Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol: A Mystery

by Gyles Brandreth

  24

  The stink of fear

  In prison, there may be occasional moments of high drama, but they are few and far between. There is a predictability – an inevitability – a suffocating monotony – a paralysing immobility – about a place where every circumstance of life is regulated after an unchangeable pattern. We labour, we exercise, we eat, we drink, we line up to empty our slops, we lie down to sleep, we pray (or kneel at least for prayer), according to the inflexible laws of an iron formula that makes each dreadful day in the very minutest detail like its brother. Outside, in the living world, ceaseless change is the very essence of existence. Not so within the dead walls of Reading Gaol. Even out of doors in the prison garden, where as I pushed my wheelbarrow to and fro, high above me I could spy the sky and clouds, I saw no birds fly past and, whatever the season, there were no butterflies. Of seed-time or harvest, of the reapers bending over the corn, or the grape gatherers threading through the vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken blossoms or strewn with fallen fruit, I knew nothing.

  Nothing changes in Reading Gaol: that is one of the prison’s unwritten rules. Except, towards the very end of my incarceration, for the first time in almost two years, something did. Just weeks before my release, the Prison Commissioners introduced a new class of inmate: ‘star prisoners’, so called, convicts who had been sent to gaol for the first time. The idea was a simple one, and laudable in its way: it was to keep the first offenders wholly apart from the recidivists, to prevent the ‘new boys’ from becoming contaminated by the ‘old lags’. Why this new category was considered necessary I am not sure. Under the ‘separate system’ all prisoners were already kept apart and the rules of ‘no communication between prisoners’ and ‘absolute silence on all occasions’ were, for the most part, strictly enforced. Perhaps it was with a view to making assurance doubly sure that the new star-class prisoner was created and marked out from the rest of us by a red star on his cap and another on his uniform? I do not know. What I do know is that whenever such a being came into view, we established prisoners – the star-less ones – were required immediately to turn away and face the wall.

  I was, of course, a first offender, but I was no longer new to Reading Gaol and it was only the prison’s latest recruits who were admitted to the new star class. One day, after he had caught sight of me on the landing, returning from the latrines, standing with my nose to the wall, waiting until a new inmate had filed past, Warder Martin remarked to me, ‘It’s not right, C.3.3. You’re a poet and a gentleman. Standing with your face to the wall whilst a villainous-looking ruffian passes by – I don’t like it.’

  I did not like it either, but I accepted it and took it for what I judged the gods meant it to be: a final humiliation.

  As the days passed and the moment of my release grew closer, I began to tremble with pleasure at the thought that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the lilac would be blooming – and that, somehow, I might find them together in a garden and see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one and make the other toss the pale purple of its plumes. I dreamt that the air that day would be Arabia for me. In Reading Gaol, meanwhile, through those last weeks locked in the pit of shame, all I could smell was the acrid odour of apprehension.

  ‘It’s sweat,’ said Warder Stokes. ‘It’s the stink of fear.’ He told me, as though it were a proud tradition, ‘A prison always smells different when there’s a hanging coming.’

  I looked at his young, freckled face, at his shining, unknowing eyes. ‘Was it like this last year,’ I asked, ‘when Trooper Wooldridge was hanged?’

  ‘It was,’ he said, nodding his carrot head with satisfaction at the recollection. ‘Don’t you remember? Everyone was nervy – inmates, turnkeys, even the governor. Especially the governor. The day of the hanging was the day Atitis-Snake gave himself up, wasn’t it? A hanging “concentrates the mind” – that’s what my granddad says. He was here when they had public hangings, my granddad.’

  ‘Ah,’ I murmured softly, ‘the good old days . . .’

  ‘That’s what he says. He was one of the turnkeys on special duty on the day of the last public hanging. He was there, up on the gallows, above the gatehouse. It was a famous day. The whole county came.’

  ‘Did the condemned man’s legs twitch?’ I asked. ‘I believe they do.’

  ‘Yes, they did,’ answered Stokes eagerly. ‘You’ve heard the story?’

  ‘No, Warder Stokes,’ I cried. ‘I have not heard the story. But I can imagine it.’

  ‘My granddad loves to tell it.’

  ‘I have no doubt that he does.’

  ‘You are planning to tell the story of Wooldridge’s hanging in one of your poems, aren’t you?’ He presented the question as a challenge. ‘You told me you was,’ he said defiantly.

  ‘I have thought of it,’ I replied, my eyes averted. ‘I have written nothing yet.’

  ‘A hanging makes a good story,’ confided Warder Stokes. ‘I don’t know if I’ll be on special duty for this one, but if I am I can bring you the details.’

  I could not think what to answer, so I smiled at the young warder with the crooked teeth and said simply, ‘Thank you.’

  From Warder Martin I learnt that on the morning that followed my interview with Major Nelson in his parlour, Sebastian Atitis-Snake was taken from the condemned cell and escorted to the prison bathhouse. There, in the presence of both the governor and the prison surgeon, he was stripped naked, washed and searched. Atitis-Snake demanded an explanation: none was given.

  The body-search, according to Martin, was carried out by Dr Maurice and included examination of the prisoner’s hair, ears, nose, mouth, fingers, nails, toes and private parts. ‘What they was looking for, they didn’t say. Whatever it was, they didn’t find it.’ Before he was locked up again, the condemned man’s cell was searched by four warders, including Martin – nothing untoward was discovered – and swabbed out, from floor to ceiling, by the lads from the cleaning party.

  On that same morning – the morning following the death of the prison chaplain – the dwarf was moved to the punishment block and chapel was cancelled.

  ‘It is like execution day,’ whispered Private Luck, calling to me from his cell at the accustomed time. ‘They always have chapel except when there is a hanging. Always, always. Every day. Always. It is very strange not to have chapel. Like the lady in the song, I am all dressed up with nowhere to go.’

  ‘You know that the chaplain is dead,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, yes, Warder Martin told me. C.3.4. jumped up on him like a mad dog and the poor old man had a heart attack. And now C.3.4. is in a punishment cell in a straitjacket and the chaplain is in a coffin on his way to heaven.’

  ‘The chaplain was a good man,’ I said.

  ‘I believe you,’ said Private Luck. ‘I did not know him at all. He came to see me once, but I was busy.’ The Indian started to giggle as he spoke. ‘The poor chaplain was very shocked. He came into my cell and found me pleasuring Warder Braddle.’ Luck burst into a peal of high-pitched laughter. ‘I was on my knees, but not saying my prayers!’

  ‘Hush, man,’ I hissed. ‘Take care what you say.’

  ‘We are quite safe,’ said my neighbour coolly. ‘There is no one near. I can always hear them coming.’

  Luck was due to be released from prison on 12 May – ‘That is a week before you, Mr Oscar Wilde, is it not? I will be waiting for you outside,’ he said, ‘and together we will go to Mrs Wilde and collect my one hundred pounds.’

  ‘You did not kill Warder Braddle,’ I protested. ‘I owe you nothing.’

  ‘You owe me one hundred pounds – and more,’ he cried gaily. ‘And I will have it or I will be telling everybody all your secrets. I will tell them about you and the boy, Mr Wilde, and they will believe me.’

  25

  A hanging at Reading Gaol

  The execution of Sebastian Atitis-Snake was set to take place at 8.00 a.m. o
n the morning of Tuesday, 11 May 1897. As the due date approached, the feeling of unease within Reading Gaol grew ever more unsettling. It was a nameless dread – acknowledged, but not understood. By night, men, customarily silent, called out wantonly from their cells, either in anger or madness or in fear. By day, scuffles among inmates broke out in the lines waiting to go to chapel or for exercise or to visit the latrines.

  In the garden one morning, the wardress with the look of Joan of Arc walked close by me. She did not smile and in her large blue eyes I saw what seemed to me to be a look of unbounded sadness. I realised then why I had always found her appearance so striking. She looked as my Constance had looked when we first met – before time and motherhood had exacted their toll. On that same day, at lunchtime, I heard from Warder Martin that Dr Maurice had been called away from Reading Gaol unexpectedly. The warder brought me a note from the prison surgeon in which the doctor expressed his regret that he would not see me before my release, but hoped that our paths might cross in happier circumstances in times to come. The note included an address in Whitechapel. That same afternoon, I chanced to see the boy Tom running towards the boiler house from the direction of the small memorial garden where Warder Braddle lay buried. As the lad crossed my path, I looked away – and at once I sensed the youth sensing my fear. I heard him stop abruptly in his tracks. Still I looked away. He stood for a moment quite close to me (I felt the heat of his breath) and then he laughed, mockingly, before running on.

  One evening – it was the eve of the execution: I had seen the hangman and Major Nelson walking together across the outer prison yard – I witnessed a hauntingly unpleasant scene. A.2.11., a prisoner from another ward – a half-witted old soldier by the name of Prince – was returning from his day’s labour in the stone-breaking yard. I recognised the man from his jerking arms and awkward, halting gait. His hands were torn and bloodied from his work and he could scarcely put one foot before the other. He was the first in line and his shambling progress delayed the half-dozen men behind him. I watched as the poor wretch stumbled and fell forward on his knees onto the ground. I heard the two warders in command of the party curse the fellow and I saw them, without mercy, pull him roughly to his feet, one of them kicking him on the ankles as he did so. One of the warders barked at the old soldier, ‘Malingerer!’ At this, the other prisoners in the line began to growl and grind their teeth like angry curs.

  And this was not the only violence that night, Warder Stokes reported. He came with my dinner of bread and potatoes the evening of the day Atitis-Snake was hanged, eager to share the news.

  ‘There’s always violence the night before a hanging,’ Stokes said, so the fracas in the corridor outside the condemned man’s cell had not been altogether a surprise. Atitis-Snake, escorted by two turnkeys, was being brought back to his cell from a final strip-search and sluicing in the bathhouse. As he reached the door of his cell, a voice close by called out, ‘Hang well, Professor Moriarty!’ Atitis-Snake, enraged, had turned to confront his abuser.

  ‘Who was it?’ I asked.

  ‘You couldn’t tell,’ said Stokes. ‘They was all wearing their caps. There was three of them coming down the corridor – star prisoners – and then there was the Indian princess – C.3.2. – standing just along from the condemned cell, on the other side of the corridor, with his face to the wall.’

  ‘What was he doing there?’

  ‘He was coming the other way – back from working in the kitchen. He’d seen the star prisoners and stopped, like a good boy. He was obeying the new rules.’

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t Luck who shouted out?’

  Warder Stokes chuckled. ‘No, it was a proper man’s voice. I was up on the gantry. I didn’t get down there till the fight had broken out – but I heard the voice what shouted and it wasn’t the princess. I’m sure of that.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Stokes was grinning. ‘All hell broke loose. Atitis-Snake – he was like a lunatic on the run. Just went berserk. He rushed at the men, lashing out like a madman. The star prisoners – because there was three of them – pushed him away, no problem – and he fell back against the Indian princess and half knocked him to the ground.’ Warder Stokes ran his tongue along the line of his jagged teeth with relish. ‘And then, when Atitis-Snake saw it was C.3.2., he began hitting him, pummelling him, beating him with his fists like there was no tomorrow.’

  The warder’s enthusiasm for the fight was infectious. I pushed my meal, untouched, across my table. ‘Well, for Atitis-Snake,’ I said, ‘I suppose, there really was no tomorrow.’

  Stokes punched the palm of his hand. ‘That’s just what the governor said. The condemned man had nothing to lose. “This was his last hurrah” – that’s what the governor said. But you’ve got to hand it to the Indian princess. He gave as good as he got – if not better. He turned on Atitis-Snake like a bat out of hell – spitting, scratching, biting, hitting back hard.’

  ‘He served with the Bombay Grenadiers, you know.’ Warder Stokes laughed. ‘Didn’t the turnkeys try to part them?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course they did – and I was running down the gantry to the rescue and all. And Martin was on his way. It was all hands on deck. It had to be cos that’s when around the corner, from the end of the ward, who should come marching home but the men from the stone-breaking yard?’

  ‘Good gracious,’ I said. I had not known Warder Stokes so eloquent – or so exhilarated.

  ‘And something was up with them cos as soon as they saw the fight, they decided to join in. Oh my God, it was a right messy business. Atitis-Snake was like a mad bull in the middle of it all.’

  ‘So this was a last-ditch attempt to prove his madness?’ I suggested.

  ‘That’s exactly what the governor said. Those was his very words.’ Stokes looked at me, confounded, as if a mighty revelation had suddenly come upon him. ‘Perhaps you’ll come back here one day – as governor.’ He grinned and revealed his absurdly crooked teeth once more. ‘Why not? Why not? You’ve got the hang of it here now, haven’t you?’

  ‘What happened next?’ I asked.

  ‘“The turnkeys guarding the condemned man showed great presence of mind.” Those was the governor’s words. There was just two of them and they got hold of Atitis-Snake and the Indian princess – they grabbed hold of ’em, as well as they could. They couldn’t part ’em, but they wasn’t going to lose ’em. They pushed ’em together into the condemned man’s cell and slammed shut the door.’

  ‘They left the pair of them to fight it out together?’

  ‘Yes,’ roared Warder Stokes. He was swaying from side to side with the excitement of his story. ‘They had to do something cos by now the corridor was swarming. There was the seven men from the stone-breaking yard – well, six, because poor old A.2.11. wasn’t up for the scrap – and the three star prisoners, all slugging it out with each other, with the turnkeys from the working party, with the two special turnkeys who was guarding Atitis-Snake . . . It was a bear-pit.’

  I looked at the warder, wreathed in smiles, and suddenly thought back to the horror of the morning: the hanging that had gone ahead, as planned, at eight o’clock.

  ‘But the fighting stopped?’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ chuckled Stokes.

  ‘How? What stopped it?’

  The warder’s eyes brightened. ‘My whistle.’ From his pocket, Warder Stokes produced a a small tin whistle, no more than three inches in length. He held it up proudly for me to inspect. ‘This was my dad’s whistle. As I came chasing down the corridor I remembered I had it and out it came and I blew it full blast . . .’

  ‘And it worked?’ I asked, incredulous.

  ‘It worked a treat,’ said Warders Stokes, his freckled face flushed in triumph. ‘I blew the whistle and the fighting just stopped – like a train juddering into the station, it just ran out of steam. The governor says I’m due for a medal.’

  ‘Congratulations, warder.’

  ‘And the inmates – a
ll ten of them – they’re due for the cat. It was an “insurrection” – that’s what the governor called it.’

  ‘I heard a whipping last night,’ I said, looking up at Stokes. ‘Have they started already?’

  ‘Oh no, last night – that was the Indian princess. He was given six strokes of the birch – right away, governor’s orders. He’d left Atitis-Snake as good as dead. He mashed him up right and proper – took his head and scraped it against the cell wall, half tore his face off. And when we opened the cell door there he was, kicking the poor bastard’s throat in.’

  ‘C.3.2. was doing this?’ I marvelled.

  ‘He was. C.3.2. was kicking Atitis-Snake’s head in. I saw him do it. Do you know what the governor called him? “A thing possessed”.’ Stokes’s face glowed with the thrill of the drama. ‘And once the princess saw the cell door was open he was through it like a scalded cat.’ Stokes laughed. ‘There was no holding him. He was along the corridor, like greased lightning – up the stairs, onto the gantry, back in his cell. You must have heard him?’

  ‘Yes, I heard him,’ I said, now closing my eyes briefly and thinking back to the night before. ‘I heard the running footsteps, I heard the cell door slam. I didn’t know what had happened.’

  ‘We locked him up and got the others back to their cells and called the doctor for Atitis-Snake and went to report to the governor. The governor ordered the beating for C.3.2. there and then.’

  I studied the young warder’s freckled face. I knew him to be a good man at heart. ‘You told Major Nelson you didn’t believe it was Luck that started the fight?’

  ‘It wasn’t C.3.2. that shouted that stuff about “Hang well, Professor Moriarty”. I told the governor that, but he said that C.3.2. had to be punished cos he was part of the fight and cos of the damage he done Atitis-Snake. He half killed him.’

  ‘And Luck, I suppose, had to be punished last night because today he is due for release.’