all the wrong reasons.’ She turned once more and
looked me directly in the eyes. ‘I wanted a shoulder to cry on. I wanted
someone sympathetic with whom I could share my woes.’

I
smiled, awkwardly. ‘Well, I’m here.’

‘Thank
you,’ she said. She took a deep breath and spread her arms. ‘And I have work to
do. I must rearrange the flowers. They have not met with approval either —“far
too fussy” I’m told.’

‘May I
help you?’

‘You
are a man, Dr Conan Doyle. You can watch.’

I
watched as she rearranged the flowers. I assisted too, when she would let me.
And I listened to her woes. And heard of her hopes and fears. Her story touched
me very much and, before I left, I gave her a cheque for forty pounds.

At five o’clock Oscar and
I were seated in the basilica of St Peter’s, at the west end of the great nave,
at the back of the chapel of the Holy Sacrament. We were not alone. It was a
Sunday in summer and the pews were crowded with visitors and pilgrims, as well
as what Monsignor Tuminello described to us as ‘the ever-faithful: the widowed
and the very old’. Tuminello, wearing a heavy chasuble of white and gold, his
physical vigour seemingly all restored, conducted the Mass
con brio.
His
theatrical style was more to Oscar’s taste than mine. Though his skin was
yellow and his face deeply lined, his voice was rich and resonant, his bearing
impressive and, when the sanctus sounded and he raised the sacrament on high,
his eyes burnt with a frightening intensity. Oscar was much moved by the
Monsignor’s palpable faith, so unbending and implacable. I had my reservations.

They
say, ‘Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.’ Not in my case, let me confess. I
was reared by Jesuits — keen, clean-minded, earnest men, so far as I knew them,
with a few black sheep among their number, but not many. I respect much that
the Catholic Church has to offer: its traditions, its unbroken and solemn
ritual, the beauty and truth of many of its observances, its poetical appeal to
the emotions, the sensual charm of music, light and incense, its power as an
instrument of law and order. For the guidance of an unthinking and uneducated
world it could in many ways hardly be surpassed … But I am neither unthinking
nor uneducated: I am a man of science with a mind of my own. Blind faith is
not for me. Faced with having to declare an unshakeable belief in the
immaculate conception or transubstantiation, for example, my spirit rebels.
Never will I accept anything that cannot be proved to me.

When
the service was done and the faithful had departed, we remained seated at the
back of the chapel. Oscar, who had changed his suiting from lime green to olive
black, looked sideways at me, with thoughtful eyes.

‘You
have all this as your birthright, Arthur, and don’t want it. I don’t and I do.
What a topsy-turvy world it is.’

‘Good
afternoon, gentlemen,’ boomed Monsignor Tuminello, suddenly descending upon us
and holding out both hands towards us. His yellow, weathered face was wreathed
in smiles. ‘I am delighted to see you,’ he growled. He had divested himself of
his chasuble and replaced it with a flowing white surplice that quite engulfed
him and had the effect of making him look like a Nordic troll dressed as an
angel. ‘Thank you for coming, Dr Conan Doyle,’ he said, looking at me eagerly.
‘Thank you both for coming,’ he added.

We got
to our feet. ‘If I am
de trop
…’ murmured Oscar, apologetically.

‘No,
no,’ insisted the Monsignor. ‘You can both hear my story. Every Holmes must
have his Watson. We all need scribes and acolytes. Where would Our Lord have
been without the Apostles? Please. Follow me.’

His
surplice billowing about him, he raised his left hand and, waving gaily at the
sacristan, who passed us by carrying the communion plate back to the sacristy,
led us out of the chapel through a side entrance. We followed him along a
short corridor lined with the stumps of ancient marble columns, through a metal
gateway and down a flight of steep stone steps to what appeared to be another
chapel — less ornate, it seemed, but larger and more cavernous than the chapel
of the Holy Sacrament above. Here there was no natural light. As Tuminello
strode ahead we lost sight of him in the sepulchral gloom.

‘We are
in the old basilica now,’ he said from out of the darkness. ‘These are the
sacred grottoes. This is where we house the tombs of the popes. As I am papal
exorcist, they are my responsibility. Except on certain special days, we don’t
let the public come down here. We can talk freely. This is my domain. You may
smoke.’

He
struck a match and, for a moment, his illuminated face leered out at us like a
gruesome jack-o’-lantern at Hallowe’en. The Monsignor was lighting a small
cigar. ‘The Almighty gave us tobacco to enjoy,’ he said.

‘I am
so pleased to hear it,’ said Oscar, reaching at once for his own cigarette
case.

‘And
wine, too,’ continued Tuminello, cheerfully.

Gradually
my eyes were adjusting to the obscurity. Tuminello was standing a yard or so
from us, beneath a grey-stone arch, by a black-marble sarcophagus. His glowing
cigar clenched between his teeth, he bent down and from a concealed niche cut
low into the wall he produced a pair of golden chalices. He held them up
triumphantly.

‘Solid
gold, rare rubies, and emeralds brought to Europe by Hernán Cortéz himself.
Pius VI drank from these. They are now surplus to requirements. We have
hundreds
more in the sacristy, just as exquisite. Cesare Verdi is very relaxed about
what we may borrow.’

‘So I
have noticed,’ said Oscar, taking one of the chalices and studying it
admiringly. Tuminello handed me the other.

It was
an object of extraordinary beauty and much lighter to hold than its appearance
would have suggested. From the niche, Tuminello fetched a third chalice, for himself
— again golden, again encrusted with precious stones — and a bottle of wine,
already uncorked.

‘Sacramental
but unconsecrated.
Vitis vinifera ordinario,
I’m afraid, but it
serves.’ He poured the wine into the chalices, sucking heavily on his cigar as
he did so. I noticed that his hand trembled and the corner of his left eye
twitched. He put down the wine bottle and raised his chalice. ‘To Joachim
Bechetti,’ he said. ‘May he rest in peace.’

‘Amen,’
said Oscar solemnly.

‘Indeed,’
I muttered.

‘He
will
rest in peace, of course. He was a good man — brilliant in his day and
brave in adversity. You have seen his work. He was a fine artist.’

‘I
understand he is to be buried on Capri,’ I said.

‘Yes,’
said Tuminello, from within a cloud of cigar smoke. ‘He was born there, but I
don’t think he’d been back in thirty years. Brother Matteo is accompanying the
body, unembalmed.’

‘You
don’t approve?’ asked Oscar.

‘It’s a
mistake, given the heat. But Brother Matteo is a vegetarian with all that that
implies. He maintains that embalming is “unnatural”. He claims that St Francis
of Assisi spoke out against it. He didn’t. But I’m too old and too tired to
argue the point. And Brother Matteo took good care of Father Bechetti when he
was alive. We must let him look after him as he thinks best now he’s gone.’

‘Brother
Matteo is a good man,’ said Oscar, reflectively.

‘Undoubtedly,’
said Monsignor Tuminello. ‘Brother Matteo is the pattern of earthly goodness.
He
practises what
we
preach. He despises the sin, but goes out of his
way to love the sinner. He gives the best of himself to the worst of us.’ The
papal exorcist took a sip of wine. ‘Brother Matteo is almost a saint, I agree,
but he is terribly naive, as so many saints are. There is nothing wrong with
embalming. I assisted at the embalming of Pio Nono. It was a beautiful
experience, a privilege for all involved.’

‘Is Pio
Nono here?’ asked Oscar, peering around in the darkness.

‘He
was. But he’s been moved to San Lorenzo fuori le Mura — St Lawrence without the
Walls. Again a mistake, but it’s what he wanted.’ Monsignor Tuminello spread
his arms wide, his cigar in one hand, his chalice of wine in the other. ‘The
popes should all be here, together,
safe,
close by St Peter. This is
where they belong.’

‘Who’s
this?’ I asked, indicating the black sarcophagus.

‘Gregory
V,’ said Tuminello, dismissively. ‘German. We’ve had too many German popes.’ He
smiled. ‘Too many Italians, too.’ He raised his chalice to us. ‘Not enough
Englishmen.’