Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (18 page)

‘Is she
your mistress or your patroness?’ asked Axel Munthe.

‘She
was one and is now the other,’ said Oscar, darkly.

‘Ah,’
murmured Munthe, evidently impressed. ‘Customarily, it is the other way
around.’

I
intervened. ‘Lady Windermere is the principal character in a play of Oscar’s,’
I explained.
‘Lady Windermere‘s Fan.
It’s a comedy. It’s delightful. And
a huge success. It’s been running in London since February. The critics were
not sure about it, but the public is.’

‘It is
the will of God that we must have critics and we will bear the burden,’ said
Oscar, skewering a raspberry with his fork and dipping the fruit into his
champagne. ‘Lady Windermere earns my keep night after night and I am grateful
to her.’

‘Congratulations,’
said Munthe, raising his glass to Oscar. ‘Are you resting on your laurels now
or planning something new?’

‘Both.’

Munthe
laughed. ‘Another comedy?’

‘No,’
said Oscar, swallowing the raspberry and leaning forward earnestly. ‘A murder
mystery. It’s a collaborative venture. I’m writing it with my friend Conan
Doyle here. We’re calling it
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Papal
Chaplains.
It will run for years.’

‘You
are ridiculous, Oscar,’ I said.

Oscar
turned his head towards Axel Munthe and widened his now glistening eyes. ‘What
do you think, Doctor?’

Munthe
smiled and set down his glass. ‘I think you have a problem with your “murder
mystery”, my friend.’

‘And
what is the problem, pray?’

‘Very
simple. You have a mystery of sorts, to be sure, but, so far as I can tell, no
murder.’

‘We
have a dead man’s hand!’ exclaimed Oscar, beating the table with his fork. ‘We
have a dead man’s finger!’

‘Yes,’
said Munthe, now laughing, ‘and a locket of lamb’s wool. But where’s the murder?’

‘We
have death stalking in the wings!’ cried Oscar.

‘You
have two elderly clergymen collapsing in the heat of a Roman summer. You don’t
have murder.’

‘It is
only a matter of time. Arthur and I have been here for only three days and
already we have been drawn into the circle of death.’

I
raised my hand in protest. ‘Steady on, old man.’

Munthe
shook his head and sipped his wine. He tilted his head to one side and peered
at Oscar through his heavy spectacles. ‘And who is in this “circle” of yours,
Mr Wilde?’

‘The
men who wear the ring,’ said Oscar calmly, ‘the ring that has lured us to
Rome.’

‘And
who are they?’ asked Munthe.

‘To
begin with, Monsignor Felici — your patient, Doctor. The man you thought might
well have been a murderer on the night you first saw the rose-gold ring, on the
night his mistress died. And Monsignor Breakspear, Arthur’s old school friend,
the boy-beater, the would-be cardinal who is busy eating his way through the
animal kingdom. He wears the ring. And Monsignor Tuminello, the third
Monsignor, the sere and yellow papal exorcist. Another of your patients, Doctor
— they’re a sickly band up at the Sistine Chapel. He wears the ring also.’

Munthe
shrugged. ‘Three Monsignors, three papal chaplains: they wear the same ring. Is
it so surprising?’

‘Cesare
Verdi, the sacristan, a layman — he wears it, too,’ I said.

‘But
Joachim Bechetti, the aged artist, and Brother Matteo, the good Capuchin — they
don’t,’ said Oscar. He sat up at the table and spread his fingers out on the tablecloth
in front of him. ‘Why not? They’re papal chaplains also. They, too, live above
the sacristy. Why are they not wearing the rose-gold ring?’

‘Because
they don’t belong to your “circle of death”?’ asked Munthe.

‘Or
because one or other of them has sent his ring to Sherlock Holmes,’ I
suggested, ‘as a coded summons.’

‘As a
cry for help,’ said Oscar, closing his eyes momentarily. ‘Exactly, Arthur.’ He
let out a deep sigh, opened his eyes again and looked around the table,
smiling. ‘A grappa in the lounge, gentlemen — and then bed, I think, don’t
you?’

I slept well that night.
My bed at the Hôtel de Russie was blessed with silent springs, a firm mattress
and crisp white bed-linen that was both cool and soothing. When I awoke, it was
nine in the morning. In the distance I heard the clock of Sant’ Atanasio dei
Greci striking the hour. I rose, opened my window and pushed back the shutters:
a wave of warm sunshine flooded over me.

To my
surprise, I found that Oscar was not in his room, nor in the dining room, so I
breakfasted alone, contentedly on coffee, a boiled egg and black bread. (Why
are continental cooks incapable of making toast?) As I drank and ate, I leafed
through a ten-day-old copy of
The Times
and learnt of floods in
Switzerland, fires in Newfoundland, and Mr Gladstone’s imminent return to
office — at the age of eighty-two.
Plus ça change
… (Why do I read the
newspapers? Oscar doesn’t. He says the news is predictable and the leaders even
more so. He is right.)

Breakfast
done, I made my way to the front desk, thinking there might be a wire from
home. There was none (unlike Oscar, my darling wife is not one for the
extravagance of telegrams when there is nothing urgent to report), but there
was a note from Oscar telling me to join him in the café in the piazza by the
Porta del Popolo. I collected my straw hat (I removed the blue bandanna) and,
at ten o’clock, went out to find my friend.

As I
stepped out of the hotel and turned to my right, I recognised, coming along the
Via del Babuino towards me, the elegant figure of Mr James Rennell Rodd,
attaché at the British Embassy and Oscar’s so-called ‘enemy’. Our eyes met.
Mine held his and, to my surprise, Rennell Rodd did not look away. Indeed, as
he approached he touched his hat to me and smiled quite pleasantly. As we
passed on the pavement, he paused briefly and, raising the waxed tips of his
moustache lightly with the backs of his fingertips, he said,
‘Buongiorno,
Dr
Doyle. This is the kind of day that makes me grateful for the posting.’

‘Good
day, sir,’ I said.

‘And
how is that priest?’ he enquired. ‘The old blind father from the Vatican? Is
there any news?’

‘He is
recovered, I believe.’

‘I’m
relieved to hear it. You can never be entirely sure when “Dr Death” is in
attendance.’

‘You
mean Dr Munthe?’

‘I do,
sir,’ answered Rennell Rodd, stroking his moustache. ‘He has quite a
reputation — he
boasts
of “putting down” elderly patients as though they
were stray dogs. No one’s actually complained, so far as I know, but if they’re
dead, I suppose they wouldn’t.’ He laughed at his own joke. ‘I have no idea as
to the truth of the matter.’

‘Dr
Munthe seems to know his business,’ I murmured.

‘And
have you met the creature he lives with? Extraordinary.‘

‘No,
I’ve not yet had the pleasure.’

Rennell
Rodd growled gently, sniffed the air and with his index finger lightly brushed
his eyelashes upwards. ‘I think the Swedes are even more inscrutable than the
Chinese, don’t you?’

I said
nothing (I could not think what to say) and the English diplomatist nodded,
touched his hat once more and went briskly on his way.

A
minute or two later, I found Oscar, as promised, outside the café on the far
side of the piazza by the Porta del Popolo. He was alone, seated at a table in
the shade, dressed in a lime-coloured linen suit, nursing a long glass of Tokay
and seltzer and reading a book.

As I
pulled up a chair to join him, he held the volume out towards me. ‘This was
written for us, Arthur. It’s called
The Innocents Abroad.’

I
smiled. ‘I like the title,’ I said.

‘You’ll
like the book. It’s a traveller’s tale: Mark Twain at the height of his powers
— wry and perceptive. It starts here in Rome, among dead Capuchin friars. I’m
gripped.’ He beamed at me. ‘Has your morning been instructive?’

‘I’ve
just seen Mr Rennell Rodd,’ I told him.

‘I saw
him too, here in the piazza.’

‘Did he
speak to you?’

‘No, he
cut me — deliberately. He walked right past me and looked the other way.’

‘Are
you sure that he saw you, Oscar?’

‘He saw
me and I saw him. He was with the Rome Irregulars.’

I
looked at him, not comprehending.

‘Our
boys,’ he smirked.

‘”Our
boys”? You mean the street urchins?’

‘Yes.
Romulus and Remus: Munthe’s “notorious pair” — Breakspear’s little scavengers.’

‘Rennell
Rodd was in conversation with those two …’ I let the sentence trail away.

Oscar
laughed at my embarrassment. ‘Yes, Arthur.
Deep
in conversation, over
there, by the obelisk, in the very centre of the square.’

‘But
he’s a gentleman, he’s First Secretary at the British Embassy. What possible
business could he have with those wretched boys?’

‘Perhaps
he was ordering up a haunch of badger for the ambassador’s table or making an
assignation of a more personal nature for himself.’

I
looked at my friend. ‘What are you suggesting?’ I asked.

‘When
we were at Oxford together, Rennell Rodd and I, we were disciples of the great
art critic, Walter Pater. Pater was our teacher and our guide. We read his
Studies
in the History of the Renaissance.
It was from Pater that we first learnt
of “the beauty of brilliant sins”. It was Pater who taught us that a person of
cultivation must seek out every exquisite experience that he can — taste all of
the fruits of all the trees in all the gardens of the world.

Rennell
Rodd may simply have been enquiring of the boys what sweet delights are
currently on offer in the wild orchards behind the pyramid.’

‘What
you are suggesting is appalling, Oscar,’ I said with great seriousness, ‘and
slanderous.’

‘They
are good-looking lads,’ said Oscar, wickedly, ‘and I’m sure I saw Rennell Rodd
twirling his moustaches.’

‘The
boys are no more than fourteen or fifteen years of age,’ I protested.

‘In
ancient Greece—’ Oscar began, smiling.

‘We are
in modern Rome, Oscar,’ I countered sternly. ‘I want to hear no more of this.’

‘Well,’
said my friend, lighting a cigarette and blowing out the match, ‘let us assume
then that he was merely after a weasel or a stoat in the Breakspear tradition.’

A
waiter had appeared at our table. I ordered a glass of grenadine and soda.

‘What
do you make of Monsignor Breakspear?’ I asked, after a moment’s pause, grateful
for the opportunity to change the subject. ‘I thought it odd that he invited
us to tea so pressingly and then failed to appear himself.’

Oscar
drew on his cigarette. ‘Ill-mannered, I agree,’ he said. ‘But, worse than
that,’ he added, ‘I sense that Monsignor Breakspear is not an original thinker,
which is surprising, given he’s a Jesuit.’

‘What
do you mean?’

‘I mean
that Breakspear borrows other men’s ideas. This notion of eating his way
through the animal kingdom, for example …‘

‘Tasting
all the fruits of all the trees …’

‘It’s
not original. Far from it. Dr Buckland, palaeontologist, Canon of Christ
Church, Dean of Westminster, was doing it before Breakspear was born. Panther,
crocodile, bluebottle, louse: Dr Buckland ate the lot. He was truly omnivorous.
Once he came across the preserved heart of Louis XIV of France in a reliquary,
declared, ,,I have eaten many strange things in my time, but never the heart of
a king,” and, before anyone could stop him, swallowed the precious relic whole.
Buckland’s son, Frank, whom I knew, carried on the family tradition, hosting
extraordinary feasts at Willis’s — with sea-slugs, kangaroo, elephant trunk and
mole pie on the menu. The Bucklands were the genuine article. There is
something about Breakspear that doesn’t ring true.’

‘These
eccentric banquets were held at Willis’s Rooms in St James’s?’

‘Yes,
at Willis’s — the same Willis’s where the sacristan’s mother helps out in the
kitchens and his twin brother is the
maître d’hôtel,
Gus Green.’

‘Your
particular friend.’

‘A good
maître d’hôtel
is a gentleman’s truest friend. I know Gus Green. I trust
him. But there’s something about Cesare Verdi that I don’t trust.’

‘He
seemed a decent sort to me.’

‘Did
you notice what he was wearing?’

‘Not
especially. He seemed well dressed.’

‘Exactly.
He was wearing a silk shirt. With cufflinks.’

‘Is
that suspect?’

‘In a
sacristan, it’s certainly surprising.’

Oscar
stubbed out the remains of his cigarette in the ashtray on the café table and
drained his glass. He breathed in deeply, expanding his chest and raising and
turning his head to gaze about the piazza. ‘We shall learn more hereafter,’ he
announced. ‘This very afternoon, in fact.’ He sat back and produced a small
envelope from his pocket, which he handed to me. ‘Note the crossed keys
embossed on the back of the envelope. It’s a missive from Monsignor Felici,
delivered to our hotel before breakfast. He apologises for yesterday’s botched
tea party and invites us to a proper one today. The Holy See’s
circolo
inglese
will be taking English tea at five o’clock this afternoon and
requests the pleasure of our company.’ He looked me in the eye. ‘This is what
we’ve come for, Arthur. The mystery is going to start to unravel now, I’m
certain of it. And I think we will find it darker than you dare imagine.’