Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (39 page)

‘The
scene is set,’ said Oscar. ‘I will begin.’

Oscar
Wilde was a seasoned lecturer, veteran of more than three hundred platforms,
concert halls and stages across the whole continent of North America and
throughout the British Isles. On that late-July afternoon, in that macabre
crypt, he commanded his small audience with effortless authority. He began his
story simply, in a conversational tone, without rhetorical flourishes.

‘Arthur
Conan Doyle and I arrived in Rome a week ago, drawn here by three curious
messages, sent care of Number 221B Baker Street, London, to Mr Sherlock Holmes,
the world’s foremost consulting detective.’

‘I’m
glad Holmes is getting a look-in,’ muttered Rennell Rodd.

Oscar
smiled. ‘If it weren’t for Holmes, we wouldn’t be here, but we are here instead
of Holmes, because Holmes, of course, is a fictional creation and these
messages were not the stuff of fiction. They were an all-too-human cry for help
and they came, we discovered, from the Vatican City, from one of the
chaplains-in-residence to His Holiness the Pope, from the papal exorcist, as it
transpired — one Monsignor Luigi Tuminello.’

‘This
is better than fiction,’ murmured Monsignor Breakspear from the front row.

‘And
worse,’ said Oscar, without pause, ‘because this is real.’

My
friend turned again towards the candles on the altar. I could tell that he was
wondering whether he dare produce his cigarette case. I know that, as a
raconteur, he always felt the prop of a lighted cigarette added a certain
something to his performance. I watched him resist the temptation and, with
shining eyes, turn back to survey his audience once more.

‘This
is a murder mystery,’ he continued, ‘and at its heart lies the murder of the
young girl called Agnes, a child whom I once heard Pope Pius IX describe as
“all innocence — a lamb of God”. This child, aged no more than thirteen or
fourteen, disappeared on Thursday 7 February 1878 from the sacristy of the
Sistine Chapel at St Peter’s here in Rome. What happened to her? Where did she
go? Alas, she was not assumed into heaven as Monsignor Tuminello hoped and
prayed. She was murdered — but by whom? And when, exactly? And how? And for
what reason?’

Oscar
held the moment. Had he had a cigarette in hand, this is when he would have
drawn upon it languorously and then have lingered to watch the twin plumes of
smoke filter slowly from his own nostrils. Instead, the heavy silence was
filled by Monsignor Felici remarking wheezily: ‘If Agnes was murdered, why was
her body never found?’

‘It
was,’ said Oscar, simply.

‘When?’
demanded Felici.

‘On the
night she was killed.’

‘Where?’

‘Where
she was murdered — in the sacristy, on the seat of tears.’

‘But
then it disappeared,’ said Nicholas Breakspear, leaning forward in his seat.

‘Yes,’
said Oscar quietly, ‘it was brought here.’

‘Here?’
exclaimed Breakspear. ‘To this church?’

‘To
this very room,’ said Oscar.

He
turned and with his right hand pointed slowly to a human skeleton seated on the
ground immediately to the side of the altar steps. The skull was tipped
forward, the arms were folded across the ribcage, the legs extended, the little
feet resting on a footstool made of blackened collarbones.

‘There
she lies,’ said Oscar. ‘I believe those are the mortal remains of Pio Nono’s
little lamb of God.’

We sat
in silence, all eyes fixed on the skeleton laid out on the floor before us. I
half stood in my place to get a better a view. ‘Can you be sure of this,
Oscar?’ I asked in a voice barely above a whisper.

‘No,
Arthur, I cannot be sure,’ Oscar replied. ‘All I can tell you is that Mark
Twain writes about this chapel in his book,
The Innocents Abroad,
published
nine years before the death of Agnes. He describes this altar and its surrounds
in some detail. This little skeleton — so elegant and slight — does not
feature in Twain’s description, which makes me think it was not here then. And
it
is
a little skeleton, which makes me think it is the skeleton of a
child. And its bones are so much paler than the others all around it, which
makes me think that it has not lain here many years … I cannot be sure that
this is Agnes’s skeleton, but I feel that it is — in my bones.’ He smiled.
‘Perhaps Brother Matteo will tell us if I am right?’

‘Si,
‘ whispered the Capuchin friar, almost inaudibly.
‘Si,’
he
repeated, his eyes cast down.
‘Mea culpa.’

‘This
is a good man,’ cried Monsignor Felici, turning his huge bulk towards the
barefoot monk slumped at his side. ‘If Matteo killed the child, he had his
reasons. Let me plead for him.’

Oscar
laughed and shook his head. ‘Brother Matteo did not kill Agnes. He would not
hurt a fly — we all know that. Brother Matteo did not kill Agnes — but he
believed he knew who had.’

Oscar
looked down into Francesco Felici’s fat red face: beads of perspiration now
bespangled the Monsignor’s cheeks and brow.

‘I take
it that all of you in the sacristy knew that Agnes was the child of Father
Bechetti. You never spoke of it, but you knew.’

‘I
never believed it,’ said Breakspear.

‘I had
almost forgotten,’ muttered Felici. ‘Sometimes that is the best way,’ said
Oscar. ‘Men forget and women forgive. If it were not so, how could any of us
survive? But Brother Matteo did not forget. He knew that Agnes had been
conceived on the island of Capri — by a priest and a nun in lust. He knew that
Agnes was to Bechetti the living embodiment of his sinfulness. When Brother
Matteo discovered Agnes’s body lying on the seat of tears he assumed that she
had been killed by her own father. It was not so, but he believed it — and with
you men of God, belief is all.’

‘Mea
culpa,’
repeated the Capuchin friar, now wringing
his hands wretchedly, his head swaying from side to side, his eyes tight shut.

‘You
might wonder why, in the years that followed, Brother Matteo was so solicitous
of Father Bechetti if he believed him to be a murderer? The answer is simple.
As Monsignor Tuminello reminded me, “Brother Matteo is the pattern of goodness.
He despises the sin, but goes out of his way to love the sinner.” It was almost
as though Brother Matteo felt obliged to love Father Bechetti more because he
believed him to be a murderer! Besides, what worthwhile purpose would be served
by bringing Joachim Bechetti to civil justice? Ultimately, God would be
Bechetti’s judge — and a better one than any that the Italian courts could
afford. And meanwhile, why bring unnecessary scandal on the office of the
chaplains-in-residence and shame on the memory of the innocent Agnes? What good
could be served by that? Let the unfortunate Bechetti wrestle with his
conscience on the bitter road to redemption and let poor dead Agnes rest in peace.

‘Quest’
è quello che è successo,’
muttered Matteo
despairingly.

‘On the
morning after her death, Brother Matteo brought Agnes’s body here. Where he hid
it overnight, I do not know: in his cell, perhaps, or behind the altar in the
darkness of the Sistine Chapel. What I am sure of is this: in the early hours
of Friday morning — 8 February 1878 — he brought the child’s body here, hidden
from view, wrapped in the brown habit of a Capuchin friar. I imagine he brought
it here by cart, in the cart of the bone man who would come to the kitchens of
the Vatican every Friday morning. He brought the body here and hid it until,
over time, it turned from flesh to bone, and he could lay it Out in a manner
that was fitting — in a place fit for the purpose, in a place of prayer, in a
chapel of rest.’

Nicholas
Breakspear moved forward to the very edge of his seat. ‘I must speak,’ he said.
‘I cannot let this pass, Mr Wilde. Whether or not Agnes was his daughter,
Father Bechetti truly loved that child. The portraits he painted of her after
her disappearance will show you that. He did not murder her.’

‘And
how do you know that, Monsignor?’ asked Oscar.

‘I
cannot tell you, but I do know,’ answered Breakspear solemnly.

‘You
cannot tell me, Monsignor Breakspear, because to you the secrets of the confessional
are sacred. You cannot break the sanctity of the confessional box. Is that not
right?’

Breakspear
made no response.

‘You
assert that Father Bechetti did not murder Agnes because you believe you know
who did.’

Still
Breakspear said nothing.

‘You believe
that it was Luigi Tuminello who killed the girl. You believe it because, in the
confessional box, you sensed that the papal exorcist as good as told you so!’

Oscar
stood triumphantly, head held high, legs apart, hands on hips. (Oscar confessed
that he did sometimes like to ‘strike a pose’.) Breakspear looked up at him and
smiled. The Grand Penitentiary’s voice was steady as he spoke. ‘When I take
confession, Mr Wilde, I do so as God’s servant. The words I hear are intended
for God’s ears, not mine. I am merely the conduit. You understand that, I
know.’

‘I do,’
said Oscar.

‘As
Grand Penitentiary and as a fellow chaplain, I heard Monsignor Tuminello’s
confession often. I heard what turned out to be his last confession only a day
or two before he died. I cannot tell you what he said to me, but I can tell you
this: he did not confess to the murder of little Agnes.’

‘No,’
said Oscar lightly, stepping away from Breakspear’s seat and viewing him with
half-shut eyes, picking his words carefully as he uttered them. ‘No, but,
nevertheless, you think that he might have killed her … because she had told
him something that made him think that she, the little innocent, had been
defiled.’

Breakspear
said nothing.

‘Agnes
spoke to Tuminello of violence and of a secret she had not shared.’

I was
watching Breakspear from the far end of the second row. Almost imperceptibly,
he nodded.

Oscar’s
oration now gathered momentum: ‘When Tuminello told you that Agnes had told him
of violence and an unspoken secret, you assumed that he was telling you that
the poor child had been taken, carnally. When Tuminello told you of the hand at
her throat and the single finger pressed against her lips, and, full of passion
and distress, spoke of her violent death, you feared the worst … Knowing of
Tuminello’s obsession with Agnes’s innocence and purity, you jumped to the
conclusion that, once he discovered that her innocence had been violated and
her purity defiled, he decided to despatch his angel to heaven before the world
could learn of her shame.’

Breakspear,
his face quite white, gazed up at Oscar in amazement.

‘You
heard all this from Tuminello only a matter of days ago,’ Oscar continued, ‘but
tell me this, Monsignor Breakspear: did the papal exorcist tell you when it was
that he had his “conversation” with Agnes, or when exactly it was that she
spoke to him of “violence and of a secret she had not shared”? No? He did not —
so you assumed, naturally enough, that it was fourteen or fifteen years ago,
not long before the poor child’s death.’

Oscar
leant forward and looked closely into Breakspear’s eyes.

‘Never
make assumptions, Monsignor. As Sherlock Holmes would tell you: it is the
golden rule. On Sunday evening last, among the tombs of the popes in the crypt
of St Peter’s, Monsignor Luigi Tuminello told Arthur Conan Doyle and me of this
same conversation with Agnes and it took place, not in 1877 or 1878, but
earlier this year — yes, in 1892 — on 21 January, to be precise, the feast day
of St Agnes of Rome. Agnes spoke with Tuminello during an exorcism. She
identified herself by name. She was much troubled and what she told him caused
him much distress. It prompted his cries for help. Indeed, it prompted him to
send the first of his messages to Sherlock Holmes on the very next day. But could
it be that Monsignor Tuminello had done what we have all done from time to
time: could he have broken the golden rule and made a false assumption? No
doubt he believed that the voice he heard during that exorcism was the voice of
the child Agnes, Pio Nono’s lamb of God — but is it not much more likely to
have been the voice of St Agnes of Rome, on her feast day, on the anniversary
of her martyrdom, telling of her travails at the hands of vicious and violent
men sixteen hundred years ago?’

‘Do you
believe in angels, Mr Wilde?’ asked the Reverend Martin English, quietly, from
his place beside Breakspear in the front row.

‘I
believe there are many more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my
philosophy. I also believe that a grain of strychnine prescribed to a patient
to stimulate a sluggish heart is known to have hallucinatory side effects.’
Oscar’s eyes moved from Martin English to Axel Munthe who was seated just
behind him. Munthe did not stir.

‘Who
killed this girl, then?’ Rennell Rodd demanded.

Oscar
returned to his central position before the altar. I could see that without the
prop of a cigarette he was uncertain what to do with his hands. A little
awkwardly, he folded his arms as he resumed his presentation.