2007 - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders

by Gyles Brandreth

  On the third day, he rose, inspected his face in the looking-glass and declared himself both ‘fit to be seen’ and ‘seen to be fit’. “I must return to Constance and the boys—by way of St Thomas’s hospital.” He prepared to depart. “And you must return to Miss Sutherland, Robert. Another man’s fiancée requires so much more attention than one’s own.”

  “We are just friends, Oscar,” I protested.

  He rebuked me, tapping me on the chest with the end of the swordstick as he did so. “There is no friendship possible between men and women, Robert. Remember that. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.”

  I walked him into the street and stood with him on the pavement until a cab came past. We hailed it and then shook hands—as friends.

  “In the long run, Robert, you will find a handshake so much more reliable than a kiss,” he said. He climbed into the two-wheeler. “I will see you soon. Thank you for giving me sanctuary, my friend. John Gray was in a sailor suit, you say?” He sat back, laughing, and waved to me, shaking his head, as the cab took him on his way.

  As it turned out, I saw very little of Oscar between then and Christmas. He was busy, completing Dorian Gray, entertaining John Gray, placating Constance, and—as he reported to me in mock-despair on the two occasions when we caught up briefly over a nightcap at the Albemarle Club—running up bills at Kettner’s and the Cafe Royal at the behest of importunate poets (“The more sentimental their sonnets, the more unquenchable their thirst!”) and running down blind alleys in vain pursuit of the mortal remains of poor Billy Wood.

  I saw very little of Oscar, but I saw a great deal of Veronica Sutherland that November and December, possibly too much. We met each day—we even found ways in which to steal an hour or two to be together at weekends—and then, on the night before she was due to go to Scotland for Christmas and Hogmanay, beneath the Albert Memorial, as the midwinter moonlight filtered between the clouds, we kissed—and kissed again—and I said the fateful words, “I love you.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered as she held me close, “thank you. It is a dreary thing to sit at home with un-kissed lips.”

  Miss Sutherland and her fiancé, Aidan Fraser, departed by train for Scotland on 23 December. They were away for ten nights. Pining, I wrote to Oscar, “What am I to do?”

  By return, he replied, “Assuming that Kaitlyn is still in Vienna and that your estranged wife is not proposing a seasonal reconciliation, come to Tite Street. Constance will look after you and I promise there will be no readings from A Christmas Carol. Tiny Tim is dead! Hallelujah!”

  I went. Christmas in Tite Street was wonderful—and curiously Dickensian. Oscar, personally, had decked the hall with boughs of holly, and Constance, assisted by Annie Marchant (bustling, busy Annie Marchant, the boys’ nursemaid), had dressed a Christmas tree—quite beautifully—in the German tradition. There were log fires burning in all the rooms (and, from I know not where, the smell of pine kernels and sandalwood). Whenever Constance appeared—long-suffering Constance—she seemed to me to have an angelic smile on her gentle face and in her hands a tray of Christmas cheer: decanters of sherry and Madeira, bowls of rum punch, plates of sweetmeats, nuts and crystallised fruits. It was, as she put it, ‘just the family—and you boys’: herself and Oscar, Cyril and Vyvyan, Annie Marchant and Mrs Ryan (the cook-cum-maid-of-all-work)—plus John Gray and myself. John Gray stayed as a house guest, sleeping on the divan in Oscar’s smoking room. I went home each night to Gower Street to sleep, but returned to Tite Street each day in time for luncheon.

  We were the only outsiders, both invited for the whole holiday, from Christmas Eve to Twelfth Night, and both arriving at exactly the same moment (six o’clock in the evening on 24 December), bearing precisely the same gifts for the two young sons of the house: a football for each of them. Oscar was appalled. “So it has come to this: we celebrate the nativity of the Christ-child with gifts of air-filled leather bladders. Yesterday, there were no footballs in this house; now there are four! Was there no frankincense at Whiteley’s?”

  Cyril and Vyvyan were delighted with their presents, and Constance thanked us both with kindly kisses and whispered endearments. (She was as warm towards John Gray as she was towards me.) “Pay no attention to Oscar,” she said, giving him a teasing look of reproof. “He plays no outdoor games at all.”

  “Not so, my dear,” said Wilde. “If you recall, I have sometimes played dominoes outside French cafes…Football, I concede, I have avoided. It is all very well as a game for rough girls, but it is hardly suitable for delicate boys, now is it?”

  There was much laughter in Tite Street that Yuletide. On Christmas Day itself, there was singing too. Willie Wilde, Oscar’s elder brother, joined the party and led an hour of communal carol-singing around the piano, followed by an informal (and gently inebriated) recital of his own ‘favourites’ from the repertoire of Gilbert and Sullivan. Willie joined us again on Boxing Day, when we left the children at home with Annie Marchant and went to Kempton Park for the St Stephen’s Day races. “St Stephen is the patron saint of horses,” Oscar announced as we arrived, “and Willie is a pagan deity worshipped by turf accountants everywhere. Willie comes to the races almost daily and has a faculty for choosing the loser, which, given he knows nothing about horses, is remarkable.”

  On New Year’s Eve there was a family dinner, with toasts. Oscar insisted that Cyril and Vyvyan be woken and brought into the dining room in the arms of Annie Marchant and Mrs Ryan to listen to the toasts. “They’ll not understand a word, Oscar,” said Constance. “Leave them be.”

  “They’ll hear the music of our voices,” said Oscar, “it’s a start.” He explained to the rest of us: “When Willie and I were boys in Dublin, Sir William Wilde, our father, allowed us to sit at the large dining-room table in Merrion Square on feast nights such as this…That is where we learnt to listen and to look.”

  Oscar’s toasts—inevitably!—were many and splendid. He toasted the future, he toasted the past; he toasted literature, he toasted art; he toasted new friends (with a nod to John Gray) and true friends (with a nod to me) and absent friends (with a mention of Conan Doyle and, smiling at me, a reference to Veronica Sutherland). With tears filling his eyes, he toasted ‘those we have loved and those we have lost’ and spoke of his sister, Isola, who had died when she was only ten:

  …she is near

  Under the snow,

  Speak gently, she can hear

  The daisies grow.

  He invited us to raise our glasses to her memory and that of ‘others too young to die, some taken from us during this now-past and bitter year’. He did not mention Billy Wood by name.

  For me, Oscar’s final toast was the most touching. “Gentlemen,” he said, “and this includes you, my sons,” he added, smiling, looking directly at his boys. “Gentlemen…Let us drink to the ladies! Let us give thanks and do honour to the women in our lives. We bless them for their strength and their sweetness and their sacrifice.” He motioned to his brother, to John Gray and to me to rise to our feet. “I give you womankind,” he said, “and in particular—and especially—the four ladies gathered in this room tonight.” He lifted his glass to each in turn, starting with the servants, both of whom stood amazed before him with tear-filled eyes: “Miss Marchant…Mrs Ryan…” He turned then to his mother and his wife: “Lady Wilde, so brilliant and so brave…and Constance, my wife…Constance: was ever a woman more aptly named?”

  On 2 January we toasted Constance again. It was her thirty-second birthday and the last formal evening of the Wilde Christmas and New Year ‘season’. Willie and Lady Wilde were not in attendance, but there were other guests: Aidan Fraser and Veronica Sutherland, who had returned that very day from Scotland, and Arthur Conan Doyle and his young wife, Touie, up from Southsea.

  At dinner, I was seated between Miss Sutherland and Mrs Doyle, and I hope I acquitted myself reasonably. It was not easy: I was at a loss with both of them. I was at a loss with Veronica, be
cause the moment I saw her again my passion for her was rekindled, but her manner towards me, while full of playful charm, gave no inkling of her present feelings about our relationship—or its possibilities. I was at a loss with Touie because her painful shyness made it almost impossible to communicate with her. I learnt that her proper name was Louisa, that her maiden name was Hawkins, and that motherhood was ‘agreeable’ to her, ‘though tiring’, but that was about all.

  If I acquitted myself reasonably that night, I did so, I suspect, only because the opportunities for doing otherwise were limited. For most of dinner, none of us was talking to our neighbours; we were all listening to Oscar. He was on song! He told a series of fantastic tales, claiming that each one was a true story. He gave each tale a title—‘The Value of Surprise’, ‘The Value of Character’, ‘The Value of Presence of Mind’—and said that he had plans to publish the stories as ‘moral tracts’. As I recall, he had hopes that the Bishop of London might contribute a preface!

  The last of these tales was the most memorable: an account of an extraordinary night at the theatre. “I forget the title of the play that was being presented,” said Oscar, “but you will recall the plot: a virtuous heroine rescued from a fate worse than death by a handsome hero…You remember it now? Indeed. Well, on the night in question, during the tremendous scene in which the fair flower-girl of Piccadilly Circus—our heroine—rejects with scorn the odious proposals of the debauched marquess—the villain of the piece—a huge volume of smoke and fire poured out of the wings. The audience rose in panic and stampeded towards the exits. Then, suddenly, on stage there appeared the noble figure of the young man who was the true lover of the flower-girl. His voice rang out, clear and strong—“The fire is already under control. The chief danger is from panic. Let all go back to their seats and recover their calm.” So commanding was his presence that all in the audience returned to their places. The young actor then leapt over the footlights and ran out of the theatre. The rest were burnt to a crisp.”

  As our laughter and applause subsided, we heard a sharp rat-tat-tat on the Tite Street front door. A moment later, Mrs Ryan appeared at the dining-room door bearing a parcel—a box, perhaps one foot square—wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string. “It is for Mrs Wilde,” she said, “a birthday present, I assume.”

  “How exciting!” said Constance.

  “Will it be a hat?” asked Conan Doyle.

  “It will be a birthday cake,” said John Gray.

  “Pray God it is not another football!” said Oscar.

  “Fetch me a knife, would you, Mrs Ryan?” said Constance. She took the package and laid it on the table before her. “It is quite heavy,” she said.

  “It is a football!” groaned Oscar.

  Mrs Ryan handed Constance a small fruit-knife. Constance cut the string and tore back the paper. Within the brown wrapping was a sturdy cardboard box. Constance leant forward and, bright-eyed with anticipation, with both hands and a flourish, she lifted off the lid.

  As she saw the horror within, the blood instantly drained from her face and she let out what seemed at the time to be a never-ending scream. She closed her eyes and, with sudden force, pushed the box away from her. It toppled over and out of it rolled a human head—the severed head of Billy Wood.

  14

  Billy Wood

  It was Conan Doyle who took immediate command of the situation.

  He got to his feet at once, while Constance was still screaming, and threw this napkin over the severed head, which had rolled to the centre of the table and come to rest—grotesquely, nose up—against the rim of a silver fruit dish. He looked at his wife and said, quite calmly, “Touie, take Mrs Wilde to her bedroom.” Mrs Doyle did not move. “Now, Touie,” he said, “now.” Mrs Doyle got to her feet. Her husband looked about him. “Veronica, you go too, please. Mrs Ryan, would you get some brandy for the ladies? And for yourself, of course. Mr Gray, would you escort the ladies? Thank you.”

  People began to move. Mrs Ryan put a comforting arm around Constance’s shoulders. Mrs Doyle stood tentatively at her side. John Gray did as he was bidden and began to usher the womenfolk out of the room. As he went, he turned to Conan Doyle. “Should we not call the police?” he asked.

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Aidan Fraser.

  Everyone was now standing or in motion, except for Oscar who was still seated at the head of the table, gazing fixedly ahead of him, as if in a trance. When the women had all gone, Conan Doyle said, “Let us leave this room.” He leant across the table and, with both hands, scooped up the head, still covered in his napkin, and cradled it in his arms. “Come, Oscar, let us adjourn to your study.”

  It is worth noting at this point that Oscar was right. The boy was beautiful—there was no doubt about that. The fact of the severed head was shocking and horrific, but the face of the boy was neither. It was perfect.

  “He was a god,” said Oscar.

  “He was certainly a good-looking lad,” said Conan Doyle.

  The country doctor was holding the severed head in his hands, examining it, assessing it as if he had been the curator of antiquities at the British Museum inspecting the latest trophy from the excavations at Pompeii.

  The head looked as if it had been lopped from a marble statue: the features were clear and strong; the forehead was broad and smooth; the cheekbones were high; the nose and chin were sharply defined; and the skin was flawless, grey-white in colour, firm and smooth as marble. The one disconcerting element—the one element that served as a reminder that this was not, in fact, an effigy, but the severed head of a human being—was the hair. There was so much of it. It was thick, dark brown and swept back as if newly brushed. He had thick eyebrows too and, on his closed eyelids, long, dark eyelashes, like a girl’s. His mouth was set almost in a smile and on his upper lip were the beginnings of a young man’s moustache.

  “He looks at peace,” I said.

  “He has been embalmed,” said Conan Doyle.

  “Embalmed?” repeated Aidan Fraser, taking a step closer to Doyle.

  “Preserved,” said the doctor, “with chemicals—most skilfully.”

  “Where is the box it came in?” asked Fraser.

  “In the dining room still,” I said. “I’ll get it.”

  As I came out of Oscar’s study to retrieve the box from the dining-room table, I was surprised to find Veronica Sutherland at the foot of the stairs. She had her overcoat in her arms.

  “Are you leaving?” I asked.

  “No,” she answered.

  “How is she?” I asked.

  “Mrs Wilde? Disturbed. Understandably. She is weeping. I came to find some smelling-salts for her. She has none.” She indicated the coat in her arms. “I brought some with me. I was feeling faint myself a little earlier. The train journey from Scotland was exhausting.” She smiled at me. “How is Mr Wilde?” she asked.

  “Shocked,” I said. “It is shocking. Horrible.” I moved towards the staircase. “Veronica, my dear, I love you still.”

  “Robert, this is not the time.” She turned to mount the stairs.

  “Forgive me.”

  Burning with embarrassment (in those days I was such a fool!) I waited for her to climb the stairs and then made my way to the dining room. The cardboard box and wrapping paper were still at Constance’s place at the table. I took them and hurried back to Oscar’s study.

  Oscar had recovered himself. He was standing behind his writing desk—his famous writing desk: the writing desk that had once belonged to Thomas Carlyle—leaning upon it, supporting himself on his fingertips, addressing Aidan Fraser who stood alone in the centre of the room. “You wanted evidence of murder, Inspector. I trust a severed head will be sufficient? I believe King Herod would have settled for less.”

  Fraser laughed a mirthless laugh. “Oh yes, Mr Wilde, you will get your investigation now—you need have no fear of that.”

  For a moment, as I re-entered the room, I could not see Conan Doyle, so I wa
s startled when he spoke. He was standing away from the others, in a corner, leaning against the wall, still holding the boy’s head, but now holding it aloft beneath a gas lamp, examining it minutely through a magnifying-glass. “Holmes would have been proud of this,” he said.

  “What?” snapped Oscar.

  “No,” said Doyle, soothingly, “not my Holmes, Oscar. We are in the real world now, alas. Dr Thomas Holmes, the father of modern embalming. During the American Civil War he received the commission to embalm the corpses of dead Union soldiers to return them to their families. Embalming had been an art. Holmes made it a science.”

  Conan Doyle walked slowly to the middle of the room and, having held the severed head close to his nostrils for a moment and sniffed sharply, he carefully placed it inside the cardboard box that I had put down on the writing desk. “This has been most skilfully achieved,” he said.

  “Using formaldehyde?” asked Fraser.

  “No,” said Conan Doyle, “arsenic, I think—which suggests to me the work of a skilled and gifted amateur rather than a professional. Your regular undertaker would not use arsenic nowadays.”

  “Do you imagine that the rest of the body has been preserved?”

  “Oh, yes. I think the decapitation is recent. Look at the clean cut across the neck. I imagine the embalming took place within hours of the murder.”

  “The embalming—could anyone do it?” asked Fraser. “On their own, I mean, without assistance.”

  “Certainly,” said Conan Doyle, “it’s a simple process. If you have the knowledge—and the pump.”

  “The pump?” I repeated, involuntarily.

  “No more,” said Oscar, “I beg you.”

  Conan Doyle lowered his voice. “The embalming fluid is forced into the blood vessels, usually via the right common carotid artery, by means of a small mechanical pump. The embalmer has then to massage the corpse to ensure the proper distribution of the fluid. That’s where skill and experience play their part. As I say, this has been most skilfully done—though the boy’s youth will have helped. As a rule, the older the deceased, the poorer the circulation.”