Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol: A Mystery (30 page)

Major Nelson lowered his eyes and contemplated the tray that lay on the floor between us. ‘That’s not unknown,’ he said.

‘He was perverse,’ I said, ‘and corrupt. He pleasured himself with a boy called Tom.’

‘Prisoner E.1.1., sir,’ said the surgeon.

‘I know the boy,’ said Major Nelson. ‘He’s on the cleaning party. A wilful lad.’

‘The boy was Braddle’s creature,’ I said, ‘his plaything. Braddle used the boy not lovingly, but brutishly.’

‘He abused him as though he were a man,’ said the doctor.

‘You know this for a certainty?’

‘The boy was sick. Eventually, when I examined him fully, I discovered why.’

I looked at the doctor and smiled. ‘I thought that might be the case when you mentioned to me that you had been studying the work of my old college acquaintance, Professor Bent Ball.’

‘Braddle abused E.1.1. brutally – with unnatural force. He ruptured him. He put the boy in mortal danger.’

Major Nelson sucked on his moustache and shook his head in dismay. ‘If that is why Atitis-Snake killed Braddle, I think we could be excused for forgiving the man. He surely did rid us of a monster.’

‘No, no,’ I cried. ‘Atitis-Snake was complicit in Braddle’s perversity. He was part of the corruption. When Braddle wanted the boy, he would use Atitis-Snake to provide his alibi, to cover his tracks. Braddle the turnkey could accompany Atitis-Snake the prisoner to any part of the prison he chose and no one would suspect a thing. Braddle would escort Atitis-Snake to a discreet corner of the gaol where the boy would be found about his cleaning duties, and there – while Atitis-Snake stood sentinel – Braddle would have his way with the lad.’

‘You know this to be true?’

‘I chanced upon the tail-end of one of these encounters when I was locked one night in the punishment cells. I heard the boy’s voice. At the time I thought it was a woman’s. I assumed it was one of the wardresses.’

‘Why was Atitis-Snake complicit in this bestiality?’

‘He had nothing to lose – he did not care for the boy one way or the other. Atitis-Snake was always Atitis-Snake’s only concern. He had nothing to lose – and much to gain. I imagine that Braddle implied to Atitis-Snake that he might one day be able to assist him either to escape or at least to make a case for early release from his incarceration. I believe that Atitis-Snake murdered Braddle because Braddle had promised him a path to freedom and Atitis-Snake eventually realised that he could not – or would not – deliver on his promise. Outside Colonel Isaacson’s office, on the day my wife came to tell me of my mother’s death, I overheard an exchange of words between the two men that told me so much.’

‘Colonel Isaacson was fearful of Warder Braddle – I know that,’ said Major Nelson. ‘It’s not unheard of in the army – the commanding officer who allows himself to become the victim of a bullying NCO.’

‘On C Ward Braddle was cock of the walk,’ I observed. ‘He ruled the roost – and he had done for many years. He drank, yes, but he did his job. He maintained discipline. And none but a few – his handful of favourites – knew his secret.’

‘And those beyond the few that knew his secret, kept it,’ said Major Nelson, looking towards Dr Maurice.

‘When I discovered the extent of the boy’s injuries I did not know what to do,’ said the surgeon, lowering his eyes. ‘Colonel Isaacson was a man who sought to avoid trouble rather than confront it. I did not think that he would prove an ally.’ He looked up, but did not catch the governor’s eye. ‘I hesitated to act when I should have done. I am ashamed of that. It cannot be excused. But as I hesitated Warder Braddle died and with his death the matter appeared to resolve itself.’ The doctor drained his glass and a heavy silence filled the room.

I broke it. ‘No one called Warder Braddle to account,’ I said. ‘No one had the courage to do so – other than his brother, the other Warder Braddle.’ As I spoke I saw the gas jets above the mantelpiece flicker. I thought suddenly of Conan Doyle and of how he would have appreciated the moment. ‘Our Warder Braddle could well have continued as he was had it not been for his censorious older brother.’

‘This is the fellow who was a turnkey at Wandsworth?’ asked the governor.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that is where I met him. That is where he died – on the night that he had come back from visiting his brother here. Thomas Braddle was vicious, but not, I think, perverse. He was cruel, but not, I suspect, corrupt. Thomas Braddle had a horror of inverts. He made that clear enough to me during our brief acquaintance. I imagine that he learnt his brother’s secret and was revolted by it. I imagine he threatened to expose his brother unless his brother mended his ways. And our Warder Braddle did what a cornered animal will sometimes do – he struck first. He rid himself of the threat to his perverted way of life. He killed his elder brother by poisoning him.’

‘With cantharides supplied to him by Sebastian Atitis-Snake?’ suggested Major Nelson, on his toes once more.

‘With cantharides
suggested
by Atitis-Snake, but I would imagine purchased and brought into the prison by Warder Braddle. Braddle supplied Atitis-Snake with the poisonous powder. Atitis-Snake then advised Braddle on the dose required – gave him what he needed and secreted the rest about his cell. When Thomas Braddle came to see his brother here, Warder Braddle simply laced his drink with poison. Thomas Braddle returned to Wandsworth, a doomed man – the worse for wear for drink and an overdose of cantharides.’

‘How do you know the detail of this, C.3.3.?’

‘Because I saw Thomas Braddle on the night that he died. He died before my very eyes – in my cell in the infirmary at Wandsworth Gaol. I saw the symptoms of the poisoning on his arms and in his face. It was a ghastly sight.’

‘So,’ said the governor, who had been levering himself up and down with increasing rapidity as the story reached its climax, ‘Atitis-Snake gave Warder Braddle the means by which to murder his brother – and expected a proper reward for services rendered?’

‘Correct.’

‘And when Atitis-Snake learnt that his wife – the unfortunate woman for whose attempted murder he was imprisoned in the first place – had died, he realised that he would spend the rest of his life in Reading Gaol unless he could find a means of escape – and Warder Braddle was to be his means of escape?’

‘Exactly so, sir,’ I said. ‘But when Atitis-Snake realised that Warder Braddle would not – could not – deliver him from a lifetime’s incarceration, Atitis-Snake felt betrayed. “Keep your word,” I heard him tell Braddle. “That’s all I ask.” But Atitis-Snake knew that Braddle would fail him and he sought revenge. It was easily achieved. Braddle visited Atitis-Snake in his cell – as he often did. And there, as the two men shared a drink, Atitis-Snake spewed his poison into Braddle’s hip flask. As Braddle left the prisoner’s cell and stepped out onto the gantry, Atitis-Snake followed him. He saw the coast was clear and seized his moment. Quickly, quietly, all unobserved, he tipped his weakened victim over the iron balustrade to a certain death.’

Major Nelson gave a grunt of agreement and settled back on his heels. ‘Why did Atitis-Snake not admit to the poisoning at his trial?’ asked Dr Maurice. ‘He confessed to the killing, after all.’

‘I do not know,’ I said. ‘Perhaps because the poisoning would have made him appear too sane. He poisoned his wife – and he was found guilty of her attempted murder and not deemed insane. A poisoner poisons – that’s what he does. It seems quite rational. But only a true madman would be under the delusion that he is Professor Moriarty engaged in hurling Sherlock Holmes to his doom in the Reichenbach Falls. Atitis-Snake confessed to the murder of Warder Braddle in order to be able to stand trial – not to be found guilty, but to prove his madness. Only by proving himself insane could he escape Reading Gaol – or the gallows.’

‘Well, he failed,’ said the governor, ‘on both counts.’ He swilled the remains of whisky around his glass and drained it with a single swig. He mopped his moustache with the back of his hand. ‘You tell a convincing tale.’ He took his half-hunter from his waistcoat pocket and peered down at it. ‘It’s hard not to feel that Warder Braddle as good as deserved his fate. And Atitis-Snake is set to hang within the month.’ He smacked his lips and looked at Dr Maurice. ‘Justice has been done to the one and will be done to the other. We cannot excuse the prisoner Smith’s attack on the chaplain, of course, but plainly it was not murder.’ The prison surgeon nodded his acquiescence. ‘I will leave C.3.4.’s fate in your hands, Doctor,’ said the governor. ‘You can keep him in a straitjacket until he has calmed himself and then decide what’s best for the future.’

The prison surgeon loosely stood to attention and murmured, ‘Yes, sir.’

Major Nelson turned his gaze back to me. ‘You are quite right, C.3.3., we need not trouble the police tonight.’ He dropped the stub of his cigar into his empty whisky glass and put out a hand to take the doctor’s glass from him. He bent down to place the glasses on the tray. He stood again and looked at me. ‘You are a brilliant man, Oscar Wilde. I trust that when you leave this place you will be able to use your remarkable talents to the benefit of others. Thank you for what you have told us tonight. Thank you for what you have taught us.’ He glanced towards the prison surgeon. ‘Dr Maurice will see you conveyed back to your cell. I shall go to Mr Palmer’s now. I am sorry you did not want the sandwich.’

24
The stink of fear

I
n prison, there may be occasional moments of high drama, but they are few and far between. There is a predictability – an inevitability – a suffocating monotony – a paralysing immobility – about a place where every circumstance of life is regulated after an unchangeable pattern. We labour, we exercise, we eat, we drink, we line up to empty our slops, we lie down to sleep, we pray (or kneel at least for prayer), according to the inflexible laws of an iron formula that makes each dreadful day in the very minutest detail like its brother. Outside, in the living world, ceaseless change is the very essence of existence. Not so within the dead walls of Reading Gaol. Even out of doors in the prison garden, where as I pushed my wheelbarrow to and fro, high above me I could spy the sky and clouds, I saw no birds fly past and, whatever the season, there were no butterflies. Of seed-time or harvest, of the reapers bending over the corn, or the grape gatherers threading through the vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken blossoms or strewn with fallen fruit, I knew nothing.

Nothing changes in Reading Gaol: that is one of the prison’s unwritten rules. Except, towards the very end of my incarceration, for the first time in almost two years, something did. Just weeks before my release, the Prison Commissioners introduced a new class of inmate: ‘star prisoners’, so called, convicts who had been sent to gaol for the first time. The idea was a simple one, and laudable in its way: it was to keep the first offenders wholly apart from the recidivists, to prevent the ‘new boys’ from becoming contaminated by the ‘old lags’. Why this new category was considered necessary I am not sure. Under the ‘separate system’ all prisoners were already kept apart and the rules of ‘no communication between prisoners’ and ‘absolute silence on all occasions’ were, for the most part, strictly enforced. Perhaps it was with a view to making assurance doubly sure that the new star-class prisoner was created and marked out from the rest of us by a red star on his cap and another on his uniform? I do not know. What I do know is that whenever such a being came into view, we established prisoners – the star-less ones – were required immediately to turn away and face the wall.

I was, of course, a first offender, but I was no longer new to Reading Gaol and it was only the prison’s latest recruits who were admitted to the new star class. One day, after he had caught sight of me on the landing, returning from the latrines, standing with my nose to the wall, waiting until a new inmate had filed past, Warder Martin remarked to me, ‘It’s not right, C.3.3. You’re a poet and a gentleman. Standing with your face to the wall whilst a villainous-looking ruffian passes by – I don’t like it.’