Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile

by Gyles Brandreth

  ‘You noticed that?’

  ‘I did. But could a simple lighted match cause such a sudden conflagration?’

  ‘He had a lighted match in his hand — and in his pocket three phials of laudanum!’ I said, with a note of quiet triumph in my voice. (I had been waiting since last night to point this out to Oscar.) ‘You saw Rollinat place them there. You told me so.’

  ‘I did. And, yes, Robert, laudanum is a tincture of opium: it is prepared with ether. It is highly flammable. Somehow the lighted match could have come into contact with the laudanum; but by accident? Is not murder much more likely? Is it not much more probable that as Bernard La Grange stepped unsuspectingly into the cab some unknown hand threw an incendiary device into the carriage after him?’

  ‘Or perhaps it was suicide,’ suggested Dr Emile Blanche gently. ‘I do think, gentlemen, that suicide is the most likely explanation.’

  We were ushered into the great man’s presence the moment we reached the clinic at Passy. We appeared to be expected: in the doctor’s library, coffee and Madeira were already set out on a tray by the bay window. Blanche blinked at us endearingly from behind his gig-lamps. ‘As old Madame La Grange reminded us yesterday, suicide is an inherited characteristic. It runs in families. Agnès La Grange took her own life. She was Bernard’s twin. Bernard will have felt that in losing his sister, he had lost half of himself. Bernard’s mother took her own life; Bernard’s sister took her own life. In doing so, they had given Bernard permission to do the same.’

  ‘It is all very sad,’ said Oscar, somewhat dreamily, holding up his glass of Madeira and gazing through the liquid gold towards the bay window and the grey sky beyond.

  ‘It is heart-breaking,’ said Dr Blanche. ‘And not only for the La Grange family. My poor Jacques-Emile is profoundly distressed by the news.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Oscar, coming suddenly out of his reverie. ‘Jacques-Emile. I feel for him. In truth, Doctor, it was to see him that we came out to Passy this morning.’

  ‘You have missed him, I am afraid. He has gone over to Montmartre to be with his friend, Rollinat.’ He sighed briefly and offered us more wine. ‘These poetic nihilists like young Rollinat, they talk of death easily enough, but the reality of it bites all the same. Bites — and hurts.’

  ‘Jacques-Emile and Bernard La Grange were friends?’ I asked.

  ‘Close friends,’ replied the doctor, smiling at me. ‘The closest. They fought together, mano a mano — they wrestled and they fenced. It was through their sparring that they expressed their love. It is often the way with men.’

  ‘And Agnès?’ enquired Oscar. ‘Did Jacques-Emile love Agnès?’

  ‘You know that he did. Passionately. Deeply. Desperately.’

  ‘And did she love him?’

  ‘Like a brother!’ The doctor gave a hollow laugh. He removed his wire-rimmed spectacles and shook his head mournfully. ‘As I told you the other day — when I should not have done so: I thought that you already knew —Agnès’s father was the love of Agnès’s life.’

  ‘Was that love —’ Oscar hesitated. ‘Was that love —achieved?’ he asked.

  Dr Blanche sat forward and put on his spectacles once more. ‘What do you mean, Mr Wilde?’

  ‘Was it consummated?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘Good God, no.’ Dr Blanche got to his feet and moved towards the window as if to get closer to fresh air. He turned back and looked at Oscar. ‘What an idea!’ he exclaimed, shaking his head.

  ‘You are certain of this?’ said Oscar, leaning forward, with supplicatory hands outstretched. ‘Forgive me for persisting, but you see the significance; under the circumstances.’

  ‘I do, of course,’ said the doctor, calming himself. ‘If Agnès and her father had been lovers, self-loathing might have driven her to suicide — or shame might have driven him to murder.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Oscar dryly.

  ‘But they were not lovers,’ the doctor continued, picking up the decanter and pouring us each a further glass of Madeira. ‘I am sure of it. Delicate as it was, I raised the matter with them both, separately and together. Edmond La Grange loved his daughter — naturally. That he should have known her carnally is inconceivable. He told me that the very notion of such a thing filled him with disgust. He told me so privately and, again, later, in Agnès’s presence.

  ‘And you believed him?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘I believed him. I have been a doctor for more than thirty years, Mr Wilde. I know when my patients are lying to me.’ He resumed his seat and sipped at his wine reflectively. ‘And I believed Agnès’s denials, equally. Her love for her father was complicated. It contained what nowadays we call an “erotic charge”. Are you familiar with the term?’

  ‘It sounds expensive,’ said Oscar. ‘Eros always was the costliest of the gods.’

  Dr Blanche obliged Oscar with a little laugh. ‘Agnès’s feelings for her father troubled her,’ he went on. ‘They may indeed have been what drove her to her suicide; but, if they were, it was because of frustration not fulfilment.’

  ‘So Agnès and Edmond La Grange did not make the beast with two backs?’ mused Oscar, draining his glass slowly. He glanced towards the doctor. ‘Are you familiar with the term?’

  Blanche smiled. ‘No, but I catch its drift. It sounds uncomfortable.’ The doctor got to his feet and turned towards Oscar, putting his hands together behind his back and raising himself on his toes as though he were addressing a classroom of students. ‘Mr Wilde,’ he said, ‘La Grange and his daughter were not lovers, I’m certain of that. Agnès told me that she was ready to take an oath on the Holy Bible that she had not shared her father’s bed. She knew that to do so would be a sin. She told me that she would never share the bed of a man she could not marry.’

  ‘She spoke of sin, did she? She had thoughts of matrimony even? You surprise me.’ Oscar placed his empty wine glass on the side table next to him. ‘She was a virgin then?’ he asked, sitting forward and looking up at Blanche.

  The doctor raised an amused eyebrow. ‘I did not say that, Mr Wilde. She was an actress. She had a lover, I believe. Quite recently acquired.’

  ‘Not your son?’

  ‘No, not Jacques-Emile — though she spoke of him to Jacques-Emile.’

  ‘Did she mention his name?’

  ‘I don’t believe so. He was an older man, I think.’

  ‘Ah,’ sighed Oscar. “‘The older man”: there’s a term with which we’re both familiar. I don’t know a more depressing turn of phrase, do you?’

  24

  The Face at the Door

  When Dr Blanche’s decanter of Madeira was empty, we took our leave. In the cab going back into town, Oscar sat with his legs stretched out before him and his straw boater pulled over his eyes.

  ‘You’re in mellow mood, mon ami,’ I said.

  ‘We have been in congenial company,’ he replied. ‘And though my eyes are closed, I begin to see the way ahead. I had a glimmer of it in Reading Gaol. It is becoming clearer now.

  ‘You amaze me, Oscar. I’m totally lost. Tell me more.

  He pushed back the boater and opened one eye. ‘I only begin to see the way, Robert. Don’t rush me. But a beginning is a beginning. I’m content with that.’ He felt in his pockets for his cigarette case. ‘As we know, with any creative endeavour, the hardest part is to begin. A blade of grass is no easier to make than an oak.’

  ‘You are an odd fellow, Oscar,’ I said, contemplating my friend as, eyes closed once more, he placed a cigarette between his lips and lit it successfully with a single match. ‘Last night we witnessed a terrible tragedy. Yesterday morning Agnès was discovered drowned. And yet, this morning, you seem positively gay.’

  ‘I did not know them well, but I do grieve for Agnès and Bernard La Grange,’ he said quietly, letting the white cigarette smoke filter slowly from his nostrils. ‘They were beautiful and gifted and too young to die. I grieve for Washington Traquair, even more so.’ He half opened his eyes and turned his
head towards me. ‘I am not heartless, Robert, you know that. But today I am happy. I cannot deny it.’ He sat up and doffed his hat in my direction. ‘I am in love.’

  ‘In love?’ I repeated, surprised.

  ‘Yes, Robert. You may congratulate me. That violet-eyed little Artemis, so grave and slight, with her flower-like head that droops like a blossom and her wonderful ivory hands …’

  ‘The young lady that you saw in London? You have spoken of her before.’

  ‘I have seen her in London, Robert, yes. And in Dublin. And in my sweetest dreams. And I have spoken of her, naturally. Have I told you that she is perfection? She has all the delicate grace of a Tanagra figurine.’ Suddenly he threw his cigarette out of the cab window and from his inside coat pocket produced a small cream-coloured envelope which he kissed and then flourished before me. ‘If I am especially gay today it is because she has written to me; and what she has to say is most encouraging.’

  ‘Ah,’ I cried. ‘She reciprocates your feelings.’

  ‘It seems so, Robert,’ he said, beaming from ear to ear. ‘I know friend Rollinat is a doughty champion of the pleasures of perversity and the dark delights of fornication among the fallen, but I am not for love among the ruined. I am for Constance! I have seen the tender purity of girlhood look out from her dreaming eyes.

  ‘Ah, yes, Constance, that’s her name.’

  He leant towards me eagerly. ‘The name has an exquisite forest simplicity about it, does it not? It sounds most sweetly out of tune with this rough and ready world of ours — rather like a daisy on a railway bank!’

  ‘Oscar!’ I reproved him. ‘You’ve used that line before — about another lady’s name.’

  ‘Have I?’ He began to laugh. ‘Surely not.’

  ‘You have, Oscar. You used those very words to Gabrielle de la Tourbillon. When you danced with her, crossing the Atlantic. She told me all about it.’

  ‘She did?’ He appeared quite unabashed. ‘And has Mademoiselle de la Tourbillon told you the truth about her own name?’ he asked.

  ‘I have not asked her. I did not like to.’

  ‘Oh, you should, Robert,’ he continued teasingly. ‘You most certainly should if you’re to marry her.’

  ‘I’m not going to marry her, Oscar,’ I protested. ‘Don’t be absurd.’

  My friend laughed. ‘I am sorry to hear it — especially since it turns out that you both have notable great-grandfathers. Gabrielle was born a Guillotin! She’s a direct descendant of the professor of anatomy who gave the guillotine his name.’

  I looked at my friend in amazement. ‘Is this true? How do you know?’

  ‘Because she told me, because I asked. Names do fascinate me so. Gabrielle and all her family changed their surname because of its macabre connotations. I think that’s a great pity. I do hope my grandchildren don’t decide to change their name.’

  ‘They won’t,’ I chided him. ‘Wilde is a wonderful name.’

  ‘So is Guillotin,’ he cried. ‘Guillotin has the edge. You can’t deny it!’

  My friend, still laughing, dropped me at the corner of the place de La République and the boulevard du Temple and drove on to Montmartre in search of Jacques-Emile Blanche and Maurice Rollinat.

  I, rather more soberly, walked down the cobbled side road adjacent to the Théâtre La Grange and turned into the narrow alleyway that led to the stage door. The burnt-out carriage had been taken away. A solitary policeman stood on the corner smoking a cigarette and watching, without any show of interest, as half a dozen stagehands, armed with wheelbarrows, brooms and shovels, cleared away the remaining evidence of the conflagration. Eddie Garstrang was watching them, too.

  I stopped and stood with him for a moment. Curiously, since our duel, my feelings towards the American had changed. I no longer despised him or viewed him as a rival. He was not a friend. Beyond Gabrielle, we had no interests in common, but because of Gabrielle — because we had fought over the same territory and it was territory that we now shared — we were, after a fashion, I now felt, comrades-in-arms. He offered me a cigarette.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘What’s happening?’ I asked, nodding towards the theatre.

  ‘Your lord and master is running the understudies through their lines. The matinée is cancelled but the evening performance goes on. Mr Branco says it is an insult to the dead. Marais says it is essential. The theatre needs the money. The old crone says the glory of La Grange requires it. I’ve no idea where Gabrielle is. She’s all yours if you can find her. I’m on my way to a bar to get drunk.’

  I smiled. ‘I thought you didn’t drink before playing cards.’

  ‘I don’t. But I’m not playing cards tonight. And I didn’t play cards last night. I don’t have to play cards any more.’ He drew deeply on his cigarette and, holding it tightly in the corner of his mouth, exposing two rows of tiny white teeth, returned my smile with a grotesque, lopsided grimace. ‘I am a free man,’ he purred. ‘I have been since the stroke of midnight. I was contracted to La Grange for six months. I’ve served my time. I’ve cleared my debt. I’ve paid my dues.’

  ‘Bravo!’ I said, putting my hand forward to shake his.

  ‘Thank you, son,’ he said, laughing. ‘It feels good.’

  I left him and went into the theatre. La Grange was on the stage, working with the understudies. I stood in the wings watching them until I caught his eye. ‘I’m here, monsieur,’ I mouthed.

  He called to me: ‘I want the company on stage at six o’clock.’ I nodded. ‘Take the message round, mon petit. This will be a night to reckon with. You can tell your grandchildren you were here!’

  His shoulders were hunched, but there was a lustre in his eyes. Hissing the word ‘Yes!’ beneath his breath, he turned back to the actors.

  I turned round to find Richard Marais at my shoulder. He was so close that our faces almost touched. His bald head was brown and blotchy. His left temple throbbed rhythmically. He was a very ugly man.

  ‘It’s done,’ he whispered.

  ‘What’s done?’ I asked.

  ‘The call for the meeting — at six o’clock. Everyone knows. He asked me to set it up an hour ago.’

  ‘Good,’ I said, excusing myself. ‘Thank you.’

  I went to La Grange’s dressing room and set about my duties in the usual way: sorting the laundry, cleaning the hairbrushes, laying out La Grange’s Claudius costume, polishing his belt and boots. When I had completed the tasks, I felt suddenly weary. The door to the dresser’s room — the cubicle beyond the dressing room — was ajar.

  I pushed it open. There was no light in the room, but I could discern the outline of the divan. I lay down on it and closed my eyes and thought of Washington Traquair.

  At six o’clock the great Edmond La Grange stood on top of the small flight of wooden steps that formed part of the ramparts of Elsinore Castle and addressed the company that bore his name.

  He spoke affectingly about Bernard and Agnès, about their youth and beauty and great talent, about their contribution to ‘the perfect Hamlet’ and about the heritage of the family La Grange. Now, he explained, he had no heirs: the La Grange name had been at the heart of Paris theatre from the era of Molière until this moment. When he died, it would be over. ‘But the play must go on.’

  ‘The name must go on,’ croaked Liselotte La Grange. The old woman sat on a chair at the edge of the stage, with her dog scratching and snuffling at her side. Eddie Garstrang stood behind her, smiling.

  Carlos Branco — ‘our Polonius’ — had wanted to cancel tonight’s performance, La Grange continued, ‘out of respect for Agnès and Bernard’. Polonius was wrong:

  ‘Polonius is an old fool; he has been overruled.’ As La Grange said these words I watched Carlos Branco standing at the edge of the wings. He was staring at the ground. As La Grange spoke, slowly, without looking up, he shook his head. ‘Tonight,’ La Grange concluded, ‘Hamlet and Ophelia will be played by the understudies, young actors who are here not because they
are anybody’s children, but because they are fine practitioners of their art.’ He invited the pair forward to take a bow. We gave them our applause.

  As the speech finished, I saw Oscar appear at the back of the crowd. He moved towards Gabrielle de la Tourbillon and put a hand on her shoulder. As she had listened to La Grange, I had seen her eyes fill with tears. She turned to Oscar and embraced him.

  The company dispersed; the stage emptied; La Grange returned to his dressing room. I followed him, congratulating him on his speech. When we reached his dressing room, as we entered I saw his eyes scan the room. ‘Is everything prepared?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘As ever.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, turning to me and smiling. ‘I’m grateful.’ He sat down on his stool and looked at me in his dressing-table mirror. ‘I shall dress myself tonight,’ he said. ‘For once, I’d like to be alone.’

  ‘I understand, monsieur,’ I said.

  ‘Go and find your friend, Oscar,’ he added, waving his hand to me through the looking-glass. ‘Watch the play from the front tonight. You may see a great Hamlet — so long as Polonius doesn’t forget his words.’ He laughed and swivelled round on his stool to look at me directly. ‘The boy and girl are good actors, perhaps as good as Bernard and Agnès, for all we know.’

  He turned back towards his dressing table and raised his hand again to wave me on my way. I left the room, closing the door behind me. As I closed it, I heard La Grange moving within the room. I paused. I heard him crossing the floor. I wondered if he was about to call me back. He wasn’t. To my surprise, I heard him turn the key in the lock of the door. I had never known him lock his dressing-room door before.

  I began to walk up the dimly lit wings when I heard Oscar’s voice across the stage. It was not loud — Oscar never spoke loudly — but it was unmistakable. Oscar’s way of speaking, whether in English or in French, was unique: effortless, ever-flowing, oracular. As I crossed the empty stage, I heard him say, ‘Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.’ I followed his voice and found my friend in the wings in the top left-hand corner of the stage, hidden behind a piece of scenery, close by the spot where the drowned body of Agnès La Grange had been discovered. He was talking with Gabrielle.