Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death

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Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death Page 11

by Gyles Brandreth


  ‘Is this significant?’ repeated Sickert, putting aside the Evening Chronicle.

  ‘Probably not,’ said Oscar, lowering the newspaper and smiling at Wat Sickert, ‘but it’s intriguing, you’ll allow … In 1865, Lord Francis Douglas dies in a mountaineering accident and Lord Abergordon happens to be there. In 1892, the next Francis Douglas Lord Drumlanrig, Abergordon’s godson—says he’d like to see Abergordon dead and within forty-eight hours he is …’

  ‘Drumlanrig named Abergordon as his “murder victim”, did he?’ asked Sickert. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Oscar, ‘according to Bosie. We’ve yet to talk to Francis himself.’

  ‘But it doesn’t mean to say he did it—it doesn’t make him a murderer.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘You’ll recall,’ said Sickert, brushing dust from his trousers with the back of his hand, ‘that a year or two ago I was chased through the backstreets of King’s Cross by a posse of prostitutes all crying “Jack the Ripper!” after me.’

  ‘I recall,’ said Oscar. ‘You told me.’

  ‘And I’m not Jack the Ripper,’ protested Sickert.

  ‘I know,’ said Oscar.

  ‘All I’m saying,’ said Sickert, ‘is that one shouldn’t jump to conclusions on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence.’

  ‘I agree completely,’ cried Oscar. ‘I don’t; I haven’t; I wouldn’t; I won’t—I assure you.’ He waved the newspaper in the air. ‘I’m just intrigued by the coincidence, that’s all …’

  Sickert sniffed and twitched his moustaches and looked out of the window. We were passing through Paddock Wood. The platform was deserted.

  ‘You never told me, Wat,’ Oscar continued, smiling wickedly, ‘why it was that you were wandering the back-streets of King’s Cross in the middle of the night? Was the danger half the excitement?’

  Wat turned back from the window to look Oscar in the eye. ‘It was not the middle of the night: it was midnight. I am an English painter: I was looking for English subjects to paint. I had been sketching at a music hall in Somers Town. I got lost on my way home …’

  ‘Were you dressed as you are dressed now?’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Sickert. ‘This is a favourite coat of mine. It was winter. I wore a cape as well.’

  ‘And the hat? And those moustaches?’ Oscar chuckled. ‘No wonder the King’s Cross chapter of the daughters of joy found your appearance alarming! I’m surprised they didn’t mistake you for one of Bram’s vampires.’ I laughed. Sickert managed a flicker of a smile. Oscar leant forward and put his hand on his friend’s knee. ‘Nobody believes that you are Jack the Ripper, Wat. And I don’t believe that Bosie’s brother murdered Lord Abergordon. What’s more, Scotland Yard assure us that Miss Scott-Rivers’s death was accidental, Mr Sherlock Holmes appears to be safe in the hands of Conan Doyle, and I’ve no doubt that when we reach Eastbourne we will find Bradford Pearse equally safe and sound—in good health, in good heart and ready to tell us his secret.’

  ‘His secret?’ queried Sickert, recovering his composure. ‘He didn’t say anything about a secret.’

  ‘We all have our secrets, Wat,’ said Oscar, smiling. ‘I have mine. You have yours. Bradford Pearse has his. He confessed as much in his letter.’

  ‘Did he?’ said Sickert, clearly perplexed. ‘He told me he was frightened. He made no mention of any secret.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Oscar. He reached into his inside pocket and produced Pearse’s letter. He opened it and passed it across to Wat. ‘Read the final paragraph again.’

  Sickert turned to the end of the letter and looked closely at Pearse’s scrawl. He read the conclusion slowly and out loud: ‘“Come and see me if you can spare the time. I’m frightened to be honest with you.”‘ He looked at Oscar. ‘It seems pretty clear to me. The man is frightened. He says so.’

  Oscar retrieved the letter and examined it once more. ‘I wonder …’ he said, reflectively, ‘… Pearse’s lack of precision when it comes to punctuation leaves scope for ambiguity, I fear. I may be mistaken, but I took it that your friend’s final sentence was an admission that he is fearful of telling you the truth. He is saying, “Wat, I’m frightened to be honest with you” is he not?’

  We reached Eastbourne Station at a little after half past six. The train ran late. There was a points failure at Polegate. The recently built Devonshire Park Theatre—the jewel in Eastbourne’s already well-studded theatrical crown—was situated to the southwest of the town, a tidy walk from the town centre but only a stone’s throw from the sea. We arrived at the stage door, at the rear of the theatre, at a minute after seven. We stood in the street, in fading light, addressing the stage doorkeeper through a small square grille cut into the stage door at about head height. From what little we could see and hear of him, he was a lugubrious old codger, who hailed from Lancashire and gave the impression of having spent a lifetime working in the theatre, loathing every minute of it. ‘No visitors before the show,’ he grunted, without so much as glancing in our direction. He was implacable, moved by neither Wat’s pleading nor, more remarkably, by the rattle of Oscar’s shiny shillings. ‘No visitors,’ he repeated.

  ‘Is Mr Pearse definitely in the theatre?’ Oscar asked, his face pressed against the grille. The doorman did not answer. We could hear him slurping a beverage of some kind. He belched slowly as Oscar repeated the question. ‘Is Mr Pearse definitely in the theatre? We need to know.’

  ‘He’d better be,’ grunted the doorman, ‘or who else are they going to murder in the fourth act?’

  As we abandoned the stage door and made our way around the building towards the box office at front of the theatre, Oscar shook his head and sighed. ‘As you will be aware, gentlemen, I have made it my life’s work to entertain the working classes, enrage the middle classes and fascinate the aristocracy—but I do believe I’ve just met my match. Accrington ‘Arry here is in a class of his own, beyond my reach.’

  We secured three seats for the evening’s entertainment without difficulty. Murder Most Foul, ‘a modern melodrama in the old tradition’, had failed to draw the town. Oscar had hoped to be seated in the mid-stalls for the performance, but Mr Standen Triggs, the theatre manager, who chanced to be on duty, proved himself to be one of nature’s aristocrats by recognising Oscar the instant we entered the foyer and being evidently, obsessively, utterly fascinated by him. Mr Triggs was quite overwhelmed by the honour of having so great a man of letters as Mr Wilde in his theatre and insisted, consequently, that our party be seated in the royal box, as his personal guests, with his humble self in awed attendance all evening. From the moment we arrived at the Devonshire Park to the moment we departed three hours later, I don’t believe Triggs took his eyes off Oscar once. He gazed upon him, fixated, as though Oscar were the Queen of Sheba.

  Triggs, as bonhomous and voluble as his stage doorkeeper was dour and taciturn, held a certain fascination himself. He was a small man in his mid-fifties, dapper in his dress, dainty in his movements. His diminutive head was quite extraordinary: it was round like a radish and separated from his shoulders by a long, thin, stalk-like neck. As he spoke, it bobbed from side to side like a child’s toy. He was virtually bald; his cheeks were pink and smooth, almost velvety; his nose was small but sharply pointed, with a red tip that looked as if it had been applied by means of theatrical make-up; his watery red-rimmed eyes were perfectly round and disconcertingly protuberant. While he spoke repeatedly of the ‘great unbridled joy’ he felt at our presence, he seemed all evening to be on the brink of emotional collapse. His hands shook; sweat trickled down his face and neck in a constant stream; time and again his bulging eyes filled to overflowing with heavy tears.

  Before the performance and during each of three long intervals he entertained us in his office and talked incessantly. His exuberance and enthusiasm were both comical and touching. He served us a warm and peculiarly unpleasant Alsatian wine. ‘Excellent, is it not?’ he asked, crying and laughing as
he spoke. He sang the praises of everybody and everything. His theatre, only eight years old, was ‘probably, possibly—no, certainly’ the finest Italianate theatre outside of Italy. His employers-the Devonshire Park and Baths Company—were, ‘without question’, the fairest, the most decent you could hope to work for, and, while he had not yet met the new Duke, nor indeed the new Duke’s new Duchess, he had heard only good things of them— ‘only very good things, very good things indeed’. And as for our friend Bradford Pearse … ‘Ever an Eastbourne favourite … Is there a better provincial player of his generation and particular build? I think not. Is there a more popular man of the theatre— present company excepted? I know not.’

  ‘Pearse is well-liked by his colleagues?’ asked Oscar, whose own eyes now seemed to be watering (possibly on account of the wine).

  ‘He hasn’t an enemy in the world,’ declared Mr Triggs. ‘Indeed,’ he added, leaning towards Oscar confidentially, ‘so liked and respected—and trusted—is your Mr Pearse that we allow him a privilege allowed to no other player on the touring circuit …’

  Oscar raised his eyebrows enquiringly.

  ‘We permit him to stay on the premises overnight. It’s against all the rules.’

  ‘He sleeps here?’ asks Sickert.

  ‘Yes,’ answered Triggs, still not taking his eyes off Oscar. ‘Bradford Pearse is customarily short of funds, but he’ll never be short of friends. When he’s appearing at the Devonshire Park Theatre we allow him to use his dressing room as his digs.’

  ‘Your stage doorman permits this?’ murmured Oscar in amazement.

  Mr Standen Triggs nodded solemnly, wiping his eyes the while. ‘Such is the standing of Bradford Pearse in his chosen profession,’ he said.

  It cannot be pretended that the professional standing of Mr Bradford Pearse was much enhanced by his appearance in Murder Most Foul.

  ‘This is not bad enough to be good,’ Oscar whispered to me as the house lamps were dimmed for the final act. ‘The word “tosh” was coined, I believe, in the year 1528.1 have long wondered why. Now I know. This play is tedious twaddle. No wonder Mr Triggs is yawning at the back of the box. I do hope friend Pearse is murdered sooner rather than later.’

  It was not to be. The last act of Murder Most Foul was the longest—or, at least, so it seemed. In the drama, Pearse played the part of a cruel husband and father, a ship’s captain, who neglects his wife and family when he is at sea and beats and brutalises them without remorse whenever he returns home. In the final moments of the play, his wife decides she can endure his cruelty no longer and, using a pistol she has stolen from a passing stranger—a character from the complex subplot: a Peruvian cattle rustler if I remember right!—she shoots her husband in the back as, in a drunken rage, holding a bull-whip, he turns away from her, his hand raised to beat their misshapen, cowering, blind, consumptive daughter …

  It was Oscar who said, famously, ‘One must have a heart of stone to read of the death of Little Nell without laughing.’ During the final moments of Murder Most Foul I noticed my friend leaning over the edge of the royal box at the Devonshire Park Theatre with his teeth clamped around his knuckles.

  Sickert, seated immediately behind Oscar, hissed: ‘What if the gun is loaded?’

  Oscar stifled a snigger. ‘If it is, we can shoot the author.’

  Sickert persisted: ‘Someone threatened Bradford’s life. If he’s to die, tonight’s the night …’

  Oscar turned to Sickert. ‘Hush, man. Let him die in peace.’

  As Oscar spoke, on stage the gun exploded. The burst of noise was shocking. From the sparsely filled auditorium, there were cries of ‘No!’

  From the back of the box, a freshly roused Standen Triggs muttered, ‘Realistic, eh?’

  On stage, the actress playing Pearse’s wife dropped the smoking pistol to the ground and covered her eyes in anguish; the young girl playing Pearse’s daughter looked, wild-eyed, towards her mother and let forth a piercing scream; and Bradford Pearse himself, centre-stage, swung about to face the audience. His chest and hands were crimson with blood; his eyes were closed, his face contorted. He staggered, first to the left, next to the right; suddenly, he stumbled forwards, towards the footlights; for a moment it seemed he might fall into the orchestra pit; instead, with arms suddenly outstretched, he stepped abruptly back and collapsed, like a dead-weight, onto the floor.

  The curtain fell.

  ‘Worth waiting for, eh?’ exclaimed Mr Standen Triggs, leaping to his feet to lead the standing ovation.

  We stood, too, and cheered and gazed down into the near-empty auditorium and saw that others were also standing to offer their applause.

  After several moments—the applause was beginning to falter—the stage curtain rose once more. There, behind the footlights, in line, side by side, hand in hand, heads held high, ready to take their call, were all the members of the cast of Murder Most Foul bar one. Bradford Pearse was nowhere to be seen.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘I FEAR THE WORST’

  ‘He’s milking it,’ chuckled Mr Standen Triggs. ‘He’ll make his entrance on the second call.’

  ‘I wonder,’ murmured Oscar.

  The curtain fell and rose again. Still there was no sign of Bradford Pearse. As she took her bow, the leading lady had her eyes cast towards the wings.

  ‘Here he comes,’ announced an excited Mr Triggs.

  ‘I think not,’ said Oscar, now sounding concerned. ‘Let us go backstage.’

  As the applause from the auditorium evaporated, the stage curtain fell for the second time. Before it hit the ground—with a disconcerting clanking sound: its hem must have been lined with metal weights—we saw the feet of the actors beneath it breaking rank and moving swiftly off the stage.

  ‘Come!’ commanded Oscar.

  ‘Stay!’ countered Triggs, stepping to the front of the box and, with a trembling but proud hand, indicating the orchestra pit below. ‘We’re in the royal box—this is our moment,’ he declared. As he pulled himself smartly to attention, the five elderly members of the Devonshire Park Theatre’s resident orchestra struck up the National Anthem. They played as though their hands all trembled as much as Triggs’s. Oscar stopped in his tracks and stood, stock still, facing the auditorium, chest forward, head erect, face frozen. Though unbearded and thirteen years younger and five inches taller, nonetheless he gave a passable impression of the Prince of Wales.

  The moment the anthem was done, Oscar was galvanised. He turned to Sickert. ‘We must find Pearse,’ he hissed.

  ‘Of course,’ said Mr Triggs, taking Oscar by the elbow, ‘I hear you, but first …’ Beaming broadly, nodding happily, his face glistening with sweat, his eyes more bulbous than ever, the theatre manager indicated the orchestra pit once more. The conductor, his baton raised, looked up towards us and, graciously, inclined his head. As Oscar bowed back (a mite less graciously), the quintet of ripe virtuosi embarked on a selection of favourite melodies from the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan.

  ‘Ah, Patience!’ cried Oscar, closing his eyes.

  ‘In your honour, Mr Wilde,’ gurgled Mr Triggs, ‘and they are raising the house lights for us so that you can appreciate our domed ceiling. The cherubs and caryatids are by Schmidt of Holloway. I know you will admire their finesse.’

  ‘I do!’ exclaimed Oscar, despairingly, gazing up towards the plasterwork. ‘But I am also anxious about our friend, Bradford Pearse.’

  ‘Indeed,’ nodded Triggs, still smiling but now moist-eyed. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Oscar.

  ‘Follow me,’ said Triggs. He waved from the box towards the orchestra pit. The selection from Gilbert and Sullivan ceased abruptly. ‘Come, gentlemen. Let us find friend Pearse. Most unlike him to miss his call, I agree.’

  Moving lightly, though breathing heavily, like an asthmatic pixie, Mr Triggs led us out of the royal box and along a short curving corridor towards what he called ‘the pass door’. ‘This takes us direc
tly to the dressing rooms,’ he explained. ‘We don’t have any of your West End comforts here, Mr Wilde, but by provincial standards we don’t do too badly.’ As we passed through the door, it was as if we had crossed a frontier. Instantly, we left behind the gilt and red-plush of the land of plenty and found ourselves in a dark and barren country: the walls were bare brick, the floors were bare boards, and the light so dim we could barely see the way ahead.

  ‘Pearse’s room is the first on the right,’ said Triggs. ‘Allow me to go ahead.’

  ‘Can you see?’ asked Oscar.

  Mr Triggs appeared to be feeling his way along the wall. He laughed somewhat nervously. ‘It takes my eyes a moment to adjust,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’ In the gloom, I could see him peering at a name card fixed to the dressing-room door. ‘Here we are,’ he said. He knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again.

  ‘Go in,’ instructed Oscar.

  ‘I fear the worst,’ whispered Sickert.

  Standen Triggs felt for the door handle, found it and turned it slowly. ‘Visitors, Mr Pearse,’ he called as he pushed open the door.

  We crowded around the doorway not knowing what to expect.

  ‘Is he there?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘Bradford!’ shouted Wat Sickert, stepping forward into the room. We followed him in. ‘He’s not here,’ said Sickert, turning to Oscar. ‘He’s gone.’

  The room was small and square, low-ceilinged, windowless and dank, like a prison cell. With four of us standing in it, there was scarcely room to move. It was lit by a solitary gas lamp fixed high up on the wall that faced the door. Below the lamp was a dressing table covered with a half-torn piece of towelling-cloth, littered with assorted sticks of theatrical make-up. On the floor, below the dressing table, was a narrow palliasse that ran the length of the room, with a navy-blue sailor’s blanket rolled up at one end to form a bolster. To the right of the table was a small deal wardrobe, its door hanging open. The wardrobe was quite empty. Thrown across the wooden chair that faced the dressing table was Pearse’s costume: a pair of breeches, a coat and the blood-soaked shirt he had worn in the final scene of the play. I noticed Oscar dipping his fingers into the blood and bringing them to his lips to taste.

 

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