Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (29 page)

‘How
extraordinary. Do you think he’s somehow mixed up in all this?’

Oscar
laughed. ‘I doubt it. He has too much ambition and too little courage for a
life of crime. But you never know, there may be hidden shallows …’

I smiled
and, taking off my straw hat, put it on the table alongside Oscar’s books, then
sat back, folded my arms and surveyed the scene. The grand piazza was filled
with brilliant sunshine, flower sellers and a sudden flurry of worshippers in
their ‘Sunday best’, criss-crossing the square on their way to one of its three
churches.

‘This
afternoon we are invited to Mass at St Peter’s,’ I said.

‘Yes,’
said Oscar. ‘Munthe says so in his note. But I think it is you who are invited,
Arthur. You are also invited to call on the Englishes, by the way. The Reverend
English said his sister had something she particularly wished to ask you. I did
not enquire further. I assured him I would pass on the message.’

‘Thank
you,’ I said.

Oscar
grinned at me — it was an impish grin. ‘Miss English looks like a woman with a
past. Most pretty women do.’

‘Her
life has not been easy,’ I said.

‘She
has told you her story then?’

‘Some
of it.’

The
waiter arrived with the coffee I had ordered and with a fresh Tokay and seltzer
for Oscar. My friend offered me one of his American cigarettes.

‘The
tobacco is pale yellow and absurdly bland,’ he said, apologetically.

‘I have
my pipe,’ I answered, feeling my jacket pockets to locate it.

‘I’m
glad. You may need it. This case could prove to be one of your “three-pipe
problems”, Arthur. It is turning out to be less tractable than I’d
anticipated.’ I found my pipe. Oscar passed me his box of matches. ‘Do you
still have the hand and the severed finger on you?’ he asked.

‘I do,’
I said.

‘Good,’
he replied. ‘Keep them safe.’

I held
the lit Lucifer to the bowl of the pipe and sucked hard on the stem. Through
the matchstick’s flickering flame I looked across at my friend as, languidly,
he drew on his cigarette and slowly ran his little finger around the rim of his
wineglass.

‘What
progress are we making, Oscar?’ I asked, puffing on my pipe. ‘This is a
wild-goose chase, isn’t it? We don’t even yet know who brought us here.’

My
friend furrowed his brow and sat forward at the table. He laid down his
cigarette, taking the saucer from beneath my coffee cup to use as an ashtray.

‘Yesterday,
I was certain that I knew whose cryptic “cry for help” it was that brought us
to Rome. Now I have my doubts. It’s not Rennell Rodd.’

I
laughed. ‘Rennell Rodd is looking forward to our departure.’

‘To
my
departure, at any rate.’ Oscar smiled wanly. ‘It’s not the Englishes.’

‘Of
course not.’

‘I
don’t know why you say “Of course not”, Arthur. They were travelling on the
same train as we were from Milan to Rome. They had reserved seats in the same
compartment.’

‘Coincidence.‘

‘Most
likely. How were they to know what train we’d take? Nevertheless, we must
consider every possibility —and we must face the fact that Miss English has
pressed her attentions on you, Arthur, in no uncertain terms. ‘‘Don’t be
absurd, Oscar,’ I remonstrated.

‘Love
and gluttony justify everything.’

‘You do
say the most ridiculous things at times, Oscar,’ I protested, unamused. ‘It
seems likely from the items sent to Holmes — the severed hand, the finger, the
ring, the lock of lamb’s wool — that the “cry for help” is connected in some
way with the disappearance of this unfortunate girl, Agnes.’

‘You
think so?’

‘It
must be.’

‘I
thought so, too, but now I am having second thoughts.’

‘You
amaze me, Oscar. I was confused to begin with, but I now see that the clues are
as clear as daylight. The severed limbs point to foul play, obviously. The
rose-gold ring with the crossed keys is what led us to the heart of the
Vatican. It could lead nowhere else. It’s the rose-gold ring that binds the
chaplains and the sacristan and Pio Nono all together.’

‘And
the lock of lamb’s wool?’

I put
down my pipe. ‘That’s what completes the picture. It’s the lamb’s wool that
leads us to Pio Nono’s “little lamb of God” — the little girl whose very name
is Latin for “lamb”.’

Oscar
blew a cloud of smoke into the air. ‘I am now wondering whether it has anything
to do with the girl at all.’

‘Don’t
be absurd, Oscar, it must have.’

‘There
is no “must” about it, Arthur. I am now thinking that the whole business may
have nothing to do with Agnes and everything to do with Breakspear.’

‘With
Breakspear?’ I was dumbfounded.

‘I am
now wondering whether, in fact, it was not that mountain of flesh, Monsignor
Felici — the Pontifical Master of Ceremonies and our official host — who sent
those extraordinary parcels to Sherlock Holmes.’

‘Felici?
To what end?’

‘To
lure you —
you,
Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes — to
Rome, to the Vatican, for a specific purpose: to expose your alleged
schoolfellow, the so-called Nicholas Breakspear.’

‘Why on
earth should Felici want to do that?’

‘Because
Felici believes Breakspear is bogus but he can’t prove it.’

‘But
Breakspear has been a chaplain-in-residence at St Peter’s since Pio Nono’s day.
He is a Jesuit priest — clearly he is. He trained at the English College here.
He knew Cardinal Newman.’

‘Of
course, no doubt, all that may well be true. But before that,
before
he
came to Rome,
before
he caught the late pope’s eye, what was he then?
Who
was he then? Is his whole life built upon a lie? He claims to have been at
school with you but you don’t remember him, do you, Arthur?’

I
hesitated. I was caught off-balance by Oscar’s maelstrom of words. ‘I am not
sure.’

‘Exactly.
You are not sure.
The moment you set eyes upon the man, you did not
trust him. And there is something about him that I do not trust either. I have
known him only five days. Felici has known him fifteen years and still doesn’t
trust him.’

‘If
Monsignor Felici has had these doubts all these years, why has he acted now?
Why not before?’

‘Perhaps
the doubts are new or perhaps they did not matter in the past. Or perhaps
nothing is new, other than the circumstances. Here is Breakspear, ten years
Felici’s junior, suddenly on the brink of becoming a cardinal … It’s too
much to bear. Envy is a deadly sin, but Felici is only human: he is as guilty
of it as he is of gluttony and pride. Felici will discover the truth about Breakspear.
If Breakspear is a fraud, Felici will unmask him. It won’t be easy, because
Felici has no proof. He just has that uneasy feeling that you had when
Breakspear greeted you with such over-familiarity this week — that uneasy
feeling that I had when I heard that Breakspear was “eating his way through the
animal kingdom” and using those two boys from up the hill as his scavengers.
Something about Breakspear doesn’t ring true. Before it is too late — before
young Monsignor Breakspear, the late pope’s favourite, the new pope’s
confessor, receives his cardinal’s hat — Felici is determined to find out all
he can about the man … It may be nothing, it may be something.’

‘But
why bring in Sherlock Holmes?’

‘Who
better to help him in such an endeavour? Felici can hardly go the Swiss Guard
or the Roman police. Why should they be interested? Besides, Felici does not
necessarily suspect Breakspear of any criminal offence. He has accepted him as
a fellow chaplain all these years. It’s only now, when his junior looks set to
overtake him on the canonical staircase, that his gorge rises. Breakspear is a
mystery and an admirer of Sherlock Holmes. He even boasts that he was at school
with Holmes’s creator. Wouldn’t it be perfect to engage Sherlock Holmes to
uncover the truth about Nicholas Breakspear — to get one fiction to unmask
another?’

‘Oscar,
this is so fanciful, and it ignores the most telling of all the clues parcelled
up and sent to Holmes: that lock of lamb’s wool. It is the lock of lamb’s wool
that leads us, inexorably, to Agnes.’

Oscar
moved his glass and my hat across the table. From beneath the two books that
lay open before him, he picked out the third.

‘Look
what I have here, Arthur, as chance would have it.’ He inspected the spine of
the slim volume. ‘It’s
A Study in Scarlet
by one Arthur Conan Doyle. It
is a first edition, published in July 1888 by Ward Lock. You may recognise it.’

‘Where
does this come from?’ I asked.

‘I
borrowed it from the sacristy yesterday.’ He took in my reproving glance. ‘I
will return it. I know I should have asked …’

I shook
my head and clicked my tongue.

‘I do
hear your tut-tut of reproach, my friend,’ he continued, adopting an absurd
little-boy-lost look. ‘But I think perhaps it was meant to be, because see this
— on the flyleaf, in pencil, the letters NB-O. I take that to stand for
Nota
bene, Oscar.
And I do take note, Arthur.’ He flicked through the book’s
pages until he reached Chapter Seven, then put his finger on a particular line.
‘Now you take note of this, my friend. It’s an
aperçu
from the great
Sherlock Holmes. I came across it last night. It struck me as particularly
pertinent. Read it out, would you?’

I took
the book in my hand and read out the sentence he had indicated: ‘When a fact
appears to be opposed to a long train of deductions, it invariably proves to be
capable of bearing some other interpretation.’

I
looked up at my friend. He was smiling. With his open wallet in his hand, he
was removing from it the little envelope that contained the lock of lamb’s
wool.

‘What
are you trying to tell me, Oscar?’

‘Encouraged
by Holmes himself, no less, I am telling you that I am now looking in a
different light at the clue that we have here. This may not be
lamb’s wool
at
all, Arthur. It may be
sheep’s wool
— designed to point us not towards
an innocent “lamb of God”, but to “the enemy within”, the false prophet of whom
St Matthew warns us: the ravening wolf who comes dressed in sheep’s clothing.’

18

Tombs of the popes

W
e
lunched at the Hôtel de Russie. James Rennell Rodd was lunching there also, but
as we passed his table he made great play of studying the label on the wine
that he was being served and so managed to avoid having to acknowledge us.

‘He’s
cutting you,’ I said as the
maître d’hôtel
led us between leafy potted
palms to a secluded alcove at the far end of the dining room.

‘That’s
a relief,’ replied Oscar, collapsing onto a leather banquette and mopping his
brow with his yellow handkerchief. The heat in the piazza had become quite
oppressive. ‘James Rennell Rodd was charming once upon a time. He wrote bad
poetry rather well. You might even have thought it had been translated from the
French. Then he lost his looks and grew that moustache and joined the
diplomatic service. Once we were friends. Once he was daring. Now he is dull,
and I fear there is nothing to be done about it. He will certainly end up in
the House of Lords. He has one of those terribly weak natures that are not
susceptible to influence.’ Pleased with this sally, my friend grinned at me,
widened his watery eyes and said, ‘I think we should have an exceptional wine
with our lunch today, Arthur. Lady Windermere can treat us.’