2007 - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders (22 page)

Canon Courteney leant forward and clipped the boy sharply round the ear. He hit him hard. “Mind your manners,” he said and hit him a second time. The boy yelped and fell silent.

“Thank you,” said Oscar, looking round the room, “thank you all. That has been most helpful.”

“Is that all?” asked the canon, slipping nimbly off his perch.

“Oh, just one thing more,” said Oscar. “You say Billy Wood left here at two o’clock—”

“As the clock struck,” said the canon, “there’s no doubt about that. I believe he even said that it was two o’clock and that he had to go because two was the time of his appointment.” There were murmurs of agreement from around the room.

“Indeed?” said Oscar, raising an eyebrow. “And when he ‘went, did anyone go with him? Or follow him?”

“No,” said the canon.

“I went to the window,” said Aston Upthorpe, “and watched him go into the street. That was the last I saw of him.”

“And was he alone?”

“Quite alone. The street was empty.”

“And which way did he go? To the left? To the right?”

Upthorpe considered for a moment and then said, “To the left. He ran off, without a care in the world.”

“And no one followed him? No one left this room?”

“Not until four,” said the canon. “We all remained here until four. That’s when we break up the party. At four, that’s the rule. No one left until then—you have my word for it.”

“Thank you,” said Oscar, “thank you.” He glanced in my direction and indicated that I should put away my notebook.

“Well,” said the canon, cheerily, “if your business is done, if you have all you need to know, shall we move on? I will enrobe and we will proceed with the service. I trust you’ll both stay.”

“Alas, we cannot,” said Oscar, putting out his arms in the hope of being helped to his feet. “We have a train to catch.”

“Everybody seems in a hurry to catch a train nowadays,” muttered Bellotti from his corner.

“You are right,” said Oscar, giving himself over to the two boys in bathing suits who were easing him upwards, “it is a state of things that is not favourable to poetry or romance, but there you are.”

“Is it to be a special service?” I asked the canon, as he was being assisted into his surplice by two of the other older gentlemen. His moon-shaped monkey-face appeared through the neck-hole of the surplice and he grinned at me.

“It is to be a baptism,” he said. “This afternoon Fred and Harry are to follow in the footsteps of Juventinus and Maximinus. They are to be baptised! Today I really must remember which one is which.”

Messrs Prior and Talmage spoke together: “We are to be godparents.” Aston Tirrold added, “We all are—these two need all the spiritual guidance they can get.”

Canon Courteney kissed the embroidered crucifix on a white-and-gold silk stole and placed it carefully about his neck. “This is why the boys are dressed as they are. I hope you did not think they were in bathing suits for amusement’s sake. That would be perverse.”

I was bemused. “Is there a font?” I asked.

“There’s a champagne bucket,” said Bellotti from his corner.

“You see,” said the canon happily, “God has provided. I am sorry you cannot stay, truly sorry. Come next month—the twenty-second. It’s always the last Tuesday. It will be the feast of dear St Margaret of Cortona. We always do something very special for her. She was sorely tried, you know.”

Oscar had put on his gloves and coat, assisted by the boys, and retrieved his cane. Now he was passing around the room, stepping between candlesticks and wine-cups, to shake each of the club members by the hand. “Thank you,” he repeated to each of them. “Bless you.” He nodded to Bellotti and embraced the canon who, with a finger dipped in wine, anointed his forehead with a sign of the cross.

“Come, Robert,” he said to me, taking me by the arm and steering me towards the door. “We must leave our friends to their service. Today is a special day.” He looked at the two boys who were hovering close by him. “Don’t worry, gentlemen, I shan’t forget you. I shall send you both baptismal gifts. I know spoons are more customary, but I’ll make it cigarette cases, if you don’t mind—inscribed, of course. One for Fred, one for Harry. You can decide who should have which.”

By now everyone in the room—bar Bellotti—was standing to bid us farewell.

“Thank you once more for your assistance,” said Oscar, with his hand on the handle of the door. “Thank you, too, for remembering Billy with so much sympathy and affection. Is there anything that was left unsaid?”

As Oscar opened the door, a slight gust of cold air blew into the room and the candles flickered in unison. Aston Upthorpe, the elder of the Astons, the one in the artist’s beret, spoke up, quite clearly. “I think the boy was in love,” he said.

“In love?” repeated Oscar.

“Yes—for the first time in his life. In love. But not with me.”

“Where is the Blood?”

“D
o we have a train to catch?” I asked, as Mrs O’Keefe closed the door of 22 Little College Street behind us and we adjusted our eyes to the surprising brightness of the world outside. It was a little after half past two. The sky was overcast and there was the sulphurous haze in the air that was common in those days in the streets adjacent to the river, but by contrast with the candlelit gloom of the house, the street was a dazzle of light.

“No,” said Oscar, producing a handkerchief and blowing his nose, “not today. It’s too late today. And tomorrow, I am committed. I shall be attending a rehearsal for Mr Irving’s new production at the Lyceum. I am looking forward to it more than I can tell you. But on Thursday, Robert, if you are free, we shall indeed catch a train. We shall return to Broadstairs, first thing. We must find O’Donnell, sober, if we can. We must see Mrs Wood once more. That will be our task for the day after tomorrow. But for now, my friend, since we are here, we shall retrace the final footsteps of poor Billy Wood. This way, I think.”

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?”