Grigsby sipped at his coffee, set the cup carefully back down on its saucer, looked back at Oscar. “You can keep your mouth shut?”
“I can be,” said Oscar, “and often am, the soul of discretion.”
“I want your word on it. That you won’t go gabbin’ about any of this to the others.”
“That goes without saying.”
“My experience, things that go without sayin’, they go better when they’re said.”
“You have my word. But by now it’s obvious, isn’t it. They did have red hair.”
Grigsby nodded.
“All four of them?” asked the Countess.
Grigsby turned to her. “All five of ’em. There was another one. Just got a telegram this mornin’.”
“Where?” Oscar asked him.
“San Jose, California.”
The Countess turned to Oscar. “We were in San Jose, were we not?”
“At the beginning of February.”
“February the sixth,” said Grigsby.
“When was she killed?” Oscar asked, already knowing the answer.
“That night.”
Oscar felt the breath leave his lungs. Its departure weakened him, and he sat back.
The Countess said to no one in particular, “Then there is no doubt at all. It is one of us.”
Grigsby nodded. “Looks like.”
Listlessly, Oscar said, “What about Dr. Holliday?” Not really believing in the possibility, and feeling curiously disloyal even for suggesting it. After all, the man had saved his life, and Elizabeth’s. “He might’ve been in San Jose that night.”
“Prob’ly was. Doc’s a gambler. He’s been followin’ your tour. Been settin’ up poker games with the high rollers who come in to see ya.”
“He told you this?”
Grigsby nodded. “And I got no reason. to disbelieve him.”
Yes. It could be. And perhaps, too, this explained why the gunman seemed so concerned with Oscar’s welfare, why he had saved him twice from possible—no, admit it, from certain disaster. He had been protecting the farmer who gathered the geese who laid the golden eggs.
For some reason this notion—that Holliday had all along, and without Oscar’s knowledge, been using him—disturbed him nearly as much as learning about the additional murder. He felt rather as though he had been betrayed yet again, not by a friend or a lover, which one might expect, but by a stranger, gratuitously.
But why should this bother him? Elephants grew tusks …
“What will you do now?” the Countess was asking Grigsby.
He shrugged. “What I been doin’ all along. Keep watchin’. Keep waitin’ for someone to make a move on a prostitute.”
“They’ve all been prostitutes?” asked Oscar, more out of politeness now than out of any real interest. He felt flat, exhausted, defeated.
“All but one,” Grigsby said. “And maybe that one was workin’ on the side. Or maybe this fella just figured she was. I got the feelin’, readin’ about her, that maybe she was a little loose. Maybe that was enough for him.”
Oscar nodded. He wanted to lie down in a bed and pull the covers over his head. He wanted, failing that, to complain some more about his heartache, which he could hardly do in front of Grigsby. Grigsby, a man as sensitive as a piano bench, would never understand. “Countess,” he said, “shall we go?”
She leaned forward. “Oscair, would you mind very much if I spoke to Marshal Greegsby for a few minutes longer?” She smiled at Grigsby. “If, Marshal, you do not mind my company?”
“No, ma’am, be a pleasure.”
“Of course not,” said Oscar. Still another betrayal. It was an epidemic. He stood. “Marshal. Countess.”
As he entered the first-class carriage, Oscar realized that he did not want to sit with the others. Not only because one of them was probably a murderer. (And now, with the news of an additional killing in still another town where they had stayed, this seemed an absolutely certainty.) But also because what he most wanted in the world at the moment was solitude.
He sat in the empty seat at the back of the carriage and stared out at the deranged trees leaning over the blue blanket of snow.
MY DEAR MRS. DOE,
Would you please be so kind as to meet with me this evening at the Ice Palace? I will proceed directly there after my lecture in the hope of finding you. The lecture will end at ten o’clock. I have something of great weight and pointedness to share with you. I think it would be best if you discussed this meeting with no one. I very much look forward to your coming.
Sincerely,
O. Wilde
He reread the letter.
He giggled.
Truly, it was perfect. Perfect.
He especially liked something of great weight and pointedness. The slut would think that this was a sly sexual allusion, and she would never suspect that it might refer just as well—no, better—, to a sacramental knife.
Yes, the letter was perfect. It was certain to lure the bitch from the safety of her lair, out into the darkness where he could act, where he could show her, could become with her, the Light that flared at the center of the cosmos.
(The splitting of taut pink flesh, the rush of red saps, the bright iridescent shimmer of meat.)
From the train, he had seen the huge castle of ice, its slick translucent sides stained orange by the slanting light of the setting sun. Sprawling on a broad promontory to the west of town, it had appeared, at first glance, like something from a child’s fairy tale. A wide portcullis yawned between two lofty crystal towers; the massive crystal walls, topped with delicate crystal parapets, rose dizzily skyward from the bright orange field of snow. It had seemed at once dreamlike and substantial, fanciful and concrete; something that had been imagined rather than constructed, but something that, having been created by an impossible feat of magic, would endure, magically, until the end of time.
But when you looked more closely, you saw that one of the huge towers was listing very slightly toward the other; that the parapet here and there showed gaps, like missing teeth, where sections had toppled to the ground. The entire structure was melting now, crumbling beneath the weight of time and temperature. In a few days, in a week at most, it would collapse upon itself, become a tumble of shattered, splintered blocks; and in another few weeks it would be gone entirely, leaving behind nothing but a small rill or two of turbid water gurgling over the black mud.
Well, in point of fact, there would be a little something else remaining. A delightful little surprise for the good people of Leadville. Damp fragments, choice thawing segments, lovely strips and chunks of what had been the wicked slut, the vile strumpet Elizabeth McCourt Doe.
(Threads of scarlet streaking the brown meltwater.)
He giggled again. He had spoken with some of them this evening, with some of the good people of Leadville. (Fools, fools! Not a one of them had guessed!) He had learned this: that because of the danger posed by the rotting ice, no one entered the Palace now. During the day, a few visitors to the town might wander up to marvel at the vast frozen construction, perhaps to frown at the futility, the enormous effort wasted on a thing so ephemeral, so fugitive. But at night, in the cold, in the darkness, no one went there.
Except the sort of creature driven by her own vile lusts, by her need to spread corruption and depravity.
She would come, yes. She would come to offer her rank, stinking, poisonous body to Wilde.
And, oh, she would suffer, this one. She would pay. This one he would keep alive for as long as possible. This one would know exactly what was happening, this one would see it happening, hear it happening. The glide and whisper of the knife, the pluck and prod of knowing fingers.
She would scream, oh my yes, she would beg for mercy.
Let her. Yes, let her. No one would hear her.
Her hair. Her red red hair. He would slice it off, skin and all, tear it in one piece from her skull as the wild Indians did, and then, oh yes, and then he would wear it for her. Wha
t a fine joke that would be! What a magnificent jest! And then, with it damp against his head, draped and dripping from his shoulders, he would dance for her, round and round in the silvered moonlight, holding the knife high so she might see it, so she might know that soon she would taste it again.
A shudder of pleasure ran through him.
It was too much, almost, to contemplate. A faint glow, a promise of the Flame to come, pulsed along the sides of his vision. And then …
… for a moment, for only a moment, the darkness overtook him, rushed over him with the roar of a typhoon, and he was back once again in the attic, listening to the footfall of the Preacher rising up the stairs …
… and then once again he was back in the endless empty field, watching the sky split apart and send entrails spilling to the parched earth …
But then he was back in his room at the Clarendon. He was all right. He was in absolute control.
He was in absolute, utter, control. Of his destiny. Of the unthinkable, unstoppable force that throbbed within him.
Tonight he would have her. Tonight she would be his. No one would, no one could, stop him.
And if someone should come, if some interloper should enter the Palace tonight, he was ready.
He picked up the revolver from the bed and turned it over, admiring its solidity, its clean forceful lines.
How easy it had been to obtain. You merely walked into a store, made your selection, paid your money, took your gun and your ammunition, and you left. As easily as purchasing a box of chocolates.
In the light of the oil lamp the blued steel gave off a soft, lovely glow.
Yes. He was ready.
He looked at his watch. Eight-thirty. Wilde would be starting his lecture.
Time to go. Time to find room 303 and slip the note beneath her door.
He picked up the note, reread it once more.
He giggled.
HENRY, COMING DOWN WITH a cold, coughing and wheezing, had asked for the evening off; and so Oscar was alone in he dressing room as he sat slumped in the red plush chair and watched himself smoke a cigarette in the mirror.
The lecture had gone well: the miners, in their simple, good-natured way, had roared with merry laughter at his wit. This had been rather a surprise, for Oscar’s heart had not been in his performance.
No, his heart had been floating somewhere behind the seats in the box to stage right, Tabor’s box. It had been fluttering and hovering somewhere there in the shadows, where behind a red velvet curtain a door led to the passageway which connected the theater to the third floor of the Clarendon Hotel. Outside the Opera House, on his way here, he had looked up and seen it: a long windowless brick structure, graceless but utilitarian, obviously an afterthought, poised in midair between the two buildings.
All he need do was take an oil lamp, walk up into Tabor’s box, pull back the curtain, open the door, amble down the passageway, open the door on the other side, find room 303, use the key she had given him, and straightaway he would be with her.
She would be awaiting him, she had said.
Probably she would already be lying in bed, her remarkable red hair atumble on her pale white shoulders, one perfect pert nipple peeking (perhaps) above the sheet …
He would not go to her.
To go to her was to admit that he must have her; that to have her, he would accept her even on her own, impossible, terms. To go to her was to validate her worldview at the expense of his own. To go to her was to surrender his dreams to the sordid reality of her arrangement with Tabor. To go to her was to diminish himself.
But in his pocket, heavy inside its cardboard box, was the silver brooch he had purchased in Denver. He had not given it to her this morning (what with revelations and revolvers, he had not found the time); and for some reason, not thinking about it, when he dressed this evening he had slipped the box into the pocket of his green velvet jacket.
He didn’t want the bloody thing. It would serve, forever, as a reminder. Of his foolishness. Of his stupidity.
He could, of course, throw it away. But that seemed a terrible waste.
What he should do, perhaps, was go to her room—for only a moment or two. Give her the brooch. Here. Something I picked up for you in Denver, before you tore out my heart and hurled it to the ground and performed a mazurka atop it.
No. No bitterness. Bitterness would lose her forever.
Idiot. You’ve already lost her forever.
No. What was needed here was a light touch. A casual, airy insouciance.
Just stopped by for a minute, must run, but I thought I’d pass along this little bauble. Nothing special, but I thought it might amuse you. Well, cheerio, do drop me a line if you get the opportunity. You have the address?—The Rambles, Grosvenor Square, London. Oh, and make sure you write private on the envelope. Otherwise one of the servants might open it, they’re hopeless really.
She would be naked under the sheet.
He sat forward, stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray.
He would go to her, yes, but only for a moment. Only to give her the brooch.
In his carpetbag, lying in the shadows beside him, he had everything he needed. A coil of rope. A change of clothes. An oil lamp. A square of soap and a large bottle of warm water, so that afterward, when he had done with the creature, he might wash the stains of it from his body. And afterward, he would use the oil remaining in the lamp to burn the clothes he wore now.
The knife was in the inner pocket of his jacket. The gun was in his topcoat pocket.
He was ready.
The night was perfect. The full moon was nearly at the center of the sky and by its light, had he wished to, he could have read a newspaper. He had not needed the oil lamp to search through the chill, empty hallways of the Palace. The room he had chosen was ideal for his purposes: splashed with moonlight, ceilingless but for the spidery metal framework which had once held sheets of ice. Part of one wall had already collapsed. In one corner lay a ragged jumble of ice and snow, and there, afterward, when he had finished, he would bury it. He had never felt the need before to hide them, to conceal the bits and pieces; but with Grigsby still prowling about, concealment was the wisest course. No one would find it for weeks, and by then he would long be gone.
The earth beneath his feet was a frigid, semiliquid muck which now, in the cold, was beginning to solidify. His toes were aching, tingling—an indication that once again all his senses had been brought to a preternatural sharpness.
He could hear his breathing, soft and steady. Always he was surprised and pleased by how calm he could remain. Anyone else might, right now, be panting with fear and tension. He—
He heard, and then he saw, the carriage. Led by two prancing black horses, it rolled across the empty field of snow. Even from a hundred yards away, so extraordinary was the accuracy of his vision, he could see her clearly, sitting upright in the seat, her long red hair trailing in the wind behind her, black now in the moonlight.
Always, before, he had gone in search of his prey. Stalking it. Tonight it came to him.
He giggled.
How convenient this was. He must use this method again.
The carriage drew closer, the thudding of the horses’ hooves, the rattle of the wheels, growing louder in the still night air.
Come to me, bitch. Come to me, slut.
Come to us.
Oscar knocked on the door to room 303.
No answer.
He slipped the key into the lock, turned it, pushed open the door.
“Elizabeth?”
He shut the door behind him. The only light came from the oil lamp he held. He was in the empty sitting room of a suite—bookcases, a dining table and some chairs, a long sofa behind a dark-wood coffee table. A door stood open to his right. The bedroom.
She would be in there, naked, lying on the bed.
Just stopped by for a minute, must run …
He entered the bedroom. The room was empty, the bed was empty.
Another betrayal.
A cruel joke.
Somewhere she was laughing at him, filled with wicked mirth as she pictured him standing here, the lamp in his hand, an expression of doltish disappointment on his face.
Enough. He had played the fool for far too long.
He was turning to leave when he saw, lying open on the dresser top, a sheet of paper.
Perhaps she had been called away, perhaps she had left him a note.
He crossed the room, lifted the paper, read, “My Dear Mrs. Doe …”
He frowned. A joke, yes; but a joke played on her. By someone else. Someone masquerading as him.
Was the woman a ninny? How could she possibly have believed that he had written this drivel? Declarative sentences so simple as to be almost moronic. Could she really accept that he was capable of such limp, pedestrian prose?
And I have something of great weight and pointedness to share with you. Only a dull, lewd mind could have produced that.
Nasty, really. Repellent.
Who could have written it? And why had he done so?
Suddenly he knew.
Not who, but why.
He remembered what Grigsby had said in the dining car. When Oscar had asked if all the murdered women had been prostitutes. “All but one. And maybe she was working on the side. Or maybe he thought she was. I got the feelin’, readin’ about her, that maybe she was a little loose. Maybe that was enough for him.”
Maybe that was enough for him.
Red hair. All the women had red hair.
All the men traveling with the tour had seen her last night; all of them knew that Elizabeth McCourt Doe had red hair.
And, thanks to O’Conner, all of them knew that she was staying in room 303 of the Clarendon.
He set the oil lamp carefully on the dresser, and then he ran from the room.
“Oscar?”
The creature was down from the carriage, standing in the slush at the entrance to the Palace, calling out Wilde’s name. It stood close enough for him to see the color of its hair, a deep dark red in the moonlight, the color of blood.
Wilde West Page 33
