‘Bravo!’ I said.
‘How old are you now, lad?’ asked Oscar.
‘Fifteen, sir,’ said the boy, ‘sixteen nearly.’
‘Romeo’s age a perfect age. Stick with it, Nat. The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming. You understand that, don’t you?’
‘I don’t understand a word you say, Mr Wilde, but I know it’s good stuff.’
The boy scampered off down the corridor and Oscar, smiling, knocked on Byrd’s bedroom door.
‘Come!’ called a voice from within.
We entered the room. It was dark and uncomfortably hot. There was an unsavoury stench in the air, the odour of sweat and sour milk. ‘You do not lock your door, Mr Byrd?’ asked Oscar.
‘I have nothing to fear, I hope,’ said Byrd. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, clothed but unshaven. He did not stir as we came into the room. He sat as he was, his narrow shoulders slumped forward, his cadaverous head bowed low. A gas lamp glowed dismally on the bedside table.
‘You have heard the news?’ Oscar enquired.
Byrd nodded. His hands were clasped together on his lap. Between them he appeared to be kneading a small piece of coloured cloth, pressing it and turning it between his clenched right fist and his cupped left palm. ‘Yes,’ he said, barely above a whisper, ‘I have heard the news. Mr Sickert and Mr Brookfield came to the hotel late last night. Not to see me, of course. They came by for a nightcap, that’s all. But when they were leaving they passed me in the hallway. They told me what had happened.’
‘I am sorry,’ said Oscar.
‘McMuirtree was my friend,’ said Byrd, looking up at us for the first time. In the dim light I saw the anguish in his eyes.
‘Had you known him long?’ asked Oscar.
‘Twenty years,’ said Byrd. ‘Half a lifetime. We met at the crossroads.’ Slowly he turned his head and looked about the room, as if he were seeing it for the first time. I followed his gaze. The room was crowded with boxes, trunks and cases, the stage properties and paraphernalia from his magic show. A silence fell.
‘The crossroads?’ repeated Oscar, eventually.
‘The crossroads,’ answered Byrd sharply, ‘where McMuirtree, half-a-gentleman, took the high road to fame and fortune, and I took the low road that led to where you find me now.’
‘Ah,’ said Oscar. ‘You were a gentleman … I did not realise.’
‘Did you not?’ said Byrd, looking directly at Oscar. ‘My father was a gentleman, a merchant, from Liverpool. My mother was a lady. She died soon after I was born. My father died on my eighteenth birthday. He shot himself. He owned a ship and he lost it in the China seas. When his ship went down, his fortune sank with it. A merchant without means ceases to be a gentleman. I was at the university at the time, Mr Wilde—your university, where you won all those prizes.’
‘I did not know,’ said Oscar. ‘What college were you at? I was at Magdalen.’
‘I know,’ said Byrd, looking down at his hands once more. ‘I was at New.’
‘Ah,’ said Oscar amiably. He turned to me. ‘What was your college, Robert?’
‘I was at New College, too,’ I said.
‘I thought so.’
‘And I did not complete my degree either,’ I added.
‘I did not complete my first term,’ said Byrd. ‘I left Oxford within a fortnight of my father’s death. I took to the road. I followed in the footsteps of my childhood heroes—Maskelyne and Cooke, the great illusionists. My father had taken me to see them perform at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly. I marvelled at all that they did. I wanted to be like them. I went to work for them. I was apprenticed to them for two years. They taught me my craft.’
‘You learnt it well,’ I said.
‘I learnt the craft of it. I mastered the tricks. My technique was impressive, but according to John Maskelyne, I lacked “the immortal spark”. I did not ,,engage” the audience.’
‘You did not look them in the eye,’ suggested Oscar.
‘Precisely,’ replied Byrd, staring steadily at Oscar. ‘Exactly so. I lacked the courage. According to John Maskelyne, to be a great illusionist requires daring and what he called “panache”. I had neither.’
‘But David McMuirtree had both … enough for two?’
Byrd gave a hollow laugh. ‘You appear to know my story, Mr Wilde.’
‘I guess at it, that’s all,’ said Oscar kindly.
‘McMuirtree came to work for Maskelyne and Cooke as well. We were of an age, but he was everything that I was not. He was strong; he was handsome; he could engage the crowd. I was the better magician, but he was the bigger man. We completed our apprenticeship with Maskelyne and Cooke and took to the road ourselves.’
‘As “McMuirtree and Byrd”?’
‘Exactly so.’
‘And did you prosper?’ Oscar enquired.
‘We might have done. Thanks to Mr Maskelyne, we had contacts. We got bookings. We were at the bottom of the bill, of course, because we were young and unknown, but we had prospects. We might have prospered, given time. But McMuirtree was impatient—and easily distracted. He took up boxing. He saw it as a more certain path to glory. And then, of a sudden, almost on a whim, he joined the Metropolitan Police. They gave him opportunities to box and a steady income.’
‘He abandoned you?’
‘He went his own way, but we kept in touch. We never lost touch.’
‘But you abandoned the stage?’ asked Oscar.
‘Without McMuirtree, I had little choice. John Maskelyne was right, Mr Wilde. I lacked courage and panache. And I was not tall enough to join the Metropolitan Police.’ He looked up at us both and grimaced and opened his fingers to let a handful of green feathers flutter to the ground.
‘Poor Captain Flint,’ said Oscar.
Byrd leant forward and carefully picked up each of the tiny feathers. There were thirteen of them in all.
‘Where is your parrot now?’ asked Oscar.
‘I have laid him to rest,’ said Byrd.
I looked about the room, wondering in which box or trunk or magician’s cabinet the unhappy hotel manager had placed the mortal remains of his feathered friend.
‘Not here,’ he said, with a dry laugh. ‘At my allotment by Brompton Cemetery.’
Oscar looked surprised. ‘You have an allotment, Mr Byrd?’
‘A small one. Gardening is my only pleasure now. I work nights here at the hotel so that by day I can dig my patch of earth. I lead a simple life, Mr Wilde. “Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.”‘
Oscar smiled. ‘I recognise the line.’ He looked down at Alphonse Byrd and shifted the weight between his feet. ‘And speaking of Socrates, Mr Byrd, let me come to the point and then Mr Sherard and I can leave you in peace. At our club dinner the other Sunday, during my foolish game, you will recall that it was Lord Alfred Douglas who named Captain Flint as his intended victim?’ Byrd nodded, but said nothing. Oscar continued: ‘I am certain that Lord Alfred meant the bird no serious harm. It was just one of his less happy jokes—and for it, and on his behalf, I apologise. So the question remains: who do you think killed the parrot, Mr Byrd?’
Byrd gazed down at the feathers in his hand. ‘Who would do such a thing?’ he murmured. ‘I have no idea. None whatsoever. A monster, that’s for certain.’
Oscar pressed him. ‘You have no idea, Mr Byrd?’
‘None at all. None.’
‘And who do you think might have killed David McMuirtree?’ asked Oscar.
‘Oh,’ answered Byrd, without hesitation, ‘I’m certain the police will be able to tell you that.’
‘Really?’ countered Oscar.
‘David McMuirtree worked for the police. He was a police informer. He will have been killed by a member of the criminal fraternity bent on revenge. Of that I’m certain. His life always hung by a thread. He knew it.’
‘Is that why, at the Socrates Club dinner, when we played the game of “Murder”, you named y
our friend as your victim of choice?’
Byrd looked up at Oscar and laughed. It was an easy laugh. ‘How did you know that, Mr Wilde?’
‘I did not know it, Mr Byrd.’
‘It was a joke, that’s all. It was a joke that he appreciated. I told him about it afterwards. He often joked about the possibility of being murdered. It did not seem to trouble him.’
‘He had courage and panache,’ said Oscar.
‘“Nothing can harm a good man, either in life or after death”,’ said Byrd, taking a deep breath and closing his hands around his parrot’s feathers.
‘Ah,’ said Oscar, ‘Socrates once again.’ He turned to me and nodded, indicating that it was time for us to leave.
‘I was a classicist once, Mr Wilde,’ said Alphonse Byrd, not stirring from his bed.
‘Indeed,’ said Oscar, bowing towards him. ‘And a gentleman.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
EVER THUS
‘What now?’ I asked as we came down the steps of the Cadogan Hotel onto Sloane Street.
There was colour in Oscar’s cheeks and a sparkle in his eyes. He stood for a moment considering his next move and then announced: ‘We turn left, I think.’
He took my arm and steered me in the direction of Knightsbridge. At the very moment that he did so, there was a sudden, sharp, crashing sound behind us. We turned abruptly and saw, smashed into pieces on the pavement immediately behind us, the remains of a large black slate that had fallen from the roof of the hotel. In silence, we looked up at the building. On every floor the windows were all shut. No curtains twitched. A pair of pigeons hovered about the rooftop and landed on the chimney stack.
‘Let us go to the police,’ I said urgently.
Oscar laughed. ‘Because of a loose tile on a hotel roof? That was an accident, Robert …’
‘You might have been killed.’
‘But I wasn’t,’ he said calmly. ‘And nor were you.’
‘Let us go to the police,’ I repeated.
‘All in good time,’ he said. ‘I need to visit the post office first. I have telegrams to send to Oxford, to Eastbourne, to Bosie and to Constance.’
‘To Constance?’ I queried, as he took my arm once more and steered me in the direction of his choosing. ‘I thought we were lunching with Constance in Tite Street?’
‘We are,’ said Oscar, happily. ‘My telegram will arrive after luncheon. It will show her that we anticipated how grateful we would be.’ His arm was linked through mine. His large head was erect and held back (he liked his chestnut hair to catch the breeze), but his sloping eyes glanced down towards me and he smiled. ‘When Constance and I first met, Robert, we telegraphed each other twice a day—at least !—and at a moment’s notice I rushed back from the uttermost parts of the earth to see her for an hour and do all the foolish things that wise lovers do. Romance lives by repetition. Do you think that if I behave once more as once I did, I will feel once more for her as once I felt?’
I did not answer him. What could I say?
As we reached the corner of Knightsbridge and Brompton Road and paused at the kerbside, Oscar took his arm from mine and reached for his cigarette case. ‘What did you make of friend Byrd?’ he asked, offering me a cigarette.
‘He struck me as being a somewhat pathetic creature,’ I answered.
‘Indeed.’ He struck a match and cupped his hands around the flame. He lit my cigarette. ‘But I was intrigued to find that the great John Maskelyne had been among his mentors.’
‘Is Maskelyne one of your heroes, Oscar?’ I asked, drawing on my cigarette without much satisfaction. It was a Player’s Navy Cut and more to Oscar’s taste than mine.
‘As a master of theatrical illusion,’ said Oscar, ‘Maskelyne has no equal.’ There was a gap in the traffic and he stepped out into the road. I followed him. ‘Of course,’ he added, laughing, as he steered us between an omnibus and a milk float, ‘if he was to be run over in the street tomorrow, who knows how he might be remembered?’
‘I don’t follow you, Oscar,’ I said.
‘Maskelyne is world famous now for his bag of tricks, for his conjuring and his feats of levitation—but what will posterity make of him?’ We had reached the safety of the pavement opposite. ‘I reckon John Maskelyne’s lasting claim to fame will rest on his one non-theatrical invention: the lock for the public convenience which requires a penny coin to operate.’
‘Good grief,’ I exclaimed, dropping my cigarette into the gutter. ‘Did Maskelyne invent that?’
‘He did,’ said Oscar, ‘and the euphemism “spend a penny” that goes with it. I am a poet and a playwright who has spent a lifetime spinning words, Robert, and yet, were Ito live for a thousand years, I doubt very much that I could come up with a phrase destined to be half so famous! Alas, we cannot choose the nature of our own immortality.’
I chuckled. ‘I wonder how you will be remembered, Oscar?’
We had reached the crowded doorway of the Knightsbridge post office. Oscar paused. Customers brushed past us as they went about their business. ‘For my downfall,’ he said, smiling gently. ‘In my end will be the beginning of my notoriety. I am certain of that. I always have been.’ He held his open palm up in front of me. ‘Mrs Robinson has seen it in this unhappy hand.’ Oscar spoke often of the prospect of his premature demise and usually did so with melodramatic relish. ‘If I should be murdered at the end of this week, Robert, I will be known for all time as the playwright who died on Friday the thirteenth. I will be the Kit Marlowe of the nineteenth century, remembered as much for the manner of my death as the matter of my life.’
‘You’re not going to be murdered on Friday,’ I insisted.
As I spoke—as I uttered the very words ‘You’re not going to be murdered on Friday’—a man’s arm pushed between me and my friend and I saw the silver barrel of a gun suddenly pointed at Oscar’s chest. My heart stopped. My head reeled. ‘For God’s sake,’ I cried without thinking, grabbing the hand that held the pistol and wrenching it up into the air.
‘Hold on, old boy!’ cried Bosie Douglas, shrieking with laughter and pulling himself free of me. ‘It’s not loaded.’
I stepped back and looked in appalled amazement at the beautiful young man who stood before us. He was wearing white cricket flannels, a pea-green blazer, a yellow boater and a broad and ridiculous grin. He embraced Oscar, kissing him on the cheek, while holding out his open palm towards me. Within his palm nestled the most remarkable firearm I had ever seen. It was no larger than a cigarette case: the chamber for the cartridges was circular, silver, and embossed like a snail’s shell; the single barrel of the gun was no longer or wider than a finger. ‘Beautiful, isn’t she?’ purred Bosie. ‘She’s French. Made by a Monsieur Turbiaux in Paris. Apparently her muzzle velocity is pitiful, but what do I care? I shall only be using her once—at very close range. My dear papa won’t feel a thing … But, then, has he ever?’
‘Put it away, Bosie,’ cautioned Oscar, turning away from the young aristocrat and shading his eyes with the backs of his hands. ‘You are making an exhibition of yourself.’
Lord Alfred Douglas laughed, kissed the barrel of the little palm pistol and slipped it into his blazer pocket. ‘I’ve just wasted a shilling sending you a wire, Oscar,’ he said, stepping away from the doorway of the post office and looking disdainfully at the members of the public who were staring at him open-mouthed in astonishment. ‘I have to go to Oxford tomorrow. My tutor is demanding my presence. He says that if I fail to appear in his rooms by twelve noon, essay in hand, I shall be sent down.’
‘And what has this to do with me?’ asked Oscar warily, raising an eyebrow.
‘I want you to come with me to Oxford tomorrow, Oscar. You can write my essay for me on the train.’
‘Don’t be absurd, Bosie.’
‘Don’t be unkind, Oscar. Please. It doesn’t need to be a very long essay. Or very good. Just a page or two on “The Evolution of the Moral Idea”. I’ve not the first notion of
where to begin. You’ll do it so beautifully, Oscar, so charmingly. Please, Oscar, cher ami. My whole academic future depends on it.’
Oscar looked at the young man and sighed. He pushed the boy’s boater to the back of his head so that a heavy flop of fair hair fell across his right eye. ‘Lord Alfred Douglas, you are utterly ridiculous. You will not be sent down from the university for failing to produce an essay on time. You might be for parading in the streets of London in possession of a firearm with intent to kill. However …’ He smiled and shook his head wearily. ‘For your own protection, therefore,’ he continued, ‘and for no other reason, I will accompany you to Oxford tomorrow.’
Alfred Douglas clapped his hands together and cheered. ‘Thank you, old fellow. Thank you! And the essay?’
‘We shall work at it on the train together.’
The young man punched his older friend affectionately on the shoulder. ‘You’re the business, Oscar. You’re the best.’
‘And now, Bosie,’ said Oscar, firmly, ‘when I have despatched my telegrams, I trust you will join us for luncheon in Tite Street.’
‘No,’ said the boy at once, ‘I can’t. I’m sorry. I’m lunching with Mama. I promised. We’re celebrating Father’s latest humiliation.’ He glanced at his timepiece and grimaced. ‘I must go. I’m late.’ Suddenly he looked at us both and grinned excitedly. ‘Of course, last night you were there! At the Ring of Death—in at the kill. Apparently, there was blood all over the shop. The papers are full of it. Poor McMuirtree murdered even though he played by the Queensberry Rules!’ He brought his boater forward onto his head. ‘You must tell me all about it tomorrow, Oscar. Write the essay tonight, old man, then we can talk on the train. That’ll be so much more fun. “The Evolution of the Moral Idea”—a thousand words will do it. Nine o’clock at Paddington. The usual Oxford platform. Will you get the tickets? Bless you, Oscar. Goodbye, Robert.’
He shook my hand. He embraced Oscar. And he was gone. With Lord Alfred Douglas it was ever thus.
Oscar went into the post office to send his telegrams. I found a news vendor and bought a selection of the early editions of the evening papers. All featured the mysterious murder at Astley’s Circus on the front page and most did so in lurid detail. The Standard described McMuirtree as ‘a well-known figure in boxing circles who, it now transpires, led a double life as a police informant’. The Evening News reported that Inspector Gilmour of Scotland Yard already had a number of potential suspects in his sights,’ notorious villains bent upon destroying Mr McMuirtree because of what he knew’. On an inside page, the Star carried photographs of some of the distinguished audience who had witnessed the tragic events of the night before, including the Marquess of Queensberry, the Earl of Rosebery, Dr Arthur Conan Doyle and Mr Oscar Wilde.
Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death Page 25