Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death (14 page)

‘Read
it to us,’ said Conan Doyle. He smiled at Sickert. ‘If you don’t mind.’

Sickert
read the letter. He read it simply, without dramatic emphasis.

Tuesday 3 May. Eastbourne

My dear Wat,

Sunday night was
memorable—fine food, fine wines, fine friends. Thank you for your hospitality.
Thank you for remembering me. I hope you always will! I shall not forget you or
your kindness(es) to me—come what may. To be candid, I don’t know what the
future holds for me. I’m being pursued and I’m fearful.

I’m in Eastbourne this week. At the Devonshire Park. Come and see
the piece— Wednesday night would suit. Bring Wilde. The play is so bad I think
it might amuse him. It was an honour to meet him again, of course. He is wise
as well as wonderful. Inspiring, in fact. I liked Conan Doyle too—and his shy
young friend with the name no one will remember. Hornbeam was it? Chas. Brookfield
was as obnoxious as ever. I neither like nor trust him. I never have. Who is to
be trusted these days? You are, of course, old friend. Thank you for that.

Come and see me if you can spare the time. I’m frightened, to be
honest with you. Come and see me.

Ever yours,

Bradford Pearse

Sickert passed the letter,
and the envelope, to Conan Doyle.

‘What
train are you catching?’ asked Oscar.

‘The
three o’clock from Victoria,’ said Sickert.

‘We’ll
come with you,’ said Oscar.

‘I
cannot, I’m afraid,’ said Conan Doyle, pushing back his chair. ‘I have domestic
obligations. The doctor is calling to see my wife this afternoon and I need to
be on parade.’ He got to his feet. ‘But I think that you and Robert should
definitely go, Oscar— and I think, too, that, with Wat’s permission, you should
share this letter with Inspector Gilmour at Scotland Yard.’ He handed the note
to Oscar.

‘You
think Pearse may be in danger?’ I asked.

‘He
clearly believes so,’ replied Conan Doyle. He looked quite grave. ‘I liked Mr
Pearse—very much.’

He
glanced at his timepiece. ‘I must go—forgive me. Will you keep me informed,
Oscar? Thank you for breakfast. Gentlemen.’ He bowed to us and went on his way.

Oscar
called after him: ‘Don’t forget your umbrella, Arthur—and don’t murder Holmes
too soon!’

Conan
Doyle turned back and laughed and waved towards us genially. As he departed, he
passed Dino, the boy waiter, arriving with our wine. He stopped the lad and
spoke to him.

‘What
did Mr Doyle say to you, Dino?’ Oscar asked when the young waiter reached us
and was uncorking the bottle.

‘He
told me to take good care of you, sir.’

Oscar
chuckled. ‘Did he indeed?’

‘Yes,
sir,’ said the boy, sniffing the cork with the air of a seasoned sommelier. He
can’t have been much older than the wine: he looked fifteen, sixteen at the
most.

‘Tell
me, Dino,’ said Oscar, taking a sip of the Scharzhofberger and rolling it
around his mouth a little noisily. ‘What
exactly
did Mr Doyle say to you?
What were his actual words, Dino?’

‘Since
you ask, sir,’ said the boy, pulling a face as he filled our glasses, ‘His
actual words was, “Only the one bottle—they’ve work to do.”‘

Oscar
banged the table with delight. ‘I knew it! ‘he cried. ‘You can depend on
Arthur! And he is right, of course. We do indeed have work to do and I’m glad
of it. As Arthur knows, work is the best antidote to sorrow.’

‘Are
you feeling melancholy, Oscar?’ asked Sickert. ‘You don’t look it. You don’t
seem it.’

‘We all
have our secrets, Walter,’ said Oscar, emptying his glass in a single draught
and handing the young waiter a second shiny shilling. ‘There are no exceptions
to the rule …’ He swivelled in his chair and held his empty glass out in the
direction of the doorway to the dining room. ‘Look at those two.’

There,
hovering at the entrance to the Langham Hotel Palm Court, stood Charles
Brookfield and Bram Stoker. They were wearing outdoor coats and anxious faces. Stoker
was shaking his head as Brookfield surveyed the room.

‘I agree:
they do look furtive,’ chuckled Wat Sickert.

‘There’ll
be a lady in the case, I warrant,’ exclaimed Oscar, waving his napkin in the
direction of the door.

The boy
waiter was refilling our glasses. ‘Dino,’ said Oscar, ‘ask those two gentlemen
to come and join us, would you?’

The
waiter brought Brookfield and Stoker to our table.

‘Good
morning,’ said Stoker genially.

‘We
can’t stay,’ said Brookfield. ‘We have an appointment.’

‘With a
lady?’ Oscar conjectured, with a smile.

‘An
actress,’ said Stoker. ‘Brookfield has an emergency on his hands. He’s lost his
leading lady. I’ve agreed to help him find another. We’re due to meet Miss
Tilvert at eleven.’

‘She’ll
be late, I’m afraid,’ said Oscar. ‘Take off your coats, gentlemen. You’ve time
for a glass, that’s certain.’

‘Do you
know Miss Tilvert then?’ asked Brookfield, looking about the room.

‘No,’
replied Oscar smoothly, ‘but I know the type. Have some Scharzhofberger,
Charles. It’ll settle your nerves.’

‘We’re
not stopping long ourselves,’ added Sickert. ‘We’re off to Eastbourne.’

‘Eastbourne,’
echoed Stoker, pulling up a chair and smiling as Dino poured him a glass of the
German wine. ‘I love Eastbourne. Eastbourne has style.’ He raised his glass
towards Oscar. ‘The town’s entirely owned by the Duke of Devonshire, you know.’

‘It’s
not His Grace we’re visiting,’ said Oscar. ‘It’s Bradford Pearse. He’s in a
play at the Devonshire Park. We’re going to see it.’

Brookfield,
who remained standing, waved away the glass of wine that Dino was offering him,
and looked down at Oscar. ‘You’re going to Eastbourne to see a play? It must be
frightfully good.’

‘On the
contrary,’ answered Oscar, breathing out a long plume of grey-blue cigarette
smoke as he spoke, ‘Bradford Pearse tells us that the play is frightfully
bad—truly atrocious. It seems it could hardly be worse. That’s why I’m
determined not to miss it. I do enjoy excess in everything.’

‘You’re
very funny, Oscar,’ said Brookfield quietly.

‘Give
Pearse my best,’ said Stoker with enthusiasm, savouring his wine. ‘He’s a fine
fellow and a good actor—and the unlikeliest candidate for murder you could
imagine. I don’t know why anyone picked him as a victim when we played that
game of yours, Oscar. Bradford Pearse hasn’t an enemy in the world. I’d stake
my life on it.’

‘What about
his creditors?’ asked Charles Brookfield, with a little sniff, folding his arms
across his chest.

‘I
don’t know about his creditors,’ said Bram Stoker, holding out his glass for a
refill, ‘but I happen to know his pawnbrokers and they speak very highly of him.’

‘I
imagine they know him exceptionally well,’ said Brookfield, smiling.

‘There’s
no truer friend than an honest pawnbroker,’ said Oscar.

‘Agreed!’
said Stoker. ‘I use Ashman in the Strand. Capital fellow. Who do you go to,
Oscar?’

‘The
same. A good man. Ten years ago, when I was in desperate straits, I took him my
most prized possession—my Berkeley Gold Medal—and he gave me thirteen guineas
for it.
Thirteen guineas!
I said, “Mr Ashman, I don’t think it’s worth
five pounds.” He said, “Mr Wilde, I know about this medal. In my day, I was a
Greek scholar, too. You won this when you were at Trinity College, Dublin, did
you not? It is the college’s highest classical award. To you it must be beyond
price. I have thirteen guineas in my safe this morning. I am happy to give you
thirteen guineas for your medal.”‘

‘What a
wonderful story,’ said Bram Stoker.

‘Ashman
is a scholar and a gentleman,’ said Oscar.

‘And a
Jew,’ added Charles Brookfield.

‘Indeed,’
said Oscar, smiling, ‘I find that so many of the best people are.’

‘Have
you seen the paper this morning?’ asked Wat Sickert, deftly changing the
subject. ‘There’s a paragraph about the Cadogan Hotel parrot. Apparently, the
poor creature was done to death yesterday, in the hotel hallway, in broad
daylight. Can you believe it?’

‘The
parrot is dead?’ said Charles Brookfield. ‘I’d not heard that.’

‘How
strange,’ said Bram Stoker. ‘Brookfield and I took breakfast there yesterday.
The parrot was fine, as far as I recall.’

‘Who
would do such a thing?’ asked Sickert. ‘It was a messy business, according to
the paper— blood and feathers everywhere.’

Charles
Brookfield smiled. ‘Perhaps it was one of your vampires, Bram?’ he suggested. ‘Bram’s
obsessed with vampires, aren’t you? I think it comes from working for Irving, the
old blood-sucker.’

‘It
could have been a vampire bat,’ suggested Oscar, lightly.

‘In
Knightsbridge?’ exclaimed Brookfield.

‘Sloane
Street,’ Oscar corrected him.

‘The
notion’s ludicrous,’ said Brookfield scornfully.

‘Unlikely,
I agree,’ said Oscar benignly, ‘but not beyond the realms of possibility.
There’s a breed of South American bat—the
desmodontidae—
that subsists on
blood, and preys on birds and beasts and humans.

‘How do
you know this, Oscar?’ asked Stoker.

‘I went
to Oxford as well as Trinity College, Dublin. Poor Captain Flint was a South
American parrot. Perhaps he was ravaged by a South American vampire bat?’

‘Do you
think that’s likely?’ asked Bram Stoker, draining his glass.

‘No,’
answered Oscar, shaking his head. ‘Frankly, [do not.’

‘Then
who killed the parrot, Oscar?’ asked Charles Brookfield. ‘Do tell us.’

‘I
can’t.’

Brookfield
looked about the table. ‘Oscar sees himself as something of an amateur
sleuth—the Sherlock Holmes of Tite Street. Isn’t that right, Oscar?’

‘I
don’t know about that,’ Oscar answered, widening his eyes and revealing his
teeth, ‘but I’m certainly an admirer of Holmes’s powers of observation and
deduction. Thanks to them, for what it’s worth, Charles, I can tell that you
left home in something of a hurry this morning.’

Brookfield
raised an eyebrow. ‘And how can you tell that, Oscar?’

‘By
looking at you, Charles. Your waistcoat’s done up with one button adrift, the
underside of your chin is not thoroughly shaved and your boots are unevenly
shined. You’re short of funds: your cuffs are frayed. You have no valet: you
clean your own shoes and this morning you spent more time shining your left
shoe than your right.’

Charles
Brookfield looked steadily at Oscar and clapped his hands together slowly in a
show of mock-applause. ‘Very good, Oscar. Very good. So who killed the parrot?’

Oscar
returned Brookfield’s gaze, but said nothing.

‘Come
on, Oscar,’ jeered Brookfield. ‘Rise to the challenge, old boy. Who killed the
parrot? If, before my first night, you can prove beyond reasonable doubt who it
was killed that parrot I’ll give you …’

‘What
will you give me, Charles?’ asked Oscar.

‘I’ll
give you …’ Brookfield hesitated and then leant forward and looked Oscar
directly in the eye. ‘I’ll give you … thirteen guineas.’

‘Very
well, Charles,’ said Oscar, smiling. ‘I accept your challenge.’

CHAPTER TEN

MURDER MOST FOUL

We caught the three
o’clock train to Eastbourne with only seconds to spare. Bustling along the
platform, as whistles blew and steam swirled about us, we must have made a
curious sight. Oscar, in a crimson cape and white fedora, led the way, striding
forward, head held high, like a papal legate hurrying to an international
conference. Wat Sickert paced anxiously beside him, the attendant major domo,
in his black frock coat and pinstripe trousers, his waxed moustaches as shiny
as his stove-pipe hat. I brought up the rear, the humble, bumbling clerk,
scurrying breathlessly to catch up with my masters. I was only last, and out of
breath, because, as we arrived at Victoria, Oscar had despatched me to buy all
the newspapers.

We
travelled First Class, thanks to Lady Windermere; we had a compartment to
ourselves; and exactly as we reached it and fell back into our seats, the final
whistle blew and the train began to judder out of the station. ‘We made it!’ gasped
Sickert, pushing his hat to the back of his head and wiping the perspiration
from his forehead with a huge, crumpled, paint-stained handkerchief.

‘Did
you doubt it?’ asked Oscar, carefully removing his own headpiece and caressing
the felt fondly as he placed it on the empty seat beside him.

‘I most
certainly did, Oscar. I thought you and Brookfield were all set to have a duel
in Portland Place. What is the matter between you and Brookfield?’