Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers (23 page)

‘No.’

‘I thought not,’ said Oscar, gently blowing a thin plume of blue smoke across the table.

‘But could he have done so?’ I asked, suddenly excited. ‘Hypnotism is part of Yarborough’s stock-in trade. Could he have persuaded this young woman to take her own life – under hypnosis?’

Conan Doyle considered his answer carefully. ‘Yes,’ he said, eventually. ‘Hypnosis is a form of unconsciousness
resembling sleep and some subjects are more suggestible than others. But, yes … under hypnosis, you can persuade people to do extraordinary things.’

Oscar contemplated his cigarette. ‘Could you persuade a sophisticated woman hosting a reception for two hundred guests to abandon it at its height and make her way to a darkened room and there disrobe, first to mutilate herself, quite brutally, and, next, to stab herself to death in the neck before cleverly concealing the weapon she had used for the purpose? Could that be achieved with hypnosis?’

Conan Doyle frowned. ‘I am not suggesting that Lord Yarborough murdered the Duchess of Albemarle, Oscar.’

‘I am relieved to hear it. Are you suggesting that he might have been party to the suicide of this other patient? Or that he is lining up the duchess’s younger sister for his cold marble slab?’

‘No,’ protested Conan Doyle, ‘not for a moment. All I am saying is that Yarborough is obsessed with “the great Charcot” and, consequently, set upon finding
physical evidence
of the roots of hysteria, at whatever cost. Charcot identified multiple sclerosis in the morgue. Yarborough is determined to localise hysteria in the same way. To undertake his research he needs the bodies of former patients. How else can he put the nervous systems of known hysterics under the microscope? It is the only way. I am not suggesting he will have had any involvement in the murder of one patient or the suicide of another – but both deaths will have been useful to him.’

‘Useful?’ repeated Oscar.

‘Yes, useful. He used the body of the girl who took her own life for dissection. He told me so.’

‘And what did he discover?’

‘Nothing – but that has not lessened his determination. The research goes on.’

‘And you think he would have liked to use the body of the Duchess of Albemarle in the same way?’

‘I do.’

Oscar studied Conan Doyle carefully, exhaled a cloud of smoke and smiled.

‘In fact, Arthur, you think that he may even have succeeded in doing so.’

‘I do.’

‘But that’s not possible,’ I said. ‘We saw the undertakers coming to collect the duchess’s body. You remember, Oscar? We were standing in Grosvenor Square – in the gardens. We watched them arrive.’

‘Oh, come now, Robert,’ exclaimed Oscar reprovingly. ‘Only the most literal believe the evidence of their own eyes. Poets and detectives need to do better than that. We saw a group of plain-faced, drably dressed individuals arrive at 40 Grosvenor Square with a hearse, that’s true. I remember. I can picture them clearly. They arrived with Lord Yarborough, did they not? We took them for undertakers because we saw what we expected to see. Who is to say they were not body-snatchers?’

I was about to remonstrate with Oscar, but my protest was stilled by a hand on my shoulder. It was a pale hand, small and delicate like a woman’s, but firm like a man’s.

I looked up and there, behind me, stood Rex LaSalle. He was in evening dress, with a white silk scarf around his neck and a pale-pink carnation in his buttonhole. He
leant on my shoulder as he bowed towards Oscar and then towards Conan Doyle.

‘I am too early,’ he said apologetically. ‘I will go again.’

‘You will stay, Rex. You are not early. We are late. But it does not signify. Punctuality is the thief of time. The waiter will bring you a chair. You will join us for our meat course – unless, of course, you’ve already feasted on some unsuspecting virgin you encountered on your way here.’

LaSalle did not rise to Oscar’s sally. ‘I have not eaten,’ he said quietly. ‘I will be pleased to join you.’

‘Excellent!’ cried Oscar, waving towards a waiter and shifting his chair around the table to make room for his young friend. ‘You will sit here next to me and, over the collared beef, we’ll tell sad stories of the death of duchesses.’

A waiter brought up an additional chair and LaSalle took his place at the table, between Oscar and Conan Doyle.

The young man’s arrival had galvanised our host. Everything he now said appeared to be entirely for the young man’s benefit.

‘With the savoury, Rex, I shall be leading a colloquy on the nature of sin – you will have much of value to contribute. But first we are sharing our news.’

Oscar looked around the table, mischief in his eye.

‘Dr Doyle has been to Muswell Hill today and lives to tell the tale. He tells it so well. Robert and I have been to Marlborough House this evening – on our way here – and enjoyed a brief audience with Tyrwhitt Wilson, equerry to the Prince of Wales. Tomorrow night,
gentlemen, we are all invited to join HRH at the Empire Music Hall in Leicester Square. You are included in the invitation, Rex.’

‘I shall be in Southsea,’ muttered Conan Doyle.

‘You will be in Leicester Square,’ declared Oscar. ‘It is a royal summons.’

‘What’s this about?’ asked Conan Doyle, testily. ‘Why did you not mention this before?’

‘Patience, Arthur,’ said Oscar, soothingly. ‘I will explain in a moment – but, first, let us hear Rex’s news.’

‘I have no news,’ said the young man.

‘But you must have news,’ insisted Oscar.

‘I have none. I have been in bed all day. I have been asleep.’

‘But last night?’ said Oscar. ‘What happened to you last night?’

‘I came with you to Mortlake, to the cemetery.’

‘And then you disappeared,’ said Oscar. ‘When the evening ended and the party broke up, and Arthur and Bram Stoker returned to town, and Robert and I joined young Prince Eddy and his companion at the priest’s house, you were nowhere to be found.’

‘I was there.’

‘I did not see you. I looked for you.’

‘I know. I saw you looking.’

‘You saw me? Why didn’t you call out?’

‘I couldn’t. I had changed my shape by then.’

‘You are talking in riddles, Rex. Explain yourself.’

Rex LaSalle laid his hands upon the table, one placed carefully over the other. As he spoke, he turned his head sharply so that he could look directly into Oscar’s eyes.

‘I have a gift, Oscar. I have spoken to you of it before.
At night, after midnight, if I so choose, I can transform my shape. By effort of will, under cover of darkness, I can change from man to beast. I can transform myself from the person you see before you now into a creature of the night – a cat, a rat, a bat …’

Oscar narrowed his eyes and let the smoke from his cigarette drift up from his nostrils across his face.

‘Do you turn yourself into a gnat now and again, Rex?’ he asked, playfully. ‘Is the rhyming element essential to this nocturnal transmogrification of yours?’

‘Mock if you must, Oscar,’ answered the young man, quite unperturbed by Oscar’s teasing. ‘I have the ability to change myself into any creature of the night – be it an owl or a wolf, a scorpion or a viper. Last night, when the charade with the naked boy on the white stallion was done, I chose to slip away. I went in the guise of a fox.’

Conan Doyle cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably in his chair. The waiter was approaching with our tray of collared beef.

Rex LaSalle turned from Oscar and looked around the table. ‘Forgive me, gentlemen. The truth is sometimes uncomfortable, but, as I have told Oscar more than once, I am a vampire. There it is.’

Oscar looked up at the waiter and smiled: ‘Fetch the sommelier, if you’d be so kind. I think we’ll be needing more claret.’

Leicester Square

47
From the diary of Rex LaSalle

It was a curious evening. I spoke only the truth and they believed not a word of it. Oscar offered joshing banter; Conan Doyle harrumphed and chewed on his moustache; Robert Sherard said nothing but looked on me with a mixture of disbelief and pity in his eyes.

We ate well and drank copiously. Oscar drank too much. He asked me about the taste of blood – how often I required it – in what amounts – at what temperature, etc. I was ready to answer him truthfully, but Conan Doyle would have none of it.

‘Desist, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘or I shall be obliged to leave the table.’

We talked much of the death of the Duchess of Albemarle. Dr Doyle accepts Lord Yarborough’s analysis: that the duchess died of a heart attack following a frenzy of carnal activity willingly entered into. Oscar believes that she was murdered, by a person or persons still unknown. Robert Sherard is convinced that Lord Yarborough is implicated in her death – that, under hypnosis, in a trance induced by Lord Y or one of his associates, the duchess was persuaded to take her own life. Is such a thing possible?

‘To know the truth one must imagine myriads of falsehoods,’ said Oscar.

When dinner was done, Conan Doyle bade us goodnight at once and went up to his room. Sherard volunteered to get a cab to accompany Oscar back to his house in Tite Street, but Oscar would have none of it. He commanded Sherard to go to Tite Street in his place and make his excuses to Mrs Wilde.

‘Tell her I am feasting with vampires and cannot come home tonight. Kiss my darlings for me.’

Sherard protested, but, realising how deep in drink Oscar had become, eventually agreed. At a little after midnight, we handed Sherard into a two-wheeler outside the Langham Hotel and waved him on his way. Arm in arm, and very slowly, Oscar and I then wandered up Regent Street towards Soho. I cannot be certain, but I sensed that we were being followed as we walked.

In my room I gave Oscar coffee while he told me that he loved me. He said: ‘The only difference between a saint and a sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. My wife is a saint, Rex, while you and I are sinners.’

This morning, before he left, he gave me five pounds.

48
Letter from Arthur Conan Doyle to his wife,
Louisa ‘Touie’ Conan Doyle