Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (20 page)

‘What
is he showing you?’ I asked.

‘The
line of
carabinieri
standing at the boundary of the Holy See. He says
they are useless and corrupt, but they are the law nonetheless and they must be
obeyed.’

The
captain went on jabbering and gesticulating, pointing both his finger and his
telescope in the direction of St Peter’s.

‘Now he
is showing me the line of Swiss Guard and telling me that the pope’s men are no
better. There is corruption everywhere, he says, except here in his balloon
where we are closer to heaven, and where he and the Almighty — and no one
besides — are in command of all our destinies.’

Oscar
bowed to the captain and found a silver coin in his pocket to give the man. The
fellow took the money and indicated that Oscar should keep the telescope while
he went back about his business. My friend lifted the glass to his eye once
more and continued to gaze towards the Vatican.

‘Our
pirate king has solved the mystery for us, hasn’t he, Arthur?’ he said. ‘At
least, in part.’

I said
nothing. I was conscious of Catherine English at my side, her arm pressed close
to mine. Oscar appeared to read my mind.

‘How
rude of me, Miss English,’ he declared suddenly. ‘I got carried away. Here,
take the captain’s spyglass and survey the scene. You must.’ He passed the
telescope to the young lady and, as she lifted it to her eye, set about
directing her attention. ‘Look below us, can you see your church? And along the
street from it, Sant’ Atanasio dei Greci? And there, further south, the
Capuchin church that Mark Twain writes about. Do you know it?’

‘I know
Mark Twain’s book,’ she said,
‘The Innocents Abroad.
It is a favourite
of mine. And I know the church you mean — where the Capuchin friars are all
buried.’ She peered through the telescope. ‘But I cannot see it. There are so
many churches down there. I can see the Pyramid of Cestius, however. And the
Pantheon. And the Colosseum. And the slums.’

‘Nothing
changes,’ said Oscar. ‘Two thousand years on and it is still the problem of
slavery. We try to solve it by amusing the slaves.’

Catherine
English held the glass steadily to her eye and looked all about her. Her gaze
moved from left to right, slowly, methodically. I followed her gaze, holding
her elbow to keep her steady in the breeze. Oscar held on to the basket’s edge
with both hands and peered below.

‘There
it is, spread out for all to see: the glory of Rome — and the squalor.’

She put
the telescope into my hands and smiled at Oscar. ‘From here I think it all
looks beautiful.’

Oscar
returned her smile. ‘They say distance lends enchantment.’

‘I am
with Miss English,’ I declared fervently. ‘It all looks quite wonderful to me.’

‘Yes,’
she said. ‘It’s heaven.’

‘But
even in heaven the novelty wears off.’ Oscar looked up at the sky and sighed.
‘When you have seen one cloud, you really have seen most of them. Wordsworth
was always overrated.’

We
laughed and, with some difficulty, I persuaded my friend not to light a
cigarette.

The balloon trip did not
last long. Less than forty minutes after we had been swept in our basket up
into the sky, we were back on terra firma.

‘You
can have a cigarette now,’ I said to Oscar, as we disembarked and stood on the
grass, somewhat unsteadily, adjusting once more to life on earth.

‘I
shall,’ he answered. ‘I shall have several. And they will both soothe and
exhaust me, as they always do. And then I’ll rest before we go up to St Peter’s
for our English tea.’ He turned to our companion and proffered her his cigarette
case. ‘Would you like a cigarette, Miss English?’

‘No,
thank you, Mr Wilde. I’d like an ice cream. ‘‘I am relieved to hear it. Half
the pretty women in London smoke cigarettes nowadays, but I very much prefer
the other half.’

‘May I
buy you an ice cream, Miss English?’ I asked. ‘I should like that very much,’
she replied. Oscar drew heavily on his cigarette and turned his head to look at
us askance. ‘You two go and find your ice creams. I’ll go and find my bed. I’ll
take a dog cart to the hotel.’ He pressed his hand upon my shoulder. ‘Come and
find me at four, Arthur, no later. Munthe is joining us for the Vatican tea
party.’ He bowed ceremoniously. ‘Miss English, thank you for allowing us to
join you on your journey to the heavens. Look after Arthur now —and answer any
of his questions, won’t you? I know he has a great deal he wants to ask you.’

‘You
are impertinent, Oscar,’ I protested.

‘But
you know you have questions for Miss English,’ he persisted. ‘Questions are
never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.

‘I
shall be happy to tell Dr Conan Doyle anything he wishes to know,’ said Miss
English lightly. ‘We are firm friends. We shall have no secrets. I shall tell
him everything.’

‘Not
quite everything, I’m sure. “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are
sweeter.”‘

Oscar
laughed and, gaily waving his copy of
The Innocents Abroad
above his
head as he departed, made his way towards the line of gigs and pony-traps that
stood on the gravel path at the edge of the field.

When he
had gone, and when, from a vendor by the bandstand, I had bought us each a
strawberry ice (served in a biscuit cone — the latest fashion), Catherine
English and I found a quiet and shady path to walk along. She told me it was
not one that she had explored before.

‘I know
the gardens here quite well,’ she said. ‘I come here often.’

‘With
your brother?’

‘No, he
is far too busy. And he prefers reading to walking. I come on my own.’

‘You
don’t have friends?’ I glanced at her. ‘You don’t have a special friend?’

‘I am
quite lonely, Dr Conan Doyle.’

‘Will
you tell me your story?’ I asked, offering her my arm.

‘It is
not a happy one,’ she said, pressing her hand lightly on mine, ‘but it is
easily told.’

As we
walked together, beneath fine oaks and umbrella pines, she told her tale
without self-pity and with touching simplicity. Oscar had been correct in his
surmise. Catherine English and her brother were orphans. Their parents, both
dead before Catherine was yet three, had been Anglican missionaries, servants
of the Church Missionary Society stationed in Peshawar in northern India.
Catherine’s father was an Anglican clergyman, passionate in his faith; her
mother, the daughter of a missionary herself, had run the Peshawar mission
school. It was in a fire at the schoolhouse — a bungalow built of wood — that
both parents had died. Their bedroom was directly behind the schoolroom. It was
a hot summer’s night and, a little before daybreak, in a matter of minutes,
the whole building had burnt to the ground. No one knew what had caused the
fire. Was it the deadly work of rebellious Pashtun tribesmen come down from the
hills — or just an accident? Catherine and Martin, miraculously, escaped the
blaze. On the hottest nights their parents would put them to sleep in a shared
cot on the mission school’s back verandah, just outside their bedroom door. The
children were rescued by brave natives as their parents were engulfed in
flames.

‘What
were your parents like?’ I asked. ‘Do you remember them?’

‘Not at
all. And I have no record of them — no letters, no photographs, no mementoes of
any kind. Everything was destroyed in the fire. We lost our past that night in
Peshawar.’

‘And
your future?’

‘It was
in the hands of the elders of the Church Missionary Society. We were babies,
without parents, without grandparents (they were already dead), without uncles
or aunts. I think our only friends were our parents’ kitchen wallah and our
ayah. They lived in a hut in the school’s backyard — it was they who saved us
from the fire. We had no family, no home, nowhere to go.

‘But
you were not brought up in India.’

Catherine
English paused in her tracks. She had finished her ice cream. We had come to a
turning along the pathway and were standing close together beneath a spreading
ilex tree.

‘Why do
you say that?’ she asked. ‘How do you know?’

‘There
is no sing-song lilt to your voice,’ I replied, smiling down at her. ‘Anyone
brought up from a baby in India — however English their origin — always has
that Indian lilt. You can’t escape it.’

She
returned my smile. ‘You
are
a detective, Dr Conan Doyle. I must remember
that.’ We resumed our walk and she pressed her hand over mine once more. ‘And
you are correct,’ she said. ‘There was no future for us in Peshawar. We were
sent to Canada to be put up for adoption.’

‘Why
Canada?’

‘Because
one of the other missionaries was a Canadian and she was returning to Canada
that summer in any event. Her passage was already booked. With the blessing of
the British agent in Peshawar, and with a small grant from the Missionary
Society, she took us with her.’

‘She
did not adopt you herself?’

‘No,
she was an older lady. She took us with her as her Christian duty, but that was
all. In the event, no one adopted us. We were taken in by one family after
another, but never for very long. We were fostered by many, but adopted by
none.’ She glanced up at me. ‘I fear we were not very lovable.’

‘That
can’t be true.’

‘I fear
it is. And I can understand it. We were not rewarding children. We were too
wrapped up in one another to give anything back to those who were caring for
us. I see that now. Wherever we went, we were fed, we were clothed, we were
sent to school, but we were not loved, we were not wanted. And when we were
sent to live with families where there were other children —
proper
children,
true sons and daughters of the house — we knew that, secretly, we were
despised. We were the outsiders, the low-caste little Indian orphans. And when
eventually, when Martin was fifteen, we ran away, we knew that, truly, we were
not wanted because no one came to look for us. No one at all.’

‘How
did you live?’

‘Through
God’s mercy,’ she said, breaking away from me for a moment and running forward
along the path to warm herself in a shaft of sunlight that had found its way
through a gap in the trees. She stopped and turned her face to the sun and
stretched out her arms at her side. ‘We were saved by the Lord!’

I
laughed at her sudden burst of exuberance.

‘I’m
being serious,’ she insisted. ‘In our hour of need, the merciful Lord stretched
out His hand and came to our rescue.

‘What
happened?’

‘We met
a priest in Etobicoke — in the street, near the market. It was only a few days
after we had run away. We told him we were sleeping in ditches and living off
scraps stolen from the market stalls. It was the truth. He offered us a cup of
tea and a room for the night at the Anglican Seminary in Toronto. We stayed
there for seven years. I worked in the kitchens and the laundry, and Martin
found his vocation and trained for the priesthood.’

‘Good
God!’ I exclaimed.

‘Precisely
so,’ said Catherine English, taking my arm again and pulling me back along the
pathway.

‘And
since then you have lived happily ever after?’

‘God
gave us shelter and purpose — but we are still outsiders wherever we go. We did
not belong in India.

We did
not belong in Canada. When Martin had finished his training, we thought that we
would come “home” to England, but we found that we were just as much outsiders
there too — perhaps more so. In England, everyone wants to know who you are and
where you come from. “Who is your family? Where do you live? What are your
roots? Do tell.” Martin and I cannot even tell you on which days we were born.’

‘You
don’t know how old you are?’ I said, amazed.

‘Quite
useful for a female of the species, don’t you think?’ She laughed. ‘But not
helpful for a man. Brilliant though my brother is, he has found it very
difficult to find work as an Anglican clergyman. He is a gentleman, as you can
tell, but he cannot prove it. English parishes are not comfortable having a
priest without a pedigree. He was very blessed when he secured the chaplaincy
here. In Rome, he is an outsider among outsiders. Everyone here has run away
from home.’

‘It’s a
good position,’ I said.

‘That’s
why he took it. They were looking for a bachelor priest who could live on next
to nothing. The chaplaincy here carries no salary. Martin’s much loved
predecessor was a man of independent means.’

‘You
have no income?’ I asked, incredulous.

‘What
funds the church possesses are all committed. Building All Saints has proved a
costly enterprise. That’s what the other evening was all about. The
fund-raising never stops. But we must not complain, though Martin does. We have
our board and lodging and I receive a modest wage as my brother’s housekeeper.
We should be content, we should be grateful, though we are poor.’