Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol: A Mystery

by Gyles Brandreth

  ‘They’re out late,’ I said.

  ‘Punishment,’ answered Warder Martin. ‘They’ve been sluicing out the latrines. The governor won’t ’ave ’em beaten cos of their age, so they gets these little extra duties. Latrines before lights out.’

  In the gloom I could see Warder Martin smiling. It was not a vicious smile, nor even a cruel smirk. It was a simple acknowledgement of the way of the world at Reading Gaol.

  We reached the steps of the castellated turret that is the home of the prison governor. Warder Martin, with a touch of braggadocio, pulled on the bell. ‘I’ve not been ’ere before,’ he said.

  ‘Nor I,’ I said. ‘I forgot to pack my evening clothes, so I hope the governor’s not expecting us to dine.’

  The heavy door – made of black oak panels studded with iron nails – swung slowly open. Both Martin and I, I sensed, anticipated an old retainer plucked from the pages of a Gothic novel. If so, we were disappointed. Dr Maurice, in waistcoat and shirtsleeves, stood on the threshold. The prison surgeon was wearing his spectacles once more, I noticed, and smoking a cigarette.

  ‘It is the butler’s night off,’ I murmured.

  ‘Remember where you are, C.3.3.,’ rebuked the doctor. He beckoned me into the hallway. He nodded to Martin. ‘Thank you, warder. Wait here while the governor sees the prisoner. He’ll not be long.’

  With a bony knuckle the doctor knocked lightly on the door immediately to the right of the front door and, without waiting for an answer, took me into a small gaslit parlour where the governor stood by the fireplace with his back to us.

  ‘Take off your cap,’ ordered the doctor. ‘Remember where you are,’ he repeated.

  As I did as I was commanded I glanced around the room. It was small, bare and comfortless. It was a front parlour, evidently, but beyond a rough Turkish rug on the grey stone floor and a plain wooden mantelpiece above an empty grate, it was bereft of both furniture and decoration.

  The governor swung round on his heels. He was dressed for dinner, in regimental mess kit, sporting his decorations and smoking a small cigar. His black hair stood to attention, shiny like a bearskin. In the gloom of the ill-lit chamber, his lined face looked wan and weary. He smiled at me grimly.

  ‘They are dying all around you, C.3.3.,’ he said. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘What do you mean, sir?’

  ‘The surgeon tells me you’ll know all about it.’

  I looked round towards Dr Maurice. He was standing behind me, resting his long back against the parlour door. He nodded, as though encouraging me to speak, and drew on his cigarette.

  ‘I do not understand, sir,’ I said.

  ‘The doctor tells me that you and he have a mutual acquaintance – “the great Arthur Conan Doyle”, the celebrated creator of the “gentleman detective”, Sherlock Holmes.’

  ‘I knew Dr Conan Doyle,’ I said, ‘in younger and happier days.’

  ‘According to Dr Maurice, you more than knew him – you were the Holmes to his Watson! You unravelled mysteries together – real ones. You solved crimes, side by side – and all by means of keen observation and careful consideration. You saw, you pondered, you cracked the nut.’ He puffed on his little cigar and looked at me beadily. ‘Well, what do you say?’

  I said nothing. I was uncertain what to say.

  ‘I have read your story, Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime,’ he went on, lifting himself up onto his toes as he spoke. ‘You clearly have a feeling for this kind of thing. Detection is your métier manqué, it seems.’ He pulled a half-hunter out of his waistcoat pocket and checked the time. He shook his head and looked at me again, raising his eyebrows enquiringly. ‘So, what’s been going on?’

  ‘I really know nothing, sir,’ I protested.

  ‘We’ll be the judges of that,’ said Major Nelson, turning to the fireplace and throwing the remains of his cigar into the grate. ‘I am dining with Mr Palmer tonight – or I hope to be. His bakery is next to the prison, you know.’

  ‘Mr Palmer of Huntley and Palmer?’

  ‘The same. He tells me that you and he were involved in unravelling a mystery a year or two ago. The police got nowhere, but you solved it – according to Palmer.’

  ‘I recall the adventure,’ I said, half smiling. ‘It afforded me my first visit to Reading.’ As I spoke I looked down and caught sight of the grotesque black arrows printed on my prison uniform. ‘My wife and Mr Palmer’s family are friends. If you think it will not embarrass him, please remember me to Mr Palmer when you see him.’

  ‘At this rate, I shall not be seeing him tonight, alas. Once I have heard what you have to say, if anything, I shall have to summon the police.’

  ‘They have not been called already?’ I asked.

  ‘No. The prison is my jurisdiction. I wanted to gather the facts myself first. I shall call them very shortly. The Prison Commissioners have recently endowed us with a telephone. I am told Colonel Isaacson never used it, but I shall.’

  ‘There may be no need.’

  ‘No need to use the telephone?’

  ‘No need to call the police.’

  The governor rocked back gently on his heels and tucked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets. ‘The chaplain is dead, C.3.3. You do know that?’

  ‘I do, sir. And I know that the dwarf attacked him. And did so mercilessly. I heard it happen.’

  ‘He’ll be for the gallows – unless he can prove he’s mad.’

  ‘He is mad, no doubt, sir – or has been driven mad here by the cruelty meted out to him. He attacked the chaplain – brutally – but he did not murder him.’

  ‘The Reverend Friend is dead – beaten and kicked to death by the prisoner Joseph Smith. Five warders were at the scene within moments of the occurrence.’

  I looked at the governor steadily. His face was open: not free of care, but free of guile. He was my gaoler-in-chief, but I liked the man and knew how much I owed to him. ‘The dwarf contributed to the chaplain’s death, no doubt, sir,’ I said, ‘but I do not believe he should be held responsible for it.’

  ‘We’ll let the courts decide whether or not he should be held responsible for his actions. If he is found guilty of murdering a prison chaplain, and he’s not judged insane, he’ll hang for it. Justice must be done.’

  ‘But if someone else is the murderer, sir,’ I persisted, ‘– someone quite else – and the dwarf merely compounded the felony, what then?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Major Nelson stopped rocking to and fro and considered me carefully.

  I spoke slowly now. I was unaccustomed to standing in a room before a fireplace having a rational conversation with a gentleman dressed for dinner. I was unaccustomed to speaking with my head unbowed. ‘If the dwarf had merely attacked the chaplain, in however brutal a fashion, and the chaplain had survived that attack, would it then have been a matter for the police?’

  Major Nelson hesitated. ‘No. No, not necessarily.’ He tugged on his walrus moustache. ‘An affray within the prison, an assault on a member of the prison staff – that would be a matter of prison discipline.’

  ‘For you to decide – as governor?’

  ‘Yes – in consultation with the prison surgeon and, possibly, the visiting committee, depending on what punishment was considered to be appropriate in the circumstances.’

  I turned to Dr Maurice. ‘You have examined the chaplain’s body, Doctor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What killed him?’ I asked.

  ‘What killed him, I would say – and will say when I sign his death certificate – is cardiac arrest. He had a heart attack.’

  ‘Provoked, you assume,’ I said, ‘by the pounding he received?’

  The doctor drew on the remains of his cigarette. ‘Possibly provoked by the attack itself. Mr Friend may have suffered his seizure at the moment that the prisoner leapt upon him.’

  I nodded. ‘I think that very likely, Doctor. It sounded to me as if the dwarf was kicking and punching a lifeless corpse.’
/>   ‘Are you saying it was not the beating that killed the chaplain?’ asked the governor.

  ‘The assault provoked the heart attack,’ I replied. ‘The heart attack is what killed him.’

  ‘And what provoked the assault, I wonder?’ pondered the governor, his hands in his pockets, jangling coins and keys.

  ‘A line of John Donne’s, I believe.’ I smiled. ‘Donne’s sermonising was ever contentious.’

  The governor looked at me askance.

  ‘Pardon me, sir,’ I said. ‘I fear that the chaplain will have riled C.3.4. with a well-intentioned but ill-timed exhortation. It was his way.’

  Major Nelson looked over to the prison doctor. Although the doctor was of lower rank, he was of higher social standing and I sensed the governor deferring to him. ‘Did Mr Friend have a weak heart?’ he asked.

  ‘He was sixty years of age,’ replied the doctor.

  ‘Were you his physician?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he have a weak heart?’ I asked.

  ‘Not that I had noticed previously.’

  Major Nelson, chewing the fringe of his moustache, looked once more at his half-hunter. ‘Where is this taking us, C.3.3.?’

  ‘I hope it is taking you to dinner, sir,’ I answered, looking at him directly. ‘You need not trouble the telephone exchange tonight. This is not a matter for the police. Nothing need be done in haste. If you go now, even if you have missed the bisque you’ll catch the turbot. The chaplain is dead. God rest his soul. The poor dwarf is in his cell. You can decide his fate when you are ready to do so. He has infringed the prison regulations and whether he should be beaten once again or sent to a secure hospital is a matter for you to decide – and probably better decided on a full stomach than an empty one.’

  The governor returned my gaze. ‘That is all very well, and I thank you for your consideration for my digestion, but I know my duty. Justice must be done.’

  ‘Oh, justice will be done, sir,’ I said quickly. ‘The chaplain’s murderer will hang. You can be certain of that.’

  23

  Sebastian Atitis-Snake

  Major Nelson left the parlour to make his telephone call.

  I stood where I was, facing the empty fireplace. Dr Maurice stood behind me. I heard him lighting a second cigarette.

  ‘What killed the chaplain,’ I said, ‘killed Warder Braddle. And what killed Warder Braddle killed Warder Braddle’s brother, also. I am convinced of that.’

  ‘And what was it?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘Cantharides,’ I said. ‘I recognised the symptoms. When we have finished here, go back to the morgue and look at the chaplain’s face. You will see what I mean.’

  ‘The bulging eyes, the darkened skin, the blisters . . . I have seen them already.’ I listened as he drew slowly on his cigarette. (Oh, how I longed for one!) ‘What will you tell the governor?’ he asked.

  ‘What I know. At least, what I think I know. I owe him that. This is a cruel place and he has made it less so.’

  ‘You will tell him everything?’

  ‘It is remarkable how one good action always breeds another.’

  ‘You will tell him about the boy?’ he asked.

  ‘I used to make jokes about the truth,’ I answered. ‘I do not find them so amusing now. I will tell him everything that I can.’

  ‘You will tell him about the boy?’ The doctor repeated his question.

  I turned to look at him. ‘For the governor to understand, I think that I must. You have not done so, Doctor?’

  The prison surgeon contemplated the plume of white smoke rising from the tip of his cigarette. ‘I saw no need,’ he said. Still he considered his cigarette. ‘What was to be gained? Who needs the pain – and the shame – of what is past? It is all over now. The boy is safe – and getting better. He’ll be released before the month is out. And he has a home to go to. I have made enquiries. He can start afresh.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it,’ I said. ‘That is good news.’

  ‘And your news is good news, too, C.3.3. You are due to be released in six weeks, are you not? Your ordeal is nearly over.’ The prison surgeon stood upright, bracing his shoulders and looking me directly in the eyes. ‘Yes, tell the governor what you know. Tell him everything. You have nothing to lose.’

  ‘Except my sons,’ I said. ‘Thus far I have lost everything – except my boys.’

  ‘You are fortunate to have sons. You will see them soon, I am sure.’

  I looked down at my hands. My fingers were fat, swollen and rough. My nails were torn and grubby from my labours in the prison yard. The doctor’s fingers, holding his cigarette, were long and slender. His fingernails gleamed. ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘Perhaps not.’ I smiled. ‘I have lost my reputation, Doctor. Any lie can be told about me now and it will be believed. That is the price I must pay for my folly.’

  ‘You can rebuild your reputation.’

  ‘No. When I leave here, there is nothing for me but the life of a pariah, a life of disgrace and penury and contempt. I know that. I say it not out of self-pity only, but as a matter of fact.’

  ‘You still have your way with words. You are Oscar Wilde. You can write. You can build your reputation anew.’

  ‘I wrote when I did not know life, Doctor. Now that I do know the meaning of life, I have no more to write. Life cannot be written; life can only be lived.’

  Major Nelson broke the elegiac moment as he bustled back into the room. He was humming ‘The Band Played On’. He had lit a fresh cigar. He held it between his teeth because in his hands he carried a laden tray. He glanced around the room and then, with a sharp intake of breath, crouched down and placed the tray on the floor in front of the grate. ‘You may have a cheese sandwich, and some water. Help yourself.’ He rose to his feet holding a pair of crystal tumblers. He handed one to Dr Maurice. The liquid it contained was pale gold.

  ‘Might I have a cigarette, sir?’ I asked.

  The governor clicked his tongue. ‘No,’ he said emphatically, ‘absolutely not. You forget yourself.’ He sipped his whisky and looked at me, raising an eyebrow. ‘You were sentenced at the Old Bailey to two years’ hard labour, C.3.3. I don’t need to remind you. According to the prison regulations “hard labour” means “hard labour, hard fare and a hard bed”. You have more than a month of your sentence still to serve. I am only allowing you the sandwich because the Cheddar is peculiarly hard.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t push your luck . . . And explain yourself.’ He took a second sip of whisky and sucked on his moustache. ‘You can take your time. I have spoken with Mr Palmer. His custard creams have afforded him the luxury of a telephone also. He knows I will be late. He asks to be remembered to you.’

  I stood with my head bowed, concentrating on the shaming black arrows on my trouser legs. ‘That is most gracious of him.’

  ‘He is a decent man,’ said the major. He stood before the fireplace, his arms loosely held out before him, his glass in one hand, his cigar in the other. ‘Look at me, C.3.3.,’ he instructed. ‘A prison is a necessary evil. I want to run this one as well as I can. When I arrived here, I smelt something rotten in the air, but the source of the stench I could not find. And others here – out of loyalty to the past, no doubt – gave me no clues.’ He threw a look towards Dr Maurice and half raised his glass to him. He looked back at me and suddenly his eyes blazed. ‘I am exhilarated, C.3.3., because I sense that at last, tonight, here, in this room, with you, of all people, I am going to get to the root of the matter.’ He nodded towards the tray on the floor at my feet. ‘Now, take a bite of your sandwich, man, and explain yourself.’

  ‘I am not hungry, sir,’ I lied. Pride is a curious thing. ‘But thank you.’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Very well. To business.’ He glanced once more towards Dr Maurice. ‘Whatever is said in this room tonight need go no farther – so long as the law is not broken and justice is done.’ The prison doctor had moved to the far side of the parlour, away from the flickerin
g gas jets. He stood in the shadows, erect, his long arms behind his back, his tumbler of whisky held from view. The prison governor turned back to me. Major Nelson’s appearance brought Conan Doyle to mind, but his avuncular, gently chiding manner reminded me more of my defending counsel at the Old Bailey. ‘So,’ he began, ‘you say that the chaplain’s murderer “will hang – we can be certain of that.” . . . You mean, I take it, that . . .’

  ‘Yes, sir. I mean that Sebastian Atitis-Snake is the chaplain’s murderer.’

  ‘Is it possible?’

  ‘Quite possible, sir.’

  ‘But how? The wretched man is locked in the condemned cell. He is guarded night and day. And why?’

  ‘“Why?”’ I repeated the governor’s question because I was not certain that I knew the answer – or all of it. ‘I am not entirely sure why, sir, but I think it could be that Atitis-Snake murdered poor Mr Friend simply to show that he could. He rose to the challenge!’

  The major rose onto his toes. ‘The challenge? Whose challenge?’

  ‘The judge’s challenge,’ I said.

  The prison governor sank back onto his heels. ‘No riddles now. A man lies dead in the morgue tonight – a good man. This is not a game we’re playing.’

  ‘Were you in court, sir, at the recent trial of Sebastian Atitis-Snake?’ I asked.

  ‘No, but I read the reports, of course.’

  ‘Then you will recall that in passing sentence Mr Justice Crawford – who had tried Atitis-Snake once before – stated that he saw it as his “responsibility” to ensure that the guilty man would never commit murder again. I understand that Atitis-Snake listened to the judgement and smiled. I imagine that it was at that very moment that the condemned man conceived the notion of proving his lordship wrong . . .’

  ‘You mean he stood in the dock contemplating another murder?’

  ‘Exactly. And given the frequency with which Mr Justice Crawford invoked the name of the Almighty as he passed sentence, I reckon that Atitis-Snake decided that the Reverend Friend, God’s man in Reading Gaol, was as apt a victim for a final murder as any.’