Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile

by Gyles Brandreth

  Brigadier Malthus appeared not to notice my embarrassment. He looked round to where Gabrielle was standing. ‘As you have told us, mademoiselle,’ he said courteously. ‘It is noted.’ He pushed out his lower lip once more and turned his gaze on Oscar. ‘Monsieur Wilde,’ he began.

  ‘I cannot help,’ said Oscar. ‘Alas. I watched the play with Mr Garstrang. When it was over we left the theatre with the rest of the audience and made our way in a leisurely fashion around the building to the stage door. Mr Garstrang told me that he was going to play cards with Monsieur La Grange, as usual, and bade me good-night. He went up to the private apartment above the theatre, while I waited outside the stage door, smoking a cigarette.’

  ‘Did you see Mademoiselle La Grange leave the theatre?’

  ‘The stage door is always crowded after a performance. There is always a rush to leave. I saw several of the actors depart. I spoke with Bernard La Grange, briefly, when he came out — to congratulate him. I did not see Agnès.’

  ‘Thank you, Monsieur Wilde,’ said the police officer, bowing towards Oscar. He looked around the room once more. ‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. You have all been most helpful in the most trying of circumstances. I shall need to speak to one or two of you more fully in the coming days’ — he nodded in the direction of Dr Blanche and of the stagehand who had found the body — ‘but it seems all too clear what has happened, does it not?’ He laid a kindly hand on Edmond La Grange’s shoulder as he continued to address the room. ‘Suicide is not a crime—’

  ‘It is a sin!’ cried Liselotte La Grange.

  ‘It is a tragedy. It is heart-breaking. I offer my sincere condolences to all those who knew and loved Agnès La Grange.’

  ‘Her mother committed suicide,’ said Liselotte La Grange loudly, staring directly at Brigadier Malthus. ‘Suicide is an inherited characteristic.’

  Dr Blanche caressed the old lady’s hand. Madame La Grange pulled it away from him angrily. ‘It’s in the blood,’ she squawked. ‘It’s in the blood.’ No one paid her any attention.

  Brigadier Malthus leant over Edmond La Grange and spoke into his ear. ‘I should see Bernard at some stage. He’s not here. Do you know where he is?’

  La Grange opened his eyes and looked up at the police officer wearily. ‘No. I’ve not seen him since last night.’ He turned his head towards the doorway and looked at Oscar. ‘Monsieur Wilde found Agnès yesterday. Perhaps he can help you find Bernard today.’

  Brigadier Malthus turned to Oscar with eyebrows raised.

  ‘You might try the Room of the Dead,’ suggested Oscar.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the police officer. ‘I’m obliged. That is all for now. We will take our leave.’

  As Malthus and his men departed, slowly the dressing room began to clear. No one looked anyone directly in the eye. No one spoke, except Liselotte La Grange. She pulled herself to her feet, leaning on Dr Blanche’s arm. ‘The play must continue,’ she barked.

  ‘Of course, Maman,’ said Edmond quietly.

  As the room emptied, I watched La Grange closely.

  Gradually his back straightened and his eyes began to gleam again.

  Word of Agnès’s death spread quickly. Members of the company began to arrive, drifting into the theatre hours earlier than usual. Members of the press arrived, also. Richard Marais marshalled them together on the stage and, at five o’clock, La Grange emerged from his dressing room to give a brief statement. To one of the journalists —an old friend, a card-playing crony — he granted an interview. I stood in the corner of the dressing room while the two men talked: La Grange remained calm throughout. He spoke of Agnès without tears but with heart-rending affection; he described her contribution to ‘the perfect Hamlet’ with unashamed pride. His self-control was extraordinary, but, early in the evening, when I left him alone in his room to take his usual pre-performance siesta, as I stood in the wings I could hear him sobbing.

  The police did not find Bernard La Grange at the Room of the Dead. Oscar found him, as he had expected that he might, at Sarah Bernhardt’s studio in Montmartre, with Maurice Rollinat. It was Oscar who broke the news to Bernard of his sister’s death. Outwardly, the young actor took it calmly, stoically, just as his father had done. He said nothing— or, rather, as Oscar described it to me later, he began quoting a line from a poem by Baudelaire and then, ‘seeming to recognise how trite the rhyme sounded in face of the reality of what had occurred, fell into silence’. Oscar told Bernard what little he knew of the circumstances of Agnès’s death and that the police officer investigating the tragedy appeared to be competent and conscientious: ‘a decent and civilised man, in fact’.

  ‘Is it Malthus?’ asked Bernard.

  ‘It is,’ said Oscar. ‘He is a friend of your father’s, I think.’

  Bernard La Grange laughed. ‘But he can be trusted, nonetheless. What does he think?’

  ‘Malthus? Of Agnès’s death? He believes that it was suicide.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bernard softly. ‘It’s in the blood.’

  Sarah Bernhardt took the young actor in her arms and embraced him as a mother might. Maurice Rollinat embraced him, too, and as he did so (as Oscar noticed, but Sarah Bernhardt did not) slipped three small, glass phials of liquid opium into his coat pocket.

  At six o’clock, Oscar brought Hamlet back to the theatre by cab. Bernard La Grange was neither shocked nor surprised that his father — and his grandmother —wanted to continue with the evening’s performance. It was what he wanted, also. ‘It’s what we do,’ he said.

  La Grange, père et fils, gave magnificent performances that night, thrilling in their intensity. Agnès’s understudy rose to the occasion, equally. ‘She is a fine young actress, ‘Edmond La Grange murmured to me as we stood together in the wings. Other members of the company were much less assured in their playing: Gabrielle de la Tourbillon was more muted than I had ever known her be on stage, and Carlos Branco forgot his lines on several occasions. ‘He’s playing Polonius,’ Edmond La Grange muttered to me scornfully. ‘Polonius is an old fool. No one will notice. No one will care.’

  At the end of the performance, La Grange sent me to find Oscar and Bernard to invite them to join him for a drink in his dressing room. ‘If you see Garstrang or Marais, get them to take care of Maman,’ he added as I made to leave. ‘I don’t want her here. I have had enough of Maman.’

  I found Bernard at the stage door, talking to a young woman. She was a pretty girl, in a blue cape and bonnet, a member of the audience, who had come to ask him for his autograph. Oscar was with them, smoking a cigarette. Bernard gave the girl his signature and kissed her hand with a Gallic show of gallantry. I told him that his father wanted to see him. ‘Must I?’ he asked wearily.

  ‘I think you must,’ said Oscar.

  I brought them back to La Grange’s dressing room.

  The old actor had undressed and dressed himself again.

  He had already opened a bottle of champagne. We raised our glasses to Agnès’s memory — and to the Théâtre La Grange and ‘the perfect Hamlet’.

  La Grange announced that, for once, he was not in the mood for cards. He had ordered Marais to fetch a cab. He proposed to take us out to supper — in Agnès’s honour. ‘I have reserved a table at Pharamond. It is Oscar’s favourite. Oscar shall speak to us of Shakespeare’s heroines and of mortality. Will you not, Oscar?’

  ‘If that is what you wish,’ answered Oscar.

  Bernard got to his feet and said that, alas, he could not join us: he was committed to going to Le Chat Noir with Maurice Rollinat and Jacques-Emile Blanche. He was sure he had mentioned it earlier.

  ‘Le Chat Noir?’ repeated Edmond. ‘Tonight?’

  ‘I have not seen Jacques-Emile since the news of Agnès … He loved her very much. He will be desolated. I feel that I should see him.’

  Edmond La Grange drained his glass and placed it on the dressing table. ‘You did say so, and I understand,’ he said. ‘Go. Take a cab. I’ll pay for it. I
n fact, take the cab that’s at the stage door now. I’ll order another.’

  Bernard embraced his father, asked Oscar for a cigarette, wished us goodnight and went on his way.

  ‘Take care,’ said Oscar, opening his cigarette case and giving Bernard two or three of his cigarettes.

  We remained in the dressing room, finishing our wine. The clock struck the half-hour. ‘Perhaps we’ll forget Pharamond,’ said La Grange. ‘This is cosy. Shall we just stay here and open another bottle?’

  A minute later, as I was fetching a second bottle of Perrier-Jouët from the case that was kept in a corner of the dresser’s cubicle, we heard a dreadful hubbub coming from the wings: shouting, cries of alarm, running feet. The dressing-room door burst open violently.

  It was Eddie Garstrang, distraught. ‘It’s Bernard!’ he cried. ‘In the street …

  ‘He’s dead?’ gasped Edmond La Grange.

  ‘Almost certainly.’

  ‘Consumed by fire?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘Yes. Exactly.’

  23

  The Elements

  As we ran from the dressing room, La Grange stumbled in the darkened wings. Oscar and Garstrang helped him to his feet. We ran on, desperately, out of the stage door and down the steps into the cobbled alleyway. We smelt and heard the fire before we saw it: the stench of burning leather, the spit and crackle of burning wood. There, at the far end of the black alley, like a bonfire on a hilltop, stood a horse-drawn four-wheeler with its carriage all ablaze.

  The carriage was a burning ball of fire, a roaring furnace, and outlined against it were the silhouettes of men frantically trying to douse the flames. The cab driver, the stage doorkeeper, Richard Marais, Carlos Branco, actors and stagehands were darting to and from the blaze with buckets filled with sand, and water from the nearby horse-trough. They did well: they contained the fire: it did not spread. The horse was saved, but not the carriage, nor the single figure within it: Bernard La Grange.

  ‘My God, Oscar,’ I whispered, ‘we could all be dead!’ We stood helpless, halfway along the alley, transfixed by the horrific scene. Repeatedly, La Grange tried to run towards the flames, but Garstrang held him back. ‘There’s nothing to be done,’ he said.

  It must have taken half an hour for the fire to subside and the remains of the burnt-out vehicle to cool sufficiently for us to get inside the carriage and retrieve the charred body of the once beautiful young man. La Grange and Carlos Branco, both in tears, attempted to lift the body out of the carriage. The boy’s limbs came apart in their hands.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ wailed La Grange.

  At Oscar’s suggestion, Richard Marais was sent to fetch the police.

  ‘Ask for Malthus,’ said La Grange.

  ‘It’s midnight,’ said Oscar. ‘Bring anyone who will come.’

  The remains of Bernard’s body were carried into the theatre and laid out in the wings. From the rail of costumes that stood at the edge of the stage Carlos Branco fetched a cloak: it was the cloak he wore as the Ghost of Hamlet’s father. He placed the cloak over the corpse. We stood around the dead boy’s body in dismay.

  Gabrielle de la Tourbillon, alerted by the noise, had come down from the apartment. She was wearing a hooded winter cloak over her nightdress. She brought us tumblers of brandy.

  ‘Where is Maman?’ asked La Grange.

  ‘In bed, asleep,’ answered Gabrielle.

  ‘Good,’ mumbled La Grange. ‘Leave her be.’

  Within the half-hour, Marais had returned. The police officer he brought with him was not Brigadier Malthus. I did not catch the man’s name, but I smelt the wine on his breath and the sweat on his uniform. He did not detain us long. La Grange formally identified the victim’s body as that of Bernard La Grange: the young actor’s silk-soft black hair was burnt to a stubble, but his face, though scorched and charred, was recognisable. The cab driver confirmed what had happened. At half past eleven — he had heard a church bell strike — a young man came out of the stage door and walked briskly up the alleyway towards the waiting cab. The alley was quite crowded —the performance was not long over — but the cab driver noticed the young man at once because he was walking directly towards him and walking with purpose. As he reached the carriage, he called up to the driver: ‘It’s only one passenger after all. Le Chat Noir in Montmartre, if you please.’ Then he climbed aboard.

  ‘Was he alone when he got into your cab?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘He was on his own, yes, but there were other people nearby, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Did he open the cab door himself?’

  ‘Yes. No.’ The coachman hesitated. ‘I don’t recall. Possibly not. He was lighting a cigarette at the time. I remember that.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Oscar.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the police officer, looking at Oscar with a weary eye. He licked the tip of his pencil and glanced down at his notebook before turning back to the cab driver: ‘And then?’

  ‘And then — a moment later, just as I was releasing the brakes to move off — I felt the explosion. The carriage rocked. It was like a small bomb going off, a sudden burst of noise and heat. I jumped down, uncoupled the carriage and pulled the horse to safety.’

  Carlos Branco looked at the cab driver in disbelief. ‘You saved the horse before the boy?’

  The cabman shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘It was a ball of fire,’ said Eddie Garstrang. ‘There was nothing to be done.’

  ‘And there’s nothing more that we can do tonight,’ said the policeman, closing his notebook and suppressing a yawn, ‘except leave you to your prayers.

  ‘Will you not examine the carriage at least?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘Not tonight,’ said the officer coldly. ‘It’s late, it’s dark. I’m going to bed. I advise you to do the same.’ The officer stared at Oscar, defying him to speak again. Oscar kept his silence. The officer turned to Edmond La Grange: ‘I shall leave a man in the street overnight.’

  A police hearse had arrived to bear Bernard La Grange’s body to the morgue. Two porters — ‘burly men with butcher’s faces’ is how Oscar described them in his journal — arrived in the wings and, without speaking or acknowledging our presence, went straight about their business. Ignoring the cries of distress from La Grange and Carlos Branco, they uncovered the corpse, throwing Branco’s cloak unceremoniously to one side, and rolled the dead body, like a pig’s carcass, onto a canvas stretcher. Together, with a single grunt, they lifted the stretcher and, without pause, carried their grim cargo away.

  ‘Flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,’ whispered La Grange, watching them depart.

  The police officer looked about the group of bleak and bewildered faces. ‘My condolences,’ he said. ‘Goodnight. Brigadier Malthus will take charge tomorrow. Please be so good as to stay in the vicinity in case any of you is needed for questioning again.’

  ‘We shall all be here,’ said Edmond La Grange calmly. ‘We have a performance of Hamlet to give tomorrow night.’

  ‘No,’ protested Branco. ‘You cannot play Hamlet without the prince.’ Desperately, he looked at La Grange and then at the policeman. ‘We have lost our Ophelia. We have lost our Hamlet. They were without equal. We cannot go on.’

  ‘The understudy knows the lines,’ said La Grange.

  ‘The play goes on.’

  ‘No,’ pleaded Carlos Branco. ‘For pity’s sake, no.

  The police officer departed. The moment he had gone, Oscar touched my arm, pulling me gently from Gabrielle’s side. ‘I think that we should be on our way as well,’ he said. He offered his hand to Edmond La Grange: ‘I know not what to say …

  ‘Say nothing,’ answered La Grange quietly. ‘We will speak tomorrow.’ Oscar nodded and turned to leave. Suddenly, raising his voice, the old actor called him back. ‘Mon ami, one thing before you go,’ he asked. ‘Please.’ Oscar turned round. ‘When we heard that Bernard was dead, you said at once, “Consumed by fire?” How did you know?’
/>
  Oscar looked at Edmond La Grange. ‘Maman’s dog died buried in a case of earth,’ he said softly. ‘Your dresser — my poor friend Traquair — died by breathing poisoned air. Agnès was drowned. Earth, air and water; there was only element remaining: fire.’

  On the morning following the horrific death of Bernard La Grange, Oscar picked me up by cab from my room in the rue de Beauce and, together, we drove out to Passy.

  ‘Do you honestly believe that these deaths are all connected?’ I asked my friend.

  It was eleven o’clock and the sky was overcast. Oscar was dressed in a most improbable (and unseasonable) suit of canary yellow. He laid a straw boater hat on the seat between us and, from a paper cornet, offered me an aniseed ball. ‘Breakfast?’ he enquired. He was at his most shiny-faced and playful. ‘Are the deaths connected?’ he murmured. ‘Yes,’ he said emphatically.

  ‘And by the elements of earth, air, water and fire?’

  He nodded. ‘I’m inclined to think so.’

  I looked at him and shook my head. ‘And I’m inclined to think that this time, Oscar, you have allowed your creative juices to flow to excess.

  ‘Are you indeed?’ He laughed. ‘Creativity, we’re told, is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.’

  ‘Precisely. And I think you’ve made rather more out of it than the facts of the matter justify. Death — murder or suicide — by earth, air, water and fire? Frankly, Oscar, I’m incredulous.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be that, Robert,’ he cried, pressing another aniseed sweet upon me. ‘Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.’

  ‘Last night’s tragedy could have been an accident, Oscar. Have you considered that possibility?’

  ‘I have, Robert, of course I have. Like you, I heard the coachman tell us that Bernard was lighting a cigarette as he entered the cab.’