‘Oh, Arthur, you do sail close to the wind.’ He laughed and turned. ‘I’m going back to find him. He looks interesting. I want to talk to him.’
‘He is interesting,’ I said, ‘but he doesn’t say very much.’
‘That won’t be a problem,’ said Oscar, turning towards the fireplace. Barrie, I saw, was now standing to one side of it, alone.
I watched Oscar go up to my young friend and introduce himself and, at once, say something that made the customarily solemn JMB laugh out loud. For the next hour, every ten minutes or so, as I moved through the crush of Sims’ distinguished guests, I caught sight of them – Oscar and James – standing side by side, talking animatedly.
As I did our host’s bidding and ‘worked’ the room, for some reason (no doubt connected with Olga) I did avoid the actresses. I talked for a while with Richard Mansfield. He said: ‘Your friend Wilde is amusing, but please tell him that I haven’t played Jekyll and Hyde for several years. I’d rather be known for my Richard III or, better still, my Napoleon.’
‘Napoleon is the part you are playing at the moment?’ I asked.
‘Yes, but I’ve taken the night off to attend George’s party – and to give my understudy an opportunity.’
‘I’d enjoy seeing your performace,’ I said.
‘Thank you,’ he replied. ‘Come tomorrow, why don’t you? We’ve a special Sunday performance – by invitation only. We’ll get Wilde to come, too.’ He glanced in Oscar’s direction. ‘I’d ask him now, but he seems a little preoccupied.’ The actor offered me a knowing smile and moved off into the throng.
I sought out Walter Wellbeloved and found him in conversation with Alec Shand. ‘I’ve only just met Wellbeloved,’ said Shand disarmingly, ‘but we’re already close because we have discovered we both have a longing for Constance Wilde. Do you hanker after her, too, Dr Doyle?’ I made no reply. ‘Ah.’ He smiled knowingly. ‘I see you do. You say nothing, but your eyes speak volumes. The eyes truly are the mirror to the soul. Everything you feel, they show. You cannot hide it.’
‘Is that so?’ I said, disarmed.
‘It is. And if your eyes look dead it’s because your soul is dead. Your eyes are full of life, Dr Doyle. And full of longing, too. You should be pleased.’
‘I’m not sure what to say,’ I answered.
‘Say nothing,’ said Shand pleasantly. ‘You can read my treatise on the subject if you’re interested. I think you’ll find the research convincing – and revealing. I’ve sent Wilde a copy. Borrow it from him.’
We were joined by Henry Labouchere MP who boomed at us: ‘When you’re with a prostitute, do you think about her or your wife or your mistress or the barmaid down at the old Bull and Bush? Come on, chaps, I want the truth.’
Walter Wellbeloved half closed his eyes: ‘I have drunk too much or I wouldn’t say this. I think about a girl called Rosie. She was a mermaid.’
‘I don’t think you’ve drunk nearly enough, old fellow,’ said Alec Shand. ‘Let’s get you another glass. I want to hear more about Rosie.’
Gradually the room thinned. I looked at my watch. It was nine o’clock. Oscar and James were still standing next to the fireplace, side by side, backs against the wall. I went to join them.
‘We’ve only just begun, Arthur, and you’re telling us it’s time to leave.’
‘It’s gone nine,’ I said. ‘I’m glad you’ve met.’
‘James has been asking me about Dorian Gray,’ said Oscar. ‘He’s taken with the notion of eternal youth. He tells me my book has given him an idea for a play.’
‘That’s charming,’ I said. ‘I hope it will be more successful than Jane Annie.’
As we were laughing, a voice behind me hissed: ‘It’s disgusting. The man’s a disgrace.’ I felt spittle on my ear.
I turned to find the diminutive Marquess of Queensbury glowering at us. His head jutted forward, his shoulders were hunched. He slapped a tight fist into his open palm and leaned in towards Oscar. ‘I’ve been watching you, Wilde,’ he snarled. ‘I’ve been watching you with this young man. You’re at it again.’
‘At what, may I ask?’ enquired Oscar coolly.
‘Carrying on like a pervert.’ Oscar raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t say you are it, but you look it. You pose as it, which is just as bad.’ Queensberry twisted his head towards James Barrie. ‘You’ll steer clear of this perfumed popinjay if you know what’s good for you, sir. He’s near ruined my son. He knows no shame.’
‘I must protest—’ Oscar began, but mildly.
‘Wilde,’ barked Lord Queensberry, ‘if I catch you and my son together again in any public place, I will thrash you. I give you fair warning.’
Oscar stopped lounging against the wall and stood upright. He towered over the snarling marquess. ‘I do not know what the Queensberry rules are, but the Oscar Wilde rule is to shoot at sight.’
With a yowl of derision, Queensberry turned and stomped away.
‘Bosie is right,’ said Oscar gently. ‘What a funny little man he is.’
There was a moment’s awkward silence before Barrie said: ‘I must be on my way. I will write to you, Mr Wilde. I’ll see you very soon, Arthur. We must talk cricket.’ With a schoolboyish formality, he shook us both by the hand. ‘Goodnight, Mr Wilde. I have so enjoyed our conversation.’
We watched him as he crossed the now half-empty drawing room and disappeared into the hall.
‘What an interesting young man,’ said Oscar. ‘He told me dreams do come true, if we only wish hard enough. Do you believe that, Arthur?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I answered truthfully.
‘He did add a caveat. He said you can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.’
‘He thinks deep thoughts.’
‘And he plays cricket.’
‘Yes.’
‘And yet he’s a Scotsman. Quite a conundrum.’ As we spoke we were still gazing across the emptying drawing room towards the hallway. ‘Look,’ said Oscar, ‘Labby and Lord Queensberry are leaving together – and Richard Mansfield and Walter Wellbeloved are departing à deux as well.’
I noticed that Labouchere, the member of parliament, had greeted the marquess with a congratulatory arm about his shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t think it advisable to make an enemy of those two,’ I said.
‘I choose my friends for their good looks,’ replied Oscar, ‘my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects – as a rule. Those two are thoroughly stupid, but I am hearing what you say, Arthur. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.’
‘Shall we go?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Oscar. ‘I’m hungry. I’ll take you to Willis’s. I know you. Sausage and mash – it’s Saturday night.’
We crossed the room, Oscar nodding amiably to a young actress he recognised (Elizabeth Robins) and a champion jockey he didn’t (Tommy Loates). As we reached the hallway, George R. Sims broke away from the group to whom he was bidding farewell and said, ‘Don’t go. There’s something I want to say to you.’
‘Arthur’s hungry,’ pleaded Oscar.
‘Wait in there,’ said Sims, indicating a doorway off the hall. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment. Almost everyone’s gone. We’ll have Welsh rarebit. Escoffier’s recipe. You can’t say no.’
‘Escoffier’s recipe?’ repeated Oscar. ‘George knows everybody.’
We stepped through the door that Sims had indicated and found ourselves in a small dining room. There were candles already lit on the table, which was set for three.
‘I suppose this is the breakfast room,’ said Oscar. ‘Look at the paintings.’
‘They’re very modern,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ mused Oscar, standing in front of a small picture that appeared to me to be a sketch of St Mark’s Square in Venice overlaid with a Spanish omelette. ‘Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at,’ he said, opening his cigarette case with ostentatious panache. ‘At least, some of them are. But they a
re impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One exhausts what they have to say in a very short time, and then they become as tedious as one’s relations.’
I laughed and peered more closely at the painting. ‘Are we looking at the same picture, Oscar?’
He moved to the other side of the room. ‘Now this one I do like. I think this is Wat Sickert’s work. And really quite wholesome by Wat’s standard. Look, it’s the young Queen Victoria.’
It was – and recognisably so. ‘That I like very much,’ I said. ‘Very much indeed.’
‘By the way,’ said Oscar, now leaning across the dining table to light his cigarette from one of the candles, ‘my friend Freddie Bunbury has just invited us to Prince Eddy’s birthday picnic.’
‘But Prince Eddy is dead,’ I said.
‘I know, but were he alive it would be his thirtieth birthday on Monday and Freddie Bunbury and Festing Fitzmaurice are having a small celebration in his honour. It’ll be at Festing’s place and fairly squalid, I imagine, but I think we should go.’
‘Who else is going?’
‘I’ve no idea, but he was very pressing and, under the circumstances, with the death of his wife and all that, I didn’t have the heart to say no. I can’t go alone, so you must come, too. Who knows? We might learn something useful.’
‘When is this?’
‘On Monday.’
‘I must get back to work, Oscar,’ I said plaintively. ‘I have a living to earn.’
‘You can go back to work on Tuesday, Arthur. We’re nearly there.’
‘Are we?’
‘Of course we are. And I think we need to eliminate Prince Eddy entirely from our inquiries, don’t you? It would be lese-majesty not to.’ He blew a cloud of blue-grey smoke into the air and, as the door opened, said happily: ‘Good. That’s settled.’
‘What’s settled?’ asked George R. Sims, coming into the room.
‘Everything,’ said Oscar, spreading his arms like an actor about to take his bow.
‘Excellent,’ said Sims. ‘Take a seat, gentlemen. The Welsh rarebit is on its way. And so are the last of my guests, I’m happy to say.’
‘Indeed,’ said Oscar, taking his place at our host’s right hand. ‘The only pleasure greater than greeting an old friend is bidding him farewell.’
‘There are a few stragglers left,’ said Sims, unfurling his linen table napkin with one quick flick of the wrist, like a jockey flourishing a whip, ‘but it’s wisest to leave them be. If I linger out there, it’ll only encourage them to linger, too. Pour the claret, would you, Arthur? It’s a poor thing, but mine own.’
‘You’re growing wine now, George?’ said Oscar, in astonishment.
‘I have a small share in Tommy Loates’s vineyard. Yes, he’s a jockey from Derby, but he rides for Leopold de Rothschild who manages his investments. That’s the joy of the turf. We’re all equal there.’
‘Ever the democrat, George!’
Sims smiled at Oscar and looked at him with an amused eye. ‘Ever the anarchist, Oscar?’
‘Oscar is right,’ I said, pouring the wine. (It was a wonderful colour.) ‘You do know everybody.’
‘I like to mix and mingle,’ said Sims, without affectation.
‘Lord Queensberry was on form tonight,’ said Oscar.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ answered Sims, frowning. ‘He’s a rum one. He transformed the world of boxing and I admire him for that. But he treated his wife abominably, as you know, and falls out with almost everybody. He’s really at his best with dogs and horses. He has considerable difficulty with human beings. He doesn’t like you, I’m afraid, Oscar.’
Oscar said nothing.
‘And Labby, for some reason, has turned against you, too.’
‘I know,’ said Oscar. ‘A pity. He was once an admirer, but he came to one of my lectures and took notes. He told me afterwards that I had used the word “charming” seventeen times, “beautiful” twenty-six times and “lovely” forty-three times and, as a consequence, he could no longer trust me.’
‘That’s very funny,’ said Sims. ‘Labby’s an odd mixture – frightfully amusing and at the same time frightfully sanctimonious. He reprimanded me for inviting Lewis Carroll to the party. Can you believe it? He said, “We’ve given a knighthood to the man who illustrated Alice in Wonderland, but nothing to the man who created Alice in Wonderland. Why? Because there’s a cloud hanging over him. Take note of the weather, Sims.” The pomposity of the man! I said, “I thought it was Her Majesty who bestowed the knighthoods, Labby.” He said, “It is, but on the recommendation of her advisors . . . ” and then tapped the side of his nose, without for a moment realising how preposterous he looked.’
‘Labby’s a power in the land,’ said Oscar reflectively, contemplating the flickering candles through the crimson of his wine glass.
‘And the cloud that hangs over Lewis Carroll?’ I asked.
‘Arthur’s very innocent,’ said Oscar, look up and smiling. ‘The Reverend Dodgson proposed marriage to the real Alice in Wonderland when she was just a child. His interest in little girls is notorious – and regarded as unhealthy by some.’
George R. Sims explained: ‘Labby’s lasting legacy is the recent Criminal Law Amendment Act. It’s raised the age of consent for girls from thirteen to sixteen, outlawed unnatural acts between men of all ages and criminalised brothels. Everyone thought it was a good idea at the time, but it’s proved a blackmailer’s charter.’
‘And what’s so amusing,’ said Oscar from within a cloud of cigarette smoke, ‘is that if you know anything about Labby you’ll know that he has been a lifelong and enthusiastic habitué of the brothel.’
‘Truly?’ I asked, knowing Oscar’s weakness for exaggeration.
‘Truly. He told me himself that when he was at Cambridge he was always falling foul of the proctors because of it. The university authorities do not approve of the undergraduates consorting with prostitutes. Once, when Labby was walking down Silver Street arm in arm with a local lady of the night, he was confronted by a proctor and asked to explain his companion. “She’s my sister,” declared Labby boldly. “Nonsense, man,” cried the proctor. “She’s one of the most notorious whores in Cambridge.” Labby looked crestfallen. “Yes, sir, I know, and both Mother and I are very worried about it.”’
We all laughed and, at Oscar’s prompting, raised our glasses of claret to ‘younger and happier days’ as a footman arrived carrying a tray laden with dishes.
‘Here we are,’ said Sims, happily smacking his lips, as the footman began to remove the heavy lids from a trio of large silver salvers. ‘Welsh rarebit – and Buck rarebit, too.’
‘And devilled kidneys and bacon,’ I exclaimed.
‘And sausage and mash,’ cried Oscar. ‘Sausages of different shapes and sizes, too!’
‘Beef and pork, sir,’ said the footman quietly. ‘I’m not sure which is which.’
‘The feast will be a journey of discovery,’ purred Oscar. He waved a fork towards our host. ‘This is perfect, George. And nothing fresh or green anywhere to be seen. You know how to entertain a gentleman. Thank you.’
The footman served me a slice of the Welsh rarebit. The grilled cheese was golden brown and still bubbling like a miniature volcano. I echoed Oscar’s thanks.
‘Thank you both for staying,’ said Sims, dismissing the footman with a nod.
‘You were expecting us?’ said Oscar, as the door closed behind the departing servant. ‘The table was already set.’
‘Yes,’ answered Sims, tucking in to his food as he spoke. I sensed that he felt awkward about what he wanted to say and was grateful to have something on his plate and in his mouth to help camouflage his embarrassment. ‘I don’t know you well, Oscar, but I know you well enough to count you as a friend.’
I glanced at Oscar. I saw the flicker of apprehension in his eye.
‘And I know that A
rthur here is your friend also,’ Sims continued, ‘and a trusted friend, and I know that he is a good man, too. Young James Barrie says he’s the best. I know they play cricket together.’
‘Never mind the cricket,’ said Oscar. ‘Where’s this leading, George?’
Our host put down his knife and fork and mopped his mouth with his napkin. ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said.
‘Please do,’ said Oscar.
‘As you may know, as a journalist I mix with members of the Metropolitan Police – and have done for years. I mix with all sorts – the bobbies on the beat and their commanding officers at Scotland Yard, all sorts.’
‘Ever the democrat, George,’ said Oscar.
Sims took a sip of wine and mopped his lips again. ‘As a consequence,’ he continued, lowering his voice as he did so, ‘I know Melville Macnaghten. I know him quite well.’
‘Of course,’ said Oscar.
‘And knowing Macnaghten as I do, and seeing him quite frequently, I know that he has set you both on the trail of Jack the Ripper. Am I right?’
‘You are,’ said Oscar.
‘I also know,’ continued Sims, now looking Oscar quite steadily in the eye, ‘that while you are busy investigating the Whitechapel murders at Macnaghten’s request, Macnaghten is equally busy investigating you.’
27
‘Explain yourself ’
‘Explain yourself, George,’ said Oscar calmly.
‘I can’t exactly,’ said Sims, picking up his knife and fork and turning his attention to his plate once again. ‘All I can tell you is that he has you in his sights.’
‘Both of us?’ I asked.
‘No, just Oscar.’
‘“In his sights”?’ queried Oscar. ‘You mean he has people following me?’
‘I believe so,’ said Sims.
‘But he denied it absolutely,’ I protested. ‘I was there. I heard him. Oscar put it to him. He denied it. And I took him for a gentleman.’
Sims looked up. ‘You’re right to do so. I believe he is one.’
‘This is preposterous,’ said Oscar, helping himself to a spoonful more of mashed potato. ‘I don’t believe it. I think you’ve misread the situation, George. Unlike you, I agree, but there’s a misunderstanding of some kind here. There must be. Macnaghten asked for my help.’
[Oscar Wilde 07] - Jack the Ripper: Case Closed Page 19