Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (17 page)

‘Tea,
gentlemen?’ he said suddenly, as if rousing himself from a reverie. He smiled,
showing small, very white teeth, and widened his shiny olive-black eyes. ‘With
a nip of brandy?’

He went
to the left-hand stairway and we followed him up the few steps, under a stone
arch, to the adjacent chamber. It was a larger room than the first, windowless,
with a flagstone floor and dark wood panelling on the walls. There were gas
lamps on each wall and between each pair of brass gasoliers hung one of Father
Bechetti’s colourful paintings. The most striking of these was a life-size
portrait of a young girl. She was seated on a rock, dressed all in white,
holding a prayer book and a rosary in her lap. Her golden hair fell in tresses
to her shoulders.

Her
skin was as pale as snow (whiter than her dress), though her lips were red and
her cheeks were tinged with pink. Her eyebrows were dark and strong, her eyes
cast down. She was not smiling, nor was she sad. She was simply seated, lost in
thought, upon the rock. Around her head there was the shadow of a halo.

In the
centre of the room was a large, round dining table, made of polished oak, with
six chairs arranged around it.

‘This
is our little refectory,’ said Cesare Verdi. ‘This is where we take tea. This
is where we dine. We dine well. Monsignor Felici makes sure of that.’

‘You
say “we”?’ asked Oscar.

‘Quite
right, Mr Wilde. I don’t dine with my priests. I serve them first and I dine
afterwards — but at the same table. It’s my table, my sacristy.’

‘And
they’re “your” priests.’

‘That’s
how I thinks of them. There are just five of them living ‘ere — in the cells
upstairs. They’re papal chaplains and I looks after them. They prays for me and
I skivvies for them.’

‘I’ve
no doubt you do them proud — in the Willis’s tradition.’

‘They
don’t do so badly. Brother Matteo is a Capuchin, of course, so he eats pretty
frugally: bread and water, vegetables and fruit, no meat, no cheese. And poor
old Father Bechetti lost his appetite when he lost his teeth. So it’s really
the three Monsignors who do the feasting. Take a seat, gentlemen.’

We did
as we were told, while Cesare Verdi went over to a sideboard on the far side of
the room and busied himself, preparing a tray of cups and saucers and lighting
a gas burner under a large black kettle that began to wheeze and whistle almost
at once.

‘Monsignor
Felici and Monsignor Breakspear we ye met,’ said Oscar.

‘You’ll
like Monsignor Tuminello,’ said the sacristan, spooning leaves from a tea caddy
into a handsome Royal Crown Derby porcelain teapot. “E’s interesting. ‘E’s the
papal exorcist.’

‘So he,
too, sees the devil in your eye, Cesare,’ said Oscar.

“E sees
the devil
everywhere,’
said the sacristan, laughing and bringing the
boiling water to the teapot.

‘What’s
this?’ I asked, indicating the large circular pewter dish that stood in the
centre of the dining table. It was piled high with what at first glance I had
taken to be an arrangement of crystallised fruit, but that I now realised, on
closer inspection, was an assortment of precious stones wrapped in what
appeared to be a fur stole. ‘Is it a still life arranged for Father Bechetti?’

‘No, ‘e
‘asn’t painted a picture in ten years. ‘Is eyes ‘ave gone, along with ‘is
teeth. Those are jewels from papal crown s.’

‘And
this,’ said Oscar, leaning across the table and lifting up a dark-green stone
the size of a plover’s egg, ‘is the emerald from Pope Julius II’s fabled
tiara?’

‘It is
indeed,’ replied the sacristan. ‘She’s a beauty, ain’t she? I’m giving ‘er a
little polish. Pope Leo ‘as a mind to wear the crown at ‘is next pontifical
Mass. ‘Is ‘oliness is partial to ‘is triple tiaras. ‘F’s one for ‘is dignity —
and why not?’

‘Papa
tantae est dignitatis et cesitudinis, ut non sit simplex homo, sed quasi Deus,
et Dei vicarius,’
[2]
said Oscar, replacing the emerald among the other
gems.

‘Hinc
Papa triplici corona coronatur tan quam rex coeli, terre et infernoram,’
[3]
responded the sacristan. ‘You’ll want to see the tiaras then, Mr
Wilde. We’ve got ‘undreds,
‘undreds.
All ‘ere in the sacristy. I’ll take
you on the tour later. And your friend, of course.’ The sacristan turned his
bright black eyes towards me and revealed again his small, white teeth. ‘I
never caught your name, sir.’

‘Conan
Doyle,’ I said. ‘Arthur Conan Doyle. Doctor.’

‘Ah,’
he chuckled, holding the teapot by its handle and spout and swirling it vigorously.
‘The Sherlock ‘olmes man. My priests just loves their Sherlock ‘olmes.’

‘I’m
gratified,’ I said.

‘And
this?’ asked Oscar, still concentrating on the pewter dish in the centre of the
table and pointing to the roll of fur that surrounded the pile of jewels. ‘Is
it ermine? It looks more like a lady’s wrap than a papal stole.’

‘It’s a
weasel,’ announced the sacristan, with a laugh.

He put
down the teapot on the sideboard, stepped over to the table and lifted the
bundle of fur from the dish. As it unfurled, the hapless creature’s face and
paws swung round towards us.

‘Oh, my
God,’ cried Oscar, flinching away from the table. ‘It’s hideous.’

Cesare
Verdi held the animal by the scruff of the neck. Its body was long and thin: it
must have been three feet in length, including its tail. The wretched animal’s
pointed face appeared to be grinning at us grotesquely; its eyes were wide open
and staring, its teeth were bared and clenched.

‘Why is
it here?’ I asked.

‘For
dinner,’ replied the sacristan. ‘We are going to eat it.’

‘In
God’s name why?’ hissed Oscar.

‘Because
my brother in Christ, Monsignor Breakspear, is determined to eat his way
through the animal kingdom. He is doing it wilfully, to assert the primacy of
man and to upset me.

This
observation was made in Italian. I did not understand it at the time: Oscar
translated it for me later. But I realised at once that the person making it
was Brother Matteo.

The
Capuchin friar stood beneath the stone arch at the top of the steps leading
into the dining room. He was a man of about sixty, tall and spare, bearded but
pale. He was dressed in the coffee-coloured habit of his order. His cowl was
thrown back; his head was held high; a thin piece of rough cord hung about his
neck; his hair was snow-white and sparse. I looked down at his feet. They were
bare and callused. I looked at his hands. They were a workman’s hands: he wore
no rings. I did not understand what he was saying, but from the glint in his
grey eyes and the gentleness of his manner I took it to be something amusing.

I got
to my feet. Oscar did likewise. Axel Munthe, who stood just behind the
Capuchin, introduced us. Handshakes were exchanged and pleasantries murmured.
I did not follow what was said, but I recognised the name Sherlock Holmes more
than once and nodded in acknowledgement of it, doing my best to disguise my
irritation.

The
sacristan laid the dead weasel to rest on the sideboard and brought his tea
tray to the dining table.

‘Té
pomeridiano?’
he said.

‘Si,
grazie,’
said the friar, inviting us to take our
seats once more and joining us at the table. ‘Tea from Darjeeling prepared in
the English way, with boiling water brought to the pot, is one of my favourite
drinks. And a full English tea is undoubtedly my favourite repast. It’s such a
civilised meal. Even a Capuchin is permitted a cucumber sandwich. Monsignor
Breakspear is a barbarian — a savage. He does not believe he has eaten unless
he has tasted blood and recently he has come up with this ludicrous notion that
it is his Christian duty to eat of the flesh of every one of God’s creatures,
from the antelope to the zebra.’

‘Is he
making his progress through the animal kingdom alphabetically?’ asked Oscar, in
Italian.

‘There
is no order to his thinking, merely self-indulgence. This isn’t science. This
is greed — and perversity. There are some wild boys who live in the woods here,
by the pyramid. They scavenge and hunt for Monsignor Breakspear and for every
new creature they bring to the pot he gives them money. It’s absurd. It’s
obscene.’

Oscar
translated the essence of what the friar was saying into English and I shook my
head in amazement. ‘Can this be true?’ I asked.

‘Si,
è vero,’
said the sacristan. “Oney buzzard and
ibis, frog, bat, vole, mole — flesh and fowl, all creatures great and small.’ He
opened a drawer in the sideboard and from it produced a small silver hammer,
about ten inches in length, holding it up for us to see. ‘We uses this to crack
open the crustaceans. We had spider crab last week. Whatever the lads turn up
with, if we’ve not tried it before, we give it a go. That’s the Monsignor’s
rule. If you eat wild boar, why not wild wolf? Some of what we’ve ‘ad ‘as
proved surprisingly tasty. Porcupine meat is very tender.’ He returned the
hammer to the drawer.

The
friar laughed. ‘And Breakspear will soon be a cardinal. We all know that. God
moves in a mysterious way.’

As the
sacristan poured us our cups of tea, another priestly figure appeared on the
threshold. He stood silently in the archway, studying the group seated at the
table. I was the first to see him. As his eye caught mine, I sensed a flicker
of recognition — or uncertainty. He appeared puzzled by our presence, perturbed
even. From his sash and his biretta, it was evident that this was the third
Monsignor — a man similar in age and build to the Capuchin, but beardless,
hairless, sallow-skinned and sorrowful in demeanour. His eyes were sunken and
heavily hooded. His forehead and cheeks were deeply lined. He had a smoker’s
complexion and a drinker’s nose. Once we registered his presence, Axel Munthe,
Oscar and I rose quickly to our feet and bowed towards the priest.

‘Monsignor
Tuminello,’ said Munthe pleasantly, ‘may I present two distinguished newcomers
to Rome: Mr Oscar Wilde, the poet and playwright, and Dr Arthur Conan Doyle, the
celebrated creator of Sherlock Holmes.’ As the Monsignor extended his hand to
shake mine, I noticed the rose-gold ring on his finger. As he released my hand
from his cold, tight grasp, his eyes flickered upwards, violently, his head
jerked backwards and, without uttering a sound, he fell in a heap to the floor.

11

Something in the air

‘The
air in Rome is notoriously foul. These are old men. They do not lead
healthy lives. I do not believe that we can regard Monsignor Tuminello’s collapse
as is any way suspicious. He fainted, he recovered. There’s an end on it.’

This
was Axel Munthe’s considered verdict, delivered for the third time over the
third bottle of champagne at the end of that night’s dinner at the Hôtel de
Russie. Oscar had insisted on ordering our food — ‘it will be all simplicity’:
wild asparagus, wild boar cooked with raisins and pine seeds,
zabaione
with
fresh raspberries — and on selecting our wines — ‘wholly unpretentious’: Italian
Barolo and French champagne — and on paying for everything: ‘with a little help
from my dear friend, Lady Windermere ‘.