“Very well,” said Conan Doyle, calmly. “We are prepared. After you…”
Slowly, carefully, Oscar turned the handle and pushed open the door.
We adjusted our eyes to the gloom. The curtains, of heavy velvet, bottle green, were drawn closed against the windows facing us, but a rim of warm sunlight filtered across the floor below them. The floorboards were bare. The walls were bare. Other than the curtains, there were no furnishings of any kind to be seen. No lamps, no candlesticks, nothing; the room was empty, utterly so.
“They’ve taken him,” exclaimed Oscar.
“Was he ever here?” asked Conan Doyle.
“On my word, Arthur—” Oscar started to protest, but Conan Doyle raised a hand to silence him.
From the moment we had left the hotel, half an hour before, Oscar had been in command of the situation. He had led the way, full of energy and enterprise. Now he was at a loss. The energy was gone, the enterprise confounded. Without demur, the metropolitan man of the world let the young provincial doctor take control. As Conan Doyle stepped briskly across the room and drew back the curtains, Oscar, deflated, stood by the doorway in silence, staring at the floorboards.
“Do you smell incense?” Doyle asked.
“No,” I said, sniffing the air. “If anything, beeswax.”
“Yes,” he said, “the floorboards have been newly polished. They gleam.” He paced around the room, as though marking out its size. “No bloodstains on the floor, no signs of guttering candles.”
“There was a carpet, a Persian rug,” murmured Oscar, as if to himself. “His feet were here, his head was there…There was a knife…I recall a blade, a glistening blade…”
Conan Doyle appeared to pay him no heed. He was busy examining the walls, running his fingers slowly across the grimy, green and black, Regency-stripe flocked wallpaper. He stood for a moment by each wall, studying it intently. There were no visible nails or hooks, no sign that pictures had ever been hung on the walls, no marks to indicate where furniture might once have stood. On the back of the door, there was a small brass coat-hook: nothing else. The room was bare and you felt that it had been so for some time.
“Very well,” Conan Doyle announced at last, “we have seen what we came to see. Our work is done. I must catch my train.” He placed a kindly hand on Oscar’s shoulder. “Come, my friend, let us be on our way.”
Seemingly in a daze, Oscar allowed himself to be led back down the stairs. Mrs O’Keefe was hovering by the front door, eager to make a further obeisance. “Was everything satisfactory?” she asked. “Will the room suit? I have found the kitchen and a kettle if you gentlemen are wanting refreshment.”
“No, thank you kindly,” said Conan Doyle, producing a sixpenny bit from his coat pocket and handing it to her. “We’re much obliged to you, but we must be going now.”
“Much obliged,” repeated Oscar, vacantly, as if half the world away. Then, recollecting himself, he bowed towards Mrs O’Keefe and extended his hand. She took it and kissed his ring, as though he were a bishop.
“Bless you, sir,” she said, “I’ll pray for you.”
“Pray to St Jude,” murmured Oscar, “the patron saint of lost causes.”
“I’ll pray to St Cecilia, too,” added Mrs O’Keefe, crossing herself as she bustled after us out of the house and into the street. “She takes a special care of musicians, doesn’t she now? She’ll look after you.”
In the cab, as we trundled back along Abingdon Street towards Westminster Bridge, the silence was strained. I said nothing because I could think of nothing to say. Oscar was lost in melancholy thought, gazing unseeingly out of the cab window. Eventually, as we entered Parliament Square, Conan Doyle spoke. “I didn’t realise you were a musician, Oscar,” he said. “What instrument do you play?”
“I’m not. I don’t,” replied Oscar. “My brother, Willie, is the family musician. He plays the piano—”
“And he composes,” I added, in the hope of sustaining the conversation. “Willie Wilde creates the wittiest musical parodies and pastiches.”
“Yes,” said Oscar, still staring out of the window. “Caricature is the tribute that mediocrity pays to genius.”
Conan Doyle laughed. Oscar turned sharply towards him.
“You are right, Arthur. That was unkind of me. When it comes to my elder brother, I am often uncharitable. It is wrong of me, I know—unchristian. It’s just that I’m not entirely sure that Willie’s ‘improved’ endings for Chopin’s Preludes fulfil their promise.”
Conan Doyle smiled. “I learnt to play the tuba once,” he said, evidently determined to keep Oscar from reverting to his sombre reverie.
“Did you?” asked Oscar, suddenly clapping his hands. “Did you really?” The notion of the Southsea doctor with the mournful eyes and the walrus moustache puffing on a tuba lifted Oscar’s spirits instantly. “Tell us more, Arthur. When was this? Why was this?”
“Years ago, at school.”
“At Stonyhurst?” cried Oscar. “The English public school system has something to commend it after all!”
“No, Oscar,” riposted Doyle, laughing genially, “not at Stonyhurst. When I was seventeen, before I began my medical training, I spent a year at school in Austria, with the Jesuits.”
Oscar could barely contain his delight. “Tuba-playing Jesuits,” he exclaimed. “Heaven be praised!” For a moment, he seemed his customary self again and leant towards Doyle, touching him on the knee. “Arthur, I think I know you well enough to tell you this. When I was at Oxford, I once spent an evening in the company of a troupe of Tyrolean yodellers.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially: “The experience changed me for ever.”
Doyle and I laughed out loud, and Oscar sat back, resting his large head against the leather bolster at the back of the cab. We looked at him and smiled. He turned his head to look out of the window again and, as he did so, we saw two small tears trickle down his face.
“What is wrong, Oscar?” asked Doyle, suddenly concerned and not yet accustomed to Oscar’s mercurial changes in mood.
“I am thinking of Billy Wood,” said Oscar, quietly. “I loved the boy.”
There was an awkward pause. “He was not quite a stranger to you then?” said Doyle, narrowing his eyes and raising an eyebrow.
“No,” said Oscar, turning to face the doctor. “I misled you there. I apologise. Billy Wood was no stranger.”
“You loved him?”
“I loved him,” said Oscar. “Yes. I loved him—as a brother.”
“As a brother?” repeated Doyle.
“As the younger brother I might have had,” said Oscar. “We were friends—best friends. We were good companions. I had a younger sister once. While she lived, she was my best friend. But I lost her too. She was just ten when she died.”
“I am sorry,” said Doyle, “I did not know.”
“It is a long time ago now,” said Oscar, reaching for his handkerchief and, unselfconsciously, wiping his eyes, “more than twenty years.” He smiled. “‘The good die first,’” he said. “Isola was ten. Billy was barely sixteen. ‘The good die first, and they whose hearts are dry as summer dust burn to the socket,’” He looked out of the cab window onto the river. We were halfway across Westminster Bridge. “You recognise the line, Robert?”
To my shame, I did not. “Is it Shakespeare?” I asked.
“No,” he said, reprovingly, “it is not. It is your greatgrandfather, Robert.” He turned to Conan Doyle to explain: “Robert is the great-grandson of one of the few poets laureate worthy of the honour: William Wordsworth.” Arthur responded with the grunt of awe that is the inevitable reaction, it seems, to this particular piece of information. Oscar continued: “Robert is reticent about his distinguished forebear because Robert is a poet himself. But given where we are—on Westminster Bridge—and the nature of the morning—“silent, bare”—I hope he will forgive me…”
Before Conan Doyle could embark on the train of questions that I knew—from a life
time’s experience—would be prompted by the mention of my Wordsworth connection, I intervened to change the subject. “Arthur, do you have children?” I asked.
Conan Doyle was a decent man—quick and sensitive—and he recognised at once that I was not eager to encourage a discussion of the Wordsworth-Sherard family history. “Yes,” he answered readily, “just the one—a daughter, Mary. She is nine months old this very week. She is plump and full of life, with pretty blue eyes and bandy legs. I love her very much.”
“Children are a joy,” said Oscar. “My little boys are three and four, and full of hope. I fear for them dreadfully.”
“I understand,” said Arthur, gently. “Once upon a time, I had a younger sister, too. She also died.”
“I did not know,” said Oscar.
“How could you?” asked Doyle.
“I did not think to ask,” said Oscar. “That was thoughtless. Pray forgive me, dear friend. I can call you my friend, can I not—even though our acquaintance has been so brief?”
“I am honoured to be your friend, Oscar,” replied Conan Doyle, and I sensed, as he spoke, that he was moved. (As I got to know him better, I noticed that whenever he spoke intimately, or of matters that touched him deeply, his Edinburgh accent, usually almost imperceptible, became quite pronounced.)
“Love is all very well in its way,” said Oscar, “but, to me, friendship is much higher. I know of nothing in the world that is either nobler, or more rare, than true friendship. Shall we be true friends, Arthur?”
“I hope so,” said Doyle earnestly and, as if to seal the compact, he turned towards Oscar and shook him vigorously by the hand. If Oscar winced—as he might have done: Doyle’s was a fist of iron—he did so inwardly. The two men beamed at one another, then turned towards me, and the three of us laughed together. The air had cleared.
“‘A timely utterance gave that thought relief,”’ I said, adding, awkwardly, by way of explanation, “my greatgrandfather—”
“I know,” said Conan Doyle. “We learnt the poem by heart at school.”
“In Austria?” cried Oscar.
“No, Oscar! At Stonyhurst. It is my favourite English poem. It contains some of the loveliest lines in the language. “To me the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.””
“If I were to live again,” said Oscar, “I would like it to be as a flower—no soul, but perfectly beautiful.”
“And what flower would that be, Oscar?” I asked.
“Oh, Robert, for my sins I shall be made a red geranium!”
As we laughed once more, Doyle glanced out of the window and saw the steps of Waterloo Station in the distance. He said, with sudden urgency, “Oscar, may I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“About 23 Cowley Street?”
“Anything.” Oscar was now at ease again.
“Who owns the house?”
“Number 23 Cowley Street? I have no idea.” Oscar answered the question quite casually.
“But you have rented rooms there?” Conan Doyle began his line of questioning gently, as a friendly family doctor might elicit details of his patient’s symptoms, but gradually the comfortable, coaxing bedside manner gave way to something less cosily avuncular and more akin to a courtroom cross-examination.
“Yes,” replied Oscar, “I have rented rooms there—now and again, not often.”
“But you are unaware of who is the owner of the property?”
“Entirely. I was introduced to the house through O’Donovan & Brown of Ludgate Circus.”
“They act as agents?”
“Indeed. They charge four pounds a month for the house as a whole, if I recollect aright— or a guinea a week, or four shillings per diem, all found. Are you thinking of opening a London practice, Arthur?”
Conan Doyle ignored Oscar’s joke. His brow furrowed. “All found?” he repeated.
“Yes,” said Oscar. “There is usually a good soul such as Mrs O’Keefe on hand to provide creature comforts.”
“But I don’t understand, Oscar. You have a house full of rooms in Tite Street. Why do you need another in Westminster—especially one at four shillings a day?”
“Half-days are possible, Arthur. O’Donovan & Brown are at pains to be accommodating. I believe there is a doctor who takes the house every Monday morning for half a crown. I have not met him. I am told that those who call upon him are young women in the main. I understand he is not entirely respectable.”
“Oscar,” said Conan Doyle, “you have not answered my question.”
“There is no mystery here, Arthur,” Oscar replied, without rancour. “Now and then, when I have a pupil to teach, or need a room in which to write, I rent Cowley Street for a day or two. It is as simple as that. At Tite Street I have a wife and children and servants—and importunate friends and impertinent tradesmen calling at all hours, whether invited or not. It is only by entire isolation from everything and everyone that one can do any work. Doctors, I know, require their waiting rooms to be full; poets, on the other hand, require theirs to be empty. Poetry, as Robert’s forefather taught us, is emotion recollected in tranquillity. There is no tranquillity in Tite Street.”
The hansom cab had now pulled up at the railway station, but Conan Doyle was not yet done. “Is it writers mainly who take rooms at Cowley Street?” he asked.
“Writers—and musicians. And artists, also. All sorts, in fact. I once encountered a clergyman there, a suffragan bishop. He was working on a series of sermons—on the theme of sorrow and the seven deadly sins, as I recall. Members of Parliament occasionally use the house as well. They come to play cards—with the artists, and their models.”
“And was it at Cowley Street that you first met Billy Wood?”
“Yes,” said Oscar, simply.
“And he was an artist’s model?” suggested Conan Doyle.
“Yes,” said Oscar, surprised. “How did you guess?”
“You said he was beautiful.”
“He had the beauty of youth. And I have a passion for beauty—as Wordsworth had. As Robert has. As I doubt not, Doctor, you have, too. Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. A passion for beauty is merely the intensified desire for life. I knew Billy Wood and I loved him. He had youth and beauty—and such spirit. In his company, I was glad to be alive.”
“You told us he was a street urchin.”
“Indeed,” said Oscar, looking his interrogator directly in the eye. “He was quite uneducated; he could barely read; he could write his name, but not much more. But he had native intelligence—an enquiring mind and a remarkable memory. And an ability to concentrate that I have not come across before in one so young. He was hungry to learn—and I was happy to teach.”
“You taught him?” said Conan Doyle.
“I taught him poetry. I took him to the theatre. I encouraged his talent. He had talent. He was a natural actor. On the stage, he might have gone far.”
“And you say that yesterday you saw this young friend of yours, this Billy Wood, in the upstairs room at Cowley Street, his naked body awash with blood, his throat cut from ear to ear.”
“I do, Arthur. And you do not believe me.”
“Oh, Oscar,” said Conan Doyle, “I believe you. I believe you completely.”
4
Simpson’s in the Strand
Waterloo Station on that close september morning was hot and crowded. The station clock had failed; there was chaos on thle concourse.
As Arthur Conan Doyle stepped down from our fourwheeler, I handed him his case, his travelling bag, and the hatbox and bouquet of summer flowers intended for his wife. As he stood there, laden, smiling, bidding us farewell, he had about him an air of trustworthiness and decency that was utterly compelling. In my life, I have known many remarkable men—poets, pioneers, soldiers, statesmen—but I have known few better men, and none more straightforward, than Arthur Conan Doyle.
Oscar, still seated in the cab, was
feeling in his pockets for money with which to pay the fare. Arthur called to him, “Let me pay my share, Oscar, but keep the cab. I want you to go directly to Scotland Yard. I can see myself off well enough.”
“To Scotland Yard?” said Oscar.
“Yes,” said Doyle, firmly, moving close to the open cab door and adopting his best bedside manner. “This is a matter for the police, Oscar. That boy was murdered—I have no doubt of that. If he was lying with his head towards the window, as you describe him, and his feet towards the door, then I suspect his throat was cut from right to left in a single, savage slice. The carotid arteries leading to his brain will have been severed instantly. He will have died in a matter of moments. Given his youth, the immediate loss of blood must have been considerable.”
Oscar was silent.
“How do you know this, Arthur?” I asked. “There was no sign of blood in the room.”
“Not on the floor, nor on the skirting,” said Doyle, “but some five feet up the right-hand wall, as you face the window, I noticed the tiniest traces of blood—not smears, but minute splashes. I imagine that when the internal jugular veins burst, for an instant a stream of the boy’s blood spurted high into the air and left its tell-tale mark.”
Suddenly, impulsively, Oscar reached out towards Conan Doyle with both hands. “Stay, Arthur,” he beseeched him, “stay and help me find who has done this terrible thing.”
“No, Oscar, I must get home. Touie is expecting me. It is her birthday, remember.”
“Will you return tomorrow?” Wilde implored.
Conan Doyle shook his head and smiled. His sharp blue eyes were ever mournful, but he had a quick and merry smile. “Oscar,” he laughed, “I am not a consulting detective. I am a country doctor. Sherlock Holmes is a figment of my imagination. I cannot help you and neither can he. You might as well ask the Happy Prince or one of the other heroes of your fairy tales to assist you. Go to the police. Go to Scotland Yard. Go at once.”
“I cannot,” said Oscar.
“You must,” said Doyle. “I have a friend at Scotland Yard—Inspector Aidan Fraser. Mention my name and he will give you every assistance. You can trust him. He is from Edinburgh.”
2007 - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders Page 3