‘If Mr Holmes’s concern for my preservation were any greater,’ Her Ladyship observed, ‘I should expect him to petition to have me listed as an Ancient Monument.’
‘So there was never any danger at all?’ Algernon sounded disappointed. ‘Gwendolen promised us danger.’
‘On this occasion, Mr Holmes’s excessive and overfamiliar vigilance was instrumental in preventing my succumbing to a case of arsenical poisoning,’ Lady Bracknell conceded severely, ‘but such occurrences are certain to be exceptional. It is the general principle that I object to.’
‘We’re very glad to see you well in any case, Aunt Augusta,’ said Cecily, demurely sitting next to her, ‘even if you are disappointed in our lack of conviction. May we join you for tea?’
Nearby, a warm, feminine voice greeted Holmes and me by name, and I looked away from the Moncrieffs’ family reunion to see Lady Goring standing next to her husband.
Lord Goring said, ‘We were on our way to dinner at the Criterion when we overheard talk of a recent commotion at Brown’s. When we gathered that you were here, Lady Goring insisted on our coming to thank you.’ After his earlier displays of emotion he had returned to his usual reserve, but his tone was cordial and his handshake firm.
Mabel Goring looked as radiant as always in silvery-grey, with the diamond and sapphire of the spider’s-web brooch prominently displayed. She said, ‘Arthur has promised to tell me everything, Mr Holmes, of what you have done, and of your contribution also, Dr Watson. From what I understand, though, the true murderer of Mr Bunbury is arrested, and those who tried to blame me are also dealt with. Is it true?’
‘It is.’ Holmes nodded. ‘Except that the man’s name was never Bunbury. It was Timothy Durrington.’
Mabel said, ‘I shall remember it, although we never met. It seems strange that our fates became, for a short time, so closely connected. Now, though, I am free to resume my life, and I am very grateful to you both for it.’
Lord Goring said, ‘Mr Holmes, I do not claim that I always settle my accounts, for to do so would give other gentlemen of my rank and income a bad name. Nevertheless, I owe you a great debt, and this reckoning I choose to pay. You have my card, sir, and I shall expect to receive your bill. Good night.’
And he bowed cordially and left us, his beautiful young wife at his side.
As they departed, Ernest Moncrieff crossed over to us from the nearby table. He said, ‘Holmes, do I really have you to thank for saving Aunt Augusta’s life?’
Holmes inclined his head. ‘The pleasure was entirely mine.’
‘No, I understand my wife’s glad of it as well,’ said Ernest, smoothing his moustache judiciously. ‘I’m also told you have cleared up that business about the man who died. Is there anything that I would be better off not knowing?’
Holmes said, ‘Two of your guests conspired to kill the man who was attempting to blackmail you; not from any concern for your well-being, but under the malign influence of your next-door neighbour, who was also responsible for blackmailing both your brother and your sister-in-law.’ I noticed that Holmes did not mention Gwendolen, who was observing the conversation a little nervously from Lady Bracknell’s table.
‘Good heavens,’ exclaimed Ernest. ‘When you put it that way, I was fortunate not to be involved.’ He sighed, and glanced across at Lady Bracknell, who was expatiating now on the lack of backbone shown by modern waiting staff when faced with life-threatening crises. ‘It’s difficult to imagine a blackmailer causing my mother-in-law any difficulties, isn’t it? Or arsenic, if it comes to that.’
‘She is as human as anybody else,’ I assured him.
‘Do you think so? Well, perhaps,’ Ernest admitted. ‘As a theory it seems fantastical, but I suppose it is the only explanation for her having produced Gwendolen.’ He thanked us both and ambled back to their table, passing his brother, who was sidling up to us at that same moment.
‘I say,’ said Algernon. ‘That fellow who died. Darlington, was it? I don’t suppose you ever found out why he gave that other name, did you?’
‘Mischief merely,’ said Holmes opaquely. ‘And I can assure you that neither you nor Mrs Moncrieff will be hearing again from those who tried to extort money from you.’
‘Well, that’s a blessed relief,’ Algernon observed. ‘On the whole they weren’t the sort of people I’d choose to be associated with.’
‘That is undeniable,’ Holmes said, ‘for all that one was a peer of the realm and another went to a respectable girls’ boarding school, though one where the conduct of the staff might have been better assured.’
‘Really?’ Algernon shook his head. ‘I must say, the behaviour of the upper classes these days is tremendously disappointing. I blame the servants, personally. They should guide us with a firmer hand.’
Holmes said, ‘I would not recommend looking to Lane for moral guidance, Mr Moncrieff.’
‘Good heavens, no. Why, only this afternoon I had to reprimand him for his reprehensible laxity in allowing someone to deplete the refreshments he supplied for Lord and Lady Maybridge. Well, good evening to you both.’ And Algernon, too, returned to his family.
Quietly, I observed to Holmes, ‘We never did discover what he did in his Bunburying days that he is now so keen to see buried forever.’
‘No.’ My friend shook his head, rather wearily. ‘Nor is it our concern, unless a crime is discovered. If Podgers’ murder had never come to light, Lord Arthur Savile would be sleeping soundly in Belgrave Square, undisturbed by the prickings of conscience. In Algernon Moncrieff’s case, I can hardly imagine anything so extreme. We can but hope that Cecily’s constancy can tame his wild nature.’
The waiter brought our tea, and Holmes busied himself for a few minutes pouring us both cups of the mercifully unadulterated fluid.
As he did so, he mused, ‘Speaking of our next case, Watson, following the trail of Savile’s crime has given me a taste for revisiting unsolved mysteries. There was a strange account a few years ago that I might turn my attention to, of the baffling disappearance of a portrait painter and the very peculiar death of one of his subjects…’ But he could see that he had not my full attention. ‘Is something on your mind, Watson?’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I am sorry. I was thinking of something Cecily Moncrieff said, though she attributed the thought to Mrs Chasuble. She said that in fiction, good people end happily and bad people end unhappily.’
‘Well, Watson, we know from her manuscript that Mrs Chasuble is not qualified to be an arbiter of taste in literary matters.’
‘It was a juvenile work, Holmes,’ I pointed out. ‘I wrote some dreadful tripe myself at that age. But I was thinking that in real life, it’s not so easy to tell what people’s desserts are. Mrs Cheveley is an out-and-out villain, of course, and if the courts play their part she will suffer for it. But what of Mrs Teville, an assassin who wanted nothing more than to protect her daughter? Or Lord Illingworth, a wicked man whose sentiments approached nobility only where they touched his own child? Or Mrs Chasuble herself, harbouring her guilty secret and suffering its effect on her nerves every day for thirty years?’
Holmes was nodding, a trifle impatiently. ‘You are right, Watson, these are imponderables. In this life, at least, there is no poetic justice, only that which we make ourselves. And that is our calling, old friend.’
I was flattered that he included me in this mission, but even so, my train of thought would not be diverted. ‘And then there is the matter of Ernest,’ I insisted. ‘You assured us all that there was no chance that the infants had been exchanged at Victoria Station all those years ago. You said that any such plan would have been nonsensical. Yet Timothy Durrington believed it, and so did his mother – if indeed he was Timothy Durrington, and she was his mother.’
Holmes sat back, sipping his cup of tea, and sighed. ‘I admit, my dear fellow, that I may have overstated my certainty upon that point. To be sure, it is not a plan that I would have made, but not everyone is so clear-he
aded as I. Durrington Senior may have intended that his son should be found in the handbag, and brought up as Ernest Moncrieff, while he raised the original as his own child. Perhaps his intention was to reveal the truth at a later date, after each boy had had the time to display the tendencies of his adopted class. It would have been a powerful statement of the irrelevance of birth, albeit one which would have seen the sergeant consigned to prison for making it.
‘As we know, that is not how events transpired, but perhaps the scheme failed only through the sergeant’s death. Perhaps he intended to report the child’s presence to the police once Timothy’s mother was on her way with the real baby Ernest, and trust that they would make the connection with the kidnapped Moncrieff child. Absent a serious accident at the station that day, he would almost certainly have been right.’
I said, ‘So it is possible, then, that Ernest could be William Durrington’s son after all? Might the body we called Bunbury have been none other than the original Ernest Moncrieff?’
Holmes shook his head. ‘Such speculation is bootless, Watson. We can never know the truth now. Nor would it do any good if we did. The Nepcotes’ gardener was a childless bachelor, whereas Gwendolen Moncrieff may well bear her husband children, if she can overcome her fear of emulating her own mother. Were such a revelation to be made, none could benefit from it and several would suffer.’
We looked across to where the Moncrieffs and Lady Bracknell were conversing, the very picture of a family at peace together. Cecily held Algernon’s arm protectively while he tucked into a muffin, as if concerned that he might injure himself with the butter knife. Gwendolen and Ernest exchanged a loving look across their teacups, while Lady Bracknell informed them exactly what their opinion should be of the play to which she had been paying no attention earlier.
I turned back to Holmes, who nodded. ‘Whether the man once known as Jack Worthing is actually Ernest Moncrieff, the son of a decorated general, or Timothy Durrington, the son of a disgraced sergeant, is irrelevant. He has a family now, and they have him. He is a good man, or at least no bad one, and we have no business preventing him, at least, from ending happily.’
‘In the end, then…’ I mused.
‘Indeed, Watson,’ said Holmes. ‘There is no vital importance to his being Ernest.’
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Other than those found in the Sherlock Holmes canon, most of the characters in this book owe their existence to the remarkable works, primarily the plays, of Mr Oscar Wilde.
Ernest (or ‘Jack’), Gwendolen, Cecily, Algernon, Lady Bracknell, Miss Prism, Dr Chasuble, Lane and Merriman all appear, of course, in The Importance of Being Earnest, probably the most perfect comedy ever written in English.
Lord Goring, Mrs Cheveley, Mabel Chiltern, Sir Robert Chiltern, Lady Chiltern and Phipps are taken from An Ideal Husband; Lord Illingworth and Mr Kelvil MP from A Woman of No Importance; Mrs Erlynne and her daughter from Lady Windermere’s Fan; and Lord Arthur Savile and his connections from the short story ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’, whose plot is as deduced by Holmes in Chapter One. Numerous references to marginal characters are taken from these and other works.
I have striven to be faithful to all of their characters as Wilde portrayed them, though obviously I have not hesitated to embellish and interconnect them when it has served my story. Despite his tendency to reuse names, Wilde was not writing with any thought of a shared continuity, and in some cases (such as the two Lady Windermeres) this has required some creative interpretation to reconcile.
Any errors are of course my own, while the brilliance of the characters is all Wilde’s. My debt to him is enormous, but that was true long before I began this novel.
PPH
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Philip Purser-Hallard is the author of a trilogy of urban fantasy thrillers beginning with The Pendragon Protocol, and the editor of a series of anthologies about the City of the Saved. As well as writing various other books and short stories, including Sherlock Holmes: The Vanishing Man for Titan Books, Phil edits The Black Archive, a series of monographs about individual Doctor Who stories published by Obverse Books. He tweets @purserhallard.
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