Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (36 page)

‘But he
didn’t, did he?’ I protested.

‘No, he
didn’t,’ Oscar conceded, ‘but he might have done. If I’d been him, it’s what
I’d have done.’

Silence
fell. The train steamed on. By now it was ten o’clock at night and our
compartment was shrouded in smoke and darkness. Oscar drew on his cigarette,
the tip of it glowing red and gold in the gloom.

‘Is
there more champagne?’ asked Axel Munthe.

‘There
is,’ said Oscar, raising the final bottle.

‘I have
been wondering …’ mused Munthe, holding out his glass as Oscar uncorked the
wine. He spoke slowly and deliberately. ‘I have been wondering … Do you think
that Father Bechetti could have killed his own daughter to protect his guilty
secret?’

Oscar
laughed. ‘I think it more likely that Monsignor Felici ravished the poor child
and then murdered her to hide his shame.’

I sat
forward in amazement. ‘Is that possible?’

Oscar
looked at me. Through the darkness I saw that he was smiling. ‘Once you read
the
Lives of the Saints
anything seems possible!’

He wedged
the champagne bottle next to the basket of fruit beside him and pulled the book
out of his jacket pocket, holding it up towards Axel Munthe.

‘Did
you read the story of St Agnes of Rome — the virgin-martyr, the patron saint of
chastity? It’s a torrid tale.’ He flicked through the book and found the page
he was looking for, squinting down at it in the dark. ‘Here it is. St Agnes
died on 21 January in the year 304, during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian.
She was only thirteen, poor girl, the same age as our little Agnes at the time
of her death.’

‘What
happened to St Agnes?’ asked Munthe. ‘I did not read it.’

‘She
refused to marry the son of the Roman prefect Sempronius and was sentenced to
death for her insubordination. But as Roman law did not permit the execution of
virgins, to make her eligible for the scaffold she was dragged through the
streets to a brothel.’

‘How
terrible,’ murmured Catherine English.

‘Indeed,’
said Oscar, closing the book and resting his hand on the cover, ‘though in her
hour of need it seems that Agnes turned to God, and the Almighty, in His infinite
mercy, spared her the fate worse than death. While she lost her life, she kept
her virtue. Before she was ravished, she was killed.’

‘How
was she killed?’ I asked.

Oscar
returned the book to his pocket. ‘The authorities can’t agree on that. There
are lots of contradictory stories. Some have her burnt at the stake; some have
her beheaded; in one she tries to escape and a Roman soldier catches her by the
throat and stabs her in the back of the neck.’

‘How
horrible,’ whispered Miss English.

‘Murder
is horrible,’ said Oscar. ‘And men are not nice.’

‘Some
are, I’m sure, Mr Wilde,’ she said, touching my arm in the darkness.

‘No,’
said Oscar. ‘They are all the same, more or less. It’s a matter of degree.’ His
eyes fixed mine. ‘Men become old, but they never become good.’

‘Have I
heard that before, Oscar?’ I asked.

‘I hope
so,’ he replied. ‘It is from my play,
Lady Windermere’s Fan.’

That day, by land and sea,
we spent some sixteen hours simply travelling. Long before we reached Rome, we were
all too weary for words. For the last hour of the journey, Oscar and Munthe
slept while Catherine English and I told one another stories from our
childhoods and then lapsed into easy silence. I was very comfortable in her
company.

I was
less comfortable, to be candid, when we got off the train at Rome station to
find her brother, the Reverend Martin English, awaiting us on the platform. I
felt that his presence there was a kind of reproof. He was taller than I, more
saturnine, and apart from his clerical collar, he was dressed entirely in
black. His appearance that night seemed to me malign as well as forbidding.

‘We
have looked after your sister, I do assure you,’ I said stiffly, as Miss
English put her cheek up to her brother to be kissed.

He
nodded towards me. ‘I am sure that you have, sir,’ he answered, quite civilly.

‘Dr
Conan Doyle has been assiduous in his gentlemanly duties,’ added Oscar, with a
sly grin.

‘Capri
is very beautiful, Martin,’ said Miss English, taking her brother’s arm. ‘I am
so glad I went. We saw ilex woods on the hillside and euphorbia all along the
coast and there was a peregrine falcon flying overheard when we arrived.’

‘I am
pleased the day went well,’ he said, smiling down at her.

‘Of
course, it was sad, too, accompanying Father Bechetti’s coffin.’ She looked up
into the clergyman’s dark eyes. ‘Thank you for coming to meet me, Martin. How
did you know what train I would be on?’

‘This
is the last train,’ he said. ‘I assumed this would be the one. But the truth is
I have not come to meet you, Catherine. I have come for Dr Munthe.’

Munthe
sighed. ‘What is it? The boys up the hill?’ He shook the clergyman by the hand.

‘No,’
said the Reverend English.

‘Is it
Monsignor Tuminello?’ asked Oscar.

‘Yes,’
said Martin English.

‘What
has happened?’ I asked.

‘The
papal exorcist is dead, Arthur,’ said Oscar. He, too, shook the clergyman’s
hand. ‘Am I not right, Mr English?’

‘How
did you know?’ asked English. ‘Did Felici send you a wire?’

‘No,’ said
Oscar, shaking his head despairingly. ‘I feared this would happen.’ In anger,
he stamped his foot on the cold, stone platform. ‘We are too late. Once he let
it be known what he was doing, this was inevitable.’ He regarded me balefully.
‘We are to blame for this, Arthur.’

‘I am
lost,’ I answered. ‘I don’t understand.’

Oscar
looked directly at Martin English. ‘How was Tuminello murdered? Was he struck
from behind or poisoned?’

English
gave a nervous laugh. ‘Monsignor Tuminello wasn’t murdered, Mr Wilde. It was a
heart attack.’

‘It was
poison then,’ said Oscar quietly.

‘He
collapsed during Mass. He was an old man.’

‘He was
sixty,’ said Oscar, ‘and he was murdered. We can be sure of that.’

The
Reverend English now appeared as bewildered as the rest of us. ‘As I understand
it, Monsignor Tuminello had a heart attack, Mr Wilde, this afternoon, during Mass.
That’s all I know. The sacristan sent word to me asking me to fetch Dr Munthe
as soon as possible. That’s why I’m here.’

‘Monsignor
Tuminello was taking Mass?’ persisted Oscar.

‘Yes.’

‘Alone?’

‘I do
not know. I presume so. I was not there. It was in the Sistine Chapel. I was at
All Saints.’

‘And
Monsignor Tuminello collapsed, you say, during the service?’

‘Yes,
according to Verdi.’

‘Yes,
but
when?
Was it before he served the sacrament or after?’

‘I
really do not know, Mr Wilde.’

Oscar
heaved a heavy sigh. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘My apologies, Mr English. I am
angry with myself because I am at fault.’

Munthe
removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. ‘I’d best go to the Vatican now,’
he said.

‘Yes,’
said Oscar. ‘You must. You were his doctor. You should go. We’ll share a cab as
far as the Piazza del Popolo.’

It was
after midnight, but we found a solitary coach-and-two waiting on the cab rank
outside the
stazione termini.
We clambered aboard and clattered through
the empty Roman streets in silence. When we reached the Anglican church on the
Via del Babuino, Catherine and Martin English bade us the briefest of
goodnights. Miss English pressed her hand against my knee as she climbed out of
the carriage on her brother’s arm.

‘Goodnight,
gentlemen,’ she said, ‘and thank you for a memorable day.’

‘Goodnight.’

When we
got to our hotel, Oscar gave the coachman money (too much, I am sure: it was
his way) and told the man to take his instructions from Dr Munthe. ‘Goodnight,
Doctor,’ he said. ‘It has been a long day — and for you it’s not over yet.’

‘Duty
calls,’ said Munthe. He held Oscar by the shoulder for a moment. ‘Thank you
for your company today and for the champagne.’

‘Shall
we meet in the morning,’ asked Oscar, ‘in the piazza, whenever you wake?’

‘Yes,’
said Munthe. ‘I will report to you in the morning. I’d better go now.’

‘It
will be murder,’ said Oscar, stepping out of the carriage. ‘I have no doubt of
that. And a Catholic murder, too.’

‘What’s
that supposed to mean?’ I asked.

‘That
it would not have taken place in an Anglican church, that’s for sure.’

‘I
don’t follow you, Oscar,’ I muttered, climbing out of the carriage after him.

‘You
will, Arthur. You will.’

‘And if
it
is
murder,’ asked Munthe, leaning his head out of the door, ‘should I
call the police?’

‘Not
yet, Doctor, not tonight … if you don’t mind.’

‘I am a
physician, not a policeman, and it’s very late. I don’t mind.’

I stood
with Oscar on the pavement by the carriage door. Munthe stretched out a hand to
shake mine. ‘You don’t have your medical bag with you,’ I said.

‘The
patient’s dead,’ said Munthe. ‘I don’t need the bag tonight.’ With his right
hand he patted his jacket pocket. ‘I have a death certificate with me. I always
carry one, just in case.’

‘Of
course you do.’ Oscar closed the carriage door. ‘Goodnight, Dr Death!’

21

Mass murderer

I
did not wake until almost noon on the following day. It was the hotel
chambermaid rattling at my door that roused me from my slumbers, and from a
troublesome dream, I recollect, in which Mycroft Holmes and I were engaged in a
tussle to the death with a peregrine falcon from Capri and a giant rat from
Sumatra! As I have said, I like regularity in my habits and when that
regularity is disturbed I suffer in consequence.

Awake,
I rose at once, threw on my clothes and saw immediately that Oscar was not in
his room. The hotel porter advised me that my friend had breakfasted long
since, collected his post — and mine — and taken himself off to the Piazza del
Popolo where I would find him at his customary watering hole.

I did.
Oscar was seated, in the far corner of the grand piazza, outside the café
beneath the city gate. In the centre of the square, between the ancient
obelisks, a hurdy-gurdy man was playing folk tunes while a little dog danced
and the two urchin boys from up the hill stood watching. As I passed them, the
boys smiled at me and waved. Uncertain what to do, I paused and walked on —
then turned back again. I went up to the boys and, as I approached them, for
the first time I looked fully into their young yet grimy faces. They were
fifteen years of age at most. They grinned at me with brilliant smiles and
dazzling white teeth, but I noticed that their shining eyes were rimmed with
yellow pus, with black rings beneath and tear stains on their cheeks. I gave a
coin to each of them and muttered
‘Condo glianze’
awkwardly. They
shouted
‘Grazie!’
gaily, pocketed the money and immediately put out
their hands to beg for more. I laughed and said
‘Basta’
and went on my
way.