Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death (20 page)

‘He had
no family, Oscar. His friends were his family.’

‘He
must have had parents …’

‘Dead
long ago.’

‘Brothers?
Sisters?’

‘None
that I know of.’ Wat stood up and hoisted the bag onto the luggage rack. The
train was moving once more. He steadied himself, holding on to one of the
leather straps attached to the frame of the compartment door. When he turned
around I saw that his eyes were filled with tears. ‘Damn you, Oscar,’ he
hissed. ‘Damn you and your confounded game.’

‘He may
not be dead,’ said Oscar quietly.

‘But
what if he is!’ wailed Sickert, sinking down into his seat and covering his
face with his hands. From his coat pocket he pulled his crumpled paint-stained
handkerchief and wiped his eyes. ‘Forgive me, Oscar,’ he mumbled. ‘I should
blame myself, not you. It was I who brought him to the Cadogan Hotel on Sunday
night. He was my guest, not yours.

‘But it
was my game,’ said Oscar slowly, ‘and on the four consecutive days since we
played it, in the exact order in which their names were drawn from the bag, the
first four of the game’s so-called “victims” have each met their fate.’ He had
produced the list of ‘victims’ from his pocket and unfolded it and laid it open
on his lap. With his fingertips lightly touching the side of his temples he
stared down at the list as if his concentrated gaze might somehow enable him to
penetrate its secrets. ‘Elizabeth Scott-Rivers died first, burnt to death, but
the conflagration could have been caused by accident … Lord Abergordon was
next to go, but he was sixty and appears to have died in his sleep … The
wretched hotel parrot was murdered for sure, butchered to death—that much is
certain…. And now Bradford Pearse has gone …

‘Who’s
next?’ asked Wat, blowing his nose.

‘Next
on the list,’ said Oscar, ‘is David McMuirtree—the boxer, Byrd’s associate,
bald yet oddly handsome’

‘I
recall,’ said Sickert. ‘“Half-a-gentleman”.’

‘Who
chose McMuirtree as his victim, I wonder?’ Oscar pondered.

There
was a pause. Oscar and Wat each lit up another cigarette.

‘I
did,’ I said, somewhat awkwardly. ‘As Oscar knows.’

Wat
Sickert sat back and drew slowly on his cigarette. ‘I did, too,’ he said
quietly.

‘What?’
cried Oscar. ‘Why? Do you know the man?’

‘No.’
Sickert laughed. ‘Not at all. I saw him box once. He’s an artist in the ring.’

‘But
you’d not met him before?’

‘No.
Never.’

‘Then
why in all creation?’

,
‘Because of his name, of course.’

‘“Because
of his name”?’ Oscar expostulated. ‘What do you mean, man?’

‘It was
a game, Oscar—you said so yourself. I chose David McMuirtree because of his
name.’

‘I
don’t follow you, Wat,’ said Oscar, furrowing his brow.

‘I was
seated on his right, you’ll recall, and through dinner, as we talked, as the
conversation ebbed and flowed, I idled away the time with my pen—sketching
McMuirtree’s profile on the back of the menu and playing with the letters in
his name …’

‘Playing
with the letters?’

‘Rearranging
them—making an anagram out of them. I discovered to my amusement that “David
McMuirtree”, rearranged, makes “A murdered victim” … That’s why I chose him,
Oscar. No other reason.’

Oscar
sat back and burst out laughing. It was not his low chuckle: it was his
raucous, barking laugh. ‘Good God!’ he exclaimed, ‘Is’t possible? Have we
condemned a man to death because of his name?’

‘It was
just a game, Oscar,’ said Sickert.

‘But a
deadly game, my friends, do you not see?’ He calmed himself and leant forward
once more and put out a supplicating hand to claim the last of Wat’s tin of
cigarettes. ‘I have being trying to work out in my mind what it is—what it
could be—that links Elizabeth Scott-Rivers, Lord Abergordon, that wretched parrot
and Bradford Pearse. I now realise it may be nothing—nothing
at all,
bar
the fact that they were randomly chosen as “victims” when on Sunday I forced us
to play that ludicrous game. These four unfortunate creatures—a lady, a lord, a
parrot and an actor—not slain for a reason, but
murdered without motive
…’

‘You
mean—’ Sickert began.

‘Yes,
Wat, I mean that just as it amused you to name McMuirtree as your “victim”
because you like to play with words, so it may be that, in our midst, there is
a cold and calculating killer who finds it “amusing” to take a list of names
such as this—’ he lifted the list from his lap and brandished it before us ‘and
eliminate them one by one, simply for pleasure playing the game for the game’s
sake.’

I leant
across and took the list from Oscar and studied it. I glanced up and saw that
my friend had closed his eyes, as if in prayer. ‘I know what you are thinking,
Robert,’ he said, almost in a whisper. ‘I am thinking it, too. The last name on
that list belongs to Constance—constant Constance, innocent Constance, the
truest and best wife and mother in the world. You love her as I do, Robert. All
who know her love her. None who knows her could wish her harm. And yet our
murderer does not need to know those whom he seeks to kill. He is playing a
game ticking off mere names on a list.’

He
shuddered and opened his eyes. ‘Are we approaching London yet?’ he asked,
getting to his feet. He reached for his cape. ‘I’m cold and hungry,’ he said. ‘It‘s
a while since Mrs Fletcher’s breakfast. ‘Wat Sickert looked up at Oscar,
ashen-faced. ‘I fear you may be right, my friend. Bradford Pearse has not taken
his own life. He has been murdered— not because of who he was, or what he was,
or aught he’d done. He was murdered because his name chanced to be upon that
list.’

‘But
who put his name upon that list,’ asked Oscar slowly, ‘if, as we all keep
saying, he hadn’t an enemy in the world?’

The
train was slowing down, passing through Croydon. ‘What do we do now?’ I
enquired. ‘Go to the police?’

‘Yes,’
said Oscar, decisively. ‘We must do as Conan Doyle advised. We must go to
Inspector Gilmour at Scotland Yard. We must show him Bradford’s letter and tell
him the whole sorry story. There were fourteen of us around the dinner table on
Sunday night and at least one of us, I fear, is a murderer.’

‘Or an
instigator of murder,’ suggested Sickert. ‘One of our number could have taken
the list and hired a killer to do his bidding. Indeed, isn’t that more
probable?’

‘Does
the murderer need to have been at the dinner at all?’ I asked. ‘If it’s a
random killer, as you suggest, Oscar, couldn’t one of our number have simply
recounted the events of the night in a bar or a pub—or at his club or
somewhere—and been overheard by a stranger?’

Oscar
burst out laughing again. ‘A stranger bent on murder? A stranger with excellent
hearing who happened to be in search of a tidy shopping list of would-be murder
victims? Anything is possible, I suppose.

The
train had reached Victoria. ‘What time is it?’ Oscar asked, while sorting through
his small change in anticipation of the coming encounters with station porters
and hansom cab drivers.

Sickert
put his head out of the carriage window and looked up at the station clock.
‘Gone five,’ he said.

‘I’ll
take Pearse’s bag, if you don’t mind,’ said Oscar. ‘Those bills of his might
reveal something— you never know.’

We
clambered out of the carriage onto the noisy station platform. ‘I’m going
home,’ said Wat. ‘I hope to sell a picture tonight. You’ll keep me posted,
won’t you?’

‘Of
course,’ said Oscar. ‘I’ll send you a wire when we’ve seen the police.’ He
handed me Bradford Pearse’s Gladstone bag to carry.

‘Are we
going to Scotland Yard at once?’ I asked. ‘It’s quite late. Should you not go
home, too?’

‘If our
murderer is following the chronology of the list, Robert, until David
McMuirtree is dead Constance should be safe.’ He led us across the station
towards the cab rank on Victoria Street. ‘Scotland Yard can wait until
tomorrow. I think first we should find McMuirtree and alert him to the danger
he is in.’

‘And
you must safeguard yourself also, Oscar,’ said Wat. ‘Your name, too, is on the
list.’

Oscar
glanced towards Sickert. ‘I know.’

Wat
suddenly stopped in his tracks. ‘Your young friend Bosie keeps a gun, does he
not? A pistol of some sort? He boasts about it.’

Oscar
laughed. ‘Indeed. He tells me he plans to use it to shoot his father!’ Oscar
stood still and looked about the station concourse and spread his arms wide and
laughed again. ‘I am surrounded by murderers and madmen …’

Wat
Sickert smiled and took both of Oscar’s hands in his. ‘I’m serious, my friend.
Perhaps you should borrow the gun from Bosie and keep it at Tite Street until
the danger’s past.’

‘I
don’t fear for myself, Wat. Death may indeed be the greatest of all human
blessings. But I fear for my children—they need their mother and Constance is
too young to die.’ The poet and the artist embraced one another. They were a
curious sight:

Oscar,
all of six-foot-three, in his crimson cape and white fedora, and Wat Sickert,
so much slighter, in his theatrical frock coat with his absurd moustaches.

‘You go
and sell your picture, Wat,’ said Oscar. ‘Robert and I are going to the
circus.’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE RING OF DEATH

‘Why on earth are we going
to the circus, Oscar?’ I asked as we stood in line in the station forecourt
waiting for a hansom cab.

‘Because
Mr David McMuirtree is a fairground fighter and has a summer engagement at
Astley’s Circus. I know because he has kindly sent me two tickets for his next
appearance promisingly described as “an historic gala bout”. It’s scheduled for
Monday night. Bosie won’t come. He has a horror of boxing. Are you free?’

‘Thank
you,’ I said. I had become accustomed to being Oscar’s companion on nights when
Bosie was unavailable. ‘I love Astley’s. When I was a boy, my birthday treat
was always an outing to “Lord” George Sanger’s circus at Astley’s.’

‘Yes,’
Oscar murmured as we moved up to the head of the queue. ‘I recall that you had
a troubled childhood.’

I
smiled. I sensed that the people behind us were listening in to our
conversation. Oscar was not averse to the public’s attention. ‘What was your
birthday treat then, Oscar?’ I asked.

‘An
afternoon in the bluebell wood of Phoenix Park reading Euripides and Theocritus,
followed by an evening in the cloisters at Drumcondra with Plato and John
Ruskin. I was an uncomplicated child.’

I
laughed and we climbed aboard our hansom.

By cab,
it took no more than twenty minutes to travel from Victoria Station to Astley‘s
Circus amphitheatre on the south side of Westminster Bridge. This was 1892, the
year before the amphitheatre—one of the great glories of Victorian London—was
razed to the ground.

Until I
was eighteen—until I began to travel and discovered the Paris Opera House, the
Fenice in Venice, the Ronda bullring in Andalusia—Astley’s was my
pleasure-dome. I had never been inside a building so wondrous, so vast, so
ornate, so exotic. It was illuminated by a chandelier that burnt five thousand
candles. The audience was seated in four steep and curving tiers that rose up
to fifty feet above the ground. There was a conventional stage for the
musicians, clowns and tumblers to perform on, and, in front of it, in place of
the traditional orchestra stalls, a huge circular arena—forty-two feet in
diameter—for the performing horses and the dancing dogs.

Philip
Astley (whom my grandfather knew) used no wild animals in his shows. He was a
horseman— and an acrobat. He invented the circus ring to display his riding
skills to best advantage. He realised that by galloping in a tight circle he
and his fellow-riders could generate a centrifugal force that would help them
maintain their balance while standing on the bare backs of their steeds.

As our
hansom trundled slowly down Victoria Street in the Thursday evening rush-hour traffic,
I tried to share my enthusiasm with Oscar. He was not interested.

‘I seem
to recall Sickert telling me that Monsieur Degas also adores the circus,’ he
said wearily.

‘Oh
yes,’ I replied warmly, ignoring his wan smile and gently raised eyebrow. ‘The French
all adore the circus. In France they regard Astley as a hero. They call him
“Le
roi des cirques”.
He died in Paris, you know.’

‘Astley’s
dead?’ said Oscar, feigning surprise. ‘Long dead. He is buried at Père
Lachaise.’

‘That
tells us nothing,’ Oscar replied dismissively.

‘They’ll
take anybody there.’

When we reached Astley’s
amphitheatre, Oscar instructed our driver to set us down at the stage door. ‘No
wonder Conan Doyle wants to kill off Holmes,’ he grumbled as he clambered down
from the cab.