Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers

by Gyles Brandreth

  ‘I need you, Frank,’ he murmured, and then, as if suddenly waking, startled, from a sleep, he released the boy and looked about him – gazing sharply at Oscar, at me, at Robert Sherard, as if he had seen none of us before. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

  ‘We remain concerned about the death of the Duchess of Albemarle,’ said Oscar.

  ‘Are you police spies, too?’ demanded the prince. He seemed a man suddenly transformed.

  ‘No,’ replied Oscar soothingly. ‘We are friends.’

  ‘Are you working for my father?’

  The prince’s small eyes burned fiercely in a face wet with perspiration. In the glow of the brazier he had the look of a feral creature glimpsed by lamplight in the undergrowth.

  ‘No,’ said Oscar truthfully. ‘When we spoke last of this matter, we were. But no longer, sir – I do assure you.’

  ‘You “assure” me, do you, Mr Wilde? What’s your assurance worth? Why should I trust you? In God’s name, what business is Helen’s death of yours?’

  Oscar said nothing. Frank Watkins, the page, put his arm around the prince’s back. Behind us, the Malay hovered with fresh pipes of opium.

  Bram Stoker pulled a large, red handkerchief from his coat pocket and passed it to the prince. His Highness wiped his face with it and calmed himself.

  ‘Helen Albemarle died of a heart attack,’ he said. ‘According to Lord Yarborough. Yarborough’s a doctor, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and a distinguished one. I am a doctor, too, Your Highness. With Lord Yarborough I examined the duchess’s body some hours after her death and there were marks upon her body – cuts, abrasions—’

  He did not look at me but continued to gaze at Oscar.

  ‘Mr Wilde seemed to think they were the marks of a vampire. Mr Wilde, I recollect, wondered whether I might be the vampire in question.’

  Oscar made to protest, but the prince continued speaking, laughing derisively as he spoke: ‘Mr Wilde is said to be the most brilliant man of his generation. At Trinity College, Dublin, I’m told, Mr Wilde won every prize on offer and walked away with a First. At Trinity College, Cambridge, I failed to last the year and walked away with nothing. But I’m not so stupid as Mr Wilde. There are no such creatures as vampires. I know that. Stoker knows that. We amuse ourselves with vampires. We pursue them for our sport. We do not believe in them.’

  ‘You believe in porphyria,’ said Oscar softly.

  ‘Porphyria is a disease of the blood that drives men mad, Mr Wilde. Porphyria is real. Vampires aren’t.’

  ‘The cuts on the duchess’s body were real, Your Highness,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t doubt it, Doctor,’ said the prince, turning his gaze from Oscar to look at me. ‘But they were not inflicted by a vampire. The Duchess of Albemarle’s husband was in the habit of beating his wife. He beat her cruelly. He beat her savagely, to be precise.’

  The prince paused and mopped his face. Returning the red handkerchief to Bram Stoker, he looked once more at Oscar.

  ‘Did you not know that, Mr Wilde?’

  ‘No,’ said Oscar, quietly. ‘I did not.’

  ‘The Duke of Albemarle is a brute,’ said Prince Albert Victor. ‘He beat his wife. I imagine he beats his servants.’

  ‘But the marks on the duchess’s torso were not bruises,’ I said. ‘They were not the mark of a lash or a whip. They were incisions.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the prince. ‘Incisions – cuts inflicted with a pocket knife kept for the purpose. I’m sure you’ve seen the knife. His Grace also uses it to cut his cigars. The Duke of Albemarle did not thrash his wife with a whip. He cut her quite precisely with a pocket knife.’

  ‘How do you know this, Your Highness?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘Helen told me. She told my father, also.’

  ‘Did you see these cuts?’ I asked.

  ‘No. His Grace was careful never to mark his wife’s face or arms or hands. Helen told me that her husband was most particular about where on her body he marked her. I never saw the scars. But my father did.’

  ‘Did the Prince of Wales tell you this?’

  ‘No. My father and I don’t discuss matters of an intimate nature, Mr Wilde. My father told his equerry – and Owl told me. And if he had not, Frank would have told me. Frank is my father’s page. Frank hears everything and tells me all that he has heard.’

  The prince reached out and took the page affectionately by the scruff of the neck. The boy paid no attention: he was busy sucking on a fresh opium pipe.

  ‘And why did the duke mistreat his wife?’ I asked.

  ‘Because he loved her,’ said Prince Albert Victor.

  ‘A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her,’ said Oscar, softly.

  ‘That is absurd,’ I snapped.

  ‘It is true, nevertheless,’ murmured Oscar.

  ‘Because he loved her,’ repeated the prince, ‘and because she did not love him. Because she loved other men.’

  ‘That is why he wounded her as he did,’ suggested Oscar.

  ‘Yes,’ said Prince Eddy. ‘He cut her breasts and her belly because none would see the wounds except for Her Grace and her lovers.’

  ‘And her lady’s maid,’ I added.

  ‘Your father saw those wounds?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘I imagine so,’ said the prince. ‘I do not know for certain.’

  ‘And he could do nothing about it because to admit that he had seen the wounds would be to admit to his own adultery …’

  ‘Yes.’ The prince laughed. ‘And risk a scandal!’

  ‘However much he might have loved her, the Prince of Wales could not protect the Duchess of Albemarle because the Duke of Albemarle, at all times, had the upper hand. The prince could do nothing to help his mistress – nothing at all – for fear that the duke would sue his wife for divorce, naming the heir apparent as co-respondent.’

  Prince Albert Victor took the bamboo pipe from the page’s hands and put it to his own lips. He sucked on it slowly, smiling at Oscar as he did so and closing his eyes as he breathed the poison into his lungs. Opening his eyes again, he offered the pipe to Oscar, who accepted it.

  ‘They say that my father prefers men to books and women to either – but, above all, he wants to be king. He will let nothing stand in the way of that. He cannot afford another scandal. He will not allow it.’

  ‘Would the Prince of Wales kill to be king?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘He has shot pheasant and partridge and grouse by the thousand, Mr Wilde. The deer at Abergeldie Castle quake at his approach. He has felled tiger and elephant. He slaughters animals with reckless abandon. But could he kill a man? I wonder. And could he kill a woman? I doubt it. And last Thursday night, he could not have killed the Duchess of Albemarle. He was on public view all evening.’

  ‘His equerry was not,’ said Oscar.

  ‘His page was not,’ said Frank Watkins, grinning.

  ‘Why would the Prince of Wales want to murder his own mistress?’ asked Bram Stoker.

  ‘Because he could no longer trust her,’ suggested Oscar. ‘Because she was an hysteric, and he could no longer rely on her discretion. He could neither protect her from her husband nor protect her from herself. She was mad, poor woman – a danger to herself and to the throne. He could not help her, but he could put her out of her misery. And if he could not do the deed himself, others would do it for him. “Who will rid me of this turbulent duchess?”’

  I looked at Oscar as he sucked on the opium pipe. ‘This is somewhat far-fetched, my friend,’ I said.

  Oscar looked back at me and smiled. ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth, Arthur. Remember that.’

  ‘It’s a lovely line, Oscar – one of your best – but we have not eliminated the impossible. Far from it.’

  Prince Albert Victor raised his hand to silence us. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘if anyone is responsible for the death of the Duchess of Albemarle
, it is her husband. His cruelty provoked her madness and her heart attack. He mutilated her – that we know. She told us so. But he did not kill her. Lord Yarborough says her heart gave way – that was the cause of death – and there is no reason to doubt him.’

  ‘And even if the duke had killed his wife,’ I said, ‘what could be done about it? If you threaten to bring His Grace to justice, His Grace will threaten to destroy the reputation of the future king of England. It cannot be done.’

  ‘Case closed,’ said Oscar, handing the opium pipe to Prince Albert Victor.

  He put the palms of his hands on the bench on either side of him and attempted to stand. He could not do so. Sherard and I each took him by the elbow and, with an effort (Oscar is a large man), lifted him to his feet, standing closely at his side while he steadied himself.

  Oscar looked down at the young prince and smiled. ‘Thank you, Your Royal Highness,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Wilde,’ said the prince. ‘I did not murder the Duchess of Albemarle.’

  ‘I know,’ said Oscar. ‘I never thought you did.’

  ‘And yet you came to see me here tonight to confront me with the possibility.’

  The prince laughed. In the faint glow of the brazier, with his thin, waxed moustache and the sweat glistening on his saturnine features, he looked like a stage blackguard crouching by the footlights.

  ‘I know why you came,’ he said.

  ‘Do you?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘You came because my father listened to a fortune-teller years ago and believed the gibberish he was told. My father believes me capable of murder.’

  ‘And are you?’

  Prince Albert Victor cast the opium pipe aside and sat upright. Looking up at Oscar and gazing steadily into his eyes, he spoke calmly.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I am, Mr Wilde. I believe in capital punishment. I believe in taking a life – in war and at the gallows. I would fight a duel. And I would murder a man in cold blood – if it was just and right and necessary to do so. I did not murder the Duchess of Albemarle – why should I? I did not kill that little dancer that we met at the Empire last night – why would I? But, yes, Mr Wilde, I am capable of murder. And if, as my father believes, it is to be my destiny, I am ready for it.’

  ‘You will be king one day, sir,’ said Bram Stoker kindly. ‘In the fullness of time, that is to be your destiny.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said the prince, shaking his head and putting his arm around the page-boy at his side. ‘I’ll not be king. I’ll go mad before then. The porphyria will claim me. I shall never be king – and my father knows it. That’s another thing the fortune-teller told him.’

  65

  From the Evening News, late edition, Wednesday, 19 March 1890

  MURDERED MERMAID NOT RIPPER VICTIM

  Louisa Lavallois, the French dancer who has been appearing as Miranda the Mermaid at the Empire Theatre of Varieties in Leicester Square, and whose mutilated body was discovered in an alley adjacent to the theatre late last night, was not the latest victim of ‘Jack the Ripper’, according to the police.

  The semi-clad body of Miss Lavallois, twenty-six, principal dancer with the dance troupe Les Ballets Fantastiques, was found shortly before midnight hidden behind dustbins in Derby Alley, fifty yards from the Empire Theatre stage door. The victim’s throat had been cut savagely and her body mutilated, leading to speculation that the pretty young dancer was yet another victim of the notorious ‘Jack the Ripper’ who has so far claimed the lives of at least eleven unfortunate females, mostly in the Whitechapel district of East London.

  However, we understand that the West End location of the present murder and the particular nature of the victim’s wounds have led police to eliminate Jack the Ripper from the list of possible suspects. We can disclose that police now believe that Miss Lavallois may have been the victim of a revenge killing undertaken by or on behalf of the leader of a French criminal gang based in the Montmartre district of Paris.

  Well-informed and usually reliable sources close to the Metropolitan Police have revealed to the Evening News that, in Paris, Miss Lavallois had a reputation as a professional courtesan equal to her fame as a dancer and may have fallen foul of her paymaster.

  According to the source, ‘It seems that the young lady left Paris without the permission of her employer and had hopes of setting up in business independently in London. Her Paris paymaster, a man at the centre of an extensive web of corruption in France, and the owner of several houses of ill-repute in Paris, Lyons and Marseilles, was not ready to be crossed in this way and, as a warning to others, decided to make an example of Miss Lavallois. Either he murdered her himself or, much more likely, sent one of his henchmen to London to do the deed.’

  We understand that Inspector Walter Andrews of Scotland Yard, who is leading the investigation into the murder, has been given the name of Miss Lavallois’s former employer in Paris and will be contacting the French police as a matter of urgency.

  However, according to our source, ‘It is very unlikely that anyone will be brought to justice. The man in question is far too powerful to touch and what can be proved? He will have sent an anonymous miscreant to London to commit the crime, and that man will have slipped into the country yesterday afternoon unnoticed and then slipped out again as soon as the job was done. There are a dozen trains a day to and from Paris and no passports required. Miss Lavallois’s killer could be any one of a thousand French criminals ready to commit murder for money. Finding him will be no easier than finding a needle in a haystack.’

  66

  From the notebooks of Robert Sherard

  As soon as the night train pulled out of Victoria station, I fell asleep. Our compartment was warm and dark, and the steady jolt and jar of the train’s engine were curiously soothing. I let the locomotive’s steam filtering through the carriage windows overwhelm me, like wafts of gas administered in the dentist’s chair.

  I must have slept for almost two hours for, when I awoke, I found we were approaching the docks at Dover. What roused me, I think, was not so much the clatter of the quayside as the sound of Oscar’s lilting voice reading out loud paragraphs from the newspaper – and then laughing contemptuously. At first I was too befuddled to fully comprehend what I was hearing.

  ‘“A professional courtesan”, Arthur. What do you make of that? I’m surprised they didn’t call her “a scarlet woman” or “a lady of the night”.’

  ‘So Miss Lavallois was a prostitute?’

  ‘That’s the implication – a jade, a hussy, a drab, a harlot, a wanton fornicatress, a common whore.’

  ‘Steady on, old chap.’

  ‘Unlike the Evening News, Arthur, I don’t mince my words. When I see a spade, I call it a spade.’

  ‘Have you ever seen a spade, Oscar?’

  ‘Very droll, Arthur.’

  Oscar sat with his coat collar turned up and a cigarette dangling from his lips.

  ‘Well, was she a prostitute?’

  ‘She was an actress, Arthur. What do you think?’

  ‘I thought she was a dancer.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Oscar. ‘You’re right. She was a dancer. Much worse.’

  Conan Doyle took the newspaper from Oscar and studied it reflectively. ‘So Miss Lavallois was “a professional courtesan” in Paris who came to London to escape her “employer” …’

  ‘Her pander, her pimp, Arthur. Read what it says. According to the paper, the blackguard has a string of houses of ill-repute.’

  ‘And this “employer”, outraged by the young lady’s bid for freedom, sent a man to London to slit her throat.’

  ‘Pour encourager les autres. And by way of revenge. That’s the gist of it. What do you think?’

  Arthur Conan Doyle sniffed. ‘It seems plausible enough. Do you think the source is reliable?’

  ‘What do you reckon to his way with words?’ asked Oscar.

  Conan Doyle raised an eyebrow and looked again at the newspaper. ‘He has a poor turn of phrase. “Needle
in a haystack” – I don’t think much of that.’

  ‘Exactly!’ cried Oscar. ‘Doesn’t that phrase give the whole game away?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ laughed Conan Doyle. ‘It’s not very felicitous, I grant you. Even a trifle obvious.’

  ‘Precisely, Arthur. It’s far too obvious. The whole cock and bull story is far too obvious. It’s so predictable that it’d disgrace a three-volume novel.’ Oscar pulled the newspaper from Doyle’s grasp. ‘This is all piffle, piss and wind, Doctor. Poppycock from start to finish.’ Taking the paper, he flung it contemptuously into the corner of the carriage. ‘I doubt there’s a word of truth in it. Not a word.’

  ‘Not a word?’

  ‘Not a word, Arthur. This is Owl’s doing. This has Owl’s handwriting all over it.’

  ‘Owl?’

  ‘Tyrwhitt Wilson – equerry to the Prince of Wales. He went to Harrow, didn’t he? Gentlemen go to Eton, scholars go to Winchester, cads go to Harrow. That’s the rule. Owl’s got perfect manners, but he’s not to be trusted.’

  Conan Doyle shook his head in bewilderment. I sat up, rubbing my eyes.

  ‘What are you telling us, Oscar?’ I asked. ‘I have been asleep.’

  ‘We’ve all been dozing, Robert, while a murderer has been running rings around us.’

  ‘Is Tyrwhitt Wilson the murderer then?’ I asked in amazement.

  ‘I doubt it. He lacks the necessary style. No, Tyrwhitt Wilson is merely the source of the story that adorns the front page of the London Evening News. He’s a cad and a bounder, but he is loyal to his master – I’ll give him that. He placed the story in the paper to protect the prince. Anything to keep the gaze of the prying press away from the royal box at the Empire Theatre and down the dark alley by the dustbins beyond the stage door. When poor Lulu Lavallois’s body was first found, all seemed to be well. The cry went up: “Jack the Ripper strikes again!” But, alas for Marlborough House, the Ripper theory wouldn’t run. The wretched girl had been butchered in the wrong way in the wrong part of town. Even Inspector Andrews of the Yard was up to spotting that. Another diversionary tactic was called for – and Owl supplied it.’