Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers

by Gyles Brandreth

  ‘That I understand,’ said the prince. ‘What I want to know is: why this grotesque charade of attaching one woman’s head to another woman’s body?’

  Lord Yarborough gave a bitter laugh. ‘To allay suspicion. I had come to the conclusion that Mr Wilde and his companions had me in their sights as the murderer. Dr Doyle, in particular, convinced himself that I was inducing patients to commit suicide under hypnosis in order to have ready access to their cadavers. When he and Mr Wilde discovered that the Lavallois girl – of whom I had never heard until the night of her death – had once been a patient of Professor Charcot in Paris – albeit it several years ago – they leapt to their conclusion. They decided I was killing these girls to furnish myself with raw material for my research. I was not – and I sought to prove it to them. The open coffin that we filed past just now: that was my idea. The duchess’s body is no longer in one piece; it has been destroyed by dissection, but her head remains intact. I thought that if Wilde and Doyle could see the poor woman’s apparent corpse laid out before them, they might think twice before turning me in to the police as a murderous body-snatcher.’

  ‘And was the duke party to this?’

  ‘He was,’ said Lord Yarborough. ‘He allowed me to take the duchess’s body away last Friday. He permitted this afternoon’s “grotesque charade”, as you rightly call it. He invited Mr Wilde and his companions to be in attendance today at my suggestion. His Grace is my friend – and my paymaster. He funds the clinic.’

  ‘And you believed, did you not, Lord Yarborough, that it was the Duke of Albemarle – your friend and paymaster – who had murdered his wife?’ said Oscar.

  Lord Yarborough looked at Oscar, but made no reply.

  ‘Yet if he had done so,’ continued Oscar, ‘why would he also have murdered Lulu Lavallois? To create a diversion – to muddy the waters – to throw suspicion on to another? Perhaps.’

  The Duke of Albemarle turned to the Prince of Wales. ‘I have known you, sir, all my life. We were boys together. One day I will be your subject. I will always be your friend. You must believe me when I tell you that I am guilty of much, Your Highness, but I am not guilty of murder.’

  ‘I believe you,’ said the Prince of Wales.

  ‘And I believe you, too,’ said Oscar, ‘not that, in your estimation, Your Grace, my opinion need count for much.’

  Oscar eyed the clock on the mantelpiece once more and turned his attention to Lord Yarborough.

  ‘And, my lord, you should know that, whatever Dr Conan Doyle may have thought, I never took you for a murderer.’

  I said nothing, but glanced towards Robert Sherard, still guarding the doors to the morning room. From where he stood, he could see through the window into the street. He acknowledged my look of enquiry and shook his head.

  ‘So,’ said the Prince of Wales, impatiently, ‘Lord Yarborough is not the murderer—’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Oscar. ‘But inadvertently he led me in the direction of the man who is. Lord Yarborough revealed to me that he is a kinsman of my friend, Robert Sherard. They are first cousins – “bastard cousins” in Robert’s phrase, but “cousins nonetheless”, as my vampire-friend, Rex LaSalle, put it.’

  ‘Your “vampire-friend”?’ muttered the Prince of Wales.

  ‘He’s not a vampire, sir – nothing of the sort. Even if such creatures exist, he is not one. He claimed to be one to gain my attention – to be amusing, original, different. He wants to be “special”. He feels it is his entitlement. He has many fantastic claims to his credit. He says he has been an actor, but he can’t have been. He speaks of none of his past triumphs. He claims to be an artist, but if he is, where is the smell of turpentine and oil? He even claims to share my birthday, but knows nothing of the great events associated with the sixteenth of October: the burning of the Oxford martyrs, the guillotining of Queen Marie Antoinette of France, the death of James II of Scotland. And little of my philosophy – though he has studied it. I am one of his curious obsessions. We met – it seemed by chance – in Tite Street, outside my house, on Monday the tenth of March, Your Highness’s wedding anniversary. We spoke of that. We met again, here, at the duke and duchess’s reception. He contrived an invitation – or perhaps he just arrived and, being correctly dressed and wonderfully well favoured, simply walked through the door. Invitation cards were not collected on the night.’

  ‘This man,’ stammered the Prince of Wales, ‘this vampire-friend of yours – this man is the murderer?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Oscar, gently. ‘He told me he was a vampire – to intrigue me, so I thought. I asked him who might be his next victim – and he pointed across the crowded room and said it would be our hostess, the Duchess of Albemarle. I glanced in the general direction in which he pointed, but I did not see the duchess – there were so many ladies there. I simply laughed at what I took to be his pleasantry. Now I see that I was his alibi. He had already found the duchess and lured her into the telephone room – he is so very handsome – and cut her throat. He liked to play the vampire, so he left tell-tale incisions in her neck. He ravaged her with his knife, ruthlessly, and then returned to the party to amuse himself in my company.’

  ‘Can this be true?’ gasped the Duke of Albemarle.

  ‘I am in no doubt,’ said Oscar. ‘He murdered Louisa Lavallois, too – but that killing, unlike the first, was not premeditated. He saw Mademoiselle Lavallois. He saw His Royal Highness’s easy way with her and he seized his moment. When he caught sight of her returning to join our party after the performance, he slipped unnoticed into the curtained vestibule adjacent to the ante-room to the royal box, followed her into the water closet and murdered her – in exactly the way he had murdered the duchess. He is bold and has nerves of steel. He is fastidious, too. As he went about his work, he made sure that none of his victim’s blood was spilt on his person. And when the deed was done, he left the murder weapon wrapped in a napkin among the sandwiches.’

  ‘Where are the police?’ I cried. ‘Where are they, Oscar?’

  Oscar turned to me. ‘They will be here shortly, Arthur. Once the prince has gone, they will appear.’

  ‘But LaSalle – he must be stopped.’

  ‘He has been. I’ve seen to that,’ said Oscar. ‘Poor Nellie Atkins was his final victim. I should have realised he would try to kill her, too. When, during our enquiries, LaSalle returned with us to this house, we saw Nellie up on the landing carrying linen. She saw us looking up at her and we all saw the terror in her eyes, but I did not realise then, as I should have done, that it was because she had recognised LaSalle as the man she had seen accompanying her mistress into the telephone room.’

  ‘Who is this man, LaSalle?’

  ‘He comes from the island of Jersey, Your Highness. I don’t know his name. It’s not LaSalle – I do know that. He stole the name LaSalle from a gravestone. There was a lad about his age called Reginald LaSalle – born in October 1863. Our mutual friend Lillie Langtry knew the real Reginald – they played together when they were children. The boy was killed in a fire in the summer of 1870. I received a telegram from Jersey with the dates and details this afternoon. Our murderer – my vampire-friend – adopted the surname to give himself some sort of identity. I imagine his first name was his own invention – since Rex is Latin for “king”.’

  ‘Who is this man?’ repeated the Prince of Wales.

  ‘I really do not know, Your Highness, but he believes he is your son.’

  Case Closed

  82

  From the notebooks of Robert Sherard

  A terrible silence fell in the room. As the clock on the mantelpiece struck the hour, we heard a distant rumbling of metal wheels on cobblestones.

  I moved towards the window, from which I saw the lamps on a pair of carriages coming towards the house from the northern corner of the square. They were not police carts.

  ‘I believe this may be Your Highness’s brougham,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the Prince of Wales. ‘
I’m obliged. And thank you, Mr Wilde. I’m grateful to you for your account of these tragic events. I am relieved the culprit is under lock and key. I’ve been a victim of such lunatics before.’

  ‘Your Highness did visit the Channel Islands in January 1863,’ said Oscar.

  From his pocket Oscar had produced the small sheaf of letters and telegrams he had collected from the Langham Hotel that afternoon. He rifled through them as he spoke.

  ‘Did I? It’s possible. I get about, you know. It’s part and parcel of being Prince of Wales.’

  Oscar held his handful of papers out towards the prince. ‘Rex LaSalle believes you are his father, sir. He believes that you met his mother on the island of Jersey and made love to her – that you proposed to her and “married” her. He believes that he is the fruit of your union – born in wedlock of a kind, conceived before your official marriage to Princess Alexandra of Denmark on the tenth of March 1863.’

  ‘We have heard enough, Mr Wilde,’ said Sir Dighton Probyn. ‘It is high time His Royal Highness took his leave.’

  ‘This is madness, Mr Wilde.’

  ‘There is madness in all murder, sir – and desperation. Rex LaSalle believes he is your son because that is what his mother told him. She told no one else. It was their secret. The boy was brought up to believe that, once upon a time, his mother had exchanged vows with a prince and that one day he would be king. It was the stuff of fairy tales.’

  ‘It was stuff and nonsense,’ said the prince emphatically. Probyn and Prince Albert Victor stood at his side, willing him to leave.

  ‘Of course,’ said Oscar, folding the papers and replacing them in his pocket. ‘Pure lunacy, wild make-believe – but real to Rex LaSalle, terrifyingly so. He believed he was a prince in all but name. He believed that fate – and Your Royal Highness – had denied him his birthright. You spurned his mother, you broke your vows—’

  ‘I was just twenty-one in 1863, Mr Wilde,’ exclaimed the prince.

  ‘And she was just eighteen. And when she died, a month or so ago, according to her son, she died an old woman.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear it.’

  ‘It was her death that provoked these murders. The mother had fed the son her fantasy, but also constrained him – saved him from himself. Once she was dead, the boy had nothing more to lose. He set out on the course of madness that ended tonight in the cruel murder of poor Nellie Atkins. He left Jersey and came to London, bringing his new identity with him. He sought me out. He had read about me in the newspapers and been taken by something I’d once said. He knew that he was “special” and he vowed that one day he would be famous – or, if not famous, at least notorious. If he could not have everything, he would still have something. If he could not be a prince of the United Kingdom, he would be a prince of murderers.’

  ‘Clearly I am fortunate to have been spared,’ said the prince, now moving firmly towards the drawing-room door. ‘I take it that vile nest of vipers was this man’s doing. I’d feared the return of Irish assassins.’

  ‘Yes, it could only have been him, but the fault was mine,’ said Oscar. ‘Foolishly I had told LaSalle of our appointment with Your Highness: he knew where to send his nest of vipers and at what time.’

  Oscar and Conan Doyle moved aside to let the prince pass. The Duke of Albemarle stepped forward to open the drawing-room door.

  ‘At least he didn’t try to shoot me in the street. I’ve had that happen – more than once.’

  ‘He would not wish to kill you, sir. That would be patricide, that would be regicide – but he would kill the thing you loved. He had no plan to murder Mrs Langtry or any of your past conquests. He wished to hurt you now – to avenge his mother and repay your neglect. He came to London to kill your current mistress – and when he chanced to see you with Mademoiselle Lavallois and saw the delight you took in her company, he decided, then and there, to despatch her as well.’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ muttered the Prince of Wales.

  ‘And you have stopped this murderer in his tracks, Mr Wilde,’ announced Sir Dighton Probyn with finality. ‘You have done the state some service.’

  The party was now reassembling in the hallway. The page, Watkins, and Parker, the butler, hovered by the two princes with their hats and canes. Tyrwhitt Wilson stood with the Duke of Albemarle at the front door.

  The Prince of Wales paused a moment and, taking his cigar from his mouth, contemplated the closed door to the telephone room in the corner of the hallway.

  ‘The unfortunate maid’s body is still in there, is it?’ he asked.

  ‘It is, sir,’ said Conan Doyle. ‘The police will be here shortly. They will deal with it.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ murmured the prince. ‘The police.’

  ‘We are on our way, Your Highness,’ said Sir Dighton Probyn crisply, nodding towards Parker who pulled open the front door.

  ‘Good evening, gentlemen.’

  The Prince of Wales stood in the doorway, offering his farewells.

  ‘I’m relieved to find you’re not a murderer, Yarborough. I’m patron of your Royal Society, you know. And I’ve an aversion to scandal.’ He laughed at his own joke. ‘Good evening, Duke. I shall think of you tomorrow, during the funeral. And we shall dine soon – at the end of next month, when I get back from France. I’m going on Sunday – my little spring break, en garçon. You know how it is. I’m hoping Eddy will join me for a few days in Paris.’

  He turned to Prince Albert Victor.

  ‘You will join me, won’t you, sir?’

  Prince Albert Victor clicked his heels and bowed.

  The Prince of Wales’s pale and watery eyes scanned the remainder of the gathering. ‘Thank you, gentlemen. Good evening.’

  He turned to go, placing his hat firmly on his head as he did so, then turned back and looked directly at Oscar.

  ‘Good night, Mr Wilde. Thank you for your endeavours. I enjoyed your account of what occurred, but remember what we have agreed. It’s not to be written down, not a word of it – not even in a play with me disguised as the Prince of Carpathia or some such.’

  ‘Rest assured, Your Highness,’ smiled Oscar. ‘Your secrets are safe with me.’

  ‘And LaSalle, whoever he is – believe me, Mr Wilde: he is not my son. I am not the father of a murderer.’

  ‘I believe you, sir – completely. I have never had much faith in mind-readers and fortune-tellers.’

  The prince, now descending the steps to the pavement, turned once more. ‘What’s that you say?’

  ‘What the fortune-teller told you all those years ago – what Onofroff saw in the dark penumbra on Tuesday night – you and your eldest son and the stain of murder … All moonshine.’

  ‘Yes,’ cried the prince, disregarding Oscar and looking up at the sky. ‘It’s a fine night. And the moon’s just coming out from behind the clouds.’

  The page held open the carriage door and the equerry helped the prince climb on board.

  ‘I trust the Danish ambassador will be serving an English dinner. We shall speak of my darling wife, of course. It will be very jolly.’

  General Sir Dighton Probyn climbed into the brougham behind the prince. Tyrwhitt Wilson closed the carriage door. The prince peered out of the window and waved to us as the carriage moved off.

  The second brougham was for Prince Albert Victor, who bade us farewell on the front steps of 40 Grosvenor Square. He looked weary as he left – and sad.

  ‘So I am not a murderer, after all,’ he said to Oscar as they shook hands. ‘Thank you for that, Mr Wilde.’

  ‘I hope you find your heart’s desire, sir,’ said Oscar.

  ‘Tonight I’ll settle for simple oblivion,’ he answered, smiling. ‘I’m bound for Limehouse and “The Bar of Gold”. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, sweet prince,’ said Oscar.

  The royal party gone, we made our way back into the hallway and Parker secured the front door.

  ‘Mr Wilde,’ said the Duke of Albemarle, ‘would you and Dr
Doyle and Mr Sherard be so good as to wait here for the police. I will give Lord Yarborough a drink in the drawing room. We will be entirely at your disposal when the police arrive. Parker will bring you further refreshments. I don’t believe you ever got those cheese straws.’

  The duke and Lord Yarborough returned to the drawing room. Parker went about his business.

  Conan Doyle looked anxiously at the telephone-room door and checked his pocket watch. ‘You say LaSalle is secure. Where is he? Is he with the police now? Where are they? It’s well past eight.’

  ‘The police will be here soon, Arthur,’ I said. ‘Rest easy.’

  ‘No,’ said Oscar, laughing quietly. ‘They won’t be here soon. I told a lie. The police have not been summoned.’

  ‘In God’s name, man,’ cried Conan Doyle, ‘what have you done?’

  ‘I let LaSalle take my four-wheeler. Sherard watched it depart – an hour ago.’

  ‘I saw the passenger, Oscar. It wasn’t LaSalle.’

  ‘No, the passenger was the coachman. LaSalle was up top, driving the carriage.’

  ‘By all that’s merciful,’ cried Conan Doyle in a frenzy of distress and confusion, ‘you’ve let the man go?’

  ‘He will commit no more murder, Arthur. He killed Nellie Atkins in a moment of madness and came and told me what he had done. He whispered it to me – in the drawing room, not an hour ago.’

  ‘And you let him escape?’

  ‘To spare him the gallows. I gave him the means of escape and a poetic idea, borrowed from Shakespeare. He will commit no more murders. He promised me.’

  ‘He promised you? The murderer “promised” you! And you gave him a poetic idea borrowed from Shakespeare! This is lunacy, Oscar. We must telephone for the police – now.’

  Oscar shook his head.

  ‘We cannot use the telephone. LaSalle tore out the wires. Let us cross the road and fetch our friend Boone.’

  ‘Boone?’ Conan Doyle was quite bewildered.