‘Not very. Marais does all the serious paperwork. Garstrang sends “thank you” letters and corresponds with my admirers. But he plays a wonderful game of cards.’ La Grange held out his arms, inviting us to take our pick of the divans and ottomans on offer. ‘Of course, he loses all the time, but you must remember that he’s playing with me. And I’m very good.’
‘And Garstrang’s very eager to please,’ added Oscar, grinning and falling back onto a plum-coloured sofa. He spread his fingers and felt the texture of the velvet cushions at his side. ‘It is deliciously comfortable here.’ He sighed. He looked towards the marble head of Epicurus standing on the sideboard. ‘Your master would be proud of you.
La Grange found glasses and offered us absinthe, brandy or champagne. ‘Champagne, if you please,’ said Oscar, ‘we must toast “the perfect Hamlet”.’
La Grange poured us our drinks. He did not take a glass himself. He never drank before a performance. ‘I have only three rules in my life,’ he said, seating himself on the divan immediately opposite Oscar, ‘and I’ve long since forgotten the other two.’ Oscar laughed. La Grange leant forward and offered his guest a Turkish cigarette. ‘What is the first rule of life for you, Oscar?’ he asked.
Oscar took the cigarette and rolled it gently between his fingers before putting it lightly between his lips. ‘There is no good in arguing with the inevitable,’ he said solemnly. ‘The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.’
‘That’s wonderful, Oscar!’ I exclaimed, stepping forward to light his cigarette.
‘I know,’ he purred, cupping his palms around the flickering match-flame.
‘I’ve not heard it before.’
‘It’s new. But, alas, not mine. It first fell from the lips of the great James Russell Lowell — poet, philosopher, ambassador, friend. I saw him in London, with George Palmer and Paul White. We dined. We drank. He talked. I scribbled.’ With his tongue, deftly, Oscar moved the Turkish cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other, while with both hands he felt inside his coat for his notebook. He found it — a small, slim book with a snakeskin binding — and flicked it open. ‘Listen. “What men prize most is a privilege, even if it be that of chief mourner at a funeral.” Isn’t that delicious?’ He drew slowly on his cigarette. ‘And how about this? “The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.”‘ He looked up, beaming, and saw that Edmond La Grange was no longer seated opposite him. The old actor had got to his feet and wandered over to the vast window that overlooked the rooftops of north Paris. Oscar closed his notebook and slipped it back into his coat pocket. ‘Where is Agnès?’ he asked. ‘Is she safe?’
‘I do not know,’ answered La Grange, still gazing out of the window. ‘She has done this before — disappeared, I mean.
‘For how long?’ asked Oscar, shifting forward on the sofa.
‘A day — a day and a night, at most. But she has never missed a performance before. That’s unlike her. I am concerned.’ He turned back into the room and looked at Oscar directly. ‘You know that her mother, Alys Lenoir, took her own life. I fear for the children. Were they born with a self-destructive element to their natures?’
‘Will you turn to the police?’ asked Oscar.
‘Yes,’ replied La Grange simply. ‘Maman does not want it, but I will. If she has not returned of her own accord by Sunday, I will go to the police. Meanwhile, we are looking for her. Dr Ferrand is looking for her. Marais is looking for her.’
‘Marais is not to be trusted,’ said Oscar quickly.
La Grange laughed. ‘In this, he is. In other matters, not, perhaps.’ The old actor lifted his hands to his weathered face and pressed his heavy fingers against his eyes. He let out a long, deep breath and laughed again, more softly. ‘Marais is my business manager and he has been cheating me for years. I have known it almost from the start. Please don’t tell him that you know I know. It is the fear of discovery that keeps him by my side. He serves his purpose. I am content to share my money with Richard Marais; just as I am prepared to share my mistress with my young dresser here. It is my way.
We left Edmond La Grange alone in the rue de la Pierre Levée.
‘A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions,’ said Oscar reflectively, as he pulled shut the warehouse door behind us. ‘Do you think La Grange is a great man, Robert?’
‘He is certainly a great actor.’
Oscar chuckled.
We walked together, arm in arm, up the cobbled street towards the Canal St Martin. Oscar, I noticed, had an unaccustomed spring in his stride.
‘You’re very buoyant this morning,’ I remarked.
‘I haven’t slept,’ he replied. ‘I have the energy of the utterly exhausted! I came on the night train and the English Channel was very French last night.’
I laughed. ‘You mean, restless, rough and rude?’
He smiled down at me. ‘Something like that, Robert, but I think the joke works better if you don’t explain it.’
‘You are on form,’ I said.
‘The game’s afoot,’ he answered. ‘There’s a tide in the affairs of men; I’m exhilarated. I’m beginning to see through the glass less darkly.’
‘I’m confused. I thought that you’d gone to London because you felt there had been two attempts on your life and you were no longer welcome here. You are now of a different opinion?’
‘The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions,’ he declared, pulling out the snakeskin notebook from his coat pocket and brandishing it triumphantly before me. ‘Russell Lowell has a gem for all occasions!’ He unhooked his arm from mine and put it around my shoulder. ‘I think perhaps that I am not in so much danger now,’ he said, more calmly. ‘I think, too, that I can fulfil my obligation to poor Washington Traquair better here than in London. He was murdered, Robert, and I will find out by whom.’
We had reached the cab rank in the place de la République. We climbed aboard a two-wheeler and set off, first, to my room in rue de Beauce to collect Oscar’s bags, and, then, to the quai Voltaire, to reclaim a room for Oscar at his hotel. As we travelled, Oscar made me recount all that had occurred while he had been away. ‘Omit no detail, Robert. Who was with whom and when and where — and how did they appear to you. Tell me all that you saw. Tell me everything. You are a poet and the great-grandson of a laureate.’ He tapped his snakeskin notebook with his forefinger. “‘The eye is the notebook of the poet,” we are told.’
I told him all that I could recall. (I told him, too, that it was not mere coyness that prevented me from telling more of my night with Gabrielle de la Tourbillon.) He listened intently. He asked me to repeat certain details, sniffing or growling to suggest interest or surprise. ‘Bravo!’ he murmured, when I had concluded my narrative. ‘You have earned your lunch. You’ve painted the landscape with the eye of a Corot.’
I laughed. ‘A little too impressionistic for your liking?’
‘Far from it. Corot’s eye was crystal-clear. He was classically trained. He lived here on the quai Voltaire, you know. That must be why I thought of him. Yesterday afternoon, at Victoria, I suddenly realised that what the Impressionists give to Paris, fog gives to London!’
‘You are on form, my friend,’ I said.
While our two-wheeler waited outside the hotel, Oscar ordered us the simplest lunch (bread, cheese, a tomato and herb omelette and a bottle of red Rhône wine) and gave me his account of his adventures in London and Reading. Customarily, Oscar was a slow eater and a leisurely conversationalist. Not on this occasion. He ate and drank and talked with almost feverish rapidity. The moment the meal was done, he threw down his napkin and got to his feet. ‘No time for lamentation or for coffee now,’ he said. ‘Our carriage awaits. We must be about our business. We must find Agnès La Grange.’
‘Do you know where she is?’ I asked, amazed, hurrying after him into the street.
‘I believe I do.’
He ordered the cab to take
us to Passy, on the western edge of the city.
Once upon a time Passy had been a picturesque fairy-tale village, comprising a church, a small château and a handful of stone houses set on a rocky hillside by the Seine. Now it was growing into a bustling, sophisticated Parisian suburb. I reminded Oscar that I knew it because it was where Balzac had lived and written some of his finest work. When I had first come to Paris, I had gone on a pilgrimage to see the great writer’s home.
‘Ah, yes,’ said Oscar, smiling. ‘Balzac, your hero. He was a most remarkable combination of the artistic temperament with the scientific spirit. He would have made a good detective. We are not visiting his house today, however, Robert. We are calling at the château next door — l’Hôtel Lamballe, once the home of Queen Marie Antoinette’s unfortunate friend, the Princesse de Lamballe, after whom Maman La Grange has named her poodle. It now houses the clinic founded and run by the father and grandfather of our young friend, Jacques-Emile Blanche. I believe that this is where Agnès La Grange has taken refuge.’
‘Among the lost and the lunatic?’
‘And the illustrious,’ added Oscar. ‘The Doctors Blanche attract a very superior type of patient. This is not Reading Gaol: the patients here come voluntarily. Delacroix, Degas, Dumas, Berlioz — they’ve all sought sanctuary here. The Blanches understand the artistic temperament. Apparently, Gérard de Nerval was allowed to bring his pet lobster with him.’
As we came up the hill towards Passy and our cab turned left through the high wrought-iron gates into the grounds of the clinic, another carriage, a closed four-wheeler, was coming out. ‘Did you see who that was?’ asked Oscar, peering out of our cab’s rear window.
‘No. Who was it?’
He shook his head. ‘Perhaps I was mistaken.’
At first encounter, the celebrated clinic of the Doctors Blanche offered a disturbing mixture of the serene and the macabre: a beautiful eighteenth-century house, flooded with sunshine, filled with freshly cut flowers, and, within it, haunted figures, mostly cowed and shuffling, wandering alone along high-ceilinged corridors. We were greeted in the marbled entrance hall by a pale young man, with sunken cheeks and bloodshot eyes, who sat at a Louis XV desk beneath an ornate Venetian chandelier, with a hypodermic syringe resting in a kidney-shaped enamel bowl at his side. He was Dr Blanche’s secretary, he assured us.
He was also a patient, he explained, as he escorted us through a series of huge and handsome reception rooms towards the doctor’s study. ‘We’re all given work to do here. It is part of the treatment.’ He looked Oscar up and down as we walked. ‘I expect the housekeeper will find something to suit you. They’re always short of people in the laundry.’
When we reached the last of the interconnecting reception rooms (it was a music room: Oscar was disappointed not to recognise the elderly gentleman seated at the piano), the young man directed us to the far corner and led us up a shallow flight of steps to a pair of closed double doors. He knocked on the doors briskly and, without waiting for an answer, pushed them open for us, stepping back to let us through. ‘I will see you at dinner,’ he said, retreating. ‘It’s jugged hare tonight.’
Oscar led the way into the doctor’s study: it was a perfect country gentleman’s library, with green-painted wood panelling between walnut bookshelves, and a broad bay window opening out onto the garden whose lawns ran down to the river’s edge.
‘Yes,’ said Dr Blanche. ‘It is the library of your dreams. I know what you’re thinking, Mr Wilde. That is my business.’
‘And you know my name!’ exclaimed Oscar.
‘And Mr Sherard’s, too,’ said the doctor, stepping forward from behind his desk and taking us each by the hand. ‘My son has told me much about you both. He values your friendship greatly. It is a pleasure to meet you.’
It was a pleasure to meet him, certainly. Emile Blanche was one of the most naturally charming men I have met.
I liked him the moment I set eyes on him. I trusted him. Beyond a pair of round wire-rimmed reading spectacles and a maroon-coloured velvet skullcap, he was not especially striking in appearance — he was in his early fifties, I suppose, conservatively dressed, clean-shaven, of middling height and build — but his manner, gentle and good-humoured, courteous and inquisitive, was immediately endearing. Behind his glasses, his beady eyes sparkled. He had an upturned mouth that revealed neat, gleaming white teeth each time he smiled.
‘What can I do for you?’ he asked, indicating a pair of upright chairs by his desk for us to sit upon. ‘Apart from offer you a glass of Madeira. It’s medicinal. I’m a doctor. You can’t refuse.’
He went to a cabinet by the window and poured us each a glass of wine. ‘This is the colour of old gold, is it not?’ he said to me as he gave me my glass. ‘Jacques-Emile tells me that you call white wine yellow wine. He is a great admirer of yours.’
‘And we are of his,’ said Oscar emphatically.
‘And of yours, of course,’ added Dr Blanche, handing Oscar his Madeira. ‘He is painting a young lady’s portrait at the moment and he has given her a copy of your poems to hold in her hands. He says that that way he can be sure there will be poetry in the painting come what may.’
Oscar inclined his head to acknowledge the compliment. ‘Is the portrait of Agnès La Grange by any chance?’ he asked.
‘No,’ replied the doctor, raising his glass towards us both in a silent toast, ‘but Jacques-Emile is indeed painting Agnès. She is a beautiful girl. Exquisite. She is staying here at the moment. Jacques-Emile brought her. With her physician’s approval, of course. Dr Ferrand lives here in Passy. He is a fine doctor and a good man. Agnès was eager to come to us: to get away from the theatre, to get away from her troubles. She is troubled, poor child. She is in love with her father.’
‘With Edmond La Grange?’
‘Yes. He was here a moment ago. You’ve only just missed him. He comes to see her every day. He is very concerned for her.’ Dr Blanche looked anxiously at our puzzled faces. ‘But you knew all this, surely?’ He set down his wine glass on the desk.
‘No,’ said Oscar quietly, ‘we did not know.’
Dr Blanche looked to me. ‘I thought that Jacques-Emile had told you.’
‘No,’ I said.
The doctor sighed and removed his spectacles. His eyelids flickered. He took a handkerchief from his coat pocket and polished his glasses. ‘I have spoken out of turn,’ he said. ‘I assumed that you knew. I apologise.’ He replaced his spectacles.
‘No harm is done,’ said Oscar. ‘We are friends of Agnès. And of her father.’
‘I know,’ said Dr Blanche, picking up his glass of Madeira once more. ‘Jacques-Emile has told me.’
Oscar leant forward in his chair. ‘You say that Edmond La Grange was here just now …’ he began tentatively.
‘Visiting Agnès,’ I added. Oscar glanced at me. I could see that I had spoken out of turn.
‘Don’t misunderstand me, gentlemen,’ said the doctor quickly. ‘Monsieur La Grange loves Agnès deeply, but as a father should love a daughter.’ He looked between us and smiled reassuringly. ‘Her love for him is more complicated — that is all. It’s her age. It’s the fact that she has had no mother. It’s her life in the theatre. It’s playing the role of Ophelia. It’s all sorts of things. I am not unduly worried. She’ll come through. Indeed, she already seems much happier than she was when she arrived. She couldn’t sleep. Now she’s fast asleep.’
‘May we see her?’ asked Oscar.
‘I have made you anxious,’ replied Dr Blanche, putting down his glass once more. ‘And suspicious.’
‘Not suspicious,’ said Oscar smoothly.
‘Suspicious, Mr Wilde. I read minds. That is my business.’ The doctor got to his feet. ‘I understand your concern. You care for Agnès.’ He smiled at us disarmingly. ‘You may watch her sleeping, certainly.’
Dr Blanche walked to the walnut bookcase by the fireplace, bent forward and turned a small handle half hidden beneath the m
antelpiece. The bookcase sprang open. ‘This way, gentlemen.’
We followed the doctor through the concealed doorway and up a narrow circular stone stairwell to the floor above. The stairs opened immediately onto a wide, deserted corridor, with cream-coloured painted walls and a polished wooden floor. The austerity of the décor contrasted markedly with the elaborate furnishings of the floor below. ‘We have rooms for thirty patients, ‘explained Dr Blanche, leading us along the corridor. He spoke barely above a whisper: even so, his voice echoed all around. We stopped outside the third room. There was a small, square pane of glass cut into the upper panel of the door and partially covered with a thin piece of cotton curtain. Dr Blanche stood to one side to let us look through the little window. Agnès was lying on a narrow bed in the corner of the room. She was wearing a long white nightdress. Her feet-were bare; her eyes were closed. She looked serene.
‘Sleeping Beauty,’ murmured Oscar.
‘We are to wake her at five,’ said the doctor. ‘She wants to go to the theatre tonight. She wants to return to her role.’
‘Is that wise?’ I asked.
‘I wouldn’t necessarily advise it,’ replied Dr Blanche, ‘but our patients are not our prisoners. And work is good. We all need to work. “Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do that day, which must be done, whether you like it or not.”‘
‘James Russell Lowell,’ said Oscar quietly.
‘So you, too, read minds, Mr Wilde,’ said the doctor, smiling.
‘No,’ said Oscar, ‘I read books.’
21
‘The Readiness Is All’
We left the clinic confused. Why had La Grange allowed the world — and us — to think that Agnès was missing when he knew all along where she was?
‘And the good Dr Ferrand knows, too,’ mused Oscar, climbing back up into our cab.
‘At least the poor girl is alive and well,’ I said.
‘Apparently so,’ said Oscar.
Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile Page 21
