Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death (32 page)

For the
first five rounds, McMuirtree barely moved as Diego danced about him nimbly. McMuirtree
stood his ground well enough, but he kept his gloves close to his face,
defensively, and on the few occasions when he threw a punch, always with his
right hand, it landed wide of the mark.

Between
each of the three-minute rounds, the fighters retreated to their corners for
sixty seconds. While Gilmour wiped a sponge across McMuirtree’s face and
Queensberry whispered instructions in his ear, Edward Heron-Allen gave us the
benefit of his wisdom. ‘It’s going to be a long haul. I reckon our man’s pacing
himself deliberately. We could be in for twenty rounds.’

‘In
real life,’ said Wat Sickert, ‘there’s only one round. Most spontaneous fights
last no more than ten seconds. The blow is struck, the blade goes in, a shot is
fired—and it’s over.’

‘This
is sport,’ said Conan Doyle.

‘No,’
said Sickert, ‘this is pantomime—Punch and Judy for grown—ups.’

The
second five rounds were as lacklustre as the first. Diego stayed on the
offensive and did not appear to tire. He circled his opponent relentlessly,
jabbing away at him, throwing punches high then low then high again in quick
succession, forcing McMuirtree to retreat but still not managing to lay a glove
on him.

‘I see
how Beauty retains her loveliness,’ said Oscar. ‘She keeps out of the sun. She
lurks in the shadows, out of harm’s way.’

‘The
crowd won’t like it,’ murmured Heron-Allen.

‘Have
patience,’ said George Daubeney. ‘Patience will be rewarded. Patience always
is.’

In the
fifteenth round Heron-Allen’s prediction came true. The rumble of discontent
began at the back of the hall with a single, angry cry: ‘For God’s sake, McMuirtree,
start fighting!’ The lone voice was joined at once by others close by, and then
the cries spread, like rolling thunder, across the auditorium. Within moments,
two hundred men were shouting in unison: ‘Fight, fight, fight!’

Curiously,
it was Diego—who, for almost an hour, had made all the running—who seemed
spurred on by the jeers of the crowd. He moved in close on McMuirtree and
instead of pounding his opponent from the front began to throw first a right,
then a left hook towards his enemy’s head. McMuirtree was now forced to duck
and weave to avoid the blows. He kept his guard up at all times, but began to
move about the ring more energetically, darting to left and right, forward and
back, taunting an increasingly frenzied Diego to chase after him.

It was
in the nineteenth round that the nature of the encounter changed decisively. As
the referee called ‘Round Nineteen’ and the starting bell sounded, David
McMuirtree, like a man suddenly possessed, sprang upon his opponent. He leapt towards
him, jabbing at him with a powerful right fist. Taken off guard, Diego stumbled
backwards and fell awkwardly against the ropes, tearing his ear as he fell. Incredibly,
instead of going after him, McMuirtree now appeared to retreat, jumping
backwards and pounding the empty air with shadow blows while seemingly waiting
for his opponent to recover his strength and return to the fray. Diego rose to
the bait and lurched towards his assailant with his fists insufficiently
raised. As he got within striking distance, for a fraction of a second the
scene froze and the hall fell silent as McMuirtree pulled his right arm back
and then, with astounding force, landed a single punch in the very centre of
Diego’s misshapen face. The man’s head jerked back, his blood sprayed the ring,
his knees buckled. He fell slowly to the ground, like a collapsing tower.

He was
down. ‘Ten, nine, eight …’ called the referee. ‘Seven, six, five …’ roared
the crowd.

‘Wait!’
cried George Daubeney.

‘Good
God, he’s getting up,’ gasped Lord Rosebery.

‘A
little touch of Lazarus in the night,’ murmured Oscar.

Alfred
Diego was down, but he was not out. Far from it. As the referee called, ‘Three,
two, one … the man, bloodied but resilient, pushed himself onto his knees
and, throwing his head back, rose up quite steadily, seemingly laughing, as if
defying McMuirtree to do his worst. In the event, McMuirtree did very little
more that round. For the next sixty seconds, until the bell went, the two
boxers circled one another warily, throwing and parrying punches without
conviction, as if merely sparring to pass the time.

‘Twenty
rounds,’ said Heron-Allen when the break came. ‘What did I tell you?’

‘Do you
think this one will decide it?’ I asked.

‘Don’t
you?’

I
looked at Lord Queensberry and Inspector Gilmour going about their business in
McMuirtree’s corner. The policeman was wiping the boxer’s torso with a towel
and squeezing a wet sponge around his mouth. The Marquess was on his haunches,
whispering urgently into his champion’s ear.

‘My
father will be impossible tonight,’ muttered Lord Drumlanrig. ‘When he’s
triumphed, he’s unbearable.’

‘Seconds
out! Round Twenty!‘ called the referee.

The
round did not last long. This time, Diego anticipated McMuirtree’s pounce and
avoided it neatly, feinting to the left before jumping to the right, bringing
McMuirtree on after him. Diego, however, held the advantage for only a moment.
It was clear that he had given his all; he had nothing more to give: his legs
could carry him no longer. The crowd sensed that the climax was upon us. ‘Kill!
Kill! Kill!’ they thundered, stamping their feet and waving their fists, as
McMuirtree moved lightly forward and, with alternate fists, began, almost
methodically, to pound his opponent about the head.

‘He’s
beating him senseless,’ cried Oscar. ‘This must be stopped.’

‘It
will be,’ called Heron-Allen. ‘Look at the blood.’

In the
ring, suddenly, blood was everywhere. Both boxers were awash with blood. Blood
was pouring from them onto the canvas. Still the crowd bayed for more: ‘Kill!
Kill! Kill! ‘, As the referee ran towards the combatants shouting ‘Break!
Break!’, David McMuirtree delivered his final blows: a left jab, a straight
right, a formidable left hook. Alfred Diego crumpled to the ground.

‘It’s
over!’ cried Oscar.

‘Thank
God,’ muttered Conan Doyle.

George
Daubeney broke away from us and ran down the gangway towards the ring.

In his
corner at the ringside, I saw the Marquess of Queensberry, with his hands
raised about his ears, dancing a victory jig.

Inside
the ring, David McMuirtree stumbled away from Diego‘s body and turned
triumphantly to face the crowd. His face was white, but his eyes blazed. He
held up his arms in salute and as he did so we saw the horror of it. There was
blood flowing freely from each of his wrists. It was streaming down his naked
arms. As George Daubeney and the referee reached him, his eyes closed and he
fell dead into their arms.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

A CHARM BRACELET

‘I am certain that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor powers, nor principalities, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all
creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our
Lord. Amen.’

The
Hon. the Reverend George Daubeney, kneeling over the body of David McMuirtree,
crossed himself with trembling, bloodied fingers and turned to look up at us. There
were tears in his eyes. Daubeney and the referee had dragged McMuirtree’s body
from the auditorium to the dressing room. They had laid him on an overcoat on the
floor.

‘Is he
dead?’ asked Oscar.

‘There
was no time for the last rites,’ said Daubeney.

‘Is he
dead?’ repeated Oscar.

Arthur
Conan Doyle was crouching by McMuirtree’s head, feeling for the pulse in his
neck. ‘He’s dead, I’m afraid, old man. There’s no doubt about that.’

‘I
thought so,’ said Oscar, quietly. ‘One can always tell. When a man dies, his
spirit vanishes. It never lingers. It is gone at once.’

‘What
in God’s name has happened?’ The Marquess of Queensberry, like a rampaging
bull, burst into the dressing room. He had a whip in his hand. He cracked it
again and again against the three-legged wooden stool that Antipholus had used
when oiling the boxer two hours before and roared:

‘In
God’s name, will someone tell me what has happened?’

‘Something
outwith the Queensberry Rules,’ murmured Oscar. ‘Your champion is dead, my
lord.’

‘He
can’t be!’ cried Queensberry, swinging round in a circle like a dervish,
holding out his whip as if to keep us all at bay.

‘It
seems he is, Lord Queensberry,’ said Inspector Gilmour. He drew himself to
attention as he spoke. ‘I’m very sorry.’

‘Sorry?’
roared Queensberry. ‘Sorry? I’ve never heard of such incompetence.’

‘A man
lies dead before us, my lord,’ said Oscar quietly, ‘and you talk of
“incompetence”?’

‘What
else is it?’ raged the Marquess. ‘Gilmour said he had the building crawling
with police officers in plain clothes. How has this happened?’

‘I do
not know,’ said Inspector Gilmour, gravely. ‘I do not know, but I intend to
find out. McMuirtree was one of ours.’

‘Yes,’
growled Queensberry. ‘So you told me. He pointed his whip towards McMuirtree’s
body laid out upon the floor. ‘We can all see how you take care of your own.’
He looked about the room angrily. ‘Where’s the referee gone?’

‘He’s
gone to see Diego and his supporters,~ explained Daubeney, getting to his feet
and backing away from the body on the floor. ‘He felt he should.’

‘Two of
my men are with Diego,’ said Inspector Gilmour. ‘I will interview him as soon
as he’s recovered.’

Oscar
shook his head. ‘Alfred Diego has nothing to do with this sorry business.’

Conan
Doyle had moved to the side of McMuirtree’s body and was now kneeling on the
edge of the overcoat inspecting the dead man’s wrists and arms. ‘This is the
devil’s work,’ he muttered.

‘I
don’t doubt it,’ said Oscar, forcing himself to step closer.

‘This
is utterly grotesque,’ continued Doyle, slowly unravelling the blood-soaked
laces that had bound the boxing gloves to McMuirtree’s wrists.

‘Fiendishly
ingenious by the look of it,’ said Oscar grimly. He bent over the cadaver and
through half-closed eyes peered closely at McMuirtree’s lifeless arms. ‘Like a
martyr’s wounds … May God forgive whoever has done this terrible thing.’

‘It is
truly terrible,’ said Conan Doyle, shaking his head. ‘In all my experience,
I’ve seen nothing like it.’

Queensberry
had calmed himself and was standing, whip in hand, arms akimbo, gazing down at
the blood-drenched body on the floor. ‘I admired this man. He was almost like a
son to me. He was better than the sons I’ve got. He was blessed with a natural
nobility. He was proper fighting man, fit and strong. And he had intelligence
and guile. He could pace himself—that’s rare. He was a decent man,
too—clean-living. That’s rarer still.’

Archy
Gilmour crouched down beside Arthur Doyle. The policeman was by several years
the older of the two, but he did not seem it. With his light red hair and fair,
freckled, anxious face, he looked like a young actor playing the part of a
detective inspector for the very first time. He tried to speak with authority,
but sounded merely bewildered. ‘Well, Doctor?’ he enquired.

‘It is
as horrific as it appears to be, Inspector,’ Doyle replied, carefully turning
back the leather wrist-band of one of McMuirtree’s boxing gloves to reveal a
two-inch-long jagged blade. He tugged at the wrist band with his fingers and
tore apart the sodden leather, exposing a second blade—smaller than the
first—and then a third, and then a fourth. ‘Do you see?’

‘I
don’t see,’ growled Queensberry. ‘What is the meaning of this?’

‘It’s
very simple,’ said Oscar. ‘Someone has sewn a series of tiny blades—jagged,
sharp and lethal into the leather lining of the wrist-bands of McMuirtree’s
gloves. During the fight, over time, as McMuirtree began to sweat and the laces
loosened, with the movement of his wrists the blades cut through the lining …
The more he punched, the harder he punched, eventually the blades cut through
the veins in his wrists as well.’

‘Not
just the veins,’ said Conan Doyle. ‘He might have survived that. The arteries were
cut, too— sliced through.’ With his forefinger the doctor indicated each side
of McMuirtree‘s bloodied wrist. ‘On both hands, both the radial and the ulnar
arteries have been severed.’

‘Is
that why there is so much blood?’ asked the red-haired policeman, contemplating
McMuirtree’s arms and chest and legs all covered in gore.

‘Yes,’
said Conan Doyle. ‘It’s the quantity of blood that he lost—and the speed at
which he lost it—that killed him.’

‘The
wretched man was streaming blood,’ said Oscar. ‘Look at Daubeney. He’s covered
in it now.’

We all
turned to look at the Reverend George. He had carried McMuirtree from the ring
and brought him to the dressing room. He stood before us now, like Banquo’s
murderer, his hands and shirt-front glistening with the dead man’s blood.