Brigadier Malthus resumed his place on the chaise longue. He was evidently intrigued by Oscar’s line of argument. ‘Do you think it could have been La Grange, then, who killed Maman’s dog — out of spite?’
‘To amuse himself and distress her?’ Oscar shrugged. ‘It’s possible. Anyone could be forgiven for asphyxiating Marie Antoinette. She was a horrid creature.’ Oscar stood at the window gazing out over the cathedral rooftop. ‘Carlos Branco might have killed the wretched dog,’ he mused. ‘Branco’s capable of murdering a dog, that I’ll concede. Murdering a defenceless animal and sharing in the proceeds of petty theft: that’s Branco’s level.’
‘And the dresser?’ asked Brigadier Malthus, leaning back over the chaise longue to study Oscar. ‘Who killed your friend, the dresser, Monsieur Wilde?’
Oscar spun round slowly on his heels and gazed directly at the policeman. ‘Am I not responsible for Traquair’s death?’ he asked dramatically. ‘I encouraged La Grange to offer him the job. I persuaded Traquair to take it. It was because of me — and me alone — that the unfortunate young man — the son of a slave, God save the mark! — was induced to travel to a foreign land where he did not speak the language and had no friends.’
Malthus smiled. ‘But you did not kill him.’
‘No, not directly, but if he took his own life I share a responsibility for that, just as La Grange shared a responsibility for the deaths of Agnès and Bernard.’
Malthus reached for his tin of cigarettes once more. ‘Edmond La Grange did not kill his own children!’
Oscar came back into the centre of the room and accepted another of the policeman’s cigarettes. ‘Not with his own hands, of course,’ he said softly, lighting his cigarette from Malthus’s, ‘but he was the author of their destruction. And he knew it. And when he realised what he had done, he had no choice but to destroy himself.’
Félix Malthus got to his feet and put a hand on Oscar’s shoulder. ‘These are extraordinary allegations, Monsieur Wilde.’
‘I know,’ answered Oscar, gazing steadily into the policeman’s eye.
Malthus lifted his hand from Oscar’s shoulder and moved across the room to the mantelpiece. He stood by the bust of Epicurus. He looked back at Oscar enquiringly. ‘You say that La Grange “destroyed” his own children before “destroying” himself. What precisely do you mean?’
‘Agnès La Grange was in love with her father.’
The policeman smiled. ‘Many young women are in love with their fathers. Does it signify? Agnès had no mother and her father was a powerful and charismatic man’.
‘This was no run-of-the-mill infatuation,’ said Oscar.
‘This was obsessive love — passionate, romantic …’
‘And unrequited, I assume?’
‘I do not know,’ said Oscar lightly, drawing on his cigarette.
Brigadier Malthus turned towards him. ‘Are you suggesting, Mr Wilde, that my old friend Edmond La Grange and his young daughter were lovers? If you are, I have to tell you that I simply don’t believe it. I knew the man for more than half a century. He was flawed. He had his weaknesses. But Edmond La Grange would not have taken his own daughter to his bed.’
I spoke up. ‘Dr Blanche was adamant on this point as well,’ I said.
My friend glanced in my direction. ‘Indeed, he was, Robert,’ he murmured. He turned back to Malthus to explain: ‘We called on Dr Blanche at his clinic in Passy yesterday morning. Dr Blanche was emphatic. Agnès was his patient. La Grange was his friend. The doctor is certain that their relationship, while complex, was not physical.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ said Malthus.
Oscar continued: ‘But the doctor’s son tells a different story. Yesterday afternoon, when Robert returned to the theatre, I went on to Montmartre and met up with Jacques-Emile Blanche and Maurice Rollinat at Le Chat Noir. Jacques-Emile loved Agnès, but she made it plain to him that she could not love him because she loved another. In recent days, Agnès spoke to Jacques-Emile of her lover and confessed that he was an older man. Jacques-Emile believes that it might have been her father.’
‘Is there evidence?’ asked Malthus.
‘No,’ said Oscar.
‘Then forget it, Mr Wilde. It was not so.’
Oscar laughed. ‘If you say so, Brigadier! You are the police officer in command of the case. Let us accept that Edmond and Agnès were not lovers.’ He clapped his hands. ‘That’s that.’ He looked Malthus steadily in the eye once more. ‘But what cannot be denied is that Agnès was in love with Edmond. Her passion for her father was obsessive and it destroyed her. It drove her to madness —and to suicide.’
‘That I can believe,’ said Malthus, nodding slowly. ‘That I will accept.’
‘And her death provoked her brother’s,’ said Oscar. ‘Suicide, as we keep hearing, is an inherited characteristic. Death was never far from the thoughts of Bernard La Grange. Death was his peculiar obsession. Robert and I once came across him in the Room of the Dead, but, unlike us, he was not there out of curiosity as a passing tourist. He was a dedicated student of mortality. Death, to him, was life’s ultimate experience. Self-destruction fascinated him. He talked of it often with Maurice Rollinat and the other nihilists of his acquaintance. And inspired by Agnès’s death, he resolved to seize his own. Bernard La Grange burnt himself to death; he sacrificed himself in the wake of his sister’s demise, like a young Indian widow committing sati. He had Indian blood in his veins, after all.’
Brigadier Malthus said nothing. He had taken a small notebook from the mantelpiece and was writing in it with a pencil.
Oscar went on: this was his summing-up, his peroration to the jury. ‘And when Bernard was gone, what had Edmond left? Nothing. So he killed himself — in his own dressing room, with his own gun, on the night he brought the La Grange heritage to a close.’
Brigadier Malthus pocketed his notebook and pencil and threw his cigarette into the empty grate beneath the mantelpiece. ‘Mr Wilde, you are very persuasive. I can believe that Agnès La Grange took her own life and that Bernard La Grange did likewise. I can even accept that their deaths might have led Edmond La Grange to contemplate suicide himself. But there is a difficulty.’
I looked up at my friend. I anticipated the difficulty. ‘We saw Carlos Branco walking into the dressing room, Oscar, a moment before the shot was fired.’
‘No, Robert. We saw a man dressed in a cloak, wearing the helmet and visor belonging to the Ghost of Hamlet’s father, enter the room. It could have been anyone.
‘Are you saying it was not Carlos Branco?’ I asked, amazed.
Oscar smiled. ‘It was not Carlos Branco, Robert.’
‘Then who was it?’ demanded Brigadier Malthus.
‘It was Edmond La Grange,’ said Oscar.
‘But, Oscar’ I protested, ‘we saw Edmond La Grange open the dressing-room door. We both saw him. He was inside the room, Oscar. We saw him.’
‘We were deceived, Robert.’
‘But how?’
‘I will show you.’ He moved towards the apartment door and held out his hand as if offering to lead the way. ‘I will show you both. Please. Come with me.
27
The End of the Story
We climbed aboard the cab that Oscar had kept waiting on the rue d’Arcole and set off for the Théâtre La Grange for what turned out to be the very last time. Given the hour and the circumstances, Oscar was remarkably effervescent. ‘I’m always stimulated by exhaustion,’ he explained.
‘There’s more to it than that, Mr Wilde,’ said Brigadier Malthus, who was seated opposite Oscar in the cab, their knees almost touching. ‘I think you enjoy the thrill of the chase. You don’t look like a hunting man, and yet …’
Oscar grinned. His smile was lopsided and his teeth beginning to show signs of decay. He completed Malthus’s sentence: ‘… we all have our secrets. Isn’t that it, Brigadier?’ From his coat pocket he produced his favourite silver cigarette case. ‘Shall we move from Algie
rs to Istanbul?’ he suggested, offering us each one of his Turkish cigarettes. He lit them for us and, savouring the aroma of the burning match, closed his eyes and murmured, ‘Learn to breathe deeply, gentlemen. Relish the moment — and the cigarette. Laugh when you can, cry when you must and, when you sleep, try really to sleep. Live life to the full. You will be dead soon enough.’
He opened his eyes and turned to me and touched me on the sleeve. ‘Forgive me, Robert, for not taking you with me every inch of the way. I know you understand. We are a team, of course, but occasionally a line of enquiry has to be pursued on a freelance basis. Sometimes a man walks faster when he walks alone.’
Brigadier Malthus breathed out a cloud of blue-grey smoke. ‘I recognise the quotation, Mr Wilde,’ he said. ‘Napoleon Bonaparte has some great lines, does he not?’
‘Oscar has plenty of great lines of his own,’ I said, rising to my friend’s defence. ‘You were speaking of hunting, sir. Have you heard Oscar’s definition of the English gentleman galloping after a fox? “The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.”‘
Malthus chuckled obligingly. Oscar smiled and drew on his cigarette. ‘The line comes from my brother Willie, in fact,’ he said, ‘but I don’t intend to give him credit. Giving Willie credit is never advisable — as his banker can tell you.’
We all laughed. I glanced out of the cab window and noticed that we were crossing rue de Turbigo, passing Oscar’s favourite boulangerie. I had known him for only a matter of weeks, but I realised that already I was wholly oscarisé, totally in my new friend’s thrall. He leant towards Brigadier Malthus and tapped him lightly on the knee. ‘The thrill of the chase may be part of the story, but in this instance, please note, I don’t lust for a kill. It’s a reprieve I’m after. If Carlos Branco is brought to trial, he’ll be found guilty.’
‘And it is too late to reprieve a man when the blade has fallen.’
Oscar sat back and rested his large head against the shabby leather of the cab seat. He looked at Malthus steadily and his eyes smiled. ‘Is that your line or Napoleon’s, I wonder?’
‘It can be yours in due course, Mr Wilde,’ said the policeman, drawing on his cigarette.
It was not yet ten o’clock when we reached the stage door of the Théâtre La Grange. A solitary gendarme stood in the alleyway, at the foot of the steps leading to the La Grange apartment. He threw down his cigarette and saluted as Brigadier Malthus strode past. The stage doorkeeper was at his post, drinking a foul-smelling horse-meat broth. ‘My breakfast,’ he grunted.
‘Breathe deeply, gentlemen,’ said Malthus wryly. ‘Relish the moment. You’ll be dead soon enough.’
We passed through the stage door vestibule into the theatre’s deserted wings. Malthus, leading the way, stumbled on the costume rail that stood just inside the doorway.
‘There’s no rush,’ murmured Oscar. ‘Let’s accustom our eyes to the gloom.’
We stood still for a moment, looking about us. To our right, on the stage itself, we could discern the outline of the battlements of Elsinore. Ahead of us, we could see —more clearly because by it a gasolier burnt low — the door to Edmond La Grange’s dressing room.
‘Was the light any brighter than this last night?’ asked Oscar, his voice barely above a whisper.
‘I don’t believe so,’ I replied. ‘This semi-darkness is how it is between performances.’
‘Indeed,’ answered Oscar. ‘Quite so.’
‘Well?’ enquired Brigadier Malthus briskly. ‘What now?’
Oscar turned his head towards the policeman’s. ‘A little show for your benefit, sir — a ten o’clock matinee. ‘Oscar touched my arm. ‘Robert, kindly escort Brigadier Malthus to the far side of the stage. Take him, if you would, to where you and I were standing yesterday, talking with Gabrielle. Take him to the very spot from which we saw Branco apparently entering La Grange’s dressing room. Wait there — behind the scenery. Do not emerge until I tell you.’
I nodded and beckoned to Félix Malthus to follow me. Carefully, in the half-light, we made our way across the empty stage. As we set off, Oscar was rifling through the costumes on the rail. We glanced behind us and saw him making his way down the wings towards La Grange’s dressing room. We heard him enter. A few moments later we heard the dressing-room door open and close again.
Oscar’s voice called out across the stage: ‘Are you hidden behind the scenery, gentlemen?’
I called back, ‘We are!’
Malthus looked at me and raised a quizzical eyebrow.
Oscar called again: ‘When I tell you, and not before, come out from behind the scenery and look across the stage — exactly as we did yesterday.’
‘I understand,’ I answered.
We waited in silence. ‘Your friend is extraordinary, ‘whispered Malthus.
Suddenly Oscar shouted, ‘Come! Come now!’
I took Brigadier Malthus by the elbow and propelled him from behind the piece of scenery to the very position that Oscar and I had occupied some sixteen hours before. Then, across the stage in the far wing, we had seen Carlos Branco walking towards the door to Edmond La Grange’s dressing room. Now, he appeared to be there again — except that this time it could not have been Branco. Branco was locked up in a police cell at the Préfecture on the Ile de la Cité. Oscar was recreating the scene: a figure wearing the cloak and helmet and visor worn by Branco in the role of the Ghost of Hamlet’s father was walking steadily towards La Grange’s dressing-room door.
‘It could be anyone,’ breathed Malthus.
‘It’s Oscar,’ I said.
The figure reached the door to the dressing room. He looked briefly in our direction — precisely as the figure had done the night before — and then knocked on the dressing-room door.
‘Who is his accomplice?’ Malthus murmured to himself.
‘There is no one else, I’m certain.’
The cloaked figure knocked on the dressing-room door once more — and the door opened. And as the door opened, the figure took off his helmet and, suddenly, within the doorway, facing us, we saw Oscar’s beaming visage appear …
‘My God!’ Malthus cried out. ‘I see!’
‘Yes,’ answered Oscar, looking towards us. ‘You see. And what you see is an illusion: a reflection of my face in a looking-glass.’ The cloaked figure standing at the door slowly turned around and, as he did so, Oscar’s face disappeared from within the doorway to be replaced by a reflection of the back of his head.
Malthus strode across the stage, his hand outstretched towards my smiling friend. Oscar unclasped the cloak that was fastened around his neck. I took the cloak while the policeman shook Oscar warmly by the hand. Just inside the doorway, to the left of it, facing us at a slight angle, was Edmond La Grange’s cheval mirror. Across the stage, over the back of his cloaked shoulder, we had seen Oscar’s face reflected in the mirror — just as the day before, in the same mirror, we had seen the reflected face of Edmond La Grange.
‘Edmond La Grange was an actor,’ said Oscar, ‘a man of the theatre. Not surprisingly, he created a little drama to introduce his own suicide. He had determined to kill himself. He had his reasons. His children were dead; the La Grange tradition was over; “the perfect Hamlet” was the perfect production with which to take his leave. And as he made his exit, by way of revenge, he thought it might be amusing to cast some suspicion on Carlos Branco, “the old fool, Polonius”, who, with Richard Marais, had conspired to rob him over all these years.’
As Oscar unfolded his story, he took centre stage. He stood where La Grange’s dressing table had stood and commanded the small room with that curious mixture of authority and charm that he used to such effect on the lecture platform. As he spoke his eyes darted about the room and he used his hands constantly to emphasise a point or to illustrate his meaning.
‘At just after six o’clock last night,’ he continued, ‘when Edmond La Grange had finished his speech and the La Grange company had begun to disperse, the great actor ret
urned to this room, his dressing room, noticing, perhaps, as he did so, where I was standing, talking with his mistress, at the back of the stage. For his pantomime to succeed, La Grange needed an audience, if only a small one.’ Oscar turned to me and smiled. ‘He sent you to find me, Robert — you recall?’
‘I do,’ I answered, ‘of course. He locked his door behind me.’
‘And, moments later, he unlocked it and opened it and looked out. He saw that the wing was empty, but I imagine that he heard us in conversation behind the scenery at the back of the stage and decided to seize his moment. The readiness was all.’
As Oscar reached into his coat pocket for his cigarette case, Brigadier Malthus reached into his for his notebook and pencil. For the remainder of my friend’s narrative, the police officer took notes. Oscar watched him carefully and whenever Malthus was busy scribbling, the Irish story-teller would draw slowly on his cigarette to give the French policeman time to catch up.
‘La Grange seized the moment,’ repeated Oscar. ‘He slipped out of his dressing room and up the wing to the costume rail. He found Branco’s cloak and threw it about his shoulders. He put on Branco’s helmet and pulled down the visor. Dressed as Branco he walked back to his own dressing-room door, turning round when he reached it to make sure that he had the audience that he had hoped for. He did.’ Oscar paused and turned his eyes from Malthus’s to mine. ‘We were there, Robert, you and I. And, knowing that we were there and knowing that we were watching, he knocked on his own door —and knocked again. And then he opened the door with one hand while pulling off his helmet with the other. As the helmet came off, the door swung open and in the looking glass, that looking glass’ — Oscar pointed to the cheval mirror that stood by the dressing-room door — ‘La Grange’s face suddenly appeared. We stared at him as he gazed at us. And as the cloaked figure, over whose shoulder we could see La Grange, stepped into the room, we assumed that what we were watching was Branco entering La Grange’s dressing room and that La Grange disappeared from view because he was stepping back to welcome his old friend and colleague.’
Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile Page 27