Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers (9 page)

I
t was mid-afternoon when we left the Duke of Albemarle. Parker, the butler, showed us out into the cool sunshine of Grosvenor Square.

‘Do you think the butler did it?’ mused Oscar, smiling, as we stepped into the street.

‘It was undoubtedly murder,’ said Conan Doyle, grimly. ‘We must go to the police.’

‘Not yet,’ said Oscar, looking up at the cloudless sky and closing his eyes while breathing in the spring air. ‘It is too soon. And nothing will be gained by it.’

‘The police are already here,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’ snapped Conan Doyle.

I cast my eyes across the street. Standing on the corner opposite, beneath the gas lamp, were three men in dark overcoats and bowler hats. They had thick moustaches like Doyle’s and were studying us.

‘Those are not police officers in plain clothes, Robert. They are the gentlemen of the press.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘Look at their filthy boots. A policeman always polishes his. It’s a matter of habit. A journalist never does, it’s a matter of pride.’ Oscar raised his hat in the direction of the three men. ‘See,’ he said. ‘They are holding
notebooks.’ He gave a mock sigh. ‘So it has come to this. There are now vermin above ground in Grosvenor Square.’

‘I shall return to my hotel,’ said Conan Doyle anxiously. ‘I am troubled by all this, Oscar. Why did the Prince of Wales send us here this afternoon when he had already sent Sir Dighton Probyn this morning?’

‘Because our mission was of a different nature, Arthur. More complex, more intriguing. And because the prince wanted Sir Dighton safely out of the way while he gave us his instructions.’

‘Exactly,’ sighed Conan Doyle. ‘Where there are secrets, there are lies, and where there are lies, there is danger.’

‘It’s the danger that’s half the excitement,’ cried Oscar. ‘Come on, Arthur. The game’s afoot! There’s been a murder in Mayfair and we can unravel the mystery.’

A hackney carriage, pulled by a handsome bay hackney stallion, rattled into view. Oscar raised his arm and waved his lilac gloves towards the coachman.

Conan Doyle rubbed his moustache uneasily. ‘There’s no doubt in my mind. I believe we should go to the police.’

Oscar laughed. ‘To doubt is intensely engrossing, Arthur. To believe is very dull. To be on the alert is to live; to be lulled into security is to die.’

‘Hmm,’ grumbled Conan Doyle, shaking his head as he climbed into the hackney cab. ‘The Langham Hotel, please,’ he instructed the driver. ‘Are you joining me?’ he asked Oscar.

‘No,’ answered Oscar, cheerily. ‘I shall give Robert a two-shilling dinner at Solferino and then begin on our
enquiries in earnest. You go back to your hotel, Arthur. Write to your little wife in Southsea. Take supper in your room and do some work. Your paper is on histrionics, is it not?’

‘Hysteria.’

‘Quite so.’ Oscar chuckled and slapped his gloves against the horse’s flank. ‘We shall meet in the morning, Arthur. Breakfast at the Savoy at nine o’clock? Don’t be late. I want to introduce you to the world authority on vampires. You’ll like him. He’s Irish – like me. And the best of fellows – like you. He stole my first sweetheart from me, but I’ve forgiven him. She was too innocent. I like men who have a future and women who have a past, don’t you?’

Conan Doyle smiled. The horse snorted. The hackney cab jerked into life and moved on. Doyle turned back and waved to us as the carriage left the square.

As our friend’s cab disappeared at one side of Grosvenor Square, another four-wheeler – a fine brougham-landaulet, with a gold-embossed coat of arms on the nearside door – entered on the other. This elegant vehicle, pulled by a sprightly chestnut cob, was followed immediately by a second, more cumbersome one: a large, long, high-sided, enclosed four-wheeler, unmarked and all painted in black, drawn by a pair of heavy drays.

‘A Black Maria,’ I suggested.

‘No,’ countered Oscar. ‘No windows. It’s the death cart.’

He took me by the elbow and steered me across the cobbles, away from the trio of newspapermen, towards the gate leading to the gardens in the centre of the square.

‘We can hide beneath the apple blossom,’ he said.

The two carriages drew up outside 40 Grosvenor Square. Lord Yarborough stepped lightly down from the brougham-landaulet. Oscar describes him as unusually handsome – and so he is. He is around fifty years of age, but appears considerably younger. His profile is distinguished, his face is finely chiselled, his thick black hair is glossy, his walnut eyes shine. He wears no beard and dresses always in black and immaculately. In portraits, in photographs, at a distance, he looks magnificent. In reality, even in his riding boots, he is barely five feet tall.

‘He is a pocket person,’ whispered Oscar, as we closed the garden gate behind us. ‘Handsome, versatile and dangerous.’

We watched as the gentlemen of the press approached his lordship. He waved them away dismissively. They shrank back, retreating without protest. A moment later, with a rattle and a clatter, the rear doors of the second vehicle were pushed open from within and five men, dressed in identical black serge suits, stepped out on to the pavement.

‘The undertakers,’ whispered Oscar. ‘And what plain-looking fellows they are. Death, here is thy sting.’

Lord Yarborough climbed the steps to the front door of the Albemarle London residence. Even as he reached for the bell-pull, the door swung open. Parker’s face appeared in the doorway, but no words were exchanged. His lordship swept into the house and Parker came down into the street.

Parker is easy to describe. He epitomises the caricature of the family retainer: he is sixty-five or thereabouts (and has been for ten years), silver-haired, ruddy-complexioned,
clean-shaven with tufts of white hair growing from his cheeks; slightly stooped, a little slow, somewhat hard of hearing; utterly loyal, wholly unimaginative, thoroughly discreet.

‘The hallmark of a first-rate butler is his readiness to commit murder for his employers,’ observed Oscar, throwing a burnt match into the bushes and relishing a new cloud of cigarette smoke as it floated slowly through his nostrils.

Parker approached the undertakers and gave them their orders. Four of the men climbed back into the vehicle at the rear while the fifth joined Parker on the box seat with the driver at the front. The carriage lumbered off in the direction Conan Doyle’s cab had taken.

‘Where are they going?’ I asked.

‘Not far. I imagine to the mews behind the house. It seems that the unhappy duchess is to leave her home by the back door.’

‘Shall we follow? The press men are going.’

‘We don’t follow the press men, Robert. They follow us.’ He drew deeply on his cigarette and closed his eyes once more. ‘Besides, there is no rush. I doubt that they’ll bring out the body until after dark. Let us savour our smoke beneath the apple blossom for a while. Remember, pleasure is the only thing one should live for. No civilised man ever regrets a pleasure and no uncivilised man ever knows what a pleasure is.’

I smiled. ‘Have I heard that before, Oscar?’

‘You will hear it again, Robert, that’s for sure.’

Oscar’s gentle laughter was interrupted by the sharp clack of footsteps on the cobbles, followed by the dull screech of the garden gate being opened.

‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ said Lord Yarborough. His voice was light and high-pitched; his manner effortlessly courteous. ‘I saw you standing here and thought I might take a moment to have a word. Would that be convenient?’

‘Good evening, my lord,’ replied Oscar, casting his cigarette into the bushes and offering the diminutive peer a lilac-gloved hand. ‘I am Oscar Wilde.’

‘Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde,’ responded Lord Yarborough. ‘I know your name – and your reputation.’ He smiled. ‘I am acquainted with your friend, Dr Doyle. He speaks so highly of you.’

‘And this is my friend, Mr Robert Sherard,’ said Oscar.

Lord Yarborough turned and bowed towards me. ‘Robert Harborough Sherard Kennedy,’ he said. ‘It is a pleasure. We are kinsmen, after all.’

‘My lord?’ I mumbled, confused, letting my own cigarette fall to the ground.

Lord Yarborough smiled at me. ‘Your father is the natural son of the fifth and last Earl of Harborough, is he not?’

‘He is.’

‘My mother was Lord Harborough’s legitimate daughter. She was born many years before your father, but our parents, Mr Sherard, were sister and brother. We are cousins.’

‘My God,’ I gasped. ‘I had no idea.’ I stood amazed.

‘Bastard cousins, of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘My mother inherited everything. And your father … was given an education.’

‘I had no idea,’ I repeated. ‘I knew none of this. We never spoke of my father’s family at home.’

Oscar came to my rescue. ‘Your mother is alive, my lord?’ he asked.

‘My mother is dead. And she was dead to me when she was alive. I did not care for her. She was a vain and ridiculous woman. Nor was she faithful to my father.’

‘Your father was the late Earl of Yarborough?’

‘Yes. My mother, Anne Harborough, married him not for love, but for reasons of euphony.’

Oscar laughed. Lord Yarborough stepped forward, bowed his head and shook my hand.

‘Well, well,’ said Oscar, opening his cigarette case and offering it around, ‘this is a happy chance encounter.’

‘Or would be,’ said Lord Yarborough, standing back and selecting one of Oscar’s Turkish cigarettes (the case contained three varieties), ‘were it not for the tragedy across the road.’ He rolled the cigarette between his fingers. ‘That is heartbreaking.’

Oscar glanced back through the trees towards 40 Grosvenor Square. The front door was closed. The curtains were all drawn. Evening shadows were now falling on the house.

‘We have just called upon His Grace,’ he said.

‘I know,’ replied Yarborough. ‘He has told me. We are old friends. He appreciates your concern and is grateful for your discretion.’

‘What was the cause of death?’ enquired Oscar casually, holding a match to the elegant earl’s daintily held cigarette.

‘Myocardial infarction. A heart attack.’

‘Without a doubt?’

‘Without a doubt. Without a doubt at all. I’d stake my professional reputation on it. The duchess had been my patient for a number of months. Her heart was enfeebled. Fatally so. I have been fearing this outcome for some while.’

‘But the wounds upon her body?’

‘Dr Doyle described them to you?’

‘He did. In detail.’

‘They are something else altogether.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘You do not need to, Mr Wilde. The Duchess of Albemarle died of a heart attack.’

‘But the bloody wounds, my lord? The tears upon her body? The cuts upon her neck?’

‘They are something else. They did not kill her. Those wounds are irrelevant, Mr Wilde. The duchess died because her heart gave way.’

‘How can they be irrelevant, my lord?’

‘They are not the cause of death.’

‘How can you be so certain? Did you examine the wounds?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you examine them closely?’

‘No, not closely. There was no need. I knew the duchess. I knew her secrets.’

‘What do you mean, my lord?’

‘It does not matter, Mr Wilde.’

Oscar drew deeply upon his cigarette. Dusk was now falling about us.

‘The wounds the duchess sustained,’ he asked, ‘they were sustained before her death?’

‘I imagine so,’ replied Lord Yarborough, his eyes narrowing. ‘Shortly before.’

‘They were not self-inflicted?’

‘No.’

‘Who caused them?’

‘I do not care to speculate.’

‘Why not, my lord?’

‘Because no good or useful purpose can be served by such speculation, Mr Wilde.’

‘But could not the infliction of the wounds have provoked the heart attack?’

Lord Yarborough – for the first time – hesitated. ‘That is possible,’ he said.

‘Then the duchess’s attacker is her murderer!’ exclaimed Oscar.

‘No, Mr Wilde. No. You do not understand.’

‘Quite so, my lord,’ cried Oscar, despairingly. ‘I do not understand.’

‘Then I will explain the matter to you as simply as I can,’ said Lord Yarborough.

He spoke quietly now, almost in a whisper. Oscar and I gathered round him in the gloom. He stood, looking up at us, his eyes imploring us to understand.

‘When I have told you what I have to tell you, we will not speak of it again. It is a matter of some delicacy. I am concerned to protect the late duchess’s reputation, not for her sake but for the sake of the duke. I was the duchess’s physician. I am the duke’s friend.’

‘Did the duke inflict those wounds?’ I asked.

‘Oh no,’ answered Yarborough, ‘but he knew of them – or others like them.’

‘Ah,’ murmured Oscar. ‘I begin to understand. The danger was half the excitement.’

‘Indeed, Mr Wilde. And the danger was very great indeed.’

I was lost. ‘I do not understand you, gentlemen,’ I confessed.

Lord Yarborough looked directly at me. ‘The duchess was one of those unhappy women who become the victims of base carnal desires, unnatural appetites that they cannot control. My mother was such a one. It is a form of madness.’

‘It is love gone mad,’ said Oscar.

‘The duchess sought satisfaction where she could – with whom she could – when she could. She gave her body to any man who chose to take it – she gave it willingly. She told me so.’

‘This is horrible,’ I said.

‘It is not uncommon,’ said Lord Yarborough, breaking away from our group and looking back towards the house. ‘At the Charcot Clinic in Muswell Hill – it is my clinic, but, with permission, it bears Professor Charcot’s name: we use his methods – we have other women similarly afflicted. We treat the hysteria with hypnosis. I had hopes that the duchess would submit to treatment. She could not be persuaded.’

‘And the man who was with her in the telephone room last night?’

‘It could have been anyone – a servant, a guest at the reception, you or me, Mr Wilde – it would not have mattered. The duchess, overwhelmed with desire, overcome by lust, wished to be taken – and taken violently. She was. If it had not happened last evening, it would have
happened some other time. If it had not been one man, it would have been another. Whoever the man was, he was not a murderer. Pursuing him will serve no purpose. Bringing this sordid story to light will do no good. It will simply besmirch the duchess’s memory and humiliate her husband. Let her rest in peace. And let the duke sleep more easily. He has suffered enough.’