‘There are no clothes,’ said Macnaghten.
‘No clothes of any kind? No shoes, no stockings, no undergarments?’
‘Nothing at all. No rings, no jewellery. She was discovered in the alley, naked, like this.’
‘And there were no garments nearby?’
‘No garments of any kind: no coat, no covering, nothing at all.’
‘Not a shred of a thread? And no signs of a struggle?’
‘Her body was discovered lying in the middle of the alley, just where we found the body on Monday. She was laid out on her back on the ground – as she is now, but with her innards resting on her shoulders.’
I saw Oscar close his eyes. ‘It is grotesque,’ he whispered.
‘Were there any marks on the ground?’ I asked.
‘The earth was dry. There were old boot prints, of course. It’s a busy alley by day.’
‘But no prints of note?’
‘No.’
‘No prints of a naked foot? No signs of her heels being dragged across the ground.’
‘No, nothing of the sort. Just the body placed on the ground – carefully, it would seem, not dropped or thrown down.’
‘And was her blood still wet?’ I asked.
‘It was sticky to the touch,’ said Macnaghten, ‘but ice cold. It was a cold night. She was discovered soon after five this morning.’
‘By the knife-grinder who keeps his cart in the alley?’ asked Oscar, looking at the chief constable once more.
‘Yes, the same man.’
‘And at what time do you reckon the murder took place?’
Macnaghten turned to me. ‘What does the rigor mortis tell us, Doctor?’
‘She died twelve to fifteen hours ago,’ I said.
Macnaghten pulled out a half-hunter from his waistcoat pocket. ‘So, perhaps ten o’clock last night?’
‘Were we still in Tite Street then?’ asked Oscar.
‘You were at home last night, Mr Wilde?’ enquired Macnaghten. He sounded surprised. ‘I thought you were staying in town – to work.’
‘I was. I am. But I was in Tite Street last evening. Dr Doyle was with me.’
‘So you were there at the time of the murder?’
‘I was. And if you were at home last night, Chief Constable, you were there also.’
‘I was not – as it happens.’ He smiled. ‘But I might have been.’
‘I need some air, gentlemen,’ said Oscar. ‘Would you excuse me?’
16
The Westminster Alhambra
‘Forgive me,’ said Oscar, bowing his head in shame.
‘There is nothing to forgive,’ I said sincerely.
‘But there is,’ he protested. ‘I stood like a toothless Cerberus at the gates of hell. I could not go in. I could not face the horror of that poor girl’s mutilated body.’
‘I am not surprised. I do not blame you.’
‘I have made a fetish of beauty, Arthur, to the extent that I cannot face the reality of the grotesque.’
‘I understand,’ I said.
‘I believe you do.’ He looked at me and smiled. ‘You are a good friend.’ He clapped his hands together lightly to herald a change of mood. And while you have been examining the remains of that unfortunate young woman, please know that I have not been entirely idle. I have been considering the evidence and conducting an interview.’
‘Here?’ I asked, surprised.
‘Yes, here, on this very marble slab.’ He gave one of his characteristic little giggles. ‘And what’s more, without benefit of luncheon.’
It was now gone two o’clock in the afternoon and I had joined my friend at Nevill’s Turkish Bath, off Trafalgar Square, at the Whitehall end of Northumberland Avenue. He had left me a note at the front desk at New Scotland Yard telling me where I might find him and, in truth, having completed the grim and bloody business of the post-mortem examination, I welcomed the idea of stripping off my clothes and steam-cleaning my body from head to toe.
The baths were recently opened and handsomely appointed in an amusingly mock-Moorish style. At the entrance, the payment kiosk was surmounted by an onion-shaped cupola, painted midnight blue and decorated with a star and crescent moon. The attendant was dressed as Ali Baba, though his demeanour was more suggestive of one of the Forty Thieves. ‘Mr Wilde’s expecting you,’ he said, in an accent that spoke of New Bermondsey rather than Old Baghdad. ‘He’s paid. Keep going till you find him.’
I descended the winding staircase to the changing room, disrobed and, wrapped in a towel, did as I had been instructed, moving along mosaic-covered passageways, from one subterranean chamber to the next, each hotter than the last. In every room, seated on benches, were men, middle-aged or elderly in the main, wrapped in towels, lost in contemplation – either of their stomachs or their destinies: it was not possible to tell.
I found Oscar in the fifth room. It was the hottest room by far.
‘This is the calidarium,’ he explained, beckoning me to sit on the marble by his side. ‘We’re not likely to be disturbed here. Only the hardiest souls venture this far. The temperature can reach 250 degrees.’
My friend looked remarkably at ease in the extraordinary heat. ‘Forgive this semi-recumbent posture,’ he said, beads of perspiration bespangling his brow. ‘It is not very elegant, but it is comfortable.’ He looked like the Walrus perched on the rocks in one of Tenniel’s drawings from Alice in Wonderland. Having apologised for his abrupt departure from the mortuary, his mood was suddenly sunny.
‘No lunch and an interview?’ I asked, seating myself alongside him. ‘What has been going on?’
‘Progress – of sorts. Michael Ostrog is indeed at large, but he was not in London last night. He was in Paris.’
‘How on earth do you know this?’
‘I have been interviewing his employer.’
‘His employer? The man from the circus?’
‘Yes, my friend Salazkin – Ivan the Terrible, circus owner, ringmaster, knife-thrower, lion tamer and spy.’
‘Spy?’
Oscar smiled. ‘I assume so. Every Russian in London is a spy. It’s well known. Why else are they here? It can’t be for the cuisine. The English have no feel for beetroot.’
I laughed. ‘Are you sure he’s a spy?’
‘No. But I’ve long thought he might be, with his circus moving from capital to capital around the western world – and I assume that’s why he comes here rather than going to a Turkish bath on his side of town. This is the Westminster Alhambra. It is where all the European spies come to meet the politicians and the diplomats.’
‘Salazkin was here?’
‘He left moments ago. He may still be in the building, cooling off in the plunge pool.’
‘Did you have an appointment?’
‘No, it was a chance encounter. He was with another friend of mine – an acquaintance, really. Henry Labouchere MP. Labby. Do you know him?’
‘No.’
‘You will. He’s one of the parliamentarians making Macnaghten’s life a misery, incessantly demanding to know, “Who was Jack the Ripper?” Labby’s gloriously censorious – which, of course, makes him wonderfully suspect.’
‘And Messrs Labouchere and Salazkin were here together just now?’
‘Yes, Labby and Ivan the Terrible, à deux in the tepidarium. Naked. Not a pretty sight.’ He pulled his own towel more closely about him before going on. ‘Curiously, they have a good deal in common. Labby, bizarrely, once worked in a circus. He was an acrobat, a tumbler. Dressed in pink tights, he was billed as “The Bounding Buck of Babylon”.’
‘When was this?’
‘In younger and happier days – a lifetime ago. His is an interesting story, though he’s not a very interesting man. He is predictable in a way that Ivan the Terrible is not.’
‘And you talked to them about Ostrog?’
‘Fortuitously, Labby had a lunch to go to – with the Foreign Secretary, as he told us with an affectation of insouci
ance that was truly nauseating.’ Oscar’s portly body rumbled with suppressed laughter. ‘Labby does not know that I know all there is to know about Lord Rosebery. Bosie’s brother is the Foreign Secretary’s private secretary.’
I smiled. It was good to see my friend back on song.
‘I’m in touch with Bosie again, by the way,’ he added. ‘Constance approves. Indeed, last night she suggested I take a little holiday with Bosie before I start on my new play.’ I said nothing. ‘Anyway,’ he went on merrily, with Labby dispatched to the Foreign Office, Salazkin and I moved ourselves into here. That’s when I asked him about Ostrog.’
‘It is definitely Ostrog?’
‘He calls himself Michael Ostrov now, but it’s the man in the police file. I recognised him in the photograph. I recognised him at the circus the other night. He is the man who has kindly delivered Salazkin’s gifts of caviar to me in Tite Street. According to Salazkin, he’s been his trusted assistant for several years.’
‘Does he vouch for him?’
‘He says he’s loyal, hard-working, taciturn – which Salazkin likes. At the circus, Salazkin does the talking. Ostrov does the errands. Salazkin says he’s not very bright, but he’s willing, relatively reliable and reasonably able.’
‘Did you tell him that the police suspect the man of being Jack the Ripper – and that they believe he is locked up in a lunatic asylum?’
‘I did – and Salazkin roared with laughter. He said he’d assumed Ostrov had a doubtful past – he’d not enquired too closely. One way or another, he said, “all circus folk walk the tightrope”. He has an amusing way with him, Salazkin. But he knew nothing of the lunatic asylum, though he said that from time to time Ostrov “disappears for a day or two” – but, as he put it, “that’s a Russian failing brought on by an excess of vodka”. He said the man was incapable of murder. He has neither the strength nor the courage, according to Salazkin. As we shall discover when we question him.’
‘We are to question him?’
‘Salazkin will arrange it – as soon as Ostrov is back from Paris. He went on the boat train yesterday, on circus business, taking publicity material to the French printers. The circus moves on to Paris shortly.’
‘And where do we go next?’ I asked.
‘Bed,’ said Oscar, with a mighty yawn. ‘I’m drained, aren’t you? You must be, after the horrors of the morning. Bed and then dinner and a stroll.’
‘I must get back to work, Oscar,’ I said. I felt a sudden knot of anxiety forming in my stomach. ‘I have a living to earn. Deadlines to meet. Stories to write.’
‘This will furnish you with a story,’ he said, sitting up and resting his hand on my arm.
‘There’s no story without a satisfactory ending, Oscar. You know that. Who was the Whitechapel murderer? Unless we can name him, what have we got? A journey and no destination. That won’t work in a book.’
‘We’re getting there.’
‘Are we? Macnaghten has five suspects. We’ve met just two of them and neither seemed particularly suspect to me.’
‘Macnaghten knows nothing.’
‘Do we know more?’
‘I believe I’ve solved the greatest part of the mystery already,’ said Oscar. He beamed at me and with his large, soft hands smoothed out his towel complacently. The Walrus was now taking on the demeanour of the Cheshire Cat.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, “really”. And Salazkin’s going to give us Ostrog to interview. And tomorrow I’m planning to take us to the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum to see Kosminski – if he’s to be found. And tonight, after dinner, I thought we should take a stroll round Whitechapel – walk the course, as it were. We’re charged with winkling out the truth of the Whitechapel murders. Apparently, I secured the most brilliant First of my generation. Undeniably, you created Sherlock Holmes. If we can’t solve the mystery, Arthur, who can?’
‘Are you going to tell me what you think you’ve already discovered?’
‘Not yet. I’m not quite certain.’
‘And what about these new murders?’ I asked.
‘What about them? They are not part of our remit, Arthur. You know my motto: “Don’t dabble, focus.’”
I laughed. ‘That has never been your motto, Oscar.’
‘Come now, Arthur, do you really think we are seeing the return of Jack the Ripper?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘But not likely. Or, at least, not if any of Macnaghten’s suspects is indeed a guilty party. If the poor girl whose body you examined this morning in the mortuary was murdered in Chelsea last night, it can’t have been Walter Wellbeloved because he was with us. It can’t have been Richard Mansfield because he was strutting the stage as Napoleon – and I reckon the audience would have noticed if the emperor had gone missing during the second act. It can’t have been Ostrog because he is in Paris. And it can’t have been Montague Druitt or the Duke of Clarence because they’re both dead. I suppose Kosminski could have slipped down from Colney Hatch under cover of darkness to do the dreadful deed, but it does seem a bit unlikely. Kosminski was an East End barber. Chelsea really isn’t his patch.’
‘Yes,’ I ruminated, ‘why are these murders suddenly happening in Tite Street?’
‘They’re not “happening” in Tite Street. The bodies are being discovered in Shelley Alley, off Tite Street, that’s all.’
‘It’s significant, Oscar. You can’t deny it. Macnaghten, charged with producing a report on the Whitechapel murders, invites you to assist him and suddenly two bodies, mutilated in a manner disturbingly reminiscent of the Whitechapel murders, turn up on your doorstep.’
‘Shelley Alley is marginally closer to Macnaghten’s doorstep than mine. I don’t believe Oscar Wilde has anything to do with the mise-en-scène.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I don’t. The first body was discovered before our meeting with Chief Constable Macnaghten, remember – before I was involved in the matter in any way.’
‘But you knew what Macnaghten wanted to discuss with you, didn’t you?’
‘I had an idea, yes. But no one else knew. Macnaghten told me that he had not mentioned it to any of his colleagues and wouldn’t do so. I’d only mentioned it to you – and to Constance.’ He got to his feet. ‘Our task is to concentrate on the Whitechapel murders, Arthur.’
‘But we keep being pulled back to Tite Street.’
‘Perhaps it is Constance, then? Do you think she’s contriving these murders to lure me home?’
‘Don’t be absurd. Even as a joke that’s a horrible thing to say.’
‘Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.’
I looked at him. His face was flushed and covered in sweat. I saw tears in the corner of his eyes. ‘You are a strange fellow. You say something quite horrible and then you come up with a lovely line like that.’
He smiled. ‘I’m glad you like it. It’s one of my favourites. I stole it from a dead man. I steal a lot of my lines, you know. It’s one of my smaller secrets.’
‘Do you have many secrets?’ I asked.
‘We all have secrets.’
‘I hope I don’t have secrets,’ I said.
‘You may not now, Arthur, but you will have one day.’
17
Whitechapel
We did not dine in town, after all.
‘We’ll find something in Whitechapel,’ said Oscar, as we climbed up into the two-wheeler he had ordered for us. ‘There’s a stall I know by the docks that sells cockles and mussels. And gin. It’s close by my favourite opium den. Wonderful silks on the walls.’ My friend was in a teasing mood, but somehow, although I’d taken to my bed for an hour’s rest in the afternoon, I hadn’t the energy to rise to his bait.
It was a cold evening, and not yet seven o’clock. The day had been a dreary one and now a dense, drizzly fog lay low upon the great city. As we drove east down the Strand the lamps were but misty splotches of diffused light that threw a feeble ci
rcular glimmer upon the slimy pavement. The yellow glare from the shop windows streamed out into the steamy, vaporous air, and threw a murky, shifting radiance across the crowded thoroughfare. There was, to my mind, something eerie and ghostlike in the endless procession of faces that flitted across these narrow bars of light – sad faces and glad, haggard and merry. Like all human-kind, they flitted from the gloom into the light, and so back into the gloom once more. I am not subject to impressions, but the dull, heavy evening, with the strange business upon which we were engaged, combined to make me nervous and depressed. I was conscious, too, of missing Touie and my children, and feeling that if I could not be with them in Switzerland I should then, at least, be at home in South Norwood earning their keep, writing a publishable story – with a satisfactory ending.
Oscar’s mood was very different. He was ebullient, gaily filling the cab with his favourite aphorisms and purple cigarette smoke. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure,’ he declared. It is exquisite and leaves one unsatisfied.’
‘The fog in here is worse than the fog out there,’ I said dourly.
‘This is not your best mood, Arthur, but happily moods don’t last. It is their chief charm.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m thinking about these poor women. All so brutally murdered. For what?’
‘Is that a rhetorical question?’ he asked, smiling at me slyly, drawing slowly on his cigarette, his head half turned away.
‘It was – probably,’ I answered. I was not inclined to conversation, but Oscar would persist.
‘All so brutally murdered,’ he repeated. ‘For what? Not for money, that’s for sure. All of the Whitechapel victims were prostitutes. None was worth robbing for what she possessed. And the police explored the sad history of each of them and there is no reason to believe that any one of them was killed because someone – husband, lover, rival – wanted them dead and was ready to pay to have them dispatched. So, if not for money, then for what? For pleasure?’
I shuddered at the thought. ‘Could there be any pleasure in such perversity?’
Oscar Wilde and the Return of Jack the Ripper Page 11