2007 - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders (33 page)

Oscar turned to Conan Doyle in mock indignation. “Arthur, tell me: did Sherlock Holmes have to endure treatment such as this?”

“Come, Oscar,” said Constance, “it was you who assured Miss Sutherland that this was not a game. I think it only fair to her—and to the rest of us—that you bring this sorry business to its conclusion.”

“You are quite right, my dear—as always.” He smiled at his wife, who averted her eyes from his and, in her awkwardness, let slip the brown paper parcel from her lap. Conan Doyle bent down at once to retrieve it for her.

Oscar turned back to address Inspector Gilmour: “I will do as you would have me, Inspector, and come to the point. You have come to arrest the murderer of Billy Wood.”

“I have,” replied the inspector coldly.

“Well,” said Oscar, “here she is…”

Oscar Wilde turned towards Veronica Sutherland and presented her to the room as if she were a prize lot at an auction. Her back stiffened; she threw off my hands from her shoulders; her eyes blazed, but she spoke not a word.

“To commit a murder,” said Oscar, “is easily done—even when you are a woman. To kill a boy takes only a moment—if the boy is asleep and you have a surgeon’s knife at your disposal. Veronica Sutherland learnt of her fiancé’s infatuation with Billy Wood and determined to put an end to it. She chose her fiancé’s birthday because she knew that was a day on which Aidan and the boy—‘the slut of a boy’—had arranged one of their secret assignations. She had her own key to 23 Cowley Street. Indeed, I learnt from Messrs Chubb & Sons of Farringdon Street that she had the key copied in the last week of June. She had been planning this murder for some time. She acquired the surgeon’s scalpel that she used—the one recommended by Arthur’s old teacher, Dr Bell, in his celebrated
Manual of Surgery
—from Messrs Goodliffe & Stainer, suppliers to the medical profession, on 1 July. This crime was well planned—and precisely executed.

“On the morning of Tuesday 31 August last, Veronica Sutherland made her way to number 23 Cowley Street and lay in wait for the two men whose lives, in different ways, she sought to destroy. I do not believe it was her intention to confront Fraser and his catamite together. I think her plan was more malign that that. She wanted to kill the boy—the young seducer—and force Fraser to live on without him. The boy meant nothing to her and everything to him. Kill the boy—and let Fraser live on, with an empty hole where once had lain his heart.

“Between two and three that afternoon, in the upstairs room at Cowley Street, Aidan Fraser anointed Billy Wood as he might have done his bride. Surrounded by candles, perfumed with incense, they lay together—and when they were done, they parted. Fraser left the house alone. He had business to attend to. He was a newly promoted inspector at Scotland Yard, after all. But Billy stayed behind—and Billy was young and carefree and had taken wine. He fell asleep where he lay, on a rug on the floor at Cowley Street, with a seraph’s smile upon his red-rose lips and guttering candles all about him. That was how Veronica Sutherland found him. That was how he was when she cut his throat from ear to ear.

“And then the doorbell rang and I appeared, rushing in and rushing out! When I arrived I was in haste. When I departed I was distracted. When she admitted me, I barely glanced at Miss Sutherland. She was half-hidden behind the door in any event. I noticed nothing, beyond a flash of her red hair. She was not expecting me, of course—she was expecting Fraser. And when she saw me and not Fraser, she immediately pulled open the door and hid herself behind it as I hurried across the hall and up the stairs. Later, of course, Fraser did return to Cowley Street, as she expected he would. He returned, I imagine, sometime after six o’clock, at the end of his working day. He returned, with a hansom cab, to collect the boy he loved—and instead he found the woman he had once loved with the butchered body of the boy who had taken her place in his affections.

“What could poor Fraser do? If he went to the police, his life was over. At best he would be imprisoned as a corrupter of youth. At worst he would be hanged as complicit in the murder. He had no choice in the matter. He did his fiancée’s bidding. He became his fiancée’s prisoner.

“Together, I imagine, they finished cleaning up the scene of the crime. They did a thorough job, leaving not a trace of evidence behind. You would not expect them to: Fraser had been trained by the Metropolitan Police. Together, I imagine, they loaded poor Billy’s body into the chest in the hallway and conveyed the chest by cab to this house. Together, I imagine, they stowed the chest in the ice house in the garden.”

Immediately Inspector Gilmour and Sergeant Atkins began to move towards the door. Oscar laughed.

“The chest will wait upon you, gentlemen. It has been there for five months, undisturbed. Besides, it no longer holds the body of poor Billy Wood.”

“Do you know then where we will find the body?” asked Gilmour.

“Yes,” said Oscar, “I believe I do. Aidan Fraser loved Billy Wood and wanted him, even after death. It was Aidan Fraser, alone, who embalmed the body of Billy Wood. He had seen how the job was done in the morgue at Scotland Yard. One night, he visited the morgue, took embalming fluid, borrowed the small hand-held pump that the task requires and brought them home. He embalmed Billy Wood as a sacrament, with reverence and adoration, as the priests of ancient Egypt embalmed the boy kings of the Nile.”

Oscar turned sharply towards Veronica.

“Where did you find the body, Miss Sutherland?” She made no reply, but gazed steadily at Oscar with cold contempt in her eyes. “You will not tell me? Well, then, let me hazard a guess. Was it in his bed? Was it in the bridal bed that was once your due? Was it?
Was it?
” She turned from him slowly and looked at Constance Wilde. “I thought it was, Miss Sutherland,” Oscar continued. “Even after death, Aidan Fraser took Billy Wood to his bed. Even after death, the boy was beautiful.”

Aston Upthorpe hunched forward and hid his face in his hands. John Gray put an arm of consolation about his shoulders. Veronica turned her gaze from Constance and bent it on the two men seated on the French settee. Suddenly, violently, she spat at them.

“Is it contempt? Is it scorn? Is it fear?” cried Oscar. “Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrender.”

Veronica turned back to Oscar and sneered, “What do you know of women, Mr Wilde?”

“I know what Congreve knew:”

Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned,

Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorned.

“I know that Aidan Fraser so loved Billy Wood that he took him to his bed even after death—and that drove you mad. Having murdered Billy once, you killed the boy again. You cut off his head, his beautiful head…You bought a surgical saw for the purpose from Messrs Goodliffe & Stainer on 23 December at three o’clock in the afternoon—I have inspected their sales ledger—and to hurt and humiliate Fraser further, you had the head delivered on such a day, at such a time, in such a way that you knew it would arrive at my house in Tite Street when Fraser was seated, apparently at his ease, surrounded by his friends.

“But ‘Nobody ever commits a crime without doing something stupid,”’ Miss Sutherland. And that night, the night of Constance’s birthday, you did something stupid. You stole a swordstick from my house. It was there at the beginning of the evening. It was gone when you left. And I noticed. You took it, hidden beneath your coat. Robert, poor boy, did not realise it when he came upon you in the hallway a moment after you had removed it from the coatstand.

“You thought—wrongly as it happens—that it was my swordstick. It was, in fact, Robert’s, a present he gave to Constance some years ago. But you took it, thinking it was mine. Somehow you had decided that you wanted to implicate me in this affair. My talk of Billy’s youth and beauty sickened you. You thought—wrongly as it happens; appearances can be deceptive—but nonetheless you thought, possibly because of what Fraser had told you about the sorry, sordid ‘Cleveland Street Affair’, that I was—as others are—as Fraser was: a lover of men, a frequenter of male brothels, a sodomite…”

Conan Doyle cleared his throat. John Gray shook his head. Gilmour called across the room, “It is gone seven-fifteen, Mr Wilde. You promised to deliver the two murderers into my hand within the hour. That was our understanding.”

“And I will keep my word, Inspector. Here is Miss Sutherland. Take her—she is yours.”

“And Fraser? Where is Fraser?”

“He is upstairs, in the room above us, lying on his bed, with the head and body of Billy Wood at his side.”

“Atkins!” barked the inspector, pulling open the drawing-room door. “Go—go now.”

Oscar called after him, “He will wait until you come, Sergeant. He is dead. Aidan Fraser took his own life at some point between four and five o’clock this afternoon. I think you will find that he killed himself with the swordstick that Miss Sutherland presented to him for the purpose.”

Suddenly everyone in the room began to move. Gilmour came straight towards Veronica. She stood and faced him with her head held high and her hands outstretched towards him. She turned to me as he closed a pair of handcuffs about her wrists.

“Goodbye, Mr Sherard,” she said.

“I love you,” I whispered. “I love you still.”

“You are a fool,” she answered, “as all men are. So vain and so stupid.”

Oscar was standing with his arm about Constance’s shoulders. “It has been a trying afternoon for you, my dear, but I thought it best that you should see and hear the worst of it at first hand.”

“I understand,” she said. “I had guessed some of it, not all. This business has filled your mind for many months. I am relieved it is all over now. The children will be, too. They need to see more of their papa.”

“You can blame Arthur for getting me involved in the first place,” said Oscar, smiling benevolently at the country doctor who had now taken out his pipe and was sucking upon it thoughtfully.

“What?” he protested. “You brought the matter to me, Oscar. It was your affair, not mine.”

“I know you better than that, Arthur. Come now, man, admit it.”

“Admit what?”

“I brought the death of Billy Wood to your attention—but you sent me to meet your friend Aidan Fraser at Scotland Yard. You had your suspicions about him, did you not? Suspicions, but no proof. You could not question him yourself—he was your friend. So you set me about the case, you unleashed me as your bloodhound. And to put the scent in my nostrils you even discovered the first ‘clue’: the tiny drops of blood upon the wall. Those specks of blood: no one saw them but you. No one needed to see them. Whether they were real or imagined, they served their purpose.”

“You amaze me, Oscar,” said Conan Doyle. “I believe you must be one of the most remarkable men of our time.”

“Well, if you think that of me, I know you will oblige me with a favour.” He looked towards the doorway. Veronica Sutherland had gone. Policemen were moving to and fro. “When Inspector Gilmour has removed Fraser’s body, I have one last duty to perform. I promised Susannah Wood that she would see her son today and she shall. Let us—you and I—lay Billy’s body beneath clean sheets, with a cloth about his neck, and let us take her to see her boy one last time.”

“Very well,” he said.

“Sherard and I will then escort the poor woman back to Charing Cross. In the fullness of time, Billy is to be buried at sea—the sea that ‘washes away the stains and wounds of the world’.”

“Euripides?”

“Indeed. You are a credit to the University of Edinburgh, Dr Doyle. And, this afternoon, Mrs Doyle has earned her place among the angels! When we’re done, will you and Touie be so kind as to accompany Constance back to Tite Street? I would be so grateful.”

“By all means.” Doyle was about to shake Oscar by the hand but thought better of it and, instead, with a clenched fist, tapped him gently upon the shoulder. “Well done, my friend. Case closed.”

“And John—” Oscar turned to John Gray who was standing by the curtained window with Aston Upthorpe. “Would you see Mr Upthorpe home?”

Oscar took the parcel that Constance had been holding and handed it to the elderly artist. “What’s this?” Upthorpe enquired.

“Christening gifts,” said Oscar, “for Fred and Harry. You remember? Cigarette cases. Would you present them to them for me?—with my love.”

Postscript

“I
am a fool, Oscar.”

The clocks of tie Albemarle Club had struck eleven. My friend and I were seated, facing one another, either side of the fireplace in the smoking room; the fire was burning low; the crackle and smell of the burning wood was comforting; the chill of the champagne was comforting, too. It was Sunday night and the club was all but deserted. Hubbard had served us, as obsequiously as ever, and—taking his cue (and a half-sovereign) from Oscar—had withdrawn, pulling the smoking-room doors closed behind him.

“She did not love me, Oscar.”

“She did not love you, Robert.”

“And yet today, only today, this very afternoon—in her room in Bedford Square, I lay in her arms. It was a fairy tale.”

“Indeed.”

“A fairy tale come true! It was real. It happened. Her love-making, Oscar…it was exquisite!”

“I have no doubt. The fact of a poet being a poisoner is nothing against his verse.”

“But she did not love me—I see that now. She used me. These past five months, she has been using me…”

He lay back in his chair, examining the purple plume of smoke as it rose from his Turkish cigarette. “She has,” he said, smiling at me kindly through half-closed eyes. “Poor Robert!”

“But today, this afternoon, when we lay together—was it not different? Was she using me then?”

“In England,” said Oscar, reflectively, “a woman who is with child cannot be sent to the gallows…”

“Surely,” I cried, “surely you do not think——”

“But I doubt that she will hang,” he went on, paying me no heed. “She is a woman, after all, an unfortunate woman brought low by the betrayal and depravity of the man she thought she loved. She killed her fiancé’s catamite and down at the Old Bailey, that’s hardly a capital offence. Some might say she has done the state some service!”