Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol: A Mystery (13 page)

Even as I spoke, the warder on his dais was shouting: ‘C.3.3., C.4.8., step out of line!’

We were arraigned before the prison governor. In the great man’s presence caps had to be removed, so we were escorted into his office separately, one after the other, in order that we might not catch sight of the other’s unmasked face.

Who had initiated our illicit conversation? That was what Colonel Isaacson required to know. Whichever one of us had spoken first was the more guilty and would receive the harsher punishment.

The colonel was seated behind his desk. He cracked his knuckles noisily in anticipation of the answer. C.4.8. confessed that he had spoken first – and, when I was called, I confessed the same. The governor was not amused. ‘I do not understand,’ he stammered, turning brick red. ‘C.4.8. says
he
started it. He is to be punished accordingly. He
insists
he started it.’ I stood my ground. The governor clasped his hands and pressed the knuckles of his thumbs against his chin. ‘If that’s how it’s going to be, you will be punished equally. You will both have the maximum the regulations allow without reference to the visiting committee – three days in a punishment cell on a diet of bread and water.’ He nodded his dismissal.

‘May I speak, sir?’ I asked.

‘What is it?’ he growled, looking down at his desk and affecting to find papers on it that he was anxious to study. ‘There can be no appeal.’

‘No,’ I said hurriedly, ‘I accept my punishment—’

‘That’s gracious of you,’ he sniffed, gazing blankly at the sheet he held before him.

‘I wanted to ask about my books, sir.’

He looked up. ‘Books?’ His face began to redden once again. He gave the impression that he felt threatened by the very word. ‘What books?’

‘Mr Haldane kindly arranged for me to be sent some books. He paid for them himself. The
Confessions
of Saint Augustine, a history of Rome, some essays by Cardinal Newman . . .’

‘Spare me the details.’

‘They should have been sent on from Wandsworth.’

‘Ask Warder Braddle,’ said the governor, dismissively. He turned back to his papers.

‘I have done so, sir, but, alas, I am not one of Warder Braddle’s “favourites”.’

The governor cocked his head to one side and let fall whatever document he was holding. ‘Say that again, C.3.3. I did not hear you properly. Say that again. I was reading.’

‘I asked Warder Braddle about my books, sir, but he referred me to you.’

‘You said something else, C.3.3. What was it?’

‘The books should have been sent on from Wandsworth, sir.’

‘No – it was something about Warder Braddle. Repeat what you said – exactly.’

‘I said, “Alas, I am not one of Warder Braddle’s ‘favourites’.”’

‘Yes,’ said Colonel Isaacson. ‘I thought that’s what I heard you say.’ He leant across the table and gazed up at me with his ferret’s eyes. His face flushed once more. ‘Warder Braddle has no “favourites”. Is that clear? There are no “favourites” at Reading Gaol. We treat all prisoners equally. This is an English prison, C.3.3. We play by the rules. We play fairly – at all times and in all circumstances. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘One should always play fairly, don’t you agree?’

‘Yes, sir. One should always play fairly when one has the winning hand.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean nothing, sir.’

‘You are dismissed. Warder Braddle has no favourites. Nor do I.’

The punishment block was below ground, a set of subterranean cells – like the wine cellars of a great castle – located beneath the main body of the prison and reached from the prison’s inner courtyard by means of a steep and narrow stairway. There were iron gates at the mouth of the stairway and at its foot. The block contained eight cells in all, opening off a single low-ceilinged corridor. C.4.8. and I were the only prisoners being held there. C.4.8. was incarcerated in the first cell, nearest to the stairway; I was placed in the last. Halfway along the corridor was an alcove, within which a turnkey sat on a wooden armchair by a small coal fire. Opposite the alcove, between cells 4 and 5, was a short passageway leading to an open sluice.

For three days and three nights I was confined to my cell. I was kept in total darkness and fed on bread and water. It did not seem to me to be a very cruel punishment. The darkness was a kind of comfort and the bread and water no worse a diet than thin gruel and bitter cocoa. During my confinement I was released from the cell just three times and then only for a matter of minutes. Each morning, after breakfast, I was permitted to carry my pot of slops along the corridor to the sluice.

For seventy-two hours no one spoke to me and I spoke to no one. The duty warder, when he unlocked the hatch in the cell door to pass me my bread and water, said nothing. In the morning I knew when it was the hour for slopping out only because I heard the same warder unlock my cell door and bang his fist against it. He spoke not a word.

Lying in the darkness, I thought of what Private Luck had told me: ‘You must learn to let your ears be your eyes while you are here.’ I thought of my friend Conan Doyle – and smiled – and tried to listen with Holmesian perception. There was much to hear – a distant bell; distant cries; footsteps on the stone stairs (some heavy, some light – were those the boots of Warder Stokes?); muffled conversations in the corridor (was that the voice of Warder Braddle?); laughter; a cough; a turnkey pissing in the sluice; the locking and unlocking of gates; the heavy breathing of a turnkey sleeping at his post . . . I listened to it all, by night and day.

The chief effect of the darkness and the silence was that I lost track of time. On the final morning of my punishment I woke I know not when. I suppose it was the warder’s banging on my cell door that roused me, but I do not recollect hearing either the banging or the turning of the key in the lock. That it was the hour for slopping out was clear: my door was ajar, the gloom of the corridor filtered into my cell. I got to my feet, pulled on my boots and took my pot of slops out into the corridor.

As, blearily, I carried my mess towards the sluice I heard voices at the end of the corridor. There was laughter and whispering – and the voice of a girl. I peered along the passageway and saw a cluster of figures gathered by the gate to the stairway. The turnkey’s alcove was deserted: the fire in the grate was dead. I turned into the recess that led to the sluice and emptied my slops in the usual way. As I retraced my steps I looked back towards the stairway. There was only one figure standing there now.

‘Where’s your cap? Get your cap or there’ll be trouble.’

The figure came along the corridor towards me.

‘It’s Braddle’s watch,’ he said. ‘Take care.’

As the figure reached me, I realised that he was not a warder, but a fellow convict.

‘C.4.8.?’ I said.

‘No, he’s gone. He went last night.’

‘But—’

‘It’s Braddle’s watch. Braddle does as Braddle pleases.’

‘Who are you?’ I asked, peering down at the man’s uniform to find his number.

‘C.3.5.,’ he replied, extending a hand to shake mine. He had the voice and manner of a gentleman.

I felt the grotesque absurdity of the moment. I stood, in a burrow in the ground, dressed in convict’s clothes, with a chamber-pot beneath my arm, greeting a man I did not know whose face I could not see. I put out my hand. ‘I am Osc—’ I began.

He laughed. ‘I can see who you are. You should wear your cap. Braddle will have you beaten if you don’t. He’s wanting an excuse.’

‘Where is he?’ I asked, looking over the prisoner’s shoulder towards the stairs.

‘He’ll be back.’

‘Why are you here?’

‘I am doing Braddle’s bidding. I am a “favourite”.’ He laughed again. ‘At least, I have been. I am Sebastian Atitis-Snake.’

‘What a wonderful name,’ I cried.

‘I hoped you might recognise it. We were sentenced on the same day. Our cases were reported in the newspapers at the same time.’

‘I recollect,’ I said. ‘You claimed to be the Emperor Napoleon. That was your defence.’

‘And you claimed to be Oscar Wilde,’ he said. ‘That was yours.’

It was my turn to laugh. I knew at once I liked this man. I was about to tell him so when we heard footfall on the stairs. ‘It’s Braddle,’ whispered my new friend. ‘Get back to your cell.’

10
‘It brings bad luck to kill a spider’

W
hat do I remember of my time at Reading Gaol? The answer is simple: almost nothing, beyond the greyness of the place, and the unremitting dreariness of each day and the sense of desolation that accompanied each night. As I look back now, one month of my incarceration merges into the next, one season is interchangeable with another. From ten thousand hours of imprisonment all I can recall with any precision are a dozen or so individual moments. One or two are moments of unexpected delight (that curious first encounter with Sebastian Atitis-Snake was one such), but rather more are moments of black despair – and most of those connect in some way with Warder Braddle. Braddle was a monster.

It was Braddle who escorted me back to C Ward following my three days’ confinement in the punishment block. As I followed him up the narrow stone steps that led from the subterranean dungeon to the prison courtyard above, I lost my footing and fell forward on the stairs. At once, Braddle turned, stepped back and crushed my hand beneath his boot. I felt his full weight press down onto my spread fingers. I sensed him hold his breath as he stood waiting for my cry. I made no sound, but, beneath my veil, salt tears trickled down my cheeks.

As we crossed the inner courtyard, we passed the file of female prisoners returning to their ward from chapel. For the first time, I noticed the face of the wardress who accompanied them. Because her uniform was drab I suppose I had assumed that her face would be equally so. But it was not. I passed within a yard of her and looked into her eyes. They were blue and beautiful. Her eyebrows were unplucked, but her brow was clear and her skin was fresh. Her cheekbones were high and her lips were even. She was not Helen of Troy, but she had about her a touch of Joan of Arc. And, as we marched by, I watched her glance at Warder Braddle and smile at the man.

Was this, then, the woman whose voice I had heard in the corridor outside my punishment cell? Could it be? How was it possible that so odious a creature as Warder Braddle could hold such sway?

‘How long have you known him?’ I asked Private Luck on the morning after my return to my cell on C Ward.

‘Five years,’ said my neighbour, lightly, ‘since I was sent here.’

‘And you like the man?’

He gave his girlish laugh. ‘I understand him. I know his kind – very well.’

‘Why is he so powerful? He is a brute.’

‘He is not gentle, but he is our prince.’

‘Our prince?’ I stood in my cell, my ear held to the locked hatch in my cell door, bemused.

‘Only a nine-gun prince, to be sure – but we bow to his authority all the same.’

‘I do not understand you,’ I answered.

‘This is good,’ giggled Achindra Acala. ‘Oscar Wilde is calling to me from his cell and he is saying he does not understand what I am saying. Oscar Wilde, who has so much education, and I, who have none.’

‘If we bow to anyone’s authority here,’ I persisted, ‘it must be to the prison governor. He is our prince. This prison is his castle.’

‘No, the governor is our Queen Victoria. She is Empress of India – she merits the one-hundred-and-one-gun salute. But she lives on the Isle of Wight, a long way from Mysore. She never comes to see us in our cells. The governor is Kaiser-i-Hind, but the local princes are still the ones who collect the revenues and administer justice. The governor is the power overseas. Warder Braddle is the power in the land.’

‘I wish he was dead,’ I said flatly.

Private Luck clapped his hands. ‘That can be arranged, I am sure. This is the place for it, by jingo. Reading Gaol must be jam-packed with assassins. The man who tried to shoot Queen Victoria was here on C Ward.’

‘He is here no longer?’

‘They sent him to Bedlam. They said he was mad.’