He was a physician and he was a writer — and it was because he was a writer that he knew of me. As he stepped out of the doorway of number 26 Piazza di Spagna to shake my hand, he smiled and said, ‘We are literary bed-fellows, Dr Conan Doyle. We have appeared together, side by side, in the pages of Blackwood’s Magazine. I forget which story of mine it was, but I remember yours distinctly. It was called “A Physiologist’s Wife” and dealt with the conflict between romance and reason. It was a fine tale, beautifully told. I was very taken with it. I am honoured to meet you.’
That he made no mention of Sherlock Holmes charmed me very much. That he immediately invited us into the house to inspect the room in which Keats had died charmed Oscar equally. He told us to leave our luggage with the boys on the doorstep — ‘I know those two,’ he said, ‘you may trust them, after a fashion’ — and to follow him. As we climbed the narrow wooden staircase to the second floor, over his shoulder he said, ‘Fear not, Mr Wilde, I recognised your name also — though, I confess, I have not read your work.’
‘There is no need,’ said Oscar, pausing on the stairs to catch his breath.
‘Perhaps not,’ replied the Swedish doctor. ‘I think already I understand your style.’
Keats’s bedroom was at the front of the house, overlooking the piazza. It was a small room, rectangular in shape, sparsely furnished, with a red-tiled floor and bare, whitewashed walls. A simple, single iron bedstead faced the window.
‘This is where he died,’ said Dr Munthe, ‘and this is where I sleep. I sleep well. This is a peaceful room, a good room in which to die.’
Oscar said nothing.
‘You are interested in death?’ I asked, as we stepped out of the bedroom into what appeared to be the doctor’s study-cum-consulting-room. It was a much larger chamber, windowless and candlelit, the walls lined with crowded bookshelves, the floor covered with Persian rugs and piles of books and papers. Above the fireplace, in the centre of the mantelpiece, between two amber-coloured candles, stood a human skull. A second skull sat perched on top of a chest of drawers. A third served as a paperweight on the doctor’s desk.
‘Death is inevitable,’ he said, smiling. ‘It fascinates me — of course it does. But I have seen so much of it that it holds no terror for me. Sometimes it is my enemy; sometimes it is my friend.’ From a shallow metal tray that rested next to the skull on the chest of drawers he picked up a small syringe and held it up close to his face. ‘This morning, for example, I welcomed death. My patient was suffering too much and to no purpose.’
‘You assist your patients to die?’ I asked.
‘On occasion, when appropriate. I know it is not your way, Doctor, but it is mine. I make no secret of it. And because of it, in certain circles I am known, they tell me, as “Dr Death”.’
‘You do not object to the title?’
‘On the contrary,’ he replied, returning the syringe to its tray, ‘I wear it as a badge of honour.’
Oscar had stepped into the room and was now standing at one end of the mantelpiece, scrutinising what appeared to be the bones of a human hand. The hand was cupped, the fingers upturned.
‘Does this serve as an ashtray?’ Oscar asked.
‘It does,’ answered Munthe, revealing his teeth in an impish grin. ‘Feel free to use it, Mr Wilde.’
‘It is the skeleton of a dead man’s hand,’ I said, quite shocked.
‘It is the skeleton of a lady’s hand, in fact, Doctor. I keep it as a reminder of what always lies beneath those soft caresses.’
As he said this and Oscar, lighting a cigarette, began to laugh, from just outside the room we heard the muffled sound of pots and pans cascading onto a stone floor. We both looked towards the corner from whence the noise had emanated and saw that there was a heavy brocaded curtain separating the study from a room beyond — presumably the kitchen. The curtain twitched and then fell still.
‘I do not live alone,’ said Dr Munthe. ‘You will meet my companion another time.’
‘I look forward to it,’ I said.
There was a further clatter of pans from beyond the curtain. Dr Munthe smiled awkwardly. ‘I fear that too much drink may have been taken.’
‘If your dinner here is spoilt,’ said Oscar, drawing on his cigarette, ‘perhaps you would care to dine with us?’
‘I should like that very much,’ said Dr Munthe. ‘It would be good to get out of the house for a while. Thank you.’ He brought his hands together in a salaam. ‘Where are you staying, gentlemen? You must have a hotel. May I join you there in an hour?’
Our faithful urchin bag-carriers were waiting for us beside the boat-shaped marble fountain. We led them back along the Via del Babuino, past the ancient church of Sant’ Atanasio dei Greci and the bright new edifice of All Saints, to the Hôtel de Russie, at the far end of the street, on the corner of the Piazza del Popolo. Oscar paid off the boys with all the change in his pocket and the remainder of his supplies of dried fruit. I told him he was being far too generous and that we’d now find the boys at our heels night and day.
‘I hope we do,’ he said. ‘We may need them. We can call them “The Rome Irregulars”.’
At the hotel, we were expected and welcomed with oppressive obsequiousness. The hotel manager turned out to be an admirer of my Baker Street sagas and found it almost impossible to release from his grasp the hand that had held the pen that had written Sherlock Holmes e il segno dei Quattro. Eventually, having plied us with French champagne and Tuscan cheese straws, he showed us to our rooms — the finest in all Rome, he assured us —and, at last, having personally supervised the unpacking of our bags, he left us in peace to bathe and shave and change for dinner.
‘I’m too tired to send Touie a wire tonight, Oscar,’ I called to my friend through the open door that connected our two rooms. ‘Remind me to send one in the morning, will you? I mustn’t forget.’
‘I’ll remind you,’ he replied. ‘And will you still be telling her the whole truth?’ he added, laughing.
He was in high spirits that night.
When we were both dressed, he came into my room and looked me up and down appraisingly. ‘And the finger? And the severed hand?’ he asked, an eyebrow raised. ‘Have you moved them from one set of clothes to the next?’
I touched my jacket pocket. ‘I have,’ I said.
‘Good. We must keep the “evidence” about us at all times. Leave a stray limb in the room and the next thing you know the hotel manager will have purloined it as a Sherlockian souvenir.’
It was a little after nine o’clock when we reached the dining room. Dr Munthe was already at table. He had not changed for dinner. As we joined him he noticed that I had noticed this and, as I took my seat, he said, touching my arm lightly, ‘I hope my day clothes do not offend you, Doctor. I live by my own rules. Whether it is arrogance or individuality, or a mixture of the two, who is to say? I am who I am. I do not expect to change.’
‘I am certain that you won’t, Doctor,’ said Oscar pleasantly. ‘In my experience there is no such thing as changing one’s life. One merely walks round and round within the circle of one’s personality.’
Munthe raised his glass to Oscar. ‘I salute you, Mr Wilde.’ He turned to me. ‘And I salute you, dear Doctor. I am so happy to meet you.
The wine waiter was hovering at our elbows with a decanter. ‘I have taken the liberty of ordering the wine,’ said Munthe, smiling. ‘Another solecism, I fear.’
Oscar looked at the decanter in dismay. ‘It is red,’ he whispered.
‘It is from the Piedmont,’ said Munthe, ‘inexpensive yet extraordinary. Please try.’
The wine waiter poured a small libation. Oscar sniffed at it suspiciously. ‘I suppose the danger is half the excitement,’ he murmured. He took a sip and then a gulp. He drained the glass. ‘It is a blood-red sunset turned to wine,’ he declared. ‘We’ll have a second bottle right away.’
I laughed.
‘Shall we drink to the memory of John Keats?’
suggested Dr Munthe. ‘Will you propose the toast, Mr Wilde?’
‘With pleasure,’ said my friend, ‘and a breaking heart.’ The waiter charged our glasses and Oscar raised his towards Dr Munthe. ‘You sleep in the room where he died, Doctor — that godlike boy, the real Adonis of our age. Let us drink to him now who knew the silver-footed messages of the moon, and the secret of the morning, who heard in Hyperion’s vale the large utterance of the early gods, and from the beechen plot the light-winged Dryad, who saw Madeline at the painted window, and Lamia in the house at Corinth, and Endymion ankle-deep in lilies of the vale, who drubbed the butcher’s boy for being a bully, and drank confusion to Isaac Newton for having analysed the rainbow. In my heaven he walks eternally with Shakespeare and the Greeks, and it may be that some day he will lift his hymeneal curls from out his amber gleaming wine, and with ambrosial lips will kiss my forehead, clasp the hand of noble love in mine.’
‘Steady on, old man,’ I said. ‘It’s only a toast.’
He smiled and set down his glass. There were tears in his eyes.
‘You have a way with words, Mr Wilde,’ said Axel Munthe.
‘And you have a way with people, Doctor,’ said Oscar, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief and reaching for the menu. ‘And people are what count. As Keats taught us, “Scenery is fine, but human nature is finer.” When we have ordered, you must tell us your story. I will speak no more. I have said enough.’
‘On the contrary, Mr Wilde, I sense you’ve scarcely begun. And I want to talk to Dr Conan Doyle about his writing.’
‘Food first,’ cried Oscar. ‘I insist.’
‘And when you insist, you get your way?’ asked the Swedish doctor.
‘Invariably.’
‘And yet you are never satisfied? Every gift, however great, is a minor disappointment — another broken toy on the withered Christmas tree of Nature’s most favoured child.’
‘You are very perceptive, Doctor,’ said Oscar, smiling. ‘And I am very hungry.’ He raised his hand to summon a waiter. ‘I think it’ll be the swordfish, the turtle soup and the suckling pig for me. Dr Munthe can choose the wines.’
We ate well and drank liberally. And, as we did so, Oscar was almost true to his word: he said very little. Dr Munthe inquired about my work, both about my writing and my special interest in ophthalmology. His own sight was poor and failing.
‘My spirit likes the sunshine,’ he said. ‘My eyes do not.’ He told us something of his story — of his childhood in Sweden, of his medical training in Paris (under the notorious Professor Charcot at the Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière[1]), of his journey south, first to Naples and then to the island of Capri. ‘Capri is my heaven-on-earth,’ he said. ‘I say that, even though I lived there with my first wife and our marriage was not a happy one.
It did not last. We parted company four years ago.
‘I am sorry to hear that,’ I said.
‘Do not be. I should never have married her. From the beginning there was the sense of an ending. Her name was Ultima.’
Oscar smiled. ‘Nomen est omen,’ he said. ‘The name is everything.’
‘Indeed, Mr Wilde. And what is your wife called?’
‘Constance.’
Munthe smiled. ‘Congratulations. I trust you count your blessings, sir. I count mine — and being free of my wife is one of them. And knowing the island of Capri is another. I shall return there one day, when I have made my fortune. Meanwhile, I am here in Rome, where work is plentiful and I know everyone. I like to know the best people.’ He raised his glass to both of us once more. ‘Now I can boast that I know even Mr Oscar Wilde and Dr Arthur Conan Doyle.’
Towards the end of our meal, as we lingered over our cheese and wine, our conversation slowed. I filled a silence in looking about the room: the restaurant had emptied and all but two of the waiters had gone home. I felt for my pipe. As I stirred, Oscar roused himself and, to light his cigarette, leant forward towards the guttering candle that stood on the centre of the table. He glanced up at me as he did so and his oyster eyes sparkled in the candlelight.
‘You trust Dr Munthe, Arthur,’ he said softly. ‘I can see that. Show him what is in your pocket.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, momentarily confused.
‘Show him the “evidence”, Arthur. Show him what has brought us to Rome.’
I hesitated, but Oscar was insistent. I set down my pipe and, diffidently, glancing furtively about the room, I produced the handkerchief parcel from my jacket pocket and, pushing aside plates and cutlery, placed it tentatively on the table.
Slowly, I unwrapped it.
‘Good God,’ exclaimed the Dr Munthe, peering down at the severed hand that now lay before him. ‘What’s this?’
‘That’s what we were hoping you might be able to tell us, Doctor,’ said Oscar, quietly.
Dr Munthe turned to me. ‘Is this yours, Doctor? Is this something from your dissecting room? Or a hideous trophy from your travels in Africa?’
‘It is mine,’ I said, ‘in the sense that it was sent to me — or, rather, it was sent care of me to Mr Sherlock Holmes. But why it was sent, and from whom, I have no idea.’
‘It came by post? In a parcel?’
‘Yes.’
‘How bizarre.’ Munthe screwed up his eyes and lowered his face closer to the hand. ‘May I touch it?’
I looked towards the waiters standing idly at the entrance to the restaurant. They were deep in conversation. ‘By all means,’ I said.
Dr Munthe lifted the dead hand and sniffed at it and turned it over and, with his nose and spectacles no more than an inch or two from it, examined it minutely. He spent some time considering the fingernails and then the stump.
He replaced the hand on the table. ‘What do you want to know that you don’t already? I’d say it’s a man’s right hand severed with a single blow. It’s not been cut from the wrist with any skill. It’s not the work of a surgeon or a doctor.’
‘Could it be the work of the Mafia?’ asked Oscar.
Munthe chuckled. ‘Yes, I too have read the stories, Mr Wilde. These Mafia men are partial to dismemberment, we’re told. They might present you with a severed hand by way of threat or warning, but I doubt that they’d trouble to embalm it first.’ He looked down at the one that lay before us. ‘This hand is mummified, as you can see. It has been preserved in formaldehyde and cut off after death. The severing was brutally done, but the embalming looks to be the work of an expert. This is not the Mafia’s style — at least, not as I understand it. Was it sent to you from Sicily?’
‘No,’ I answered. ‘It was posted from Rome.’
‘And was there no note with the hand? No message in the parcel?’
‘None whatsoever,’ said Oscar. ‘But there were other packages, apparently from the same source — with content almost as surprising.’
From his pocket Oscar produced his wallet and opened it. He looked to me. ‘Arthur, show the doctor the finger.’
‘The finger!’ exclaimed Munthe, shaking his head in amused amazement. ‘This is Grand Guignol.’
‘You are right, Doctor,’ said Oscar, carefully laying the lock of hair and the ring next to the dead hand on the table. ‘It is all very theatrical.’
I took Oscar’s apricot handkerchief from my pocket and unwrapped the finger.
‘There you have it,’ said Oscar, sitting back in his chair and drawing slowly on his cigarette. ‘A hand, a finger, a lock of hair, a tell-tale ring — that’s all the evidence we have.’
Dr Munthe surveyed the table. ‘But it’s enough,’ he said.
‘What do you mean, “it’s enough”?’ I asked.
‘It’s done its business. It’s brought you to Rome — to do what the police here would never do: to investigate further.’ Dr Munthe looked at me and smiled. ‘In this country, no one trusts the police, no one at all. The local police — the vigili — are fools, to a man. And they can all be bought.’
‘And the carabinieri?’ as
ked Oscar. ‘They look tremendous in their uniforms.’
Munthe laughed. ‘And quite magnificent on horseback. They guard the king — and look after their own. They may be cannier than the vigili, but they are just as corrupt, and considerably more expensive. The police in this country don’t combat crime: they promote it. I can well understand why anyone who knew of his existence might turn to Sherlock Holmes in desperation.’
‘And this “evidence”, said Oscar, waving his cigarette in circles above the table like a witch conjuring spirits from a cauldron, ‘does it smack of desperation?’
‘I think it does.’
‘And these “clues”, what do they tell us?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Munthe, gazing at the table. ‘The finger is self-evidently from a different hand — and from a different person.’
‘And the lock of hair?’ asked Oscar. ‘What do you make of that?’
Munthe picked up the curl and held it close to his eyes. He rubbed it between his fingers. He put it to his nose. ‘This isn’t human hair,’ he said. ‘This is lamb’s wool.’
‘Are you certain?’ asked Oscar, sitting forward and consigning the butt of his cigarette to his water glass.
I laughed. ‘Oscar took it to be a golden kiss-curl from a young man’s forehead.’
‘It is lamb’s wool,’ repeated Munthe, handing it to me to examine. ‘Feel it.’
‘And the gold ring?’ enquired Oscar. ‘What do you make of that? Don’t tell me it’s nothing more than a gewgaw from one of Tom Smith’s Christmas crackers.’
The Swedish doctor removed the ring from the finger and peered closely at it. He turned it carefully between his own fingers. Gently he bit on it. He put it onto the palm of his hand and held it out for us all to see.
‘The ring is made of gold, to be sure. And inside the ring I see what you must have seen — the crossed keys of St Peter.’
Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders Page 6
