‘That evening as we played our game, in his mind Alphonse Byrd played with the idea of murdering David McMuirtree. On Sunday night, I imagine, it was little more than an idle fancy—a dangerous and delicious dream. But on Monday morning, when Byrd learnt of the death of Elizabeth Scott-Rivers, and on Tuesday when he read of the death of Lord Abergordon, Byrd saw that his dream might become a reality. He sensed that, suddenly, his destiny was calling. And he seized the moment. He claimed the hour. He killed his own parrot.’
‘Hardly a crime,’ muttered Bosie Douglas. ‘It was a revolting creature—fractious, repellent.’
‘But Byrd loved that parrot,’ I said, addressing Oscar. ‘Everyone told us that.’
Oscar smiled at me. ‘And because Byrd loved his parrot, and because the parrot loved and trusted him, he was able to take it in his hands and wring its neck without the parrot making a single sound—without the least flapping of wings, without the merest fuss.’ Oscar looked about the room complacently. ‘I knew that it must have been Byrd who killed the parrot because only Byrd could have killed it silently.’
Charles Brookfield leant forward and rested his notebook on the dining table. ‘You are telling me that it was Mr Byrd who killed the parrot, are you?’
‘I am, Charles,’ said Oscar, sucking the last out of his cigarette. ‘That’s why I seated him on your right tonight. I felt it was the least I could do.’ Oscar widened his eyes and extinguished his cigarette. ‘After all, you’re paying thirteen guineas for the privilege.’
Brookfield turned in his seat and sat back and gazed fixedly on Alphonse Byrd, tilting his head slowly to one side and then the other—as a man might apprise an auction lot or study an unfamiliar piece of sculpture. Byrd did not flinch. His immobile features betrayed nothing. Inspector Gilmour began to ease himself away from the table.
‘My time-keeper is silent.’ Oscar glanced over his shoulder at the clock that hung above the dining-room door. ‘Three minutes more, and then I’m done.’ He raised his voice a little and quickened his pace as he resumed his story. ‘Alphonse Byrd murdered Captain Flint in his office on Tuesday morning, the third of May. He killed the parrot with his bare hands, tore the feathers from its back and then squeezed some of the poor creature’s blood into a silver hip flask—just such a flask as I have here.’
With one hand he held open his jacket; with the other, from an inside pocket, he produced an elegant silver drinking flask. ‘Never forget, gentlemen, that Alphonse Byrd is a magician trained by the great John Maskelyne. Byrd may lack the immortal spark, but he was tutored by a master. He secreted the bird’s body, blood and feathers in a drawer in his desk until he needed them. At a little before three o’clock that afternoon, when the coast was clear, he slipped from his office into the hotel lobby and—in a matter of moments, in the twinkling of an eye—he created the macabre scene of carnage that, minutes later, my wife and Edward Heron-Allen discovered there.
‘Byrd is, as McMuirtree was, a showman. But, unlike McMuirtree, Byrd, by his own admission, lacks courage. He set himself on the path to murder when he killed Captain Flint, but he did not truly commit himself until later in the week—when he heard the news of the disappearance and presumed death of Bradford Pearse. It was then, and only then, that Byrd decided that the gods were indeed on his side. But, of course, it is when the gods wish to punish us that they answer our prayers …’
Oscar picked up the silver hip flask from the table and slowly turned it over in his hands. ‘Alphonse Byrd may lack courage, and panache, but he does not lack ingenuity. He murdered David McMuirtree in a manner most ingenious. He might have killed him in Tite Street at our magic show—but that would have been too obvious, too dangerous: Byrd himself would have been on the scene and the first to be suspected. No, Byrd contrived to kill McMuirtree at one remove—surrounded by admirers, in the Ring of Death at Astley’s Circus, while Byrd himself was here, at the Cadogan Hotel, surrounded by witnesses, a mile and more away. Like all the best magic effects, the murder of David McMuirtree was achieved with beautiful simplicity. The concept was all. The execution, next-to-nothing. All Byrd had to do was tamper with McMuirtree’s boxing gloves and send his victim on his way …’
‘Did he line the gloves with cockspurs as I suspected?’ asked Edward Heron-Allen.
‘No,’ said Oscar. ‘Cut-up bits of razor from a magician’s home-made guillotine.’
The clock above the door began to strike the hour. Archy Gilmour and Roger Ferris got to their feet and positioned themselves at either side of Alphonse Byrd. Oscar looked along the table and smiled.
‘It’s midnight,’ said Inspector Gilmour.
‘Yes,’ answered Oscar, quietly, ‘midnight … And it seems I’m still alive.’
Arthur Conan Doyle pushed his chair back from the table. ‘Are you surprised?’
Oscar laughed. ‘Not entirely, Arthur—but Mr Byrd may be.’ Gilmour and Ferris took the impassive Byrd by the arms and pulled him to his feet. He offered no resistance. His face betrayed no feeling.
‘I believe,’ said Oscar, ‘that Mr Byrd hoped that by now I, too, would be dead or dying. He did not choose me as his murder victim, but once McMuirtree had been successfully despatched, I think he saw no reason why I should not be next.’
The policemen pulled Byrd’s arms roughly behind his back. From his coat pocket, Ferris produced a pair of handcuffs and slipped them over the prisoner’s wrists.
‘As he sees it,’ Oscar went on, ‘life has not been kind to Alphonse Byrd. I have not been kind to him. I have a beauty in my life that makes his ugly. I’ve snubbed him, taken him for granted—treated him as a servant when, in fact, he’s a scholar and gentleman …’
‘But Alphonse Byrd is not a gentleman. Nat, the page-boy at this hotel, he’s a gentleman. Antipholus, the black boy from the circus—he’s a gentleman. Brian Fletcher, a young actor we encountered on our way to Beachy Head now he’s a gentlemen! But Alphonse Byrd … what’s he? He is as most murderers and bullies are: a funny little man, a whey-faced nondescript nobody—riddled with resentments, the victim of a million imagined slights. He’s neither a gentleman nor, indeed, a scholar.’
‘We’ll take him with us now, Mr Wilde,’ said Archy Gilmour, pulling Byrd away from the table and pushing him towards the door.
Oscar continued speaking. He would not be stopped. ‘Byrd told me that he had spent a term at Oxford, but I knew at once that it was a lie. I asked him which was his college—and he answered, simply, “New.” No man who has been to New College ever calls it “New”.
Gilmour and Ferris stood with Alphonse Byrd by the dining-room door. ‘Goodnight, gentlemen,’ grunted Gilmour. ‘We’ll be in touch with those of you from whom we’ll need statements.’
‘I think you’ll need this,’ said Oscar, waving the silver hip flask in the detective inspector’s direction.
‘What’s that?’
‘Evidence, I imagine,’ said Oscar lightly. ‘It contains the wine that Mr Byrd poured into my glass tonight. It contains the second glass of that wine, to be precise. I allowed Daubeney to drink the first before I realised that it had been adulterated.’
‘What are you saying, Mr Wilde?’ asked Inspector Gilmour impatiently.
‘I’m saying that while Byrd may not be a scholar, he nonetheless appreciates a classical allusion. As I am the founder of the Socrates Club, and he is the secretary, he thought it appropriate that I should die as Socrates did. Mr Byrd sought to murder me tonight with the juice of a plant from his allotment conium maculatum: poison hemlock. I’ll not be pressing charges, however. I only drank a drop.’
‘What about Daubeney?’ asked Conan Doyle, getting to his feet and moving towards the door. ‘I’d better see him.’
‘Yes, Doctor,’ said Oscar. ‘Perhaps you had— though I doubt that he’s in mortal danger. I tasted the wine—there was not enough poison in it to kill a man. Our club secretary is one of those sad creatures who never get anything completely right. It’s even possible
that McMuirtree would have survived his ordeal in the Ring of Death if Daubeney hadn’t been on hand to push the blades deeper into the boxer’s severed wrists. Poor, pathetic Alphonse Byrd. Take him away. He lacks the immortal spark.’
Gilmour and Ferris bundled Byrd out of the room. Conan Doyle followed them, calling on Willie Hornung to accompany him. ‘Better do as I’m told,’ said the young man, pushing his spectacles up his nose and waving to the room as he went. ‘What a night, Oscar! I’ll not forget it. Thank you!’
Oscar stood alone at the head of the table, his arms hanging loosely at his side. He was only thirty-seven, but, suddenly, he seemed quite old washed-out, washed-up. His face, that, moments before, had been so alive and full of colour as he told his tale, was ashen. As he looked about the room he appeared confused: his eyes flickered, his eyelids drooped. As he reached into his cigarette case I noticed that his fingers shook.
‘What a night, indeed,’ chortled Edward Heron-Allen, stepping forward and shaking Oscar warmly by the hand. ‘You’re extraordinary, my friend—a phenomenon …’
‘He writes plays too, you know,’ said Bosie Douglas, adjusting Oscar’s tie proprietorially. ‘For a pre-Raphaelite, he’s quite the Renaissance man!’
‘Congratulations, Oscar,’ said Lord Drumlanrig. ‘A tour de force. You should have gone to the Bar. Why didn’t you? Have you considered politics? I mean it. Rosebery wants men like you.’
Oscar smiled wanly. ‘A politician …’ he began—and then he stopped. ‘And I am wary of lawyers,’ he said. For a moment, I saw fear in his eyes. I sensed him searching for an aphorism that did not come.
‘We are staying with our mother tonight, Oscar,’ said Bosie, leaning forward and kissing Oscar lightly on the cheek. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Lunch at the Café Royal as we agreed?’
‘Of course,’ said Oscar. ‘One o’clock.’
‘Good night, Oscar,’ said Lord Drumlanrig.
‘And if you see Papa,’ added Bosie as he pulled his brother with him towards the door, ‘shoot him for me, won’t you? I don’t think I dare murder him myself with you on the case.’
Oscar smiled and watched the two young men link arms and go on their way.
‘Quite brilliant, Oscar,’ boomed Bram Stoker, putting a comfortable hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘Drumlanrig was spot-on. It was indeed a tour de force. You out-Irvinged Irving.’ He looked into Oscar’s face and smiled. ‘No wonder you’re drained. Go home now and have a hot tub and a hot toddy. That’s what the Guv’nor does. Works every time.’
Charles Brookfield stood at Bram Stoker’s side. He was holding a cheque for thirteen guineas. ‘Here you are, Oscar,’ he said. ‘I believe this is what I owe you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Oscar, inclining his head towards Brookfield. He took the cheque, examined it, folded it and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He looked directly into Brookfield’s eyes. ‘And what did you think, Charles?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Brookfield.
‘What did you think?’ repeated Oscar.
‘Of you? Just now?’
‘Yes,’ said Oscar. ‘Of me just now.’
‘Since you ask, Oscar,’ answered Brookfield, slowly, weighing his words as he spoke, ‘Since you ask … I thought it was rather like your speech at the opening of Lady Windermere—brilliant in its way, but wrong—ill-judged … just a touch self-regarding, just a touch too much. Your arrogance, Oscar, will be your undoing.’
‘Don’t listen to Brookie, Oscar,’ cried Bram Stoker. ‘He isn’t Irish. He doesn’t always understand. You were brilliant, my friend—quite brilliant. There’s no other word. And you restored Pearse to us! How about that?’
Bradford Pearse and Wat Sickert were standing together by the doorway. Sickert was holding a cigar, resting an elegant right elbow on Pearse’s broad left shoulder. ‘We’re going to the Arts Club,’ he announced, ‘now to celebrate the prodigal’s return.’
Bradford Pearse nudged Sickert playfully. ‘Will there be entertainment, Wat? Will some of your models be joining us, eh?’ The barrel-chested actor roared with delight at the prospect and punched the air. ‘Thank you, Oscar,’ he cried exuberantly. ‘Thank you, dear friend. It’s so good to be back. The lighthouse was delightful, but the amenities were limited.’
‘Are you going to grow another beard, Brad?’ asked Bram Stoker, moving to the door, taking Charles Brookfield with him. ‘These pink cheeks of yours are quite disconcerting.’
‘I thought a moustache this time—like Sickert’s here. What do think? I’ve played the old sea-salt long enough. I thought I’d try my luck as a young buck about town.’
‘You don’t want to play any more waiters,’ said Charles Brookfield drily. ‘You won’t get the notices.’
‘I’m an ac-taw,’ said Pearse happily, ‘I play whatever comes my way.’
‘Are you coming our way, Oscar?’ called Sickert as the group gathered at the dining-room door. ‘Are you up for a nightcap?’
‘No, I’m taking Bram’s advice. It’s late. I’m for my bed. Robert will walk me home.’
‘Good man,’ said Bram Stoker, acknowledging Oscar with a small salute.
‘Goodnight, gentlemen,’ said Oscar, raising his hand to his friends.
‘Goodnight, Oscar.’ ‘Goodnight, Oscar.’ ‘Goodnight, Robert.’ ‘Goodnight, Oscar well done!’
As the foursome left the room, waving and hallooing as they departed, Wat Sickert lingered. He turned briefly and looked towards Oscar with pleading eyes.
‘Have no fear, Wat,’ said Oscar gently. ‘It’s fine. Go now. I know you didn’t touch the girl.’
Oscar and I walked back to Tite Street together, arm in arm. The air was still. The night sky was clear. In the black roof of the world the stars shone bright. As we walked, Oscar regained much of his energy. As we crossed Sloane Square into the King’s Road and a dog-cart came hurtling out of the darkness and missed us by an inch or two, Oscar began to laugh in a way that I had not heard him laugh for a month or more. It was an easy laugh, happy and unforced. ‘I have survived,’ he chuckled. ‘I have lived through Friday the thirteenth, Robert, and not been murdered after all!’
On the far side of the square, when we had reached the safety of the pavement, I asked him:
‘Who was it who chose you as their murder victim, Oscar? Do you know?’
‘It was Edward Heron-Allen,’ he said, still chuckling. ‘He confessed it when he brought me his prized cockspur. He said that if I was dead, he could marry Constance. I told him if I was dead, you would marry Constance!’
I laughed. ‘Did you really, Oscar?’ The notion was absurd, but, even so, to hear it spoken out loud pleased me very much.
‘I did—but I’m not dead and you shan’t. And Mrs Heron-Allen is alive and well and no doubt offering young Edward wifely consolation as we speak.’
We had stopped beneath a street lamp. In the pale and yellow gaslight I could see that Oscar was smiling. He seemed happy once again. He lit a cigarette—the last of his Player’s Navy Cut.
‘You know,’ I remarked, ‘for a time, I thought that Heron-Allen might be the murderer?’
Oscar threw his match into the gutter. ‘I thought you were convinced that it was young Drumlanrig?’
‘I was—later. I was absolutely certain of it.’
Contentedly, we resumed our walk, arm in arm once more. ‘The things one feels absolutely certain about,’ he said, ‘are never true.’
As we turned left, into the first of the little alleys leading towards Tite Street, I paused for a moment and asked: ‘If it was Heron-Allen who named you as his victim, who was it who named Constance as theirs?’
‘Can you not guess?’ he asked, walking on. ‘It was Charles Brookfield, I am afraid.’
‘Brookfield?’
‘Indeed.’
‘Did he tell you?’
‘No—my grid told me. By a process of elimination. It can only have been Brookfield.’
‘Brookfield want
ed to murder Constance?’ I said, appalled.
‘It was only a game, Robert,’ said Oscar. ‘No doubt Brookfield wished to put my wife out of the misery of being married to me.’ He spoke without rancour. He sounded almost amused by the idea. ‘He is a curious character, our Mr Brookfield …’
‘Indeed,’ I said, tartly.
‘Do you think that he was right about my performance tonight?’ he asked, glancing up at the sky as he spoke. He did not wait for my reply. ‘I think that perhaps he was,’ he said.
Suddenly, as we reached the corner of Tite Street, he burst out laughing again. ‘You know that, at first, I believed that Brookfield was our murderer. It was Mrs Robinson who pointed me in his direction. When she examined the map of my hand, she said:
“Where this brook abuts this field, Mr Wilde, I see a whirlpool and it worries me” … I assumed that my hand was telling her that “Brookfield” would prove my nemesis!’
‘And was it not?’
‘I think not,’ said Oscar, laughing quietly. ‘Mrs Robinson is paid a guinea a reading. She must say something. At our party, she met Mr and Mrs Brooke, the Rajah and Ranee of Sarawak, and Miss Bradley and Miss Cooper, the eccentric poetesses jointly known as “Michael Field”. Mrs Robinson slipped their names into her reading of my palm— and I heard what I wanted to hear, not what she was telling me.’
‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘I thought that you put your trust in Mrs Robinson.’
‘I do. I have done. And, no doubt, I will again. But I must remember that fortune-telling is allied to the world of entertainment. It’s sometimes difficult to tell the truth from the trickery … Leastways, Brookfield was not our murderer.’
‘But he despises you, Oscar.’
‘Does he not have cause? I snub him. I reprove him for wearing gloves indoors. At dinner, I have him seated below the salt.’
‘Brookfield despises you and yet he can’t keep away from you. He’s like a moth about a flame. He despises you not because you snub him, but because he envies you.’
Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death Page 32