2007 - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders

by Gyles Brandreth

  Veronica Sutherland liked Sir John, she said, because ‘he is what he is’, ‘a man without guile, without pretension’.

  She enjoyed the way he puffed away at his briar pipe in her presence and, indoors, unselfconsciously sat at table with his deerstalker hat on his head. “He is honest, Robert, and of how many men can you say that nowadays? And he likes women, he understands women. Of how many men can you say that?”

  Sir John liked Veronica Sutherland because, indeed, she did remind him of his late sister-in-law, Sophie Gray. “You have her wit and gaiety,” he told Veronica, “as well as her beauty and intelligence. Her life-force was extraordinary, but in the end it overwhelmed her. She became an hysteric, poor child. She died by her own hand. She flew too near the flame.”

  It was late one Friday afternoon at the end of that October, following one of our lunches with Sir John, when Veronica and I were at Tite Street, taking tea with Oscar, and telling him about the picture of Sophie Gray, that Oscar told us he had nearly completed his new story for Stoddart and had decided on its title. “I shall call it The Picture of Dorian Gray,” he announced.

  “Do you think Millais will mind?” I asked.

  “Why should Millais mind?” answered Oscar, somewhat peevishly. “The artist in my story bears no resemblance to Millais, none whatsoever. And Dorian Gray, whose portrait is at the heart of my story—and who is perfection itself, who is perhaps what I would like to be in other ages!—knows no kinship to Sophie Gray.”

  “But is not suicide one of the elements in your story?” I persisted. “Does not Dorian Gray take his own life? I am only anxious for Millais’s sake because Sophie Gray took hers…”

  Oscar waved me away airily. “If Dorian Gray is cousin to anyone,” he said, indicating the discussion was at an end, “it is to my young friend from the Foreign Office, John Gray. The surname is, of course, commonplace, but John, I assure you, is not.”

  John Gray was Oscar’s new enthusiasm—the one distraction he allowed himself that autumn. I later learnt that though Oscar had told me, emphatically, that when ‘visiting the dead’ he preferred to go alone, in fact, on each of his investigative visits to what he called ‘the melancholy morgues and mortuaries of the metropolis’, he had been accompanied by John Gray.

  Gray was twenty-three and worked at the Foreign Office. He was not a diplomatist; he was a clerk in the library, a young man of humble origins who had made his way in the world by dint of his own endeavours. “His father was a carpenter,” said Oscar; “we shall assume his mother was a virgin.” Obliged by his parents’ penury to leave school at thirteen, Gray had become a metal-worker by day while, by night, continuing his studies at his own expense. To his credit, aged sixteen, he had entered the examinations necessary to secure a clerkship at the Post Office—and passed with flying colours. “He is a complex, multiform creature,” said Oscar, “interested in art and music, poetry and languages, postage stamps and me!” Oscar met him for the first time that September—just a few weeks after the death of Billy Wood—at a literary gathering in Chelsea. “We became firm friends the moment we met,” said Oscar. “John has the appearance of a Greek god—and only shallow people do not judge by appearances.”

  I first learnt of John Gray’s existence on that last Friday in October 1889. I met him for the first time a week later, on Bonfire Night, 5 November 1889. Veronica was dining in Bedford Square with her great-aunt, and Oscar and I had arranged to go together to the theatre. (The Irish-American actress, Ada Rehan, was making her debut at the Lyceum.) Oscar had told me he would come to collect me by cab and to be ready and waiting for him at my room in Gower Street at seven o’clock—no later.

  I was booted, suited, polished and brushed by 6.45 a.m. I was standing in the street at seven. By seven-fifteen I was anxious. By seven-thirty I was alarmed. Oscar was occasionally late for dinner, but never for the theatre. (Others insulted actors casually, treating them as servants; Oscar never did.) At 7.45 p.m., simply to reassure myself, I decided that I must have misunderstood him and that what he had in fact proposed was that we should go by separate cabs and meet at the theatre. I was reluctant to hire a hansom myself, of course, because what spare funds I had I’d all but spent on cream teas and iced champagne for Veronica, but if I was to have any chance of reaching the theatre by eight o’clock a cab was the only way. With my mind made up, and my forehead throbbing, I peered up and down the gloomy thoroughfare. By rights, Gower Street on Bonfire Night, when the fog is thick and the West End at its busiest, should not be the easiest place to hail a passing cab, but to my amazement, at the precise moment that I needed one, a four-wheeler appeared out of the yellow gloom and drew to an abrupt halt before me.

  “The Lyceum Theatre,” I called out to the cabman.

  “I don’t think so, guv,” he replied, “I’m going home.”

  “Why have you stopped then?” I barked.

  The cab door opened and I was answered. Onto the street stumbled two figures: a fair-haired boy in a sailor suit and Oscar Wilde, in dishevelled evening dress, his face blue-black with bruises, his hair matted with blood. “This is how I found him,” said the boy. “He told me to bring him here.”

  I paid off the cabman and, between us, the boy and I helped Oscar up the stairs and into my room. “My name is John Gray,” said the boy, who looked fifteen at most. His hair was blond and longer than it should have been. His eyes were blue and watchful; his skin was golden; his lips were pale; his high cheekbones were dusted with freckles the colour of sand. John Gray was indeed a young Adonis in a sailor suit (a French sailor suit, I think)—just as poor crumpled Oscar, with his sagging flesh, his swollen mouth, his eyes half closed (they were too bruised to open), was an ageing Bacchus after a brawl.

  We eased Oscar onto my bed. I loosened his collar and tie, and poured what brandy I had into a glass and held it to his lips. He whimpered. He was exhausted and in pain.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I don’t rightly know,” said the boy. (He spoke well. He had the manners of a young gentleman.) “I was crossing Soho Square, on my way to Kettner’s restaurant to meet a friend. I saw Oscar standing on the pavement, by the church, talking to a man. They were arguing.”

  “What sort of man?”

  “I don’t know—just a man, in a heavy coat.”

  “What sort of man?” I repeated. “Was he young? Old? Bearded?”

  “Not young, not bearded.”

  “Was he tall?”

  “Quite tall, and well built. He was dark—swarthy, that’s the word. He was carrying a stick. Because they were shouting at one another I didn’t go too close.”

  “What were they shouting?”

  “The man said something like, “Keep away! Keep away or I’ll kill you!”—and then he began to hit Oscar. He beat him with his stick and forced him to the ground. Oscar fell back onto the steps of the church and the man flung himself on top of him and hit him in the face. He punched him, again and again. That’s when I ran towards them, shouting, “Stop! Police!” The man got up and cursed me and ran away.”

  “You say the man said, ‘Keep away or I’ll kill you!’”

  “Yes, something like ‘Laisse-la ou je te tue!’”

  “What?” I exclaimed. “He spoke in French?”

  “Yes, it was French. I’m sure of that. But the accent was a strange one.”

  “It was a man called O’Donnell,” I said. “He comes from Montreal. He is a brute.”

  “He was certainly that,” said the boy.

  Oscar said nothing. His head was turned to the wall. His breathing was deep and ragged, but steady. I sensed he was asleep. “I’ll keep him here,” I said. “Mrs Wilde is not expecting him home tonight in any event. Best not to worry her.”

  “Are you sure?” said the boy, straightening the collar of his sailor suit and looking about him for a mirror in which to check his hair.

  “I’m sure,” I said. “I’ll look after him. I’m his friend.”

&nbs
p; “His ‘best friend’, according to Oscar,” said the boy.

  “I’m glad of that,” I said.

  “Well, I’ll be off then,” said the lad cheerily, offering me his hand. “I’m dining at Kettner’s. Did I say? We’ll meet again soon, I hope. And Oscar will be right as rain in a day or two, won’t he? I love him. We all do.”

  And with a half-salute and the hint of a wink, John Gray was gone.

  13

  6 November 1889—2 January 1890

  Oscar stayed in my room for the following three days.

  On the morning of 6 November, when I awoke with a stiff neck and a twisted spine (the price of a night on a dilapidated divan), I discovered him sitting up in bed, the pillows well plumped behind him, smoking a Turkish cigarette and reading Baudelaire by candlelight. “Bonjour, mon ami,” he said, cheerfully.

  His face was still a mass of bruises, but his spirits appeared entirely restored. He professed no recollection of the events of the night before. None whatsoever.

  “John Gray in a sailor suit? Are you hallucinating, Robert?”

  “Oscar, I assure you—”

  “You are hallucinating, Robert,” he continued blithely, as I fumbled with a match to light the gas ring to boil some water for our tea. “Look at you—your hands are shaking! I blame Conan Doyle.”

  “Why? What’s he to do with it?”

  “Ever since Arthur told us of his plans to make Sherlock Holmes a dope fiend, you, Robert Sherard, have been itching to experiment yourself. Admit it. Is it morphine or cocaine you’ve turned to?”

  “Don’t be absurd, Oscar,” I said, laughing. “If anyone’s mind is not quite as it should be, it is evidently yours. John Gray rescued you last night when you were attacked by that brute O’Donnell.”

  “Whatever may have happened to me last night, I was not attacked by Edward O’Donnell.”

  “According to Gray, your assailant was abusing you in French.”

  “Ah,” said Oscar, “that sounds to me like a disappointed poet—they can be so violent. Give a man a poor review and the next thing you know, he is knocking you down in the street—and doing so in French to give his actions the veneer of respectability.”

  “If it wasn’t O’Donnell,” I persisted, “who was it?”

  “It wasn’t O’Donnell, Robert,” he replied, blowing out the candle as I drew the curtain and let in the cold, grey light of morning. “O’Donnell is not our man.”

  “So you say. So you keep saying.”

  “Indeed,” he went on, pulling my eiderdown close about him, “as I have lain here on your most comfortable bed—for which many thanks, old friend—as I have lain here, I have been reflecting that ‘our man’ may, in fact, be a woman—or a man with womanish ways. The scene of the crime was as clean as a whistle when we found it. The floorboards had been polished with beeswax, you’ll recall. Beeswax suggests a woman’s touch.”

  “Or, possibly,” I ventured, “a man accustomed to household work—a domestic servant? Did you not tell me that Mr Bellotti recruits bootblacks and the like on behalf of O’Donovan & Brown?”

  “I did,” said Oscar. “Well remembered, Watson. You are right. Bellotti is mixed up in this business for certain, but how and to what extent I have no idea. While I have been trawling the morgues of the metropolis, my ‘spies’ have been keeping a close eye on friend Bellotti—and on the brute O’Donnell—and, I am sorry to tell you, they have nothing of interest to report.”

  “And what have the morgues revealed?” I enquired.

  “Nothing of interest either,” he answered with a smile, “except that death no longer holds any terror for me. In recent weeks, I have gazed on the faces of the dead by the dozen and what I have discovered is quite consoling, Robert. When we die, we disappear. Our spirit escapes we know not where. The shell we leave behind means nothing. A dead body is no more disturbing than a discarded overcoat.”

  “How many more morgues have you still to visit?” I asked.

  “None,” he said, sitting up and pushing the eiderdown away from him, letting Baudelaire slip to the floor. “I have exhausted them all. Now, I plan to embark on the dissecting rooms of the London hospitals. Had I thought, I should probably have started there.” With a suppressed groan he pushed himself off the bed and onto his feet. “According to Conan Doyle, the medical schools are so eager to have fresh cadavers for their students to dismember and dissect that there is now a black market in the mortal remains of the recently deceased. I must get dressed and be about my business.” Suddenly, he caught sight of himself in the mirror above the washbasin and let out a yelp of anguish. “Mary Mother of God, I cannot be seen in the streets like this! It’ll be all over the papers within hours.”

  I smiled. “Fear not,” I said, “in a day or two, you’ll be fine.”

  “I am hideous, Robert—deformed!”

  “Bruised, that’s all. Sit yourself here by the gas fire. Rest, recuperate, recover your strength. Tomorrow, or the next day, will be soon enough to venture out. I’ll send a wire to Constance. I’ll say you’ve gone to Oxford for a day or two.” He turned away from the looking-glass with a shudder and slowly, with my help, eased himself into the armchair by the fire. I covered his lap with his overcoat. “Rest up here, while I go and get us some breakfast.”

  “Oh, would you, Robert? You are an angel. And, yes, do send a wire to Constance. And, while you’re out, perhaps you could find me a fresh shirt also? Could you bear it? You know my size. Perhaps two shirts, in fact.” He found his wallet inside his coat pocket and gave me a five-pound note. “Silk shirts,” he added. “And some nice soap, if you see any. I feel so grubby. Houbigant’s if you can get it—either Peau d’Espagne or Sac de Laitue…And while you’re in the chemist’s shop, there’s a wonderful thing called Koko Marikopas. It is costly, but the name alone is worth the price and it works miracles. It’s a hair tonic—and before my very eyes my hair is turning grey—”

  “Don’t be absurd, Oscar,” I said, taking his money and putting on my own overcoat. “You have a strand or two of silver, that is all.”

  “Who cares for silver?” he murmured, closing his eyes. “I care only for gold.”

  I was gone an hour. When I returned, laden with groceries, shirts and soap (but without the hair tonic), Oscar was not there. For a moment, I felt infuriated. Oscar was, essentially, a kindly man, generous to a fault, courteous in a way that would seem incomprehensible to a later generation—and yet…Let it be said: he was fundamentally selfish; he did as he pleased when he pleased.

  As I was pondering what to do with my superfluity of supplies, there was a loud knocking at the front door. I looked out of my window onto Gower Street. There was Oscar, beating on the door with a cane. I ran downstairs to admit him, my resentment waning as I went.

  “Where have you been?” I asked.

  “In search of life’s essentials,” he answered, “fresh air and cigarettes.”

  I laughed. “And what if you’d been noticed? I thought you were anxious about being all over the papers,” I said.

  “You are right, Robert. It is a dreadful thing to have one’s name in the newspapers. And still more dreadful not to. I decided to take the risk, but went prepared—with this!”

  From behind his back, he produced an ornate Venetian carnival mask and held it before his face. It was a present, given to me by Veronica Sutherland, and given to her by Aidan Fraser. Oscar must have found it on my mantelpiece.

  “You are preposterous, Oscar,” I said. “I’m surprised you weren’t arrested—especially carrying that cane.” I had recognised it at once. “That is my swordstick, the one I gave to Constance, is it not?”

  “It is.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Find it? I had it with me last night.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as God’s in his heaven and all’s well with the world.”

  I knew full well that Oscar had not had the swordstick with him when John Gray had b
rought him to my room the night before. I took it that he had lost it at some point during his encounter with O’Donnell in Soho Square. I surmised that he had set out that morning—behind his mask!—to retrieve it from wherever it had fallen. I could have argued all this with him, forced him to admit as much, but to what avail? Oscar told only what he wished to tell when he wished to tell it.

  Back in my room, Oscar hung his coat on the peg behind my door, returned the Venetian mask to the mantelpiece and, with some ceremony, laid the swordstick across the washbasin like a sceptre on an altar. He then stood with his back to the fireplace, facing the room, and checked his timepiece. “Twelve noon—is it to be breakfast or lunch?”

  “Brunch,” I declared, using the new portmanteau word just in vogue and proudly unwrapping my range of provisions.

  “Brunch,” he repeated. “Callooh! Callay! Bacon and sausages followed by clear turtle soup and luscious ortolans wrapped in Sicilian vine-leaves…And a bottle of wine from the banks of the Mosel. Heaven comes to Gower Street! I would be smacking my lips, Robert, were they not so swollen. You are a true friend and a perfect host.”

  When we had feasted, Oscar slept. He slept all day and all night. On the second morning the blue-black of his bruises had turned to muddy yellow and the swelling had subsided. He was still weary, however, and in pain, content, it seemed, to lie upon my bed, dozing, smoking, reading Baudelaire to me out loud—in French—and then inviting me to join him in translating Baudelaire out loud—into Italian! I had recently received a copy of The Bostonians, inscribed to me by the author, and I volunteered to read it to Oscar. “No, thank you, Robert,” he said, closing his eyes. “Mr Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty. If only Arthur had completed his new story, that I would enjoy.”