2007 - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders

by Gyles Brandreth

  He pointed his cane across the street and stepped briskly into the empty roadway. Oscar was thirty-five but, to me, he had always seemed older than his years. He was large; he was cumbrous; he was not given to physical exertion. He regularly lamented the passing of the sedan chair. Usually, when he moved, he moved reluctantly, at the pace of the turtle, not the hare. That afternoon, however, in the empty backstreets of Westminster, there was a spring to his stride that I had not known before.

  He read my thoughts. “Yes, Robert,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder as we crossed the cobbled street, “we are retracing the final footsteps of poor Billy Wood, yet my spirit is high. I am intoxicated by more than Bellotti’s cheap champagne. My mind rebels at stagnation. I abhor the dull routine of existence. The game’s afoot—and my heart beats faster. I am exhilarated because in tragedy there is excitement. We thrill to Euripides in a way that we never do to Plautus.”

  He paused halfway across the road, turning back to look up at the first-floor window of the house that we had just left. The heavy curtain was partially drawn back and there, at the window, stood Aston Upthorpe, in his absurd artist’s beret, gazing down at us. He raised a hand and waved. Oscar waved back.

  “Poor man. How he loved that boy. An old man’s unrequited love is pitiful, is it not? May we be spared.”

  The sudden clip-clop of hooves interrupted this maudlin meditation. A coal merchant’s cart turned into the street and trundled towards us. Oscar clutched my arm and we hastened to the safety of the pavement opposite. “So, Robert, the boy comes out of the house and, according to Upthorpe—our one witness—he turns left and runs across the road. He does not pause to consider which way to go. He knows where he is going. His appointment is for two o’clock, but he does not announce his departure until he hears the clock strike. Why? Because he knows he has not far to run. He reaches the corner of the street, he turns right…and immediately right again…and he is here.” We were now in Cowley Street. “The journey has taken us barely two minutes. A boy of sixteen could run the distance in thirty seconds. So, one moment Billy is with his friends at 22 Little College Street and the next—within the twinkling of an eye—he is here, on the doorstep of 23 Cowley Street. Why? Why on that day? Why at that time? What was his purpose? Whom had he come to see?”

  “That much we do know,” I said. “He had an appointment with his uncle, Edward O’Donnell.”

  “No, Robert, that cannot be; that makes no sense. O’Donnell is a brute and a drunkard—you don’t run to him, you run from him. Billy ran here as eager as a bride. He came newly shaved, in his Sunday best: all our witnesses attest to that. And poor Upthorpe tells us that Billy was ‘in love’—and not with him…Was Billy running to meet his love?”

  “You are saying that he could have come here to meet a girl?”

  “Yes, Robert, it could have been a girl—or, perhaps, a woman? You have told me often of the woman who stole your heart when you were just sixteen. What was her name?”

  “Madame Rostand.”

  “And her age?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “And her breasts were like pomegranates…I remember.” (Oscar was indeed in high spirits that afternoon.) “But if it was a woman, Robert, why did the other boys—Fred and Harry—make no mention of her? Surely they would have known. Could a boy of sixteen keep ‘the older woman’ in his life a secret from his friends? Could you?”

  “But, Oscar,” I countered, choosing to rise above his banter, “what I still don’t understand is this: why did Billy say to the others, quite specifically, that he was on his way to see his uncle, if, in fact, he was not?”

  “Either because he needed an excuse that would not be questioned, especially by Bellotti, or because— now here’s a thought—because he was to meet his uncle, whom he feared, but in the company of someone else—someone with whom he felt safe, someone who, he thought, might be able to rid him of his uncle’s tyranny…”

  I was confused and unconvinced. I said, looking up at the house and grabbing at certainty: “Whomever he came to meet, he came to meet them here.”

  “Yes,” said Oscar. “And within an hour, within an hour and a half at most, he was dead.” He knocked sharply on the door.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Hoping to gain admittance.” He knocked again. “But see the door knocker—how dowdy it looks. Mrs O’Keefe has not been in attendance here for some time. I think we will find the house deserted.” He undid his coat and, from his waistcoat pocket, fetched a small Chubb key. He held it up. “Bellotti’s key,” he said.

  “One key,” I said, looking at the door, “but three locks.”

  “And the key,” said Oscar, “fits all three.” He undid each lock in turn. “It is a Chubb skeleton key such as housekeepers use to gain entry to every room in an hotel. Bellotti knows his business.” Oscar pushed open the front door. The light from the street spilt into the tiny hallway, but there was darkness beyond.

  “Do you have a match?” I asked.

  “And a candle,” said my friend, with a smile, producing one from his coat pocket. “There seemed to be a superfluity in Little College Street.”

  He handed me his cane and lit the candle. We closed the front door behind us and stepped towards the stairs.

  “Listen!” he whispered. We stopped, in silence. Nothing. We stood close together at the foot of the stairs. He held the candle between us. His eyes were glistening.

  “Did Billy Wood have a key?” I asked.

  “We can assume so,” said Oscar, “either from Bellotti or from Upthorpe—but perhaps he did not need one…Perhaps it was the housekeeper who admitted him?”

  “Was she ‘the older woman’, do you think? Could she have been?”

  “It is possible.”

  “What was she like, Oscar? What was her age?”

  “I cannot tell you!” he said. And as he said it, such was his sigh that he almost extinguished the candle. He turned from me in his exasperation. “I cannot tell you, because I do not know. I did not look at her—even for a moment. I was late, I was preoccupied. She opened the door. I brushed past. It was so hot that day. I put down my hat and cane and—immediately, without pause—I made my way up these stairs.” He began to climb the staircase, holding the candle high to light the way. “I was late. I had arranged to meet a pupil here at three—”

  “A pupil?” I interrupted him. “I thought you said it was a friend?”

  “Indeed,” he answered impatiently, “a pupil and a friend—a student of mine. It really matters not.” He moved on up the stairs. “The point is that I was thirty minutes late, perhaps more. I was in haste. I gave the housekeeper no attention, no thought whatsoever—fool that I am.”

  We had reached the landing and were standing side by side outside the closed door to the room in which Oscar had found the dead body of Billy Wood. He paused.

  “Hush!” he whispered. “Hush! Listen!” I listened. I heard nothing. “What was that?” he asked, handing me the candle. I waited, and then I heard it—a faint sound from within the room. It might have been the muffled cry of a whimpering child or the distant yelp of a wounded dog. We moved closer to the door. Abruptly, the mewling ceased and after a moment’s silence, like a held breath, there was a sudden sharp explosion of scratching and scrabbling, followed by a noise that sounded like a fist pounding at glass. Oscar flung open the door and a tiny bird flew at our faces and then, with a fearful flapping of its little wings, flew chaotically away again. Wildly, it crashed and spun about the room, hitting the floor, hitting the walls and, again and again, throwing itself frantically against the window-pane.

  “Oh God!” cried Oscar. “It is the trapped spirit of poor Billy Wood! We must set it free.” He rushed across the room and, with both hands, pushed the window open wide. He stood back against the wall and, as he did so, the bird flew directly towards the window casement and out into the world beyond.

  “Well done,” I said. “Good man.” />
  “It was a sparrow,” said Oscar, closing the window.

  “God is not mocked.” He fastened the window latch. “Did we leave the window open when we were here with Conan Doyle?”

  “We may have done,” I answered. “The day was close. I don’t remember. Perhaps Mrs O’Keefe opened it when she was here?”

  “Perhaps.” He stood gazing about the empty room. “It is curious how little we remember, even of experiences that seemed so vivid at the time. The mind’s eye is not a camera; it is an artist’s brush. It provides no photographic record, alas. It can bring back the colour of the day, the feeling of the moment, but the detail is all gone. It’s an adequate instrument for poets and painters, but for detectives—useless!”

  He walked slowly to the window and peered down into the street.

  “What do I recall of the afternoon of Tuesday 31 August 1889? Not enough, Robert, not enough!” He turned and fixed me with his gaze. “At approximately three-thirty that afternoon, I stood in the doorway to this room, where you are standing now, and what precisely did I see?”

  “You saw the body of Billy Wood.”

  He moved towards the centre of the room. “He was lying here. His head was where my feet are now. He was naked. His arms and legs were white—so white—but his body was awash with blood. So much blood. Where were his clothes? I don’t recall. There was a rug—a Persian rug. That I remember. And candles here, guttering but still alight, in candlesticks, in a half-circle about his head. But how many? Four certainly—possibly six.”

  “There was a knife. You said there was a knife.”

  “Yes, a small knife. Or it might have been a razor. The blade shone. It gleamed. I remember that.”

  “Is that significant?”

  “If it had been the murder weapon it would have been mired in blood.”

  “Could it not have been used as the murder weapon and then wiped clean?”

  “It could,” said Oscar, “it could indeed.” He walked around the imagined outline of the corpse and came to stand at my side. He took out a cigarette and lit it from the candle I was still holding. We stared at the bare floorboards.

  “What is your most vivid recollection of the scene that afternoon?” I asked.

  As he answered, the cigarette smoke drifted slowly from his mouth and nostrils, forming a grey cloud about his head. “The horror of it,” he said, “the purple of the blood…and how beautiful he looked, how innocent. His body was soaked in blood, but his face was clean, serene. His eyes were closed. He looked at peace, Robert. He had been butchered to death and yet he looked at peace. How is that possible?”

  “And how is it possible that when we returned to the scene of the crime—not twenty-four hours later—there was no trace of any of this horror? It had all been cleaned away.”

  “Except for Arthur’s spot of blood!” Oscar broke away from me and went to examine the room’s right-hand wall. “Where is it, Robert? Where is the blood?” He scanned the wall with care, running his eyes and hands along it. “Bring the candle—it is getting dark.” I took the candle to him. We stood where Conan Doyle had stood. “It was somewhere here, was it not?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Divide up the wall into squares, Robert—as friend Millais does when planning one of his larger canvases. Now, carefully, consider each square: first vertically, then horizontally. Take your time…Where is the blood, Robert?”

  “I cannot see it,” I said.

  “Nor can I,” said he.

  We stood in silence, gazing at the wallpaper. He drew on his cigarette and smiled.

  “Hideous, is it not, this wallpaper? So grotesque that I imagine it is the manufacturer’s most popular design.” I laughed. He turned to me, still smiling, but with a sweetness in his smile. “The wall hangings will not have troubled poor Billy. He paid little heed to his surroundings, as I recall. He was happy in himself. Indeed, I now think that he may never have been happier than at the moment of his death. “If it be how, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come…” Are you ready, Robert? Let us inspect the other rooms and be on our way.”

  Oscar took the candle from me and led us out of the room, without a backward glance. He now seemed to be in haste to get away. Our inspection of the rest of the house was almost cursory. There were two rooms on each floor, plus a water-closet, a cloakroom beneath the stairs, and a scullery and washroom adjacent to the kitchen. He opened the door to each, held up the candle, muttered, “Nothing here,” or words to that effect, and moved swiftly on. The house, from what I could see, was exactly as it had been when we had visited it last: empty, unlived in, almost completely bare.

  “When Bellotti’s club met here,” I asked, as we came up from the kitchen and moved back towards the front door, “was the house unfurnished then?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Bellotti is a travelling showman—he takes his costumes and his properties with him. When you rent a room in a house such as this, it comes as it is: with a table and a chair, perhaps a bare bedstead, a kettle in the kitchen, nothing more. When I came to the house in August, it was as you see it now—except…except…” We were standing in the hallway, at the foot of the stairs. Suddenly exultant, he spread his arms wide. “Bravo, Robert!” he cried. I looked at him, uncomprehending. “Except that here,” he said, “just here,”—he indicated the wall by the foot of the stairs—“there was a chest, a long wooden chest.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” he said, kneeling down, with difficulty, to examine the floorboards. “There are no scratch marks that I can see, but there was a chest just here, I’m certain of it…”

  “Certain of it?”

  “Where else would I have placed my hat and cane? I would hardly have dropped them on the floor, would I?” He got to his feet, helping himself up on my arm. “Thank you, Robert, thank you! You have unlocked another of the gates along our pathway.”

  “Have I?” I laughed.

  “You have, my friend. Dr Watson could not have done more. By enquiring about the furniture that is not here, you reminded me of the one piece of furniture that was. When I came into the house that afternoon, I brushed past the housekeeper in my haste, but as I did so, I automatically removed my hat and, as I made to climb the stairs, I laid it down with my cane. And I laid them here—on a wooden chest—the chest in which the Persian rug, the candlesticks and whatever other paraphernalia was required were brought to the house—and in which the body of poor Billy Wood was borne away! I salute your genius, Robert! I shall reward it with tea and muffins at the Savoy—or perhaps a hock and seltzer. What time is it?”

  By the time we reached the Savoy Hotel and had been served with tea and muffins, plus buttered crumpets and anchovy toast, not forgetting the hock and seltzer, too, it was after five. On the way, Oscar had halted the cab by the flower-stall at Charing Cross and bought us each a buttonhole: a camellia set against a sprig of fern.

  “A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature,” I remarked as he climbed back into the cab. “A gentleman should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.”

  “Who said that?” he asked.

  “You did,” I replied, “as well you know.”

  “Really?” he said, his brow furrowed. “Are you sure it wasn’t Whistler?…No doubt it will be.”

  He was in exuberant form. And when taking afternoon tea at his favourite table at the Savoy—“No cakes, Cesari! We are in savoury mood and on the strictest diet!”—he was, in every sense, in his element. “We have made progress today, Robert,” he said, mopping butter from his chin. He had impeccable manners, but he was not the daintiest of eaters. “And very soon,” he said with relish, “we shall make more.”

  I pondered what he meant by ‘progress’. “Did you believe Bellotti,” I asked, “when he said that the dwarf was his son?”

  He reflected for a moment before answering. “Yes,” he said, slowly, putting down his nap
kin, “I believed him. I was taken aback, but I believed him. There was no need for him to lie about that.”

  “I do not trust Bellotti,” I said.

  “And I know it to be true,” Oscar continued, “that the dwarf visits the women’s asylum at Rochester on a Tuesday afternoon. I’ve had Jimmy and another of my spies follow him there.”

  “I do not trust Bellotti,” I said again, with emphasis, “and I do not like him.”

  “He is not likeable,” said Oscar, smiling at me. “But what did you make of Canon Courteney and his crew?”

  “I liked them,” I said.

  “I am glad. I like them, too. One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead—the life one imagines, or hopes for, or might have led. Within the confines of their curious club, Canon Courteney and his quaint companions are free to live their lives as they would wish. Between twelve and four on the last Tuesday in the month, they become themselves. They come alive. I envy them.”

  “Could one of them be our murderer?” I asked.

  “You mean Aston Upthorpe?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He loved Billy Wood, but Billy Wood loved another…”

  Oscar examined his muffin contemplatively. “They say each man kills the thing he loves…I wonder? He had a motive, that’s true. And he had the opportunity.”

  “But they all say they were together all the time, so he also has an alibi.”

  “Were they all together all the time today, when we were with them?”

  “I believe so. Were they not?”

  “No. Upthorpe went to relieve himself, twice. So did Bellotti. And Stoke Talmage went once. But you did not notice. Or, if you did, you assumed—rightly—that they were answering a call of nature and thought no more about it. Upthorpe—or any of the others—could have been away from the room for a few minutes on 31 August without anyone noticing. Time enough to cross the street and commit a murder, I suppose.”