‘I don’t need to know about Salome’s antecedents, Mr Wilde. I need to know why this young woman’s head has been sent to you.’
‘Because I asked Tom Norman to supply me with such a head – as a theatrical property. And he has done so.’
‘You commissioned this head?’
‘After a fashion, yes. But I meant it as a tease, as a challenge . . . I did not want the head of a young woman. I wanted the head of John the Baptist.’
‘And did you pay for it? Did the package contain Norman’s bill?’
‘There was nothing in the box beyond the head,’ I said.
‘So we cannot be certain that the head comes from Tom Norman?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘But the postmark shows the parcel was sent from Whitechapel.’
‘To Mr Wilde at his Tite Street address?’
‘It must be from Tom Norman,’ said Oscar.
‘Do you recognise the handwriting in the address?’
‘It is written with capital letters.’ I was holding the lid to the cardboard box. I passed it to the chief constable. He smiled at me – a conspiratorial smile. His manner made it clear that he regarded me as his sort of man, but now harboured the severest doubts about Oscar.
‘I see it all,’ persisted Oscar. ‘Tom Norman is a collector of curiosities – many of them grotesque. I – stupidly – asked for a head. Either he had one already in his collection or he acquired one.’
‘Well, it’s a possibility,’ Macnaghten conceded. ‘We know that in the past he has acquired body parts from the mortuary at the Whitechapel Hospital. This may be one of them. I shall make inquiries.’
He got to his feet. I followed suit. Oscar remained seated.
‘Thank you, Dr Doyle,’ said Macnaghten, shaking me by the hand. ‘You did the right thing bringing this to me right away.’
He moved towards the door and I went with him. ‘When do you think this young woman lost her head? Not recently?’
‘Certainly not in recent days – or weeks. The head is well embalmed. There’s no lingering smell of formaldehyde. She might have died months ago, years even.’
‘Yes, I see. Thank you. And the decapitation?’
‘Cleanly done, professionally, post mortem.’
‘Thank you.’ Macnaghten opened his study door and felt in his coat pocket for his pipe.
‘Have you made any progress identifying the two women who were murdered this week?’ I asked.
‘The two women found in the alley here, off Tite Street?’
‘Yes.’
‘None at all,’ said Macnaghten, sucking on his empty pipe. ‘No one has come forward asking after them. No one has been reported missing.’
‘Is that unusual?’
‘Yes.’
Macnaghten and I stood together awkwardly at the doorway of his study. I glanced back at Oscar who sat immobile in the armchair by the fireplace.
‘Mr Wilde?’ said Macnaghten.
Oscar turned his head in Macnaghten’s direction. ‘On Monday you asked for my assistance. Today you treat me as an idiot-child.’
‘Forgive me, Mr Wilde, but seeking to procure a human head as “a tease” or “a challenge”, as you put it, is not responsible behaviour. It is juvenile at best. At worst . . .’
‘It is criminal, no doubt,’ said Oscar.
‘No doubt at all,’ said Macnaghten.
Oscar got to his feet and turned towards the chief constable. ‘We are neighbours,’ he said, ‘and I hoped that we might be friends. But I believe that you have deceived me.’
‘What on earth do you mean, man?’
‘When I asked you if I was being followed by one of your men, you assured me that I was not.’
‘And you are not.’
‘But I am,’ said Oscar. He stepped away from the armchair and moved towards the window. ‘Please, Mr Macnaghten, look out of your window and across the street. You will see a man standing beneath a lamp-post. He is watching your house. But he is not watching you. He is watching me.’ Oscar beckoned me towards the window. ‘Look at him, Arthur. You can get a good view of him here. He looks almost respectable, doesn’t he?’
‘Whoever he is,’ said Macnaghten quietly, neither looking at Oscar nor out of the window but tapping the bowl of his pipe gently against the palm of his hand, ‘I am not responsible for his presence. He is not there at my behest. He does not report to me.’
There was a moment’s pause.
‘But we do,’ said Oscar lightly, turning on his heel towards the policeman and smiling broadly. His mood appeared suddenly to have changed: his smile was like a burst of sunshine breaking through black clouds. ‘I apologise for my misdemeanour. Tom Norman’s a rogue and I was wrong to encourage him. Dr Doyle was right – as he always is. We have brought you this dismembered head and if it is of any use in your inquiries that will be to the good. If it is not, at least it will now get a decent burial – or as decent a burial as the resources of the Metropolitan Police will allow.’
Macnaghten looked bewildered. Oscar’s sudden transformation of manner quite disarmed him.
‘This head,’ continued Oscar, pointing with a languid hand towards the cardboard box on the floor, ‘appears to have drawn us down an unpleasant cul-de-sac. We must now return to the highway. I sense we are nearing the end of the road.’
‘I am confused, Mr Wilde,’ said Macnaghten, shaking his head and pocketing his pipe.
Oscar laughed. ‘I can see that, sir.’ He crossed the study to join the policeman by the door. I turned away from the window and followed. ‘Have no fear,’ my friend continued gaily, ‘Wilde and Doyle are on the case. We are doing as you asked – eliminating those prime suspects of yours and even finding a few new ones of our own.’
‘We did investigate Tom Norman, I assure you,’ said Macnaghten, nodding and leading us out of his study into the hallway. ‘He is a doubtful character and I know that butchery was in the family line, but he had watertight alibis – witnesses who could prove he was elsewhere at the time of the majority of the Whitechapel murders.’
‘And what about the Marquess of Queensberry?’ asked Oscar.
‘What about him?’ replied Macnaghten, looking astonished.
Oscar glanced back towards the policeman’s study. ‘That man in the street – the one who follows me – if he is not in your pay – and I accept your word on that – perhaps he is in the pay of Lord Queensberry? I am a friend of his son, you know.’
‘Of Lord Alfred Douglas? Yes, I know that.’
And Lord Queensberry does not approve. He feels that I am not a proper or fit person for his son to know. That could be why the noble marquess has me trailed. He hopes to find evidence of immoral behaviour on my part.’
Macnaghten said nothing.
Oscar smiled. ‘Never mind that.’ He touched the policeman lightly on the arm. ‘You were right to point out that I have been acquainted with a number of the suspects in these Whitechapel murders. I am acquainted with the Marquess of Queensberry, also. You have not considered him as a possible “Jack the Ripper”?’
‘Not for a moment.’
‘Ah,’ said Oscar, picking up his gloves from the side table in the hallway and pulling them on. ‘Queensberry is a noted woman-beater, a known frequenter of Whitechapel and, without a shadow of a doubt, utterly unhinged. You should be investigating him, Mr Macnaghten. Leave no stone unturned.’
‘I don’t know what to say, Mr Wilde.’
‘You are an Englishman, Mr Macnaghten. You should say something about the weather.’
Macnaghten opened the front door and looked up at the sky. ‘Well, yes, at least it isn’t raining.’
As we stepped into our waiting carriage, I noticed that the man in the street had disappeared. As he sat back in his seat, Oscar laughed. ‘I think I negotiated the rapids there quite successfully, don’t you, Arthur? I need a drink. How about you?’
30
The Club
‘I don’t need a drink, Oscar. I need
an explanation.’ The carriage was turning in a circle and making its way down Tite Street towards the Thames Embankment. Where are we going?’ I asked. ‘Since we’re here in Tite Street, shouldn’t we call in on Constance?’
‘We will be seeing Constance later,’ said Oscar, settling himself back in his seat and gazing calmly out of the window. ‘She is joining us at the theatre.’
‘Must we go to the theatre?’
‘Mansfield sent me a wire overnight saying you had expressed a desire to see his Napoleon. He’s arranged tickets for us. It’s your doing, Arthur.’
‘I must go home,’ I pleaded. ‘I have work to do.’
‘This will be work – and hard work, too, if the reviews are anything to go by. It’s a poor play, by all accounts, but given the leading man is one of Chief Constable Macnaghten’s principal suspects it is our duty to attend.’
Our four-wheeler was now rattling along past the Chelsea Physic Garden. Oscar continued: ‘Walter Wellbeloved, evoker of spirits and mermaid-fancier of this parish, another of Macnaghten’s murderous possibilities, is joining us – along with Constance. It should be an instructive afternoon. And before it, we’re having a drink.’
I shook my head despairingly. ‘Tomorrow, I am going home,’ I said emphatically.
‘After the birthday picnic – if you must,’ said Oscar. ‘That is up to you, mon ami. But our mystery is almost unravelled. It would be a pity to miss the dénouement.’
‘“Miss the dénouement”? You do talk a lot of tosh at times, Oscar,’ I said. I sat back and looked across at him. I was simultaneously exasperated and amused. ‘And what was all that in there about the Marquess of Queensberry? Explain yourself.’
‘It was a diversionary tactic,’ answered my friend smugly.
‘You don’t seriously think Lord Queensberry is Jack the Ripper? It’s an absurd notion.’
‘No more absurd than it being Lewis Carroll or the Duke of Clarence.’
‘You were just making mischief, Oscar.’
‘And if I was, it was a case of fair-dealing. The Marquess of Queensberry is not a pleasant person. He’s a brute, a blackguard and, I reckon, quite capable of murder.’
‘But why would he murder five women in Whitechapel?’
‘Why would anyone? That is the nub of the matter.’
‘Do you think it might be one of Queensberry’s men who is following you?’
Oscar looked at me. ‘I accept that it is not one of Macnaghten’s men. I know that your instinct is that the chief constable is a good man, Arthur, and, given his repeated assurance, I am ready to take him at his word.’
‘I am glad.’
‘But that means that George R. Sims must have been mistaken – which is not like him.’
‘It’s a complex case,’ I said gravely.
He leaned towards me. ‘But we are getting there.’
‘Are we?’
‘We are.’
I could not share my friend’s confidence, but I sensed that he spoke from the heart. ‘At least we have eliminated Tom Norman,’ I said, in an effort to be positive.
‘More or less.’
‘Macnaghten was adamant. Norman has alibis.’
‘Indeed. And the very fact of sending the head suggests a clear conscience – of a sort.’
‘It was not a pretty sight.’
‘You say that,’ said Oscar, ‘and, of course, I only glanced at it briefly when you took it out of the box to examine it, but beneath the wig and whiskers I caught sight of what seemed to me to be a pretty face.’
‘You noticed?’
‘Yes. And I noticed the high cheekbones, too.’
Charing Cross station approached and, as we reached it, the four-wheeler turned left up Craven Street towards Trafalgar Square. ‘Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead,’ murmured Oscar, peering out of the carriage window once more.
‘What’s that?’
‘One of Benjamin Franklin’s lines,’ said Oscar. ‘He was full of good ones. He lived here – in this street.’
‘Is that where we’re going?’
‘Oh no. I don’t think Benjamin Franklin would approve of where we’re going.’
‘And where are we going?’
‘The Anarchists’ Club in Windmill Street. We can walk to the theatre from there. It’s not your usual London club. The decor’s not up to much, but I know you’ll enjoy the company. There should be a little friend waiting for you.’
In truth there was no decor to speak of. The club – correctly termed ‘Club Autonomie’ – consisted of a series of four or five shabby rooms on the ground floor of a narrow, nondescript house in a side street off the Tottenham Court Road. The flooring throughout was made up of bare boards, ill-fitting, unvarnished, covered with patches of oil-cloth and linoleum. The walls were peeling plaster painted a dingy green and covered with newspapers pinned up for the members to read. In the main room – Oscar called it ‘the club room’ – there was a bar at one end where an elderly Sicilian barman served wine and beer and spirits and, in the centre of the room, dominating it, a long, low refectory table. On either side of the table, crowded on wooden benches, talking, arguing, eating, drinking, reading pamphlets, writing notes, gazing into the middle distance, sleeping head in arms, was a curious assortment of people, some evidently in clusters, others in pairs, a number on their own, ranging in age from twenty to seventy. The air was thick with yellow smoke and the hubbub of conversation. The people, as I glanced at them, appeared to be in costume – as though they were supernumeraries in an Italian opera.
‘None of them looks English,’ I whispered to Oscar as we walked the length of the room towards the bar.
‘None of them is English. You won’t find the weather being discussed here. They only talk of revolution. They made me a member when I published The Soul of Man under Socialism. I read a paper here – in this room. In German. It was an evening short on laughter. German, French and Italian are the principal languages spoken here, though I sense that Russian is gaining ground.’
‘Why are we here?’
‘I like it. The drink is good and inexpensive. The conversation is challenging. Curiously, Constance likes it too.’
‘They have lady members?’
‘Oh yes. Look.’
We had reached the bar and there, standing at it, half-turned towards us, was Olga.
‘Hello,’ I said. I know that I spoke awkwardly. I fear that my face may have reddened.
‘Dobro pozhalovat,’ she replied. She smiled and put out a hand to touch mine. ‘I wasn’t sure that I was going to see you. I thought I might, so I came.’ Her fingers rested over my hand. I could not think what to say. ‘I know I look strange. I am wearing my costume underneath my coat.’ She laughed and stood back. She was wearing the same sombre coat she had worn when we had had tea together, but it was unbuttoned now and the way it hung around her slim frame made it look curiously like a dressing gown. ‘Do I look ridiculous?’ she asked.
‘You look lovely,’ I said, smitten.
‘Good afternoon, Dr Doyle.’ Ivan Salazkin was also at the bar. He, too, was wearing his circus costume, with, over it, a capacious black cape. Without his top hat or his elaborate waxed moustache, he looked magnificent but real, like a handsome hussar in a painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence. ‘You are arriving just as we are leaving,’ he said in his impeccable English. ‘We expected you an hour ago.’
‘This is the Anarchists’ Club,’ said Oscar. ‘We thrive on confusion.’
‘I did not know we were expected,’ I said.
‘Olga wanted to say goodbye,’ said Salazkin, nodding towards her. ‘The circus moves on to Paris at the end of the week. Oscar proposed that we meet here for a farewell drink.’
‘I shall now organise a farewell dinner instead,’ said Oscar.
‘There will be no time,’ said Salazkin. ‘We have a performance every afternoon and every evening and then, next Sunday, in the early hours, we depart.’
‘Th
ere will be a post-show supper,’ Oscar insisted. ‘You will have time for that. I will arrange it.’
‘I have to get back to work,’ I said.
‘More Holmes, I hope?’ asked Salazkin pleasantly.
‘I don’t think so,’ I replied. ‘I have other plans.’
‘And responsibilities?’ said Salazkin.
‘Yes.’
‘You have a family?’
‘Yes.’ There was a moment’s pause.
‘You have children?’ asked Olga. We were standing side by side at the bar. Her fingers were no longer resting on my hand, but our arms were touching. I was aware of that.
‘Yes,’ I said, looking down at her. ‘I’m sure I told you. A girl and a boy.’
She smiled at me. ‘You did not tell me, Arthur. Do you have a photograph of them? Are they very young?’
‘Yes,’ I said awkwardly, ‘they are young.’
‘How old are they?’
Absurdly, I struggled to recall their ages. ‘They are four and two,’ I said. ‘They are with their mother and their nurse in Switzerland.’
‘And do you have a picture of them?’ she asked again. Her eyes sparkled. In them I saw no reproach.
‘He does,’ boomed Oscar from behind me. ‘Show her, Arthur.’
I reached inside my coat for my wallet and pulled from it the small photograph I carried with me of Kingsley as a baby resting on little Mary’s lap. It was a lovely picture, full of hope and joy and innocence.
Olga looked at the photograph and smiled. ‘He looks like you, Arthur. He is handsome, too. And he looks so happy.’
‘He looks nothing like Arthur,’ cried Oscar. ‘He’s a beautiful baby. Don’t you agree, Ivan?’
Olga held up the photograph for Salazkin to consider. The ringmaster looked at it coolly, nodded and said, ‘Charming.’ He felt beneath his cape for his timepiece. ‘We must go,’ he announced. ‘We are cutting it fine, as you English like to say.’
‘I am Irish,’ said Oscar, shaking Salazkin by the hand.
‘Goodbye, Arthur,’ said Olga, holding up her face for me to kiss. ‘Think of me now and then.’
Oscar Wilde and the Return of Jack the Ripper Page 21