Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers (47 page)

He gazed down at Nellie Atkins’s crumpled corpse.

‘I should have acted sooner. I might have prevented this. Poor child. Deaf and dumb. And now dead.’

The clock on the far side of the hallway struck
the half-hour. Oscar turned away from the body and looked back to the drawing-room door.

‘Bear with me, Arthur – until the police arrive. Let us utilise what time we have to confront our betters with the truth. It may be our only opportunity.’

Against my better judgement, but not against my will, I lifted the poor dead girl’s body and moved it back into the telephone room. I closed the door against it and followed Oscar as he crossed the hallway once more.

He looked absurd in his borrowed clergyman’s garb of woe and yet there was a grandeur in his bearing that commanded attention and respect. I was ready to do his bidding. The curious charm of his personality, his height, his bulk, his shining eyes, the dome of his forehead, his evident high intelligence, his sympathy, his sense of feeling and his unique way with words lend to Oscar Wilde an extraordinary authority.

Together, discreetly, we stepped back into the drawing room. The gathering was as we had left it two minutes before. Robert Sherard stood sentinel at the doorway to the darkened morning room. The Prince of Wales and the Duke of Albemarle, with Prince Albert Victor and Lord Yarborough, stood together in the centre of the room, talking, drinking Gewürztraminer, smoking cigars, beneath a brilliant Venetian chandelier. Comptroller, equerry, page and butler hovered close by.

‘Your Royal Highnesses, Your Grace,
gentlemen,’ declared Oscar in full voice, as I secured the drawing-room door behind us, ‘forgive this interruption.’

‘No speeches now, Mr Wilde,’ called out the Prince of Wales, looking towards Oscar in mock reproof. ‘We know you can resist everything except temptation, but you don’t need to live up to your reputation here. The duke has proposed a toast to his late wife that was perfect in its simplicity. Do not spoil it by trying to cap it now.’

‘I have news to share, sir,’ said Oscar. ‘I don’t wish to make a speech.’

‘News? Is my brougham at the door?’

‘Not yet, sir,’ answered Oscar. ‘The news is grave and it concerns us all.’

A sudden stillness filled the room.

‘Very well,’ said the prince, testily. ‘If His Grace is content to hear you out, so are we. What is this news?’

‘There has been another death, Your Highness – another murder. In this house – this evening.’

The Duke of Albemarle cried out: ‘No!’

Sir Dighton Probyn moved at once to the Prince of Wales’s side. Lord Yarborough stepped back and shook his head. Prince Albert Victor covered his face with both hands.

‘What are you saying, Mr Wilde?’ barked the Prince of Wales angrily. ‘What melodrama are you conjuring up for us now? Forget your theatrics, man – stick to the truth, pure and simple.’

‘The truth is rarely pure and never simple, sir,’ said Oscar, with a wintry smile. ‘Give me the few
minutes, Your Highness, before your carriage arrives and I will do for you what you asked me to do a week ago: explain the death of your dear friend, Helen, late Duchess of Albemarle.’

‘For God’s sake,’ cried the Duke of Albemarle. ‘You said there had been another death – here, this evening.’

‘Yes, Your Grace,’ said Oscar. ‘Nellie Atkins, your wife’s maid, has been murdered – strangled to death, her body left abandoned in the telephone room.’

Lord Yarborough moved abruptly towards the drawing-room door. ‘I must go to her,’ he breathed.

I held my ground and blocked his way, placing my back firmly against the door, covering the handle. On the far side of the room, Robert Sherard, I noticed, had closed the double doors leading into the morning room. He stood with his back to them, his arms folded defiantly across his chest.

‘There is no need to attend to the maid, my lord,’ said Oscar. ‘She is beyond help. She is quite dead. Dr Conan Doyle has examined her. We can leave her body to the police surgeon now.’

‘Nellie dead?’ said the Duke of Albemarle in a hoarse whisper.

‘She knew too much,’ said Oscar quietly.

‘She was deaf and dumb, Mr Wilde.’

‘She saw too much.’

‘I am lost for words,’ murmured the duke.

Sir Dighton Probyn stood at the side of the
Prince of Wales. ‘Your Royal Highness, I think the time has come for you to take your leave.’

The prince turned to the old general and spoke, not unkindly: ‘No, Probyn. Not yet. Not until we have heard Wilde’s story.’

Carefully, slowly, his eyes scanned the room: he looked in turn at each man standing there.

‘There are ten of you here and all can be trusted. Eddy is my son and heir – my flesh and blood, after all. You, Probyn, and my staff – Wilson, Atkins – you three are my liegemen and true. Albemarle and Yarborough are my friends – and gentlemen to the marrow. Parker has been with this house for forty years. If he is not to be trusted, there’s no hope for the world. And Wilde and his associates have given me their word of honour: my secrets are safe with them until I reach my grave – and then for a hundred years. They have sworn it.’

‘We have, sir,’ said Oscar. ‘We will tell the police only what the police truly need to know to fulfil their obligations to the law.’

‘The truth, but not the whole truth?’ suggested the prince. ‘That’s what the police will get, is it?’

‘Exactly, sir.’

‘But I will get the whole truth from you, will I, Mr Wilde?’

‘Entire, unvarnished – if Your Royal Highness pleases.’

‘Unvarnished, eh?’ muttered Prince Albert Victor. ‘That’s not something royalty is accustomed to.’

‘I will have done with this, Mr Wilde. We are so deep in now that I suspect only the whole truth can save us. It is better, perhaps, to know the worst than merely to fear it.’

The Prince of Wales looked about the brightly lit room once more and waved his cigar in all directions as he spoke.

‘If we are all game for this, gentlemen, shall we clear the air? Shall we let Mr Wilde proceed?’

‘Is this wise, sir?’ asked Lord Yarborough.

‘You’ve nothing to fear, Yarborough, surely?’ asked the prince.

The diminutive physician stepped back, lowering his head as he did so.

‘Your Royal Highness,’ began the Duke of Albemarle – but one sharp look from the Prince of Wales silenced him.

‘We are agreed, then,’ said the prince, drawing slowly on his cigar. He reached out and touched the duke on the sleeve. ‘I did not mean to be harsh, Duke. The truth may be of benefit to us all – who knows? It may even help poor Helen to rest in peace.’

The room fell silent once more.

Oscar stood by the drawing-room door, facing into the room, with the royal party ranged in an arc before him. To the Prince of Wales’s right stood Prince Albert Victor and General Probyn; to his left, and one step behind, stood the Duke of Albemarle and Lord Yarborough. Tyrwhitt Wilson, the equerry, Frank Watkins, the page, and Parker, the butler, stood farther back, in the
window bay, side by side, upright and quite still, like guardsmen in a sentry box.

From my vantage point at Oscar’s shoulder I could see each man’s face quite clearly. All seemed to me to show terror in their eyes – all but the Prince of Wales, that is.

The prince seemed oddly at ease, as if suddenly relieved that all the secrecy was about to be at an end and all the lies were now to be exposed.

‘Unravel the mystery, Mr Wilde. Get on with it – you’ve not got long. My carriage arrives at eight. I am dining with the Danish ambassador. Probyn says I must. What lies at the heart of this tragedy?’

‘Love,’ answered Oscar, simply.

‘Oh, Mr Wilde,’ snorted the prince. ‘I’ve heard you say love is an illusion – more than once.’

‘Even so, Your Highness, it is love that is the true explanation of this world – whatever the explanation of the next.’

‘Love,’ repeated the prince, with a little growl.

‘And pride,’ added Oscar. ‘And enmity.’

‘Very good,’ said the prince. ‘That’s the philosophy done with. Now let us get to the practicalities. The Duchess of Albemarle: you know why she died, do you, Mr Wilde?’

‘I do, sir,’ he replied. ‘She died because she was your mistress.’

If the heir to the throne was discomfited by Oscar’s assertion, he did not show it. He seemed almost amused by Oscar’s cool impertinence.

‘And the death of Lulu Lavallois?’ enquired the prince. ‘What brought that about?’

‘She was your mistress also.’

The prince chuckled. ‘I hope, Mr Wilde, that you are not going to suggest that little Nellie Atkins died because she and I were on intimate terms?’

‘No. Poor Nellie was murdered because she knew who it was who had accompanied the Duchess of Albemarle into the telephone room on the night of her death. Nellie saw the man – and later the man saw Nellie and grasped at once that Nellie knew his secret.’

‘And this man who accompanied the duchess into the telephone room – did he murder the duchess?’

‘He intended to murder her,’ said Oscar. ‘Indeed, he believed that he had done so. But, as we know, the duchess had a weak heart and her heart gave way before her throat was cut. That, at least, is what both Lord Yarborough and Dr Conan Doyle have concluded – that’s what the limited amount of blood found on her body and in the telephone room suggests. The duchess entered the telephone room willingly – anticipating an amorous encounter. Almost at once – possibly when the man produced his knife – her heart gave way. He did not know that she was already dead when, a moment later, he cut into her throat.’

‘And the marks upon her chest?’ asked the Prince of Wales quietly.

‘Some were new and some were old. The murderer saw scars already on her breasts and
added more – for good measure. He despised her, I am sorry to say.’

‘He was not one of her lovers?’

‘No, Your Highness, he was not. Lord Yarborough may be right and the late duchess may indeed have been a victim of the condition known as “nympholepsis”, but she took no pleasure in being cut about the body by her lovers. That is a perversity too far. Until the night she died, she had no marks upon her neck and the cuts upon her breasts were not the work of one of her lovers … They were her husband’s doing.’

The Duke of Albemarle said nothing. He gazed fixedly at Oscar and I saw the terror in his eyes turn to anger.

‘His Grace is most gracious to his guests and friends,’ continued Oscar, ‘but he was a brute to his wife. She betrayed him – time and again, with man after man – and he punished her. He scarred her breasts, knowing her breasts would be seen only by her lovers – and by her lady’s maid.’

‘She was my wife.’ The Duke of Albemarle spat out the words.

‘And you loved her very much, once upon a time,’ said Oscar. ‘And for the sake of “form”, you told the world you loved her still – and the world believed you.’

‘She was unfaithful,’ barked the duke.

‘So you took your revenge,’ said Oscar quietly. ‘Is it not a husband’s right? You punished her infidelity and you maimed her in a vain attempt to curb her lust. I imagine that Lord Yarborough –
her physician and your friend – knew what you had done and pardoned you – or at least sought to understand your vicious behaviour. He told me that your wife took pride in the cuts upon her body – that she desired them. He sought to protect you, Your Grace.’

Lord Yarborough’s eyes appeared to be fixed on one of the Romney portraits on the wall. He said nothing and gave the studied impression that he was paying Oscar’s narrative no heed.

‘At first I was certain that the Duke of Albemarle had, at least in part, been responsible for his wife’s untimely death. He had the means – the knife he carries in his pocket to cut his cigars. He had the opportunity – he could easily have taken his wife into the telephone room on the night of the reception as the pair waited in the hallway to bid farewell to their royal guests. He had the motive – his wife’s repeated infidelities. He might have done the deed, alone – or with a co-conspirator. Mr Parker, the family retainer, has been the duke’s loyal servant these forty years. He would do anything for his master.’

Oscar glanced in the direction of the window bay.

‘It was Mr Parker who told me and Dr Conan Doyle and Mr Sherard, on the morning following the duchess’s death, that Nellie Atkins was not available for interview because she had fallen downstairs. Did she fall? Or was she pushed? Or was she beaten by way of warning – beaten
either by her lord and master or by his trusty butler? It hardly matters. The effect was the same.’

Parker stepped away from the window. ‘Mr Wilde, I protest.’

Oscar raised a hand. ‘Do not protest, Mr Parker. I’m not done yet. I think you’ll be spared the gallows.’

‘If not the gallows humour,’ muttered Prince Albert Victor.

‘Mr Wilde,’ said the Prince of Wales. ‘Time is pressing. Are you telling us that in your far-fetched opinion the Duke of Albemarle was responsible for the death of his wife?’

‘Men do kill their wives, Your Highness. It is the commonest kind of murder. I was indeed convinced the duke had planned to kill his duchess – until Tuesday night when, together, we were faced with a second death: that of Mademoiselle Louisa Lavallois.’

‘Poor Lulu,’ murmured the Prince of Wales.

‘Poor Lulu – so full of life and laughter, so full of joy. Why did she have to die? She could have been murdered only by someone who had intimate knowledge of the death of the duchess. The wounds inflicted on Mademoiselle Lavallois were precisely those inflicted on the Duchess of Albemarle. Only her murderer – or anyone who had seen her body in the immediate aftermath of her death – could have replicated those wounds so exactly. That fact alone let my friend Bram Stoker off the hook. And Professor Onofroff, of course.
Besides, neither was here on the night of the duchess’s death.’

‘What about the composer, Dvorak?’ asked the Prince of Wales. ‘He wasn’t here at that reception, was he, but he looked deuced uncomfortable during Onofroff’s seance – and Onofroff marked him down as guilty as sin.’

‘Guilty of incest, perhaps. But not of murder. He loved his daughter – not wisely, but too well. Onofroff saw Dvorak and the girl silhouetted within what he called “the dark penumbra”.’