Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (37 page)

Oscar
did not notice my arrival until I reached his table. He was seated in the
sunshine, wearing his green linen suit and my straw hat, absorbed in one of his
books. He had the volume propped open in front of him, with a glass of
champagne at its side, a cigarette in one hand and a sliver of peach in the
other. As I cast a shadow across the table, he looked up at me and smiled.

‘Give
me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of
doors by somebody I do not know …’

‘A
happy sentiment,’ I said. ‘Good morning, Oscar.’

‘Not
original, I fear.’ His face clouded over. ‘Keats. He always said it first. He
always said it better.’ He put the piece of peach into his mouth and laid down
his cigarette. He picked up the book and handed it to me. ‘Keats’s letters,
published in the year of Pio Nono’s death, as chance would have it, 1878, the
year of little Agnes’s disappearance.’

I drew
up a chair and joined my friend. I saw that he had an empty glass waiting for
me. He reached beneath the table and from a shaded ice bucket produced a bottle
of champagne. He filled my glass.

‘You
recall Keats’s last words, don’t you, Arthur?’ he asked.

‘I
never knew them, Oscar,’ I said, smiling. ‘I’m a doctor, not a poet.’

‘Did
they teach you
nothing
at Stonyhurst after Alexander Pope?’ he wailed.
‘John Keats’s last words, spoken not a quarter of a mile from where we are
seated at this very moment, uttered in the very room Axel Munthe now shares with
a dope-fiend of a monkey … last words, Arthur, that deserve their
immortality.’

‘Yes,’
I said, raising my glass to him. ‘And what are they?’

“‘My
chest of books divide amongst my friends!”’

‘Another
fine sentiment,’ I said, putting down the glass and examining the volume
admiringly.

‘Books
are everything, Arthur. They are our truest friends. When I die, you shall have
a share of mine.’

‘Thank
you,’ I said, touched by the thought.

He
picked up the other volumes from the table. ‘These two will certainly come to
you.’ He brandished the books before me. ‘Butler’s
Lives of the Saints
and
Mark Twain’s
Innocents Abroad:
they’ve solved our case between them.’

I
looked at him and laughed. ‘You’ve lost me again, Oscar,’ I said. ‘I am still
trying to unravel last night’s riddle. The unfortunate Monsignor Tuminello dies
—collapses at the altar, evidently of a heart attack — and, without a moment’s
pause, you cry “Murder!”’

‘Of
course,’ he exclaimed. ‘Murder it must have been. I did not need a book to help
me to that conclusion. It is obvious.’

‘It is
not obvious to me, Oscar.’

‘Come
now, Arthur. Tuminello tells us his long-kept secret — that he is to be God’s
advocate in the cause of the canonisation of little Agnes — and within hours of
this revelation, he dies. You and I have not killed him, so who has?’

‘Why
should anybody kill him?’

‘Because
his advocacy of Agnes’s cause will lead inevitably to a thorough investigation
of her death, and whoever killed Pio Nono’s little lamb of God all those years
ago won’t want that …‘

‘In
your view whoever killed that poor child on
7
February 1878 also killed
Monsignor Tuminello yesterday?’

‘Indubitably.
Tuminello told us that achieving the canonisation of little Agnes had become
his “life’s purpose”. Once known, his determination to uncover the truth about
her death ensured his own. On Sunday, he was either seen by someone talking to
us, or we were overheard, or perhaps, naively, he unburdened himself to one of
his colleagues … Whatever it was, on Monday he was killed.’ Oscar raised his
glass as if to the late Monsignor’s memory. ‘Who’s next, I wonder?’

‘You
think the murderer will not stop at Tuminello?’

‘Anyone
pursuing the truth about the death of little Agnes represents a threat to her
murderer. The man — I
am
assuming it is a man — killed a defenceless
child, Arthur. The secret he once thought safe has been disturbed. To
safeguard that secret, he will stop at nothing.’

I
looked around the sun-drenched piazza. The hurdy-gurdy music played on, but I
noticed that the feral lads from up the hill had disappeared. In their place, a
pair of nuns, in black habits with well-starched white cornettes, stood arm in
arm watching the dancing dog running round in circles chasing its own tail.

‘So
even we are not safe?’ I said, surveying the comfortable scene.

Oscar
leant across the table towards me. ‘We’re here, engaged on Tuminello’s
business, at his behest. We
in particular,
Arthur, are not safe. Why
else do you think we are drinking French champagne? It’s a deuced expensive
drink in Italy, but so long as I can see every bottle as it’s uncorked and keep
it within my sights until it’s drained, I can be sure the wine’s not been
tampered with. It’s the only way.’ He emptied the last of the champagne into my
glass. ‘Peel every peach yourself and make sure you lock your hotel room
tonight. We don’t want you murdered in your bed. You never know who may not be
rattling at the door.’

‘Shouldn’t
we inform the police?’ I asked.

‘The
Swiss Guard or the
carabinieri?’

‘Either?
Both?’

‘According
to the natives, neither can be trusted and each is as incompetent as the other.
And I don’t think they’d be inclined to read Butler’s
Lives of the Saints
or
Twain’s
Innocents Abroad,
do you, even in translation?’

‘Be
serious, Oscar.’

‘I am
serious. We need to wrap this up ourselves, Arthur. And we shall. Within
twenty-four hours, as soon as the Capuchin friar is back from Capri. I have a
plan. You’ll be back in South Norwood by the end of the week, my friend.’ He
delved into his inside jacket pocket and produced a couple of telegrams, one of
which he passed to me. ‘I opened it inadvertently. I apologise. Your darling
wife is missing you.’

I took
Touie’s telegram and opened it to read her brief and loving message.

‘She
calls you her “soul’s partner”, I see,’ said Oscar, his head tilted to one
side, his eyes appraising me. ‘Another fine sentiment, but quite a
responsibility.’

‘Yes,’
I said, pocketing the telegram and turning back to my glass.

‘Marriage
is quite a responsibility,’ he said.

‘Yes,’
I said.

‘A
world of pains and troubles is very necessary to school an intelligence and
make it a soul, don’t you think?’

‘I’m
not sure,’ I replied. ‘That’s rather deep. Is that you and the champagne
speaking, Oscar, or John Keats?’

‘I
don’t recall — but it’s rather good, isn’t it?’

‘It is
Keats,’ said Axel Munthe, firmly. ‘And it was murder, Mr Wilde. You were
right.’

The
Swedish doctor brought over a chair from an adjacent table and sat down facing
us, sitting forward so that my shadow fell on him, shading his eyes. He folded
his hands together and rested them on Oscar’s pile of books. ‘Good morning,
gentlemen,’ he said, nodding to each of us in turn.

‘Murder,
eh?’ murmured Oscar. ‘I am sorry to hear it, but I am delighted, too. It’s
always charming to be found in the right.’ He dropped the end of his cigarette
into his empty champagne glass. ‘Monsignor Tuminello was conducting Mass
alone?’

‘He
was.’

‘With
an acolyte or two in attendance, but no other priests?’

‘Correct.’

‘In the
Sistine Chapel?’

‘Yes.’

‘At the
high altar, before a small congregation?’

‘Yes.’

‘And at
the conclusion of the service, before pronouncing the final blessing, he
suffered his “heart attack”? He arched backwards up onto his heels and fell
forward clutching at his chest?’

‘By all
accounts, exactly so. Who told you?’

‘No one
told me.’

‘Then
how did you guess?’

‘I
didn’t “guess”,’ declared Oscar indignantly. ‘Occasionally, I allow myself an
imaginative leap, but I never “guess”. As Arthur’s friend Holmes will tell you,
it’s a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins
to twists facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.’

‘Then,
how did you know?’ demanded Munthe.

‘My
father was a doctor. I was brought up in a household filled with medical
textbooks. I like to read. I am familiar with the symptoms of strychnine
poisoning. I take it that it was strychnine?’

‘I fear
that it was,’ said Munthe.

‘Mixed,
I suppose, with the communion wine?’

‘Yes.
There were still plentiful traces of the poisoned wine at the back of his throat
when I examined him.’

Oscar
turned to me with a look of satisfaction on his wide face and revealed his
crooked teeth in a complacent smile. ‘An ingenious way to kill a Catholic
priest, eh, Arthur? Try the same trick in an Anglican church and you’d kill the
whole congregation. In the Church of England, when it comes to taking the Holy
Sacrament it’s liberty hall: every communicant is given the wine as well as the
bread at communion. At a Catholic Mass, the celebrant alone takes the wine. So
long as the murderer knows who will be conducting the Mass, he can place his
poison in the sacramental wine decanter at any point before the service starts
and then be a mile away, or more, by the time his intended victim raises the
chalice to his lips and the grisly death occurs …’

He
looked around for a waiter from whom to order a second bottle of champagne,
evidently in celebratory mood. I turned to Axel Munthe. ‘I am going to give my
character Sherlock Holmes an older brother and model him on Oscar. I shall sit
him in a chair in his club from which he’ll never stir—’

‘Like
Diogenes in his tub?’ quipped Oscar, as he caught the waiter’s eye.

‘Exactly,’
I said. ‘And from there, in his club, in his chair, I will let the sedentary
sage solve every crime that comes his way.’

‘I
shall be stirring myself tomorrow,’ said Oscar, turning his attention back to
us. ‘You will be, too, Arthur. We are going to host an old-fashioned English
tea party — in the Capuchin church of the Immaculate Conception.’

‘Why
there?’ I asked.

‘Because
Mark Twain says it’s a “must see” for all who come to Rome, and because Brother
Matteo is a Capuchin and a key player in our unfolding drama.’

‘Brother
Matteo will be there?’

‘We
need them all there, Arthur: Brother Matteo, the Grand Penitentiary, the
Pontifical Master of Ceremonies, the sacristan, the Reverend English and his
sister, even the egregious Rennell Rodd. We must despatch the invitations as a
matter of urgency.’

‘Will
they come?’

‘We
shall lure them there with the promise of a reading of your newest Sherlock
Holmes mystery …

‘I’ve
not written it yet,’ I protested.

‘This
isn’t until tomorrow, Arthur,’ he said playfully, greeting the arrival of the
fresh champagne with an elaborate salaam.

Axel
Munthe looked at Oscar sternly. ‘You seem in a remarkably gay mood, given the
news I’ve brought. Monsignor Tuminello has been murdered, Mr Wilde.’

‘If he
was a good man, he is in heaven already,’ said Oscar, now eyeing the waiter as
he eased open the bottle of champagne. ‘We are not to mourn for our brother’s
soul being in heaven, surely?’

The
waiter offered Oscar the wine to taste: he sipped it gingerly, then took a
mouthful and rolled it around his tongue before swallowing it gratefully and
nodding his approval to the waiter.

‘And if
there was the odd venial sin still outstanding, he will be in Purgatory — with
his fingers crossed. Either way, he is in a better place than this vale of
tears.’

The
waiter made to charge our glasses; I covered mine with an open palm. ‘Did
Tuminello die instantly?’ I asked Axel Munthe.

‘From
what I gather, within moments of suffering the spasm. It seems that the poor
man breathed his last even as he was being carried from the altar to the
sacristy.’

‘Who
carried him?’ Oscar enquired.

‘Cesare
Verdi and one of the acolytes.’

‘It was
definitely a lethal dose then?’ I said.

‘It was
no accident, Dr Conan Doyle.’

‘But
all present took it to be a heart attack?’ asked Oscar, placing a glass of
champagne in front of Munthe.

‘Yes,
that’s how it appeared.’

‘And
you did not disabuse them?’

‘I
followed your instructions.’

‘And
you examined him discreetly?’

‘Cesare
Verdi had laid him Out on the seat of tears, but I was on my own when I
examined him and I have spoken to no one since.’

‘Good,’
said Oscar. ‘Thank you. That should provide us with the time we need to gather
in the final pieces of the puzzle.’ He sipped at his champagne and, over the
rim of his glass, looked beadily into Axel Munthe’s blinking eyes. ‘Do not
misunderstand me, Doctor. I do not take Luigi Tuminello’s death lightly. I am
exhilarated just now because the play is reaching its climax, the curtain is in
sight and I look forward to the audience’s applause. But I am stricken, too. My
conscience pricks — and so should yours. I’ve played my part in Tuminello’s
death. And so have you.’