2007 - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders

by Gyles Brandreth

  “It could have been an accident, Oscar,” Fraser said, with deliberation. “The man was virtually blind, was he not?”

  “That would have made him more careful, I think, not less so. You cannot rule out murder. You must not.”

  “But why should anyone wish to murder Bellotti?”

  “Because he was your witness, Aidan. You said he told you that Edward O’Donnell and Drayton St Leonard were one and the same man—”

  “He did.”

  “You are sure of that?”

  “Quite sure of it.”

  “And he told you, too, that Billy Wood left the lunch party that day to meet up with him?”

  “That’s what he said. He was ready to testify to that.”

  “Very well,” said Oscar. “If Bellotti was prepared to testify to that, what else might he not have been prepared to say in court? If he was prepared to implicate O’Donnell, what other reputation might he not have been ready to ruin? The moment Gerard Bellotti turned police informer, his days were numbered.”

  Fraser laughed and pointed to the slim volume lying on the seat next to Oscar. “I think you have been reading too much Conan Doyle, Oscar.”

  My friend picked up his copy of The Sign of Four and turned it over carefully in his hands. “I am absorbing what lessons I can from Mr Sherlock Holmes,” he said, “that ‘perfect reasoning and observing machine’.”

  Fraser smiled and, settling back in his seat, ran his long thin fingers through his hair. “It was an accident, Oscar—or suicide. Bellotti realised the game was up and he couldn’t face the consequences.” He turned to look out of the carriage window, but night had fallen and he could have seen only his own reflection in the glass. “You mentioned a dwarf this morning,” he said. “What dwarf was that?”

  “Bellotti kept a dwarf, as a kind of companion, errand-boy, bodyguard…I rarely saw Bellotti without the dwarf. He was an ugly creature.”

  “If Bellotti was murdered,” suggested Fraser, turning back to Oscar, “perhaps this dwarf was the murderer.”

  “I doubt it,” said Oscar. “The dwarf was Bellotti’s son.”

  Fraser turned towards the carriage window once again. “I did not know about the dwarf,” he said.

  “You’ll have to find him,” said Oscar.

  “Yes,” said Fraser, somewhat distractedly, “yes, I suppose so. There’s much to be done…”

  “What will you do first?” Oscar asked. “Interview the members of Bellotti’s little luncheon club? They should be able to identify Drayton St Leonard for you, should they not? Of course, unlike Bellotti, they may be reluctant to do so…”

  “I think I’ll begin with Mrs Wood,” said Fraser. Oscar shook his head dismissively. Fraser continued: “Mrs Wood—or Mrs O’Donnell—or whatever she calls herself: she was your ‘housekeeper’, Oscar, I’m sure of that.”

  “She’ll deny it.”

  “No doubt. Those with blood on their hands are disinclined to tell the truth.”

  “Will you charge her?”

  “Not without a confession, no. Juries don’t like to convict mothers of murdering their own. But they’ll convict O’Donnell. O’Donnell will hang— and that will be her punishment.”

  Our train was now travelling through the outskirts of south-east London. By day, the dreary streets and rundown dwellings that we were passing represented some of the meanest slums of the capital. By night, flickering candles on window ledges and gas lamps on alley walls turned poverty into fairy tale, transforming lines of tawdry tenement buildings into rows of Hansel and Gretel cottages. Oscar followed my eyes and read my mind. “Illusion can be a comfort,” he said.

  Veronica was waking from a sleep. Her eyes were tired; her skin was pale (the powder had fallen from her cheeks); her hair had become unpinned and was tumbling about her neck. I had not known her look more natural, or more vulnerable. She smiled at me with gently parted lips and held my look in hers. I was overwhelmed by her loveliness.

  The train was moving slowly now, as we approached the terminus. Veronica, sitting forward, adjusting her hair and stretching at the same time, turned towards Oscar and said, “I owe you an apology, Mr Wilde.”

  Oscar stood up and bowed to her before reaching up to lift down one of the bags from the rack above our heads. “You owe me nothing, dear lady.”

  “I owe you an apology,” she repeated. “I was intemperate earlier—and ill mannered. I don’t know what got into me. I trust you will forgive me and show that you do so by coming for a birthday drink tomorrow evening.”

  “I shall be honoured,” said Oscar. “Is Robert invited also?”

  “He knows he is!” She leant towards me, lifted my hand and kissed it.

  “Good,” said Fraser, slapping his knees and getting briskly to his feet. The train had lurched to a stop. “That’s settled then. Six o’clock tomorrow evening at Lower Sloane Street. And now?”

  We were all on our feet, gathering our possessions about us.

  “I shall return to my great-aunt in Bedford Square,” said Veronica. “She is not expecting me, of course, and she is not good at dealing with the unexpected, but she will cope. She had her doubts about my travelling to Paris unchaperoned. My early return will give her some satisfaction.”

  “I have not had the pleasure of meeting Mrs Sutherland Senior,” said Oscar, pulling on his bottle-green coat with the astrakhan collar. “I trust she will be joining us tomorrow evening?”

  “I think not,” replied Veronica. “She never ventures out after dark. She’s of that generation.”

  “Ah,” said Oscar, opening the carriage door and handing a suitcase to a porter on the station platform. “There are exceptions to every rule. My mother never ventures out by day. She has an aversion to the brutality of strong lights.”

  We were now all bathed in the ochre glow of the gas lamps of Victoria Station. Like one of Mr Cook’s guides, escorting an expedition through the side-streets of Florence, Oscar strode ahead, cane held high, leading our party (with four porters in tow) to the cab rank in the station forecourt. There was a two-wheeler at the head of the line.

  “Would you be so good as to take this young lady to Bedford Square?” said Oscar, handing the driver two shillings. The man examined the coins and grunted. Oscar murmured, “The vocabulary of the London cabby is terse, but compelling.”

  Veronica climbed up into the two-wheeler and looked down at us. I would like to say that, as she departed, she favoured me with her warmest smile—but I cannot. She appeared to regard each of us with equal favour. “Goodnight, gentlemen,” she said, with a little wave. “A demain.”

  “Your fiancée is a remarkable woman,” said Oscar, putting his hand on Fraser’s shoulder, as we stood watching and waving while her cab trundled away into the night. “She has fire in her soul. It burns fiercely.”

  “I so want to please her,” said Fraser.

  “It will not be easy. She has energy and intelligence—the spirit of a man—yet, through an accident of birth, she is fated to play the docile woman’s part. It is difficult to be wholly happy in such circumstances.”

  The station porters were loading the remainder of our cases into the next cab in line. “Where now?” cried Oscar. “A drink? A bite of supper? Buck rarebit and a glass of champagne?”

  Fraser was still gazing after Veronica, although her cab had by then disappeared into the traffic. He returned from his reverie. “I am going to Bow Street to re-examine O’Donnell,” he said.

  “What?” exclaimed Oscar. “Now? It is nine o’clock on a Saturday night!”

  “As good a time as any,” Fraser replied.

  “A somewhat irregular time for a police interrogation, surely?” said Oscar, looking at the inspector with some puzzlement.

  Fraser laughed. “Come, Oscar, was it not you who urged me to return ‘at once’ to London? I might have left matters to Archy Gilmour, but you said, “Duty calls.” You wanted me on the case.”

  “Of course,” said Oscar, “quite
right.” He paused a moment and then, with both hands on Fraser’s shoulders, facing him, he looked directly into the white-faced policeman’s eyes. “Might I ask a favour, Aidan?” he enquired. “Might I come too?”

  Fraser looked uncertain. “To Bow Street?”

  “Yes,” said Oscar.

  “Now, that would be somewhat irregular, would it not?”

  “Not to question O’Donnell myself,” Oscar went on, “that’s your job, Aidan, I understand that—but to watch and witness? You believe that O’Donnell is guilty and from what Bellotti told you it seems that there’s circumstantial evidence…I believe him innocent, but I have never seen the man sober. Perhaps I do not have the measure of him yet. In the cells, he will be sober…”

  Fraser shook his head. “Not necessarily,” he said. “It depends on the sergeant on duty. If O’Donnell has money, he may have been able to obtain liquor, even in his cell.”

  “Please, Aidan,” said Oscar, imploringly.

  The young detective shrugged his shoulders and sighed. “It’s most irregular, but very well…Come,”—he held open the cab door for us—“come, by all means. It was your case at the start, Oscar. It is right that you should be in at the finish.”

  “You think we’re at the finish?” I asked as our cab turned into Victoria Street.

  “I think O’Donnell will confess,” said Fraser.

  We were at Bow Street within a quarter of an hour. As we climbed down from the brougham, Fraser went on into the police station ahead of us while Oscar persuaded our cabman to wait for us with our bags. “Driver, I fear we could be as much as an hour,” he said. “If you park across the street, by the stage door to the Opera House, you may catch the last act of Lohengrin.”

  The driver nodded absently. “If you say so, sir.”

  “I do say so, driver,” said Oscar. “It is your kind of music—it is Wagner!” The driver looked none the wiser, but nodded again as he pocketed the coin that Oscar had pressed inter his hand. “Wagner’s music is better than anybody’s,” Oscar persisted. “It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without people hearing what one says.”

  “Very droll, Oscar,” boomed a stranger coming across the street towards us, a small, bald man in evening dress, smoking a large cigar. I did not know him, but evidently he knew Oscar—everyone knew Oscar!—and Oscar, as soon as he registered the man’s presence, cried, “Gus! Gus! So good to see you!”

  The little man was Sir Augustus Harris, manager of both the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. “It’s not opera tonight, Oscar. It’s pantomime—your kind of evening! Bluebeard —your kind of show! And all two thousand one hundred and ninety seats are sold! But if you want to join me in my box—”

  “No, thank you kindly, Gus. My friend and I are otherwise engaged.”

  Sir Augustus Harris looked up at the blue lamp hanging above the entrance to the police station and raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Your secret is safe with me,” he chortled. “Goodnight, Oscar.” He nodded to me, “Good evening, sir.” He crossed back to the other side of the street, waving his cigar grandiosely in the air and calling out to Oscar as he went, “Irving tells me you’ve been to his rescue. Bravo! He’s grateful. Come and see me soon, Oscar. Let us do something together—so long as it’s not your Salome!”

  “Gus is a good man,” said Oscar, “a civilised philistine. He represents the survival of the pushing.”

  We climbed the stone steps of the police station to find a young constable waiting for us in the dimly lit lobby by the station front door. “Inspector Fraser’s with Sergeant Ritter, sir. They won’t be a tick. They’re getting the keys.”

  “It’s very quiet here,” said Oscar, “sepulchral. One might be in a deserted country church.”

  “It’ll liven up later, sir,” said the young bobby. “By midnight, when the pubs and bars have all shut, it’ll be as busy as a casbah on novelty night.”

  Oscar gazed at the youth in amazement. I could see an elaborate compliment forming in my friend’s mind when, suddenly, we were distracted by the sound of clanking keys behind us. We turned and there, in the corner of the empty lobby, in what had given the impression of being a blank wall, we now discerned a narrow door, made of heavy metal, studded with bolts and painted black. Cut into the door, at head height, was an aperture no larger than the mouth of a letter box and through the aperture, brightly lit, we saw the perfect white teeth of Aidan Fraser. “Are you coming?” he called.

  “We are,” said Oscar. He smiled at the young constable regretfully. “We will meet again, I hope.”

  As we reached the metal door, it swung silently inward and, just beyond it, in a narrow, low-ceilinged passageway, we found Fraser, eyes glittering, holding up a paraffin lamp to light our way. “Step carefully,” he said, “it’s dark and damp down here. I nearly slipped.”

  With him was Sergeant Ritter, a middle-aged man, not tall but heavily built, with rheumy eyes, a drinker’s nose and a look of defeat about him. He breathed heavily, but said little. When Oscar remarked, solicitously, “Is your asthma troubling you, Sergeant? It’s been a bitter winter,” the sergeant stared blankly at his interlocutor, as though Oscar were a creature from the planet Mars, and offered no response. (Not everyone was susceptible to Oscar’s charm.)

  “Follow me,” said Fraser, holding his lamp aloft and leading us in single file along the narrow passage, then down a short flight of metal steps to the cells. The place was indeed dark and damp—and claustrophobic. It had a dismal, pestilential feel.

  “He’s in Cell One,” said Fraser. “He’s our only prisoner tonight. He’s still in drink, alas. Ritter thought it best to keep him quiet with liquor. He was not to know we would be coming.”

  We were outside the cell door, standing close together around Fraser’s lamp. “It’s as quiet as the grave,” said Oscar, “not a mouse stirring.”

  “There may be rats in the cell, Oscar,” said Fraser, with a wintry smile. “Stay by the door—he could be violent. Let Ritter go in first. We’ll see whether he’s in a fit state to answer questions tonight. If not, we’ll return in the morning.”

  Fraser unlocked the door and handed his sergeant the paraffin lamp. It was our only source of light. If its small, flickering flame had been extinguished, we would have been plunged into utter darkness. We stood in silence by the door, at the top of the three steps leading down into the cell. Ritter, breathing heavily, went ahead, holding up the lamp to light his way.

  “O’Donnell!” he barked. “You’ve got visitors. Get up, man. O’Donnell! O’Donnell!”

  But answer came there none.

  The cell was no more than four feet wide by eight feet long. At the far end of the cell, immediately facing the door, high up on the wall, just below the ceiling, was an open hole, the size of a brick, that served as an air vent by night and a pathetic window on the sky by day. Across the hole, blocking its passage, was a single metal bar. Hanging from the bar was a leather belt. Hanging from the belt was the body of Edward O’Donnell. His head lolled to one side. His eyes were open wide, wild and staring. His mouth was wide open, too. As Ritter held the lamp up towards O’Donnell’s ghastly face, we could see that his chin, beard and shirt were covered with fresh vomit.

  “He is dead,” said Ritter, pressing his fingers against the hanging man’s wrist.

  “I should have known,” said Oscar. “The fault is mine. I am guilty of this.”

  24

  29-30 January

  Within what seamed like moments—and can, in fact, have been no more than five or six minutes—Oscar and I were back in the two-wheeler being driven along the Strand. My heart was palpitating still, but Oscar, save for a row of tell-tale beads of perspiration across his brow, gave no outward sign of inner turmoil. It was in his nature to remain calm in a crisis. The perspiration was induced by exertion, not anxiety. Oscar Wilde was a man who could—and did—endure, with apparent equanimity, catcalls from a hostile audience, jibes and jeers from
an ignorant mob, even his own arrest and imprisonment. The more turbulent the tempest, the more serene he seemed.

  From his coat pocket he took out his presentation copy of Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four and turned it over carefully in his hands, leafing idly through the pages. “Holmes is right, Robert. His maxim holds. Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

  “You know the truth of this?” I asked. I was more confused than ever. The hideous image of O’Donnell’s dangling corpse filled my mind’s eye.

  “I believe so,” he said soothingly, caressing Doyle’s book and giving me that half-smile that was—to me, at least—the sure sign that he had just conceived a thought that particularly pleased him. “I believe so, Robert, but I must put it to the test. That I’ll do tomorrow…And then we’re done. Case closed.” He returned the book to his coat pocket.

  “Case closed.” Those were the words that Aidan Fraser had used, repeatedly, as he had bustled us out of Cell One at Bow Street Police Station a few minutes before. At the moment of the grim discovery of O’Donnell’s body, when Oscar had exclaimed, “The fault is mine. I am guilty of this,” the inspector had turned on him angrily and hissed, “Don’t be an idiot, Wilde. The man has taken his own life. By his suicide he has confessed his guilt. Case closed.”

  Bewildered, appalled by the sight that confronted us, stupidly I exclaimed, “We must call the police!”

  “We are the police!” barked Fraser. “Get a grip, man. The brute is dead, that’s all. Case closed.”

  The sergeant was still holding up the paraffin lamp towards the face of the dead man. Oscar was gazing directly at the bulging, sightless eyes. He seemed transfixed. “No time for lamentation now,” he murmured. (It was one of his favourite lines.)

  “My apologies, Sherard,” said Fraser, recovering his composure. “I am as shocked as you are. It is a dreadful thing, though perhaps to be expected.”

  “Yes,” whispered Oscar, “it was to be expected.”

  “Forgive me, Oscar,” said Fraser. “I will not mention your presence here when I write my report. It is not relevant in any event…Now you must go. I should not have brought you here in the first place. It was wrong of me. But you pressed me—and you have seen what you have seen. Now go. Go at once and leave us to do our duty.”