Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol: A Mystery (34 page)

‘This was necessary,’ answered Melmoth, earnestly. ‘My brother Willie had all my old clothes – and he had pawned them. My dear sweet wife had sent me money from Genoa for new clothes – and for food and travelling expenses. I bought some scent in her honour – Canterbury Wood Violet from Pritchard’s in St James’s. It is her favourite – and mine. I wanted, for psychological reasons, to feel entirely physically cleansed of the stain and soil of prison life.’ He looked down at the backs of his hands and inspected his well-manicured fingernails. ‘I shopped during most of the day and then, in the evening, after I had run a particular errand, I took the train to Newhaven and caught the night boat to Dieppe.’

‘You came here – why here? Why Dieppe?’

‘Why not? I had considered escaping to the other side of the world – to Brazil or Brisbane. But my Portuguese is poor and my Australian worse. I thought of Bruges or Brussels or Boulogne. I am proficient in French and alliterative in geography . . .’ He smiled. ‘I had almost settled on Boulogne, but then I learnt that the young man with whom I was once infatuated – the young man whose presence in my life brought about my downfall – was living there,
is
living there . . . I did not wish to see him. I do not want to see him. If I see him I will never see my sons again – and my wife will take my allowance from me. I need my wife – in spite of everything. Life is a stormy sea. My wife is a harbour of refuge.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Dr Quilp, shifting in his seat, ‘your wife – and your terror of losing your allowance. That had preyed upon you in prison, I know.’ He sat forward at the table and pressed the tips of his fingers against his temples for a moment. He closed his eyes and then opened them wide as if making a determined effort to concentrate. ‘That reminds me. What about Private A. A. Luck,’ he asked, ‘“late of the Bombay Grenadiers”? Was he not at the prison gates to greet you – and demand his hundred pounds?’

‘There were two reporters at the prison gates to greet me. One asked me for my immediate plans. “To breakfast on caviar and champagne,” I told him. He appeared shocked. “A proper breakfast is the duty a writer owes to the dignity of letters,” I explained. He seemed none the wiser. The other reporter asked a more discerning question. He wanted to know what I hoped for in the future. I told him that I coveted neither notoriety nor oblivion. He appeared satisfied with that.’

‘But there was no sign of Private Luck?’

‘No, Dr Quilp, there was so sign of Private Luck.’

‘I am surprised.’

Melmoth paused before responding. He set his cigarette down on the ashtray and moved his glass of champagne so that it stood immediately before him. He sat forward and rested his elbows on the table, placing his right hand across his left. ‘You are not surprised, Dr Quilp. You cannot be.’

‘I am,’ insisted the other man.

Melmoth spoke softly. ‘I know what you are, “Dr Quilp”, and you are certainly not what you claim to be.’ Melmoth gazed steadily at the man facing him. ‘For a brief moment yesterday – fleetingly – I thought you might be Private Luck. I only saw Luck once without his prison cap – and then his face was hidden beneath a layer of rouge and eyeshadow. He was about your height and build – and age. When I saw the powder on your face and considered your newly grown moustache and beard, I realised straight away that you were a man in disguise. For a moment, as I watched you hiding behind your spectacles, I thought you might be Luck – but then I saw the roughness of your hands and knew you could not be.’

The man said nothing. He did not move. He barely breathed.

‘When you introduced yourself to me yesterday,’ Melmoth continued, ‘I was intrigued that, in passing, you quoted
The Importance of Being Earnest
. I was charmed, even. But I was baffled by your name. Where did you find it? There’s a Quilp in Dickens, of course, in
The Old Curiosity Shop
– but why
Doctor
Quilp? Did you know about my father? In Dublin, when I was a boy, Dr Wilde was accused of rape by a woman who had once been his patient and his mistress. She published a scurrilous pamphlet in which she called my parents “Dr and Mrs Quilp”. I thought perhaps you knew the story – and chose the name to tease or wound me.’

‘No,’ said the man. He spoke softly, too. ‘I had not heard that story.’ He gazed steadily at Melmoth. ‘But my name is Quilp,’ he insisted.

‘You are no more Dr Quilp than I am Sebastian Melmoth! Indeed, when you showed me your visiting card, I saw that it had been printed by the same printer who printed mine – a little man called Pascaud who trades not three streets from where we are seated now. You had your cards printed a matter of days ago. You are an impostor.’

The man raised a hand in protest.

Melmoth brooked no interruption. ‘A seasoned impostor at that!’ He laughed. ‘For everything you had an answer. When you told me that you were an apothecary and I said you did not have an apothecary’s hands, you said, at once, that your father was a blacksmith! The answer was absurd, but it came to you so readily that I knew that I was dealing with a man to whom the manufacture of instant untruths is second nature.’ Melmoth took a sip of wine. ‘I knew at once that you were not who you claimed to be, “Dr Quilp” – but who were you? And why had you come to see me? “Who is that man?” I wondered. “And what does he want?”’

The man touched his chequebook. ‘I wanted to hear your story,’ he said. ‘I was ready to pay for it.’

‘No,’ insisted Melmoth. ‘You did not want my story. You wanted the story of the murderer Atitis-Snake. You made that clear. You wanted what I knew of Atitis-Snake – nothing more. And by midnight last night you’d heard enough.’

‘By midnight we were both exhausted,’ said “Dr Quilp”.

‘By midnight, you knew that I knew more than was good for you. And I knew that you knew more than you pretended.’ Melmoth drew on his cigarette and sat back for a moment. ‘For example, I had only mentioned Private Luck’s Sanskrit names once, in passing, and yet, hours later, you recalled them instantly.’

‘I wrote them down.’

Melmoth waved a dismissive hand. ‘You knew them already. You knew the whole story already, “Dr Quilp”. What you sought to discover was what
I
knew – and when you found that I knew too much you packed me off to bed with a prostitute and a twist of Spanish Fly.’

‘It is an aphrodisiac,’ said the man.

‘Indeed, famously so,’ said Melmoth, laughing derisively. ‘It is the most notorious aphrodisiac in history. It comes from the Spanish fly beetle, does it not? I believe
Cantharis
is the Latin name. The correct dose will rouse a man. The incorrect dose will kill him.’

‘But Mr Melmoth – Mr Wilde – you are alive . . .’

‘And well,’ added Melmoth, with an inclination of his head. ‘I thank you.’ With his thumb and forefinger he picked a stray leaf of cigarette tobacco from his lower lip. ‘I count my blessings. But Achindra Acala Luck is dead. The Reverend M. T. Friend is dead. The Braddle brothers are dead. Your wife is dead.’

‘What are you saying?’ The man looked about the deserted café. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘You are quite mad.’

‘No, I am not mad,’ said Melmoth. ‘I am as sane as you are – Sebastian Atitis-Snake.’

The man pushed back his chair. Melmoth held up a hand. ‘Don’t go. There is no point. I know everything.’

‘Do you?’ The man spat out the words contemptuously, but he did not move.

‘I believe so. You have a wonderful name, Sebastian Atitis-Snake. I think you love it. I think it has been the making of you – at least, the making of your personality. It has also been your undoing. Names do make – and unmake – a man. I know. Were I called John Smith, I would not be Oscar Wilde. And if I cannot be Oscar Wilde, I will be Sebastian Melmoth. My new name has a ring to it – as my old one did. I imagine that’s why you chose the name of Quilp as your
nom de guerre
. It’s a name to reckon with. Will you say it for me? Say it out loud. Say it with pride. Let it roll off your tongue, Sebastian Atitis-Snake.’

The man looked about him. The street was all but empty. The café barman and the waiter were nowhere to be seen. ‘Yes,’ said the man, softly, ‘I am Sebastian Atitis-Snake. That is my name.’

‘I raise my glass to it,’ said Melmoth, suiting the action to the words. ‘It is a remarkable name – quite special. And I believe that it has made you believe all your life that you, too, are remarkable – quite special. You are one of those in this world who must have his way – who will not be crossed, who cannot be denied. Your belief in yourself is colossal. I know the type – all too well. Your name is unique – and so are you. You believe that you can achieve whatever you want and will stop at nothing to do so.’

‘Is that so very wrong?’ asked the man. The anger in his voice had subsided.

‘When you tired of your wife, you rid yourself of her. That
was
wrong.’

‘You wronged your wife,’ murmured Atitis-Snake.

‘I did not kill her,’ said Melmoth calmly. ‘When you found yourself in prison, you murdered one man – the first Warder Braddle – in the expectation that another, his brother, the second Warder Braddle, would find a way to free you. When he failed you, you took your revenge – you killed him also. That was wrong.’

‘I was not going to rot my life away in Reading Gaol,’ said the man angrily. He had removed his spectacles. Visibly his temples throbbed. ‘You were sentenced to two years’ hard labour, Oscar Wilde. I was sentenced for life.’ The man hit the table with a clenched fist. ‘I would be free.’

‘Yes – you would have your way, Sebastian Atitis-Snake, always. And to achieve your end you conceived a plan to free yourself that was as dangerous as it was daring.’

‘I did,’ breathed Atitis-Snake. ‘I most surely did.’ He raised his glass and drank from it greedily.

‘When you did not need to do so, you confessed to the murder of the second Warder Braddle. That was extraordinary. You pleaded “Guilty but insane” – when you must have known that such a plea would fail. It had failed before – at your first trial in front of the same judge. Why should it succeed now?’

Atitis-Snake shrugged. ‘The idea of posing as a lunatic appealed to me. The idea of claiming that I was “Professor Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime” amused me.’

‘And appealed to your histrionic vanity,’ said Melmoth. ‘And your plea might prove successful. And if it did, so be it. You would go to an asylum – and escape from there. But if it did not, you would be condemned to death. You can have been in no doubt about that.’

‘I was in no doubt about that,’ said Atitis-Snake emphatically.

‘I believe that is what you wanted.’

‘I had a plan.’

‘A brilliant plan – and it almost worked, Sebastian Atitis-Snake. Indeed it would have worked had you not encountered another uniquely named self-styled genius along the way.’ Melmoth laughed. ‘My name is Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde,’ he declared, throwing up his hands towards heaven. As he made the gesture a dog ran out from under the archway alongside the café and began to chase a sheet of newspaper that the breeze was blowing down the street. ‘Forgive me,’ murmured Melmoth. ‘I am a little drunk.’

‘And I am a free man,’ said Atitis-Snake.

Melmoth looked at him. ‘You are. And poor Private Luck, late of the Bombay Grenadiers, is dead. He was hanged when you should have been.’

Atitis-Snake said nothing, but held Melmoth’s gaze.

‘I believe the idea of another man hanging in your stead first entered your head on the day that Trooper Wooldridge was hanged. That was the day of your confession. That was the day when word went round the prison that when Wooldridge swung from the rope his neck stretched by eleven inches and his face was distorted beyond recognition. Post-mortem, the hanged man was unrecognisable.’

‘I raise my glass to you, Oscar Wilde.’

‘I raise mine to you, Sebastian Atitis-Snake. Wooldridge was unrecognisable post-mortem, but how could you ensure that if another went to the gallows in your place he would not be recognised
before
he reached the scaffold? Who sees the condemned man at the last? Who is with him at the dreadful moment when the white sack is put over his head and his face is obscured for ever? Four people. Just four. Two special warders – chosen for the very reason that they do not know the prisoner well. The hangman himself – who has never seen the condemned man before. And the prison chaplain – who knows the condemned man very well indeed. Therefore, you eliminate the prison chaplain. You must. And it is easily done. You are a master poisoner. Cantharides is your special friend.’