Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders

by Gyles Brandreth

  ‘That seems a little improbable,’ I added from my end of the table. ‘“Vanishing into thin air” seems to me to be the least likely explanation.’

  Monsignor Tuminello, who was now quite drunk, looked at me with blazing eyes. ‘What does Sherlock Holmes tell Dr Watson in The Sign of Four? You wrote it. We read it.’

  ‘It is just a story,’ I pleaded, ‘an inconsequential yarn.’

  ‘You will remember the line,’ insisted Tuminello. “‘How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”’

  ‘Yes, I recall the line,’ I said.

  ‘Agnes vanished into thin air. She was assumed into heaven. There is precedence.’

  Monsignor Felici shifted his mighty bulk uneasily. ‘Verdi, what time is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Coming up to seven, sir.’

  ‘Evening prayer calls,’ announced the Monsignor. ‘Agimus tibi gratias, omnipotens Deus, pro universis beneficiis tuis, qui vivis et regnas in saecula saeculorum, ‘he murmured, closing his eyes and resting his fingertips on the edge of the table before him.

  The other priests responded automatically: ‘Deus det nobis suam pacem.’

  ‘Et vitam aeternam,’ concluded Felici, pushing himself to his feet, his eyes still closed.

  ‘Amen.’

  The Monsignor stepped away from the table, lifted his shoulders and looked about the room, sniffing the air as a general might emerging from his tent on the day of battle. ‘I must be about my duties,’ he declared.

  Axel Munthe, who had been seated facing him, got to his feet. ‘Thank you, Monsignor, for a memorable tea party.’ The doctor looked to either side of him and held out his hands. ‘Before I go, let me settle Monsignor Tuminello and Father Bechetti in their cells. Brother Matteo will assist me.

  ‘Very good,’ said Felici, briskly and nodded to Oscar and to me. ‘Thank you for your company, gentlemen. ‘We rose to our feet and bowed towards the Monsignor. ‘At least we had tea — and a colloquy of sorts. It wasn‘t quite what Breakspear envisaged, but it had its lively moments. I think we can agree on that.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘Forgive me if I hasten away. God is my saviour — and my time-keeper.’

  He considered which way to make his exit and settled on moving to the right, squeezing himself past Brother Matteo, resting his hands briefly on the Capuchin’s shoulders as he did so. He paused to acknowledge the sacristan who stood, head bowed, at the end of the sideboard.

  ‘A fine English tea, Verdi. Thank you. Just a pity about the cucumber sandwiches.’

  As the papal Master of Ceremonies swept out of the refectory, the candles on the dining table spluttered in a kind of genuflection.

  15

  When a pope dies

  Once Felici had gone, Cesare Verdi picked up Axel Munthe’s medical bag and offered his arm to Monsignor Tuminello. The papal exorcist took it, gratefully. Verdi and Tuminello led the way; the Swedish doctor and the benevolent Capuchin followed on with the enfeebled Father Bechetti. Slowly, the five men shuffled and stumbled down the steps from the refectory and then up the immediately adjacent steps to the chaplains’ cells. I volunteered to assist, but Munthe was adamant:

  ‘No, thank you, too many doctors spoil the diagnosis. We won’t be long.’

  Oscar resumed his seat at the head of the table. Once the medical escort-party had departed, I took my cue from Oscar’s lightly raised eyebrow and resumed mine. I noticed that Monsignor Breakspear had not moved. When Felici had got to his feet at the conclusion of the grace, Breakspear alone had remained seated at the table, gazing vacantly at the wall opposite.

  Breakspear appeared to read my mind. ‘It was not bad form. I owe no deference to Felici. He and I and Tuminello are of equal standing. They are my senior in years — I am not yet forty: they are fifty and sixty or thereabouts — but our status is the same. There are fourteen grades of Monsignor within the Catholic hierarchy, but, as it happens, we three are on precisely the same rung of the ecclesiastical ladder. The papal Master of Ceremonies commands almost all he surveys within St Peter’s, I grant you that, but he outranks neither the Grand Penitentiary nor the papal exorcist. I do not need to stand in his presence.’

  ‘You are all equally exalted,’ said Oscar, inclining his head respectfully towards the Monsignor, ‘but I think you have reason to be the most exhausted. Listening to confessions day in, day out, must take it out of a man.’

  Breakspear laughed. ‘They give this job to the younger ones, you know, because we still have our hearing. In the confessional, the penitent is inclined to whisper. You have to strain your ears to catch the full horror of his sins. It is exhausting. And you end up with a crick in the neck.’ He pushed back his chair. ‘Shall we steal a glass of Tuminello’s wine?’

  ‘What is the wine?’ asked Oscar. ‘It is a dull colour.’

  ‘And it has a deadening effect if drunk to the extent Tuminello drinks it. He imports it personally. We’re doing him a favour if we drink some of it for him.’ He fetched glasses and the decanter from the sideboard and brought them to the table. ‘Come and sit down here, Conan Doyle. Let us pretend we’re gentlemen and the ladies have left us to our port.’

  I moved to Tuminello’s place, on Oscar’s left, immediately facing Breakspear. The Grand Penitentiary poured out the wine. Oscar sniffed at it with nostrils superciliously flared. He took a tentative sip, and then another.

  ‘It’s a Madeira,’ he declared, his face lighting up, ‘and it’s utterly superb.’ He raised his glass to Breakspear. ‘Your health, Monsignor. “Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring,” as Pope advises.’

  ‘Which pope is that?’ asked Breakspear.

  ‘Alexander Pope,’ said Oscar, ‘in his famous poem. “A little learning is a dangerous thing, drink deep,” et cetera. You must remember it from school.’

  ‘We didn’t study Pope at Stonyhurst, did we, Conan Doyle?’

  ‘I think we did,’ I said. ‘I’m sure we did.’

  ‘That’s the wrong answer, boy!’ cried Breakspear, laughing uproariously as he drained the decanter, filling each of our glasses to the brim. ‘More of that cheek and I’ll take the Tolley to you.

  ‘I am glad I went to school in Ireland,’ said Oscar, smiling. ‘In England schoolboys appear to take pleasure in beating one another relentlessly. They make a ritual of it — a fetish, one might say. Very strange.’ He sucked the Madeira from the edge of his glass and rolled the wine around his tongue, considering Breakspear from beneath half-closed eyelids. ‘You’ve been in Rome how long, Monsignor?’ he asked.

  ‘I came here as soon as I left school. I trained for the priesthood at the English College here. Pio Nono chose me as one of his chaplains when I was not yet twenty-five. This is where I have been ever since.’

  ‘This is your world,’ said Oscar, raising his glass to the room.

  ‘And these men are my family,’ replied Breakspear, looking at the empty chairs set around the dining table.

  ‘And are they also your friends?’ enquired Oscar. ‘Do you like them?’

  Breakspear laughed. ‘Oh no, I know them far too well for that. I love them. But I can’t say I like them. Not at all.’

  ‘Do you trust them?’

  ‘I am a Jesuit. The question is: do they trust me?’ He turned in his seat to look up at the painting on the wall. ‘Father Bechetti trusted me. When I first came here he was my one true friend. He was already old and past ambition. He did not envy me my youth as the others did. He was not jealous of my promise. He treated me like a son. I miss him.’

  ‘He is still here,’ said Oscar quietly.

  Breakspear turned back from the painting. ‘But his mind has gone.’

  ‘Has it?’ said Oscar. ‘He joined in the grace just now.’

  ‘You noticed?’

  ‘He speaks …’

  ‘When the spirit moves him.’

  ‘From the little I have seen of him, I would say t
hat he understands something of what is happening around him.’

  ‘You are right. Now and then he does. But he is not the man he was. He has not been the same since Pio Nono died.’ Breakspear drank his wine and closed his eyes. For a moment he seemed lost in thought. ‘None of us is,’ he said.

  ‘What happened on the day that Pio Nono died?’ asked Oscar.

  Breakspear sighed. ‘The world changed. Our world changed. Utterly.’ He opened his eyes and smiled at Oscar. ‘Pio Nono was pontiff for almost thirty-two years — for thirty-one years and two hundred and thirty-six days to be precise. He was the longest-reigning pope in history. He was our Holy Father. He was pope before I was born. He was my Holy Father.’

  ‘You were with him at the last?’

  ‘We all were. It seemed all Italy was there — cardinals, bishops, chaplains, monks and nuns, members of the household, members of the Swiss Guard, servants, diplomats, dignitaries. Towards the very end, half of Rome’s aristocracy turned up. The king sent emissaries … The bedchamber was crammed to overflowing, like a marketplace, except for the silence. No one spoke. No one made a sound.’

  ‘There were no tears?’

  ‘Now and then, at the back of the room, a reverend sister would begin to sob — and there were prayers, of course. But it is the silence I remember chiefly, the anxious stillness, as if, for hours on end, we all held our breath.’ Breakspear finished his wine and sat forward at the table. ‘When a pope dies, it is a moment in history.’

  ‘And you were there — in the room.’

  ‘I was there, kneeling at the bedside. For a time, on that last morning, I held his hand. He spoke to me — to me. “Nicholas, questa volta me ne vado davvero” —“Nicholas, this time I am really going.” The poor man had been ill for months with bronchitis and fever. For weeks on end, he had teetered at death’s door. He survived the worst of the winter and died on 7 February 1878. It was a Thursday. On the night before his death he slept quite well. He took quinine and a little broth, and he blessed us with the crucifix he kept beneath his pillow. All night we kept a vigil at his bedside. It was at a quarter to five in the morning that the terrible trembling in the limbs and the rapid breathing came on. But his mind remained clear to the end. When he received the Viaticum — the final Eucharist — he repeated the prayers himself. He received extreme unction at nine. At one o’clock, Cardinal Bilio, as Secretary of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, began the service for the dying. The Holy Father struggled with the responses, but once he had completed the act of contrition, with the words “col vostro santo aiuto” his strength seemed to return. He revived until about four when the final agony began. Cardinal Bilio recited the Proficiscere to him: “Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul! Go from this world! Go, in the name of God …“ He died at twenty to six.’

  From the first I had had my reservations about Breakspear. Instinctively, I had neither liked nor trusted him. But, I confess, I found this testament of his strangely moving. ‘And at the moment of the pope’s death,’ I asked, ‘how did you feel?’

  ‘Bereft. Alone. Ashamed.’

  ‘Ashamed?’

  ‘I knew that in that moment — of all moments — my thoughts should have been with the Holy Father, but the truth is: I thought only of myself. Pio Nono was dead and I felt sorry for myself. I felt close to despair.’ Breakspear rested his fingertips on his eyebrows and pressed the lengths of his fingers against his eyes.

  ‘Goodness, gentlemen, I am supposed to be the confessor and here I am telling you things I have not told anyone before.’

  ‘Please,’ said Oscar, leaning towards the Monsignor, ‘finish your story: complete the account of the day. What happened next?’

  Breakspear looked at Oscar and appeared puzzled. ‘What happened next?’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes.’ Oscar urged him on. ‘You left the chamber?’ Breakspear took a deep breath and wiped his mouth with his hand. ‘Not at once. I stayed to witness the curious ceremony that marks the death of a pope. One of the cardinals stepped forward, holding a small silver hammer. You may have seen it. The sacristan keeps it here on the sideboard. The cardinal stood at Pio Nono’s bedside and with the hammer he struck the Holy Father on the forehead, three times, sharply, calling him by his proper name, “Giovanni Mastai, sei morto?” — “Giovanni Mastai, art thou dead?” And when answer came there none, the cardinal turned to the room, raised his arms and proclaimed to the world that Pio Nono was no more.’

  ‘And the girl?’ Oscar cast his eyes towards the portrait hanging behind Breakspear on the refectory wall. ‘The beautiful child in the painting, Agnes?’

  ‘What about her? She was not there.’

  ‘Where was she at the moment of Pio Nono’s death?’

  ‘In the laundry, I suppose. In her dormitory? Somewhere. I don’t know. At prayer with the reverend sisters, perhaps.’

  ‘When, then, did she hear the news?’

  ‘I have no idea. News of the death of a pope does not travel slowly. Within a few minutes of the Holy Father’s passing she will have known. She will have heard almost at once, poor child. She was always somewhere near by. She never left the Vatican. Apart from anything, from the bell tower she will have heard the death knell toll.’

  ‘But you saw her that night, Monsignor Breakspear. I feel sure that you did.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because when Monsignor Tuminello was talking about her just now — and talking about her so animatedly, with such passion and fondness — you said nothing, nothing at all. In my experience, when a clever man has a great deal to say, he says nothing.’

  ‘I have nothing to say about Agnes.’

  ‘Please tell me what happened, Monsignor.’

  Nicholas Breakspear placed his hands carefully on the table in front of him, one hand resting upon the other. Momentarily, he glanced towards me, as if looking for support; I looked down at his hands; he turned to Oscar and composed himself. He spoke quietly.

  ‘Mr Wilde, the death of a pope is a public event. I have described what I remember of the passing of Pio Nono to you to satisfy your curiosity. It was a moment in history — a moment of significance. I was privileged to be a witness and your interest is, in every way, legitimate. But the death of an unknown child is of no significance … that is something else.’

  ‘She is dead?’

  Breakspear hesitated. ‘Why do you ask? I do not know. I think so. I believe so.’

  Oscar pressed on. ‘You saw her that night, Monsignor. Tell me what happened.’

  Breakspear sat back, bemused, exasperated. ‘What’s this about, Mr Wilde? How do you know anything about the girl? What’s she to you?’ Oscar stared at Breakspear with ungiving eyes. ‘What’s she to you, Mr Wilde?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Oscar, eventually, ‘nothing at all.’ He held the glass of Madeira in his right hand, cupped between his fingers. Slowly, he took a sip of the wine and looked up once more to consider the painting on the wall. ‘But there she is — the girl. She cannot be denied. Agnes … I see her beauty and I sense her innocence.’

  ‘How do you know her name?’

  ‘Tuminello told me her name the other night.’

  ‘That is not possible,’ snapped Breakspear. ‘I do not believe you, Mr Wilde.’

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ Oscar repeated. ‘Tell me. Please.’

  ‘Tell ‘im, Monsignor.’ Cesare Verdi stood at the doorway to the dining room. His black eyes shone in the candlelight. ‘My brother ‘as told me all about Mr Wilde. You can trust ‘im, Monsignor. If ‘e wants to know, ‘e’ll have a reason.

  ‘Thank you,’ murmured Oscar.

  Breakspear looked up at the sacristan. ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘Yes, Dr Munthe is giving ‘em their injections, working ‘is magic.’

  Breakspear smiled. ‘Hastening their ends …’

  Cesare Verdi remained, silhouetted in the doorway. ‘Brother Matteo is with ‘em.’ He ran his hands through his cu
rly head of hair and wiped them on the sides of his cassock. Apart from the absence of a clerical collar, he was dressed like a priest, but you knew even at a glance that he was not one. He folded his arms and nodded to Oscar.

  Oscar picked up his cue. ‘What happened, Monsignor? You did see Agnes that night, after the death of Pio Nono?’

  ‘Yes. I found her here in the sacristy at ten o’clock.’

  ‘She was alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Here? In this room?’

  ‘No, down there.’ He pointed beyond Cesare Verdi, to the first chamber, the room with the red-damask walls. ‘I found her there. She was lying on the seat of tears.’

  ‘Asleep?’

  ‘No. She was dead.’ He paused and took a small breath. He moved his empty wineglass towards the centre of the table. ‘At least, I think that she was dead. I assumed she was dead. She was as white as a surplice, as cold as a chalice.’

  ‘You touched her?’

  ‘I touched her forehead. I held back her hair and searched for a pulse on her neck. I found none. There were tear stains on her cheeks. Her eyes were closed.’

  ‘She had been dead for some time?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  Oscar had finished his wine. He, too, placed his empty glass near the centre of the table. He regarded Breakspear with kindly eyes. ‘She looked peaceful?’

  ‘Yes. Her arms were folded across her chest. Her feet were resting on a pillow.’

  ‘Was there a smile on her lips?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Wilde, there was. How did you know?’

  Oscar made no reply. I leant forward. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I did nothing. I did not know what to do. I knelt at the poor, dead child’s side and I did nothing.’

  ‘You didn’t call for help?’

  ‘It was ten o’clock. Those who were not still at the Holy Father’s deathbed were at compline. I knelt by the seat of tears and I shed my own.’

  ‘You wept,’ said Oscar, ‘and what did you think had happened? Why was she there? Why was she dead?’

  Breakspear answered without hesitation: ‘I thought she had died of a broken heart.’