Conan Doyle sat in stunned silence, mouth agape. Finally, he swallowed and said, “Y-you’re quite sure, Oscar? You’re sure he meant—”
“I am quite sure, Arthur. I am quite sure he meant that he and Lord Howell were lovers in the manner of the ancient Greeks.”
Neither man spoke for a full minute. The only sound was the Italian’s soft weeping.
“Well,” Conan Doyle finally managed to say. “That explains why the wheels of British justice turned so quickly for once.”
“Yes,” Wilde agreed. “It simply wouldn’t do for it to become common knowledge that the war minister, a decorated hero of the Crimea, practiced the Uranian way of love. And, most unforgivably, with his valet, a man of the lower classes.”
Both looked up at the approaching tread of heavy feet. A group of sober-faced men crowded in through the cell door: Prison Warden Bland, a black frocked priest, Dr. Lamb, and two uniformed prison warders. It was a few minutes before nine. They had come for Vicente.
The hour of execution was nigh.
The young Italian saw them, too. Realizing that his death was but moments away, his face turned ghastly white. He pulled something from beneath the woolen blanket and stared at it for one last time: a square of folded paper and a small photograph. He kissed the photograph, muttering in Italian, and then looked up at Wilde with tears in his eyes and pressed them into his hands.
Wilde glanced at them: a photograph of a young woman, by resemblance a sister or cousin, along with a tightly folded letter damp with tears and tattered from many readings.
The valet muttered something to Wilde, and even though Conan Doyle could not completely understand the meaning, he fully understood the intent: the valet was pleading for Wilde to write to the woman in the photograph, informing her what had become of him.
“Gentlemen,” the prison warden announced. “The hour is at hand. Please go. We must make the prisoner ready to face his sentence.”
* * *
“I want to leave this wretched place at once,” Wilde said in a taut voice. “I do not wish to witness what is about to happen.”
“Nor I.”
But to their surprise, instead of returning to the front gate, the thuggish guard led them into an open quadrangle milling with newspaper men, civic officials, the idly curious, and, most shockingly, a few well-dressed society women, all attending on the pretense of fulfilling some form of civic duty in witnessing an execution, and not at all idle thrill seeking.
“You fail to understand,” Conan Doyle explained to the guard, “we wish only to leave.”
The guard did not attempt to conceal his amusement. “Too late to get squeamish now. The gates are locked. No one comes or goes until the execution is over.” He flashed them a Marquis de Sade grin. “Sorry, gents.”
Trapped.
“What in God’s name is that?” Wilde said, pointing at something.
The corner of the yard featured a strange construction with a steeply pitched roof complete with a glass skylight to allow daylight in. A low fence screened the lower half from view.
“The execution shed,” Conan Doyle answered. “It contains the gallows and the trap door.”
“Surely not?” Wilde said in a tone of utter revulsion. “It resembles a macabre Punch and Judy theater!”
The two friends were pinned against a wall, helpless to escape. The restive crowd fell silent as the condemned man, his arms pinioned at his sides, was led out onto the gallows platform. Dr. Lamb and a chaplain preceded the executioner, with Prison Warden Bland following at the rear. As the chaplain wobbled forward to give the prisoner last rites, he tripped and nearly sprawled full length.
“Wonderful,” Wilde said. “As at any good execution, the chaplain is drunk. Could this get any more delightful?”
The crowd of gentlemen began to push and jostle, subtly scrumming for a spot with the best view of the gallows.
An elderly man stepped to his right and Conan Doyle glimpsed the back of a head with long fiery red curls tumbling down about the shoulders. The redhead looked at something to his right and Conan Doyle instantly recognized the face. “That is the Marquess of Gravistock, Rufus DeVayne! He companioned the Prince of Wales to your play the other night.”
“Really? Are you sure?” Wilde said, squinting at the figure. “I doubt I would have forgotten meeting a youth so handsome.”
“You didn’t, Oscar. You were in your dressing room, sulking.”
“Ah, yes.” Wilde remembered, rather sourly.
A raffish young swell in a white silk topper also clapped eyes on the marquess and called out to him, “Rufus, you young fiend, is that you?”
The marquess turned to look and unleashed a wicked smile. “Hello, Bunky,” he replied. “It is I, manifested in the flesh.”
“What drags you from your rooms to this pest hole? Are you an enthusiast for executions?”
“Don’t be dull, Bunky. Everyone here is an enthusiast for executions, you included. I am here because a taste of death fires the blood. And in the hopes of gaining a trinket.” He flashed a pair of scissors. “I hope to snip a lock of hair, an earlobe, anything. Such talismans are imbued with great power.”
The young swell barked a laugh and said, “Just like at school. Still worshiping the devil, eh?”
“You’ve got it wrong, Bunky. It is he who worships me!”
The marquess seemed impervious to the scandalized stares launched at him by everyone within earshot of the remark. Conan Doyle harrumphed his disapproval and commented, “The young marquess seems rather a cad.”
But Oscar Wilde did not answer. He was staring fixedly at the young aristocrat in a pique of rapture.
On the gallows, the chaplain meandered to the end of his prayer and made a rather sloppy sign of absolution. Vicente was shuffled forward onto the trap by a warder gripping either arm. One dropped to his knees out of sight behind the wooden palisade as he bound the Italian’s ankles together.
“I refuse to witness this,” Wilde said, turning his face away.
The executioner stepped forward and drew a white hood over Vicente’s face, the fabric of which sucked in and out with each quickening breath. A warder handed the executioner the thick hawser with its heavy noose, and he slipped it over the young man’s head. Vicente’s knees visibly quivered as he took the weight of the rope.
The crowd’s subdued murmuring drained away. From somewhere, the execution bell began to toll the hour. Clong …
At the bell’s first strike, a flight of grubby pigeons burst up from the rooftops, wings creaking as they flapped around the courtyard, once, twice, three times, and then fled away.
… clong … clong …
The executioner gripped the long handle of the trap release.
… clong … clong …
Wilde’s head, against his volition, turned back to look.
… clong … clong … clong … clong. The bell tolled nine times and stilled. A resonating silence spread out in all directions.
The executioner yanked the handle, a catch released, and the double doors of the drop fell open with a guttural sound. Vicente seemed to hang suspended for a moment and then plummeted from view with a dreadful suddenness. The rope snapped taut and quivered with tension. All breath sucked from the crowd. Silence reigned. Some looked distraught. Some smiled. Others held a mystical look upon their faces, as if savoring the lingering taste of death.
A slow murmur began at the front of the crowd and swept back to where Conan Doyle and Wilde stood. For a moment they were puzzled, but then they understood why. The hanging rope was jerking from side to side and a sudden realization swept the crowd.
The executioner had botched the job.
The drop had not broken Vicente’s neck, and he was strangling to death. His muffled screams, though faint, rose from the drop pit. They continued for several long moments, the rope penduluming back and forth with its dread weight, until it shivered and stilled.
Conan Doyle’s mouth filmed with bile
. The death had been neither clean nor instantaneous.
“Oh, badly done!” a voice chortled—unmistakably that of the marquess.
A chorus of boos went up, and suddenly apple cores, crumpled newspapers, and every missile that came to hand began to soar from the crowd, aimed at the bungling executioner. The chief warden, the executioner, and the prison guards cowered beneath the fusillade and looked from one to the other with dismay.
“I—I f-feel … r-rather … ill…” Wilde stammered out. His brow beaded with perspiration. His wan complexion had grown clammy and waxen.
“Take a deep breath. Fill your lungs. Breathe man, breathe!”
Wilde’s knees quivered. Conan Doyle gripped his friend by the arm and began to push him through the booing crowd toward an exit. The Scottish author was a large and strong man, but Wilde was over six foot and weighed several stone more. If the Irishman fainted in the press of the crowd, he would prove an immovable object.
“Come, Oscar. Keep walking. It’s just the shock. You’ll be all right. Breathe deep. Fill your lungs with—”
“Going dark … can’t see…”
“A few feet more,” Conan Doyle grunted through clenched teeth as he strained to hold his friend up. “Just a few feet more.”
“I f-fear…,” Wilde gasped, “… it . . is … rather … too … laaaaaaaayyyte…”
Wilde’s knees buckled and he sagged to the ground, dragging Conan Doyle down with him.
CHAPTER 19
RIGHT COFFIN, WRONG CORPSE
“Stop thrusting that dagger into my brain, Arthur, I am quite recovered!”
Wilde flailed a clumsy hand, trying to push aside the smelling salts Conan Doyle was wafting under his nose.
They were seated once again in the sanctuary of Wilde’s carriage. Conan Doyle reached over to let down the window and tried to guide the Irishman’s large head outside.
“What on earth are you doing?” Wilde demanded, firmly resisting.
“You need air. Take a good lungful.”
“Are you mad? The air is dangerously fresh. What I require is a cigarette.”
Against Conan Doyle’s repeated urgings, Wilde insisted on lighting up one of his Turkish cigarettes. Despite all logic, after several long, lung-tingling drags, he seemed to revive and was finally well enough to look about and take note of where he was. The driver had drawn up a little ways from the prison gates. Having slaked their blood lust, the mob was dissipating, as revelers repaired to alehouses and brothels to satiate other appetites.
“I’m afraid we’re trapped here until the crowd thins,” Conan Doyle said. “Plus, you still look a little green.” He tried again with smelling salts, but Wilde pushed his hand away.
“I am Irish. Those of us who hail from the Emerald Isle are given to mossy complexions.” He dug in his coat pocket and drew out a hip flask. “This is what I require to revivify body and soul.” He uncapped the flask, took a long swig, and offered it to his friend. “A nip for the doctor, too?”
“A tonic I fully concur with.” Conan Doyle took a swig and gasped out a liquorish breath as high-proof brandy burned down his throat, kindling a fire in his belly.
Wilde eyed the milling crowd with distaste and said, “I do not wish to tarry in this insalubrious place. Have you seen enough, Arthur? Why do we loiter?”
“I am struck by the presence of the marquess. A strange coincidence. First he is at the theater, bosom companion of the Prince of Wales, and now here.”
“When it comes to bosom companions, Prince Edward’s current mistress has few equals.”
“Yes, very droll, Oscar. I see you are fully recovered.”
“The marquess’s attendance at one of my plays is fully understandable—genius attracts the attractive—but I cannot imagine why such an elegant young aristocrat would frequent something so horrid as a hanging.”
“You heard what he said to that young swell. Plus, I noticed the other night that he wore a pendant about his neck—a pentacle.”
“A pentacle? Then perhaps he truly is an aficionado of the occult.”
“He seemed quite boastful of the fact when his friend ‘Bunky’ recognized him.”
“I thought that was a jest. How very odd.” Wilde mused a moment and said, “Still, it is the meek and mild Doctor Lamb that intrigues me.”
“How so? He struck me as a noble man. He has renounced monetary gain to volunteer his talents to the least fortunate in society.”
Wilde’s mouth puckered skeptically. “Yes, he said as much, and yet his clothes argue volubly against his claimed state of penury. You did notice his attire?”
Despite being the author of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle was embarrassed to admit he did not share his fictional creation’s powers of observation. He shook his head, abashedly.
“Our poor-as-a-church-mouse physician was kitted out in fawn doeskin trousers, a very fine shirt of Irish linen with French cuffs, and a beautifully tailored waistcoat from a gent’s haberdashers I only frequent when I am feeling at my most self-indulgent. The prison doctor may indeed receive a pittance of a yearly stipend, but he obviously enjoys someone’s patronage when it comes to procuring his wardrobe.”
“Perhaps he supplements his income by other means.”
“A darker, but entirely credible possibility.”
Conan Doyle frowned. “Of course, bodysnatching is largely a thing of the past, but medical schools still require fresh corpses for students of dissection.”
“And as prison physician of Newgate, the selfless Doctor Lamb would be in a most convenient position to procure the very freshest of pickings.”
“I am curious to witness the fate of the body. The executed are left hanging for a full hour to ensure death. We will just have to wait—”
He was interrupted as the prison’s smaller gate-within-a-gate flung open. A cadre of uniformed prison guards jogged out and began to drive the crowd back with threats, curses, and the occasional jab of a truncheon in the ribs. The main gate opened behind them and a hearse drove out drawn by two black horses with plumed heads. The well-heeled spectators that had been allowed inside the prison now also spilled out of the main gate, joining the mob.
“But there’s the hearse now,” Wilde pointed out. “Surely an hour has not elapsed?”
Conan Doyle’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “No, it has not. Clearly they are not following protocol.”
With jeers and cheers, the waiting rabble surged forward to greet the hearse, a sea of upraised hands, all jostling for a single touch of the dread black carriage.
“What are they doing?”
“A morbid tradition. They all seek to lay a hand upon the hearse … for luck.”
“Ugh!” Wilde had had enough and was about to insist they depart when he spotted a mane of fiery red hair among the scrum of figures darting dangerously close to the turning wheels.
The Marquess of Gravistock.
Meanwhile, Conan Doyle’s attention was fixed upon the driver’s seat of the hearse. The noble Doctor Lamb rode alongside a funeral groom in a top hat draped in black crepe: a man with a familiar port-wine stain.
Conan Doyle suddenly flung open the carriage door and dropped to the cobblestones. “I will leave you now, Oscar.”
“What? Wait! Where are you going?”
“To follow the hearse. I want to see the body placed in the ground. I suggest you return to your club until you recover.”
Without waiting for a reply, Conan Doyle plunged into the milling crowd and soon vanished from sight. Wilde strained to keep his eyes on the long mane of fiery red curls amongst the river of bobbing top hats. He followed the marquess’s progress along Newgate Street until he climbed into his personal carriage.
A very distinctive carriage, as it turned out.
Wilde rapped his knuckles on the carriage ceiling.
“Yes, sir?” his driver called down.
“Gibson, I want you to follow that carriage.”
“Which one, sir? I see a numb
er of carriages.”
“This one is hard to miss. It’s a rather handsome yellow landau … and it’s being drawn by four zebras.”
* * *
Feeling slightly foolish, Conan Doyle trotted along behind the hearse, in the coma of a comet’s tail of whooping and skipping street arabs. But as the crowd thinned, the hearse gained speed and began to draw away and Conan Doyle feared it would leave him behind. Fortunately, he was able to steal a hackney cab someone else had bribed to wait behind, by offering the driver a bribe of a larger denomination, and resumed the pursuit. Soon the ominous hulk of Newgate fell behind the hearse and its following cab.
It proved to be a short trip. A brief trot up Farringdon Road ended at Spa Fields, London’s most infamous burial ground, a barren two-acre plot of unconsecrated mud where the poor, the indigent, and the corpses of executed prisoners were interred at a minimum expense to the state. Separated from the surrounding tenements by only a tumbledown wooden fence, a stench of putrefaction hovered about the place, released by the eructations of gas from corpses ripening like vile fruit beneath a thin skimming of mud. Conan Doyle watched as the gates opened and closed behind the hearse and instructed his driver to pull up a dozen feet beyond.
He stepped down from the cab and, removing his top hat and coat to be less conspicuous, tossed them back onto the seat. “Wait here,” he called up to the driver.
“Wait ’ere?” the incredulous driver replied. “With the stink of contagion shiverin’ in me lungs? I’d be like to catch me death!”
Conan Doyle dug in a pocket and tossed up a half crown. “Another if you stay.” And with that, he ducked through one of the many holes in the dilapidated fence.
Although he knew of Spa Fields’s reputation, he was not fully prepared for the blasted vista that greeted him: a churned field of muck, trampled flat of grass and trees. Here and there, a few tilting gravestones, like a mouthful of crooked teeth, marked the most recent burials. In places the ground appeared to be moving and alive, swarmed as it was by fat bluebottles and shabby crows rooting amongst the broken clods for a greedily gobbled morsel.
Stumping across the landscape like damned souls wandering in purgatory were the gravediggers: lumpen golems conjured from grime and filth; although, to call them gravediggers was part misnomer, for they spent as much time digging up as they did digging down as Spa Fields recycled graves with unseemly haste to make room for new interments.
The Dead Assassin Page 18