Her skin was as pale as snow (whiter than her dress), though her lips were red and her cheeks were tinged with pink. Her eyebrows were dark and strong, her eyes cast down. She was not smiling, nor was she sad. She was simply seated, lost in thought, upon the rock. Around her head there was the shadow of a halo.
In the centre of the room was a large, round dining table, made of polished oak, with six chairs arranged around it.
‘This is our little refectory,’ said Cesare Verdi. ‘This is where we take tea. This is where we dine. We dine well. Monsignor Felici makes sure of that.’
‘You say “we”?’ asked Oscar.
‘Quite right, Mr Wilde. I don’t dine with my priests. I serve them first and I dine afterwards — but at the same table. It’s my table, my sacristy.’
‘And they’re “your” priests.’
‘That’s how I thinks of them. There are just five of them living ‘ere — in the cells upstairs. They’re papal chaplains and I looks after them. They prays for me and I skivvies for them.’
‘I’ve no doubt you do them proud — in the Willis’s tradition.’
‘They don’t do so badly. Brother Matteo is a Capuchin, of course, so he eats pretty frugally: bread and water, vegetables and fruit, no meat, no cheese. And poor old Father Bechetti lost his appetite when he lost his teeth. So it’s really the three Monsignors who do the feasting. Take a seat, gentlemen.’
We did as we were told, while Cesare Verdi went over to a sideboard on the far side of the room and busied himself, preparing a tray of cups and saucers and lighting a gas burner under a large black kettle that began to wheeze and whistle almost at once.
‘Monsignor Felici and Monsignor Breakspear we ye met,’ said Oscar.
‘You’ll like Monsignor Tuminello,’ said the sacristan, spooning leaves from a tea caddy into a handsome Royal Crown Derby porcelain teapot. “E’s interesting. ‘E’s the papal exorcist.’
‘So he, too, sees the devil in your eye, Cesare,’ said Oscar.
“E sees the devil everywhere,’ said the sacristan, laughing and bringing the boiling water to the teapot.
‘What’s this?’ I asked, indicating the large circular pewter dish that stood in the centre of the dining table. It was piled high with what at first glance I had taken to be an arrangement of crystallised fruit, but that I now realised, on closer inspection, was an assortment of precious stones wrapped in what appeared to be a fur stole. ‘Is it a still life arranged for Father Bechetti?’
‘No, ‘e ‘asn’t painted a picture in ten years. ‘Is eyes ‘ave gone, along with ‘is teeth. Those are jewels from papal crown s.’
‘And this,’ said Oscar, leaning across the table and lifting up a dark-green stone the size of a plover’s egg, ‘is the emerald from Pope Julius II’s fabled tiara?’
‘It is indeed,’ replied the sacristan. ‘She’s a beauty, ain’t she? I’m giving ‘er a little polish. Pope Leo ‘as a mind to wear the crown at ‘is next pontifical Mass. ‘Is ‘oliness is partial to ‘is triple tiaras. ‘F’s one for ‘is dignity — and why not?’
‘Papa tantae est dignitatis et cesitudinis, ut non sit simplex homo, sed quasi Deus, et Dei vicarius,’[2] said Oscar, replacing the emerald among the other gems.
‘Hinc Papa triplici corona coronatur tan quam rex coeli, terre et infernoram,’[3] responded the sacristan. ‘You’ll want to see the tiaras then, Mr Wilde. We’ve got ‘undreds, ‘undreds. All ‘ere in the sacristy. I’ll take you on the tour later. And your friend, of course.’ The sacristan turned his bright black eyes towards me and revealed again his small, white teeth. ‘I never caught your name, sir.’
‘Conan Doyle,’ I said. ‘Arthur Conan Doyle. Doctor.’
‘Ah,’ he chuckled, holding the teapot by its handle and spout and swirling it vigorously. ‘The Sherlock ‘olmes man. My priests just loves their Sherlock ‘olmes.’
‘I’m gratified,’ I said.
‘And this?’ asked Oscar, still concentrating on the pewter dish in the centre of the table and pointing to the roll of fur that surrounded the pile of jewels. ‘Is it ermine? It looks more like a lady’s wrap than a papal stole.’
‘It’s a weasel,’ announced the sacristan, with a laugh.
He put down the teapot on the sideboard, stepped over to the table and lifted the bundle of fur from the dish. As it unfurled, the hapless creature’s face and paws swung round towards us.
‘Oh, my God,’ cried Oscar, flinching away from the table. ‘It’s hideous.’
Cesare Verdi held the animal by the scruff of the neck. Its body was long and thin: it must have been three feet in length, including its tail. The wretched animal’s pointed face appeared to be grinning at us grotesquely; its eyes were wide open and staring, its teeth were bared and clenched.
‘Why is it here?’ I asked.
‘For dinner,’ replied the sacristan. ‘We are going to eat it.’
‘In God’s name why?’ hissed Oscar.
‘Because my brother in Christ, Monsignor Breakspear, is determined to eat his way through the animal kingdom. He is doing it wilfully, to assert the primacy of man and to upset me.
This observation was made in Italian. I did not understand it at the time: Oscar translated it for me later. But I realised at once that the person making it was Brother Matteo.
The Capuchin friar stood beneath the stone arch at the top of the steps leading into the dining room. He was a man of about sixty, tall and spare, bearded but pale. He was dressed in the coffee-coloured habit of his order. His cowl was thrown back; his head was held high; a thin piece of rough cord hung about his neck; his hair was snow-white and sparse. I looked down at his feet. They were bare and callused. I looked at his hands. They were a workman’s hands: he wore no rings. I did not understand what he was saying, but from the glint in his grey eyes and the gentleness of his manner I took it to be something amusing.
I got to my feet. Oscar did likewise. Axel Munthe, who stood just behind the Capuchin, introduced us. Handshakes were exchanged and pleasantries murmured. I did not follow what was said, but I recognised the name Sherlock Holmes more than once and nodded in acknowledgement of it, doing my best to disguise my irritation.
The sacristan laid the dead weasel to rest on the sideboard and brought his tea tray to the dining table.
‘Té pomeridiano?’ he said.
‘Si, grazie,’ said the friar, inviting us to take our seats once more and joining us at the table. ‘Tea from Darjeeling prepared in the English way, with boiling water brought to the pot, is one of my favourite drinks. And a full English tea is undoubtedly my favourite repast. It’s such a civilised meal. Even a Capuchin is permitted a cucumber sandwich. Monsignor Breakspear is a barbarian — a savage. He does not believe he has eaten unless he has tasted blood and recently he has come up with this ludicrous notion that it is his Christian duty to eat of the flesh of every one of God’s creatures, from the antelope to the zebra.’
‘Is he making his progress through the animal kingdom alphabetically?’ asked Oscar, in Italian.
‘There is no order to his thinking, merely self-indulgence. This isn’t science. This is greed — and perversity. There are some wild boys who live in the woods here, by the pyramid. They scavenge and hunt for Monsignor Breakspear and for every new creature they bring to the pot he gives them money. It’s absurd. It’s obscene.’
Oscar translated the essence of what the friar was saying into English and I shook my head in amazement. ‘Can this be true?’ I asked.
‘Si, è vero,’ said the sacristan. “Oney buzzard and ibis, frog, bat, vole, mole — flesh and fowl, all creatures great and small.’ He opened a drawer in the sideboard and from it produced a small silver hammer, about ten inches in length, holding it up for us to see. ‘We uses this to crack open the crustaceans. We had spider crab last week. Whatever the lads turn up with, if we’ve not tried it before, we give it a go. That’s the Monsignor’s rule. If you eat wild boar, why not wild wolf? Some of what we’ve
‘ad ‘as proved surprisingly tasty. Porcupine meat is very tender.’ He returned the hammer to the drawer.
The friar laughed. ‘And Breakspear will soon be a cardinal. We all know that. God moves in a mysterious way.’
As the sacristan poured us our cups of tea, another priestly figure appeared on the threshold. He stood silently in the archway, studying the group seated at the table. I was the first to see him. As his eye caught mine, I sensed a flicker of recognition — or uncertainty. He appeared puzzled by our presence, perturbed even. From his sash and his biretta, it was evident that this was the third Monsignor — a man similar in age and build to the Capuchin, but beardless, hairless, sallow-skinned and sorrowful in demeanour. His eyes were sunken and heavily hooded. His forehead and cheeks were deeply lined. He had a smoker’s complexion and a drinker’s nose. Once we registered his presence, Axel Munthe, Oscar and I rose quickly to our feet and bowed towards the priest.
‘Monsignor Tuminello,’ said Munthe pleasantly, ‘may I present two distinguished newcomers to Rome: Mr Oscar Wilde, the poet and playwright, and Dr Arthur Conan Doyle, the celebrated creator of Sherlock Holmes.’ As the Monsignor extended his hand to shake mine, I noticed the rose-gold ring on his finger. As he released my hand from his cold, tight grasp, his eyes flickered upwards, violently, his head jerked backwards and, without uttering a sound, he fell in a heap to the floor.
11
Something in the air
‘The air in Rome is notoriously foul. These are old men. They do not lead healthy lives. I do not believe that we can regard Monsignor Tuminello’s collapse as is any way suspicious. He fainted, he recovered. There’s an end on it.’
This was Axel Munthe’s considered verdict, delivered for the third time over the third bottle of champagne at the end of that night’s dinner at the Hôtel de Russie. Oscar had insisted on ordering our food — ‘it will be all simplicity’: wild asparagus, wild boar cooked with raisins and pine seeds, zabaione with fresh raspberries — and on selecting our wines — ‘wholly unpretentious’: Italian Barolo and French champagne — and on paying for everything: ‘with a little help from my dear friend, Lady Windermere ‘.
‘Is she your mistress or your patroness?’ asked Axel Munthe.
‘She was one and is now the other,’ said Oscar, darkly.
‘Ah,’ murmured Munthe, evidently impressed. ‘Customarily, it is the other way around.’
I intervened. ‘Lady Windermere is the principal character in a play of Oscar’s,’ I explained. ‘Lady Windermere‘s Fan. It’s a comedy. It’s delightful. And a huge success. It’s been running in London since February. The critics were not sure about it, but the public is.’
‘It is the will of God that we must have critics and we will bear the burden,’ said Oscar, skewering a raspberry with his fork and dipping the fruit into his champagne. ‘Lady Windermere earns my keep night after night and I am grateful to her.’
‘Congratulations,’ said Munthe, raising his glass to Oscar. ‘Are you resting on your laurels now or planning something new?’
‘Both.’
Munthe laughed. ‘Another comedy?’
‘No,’ said Oscar, swallowing the raspberry and leaning forward earnestly. ‘A murder mystery. It’s a collaborative venture. I’m writing it with my friend Conan Doyle here. We’re calling it Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Papal Chaplains. It will run for years.’
‘You are ridiculous, Oscar,’ I said.
Oscar turned his head towards Axel Munthe and widened his now glistening eyes. ‘What do you think, Doctor?’
Munthe smiled and set down his glass. ‘I think you have a problem with your “murder mystery”, my friend.’
‘And what is the problem, pray?’
‘Very simple. You have a mystery of sorts, to be sure, but, so far as I can tell, no murder.’
‘We have a dead man’s hand!’ exclaimed Oscar, beating the table with his fork. ‘We have a dead man’s finger!’
‘Yes,’ said Munthe, now laughing, ‘and a locket of lamb’s wool. But where’s the murder?’
‘We have death stalking in the wings!’ cried Oscar.
‘You have two elderly clergymen collapsing in the heat of a Roman summer. You don’t have murder.’
‘It is only a matter of time. Arthur and I have been here for only three days and already we have been drawn into the circle of death.’
I raised my hand in protest. ‘Steady on, old man.’
Munthe shook his head and sipped his wine. He tilted his head to one side and peered at Oscar through his heavy spectacles. ‘And who is in this “circle” of yours, Mr Wilde?’
‘The men who wear the ring,’ said Oscar calmly, ‘the ring that has lured us to Rome.’
‘And who are they?’ asked Munthe.
‘To begin with, Monsignor Felici — your patient, Doctor. The man you thought might well have been a murderer on the night you first saw the rose-gold ring, on the night his mistress died. And Monsignor Breakspear, Arthur’s old school friend, the boy-beater, the would-be cardinal who is busy eating his way through the animal kingdom. He wears the ring. And Monsignor Tuminello, the third Monsignor, the sere and yellow papal exorcist. Another of your patients, Doctor — they’re a sickly band up at the Sistine Chapel. He wears the ring also.’
Munthe shrugged. ‘Three Monsignors, three papal chaplains: they wear the same ring. Is it so surprising?’
‘Cesare Verdi, the sacristan, a layman — he wears it, too,’ I said.
‘But Joachim Bechetti, the aged artist, and Brother Matteo, the good Capuchin — they don’t,’ said Oscar. He sat up at the table and spread his fingers out on the tablecloth in front of him. ‘Why not? They’re papal chaplains also. They, too, live above the sacristy. Why are they not wearing the rose-gold ring?’
‘Because they don’t belong to your “circle of death”?’ asked Munthe.
‘Or because one or other of them has sent his ring to Sherlock Holmes,’ I suggested, ‘as a coded summons.’
‘As a cry for help,’ said Oscar, closing his eyes momentarily. ‘Exactly, Arthur.’ He let out a deep sigh, opened his eyes again and looked around the table, smiling. ‘A grappa in the lounge, gentlemen — and then bed, I think, don’t you?’
I slept well that night. My bed at the Hôtel de Russie was blessed with silent springs, a firm mattress and crisp white bed-linen that was both cool and soothing. When I awoke, it was nine in the morning. In the distance I heard the clock of Sant’ Atanasio dei Greci striking the hour. I rose, opened my window and pushed back the shutters: a wave of warm sunshine flooded over me.
To my surprise, I found that Oscar was not in his room, nor in the dining room, so I breakfasted alone, contentedly on coffee, a boiled egg and black bread. (Why are continental cooks incapable of making toast?) As I drank and ate, I leafed through a ten-day-old copy of The Times and learnt of floods in Switzerland, fires in Newfoundland, and Mr Gladstone’s imminent return to office — at the age of eighty-two. Plus ça change … (Why do I read the newspapers? Oscar doesn’t. He says the news is predictable and the leaders even more so. He is right.)
Breakfast done, I made my way to the front desk, thinking there might be a wire from home. There was none (unlike Oscar, my darling wife is not one for the extravagance of telegrams when there is nothing urgent to report), but there was a note from Oscar telling me to join him in the café in the piazza by the Porta del Popolo. I collected my straw hat (I removed the blue bandanna) and, at ten o’clock, went out to find my friend.
As I stepped out of the hotel and turned to my right, I recognised, coming along the Via del Babuino towards me, the elegant figure of Mr James Rennell Rodd, attaché at the British Embassy and Oscar’s so-called ‘enemy’. Our eyes met. Mine held his and, to my surprise, Rennell Rodd did not look away. Indeed, as he approached he touched his hat to me and smiled quite pleasantly. As we passed on the pavement, he paused briefly and, raising the waxed tips of his moustache lightly with the backs of hi
s fingertips, he said, ‘Buongiorno, Dr Doyle. This is the kind of day that makes me grateful for the posting.’
‘Good day, sir,’ I said.
‘And how is that priest?’ he enquired. ‘The old blind father from the Vatican? Is there any news?’
‘He is recovered, I believe.’
‘I’m relieved to hear it. You can never be entirely sure when “Dr Death” is in attendance.’
‘You mean Dr Munthe?’
‘I do, sir,’ answered Rennell Rodd, stroking his moustache. ‘He has quite a reputation — he boasts of “putting down” elderly patients as though they were stray dogs. No one’s actually complained, so far as I know, but if they’re dead, I suppose they wouldn’t.’ He laughed at his own joke. ‘I have no idea as to the truth of the matter.’
‘Dr Munthe seems to know his business,’ I murmured.
‘And have you met the creature he lives with? Extraordinary.‘
‘No, I’ve not yet had the pleasure.’
Rennell Rodd growled gently, sniffed the air and with his index finger lightly brushed his eyelashes upwards. ‘I think the Swedes are even more inscrutable than the Chinese, don’t you?’
I said nothing (I could not think what to say) and the English diplomatist nodded, touched his hat once more and went briskly on his way.
A minute or two later, I found Oscar, as promised, outside the café on the far side of the piazza by the Porta del Popolo. He was alone, seated at a table in the shade, dressed in a lime-coloured linen suit, nursing a long glass of Tokay and seltzer and reading a book.
As I pulled up a chair to join him, he held the volume out towards me. ‘This was written for us, Arthur. It’s called The Innocents Abroad.’
I smiled. ‘I like the title,’ I said.
‘You’ll like the book. It’s a traveller’s tale: Mark Twain at the height of his powers — wry and perceptive. It starts here in Rome, among dead Capuchin friars. I’m gripped.’ He beamed at me. ‘Has your morning been instructive?’
Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders Page 11