Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile

by Gyles Brandreth

  When I arrived, she looked around and said, ‘What time is it? Everyone’s gone. I must change or I will be late.’ She kissed Oscar lightly on the cheek. ‘I will see you later,’ she said. As she passed me, she paused and put a hand to my face. Oscar looked away. We kissed, as lovers kiss, but it was not as it had been. This was the end of the affair and, without a word being spoken, we both knew it. She hurried away to her dressing room.

  ‘Well,’ said Oscar, when Gabrielle had gone, ‘how goes it with the great La Grange? Shouldn’t you be about your duties?’

  ‘My services are not required this evening,’ I said. ‘He’s going to dress himself. He wants to be alone.’

  Oscar looked perturbed. When I told him how La Grange had waved me on my way and locked the door of the dressing room after my departure, he stepped out from behind the scenery and peered across the empty stage towards La Grange’s dressing room. I looked over his shoulder. We could see the closed door clearly from where we stood.

  Abruptly, my friend pulled me back. Walking down the wings on the other side of the stage was Carlos Branco. He was already dressed in his costume as the Ghost of Hamlet’s father, wearing his cloak (the cloak that had covered the body of Bernard La Grange the night before) and his helmet and visor. He walked briskly towards the door of La Grange’s room. He knocked on the door and waited a moment. Briefly he glanced in our direction. He turned back to the door and took off his helmet and visor and knocked again. The door opened. La Grange appeared. The great actor gave a wintry smile and nodded, stepping backwards as Branco entered the room.

  Oscar pulled me back behind the scenery. ‘Did they see us?’ he whispered.

  ‘Branco must have seen us. He looked directly at us.

  ‘Did La Grange see us?’

  ‘I don’t know. Does it matter?’

  As we spoke, we heard a sudden gunshot.

  We emerged from behind the scenery and ran across the stage towards La Grange’s dressing room. The door was open. La Grange was seated at his dressing table. His body was slumped over it. His head was lying in a glistening pool of purple blood. His Colt revolver was resting by his outstretched right hand. He was quite dead.

  25

  The Truth

  ‘He’s blown his brains out,’ said Eddie Garstrang, surveying the scene.

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Carlos Branco.

  ‘Dear God,’ gasped Richard Marais. ‘It is all over.

  Garstrang and Branco were the first to reach the dressing room. As Oscar and I ran across the stage we saw them hurtling through the darkened wings. They were followed immediately by Richard Marais and two stagehands. We arrived at the door as they did.

  Within the room everything was still. There was no sound apart from the gentle ticking of the little carriage clock on the sideboard. We stood, frozen, seven men in a silent semicircle, gazing down on the ruin of the great La Grange. No one spoke.

  ‘Shouldn’t we get the doctor?’ I asked eventually.

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Oscar. ‘There’s no doubting that.’

  ‘Look at the blood,’ said Garstrang. The blood was everywhere: splashed across the looking-glass, spread across the dressing table, trickling onto the Turkish rug at La Grange’s feet.

  ‘Is this the promised end?’ murmured Oscar.

  The clock began to strike seven. ‘The performance must be cancelled,’ said Carlos Branco. ‘Now we have no choice.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Richard Marais.

  Oscar turned abruptly on Marais. ‘How do you know what Monsieur Branco has just said?’ he asked. ‘He is standing behind you. You cannot hear him and you cannot see him to read his lips.’

  Richard Marais looked up at Oscar contemptuously. ‘Young man, you are not nearly so clever as you think. I can see Monsieur Branco’s face quite clearly — reflected in the cheval mirror by the door.’ He pointed to the full-length mirror that stood between the dressing table and the doorway. Carlos Branco smiled.

  Oscar lowered his head, suddenly abashed. ‘I apologise,’ he muttered.

  Outside the dressing room we could hear footsteps and voices.

  ‘We must go and tell them what has happened,’ said Branco.

  ‘Yes,’ said Marais, turning to the stagehands. ‘There’s business to attend to. The performance is cancelled. I’ll inform the box office and the front-of-house staff.’

  ‘Should I address the company?’ asked Branco.

  Oscar hesitated. ‘Or should Madame La Grange do that?’ he asked.

  ‘Dear God!’ Marais sighed and looked once more at the bloodied body of Edmond La Grange slumped across the dressing table. The glistening blood was beginning to congeal, the purple colour turning to a brownish black. ‘Someone must tell Maman.’

  ‘Shall I tell Maman?’ suggested Carlos Branco. ‘I’ve known her longest.’

  ‘Who will tell Gabrielle?’ I asked.

  ‘And someone must call the police,’ said one of the stagehands quietly. The stagehands’ faces were pale with shock. In their eyes I saw fear as well as dismay.

  ‘Quite right,’ said Richard Marais. ‘We must call the police. And Dr Ferrand. He may be in the building anyway.’

  Marais broke from our semicircle and moved towards the dressing-room door. Branco made to follow him. ‘If we get the company together on stage, I’ll speak to them.’

  ‘And what will you tell them?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘The truth,’ said Branco briskly. ‘What else is there?’

  ‘What is the truth of this?’ asked Garstrang, looking about the room and shaking his head wearily.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Oscar, moving towards the door himself, and laying a hand on Carlos Branco’s sleeve, ‘but, for the moment, I think that you should remain here.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ said Branco, pulling his arm away.

  ‘Let Monsieur Marais speak to the company,’ said Oscar, ‘while Mr Garstrang fetches the police.’ He placed himself between Carlos Branco and the dressing-room door. Oscar was considerably taller than the actor and less than half his age.

  ‘Get out of my way,’ growled Branco. ‘You’ve already made an idiot of yourself with Marais. Spare me your impertinence.’

  Oscar stood his ground. ‘I don’t wish to be impertinent,’ he said softly, ‘but I think that you should stay here with us until the police arrive.’

  ‘Why?’ barked Branco indignantly. ‘In God’s name, tell me why?’

  ‘Because,’ said Oscar simply, ‘my friend Mr Sherard and I saw you enter this room only seconds before the fatal shot was fired.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd!’ roared Branco. ‘I was nowhere near the room when the shot was fired. I was at the back of the stage searching for my cloak and helmet.’

  ‘And before you ask,’ added Marais, his hand on the door, ‘I did not “hear” the gunshot. I saw the stagehands running and followed them.’

  ‘Enough of this charade,’ said Branco, pushing past Oscar. ‘La Grange is dead. He shot himself. That’s plain for all to see.’ He turned and looked Oscar in the eye. ‘Now there’s business to be done. You can guard the body, mon ami. With your friend. Until the police arrive. We’ll see to the rest. It’s our theatre: we know how it works.’

  Marais pulled open the dressing-room door and, together, he and Carlos Branco joined the gathering throng outside. Eddie Garstrang and the two stagehands followed them. One of the stagehands — the one who had spoken — turned as he left and looked back at the body of Edmond La Grange. The young man’s eyes were filled with tears.

  The moment they were all gone, Oscar pulled the door to and turned the key in the lock.

  ‘You let him pass,’ I said, amazed. ‘You let Branco go.’

  ‘Did I have a choice?’ asked Oscar. ‘I don’t carry handcuffs about my person. I could hardly knock him down.’

  ‘You should have done.’

  ‘There’s a dead man in the room, Robert. A brawl would not be seemly.’ />
  We both turned and gazed once more on the still corpse of Edmond La Grange slumped across the dressing table.

  ‘Branco is a murderer,’ I said.

  ‘He’ll not escape — nor try to,’ said Oscar. ‘After forty years, he is ready for his moment centre stage.’

  I stood at the far side of the dressing table looking down on the blood-soaked head of the man who had become my master. I could not claim to know him well, but I had relished my short time in his service. His was a household name and I was twenty-one and not immune to the glamour of fame. Edmond La Grange was a ‘great man’ — a man ‘born to play kings’, as the French say —a man who commanded applause, night after night for more than forty years. I had not grown to love him yet, but I enjoyed his company — I was honoured by it — and I recognised his particular genius. I put out my hand towards him and, for a moment, touched his shoulder.

  I turned to Oscar who was now slowly pacing the room, inspecting the walls, the floor, the ceiling. ‘Why should Carlos Branco want to kill Edmond La Grange?’ I asked.

  ‘All sorts of reasons,’ murmured Oscar distractedly. ‘Envy, jealousy, hurt, betrayal …’

  I protested: ‘But they were friends!’

  ‘Most men are murdered by their friends,’ grunted Oscar, kneeling down behind the cheval mirror near the doorway, ‘just as most women are murdered by their lovers.’ He paused. ‘But did Branco murder La Grange, I wonder?’ he asked.

  ‘We saw him enter the room only a moment before the shot was fired.’

  ‘We did,’ said Oscar, getting to his feet. ‘And, look, here are his cloak and helmet — discarded behind the looking-glass.’

  ‘It can only have been Branco,’ I said, taking the pieces of costume from Oscar and laying them on the chaise longue. ‘There was no one else in the room when I left it. La Grange was alone in here when he locked the door behind me. I’ll swear to that.’

  Oscar was now standing close to the dressing table, peering over it, examining the bloodstained hairbrushes and the Colt revolver that lay by La Grange’s open hand. “Tis strange,’ he murmured, ‘passing strange.’

  ‘There is no mystery here, Oscar,’ I said emphatically. ‘Branco came to the door and knocked on it. We saw him. He knocked on the door a second time. We saw him. La Grange opened the door to him — and welcomed him, with a smile. We watched it happen, Oscar.’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘We saw him enter the room and the door close.’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘And a moment later, we heard the shot ring out.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  Oscar straightened himself and turned to me, feeling in his pocket for his cigarettes. ‘A brawl would have been unseemly, but I think a cigarette is permissible, don’t you?’ As he lit our cigarettes, he asked, ‘From the moment we heard the gun fire, how long did it take for us to come out from behind the scenery and begin to cross the stage? Long enough for Branco to throw off his cloak and run out of the dressing room?’

  ‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘quite long enough.’ I spoke eagerly:

  I was so accustomed to being a member of Oscar’s admiring audience, I felt oddly flattered whenever he sought my opinion. ‘Remember,’ I said, ‘he removed his helmet as he entered the room. He only had to drop the helmet and the cloak onto the floor, place the gun by the body and run out into the wings. As we came across the stage, he turned tail and came back towards the dressing room as if he were arriving for the first time.’

  ‘And he shot La Grange with La Grange’s own revolver?’ mused Oscar, gazing down once more at the long grey barrel of the Colt six-shooter.

  ‘Yes, it was in the drawer, and already loaded. We all knew that La Grange kept it there.’

  Oscar ran his fingertips along the barrel of the gun. ‘It’s called the Peacemaker, you know. Sarah Bernhardt gave it to La Grange as a present. It had belonged to her American manager — the terrible Mr Jarrett.’

  ‘I remember,’ I said. ‘Sarah will be distressed when she hears the news.

  My friend smiled and drew slowly on his cigarette.

  ‘Yes and no,’ he murmured. ‘You are familiar with the Chinese proverb: “There is no pleasure so great as watching an old friend fall off the roof.”‘ He wandered from the dressing table to the sideboard and peered down at the little carriage clock. It was almost half past seven. ‘I wonder how long the police will be?’ he asked. ‘I liked Brigadier Malthus, didn’t you? I trusted him.’

  The police arrived just as the clock was striking eight and Carlos Branco was about to address the company on stage. Moments before, in the wings, we had watched Branco offer his condolences to Liselotte La Grange. He leant towards the old lady and bowed and then, awkwardly, attempted to embrace her. Maman, who had lost her only son and both her grandchildren within the space of days, stared up at him blankly. Her withered face betrayed no feeling. Behind her was Richard Marais, pale as a corpse, and at her side, holding her hand, stood Gabrielle, her eyes puffed up from crying, her cheeks blotched with tears.

  Brigadier Malthus, when he arrived, marched immediately onto the stage with a quiet authority that brooked no argument. He silenced Carlos Branco even as he was about to speak and turned to face the assembly himself. He apologised for his intrusion, regretted its necessity and offered both his sincere condolences and his complete assurance that matters would be conducted as expeditiously as the proper pursuit of justice allowed. Standing on the ramparts, where La Grange had stood before him, he explained that no one — ‘no one at all’ — would now be able to leave the building without his permission, adding, smiling gently as he did so, that he had men stationed outside each of the theatre’s several entrances. He invited the actors to return to their dressing rooms and the stage staff to resume their posts until further notice. Glancing at his pocket watch, he expressed the hope that his business would be done within two to three hours —’by midnight at the latest’.

  He was better than his word.

  By 8.30 p.m. Malthus’s men had removed the body of Edmond La Grange from the theatre that bore his name. They also removed his dressing table and all its contents, including the terrible Mr Jarrett’s Colt revolver, and the bloodstained Turkish rug and the swivel stool on which La Grange was sitting when he was shot. Between 8.30 p.m. and 10.30 p.m., Brigadier Malthus interviewed those he termed ‘the essential witnesses’. In the space of two hours, assisted only by a young officer who took notes in shorthand, Malthus conducted a dozen interviews. His manner was courteous and urbane, enquiring, of course, but never aggressively so. Oscar said later that Malthus reminded him of a benevolent headmaster trying to bring the best out of his boys rather than a senior police officer charged with the investigation of a gruesome killing. He began his interviews with Oscar and me, followed by Carlos Branco, Richard Marais, Eddie Garstrang and the two young stagehands. He also questioned the theatre’s stage manager, the stage doorkeeper, the company doctor (his old friend, Pierre Ferrand) and, finally, the mother and the mistress of the deceased. At just after 10.30 p.m., he arrested Carlos Branco on suspicion of murder.

  We did not witness Branco’s arrest, but we heard him being dragged from his dressing room on the first floor, angrily protesting his innocence. His cries were those of a desperate man and, projected by an actor’s voice, they echoed around the building. As he was bundled down the stairs to the stage door — it took four policemen to restrain him, according to the stage doorman — he cursed the name of La Grange, blamed Oscar’s ‘false witness ‘for his wrongful arrest and shouted repeatedly: ‘Marais heard it all!’

  Once Branco had been locked into the police wagon and was on his way to his first night in the police cells, Brigadier Malthus walked through the theatre gathering up what he called ‘my old friend La Grange’s intimate circle’ and invited us to join him in the actor’s dressing room for a drink in the great man’s memory.

  La Grange’s dressing room without La Grange was a different place. Brigadier Malt
hus stood in the centre of the room, where La Grange’s dressing table had stood. We arranged ourselves around him: he was the master now. ‘This is Denmark under Fortinbras,’ murmured Oscar. My friend and I stood together, with our backs to the wall, at the edge of the gathering, by the dressing-room door, half hidden behind the cheval mirror.

  As the room began to settle, Malthus caught my eye.

  ‘Will you help Dr Ferrand serve the wine?’ he asked. The pink-faced company doctor was in the dresser’s cubicle opening the champagne. His hands were shaking slightly and there were traces of tears about his eyes. I assisted him as I was bidden. (Later I asked Oscar what he thought it was about Malthus that enabled him to be so effortlessly commanding. ‘Is it his height? His age? His integrity?’ Oscar laughed. ‘You know that he’s a policeman. We’re all frightened of policemen. And he’s a polite policeman. That’s very disconcerting.’)

  When the doctor and I had ensured that everyone had a glass, Malthus looked down at Liselotte La Grange who sat on Molière’s chaise longue gazing up at him, and said, ‘Let us drink to the name of La Grange. In the theatre, there is none greater.’

  The old woman was dry-eyed and calm. She sat bolt upright, her head erect. It was not yet five hours since her son’s death, but she was already dressed in full mourning. She looked more poised and self-possessed than I had ever known her. With both hands cupped around her glass, she held it up to lead the toast. ‘Thank you, Félix,’ she said, nodding to Malthus. ‘You were always a good boy.’ She looked around the room to find the doctor. ‘And you, too, Pierre.’ She turned back to the police inspector. ‘I never trusted Branco,’ she breathed. ‘Never.’ She spoke the word with such sudden vehemence that the wine spilt over the edge of her glass.

  Malthus took the glass from her and Gabrielle de la Tourbillon — also already dressed in black, I noticed —knelt down by her side and mopped up the wine with a little lace handkerchief. (It was a gift of mine: I was embarrassed to see it now. When young love evaporates, our love tokens remain to mock us.)