‘And what do you make of the ring, Doctor? What does it tell us?’
‘I am not sure what it tells us,’ said Munthe, ‘but I have seen the ring before, just a year or two ago, on the bedside table of a dying woman.’
‘Was it her ring?’
‘No. It belonged to the priest who had come to administer the last rites to her. At the time I did wonder whether he might not have murdered her.’
7
The Pyramid of Cestius
‘And had he murdered her?’ asked Oscar.
Munthe did not answer directly. He held the ring towards the candlelight as he spoke and studied it intently. ‘He was her lover, of course. That I do know.’
‘Why do you say “of course”?’ I asked. ‘He was a priest.’
‘These things happen, Dr Conan Doyle — all the time.’
‘How do you know that he was her lover?’ asked Oscar.
‘She told me and I believed her. She was dying of tuberculosis. She had no reason to lie. He was her lover and she was expecting his child.’
‘Ah,’ murmured Oscar.
‘Yes, he had motive, means and opportunity. He was with her at the end, alone. She was very weak. He could have killed her simply by holding a pillow across her face.’
‘But why would he murder her if she was already dying?’ I asked.
‘Because he feared a deathbed confession. She carried his child — and his secret. So long as there was breath in her body it was a secret she might share.’
‘And this notion that he’d murdered her: when did that come to you?’
‘As I entered her room. He’d sent for me. His message said that she was fading and that I should hurry. As I arrived, I saw at once that she was dead. She was dead and he was kneeling at the foot of her bed in prayer. ‘‘He was a priest,’ I said.
‘He was also her lover. I would have expected him to have been at her side.’
‘The picture was too perfect,’ said Oscar.
‘Exactly, Mr Wilde. She lay in peace, with her arms folded across her heart and her eyes closed. He knelt silently at her feet in prayer. The scene was contrived.’
‘And the ring?’ asked Oscar, taking it from Munthe’s fingers and holding it up to the candlelight between his own.
‘I saw it on the bedside table, next to the girl’s rosary.’
‘What of that?’ I asked.
Dr Munthe turned to me and smiled. ‘Why had he removed it, Dr Conan Doyle?’
Oscar answered, ‘Because it was a priest’s ring, a sign of his calling. He removed the ring while he committed the mortal sin of murder.’
‘Exactly so, Mr Wilde. As I entered the room and approached the bed, I saw the ring on the bedside table. I noticed it because of its colour — rose-gold — and because of its size. It was clearly a man’s ring. Moments later, it had gone. I next saw it on the priest’s hand. While I attended to my patient, he had retrieved the ring and slipped it back onto his finger.’
I tugged at my moustache. ‘It’s a fine story,’ I said.
‘You should write it up, Doctor — it would appeal to the readers of Blackwood’s Magazine.’
‘Do you think that your priest was a murderer?’ asked Oscar.
‘No,’ said Munthe, sitting back and folding his napkin carefully.
Oscar laughed. ‘And why do you say that, just as you’ve convinced me otherwise?’
‘Because of his demeanour in the months since the young woman’s death.’
‘Has it changed?’
‘No, not at all. I know the man quite well. He is a patient also. And since the woman’s death, he has appeared to me to be exactly as he was before. You would expect murder to leave its mark upon a man, would you not?’
‘Not if the man was in the habit of murder,’ said Oscar. ‘Not then.’
‘Now who is being fanciful?’ I asked.
Oscar laughed and dropped the ring onto the apricot-coloured handkerchief that lay on the table before him. ‘Isn’t it time for a glass of grappa, gentlemen?’
We packed away the ‘evidence’ (as Oscar termed it) and adjourned to a far corner of the hotel’s candlelit lounge where one of the waiters brought us our drinks and we sat, in semi-darkness, talking of mortality, late into the night. Dr Munthe spoke of death with a fascination bordering on reverence.
‘Death is not a god,’ said Oscar. ‘Death is only the servant of the gods.’
‘What can any of us know of death as mere observers?’ asked Munthe. ‘As your hero Keats says, “Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.”’
It was gone three when we saw our new friend out into the Via del Babuino once more. The street was deserted. The air was still and warm. In the sky there was already the hint of dawn. Dr Munthe bowed quite formally to each of us as he shook our hands and took his leave. ‘I have had a most memorable evening, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
‘We shall see you again very soon, I hope,’ said Oscar. ‘And you must introduce us to your friend, the priest —the one with the ring.’
‘He is a patient more than a friend,’ said Munthe, ‘and no ordinary priest. But I will do what I can for you. I want Dr Conan Doyle to write up the story for Blackwood’s Magazine.’
Oscar and I retired at once to our rooms and I slept more soundly than I had done for many months. It was one o’clock in the afternoon before I awoke. As I opened my eyes, I found Oscar standing at my bedside, looking down at me. His huge head was at its most leonine: his hair was newly washed, his cheeks were pink, his eyes were shining.
‘We’ve missed breakfast,’ he hissed. ‘Now we’re missing lunch!’ He was dressed all in black, with a black silk tie held in place with a diamond tiepin.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked, still half asleep.
‘You are sending your telegram and I am meeting you in the piazza in half an hour.’
‘You are dressed in mourning,’ I said, sitting up.
‘We are visiting the dead,’ he replied.
He had drawn back the curtains: warm sunshine was flooding the room. I threw off the bedclothes and dressed hurriedly, wording the wire to my wife in my head as I did so. I limited myself to twenty words. I wanted to keep the message simple: NOW WITH OSCAR WILDE IN ROME RESEARCHING NEW STORY FOR BLACKWOOD‘S. ALL WELL. MISSING YOU AND OUR PRECIOUS DAUGHTER. ACD.
Within the half-hour, I had joined my friend in the Piazza del Popolo. I found him waiting at the cab rank, engaged in earnest conversation with the two street urchins we had encountered the night before.
‘I warned you this would happen, Oscar,’ I said.
‘These boys are natural philosophers, Arthur,’ he replied. ‘They know that generosity is the essence of friendship.’
‘I can see what you are giving them,’ I said, shaking my head as Oscar handed each of the grinning ragamuffins another silver coin. ‘What are they giving you?’
‘Devotion!’ he answered, triumphantly. ‘I do not ask for anything more.’
‘Or less,’ I said, with a gentle jeer, as we climbed aboard the carrozzina. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To the gates of Rome — to the Porta San Paolo. We are making a pilgrimage to the Protestant Cemetery.’
‘Are your disciples coming too?’
‘They live close by, apparently.’
The journey took half an hour. Barefoot, bare-chested, the broken-toothed, olive-skinned boys ran behind our carriage all the way, along narrow side streets, across wide-open piazzas, down dusty lanes to the southern edge of the city. At first, as they ran the boys chatted to one another and called out to Oscar, but as the pounding got harder they fell silent and concentrated on their running.
Oscar gazed upon them lovingly. ‘What wonderful lives they lead!’
‘Do you think so?’ I asked.
‘They know freedom, Arthur.’
‘They know poverty, Oscar. The sunshine and their youth mitigate the worst of it, perhaps, but they are dressed in rags all the s
ame. They’re beggars.’
‘It is safer to beg than to take,’ he declared, grandiloquently, waving the midges away from his face, ‘but it is finer to take than to beg. Don’t you agree?’
‘That’s too deep for me, my friend. I am just a general practitioner from South Norwood.’
‘You’re the man who created Sherlock Holmes,’ he cried. ‘You’re set to join the immortals!’
As he said this, our carriage came sharply round a bend in the road and, with a jolt, we were confronted by the most remarkable sight: a mighty pyramid set immediately alongside the highway. Oscar called out to our driver, ‘Basta! Basta! Whoa!’ and put out his arm to stop me from falling forward as the carrozzina juddered to a halt.
‘This is extraordinary,’ I gasped.
‘This is the tomb of Gaius Cestius,’ said Oscar. ‘He’s joined the immortals too — thanks to this.’
The pyramid stood a hundred feet tall at least. It was faced in pale-grey marble, but the early-afternoon sun shone upon it so brilliantly its surface shimmered like gold. We clambered down from the carriage and stood gazing across the road towards the ancient monument.
‘Gaius Cestius.’ I repeated the name. It meant nothing to me. ‘Who was he?’
‘A Roman, from not long before the time of Christ. A tribune of the people. As I recollect from the inscription on the tomb, a member of the college of priests known as the Septemviri Epulones. They organised the great religious ceremonies, the feast days, public banquets and the like. Cestius was an impresario. He had flair, as you can tell from his creation. He built it in anticipation of his own demise — in just three hundred and thirty days. He was very proud of that.’
‘And his claim to fame?’
‘The pyramid, nothing else. But it’s enough, don’t you think?’
I stood marvelling at the scale and grandeur of the edifice and reflecting on the vanity of a man who could create such a monument to himself.
‘And young Romulus and Remus live hereabouts — so they say.’
The two street urchins stood on the far side of the road, at the foot of the pyramid. They were panting from their exertions and their torsos glistened with sweat. Seeing us look towards them, they waved and beckoned us to follow them.
‘Let’s inspect their living quarters,’ said Oscar. ‘Let’s see if they’re as poor as you think.’
‘Aren’t we on our way to the Protestant Cemetery?’ I asked.
‘It’s only a hundred yards further on. Let’s follow the boys for a moment, since we’ve come this far.’
Oscar gave instructions to our driver to wait and then, urging me to ‘stop dawdling and keep up’, strode purposefully across the road towards the urchins.
‘You’re not normally one for a country hike,’ I remarked.
He paid no attention. ‘Youth is the one thing worth having,’ he said, his eyes fixed on the two street boys. ‘Youth is everything.’
The boys ran ahead of us, along the eastern side of the pyramid, towards a stone wall that abutted the monument and separated the bank alongside the roadway from a field and woodland beyond. We followed them.
‘This is the old city wall,’ said Oscar. ‘There are steps, of a sort.’
The boys scampered up the rough stone steps that jutted out from the wall and disappeared over the top. Laboriously, now sweating profusely ourselves, we followed on.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
‘I have no idea,’ said Oscar, gasping for breath, ‘but it’s an adventure — there’s no denying that.’
The boys were now running across a short expanse of scrubland, away from the pyramid and out of the sunlight, towards a clump of trees at the edge of the wood. There they stopped and turned towards us, grinning, arms outstretched.
As we came close, the scene became less charming and more sinister.
Immediately beneath the trees, in the shade where the boys were standing, was a wooden shelter, about fifteen feet long and ten feet deep, but no more than six feet high. It was a ramshackle affair, insubstantial, dilapidated, open to the elements, with a sloping roof and a back wall, but no sides or front or floor. It might have been a refuge for sheep or a pigsty. On the ground within the shelter, strewn about, were three worn-out mattresses, filthy blankets, torn sheets, piles of newspapers and rags, and the detritus of the beggar’s life: broken bottles, old tin cans and the remains of scavenged meals. At the far end of the shelter, by a small, low-burning fire, was a mound of bones and, alongside the bones, lying on the ground, was the curled-up figure of an old man. His body was shrouded in a blanket. His face, clearly visible, was vicious. He had the sallow skin and the beak-like nose of a corpse, and I might have taken him for dead but for his beady, watchful eyes.
Oscar did not appear to see any of this. He was looking steadily at the two boys who stood before us smiling.
‘God save us,’ he muttered. ‘I spy entertainment.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘I see the leer of invitation,’ he said.
The boys looked at us and laughed and pulled down their ragged trousers to reveal their nakedness.
8
All Saints
We fled the scene at once. ‘This is not what I had expected,’ murmured Oscar, as we paced across the scrubland, back towards the pyramid.
‘It’s appalling,’ I said. ‘It’s perverse, unnatural.’
‘Unexpected, certainly.’ He laughed. ‘Your tweeds, your moustache, your military bearing, Arthur: they appear to attract a different kind of attention in these southern climes.’
I ignored his ribbing. ‘I suppose the sick old man is their beggar-master,’ I said. ‘The hapless boys are obliged to do his bidding.’
‘The “hapless boys” looked happy enough to me —willing enough, too.’
‘It’s a filthy trade.’
‘And not their only one. Did you see the pile of bones next to the old man?’
‘I did. To sell old bones for glue-making is one thing. To sell young bodies for base gratification, quite another. It’s immoral — it’s sinful.’
‘Is sinfulness so very dreadful, Arthur?’ he asked, looking back at me over his shoulder as he clambered gingerly onto the jagged stone steps that jutted from the city wall. ‘The body sins once and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.’
‘I don’t believe you know what you’re saying, Oscar, ‘I replied. On occasion, I felt my friend’s verbosity overwhelmed his innate good sense.
We reached the roadway and found our horse and carriage waiting where we had left them. The driver, wearing a tattered straw hat and sucking on a little clay pipe, looked down at us with ill-concealed contempt. I sensed a wicked quip forming itself on Oscar’s lips. I intervened and hushed my friend, urging him to keep his counsel and climb aboard.
‘The man won’t speak English, Arthur. Besides, I imagine he knows exactly what goes on behind the pyramid. He probably brings English milords out here on a regular basis. I hate to think of the size of tip the wretch will be expecting.’
‘Inversion is a sickness, Oscar,’ I hissed under my breath. ‘It is not something to make jokes about.’ I looked at him sternly. ‘This is no laughing matter.’
He returned my gaze with a smile in his eyes. “‘Our sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught; our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”’
‘Keats?’
‘Shelley. He came here, too — to see the pyramid and to visit Keats’s grave.’ Oscar called up to the driver, coldly:
‘Cimitero, avanti!’
‘Shouldn’t we return to the hotel?’ I asked.
The heat of the afternoon was dry but nonetheless oppressive. I had no hat and my clothing was entirely unseasonable. As a consequence of our exertions, I was soaked in perspiration.
‘We’ll see the cemetery first. We’re almost there. It’s a bea
utiful spot. It will refresh you.’
It was. And it did. It was an oasis, only a few hundred yards beyond the pyramid, discreetly tucked beneath the ancient city walls, wonderfully cool, surrounded by pine trees, shaded by tall cypresses. As Oscar led me in through the wrought-iron gate he said, ‘When Shelley came to this cemetery for the first time, he wrote, “It might make one in love with death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.”’
I said nothing. Did Shelley write those words, I asked myself, or has Oscar just invented them?
‘Shelley’s heart is buried here,’ he continued. ‘His body was burnt on the beach at the mouth of the river Arno, near where he was drowned. His flesh and bones were cremated there, where he was washed ashore — something to do with the quarantine laws at the time. But his heart rests here: “the heart of all hearts”.’
As we stood inspecting the plaque in Shelley’s memory, Oscar turned to me: ‘The bones we saw behind the pyramid, where the old man lay, were they human bones?’
‘No,’ I reassured him. ‘Sheep and cattle, I’d say. And mules and donkeys.’ I looked at him. ‘Yes, I had wondered for a moment, too.’
We paid our respects to Shelley’s heart — interred at the base of a tower in the cemetery’s outer wall — and then found the grave of John Keats. I had feared my friend might prostrate himself on the grass or give way to hysterical sobbing. In fact, he remained quite calm: more Holmes, less Wilde. As we stood, looking down at the poet’s simple tombstone, he remarked, ‘Keats marvelled that men could be martyred for their religion — and then he discovered love and declared that he, too, could be martyred for his religion. “Love is my religion,” he said. ,,I could die for that.”’ Oscar put his hand lightly on my shoulder. ‘Love will be at the heart of our murder mystery, Arthur. I think we can be sure of that.’
‘You are convinced then that we are dealing with a mystery that involves murder?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘murder most foul. And I am convinced, too, that Dr Munthe’s patient — the priest, but “no ordinary priest” — holds the key. We shall meet him soon enough.’
Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders Page 7
