At half past four, Oscar, checking his watch, called the assembly to order.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, there are chairs laid out in the last chapel. Please make your way there now. Miss English and Dr Conan Doyle will bring through further refreshments. We are nearly all gathered, I think. We’re just waiting on Cesare Verdi, then we can begin.’
There was no dilly-dallying. The assembly moved eagerly along the vaulted corridor to the last room, the ‘crypt of the three skeletons’, where Oscar had arranged nine chairs in rows facing the altar.
The four clergymen, without prompting, filled up the front row, with the Capuchin friar at one end, the Anglican chaplain at the other and the two Monsignors in pride of place between. Once Miss English had topped up the teacups and I had finished serving the sandwiches, we took our places in the second row, alongside James Rennell Rodd, who remarked loudly as we joined him, ‘Don’t let Wilde hog the limelight with his preliminaries. It’s your story we’ve come for, Conan Doyle.’
‘And a tale of Sherlock Holmes is what you are about to receive, James,’ declared Oscar, standing centre-stage before us. ‘But on this occasion, forgive me, it’ll be I who tells the story, not Arthur.’
‘The man’s incorrigible,’ grumbled Rennell Rodd. ‘I should not have come.’
‘I am glad that you did, James,’ said Oscar, unperturbed. ‘You have a significant part to play in what’s to come.’
From the front row Nicholas Breakspear looked up at Oscar and enquired tartly: ‘We are getting a Sherlock Holmes story, aren’t we, Mr Wilde? That is what we were promised.’
‘It all begins with Sherlock Holmes,’ said Oscar, tantalisingly, checking his watch once more, then looking behind him at the candles flickering on the altar. He glanced at the skeletons, bones and vertebrae that lay all around. Peering into the enveloping gloom, he smiled as Cesare Verdi — unshaven, dressed in an unseasonable wool suit and holding a brown bowler hat — appeared beneath the archway. ‘Ah, you’ve arrived,’ said Oscar.
Verdi raised a hand as if to speak, but Oscar stopped him.
‘Please,’ said Oscar, ‘take a seat, then we can begin.’
‘Yes,’ muttered Rennell Rodd. ‘Let’s get on with it.’
Verdi took his seat in the half-light in the back row by the doorway. Oscar gazed upon the assembled company with apparent satisfaction. Catherine English smiled at me and whispered softly, ‘This is exciting.’ She pressed her fingers gently on my sleeve. I looked around at the expectant faces all fixed on Oscar and thought to myself, If there is a murderer in our midst, he is either a mighty cool customer or he has no notion of what Oscar has in store.
‘The scene is set,’ said Oscar. ‘I will begin.’
Oscar Wilde was a seasoned lecturer, veteran of more than three hundred platforms, concert halls and stages across the whole continent of North America and throughout the British Isles. On that late-July afternoon, in that macabre crypt, he commanded his small audience with effortless authority. He began his story simply, in a conversational tone, without rhetorical flourishes.
‘Arthur Conan Doyle and I arrived in Rome a week ago, drawn here by three curious messages, sent care of Number 221B Baker Street, London, to Mr Sherlock Holmes, the world’s foremost consulting detective.’
‘I’m glad Holmes is getting a look-in,’ muttered Rennell Rodd.
Oscar smiled. ‘If it weren’t for Holmes, we wouldn’t be here, but we are here instead of Holmes, because Holmes, of course, is a fictional creation and these messages were not the stuff of fiction. They were an all-too-human cry for help and they came, we discovered, from the Vatican City, from one of the chaplains-in-residence to His Holiness the Pope, from the papal exorcist, as it transpired — one Monsignor Luigi Tuminello.’
‘This is better than fiction,’ murmured Monsignor Breakspear from the front row.
‘And worse,’ said Oscar, without pause, ‘because this is real.’
My friend turned again towards the candles on the altar. I could tell that he was wondering whether he dare produce his cigarette case. I know that, as a raconteur, he always felt the prop of a lighted cigarette added a certain something to his performance. I watched him resist the temptation and, with shining eyes, turn back to survey his audience once more.
‘This is a murder mystery,’ he continued, ‘and at its heart lies the murder of the young girl called Agnes, a child whom I once heard Pope Pius IX describe as “all innocence — a lamb of God”. This child, aged no more than thirteen or fourteen, disappeared on Thursday 7 February 1878 from the sacristy of the Sistine Chapel at St Peter’s here in Rome. What happened to her? Where did she go? Alas, she was not assumed into heaven as Monsignor Tuminello hoped and prayed. She was murdered — but by whom? And when, exactly? And how? And for what reason?’
Oscar held the moment. Had he had a cigarette in hand, this is when he would have drawn upon it languorously and then have lingered to watch the twin plumes of smoke filter slowly from his own nostrils. Instead, the heavy silence was filled by Monsignor Felici remarking wheezily: ‘If Agnes was murdered, why was her body never found?’
‘It was,’ said Oscar, simply.
‘When?’ demanded Felici.
‘On the night she was killed.’
‘Where?’
‘Where she was murdered — in the sacristy, on the seat of tears.’
‘But then it disappeared,’ said Nicholas Breakspear, leaning forward in his seat.
‘Yes,’ said Oscar quietly, ‘it was brought here.’
‘Here?’ exclaimed Breakspear. ‘To this church?’
‘To this very room,’ said Oscar.
He turned and with his right hand pointed slowly to a human skeleton seated on the ground immediately to the side of the altar steps. The skull was tipped forward, the arms were folded across the ribcage, the legs extended, the little feet resting on a footstool made of blackened collarbones.
‘There she lies,’ said Oscar. ‘I believe those are the mortal remains of Pio Nono’s little lamb of God.’
We sat in silence, all eyes fixed on the skeleton laid out on the floor before us. I half stood in my place to get a better a view. ‘Can you be sure of this, Oscar?’ I asked in a voice barely above a whisper.
‘No, Arthur, I cannot be sure,’ Oscar replied. ‘All I can tell you is that Mark Twain writes about this chapel in his book, The Innocents Abroad, published nine years before the death of Agnes. He describes this altar and its surrounds in some detail. This little skeleton — so elegant and slight — does not feature in Twain’s description, which makes me think it was not here then. And it is a little skeleton, which makes me think it is the skeleton of a child. And its bones are so much paler than the others all around it, which makes me think that it has not lain here many years … I cannot be sure that this is Agnes’s skeleton, but I feel that it is — in my bones.’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps Brother Matteo will tell us if I am right?’
‘Si,‘ whispered the Capuchin friar, almost inaudibly. ‘Si,’ he repeated, his eyes cast down. ‘Mea culpa.’
‘This is a good man,’ cried Monsignor Felici, turning his huge bulk towards the barefoot monk slumped at his side. ‘If Matteo killed the child, he had his reasons. Let me plead for him.’
Oscar laughed and shook his head. ‘Brother Matteo did not kill Agnes. He would not hurt a fly — we all know that. Brother Matteo did not kill Agnes — but he believed he knew who had.’
Oscar looked down into Francesco Felici’s fat red face: beads of perspiration now bespangled the Monsignor’s cheeks and brow.
‘I take it that all of you in the sacristy knew that Agnes was the child of Father Bechetti. You never spoke of it, but you knew.’
‘I never believed it,’ said Breakspear.
‘I had almost forgotten,’ muttered Felici. ‘Sometimes that is the best way,’ said Oscar. ‘Men forget and women forgive. If it were not so, how could any of us survive? But Brother Matteo did not forget. He knew that Agne
s had been conceived on the island of Capri — by a priest and a nun in lust. He knew that Agnes was to Bechetti the living embodiment of his sinfulness. When Brother Matteo discovered Agnes’s body lying on the seat of tears he assumed that she had been killed by her own father. It was not so, but he believed it — and with you men of God, belief is all.’
‘Mea culpa,’ repeated the Capuchin friar, now wringing his hands wretchedly, his head swaying from side to side, his eyes tight shut.
‘You might wonder why, in the years that followed, Brother Matteo was so solicitous of Father Bechetti if he believed him to be a murderer? The answer is simple. As Monsignor Tuminello reminded me, “Brother Matteo is the pattern of goodness. He despises the sin, but goes out of his way to love the sinner.” It was almost as though Brother Matteo felt obliged to love Father Bechetti more because he believed him to be a murderer! Besides, what worthwhile purpose would be served by bringing Joachim Bechetti to civil justice? Ultimately, God would be Bechetti’s judge — and a better one than any that the Italian courts could afford. And meanwhile, why bring unnecessary scandal on the office of the chaplains-in-residence and shame on the memory of the innocent Agnes? What good could be served by that? Let the unfortunate Bechetti wrestle with his conscience on the bitter road to redemption and let poor dead Agnes rest in peace.
‘Quest’ è quello che è successo,’ muttered Matteo despairingly.
‘On the morning after her death, Brother Matteo brought Agnes’s body here. Where he hid it overnight, I do not know: in his cell, perhaps, or behind the altar in the darkness of the Sistine Chapel. What I am sure of is this: in the early hours of Friday morning — 8 February 1878 — he brought the child’s body here, hidden from view, wrapped in the brown habit of a Capuchin friar. I imagine he brought it here by cart, in the cart of the bone man who would come to the kitchens of the Vatican every Friday morning. He brought the body here and hid it until, over time, it turned from flesh to bone, and he could lay it Out in a manner that was fitting — in a place fit for the purpose, in a place of prayer, in a chapel of rest.’
Nicholas Breakspear moved forward to the very edge of his seat. ‘I must speak,’ he said. ‘I cannot let this pass, Mr Wilde. Whether or not Agnes was his daughter, Father Bechetti truly loved that child. The portraits he painted of her after her disappearance will show you that. He did not murder her.’
‘And how do you know that, Monsignor?’ asked Oscar.
‘I cannot tell you, but I do know,’ answered Breakspear solemnly.
‘You cannot tell me, Monsignor Breakspear, because to you the secrets of the confessional are sacred. You cannot break the sanctity of the confessional box. Is that not right?’
Breakspear made no response.
‘You assert that Father Bechetti did not murder Agnes because you believe you know who did.’
Still Breakspear said nothing.
‘You believe that it was Luigi Tuminello who killed the girl. You believe it because, in the confessional box, you sensed that the papal exorcist as good as told you so!’
Oscar stood triumphantly, head held high, legs apart, hands on hips. (Oscar confessed that he did sometimes like to ‘strike a pose’.) Breakspear looked up at him and smiled. The Grand Penitentiary’s voice was steady as he spoke. ‘When I take confession, Mr Wilde, I do so as God’s servant. The words I hear are intended for God’s ears, not mine. I am merely the conduit. You understand that, I know.’
‘I do,’ said Oscar.
‘As Grand Penitentiary and as a fellow chaplain, I heard Monsignor Tuminello’s confession often. I heard what turned out to be his last confession only a day or two before he died. I cannot tell you what he said to me, but I can tell you this: he did not confess to the murder of little Agnes.’
‘No,’ said Oscar lightly, stepping away from Breakspear’s seat and viewing him with half-shut eyes, picking his words carefully as he uttered them. ‘No, but, nevertheless, you think that he might have killed her … because she had told him something that made him think that she, the little innocent, had been defiled.’
Breakspear said nothing.
‘Agnes spoke to Tuminello of violence and of a secret she had not shared.’
I was watching Breakspear from the far end of the second row. Almost imperceptibly, he nodded.
Oscar’s oration now gathered momentum: ‘When Tuminello told you that Agnes had told him of violence and an unspoken secret, you assumed that he was telling you that the poor child had been taken, carnally. When Tuminello told you of the hand at her throat and the single finger pressed against her lips, and, full of passion and distress, spoke of her violent death, you feared the worst … Knowing of Tuminello’s obsession with Agnes’s innocence and purity, you jumped to the conclusion that, once he discovered that her innocence had been violated and her purity defiled, he decided to despatch his angel to heaven before the world could learn of her shame.’
Breakspear, his face quite white, gazed up at Oscar in amazement.
‘You heard all this from Tuminello only a matter of days ago,’ Oscar continued, ‘but tell me this, Monsignor Breakspear: did the papal exorcist tell you when it was that he had his “conversation” with Agnes, or when exactly it was that she spoke to him of “violence and of a secret she had not shared”? No? He did not — so you assumed, naturally enough, that it was fourteen or fifteen years ago, not long before the poor child’s death.’
Oscar leant forward and looked closely into Breakspear’s eyes.
‘Never make assumptions, Monsignor. As Sherlock Holmes would tell you: it is the golden rule. On Sunday evening last, among the tombs of the popes in the crypt of St Peter’s, Monsignor Luigi Tuminello told Arthur Conan Doyle and me of this same conversation with Agnes and it took place, not in 1877 or 1878, but earlier this year — yes, in 1892 — on 21 January, to be precise, the feast day of St Agnes of Rome. Agnes spoke with Tuminello during an exorcism. She identified herself by name. She was much troubled and what she told him caused him much distress. It prompted his cries for help. Indeed, it prompted him to send the first of his messages to Sherlock Holmes on the very next day. But could it be that Monsignor Tuminello had done what we have all done from time to time: could he have broken the golden rule and made a false assumption? No doubt he believed that the voice he heard during that exorcism was the voice of the child Agnes, Pio Nono’s lamb of God — but is it not much more likely to have been the voice of St Agnes of Rome, on her feast day, on the anniversary of her martyrdom, telling of her travails at the hands of vicious and violent men sixteen hundred years ago?’
‘Do you believe in angels, Mr Wilde?’ asked the Reverend Martin English, quietly, from his place beside Breakspear in the front row.
‘I believe there are many more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy. I also believe that a grain of strychnine prescribed to a patient to stimulate a sluggish heart is known to have hallucinatory side effects.’ Oscar’s eyes moved from Martin English to Axel Munthe who was seated just behind him. Munthe did not stir.
‘Who killed this girl, then?’ Rennell Rodd demanded.
Oscar returned to his central position before the altar. I could see that without the prop of a cigarette he was uncertain what to do with his hands. A little awkwardly, he folded his arms as he resumed his presentation.
‘Father Bechetti did not kill his own daughter,’ he began. ‘He felt the shame of her existence — but it was his shame, not hers. He would have been more likely to take his own life than his own child’s, but he did neither. And Monsignor Tuminello did not kill Agnes either. Had she been defiled, the fault would not have been hers in any event. Tuminello trusted completely in her goodness and her innocence. He may not have heard her voice, but he understood her spirit and he wanted to discover the truth about her death only in order to advance her towards sanctity.’
Nicholas Breakspear nodded emphatically at this last remark. Oscar looked down at him.
‘And you did not k
ill her either, Monsignor Breakspear-Owen.’ The Grand Penitentiary tilted his head and gazed up at Oscar with narrowed eyes. ‘You don’t mind if I use your full name, do you?’ added Oscar.
‘Not in the least,’ replied Breakspear, without the faintest sign of being discomfited. ‘It’s a bit of a mouthful. I haven’t used it for years.
‘Not since you came to Rome, in fact.’
‘I suppose not,’ said Breakspear easily. He laughed. ‘It’s not a criminal offence, I trust.’
‘No, Monsignor. It turns out that you are exactly who and what you claim to be. It’s quite disappointing. You are not a fraud at all. Because Conan Doyle couldn’t recollect your name, I suggested he make enquiries at your old school. He sent a wire to the bursar asking after “Nicholas Breakspear”. I sent another on his behalf, supplying your initials: NB-O. I found that you had written them on the flyleaf of your first edition of A Study in Scarlet.’
Oscar glanced in my direction and pulled a telegram envelope out of his inside jacket pocket.
‘This came for you from Stonyhurst yesterday, Arthur. I know I shouldn’t have opened it …’
I raised my eyebrows, but said nothing.
Oscar turned back to Breakspear and eyed him beadily. ‘You are a killer, after your fashion, of course.’
‘Am I?’ The Grand Penitentiary appeared unmoved by the assertion.
‘You are, and you boast of it. With the help of those scavenging boys who live up on the hillside behind the pyramid, you are eating your way through the animal kingdom. It’s not original and it’s not nice — but it doesn’t make you a murderer in the eyes of the law.’
‘I am relieved to hear it.’
‘The worst we can accuse you of, Monsignor, is the sin of pride: dropping the humbler part of your surname for the vanity of being able to give yourself the name of England’s only pope.’
‘I plead guilty to the sin of pride,’ said Breakspear, quite unabashed. ‘I am grateful not to be charged with murder.’
‘Who is to be?’ asked Monsignor Felici. ‘We are all guilty of something, it seems. No doubt, I am guiltier than most. I am fatter than most, I know.’ He laughed wheezily and glanced over his shoulder towards Axel Munthe.
Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders Page 25
