19
Capri
And did he tell you?’ asked Axel Munthe. With tightly clenched fists, the Swedish doctor was rubbing his eyes and stifling a yawn as he asked the question.
‘He did!’ replied Oscar gleefully. ‘The hand belonged to Pope Leo XII and the finger to Pope Benedict XIV.’ Oscar paused dramatically. ‘Or was it the other way around?’
My friend, wide-eyed with excitement, looked to me for assistance — in vain. He turned back to Munthe and gave a histrionic shrug of his shoulders. ‘It matters not. According to Monsignor Tuminello, neither Holy Father had much to commend him beyond the fact that his mortal remains were easily accessible and epitomised the best of the ecclesiastical embalmer’s art.’
It was now ten o’clock at night and — as per Munthe’s instruction in his note to me that morning — we had presented ourselves at Keats’s house by the Spanish Steps. The doctor asked us up into his rooms, but neither took our hats nor suggested we take a seat. Given that we had called on him at his invitation, he seemed oddly wary of us. He was self-evidently weary. He had removed his darkened spectacles: his weak, pale eyes had a hollow, haunted look.
Oscar appeared not to notice. ‘I told Monsignor Tuminello that I had first suspected that it was he who had summoned Sherlock Holmes to the Vatican on the afternoon that we first met, from the moment when the Monsignor arrived in the refectory at the sacristy, saw Conan Doyle and immediately collapsed. It was the shock of recognition — the surprise of a wild dream realised.’
Oscar’s eyes flicked around the room: he glanced towards Munthe’s desk, table, sideboard, chest of drawers. I was familiar with the signs: my friend was hoping for a drink. None was forthcoming. He reached into his pocket for his cigarette case.
‘Then, foolishly,’ he went on, ‘I allowed myself to be distracted by the notion that it was Felici who had summoned Holmes, wanting someone to expose Breakspear!’
‘Does Monsignor Breakspear need to be exposed?’ asked Munthe, looking confused and stifling another yawn.
‘He does and he will be. Conan Doyle is on the case.’
Oscar took his cigarette to one of the candles on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. ‘I should not have allowed myself to be distracted,’ he said putting his cigarette to his mouth and bending his face close to the candle flame. ‘Tuminello’s story makes perfect sense.’
‘If you believe that a man can hear the voices of the dead,’ I said, sarcastically, ‘it does.’
‘Even if you don’t, it does,’ rejoined Oscar robustly. He was in no mood for argument. ‘Tuminello’s actions are all of a piece. The Monsignor — the exorcist — is obsessed with Agnes. To him, she is a saint already. But to prove it to the world he needs to be able to answer the questions he knows the devil’s advocate will ask. He needs to discover precisely how little Agnes died. At the time of her disappearance, extensive enquiries were made, but nothing of substance came to light. Breakspear says he saw her body, but he will say no more than that. What’s Tuminello to do? For years he does nothing. He broods, he believes, he drinks, he smokes, but he does nothing. And then, on 21 January this year, he hears her voice! Agnes speaks —and she speaks of a violent death and of a secret, of a hand at her throat and a finger at her lips …’
‘Did Tuminello say it was 21 January?’ I asked, surprised. ‘He mentioned the month, but not the day.’
‘Well done, Arthur,’ said Oscar, drawing enthusiastically on his cigarette. ‘You have Holmes’s ear for detail. The precise date is merely my surmise. Tuminello sent the first package to Sherlock Homes on 22 January this year — we know that: we have seen the postmark; you kept the packaging. I am guessing that he heard the voice on the day before, on 21 January, the feast of St Agnes.’
I smiled. ‘Clearly, I am going to have to get Holmes to pen a monograph on the uses of hagiography in the detection of murder.’ Oscar reached out his right arm and squeezed my shoulder happily.
Dr Munthe looked on bleary-eyed. ‘Why on earth did he approach “Sherlock Holmes” at all?’
‘He was desperate. It was a shot in the dark. Through the winter, week in, week out, the Vatican’s little circolo inglese had been enjoying the tales of the world’s foremost consulting detective. In his hour of need, Tuminello thought he might consult him too. The book was there. He could copy out the Baker Street address. Tuminello — who speaks near-perfect English but claims to be able to read and write barely a word of the language — despatches his first clue. It is a simple tuft of lamb’s wool.’ Oscar pointed his cigarette towards Munthe triumphantly. ‘You saw that at once, Doctor.’
‘Did I?’ asked Munthe.
‘You did,’ I laughed. ‘I seem to recall that Oscar was convinced it was a lock of hair plucked from the brow of a golden Adonis.’
Oscar was too merrily on song to be put off his stride. ‘Eventually, of course, we recognised what we should have seen at once: that the lamb’s wool symbolised Agnes, Pio Nono’s little lamb of God.’ He turned to the mantelpiece and flicked ash from the tip of his cigarette into the upturned palm of the late builder from the church of All Saints. ‘The dead hand — not a woman’s hand, as we first thought, but the small and delicate hand of a pontiff unfamiliar with hard labour — was Tuminello’s second clue, sent to Holmes in growing desperation six weeks after the first. As it transpired, it was the clue that we unwrapped first. It certainly caught our attention. The final clue, of course, was the finger. It was the finger that pointed us in the direction of the Holy See, thanks to the tell-tale rose-gold ring—’
‘Stolen,’ I added, ‘by Monsignor Tuminello’s own admission, from the dead hand of Pope Pius IX. Tuminello attended the embalming of His Holiness and brought away Pio Nono’s rose-gold ring as a souvenir.’
‘Yes,’ mused Oscar, twin plumes of cigarette smoke filtering from his nostrils, ‘of the seven rings once in the possession of Pio Nono’s “seven deadly sins”, the only ring not yet accounted for is the one that belonged to Father Bechetti. Where it’s got to, heaven knows.’
He stood erect, head held high, chest expanded, with his back to Munthe’s fireplace. With his right hand he patted the outside of his breast pocket.
‘I still have Pio Nono’s ring in my wallet, as my souvenir, but before we left St Peter’s, we returned the severed limbs to their respective sarcophagi. Arthur generously gave them up, though Monsignor Tuminello said they’d not been missed. We said a prayer as we reunited hand and digit with their rightful owners.’
‘You have returned them?’ Munthe smiled at Oscar. ‘I might have hoped to add them to my collection. Even a minor pope’s hand is quite a novelty.’
As we laughed, from behind the brocaded curtain in the corner of the room came the noise of cascading saucepans. Oscar turned eagerly. ‘Are we going to eat?’ he asked.
‘You may do as you please, gentlemen,’ said Munthe, putting on his spectacles. ‘I must calm my companion and then I am for my bed. I must be up at five. I have said that I will accompany Brother Matteo and Father Bechetti’s coffin to Capri. We are taking the Naples train at a quarter to six.’
‘We shall join you,’ declared Oscar, jubilantly. ‘Capri in July will be glorious.’
‘We’re accompanying a coffin, leaving at dawn and returning at dusk. It’s not a seaside holiday.’
‘Nevertheless, we shall come too, if you’ve no objection, Doctor?’
‘None whatsoever,’ said Munthe distractedly. He had moved to the chest of drawers on the far side of the room and, from on top of it, from a shallow metal tray that stood alongside a human skull, he had picked up a small syringe. He handled it with care.
‘Which is it tonight,’ asked Oscar, ‘morphine or cocaine?’
Munthe raised his eyes languidly from the needle’s point and gazed at Oscar. ‘It is cocaine,’ he said, ‘a seven per cent solution. Would you care to try it?’
‘Thank you,’ said Oscar, ‘we’ll have a sandwich and a bottle of Barbaresco at the hotel instead. You sho
uld eat something, too, Doctor. Won’t you join us?’
‘If you’ll excuse me,’ he said, ‘I’ve eaten, but I have not slept all day.’ He stood facing us, syringe in hand. It was clear that our evening was at a close.
‘I do apologise, Doctor,’ I said, hastily. ‘We would not have called, but in your note to me this morning you said you were going to rest during the day and suggested we come by this evening.’
‘I did, but as it turned out I got no rest. I’ve not slept since Friday night. As soon as I got in from Father Bechetti’s deathbed this morning, I was called out again.
Another case.
‘Another day, another death,’ said Oscar, smiling.
‘As it happens, yes,’ said Munthe, ‘but in this instance I arrived too late to be of any use. I had no involvement in the patient’s death. The poor man killed himself —gradually, over many years.’
‘Ah,’ sighed Oscar, ‘the demon drink …’
‘Yes. It broke him, slowly. He was a pathetic creature at the last. He lived up the hill, by the Protestant Cemetery, not far from where your hero Keats lies buried. His boys want him buried there.’
‘His boys?’ asked Oscar, leaning forward earnestly. ‘This is the father of the two boys who come from the field behind the pyramid?’
‘The immoral ones?’ I added.
‘The boys I warned you about — yes, those lads. Their father was a bone man and a drunkard. He’d been of little use to anyone for several years. Now he’s dead. He passed away last night, according to the boys.’
‘How do you know?’ asked Oscar, pressingly. ‘Have you spoken with them?’
‘I have been with them for much of the day. They found his body this morning when they went to give him his breakfast. He was dead. They saw that at once. His body was rigid and stone cold. They ran into town, encountered the Anglican chaplain and Rennell Rodd in the piazza, and told them what had occurred. Then they came here to find me. It’s a sorry business, but the boys will be fine. Their father had not been a father to them for many years. He had only been a burden. Today they are saddened by their loss. Soon they will simply feel relieved.’
From behind the brocaded curtain came the sharp clatter of tumbling kitchenware. Oscar started.
Munthe laughed. ‘Before you go, gentlemen, let me introduce you to my companion. She is not easy to live with, but I do love her so. Her name is Cleopatra. Around this time in the evening she gets hungry for attention —and for cocaine.’
Dr Munthe stepped across the room and slowly pulled back the brocaded curtain to reveal the kitchen beyond. There, on top of the unlit stove, cross-legged and rocking to and fro, sat a beautiful Arabian baboon.
At five-forty-five the following morning, Oscar Wilde and I scrambled aboard the Rome to Naples diretto at the very moment of the train’s departure. We had reached the railway station before five-thirty, but Oscar refused to proceed to our platform until he had equipped himself with coffee — and the station’s coffee vendor was not a man to be hurried. (And his coffee, it turned out, was not coffee to be drunk. ‘It’s cold and tastes of sour walnuts, ‘croaked Oscar, bitterly. ‘It was sent to punish us. God does not approve of early risers.’)
The murky liquid having been consigned instantly to the gutter, we rushed across the station concourse towards our train. Amid doors slamming, whistles blowing and steam hissing, frantically we ran along the platform until, at last, we caught sight of Axel Munthe seated in the corner of a second-class compartment. As the train juddered to life and lurched ponderously forward, we heaved ourselves onto it. The Swedish doctor, dressed in his customary linen suit, wearing his usual hat, holding a handkerchief and polishing the lenses of his spectacles with fastidious fingers, squinted up at us as we stumbled, breathless, into the carriage and tumbled, panting, onto the seats opposite him.
‘Ah, you’re here, gentlemen,’ he said, smiling.
‘We are,’ wheezed Oscar. ‘Just. How are you? How is your monkey?’
‘I am well, and Cleopatra is a baboon, not a monkey, but thank you for asking. When I left, she was sleeping like a baby.’ The doctor put on his spectacles and tucked his handkerchief neatly into his pocket. ‘She’s only eighteen months old so, in fact, she isn’t much more than a baby. Baboons can live to be forty-five years of age in captivity, you know. They thrive as pets in a way that’s impossible in the wild. I much prefer animals to humans, don’t you?’
‘That’s too deep a question to ask a man who’s not yet had his morning coffee,’ murmured Oscar. He sniffed and looked sharply around the compartment, then turned back to study Munthe. ‘Where is your corpse?’ he demanded.
‘Father Bechetti’s coffin is in the luggage van. Brother Matteo is there, too. He felt he should keep an eye on it. He’s a good man.’
‘So everybody says,’ muttered Oscar.
His hooded eyes shifted their gaze from Dr Munthe to the young lady seated next to him. I had already greeted her with a smile and a mouthed ‘Good morning’. It was Catherine English, looking lovelier than ever, despite the ungodly hour. She was wearing a summer dress of the palest pink, with deep cuffs and a high collar of soft white silk. I was surprised to see her. Clearly, so was Oscar.
‘Look at the state of us, Miss English,’ he apologised. ‘We’re a disgrace. I’m unshaven and unkempt.’ Oscar glanced towards me with a look of exaggerated disgust.
‘Arthur is probably unshaven also — it’s difficult to tell, given his absurd moustache. If we’d known we were to have the honour …’ He half rose in his seat to bow to the lady.
‘When I saw Dr Munthe yesterday,’ she explained, ‘he mentioned that he was coming to Capri and, as I have never been, I asked whether I might come too. I shan’t get in the way, I promise you. I’ll be as quiet as a church mouse.’
I smiled at her. She had a lovely way with words and a charming manner of speaking: the tone of her voice combined clarity and strength of character with intelligence and gentleness.
Oscar ran his eye over her rose-coloured costume. ‘You’re not coming to the funeral?’
‘None of us is,’ said Munthe, intervening, ‘unless, of course, you wish to stay on. I can’t. The funeral won’t be for a day or so. We’re merely accompanying the coffin to the church. As I am the doctor who signed the death certificate, it simplifies matters with the paperwork at the harbour if I escort the deceased onto the island. If all goes well, we can return to Rome late tonight.’
‘I will keep in the background,’ said Catherine English, lowering her eyes. ‘I have brought my book.’
Oscar raised an eyebrow. ‘The Lays of Ancient Rome?’
‘No,’ she answered prettily. ‘The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle. I am fond of a good detective story.’
Oscar sniffed again, stifling a sneeze. ‘Has Dr Munthe told you about the case we are investigating?’
The young woman looked anxiously in the doctor’s direction. ‘I have told Miss English everything,’ said Munthe, ‘without breaking a doctor’s code of confidentiality, of course.’
‘Of course,’ said Oscar. ‘This is good. It means we can speak freely. There is something I wanted to ask Dr Munthe last night, but there was not time.’
‘We have time now,’ said the doctor amiably. Oscar pushed himself forward on his seat so that his face was close to Munthe’s. He lowered his voice: we had to strain to hear him above the hiss and rumble of the train. ‘Is Monsignor Tuminello mad?’ he asked.
‘Mad?’ repeated Munthe.
‘This exorcism business — it’s lunacy, isn’t it?’
‘I am not that sure it is,’ replied Munthe, carefully. He sat back in his seat, pulling his face away from Oscar’s. ‘As Tuminello’s physician, and friend, at his behest I have attended a number of his exorcisms. He certainly appears to bring peace to troubled souls. With nothing more than words and oil and holy water, he achieves what I can manage only with a syringe and a seven per cent solution.’
‘What happens?
’ I asked, turning to Munthe. ‘How does the act of exorcism work?’
‘It’s a ritual,’ said Munthe, ‘that’s all.’
I pressed him. ‘What takes place — exactly?’ I asked. He regarded me steadily. ‘It varies, but it always begins in the same way. The priest, holding up a crucifix, addresses the victim, the “possessed one”, with the words “Ecce crucem Domini” — “Behold the cross of the Lord”. Then he touches them with the hem of his stole and rests his hand on their head. The object of the exercise, according to Tuminello, is to engage “the demons within”, to take them on in personal combat and defeat them. It’s a fight to the death.’
‘And these “demons”,’ enquired Oscar, ‘how do they manifest themselves?’
‘They speak through the victim — usually they cry out loud. They declare themselves: “I am Satan, I am Lucifer, I am Beelzebub”. Sometimes they emerge slowly, stealthily; more often in loud and sudden bursts. I was with Tuminello once when he performed an exorcism on a young boy of nine or ten. The child was uncontrollable. His language was vicious, utterly vile. The lad — he was a slip of a boy — had to be held down by four grown men. They struggled to subdue him. I watched amazed. Tuminello explained it very simply. He said the boy had “the strength of the devil” inside him.’
‘Could there have been another explanation?’ I asked.
‘Possibly but it’s one not yet known to science.’
Oscar sat back and considered Munthe. ‘And how does the exorcist defeat these diabolical forces?’ he enquired.
‘With difficulty — and determination. Tuminello is wonderfully condescending towards them. “The secret is to find your demon’s weak spot,” he says. Apparently, some demons cannot bear to have the sign of the cross traced with a stole on an aching part of the body; some cannot stand a simple puff of breath on the face; others resist with all their might a blessing with holy water. According to Monsignor Tuminello, “relief” is always possible, but in certain cases to rid a person of his demons can take many exorcisms over many years. It seems that for a demon to leave a body and return to hell it has to die for ever. I’ve heard one of these devils in its death throes crying out, “I am dying, I am dying. You are killing me, Tuminello. All priests are murderers.”’
Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders Page 21
