‘Of course,’ warbled Bunbury, stepping lightly back into the shadow and returning almost at once bearing a large tray on which stood, unsteadily, a dust-covered brown bottle and three green Hoch glasses. ‘Gewürztraminer,’ he announced, ‘and a good year, too.’
‘And opened already,’ said Oscar, raising a somewhat anxious eyebrow.
‘Fear not,’ chirruped Sir Freddie. ‘There’s a second bottle cooling in the bassinet.’
‘Excellent,’ said Oscar. ‘Shall I pour?’
‘By all means – and you may drink for Festing.’ The baronet lowered his voice: ‘He no longer eats and he doesn’t like to drink in company. Because of the dribbling.’
Oscar filled our glasses to the brim. Sir Freddie handed me mine. ‘We introduced Prince Eddy to the Gewürztraminer when we first accompanied him to Heidelberg. Forever after, it was his wine of choice.’
‘I know Heidelberg,’ I said. ‘A fine university.’
‘We were with him at Heidelberg – and at Cambridge, of course. He was at Trinity. I know Oscar was at Oxford. Were you an Oxford man?’
‘Edinburgh,’ I said.
‘Never mind,’ murmured Sir Freddie consolingly. ‘You went to sea eventually – that’s what counts. We spent three years at sea with Prince Eddy – aboard HMS Bacchante. That was before he went to university. He was a midshipman and we were in attendance, along with Dalton, his tutor, who served as the ship’s chaplain. We toured the Empire – the Americas, the Falkland Islands, South Africa, Australia, the Far East, Ceylon, Aden, Egypt, the Holy Land, Greece.’
‘Ah, Greece,’ sighed Oscar, sipping the yellow-green wine. (It was crisp and refreshing, to my surprise.)
‘Yes,’ responded Sir Freddie brightly. ‘It was in Greece that Festing accepted his true nature. In the hills, outside Athens.’
‘Say no more,’ I murmured.
Bunbury continued, unabashed: ‘I remember, Oscar, when I first met you, you were a young man then, and you told me your ambition was “to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world”. That was our ambition, too. That’s what we wanted for Prince Eddy.’
‘And Dalton, the clergyman, the tutor?’
‘Dalton had other ideas, of course – but ours prevailed. Prince Eddy was our boy. He was Her Majesty’s eldest grandson, of course – named Albert Victor after her and her beloved Albert, destined to be sovereign himself one day – but he was always Eddy to his dear mamma and it was she who put him in our charge. From the age of sixteen, until the day he died, he was ours, all ours. We promised the princess we would look after him and we did.’
‘You indulged him,’ said Oscar, without prejudice.
‘We loved him. He was a wayward boy, as princes are, but he was our boy. We indulged him, yes. Whatever he wanted, we gave him. Elephants to ride, tigers to shoot – a Gaiety girl in Brighton, a geisha in Fukagawa, a goatherd in Thessalonica.’ He laughed at the recollection.
‘Did you set no boundaries?’ I asked.
‘None at all. In Japan he wanted a tattoo. We had a moment’s doubt about that because we knew he would be marked for life – but he was determined, so we let him have his way, as ever, and, given where it was placed, we knew that his mother would never see it – though I fear, as she nursed him on his deathbed, she may have done so.’
‘He died very young,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Sir Freddie. ‘Don’t believe any of the rumours, it was pneumonia. He was twenty-eight. He did indeed die very young, but while he was alive, he lived!’ He turned towards Oscar and raised his nodding tortoise’s head defiantly. ‘Yes, sir, we indulged him in everything, I’m proud to say. Whatever he wanted, if it was within our power to grant it, we did.’
‘Did you ever let him kill a man?’
‘He fought a duel in Heidelberg, but no one was hurt. He wasn’t much of a swordsman. He was a good shot.’
‘No, I meant kill a man for sport?’
‘They were hunting aboriginals for sport in Australia when we were there, but that didn’t interest Prince Eddy.’
‘Would you have given him the chance to commit murder if that is what he’d wanted?’
‘But he didn’t. He was a gentleman through and through. And a gentle man.’ The baronet bridled and narrowed his eyes. ‘I know what you’re getting at, Oscar. All that Jack the Ripper stuff. A vile calumny. Intolerable.’ His pale face flushed with anger. ‘Prince Eddy would never have harmed a woman. Not in a thousand years. People will always believe the worst of someone if they can – most particularly of a prince. The slur about Jack the Ripper has tarnished his memory, I know that. It’s been my life’s last ambition to clear his name. When the police came sniffing around again last year, when my poor wife was fading, I showed them the log books and the diaries. The prince was five hundred miles away when most of the Whitechapel murders occurred. And so were we.’
‘But you took him to Whitechapel on occasion?’ Oscar persisted. ‘That’s how the stories started.’
‘We did. He had a taste for the oriental. He had “a soft spot for smooth skin”. That was the line he used. Witty, eh? Dalton always downplayed the prince’s intelligence – said his mind was “abnormally dormant”. Far from it. Prince Eddy wasn’t intellectual, but he had an enquiring mind. He truly wanted to “taste of all the fruit”. We went to Whitechapel to smoke the occasional opium pipe and to seek out the company of Chinese sailors. They had no idea who he was and he loved that.’
‘And you loved him.’
‘We did,’ said Sir Freddie, gazing wistfully at the portrait on the mantelpiece.
‘Were you alone?’ asked Oscar.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Was this special bond confined to just the pair of you – you and Festing?’
‘We knew him best, we loved him most,’ Sir Freddie nodded, ‘but, yes, there was a third – and I think you knew him, Oscar. James Kenneth Stephen.’
‘The poet? Yes, I knew him. He kindly supported my candidature for membership of the Savile Club. That was a few years ago. But I remember him. He was a nice man.’
‘He was Prince Eddy’s tutor at Cambridge. He was only four years the prince’s senior, but they became close friends.’
‘Were they lovers?’
‘I don’t know. All I do know is that when Stephen heard the news of the prince’s death, he was overwhelmed by grief. He refused to eat and died twenty days later, aged just thirty-two.’ The baronet turned to look at his friend in the taffeta ball gown. ‘I think that’s what Festing is doing now – not eating, just waiting to die.’
‘Shall we raise our glasses to the prince?’ said Oscar.
‘Yes,’ said Sir Freddie. He held out his glass towards the picture on the mantelpiece. ‘To the memory of His Royal Highness Albert Victor Christian Edward, Duke of Clarence and Avondale – our Prince Eddy. Happy birthday, darling boy.’
33
Home
Oscar heaved his body into the back of the two-wheeler and collapsed onto the leather banquette with an exaggerated sigh. ‘We should have coupled that with a toast to those that loved not wisely but too well.’
‘What an extraordinary experience,’ I said, moving my portmanteau from the seat and sitting down next to my friend. ‘I’m quite drained.’
‘Likewise. Drained. And ravenous. Those hideous Scotch eggs. . .’
‘You handled it all superbly, Oscar.’
He laughed wheezily and, letting out a slow, deep breath, he patted me on the arm. ‘Thank you, Arthur. You didn’t do so badly yourself. For one dreadful moment I thought we were destined to spend the morning en travestie, trussed up like a couple of Ugly Sisters from the pantomime.’ He took his cane and banged it up against the roof of the carriage. ‘Back to the Langham Hotel, driver, if you please,’ he called.
‘No, not for me. I’m going home now. I must. Drop me at an underground station when we pass one.’
‘What, no lunch? You can’t seriously be contemplatin
g returning to South Norwood on an empty stomach.’
‘I have to go home, Oscar. I’ve matters to attend to, work to do. I’ve a living to earn.’
‘Write this up and your fortune’s made. I’m planning the play already. Mansfield’s ready to play the part – eager, in fact. You heard him say so yourself yesterday.’
I laughed. ‘I did indeed.’
‘We’re just tying up loose ends now. We need to see Druitt’s sister and then I think we can safely say “case closed”.’ He turned and looked at me, bright-eyed. ‘You can’t go home without lunch, Arthur. I won’t let you. And the Langham will do us proud. What do you fancy? Lobster bisque, spring lamb, pink, cut slantingly to the bone, with really crisp roast potatoes, buttered carrots, peppery cabbage slightly underdone, and a gravy just like the one your dear old grandmother used to make . . . How does that sound? ’
I resisted the temptation. And Oscar, generously, had the two-wheeler take us all the way to London Bridge so I might catch the fast train to Norwood Junction.
As we travelled across town, we reflected on the morning’s bizarre encounter. I asked my friend how he had first come to meet these two unlikely courtiers.
‘They’re not “unlikely” really. They are almost typical, in fact. A royal court’s a curious place. Everyone you meet there is a tad improbable. I first met Fitzmaurice and Bunbury many years ago. The Prince of Wales hosted a dinner to which I was invited. They were there. I sat between them.’
‘How well do you know the Prince of Wales?’
‘He’s been to our house – to take part in an experiment in thought-reading, of all things. Lily Langtry brought him. They were close – for a time. But, as you know, nothing lasts. Neither summer nor winter, nor the passion of love. And rides on the merry-go-round of royal romance are customarily of quite brief duration.’
‘Are you and the prince still friends?’
Oscar cocked an eyebrow and grinned. ‘We were never “friends” in the way you mean. Royalty offer you friendliness, not friendship. There is a difference. You and I are friends, Arthur, and I believe we always will be. I’ve known a lot of good men in my time, but none, I think, as decent as you. “Steel true, blade straight” – that’s what it should say on your gravestone.’
When we reached the railway station, I clambered down from the two-wheeler and extended a hand to my friend. He shook it warmly. ‘The moment there’s news I’ll wire you,’ he said. ‘And don’t forget next Saturday night – it’s goodbye to the circus. My farewell supper for our Russian friends. I’ll get Mansfield and George R. Sims to join us. Make a bit of a party of it. You can say au revoir to your little Russian acrobat then – if you don’t slip up to town for a secret tryst meanwhile. But if you can resist the Langham spring lamb you can probably resist anything. Goodbye, old heart.’
As I stepped under the stone archway to enter the station booking hall, I turned back to wave, but the two-wheeler was already gone.
Within the hour I was back home in South Norwood. It was good to be home. In many ways I had enjoyed my week on the trail of Jack the Ripper in the company of Oscar Wilde, but I was exhausted by it, too – exhausted by Oscar, by his wit and his exuberance, by his appetite and his perversity – and dispirited by the fog of London, by the macabre world of police mortuaries and East End opium dens, by the grim spectacle of young women, cruelly disembowelled, and old men absurdly dressed in ball gowns.
When I reached Norwood a light rain was falling, but it did not matter. As I walked down the hill from the station, I felt it washing away the grime of the metropolis. As I turned into Tennison Road I had a spring in my step. It was good see my familiar front door, good to turn the key in the latch, good to find my darling Touie’s face smiling up at me from the small framed photograph of her that I kept on my desk in the study. It was especially good to be back at that desk again.
The house was in good order and well-aired. Mrs Stocks, our part-time housekeeper, had everything spic and span, with flowers in the hallway, fresh linen on the bed and my kind of simple fare waiting for me in the larder. As a man eats, so shall he write. I had enjoyed reading my friend Wilde’s short stories – they tasted of foie gras and lobster bisque. Mine, I fancy, taste more of corned beef and pickled onions.
For the next few days, I ate simply and worked well. I completed my story for The Idler and started on another. Now and again I thought of Olga and wondered whether I would indeed see her one last time that coming Saturday. Now and then in my mind I turned over elements of the case we had been investigating, but felt as baffled by it all as Macnaghten and his men seemed to have been. The recollection of Oscar asserting merrily that we were ‘just tying up loose ends now’ made me smile.
I was alone with my breakfast boiled egg on Thursday morning when I heard from him. The postman called at 8.00 a.m.: Oscar’s was the only letter he had to deliver. Over the five years of our friendship, we had not corresponded much, but I recognised his precise, elegant hand at once:
16 Tite Street
10.i.94
My dear Arthur,
I have news – but before I share it, how are you? Are you working hard? To work , to work: that is your duty. And your pleasure, too, I trust. Work never seems to me a reality, but a way of getting rid of reality! I have returned to Tite Street – in the interests of economy – but I shall not stay here long. My boys are delightful, but they are noisy. They make work difficult and meals impossible. To be able to live at home I need to send my sons to boarding school and my wife to Biarritz – or perhaps to Switzerland to join yours? – but, alas, at present I have not the means. I am in the purple valleys of despair and no gold coins are dropping down from the heavens to gladden me. I am overdrawn at the bank and last night a tax collector called here at the house.
‘Taxes! Why should I pay taxes?’ I cried.
‘But, sir,’ he said, ‘you are the householder here, are you not? You live here, you sleep here.’
‘Ah, yes, but I sleep so badly.’
The man simply did not comprehend. I gave him my brother Willie’s address and said I was sure he would give him better satisfaction than I was able to do. You are so wise to have retreated to the country, Arthur (I am assuming Norwood is the country: I have never been) – London is now become so very dangerous: the barking of tax inspectors at dusk is distressing, the roaring of creditors towards dawn is frightful, and I hear this morning that solicitors are getting rabies and biting people.
It really is intolerable the want of money. I have concluded that wanton extravagance is the only remedy – and to that end for Saturday’s late supper I have ordered the finest wines and the costliest dishes that the Langham’s sommelier and chef de cuisine can produce for our delectation. I am also thinking, as it will be the thirteenth, we should have thirteen at table – viz
ACD and OW
Ivan the Terrible and little Olga
Richard Mansfield and brother Willie (because Mansfield admires him and Constance will insist I invite Willie. She is anxious for a ‘family reconciliation’. I cannot invite Constance herself, alas, or Willie will expect his fiancée to be invited too – and there are limits!)
George R. Sims and Freddie Bunbury (if he’s up to it – we can take it that Festing Fitzmaurice won’t be – what would she wear?) – and Labby, perhaps? He is frightfully pompous, but he can be amusing and he knows Salazkin. What do you think?
And Mr Dodgson/Lewis Carroll? I feel the evening needs the sense of a Mad Tea Party and it is always charming to have a ‘celebrity’ at this kind of gathering, don’t you agree? (Sims will bring him if you approve the idea.)
I don’t believe the Prince and Princess of Wales will be able to make it at this short notice, so: Wellbeloved and Mrs Mathers?
And then Macnaghten, of course. That’s thirteen, I think. I want Macnaghten there because, as my party piece, after we’ve eaten, I thought I would ‘reveal’ the true identity of Jack the Ripper. We need to impress Mansfield with
a coup de théâtre – so he commits to the play there and then and we can secure an advance on royalties!
I put down the pages of my friend’s letter and said out loud, ‘The man’s gone mad.’ I laughed. I got to my feet and cleared away my breakfast things and, briefly, unlocked the back door and stepped into the garden. The air was biting. There was frost on the grass like icing on a cake. I stood, legs apart, hands on hips, head held high, and breathed deeply. I noticed the water-butt frozen over and, suddenly, found swimming into my mind’s eye the men I’d known fourteen years before when I was a boy of twenty and had signed on as the ship’s surgeon on the whaler Hope that took us from Peterhead to the Arctic Circle. I thought of those men and their courage and endurance and of how they risked death by day and night – not just from hypothermia (the cold was excruciating) but from the ever-shifting floes of ice that could slice a man in half. And then I thought of Oscar and Willie and Labby and the rest and roared as I might have done at the music hall.
My head cleared, I returned to the kitchen, poured myself another cup of tea and picked up Oscar’s letter once more:
My news – my real news – is quickly told. We can eliminate Montague Druitt from our list of suspects. As you know, he was Macnaghten’s prime candidate entirely because his suicide came hard on the heels of the last of the initial Whitechapel killings. Mary Jane Kelly was murdered at Miller’s Court on 8 November 1888. Montague Druitt threw himself into the Thames on or soon after 1 December 1888.
That Druitt took his own life is not in question. When his body was recovered there were four large and heavy stones found in each of his coat pockets and when his room sat Blackheath were searched a suicide note was discovered. It read: ‘Since Friday I felt I was going to be like Mother, and the best thing for me was to die.’ Mrs Druitt had been committed to the Manor House Lunatic Asylum in the spring of 1888.
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