Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (38 page)

‘In any
event, he was not long for this world,’ said Munthe, transferring his gaze from
Oscar to the champagne glass before him. ‘He was not a well man.’

‘It was
you who prescribed him strychnine, Doctor—’

‘Yes,’
answered Munthe, looking up sharply, ‘But not a lethal dose or anything like
one. Very occasionally I gave him a thousandth of a grain, as a stimulant, and
I administered it personally.’

‘Were
you in Rome on the day that little Agnes died —on 7 February 1878?’

Munthe
looked perplexed. ‘On the day that Pope Pius IX died? Yes, as it happens, I
was. I was a student, aged twenty, on my first trip to Italy.’

‘And
you went to the Vatican that day?’

‘I did,
out of curiosity. I was not alone. The pope was dying — all Rome knew that.’

‘So you
were there,
locus in quo,
on the day that little Agnes died.’

Munthe
laughed. ‘I was, but I did not kill her. I do assure you of that. And I did not
kill Tuminello.’

‘Do not
protest too much, Doctor. Are you not, like Keats, by your own admission, “half
in love with easeful death”?’

‘I did
not kill the child, Agnes. I did not kill Monsignor Tuminello.’

‘If you
didn’t, then who did, I wonder?’ Oscar raised his champagne glass to his lips
and looked out across the grand piazza.

I
smiled. ‘You believe you know, don’t you, Oscar?’

‘I
believe I do, Arthur. And, God willing, tomorrow afternoon, over tea at the
Capuchin church, all will be revealed. And Arthur, while I explain the mystery,
you can serve the cucumber sandwiches.’

22

Old bones

T
he
austere and elegant church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini was
commissioned by Pope Urban VIII in the year 1626 at the instigation of his
younger brother, Cardinal Antonio Barberini, who was both powerful and of the
Capuchin order. In 1631, on the church’s completion, Barberini commanded that
the mortal remains of thousands of Capuchin friars be exhumed and transferred
from the old Capuchin friary of the Holy Cross near by to the crypt of the new
church of the Immaculate Conception. There, over time, in five interconnecting
subterranean chapels, the bones of more than four thousand Capuchins were laid
to rest. They were neither buried nor entombed but displayed: as a celebration
of the dead and a reminder to the living. Bones —
thousands of bones
—
laid out in extraordinary, elaborate, ornamental patterns, adorn the walls and
ceilings of the church crypt. Complete skeletons, some dressed in Franciscan
habits, lie or sit or crouch in dark corners and individual niches. A plaque in
one of the chapels reads: ‘What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you
shall be.’

It was
at this bizarre ossuary that Oscar chose to host his English tea party and
bring what he termed ‘the drama of the Vatican murders’ to its climax. It was
in this dimly lit gallery of bones and skeletons that he insisted that I hand
round cups of Indian tea and plates of cucumber sandwiches (thinly sliced and
lightly salted). To my astonishment, the Capuchin church was happy to allow my
friend to commandeer the crypt for his divertissement. Indeed, it turned out
that the priest in charge had a ‘set fee’ for an afternoon’s hire of the crypt
and since Brother Matteo, a good Capuchin and friend to the church, was to be
of the party, and Oscar was ready to pay four times the going rate, there were
no awkward questions asked.

To my
delight, Catherine English agreed to help me with the refreshments. The
sandwiches were not a problem. It turned out that in the larder of her
apartment at All Saints she had a ready supply of bread she had baked in the
English manner; I bought fresh cucumbers from the vegetable market on Piazza
Barberini, and Darjeeling tea from the English tea-rooms by the Spanish Steps.
And at the church of the Immaculate Conception we found a stove, a kettle and
sufficient crockery for our purpose in the pantry adjacent to the crypt.

The
guests were invited for four o’clock and all came, in good order and in good
humour — in remarkably good humour, I thought, under the circumstances.

‘They
are excited by the prospect of hearing your story,’ Oscar whispered to me
teasingly.

‘They
will be disappointed, then,’ I said.

‘A
little disconcerted, perhaps, but when they hear what I have to offer in its
place I believe their attention will be held.’

The
trio of chaplains-in-residence from the Vatican were the first to arrive.
Monsignor Felici, the Pontifical Master of Ceremonies, vast and wheezing, but
with a twinkle in his eye, descended the crypt’s stone steps, gripping Brother
Matteo by the arm. The friar, stalwart, upright, equable as ever, though
returned from Capri only that lunchtime, betrayed no sign of weariness. When I
asked after Father Bechetti’s funeral, he nodded gently and said simply,
‘E
andato bene, grazie.’
Monsignor Breakspear brought up the rear, bubbling
with bonhomie.

‘I love
this church,’ he declared to no one in particular. ‘Urban VIII was brought up
by Jesuits, of course. He
was
urbane, arguably the most civilised of all
the popes. As we can tell from Caravaggio’s portrait, he was wonderfully
handsome. He had a brilliant mind and exquisite taste. He got the better of
Galileo in debate. He wrote fine poetry and beautiful prose.’ Breakspear caught
my eye and beamed at me. ‘He would have enjoyed your work, Conan Doyle. If only
poor Tuminello was still with us, he might have been able to summon up Urban’s
ghost to listen to your story this afternoon.’

I
smiled wanly at the Grand Penitentiary and offered him a cucumber sandwich.

‘The
Lord be praised,’ he breathed. ‘These do look like the real thing.’ He took a
bite of a sandwich and gazed about him. We were standing in the ‘crypt of
skulls’, the empty eye-sockets of a legion of dead Capuchins staring down at
us. ‘Perhaps Tuminello
can
hear us,’ he said, ‘and Father Bechetti too.
And Pope Urban …’

‘And
Pio Nono?’ suggested Oscar, joining the group.

‘Pio
Nono was very hard of hearing towards the end,’ said Monsignor Breakspear,
beaming at me once more. ‘Be sure to speak up during your reading, Conan
Doyle.’

Hurriedly
I moved away, mumbling that I had to be about my butler’s duties. I took my
dish of sandwiches through to the ‘crypt of the pelvises’, where I found the
Reverend Martin English, Axel Munthe and James Rennell Rodd, teacups in hand,
standing in a semicircle and peering up at a ceiling rosette formed by seven shoulder
blades set in a frame of sacral bones, vertebrae and feet.

‘We
don’t do this sort of thing in England, do we?’ murmured Rennell Rodd. ‘I’m
glad.’ He looked at my plate of sandwiches. ‘This is more like it,’ he said.

Truth
to tell, everyone at the gathering seemed more taken with the tea and
sandwiches than the extraordinary
memento mori
all around them. Indeed,
everyone, it appeared, apart from Oscar and myself, knew the crypt already.

‘It has
been a tourist attraction since the eighteenth century,’ Axel Munthe explained.
‘The Marquis de Sade, Hans Andersen, Mark Twain: they’ve all written it up.
When you’ve been to St Peter’s and seen the
Pietà,
this is where you
come next.’

‘The
English do come,’ said Rennell Rodd, ‘but rarely more than once. It’s not
terribly jolly, is it?’

‘We
Swedes come time and time again,’ replied Axel Munthe, pleasantly. ‘We find it
very soothing.’

At half
past four, Oscar, checking his watch, called the assembly to order.

‘Ladies
and gentlemen, there are chairs laid out in the last chapel. Please make your
way there now. Miss English and Dr Conan Doyle will bring through further
refreshments. We are nearly all gathered, I think. We’re just waiting on Cesare
Verdi, then we can begin.’

There
was no dilly-dallying. The assembly moved eagerly along the vaulted corridor to
the last room, the ‘crypt of the three skeletons’, where Oscar had arranged
nine chairs in rows facing the altar.

The
four clergymen, without prompting, filled up the front row, with the Capuchin
friar at one end, the Anglican chaplain at the other and the two Monsignors in
pride of place between. Once Miss English had topped up the teacups and I had
finished serving the sandwiches, we took our places in the second row,
alongside James Rennell Rodd, who remarked loudly as we joined him, ‘Don’t let
Wilde hog the limelight with his preliminaries. It’s your story we’ve come for,
Conan Doyle.’

‘And a
tale of Sherlock Holmes is what you are about to receive, James,’ declared
Oscar, standing centre-stage before us. ‘But on this occasion, forgive me,
it’ll be I who tells the story, not Arthur.’

‘The
man’s incorrigible,’ grumbled Rennell Rodd. ‘I should not have come.’

‘I am
glad that you did, James,’ said Oscar, unperturbed. ‘You have a significant
part to play in what’s to come.’

From
the front row Nicholas Breakspear looked up at Oscar and enquired tartly: ‘We
are getting a Sherlock Holmes story, aren’t we, Mr Wilde? That is what we were
promised.’

‘It all
begins with Sherlock Holmes,’ said Oscar, tantalisingly, checking his watch
once more, then looking behind him at the candles flickering on the altar. He
glanced at the skeletons, bones and vertebrae that lay all around. Peering into
the enveloping gloom, he smiled as Cesare Verdi — unshaven, dressed in an
unseasonable wool suit and holding a brown bowler hat — appeared beneath the
archway. ‘Ah, you’ve arrived,’ said Oscar.

Verdi
raised a hand as if to speak, but Oscar stopped him.

‘Please,’
said Oscar, ‘take a seat, then we can begin.’

‘Yes,’
muttered Rennell Rodd. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

Verdi
took his seat in the half-light in the back row by the doorway. Oscar gazed
upon the assembled company with apparent satisfaction. Catherine English smiled
at me and whispered softly, ‘This is exciting.’ She pressed her fingers gently
on my sleeve. I looked around at the expectant faces all fixed on Oscar and
thought to myself, If there is a murderer in our midst, he is either a mighty
cool customer or he has no notion of what Oscar has in store.