2007 - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders

by Gyles Brandreth

  Doyle made a vain attempt to protest, but Oscar’s flow would not be staunched.

  “No, no, believe me,” he went on. “Arthur wants to get away at once. His train departs within the hour. He has his ticket and scant means to buy another. He is strapped for cash, Robert. Like you, money is a perpetual worry to him. Unlike you, he pays his bills on time. Besides, it is his wife’s birthday and he is eager to hasten back to her, bearing gifts.”

  Oscar paused to sip his coffee. Doyle was gazing at him, wide-eyed with admiration. “Mr Wilde, you are amazing,” he said. “You are correct in every particular.”

  “Come, Arthur, no more ‘Mr Wilde’, please. I am your friend. And I have studied your Study in Scarlet. This was scarcely a three-pipe problem.”

  Doyle pinched his lower lip with pleasure. “Give me your methodology,” he said.

  Oscar was happy to oblige. “Well, Arthur, I surmised that you might be short of funds last night because of the alacrity with which you accepted Stoddart’s invitation to write for him and then enquired how soon you might be able to expect payment. This morning, when I arrived at the hotel, it was not yet eight o’clock and yet you were already at the desk, settling your account. I saw your cheque book. It was brand-new, but the cheque you were using was the last one in the book. As yesterday was the last day of the month, I thought to myself, The good doctor is a man who likes to pay his bills on time.”

  “I am impressed,” said Doyle, laughing.

  “I am not,” said Oscar, affecting a sudden earnestness. “Those who pay their bills are soon forgotten. It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes. I further surmised that you were planning to catch an early train because why else would you settle your account before breakfast and have your luggage already brought down into the hallway?”

  “But how did you know that today is my wife’s birthday?”

  “Your luggage includes a bouquet of fresh flowers with card attached, and a lady’s hatbox. I do not yet know you well, Arthur, but I know you well enough to be certain that these are not gifts intended for some passing fancy. However, I was troubled by the hatbox—”

  “I am anxious about that hat,” Doyle interjected. “I may have made a poor choice.”

  “A hat for a lady is always a poor choice,” said Oscar, holding the moment as he stirred his coffee and considered his next thought. “In ancient Athens there was neither a milliner nor a milliner’s bill. These things were absolutely unknown, so great was the civilisation.”

  Doyle was shaking his head in delight and disbelief. “And how do you know I have already purchased my railway ticket?” he asked.

  “Because I see it sticking out of your left breast pocket!” Oscar replied.

  Conan Doyle laughed and banged the table with so much pleasure that the teaspoons rattled in their saucers.

  “Arthur.” Oscar turned to Doyle and looked into his eyes with sudden intensity. “I am glad to have made you laugh, for soon I shall make you weep. The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. If you have tears to shed, prepare to shed them now.”

  Doyle returned Oscar’s gaze and smiled the reassuring smile of a kindly country doctor. “Unfold your tale,” he said. “I am all ears.”

  “I will tell you the story as simply as I can,” said Oscar. “In truth, it can be simply told.” As he spoke, he lowered his voice. I recall every word precisely—I made a note of it that night—but I recall, too, having to lean across the table to hear him.

  “Yesterday afternoon,” he began, “at some time between half past three and four o’clock, I presented myself at the door of number 23 Cowley Street in Westminster. I had an appointment there and I was late. I knocked sharply at the door, but there was no reply. I rang the doorbell—still nothing. Impatiently, I knocked again, more loudly. I rang the bell once more. Eventually, after what must have been several minutes, I was admitted by the housekeeper. Because I was late, I did not wait to listen to her excuses. Immediately I climbed the stairs, alone, and let myself into the first-floor sitting room. I was utterly unprepared for the scene that awaited me. It was a scene of horror, grotesque and pitiable.”

  He paused, shook his head and lit a cigarette. “Go on,” said Conan Doyle.

  Oscar drew on the cigarette and, his voice barely above a whisper, continued. “There, lying on the floor, his feet towards me, was the body of a boy—a young man named Billy Wood. His torso was soaked in blood, blood that glistened like liquid rubies, blood that was barely congealed. He could have died only minutes before. He was naked, quite naked. The blood was everywhere, except for his face. His face was untouched. I recognised his face at once—though his throat had been cut from ear to ear.”

  Conan Doyle’s gaze remained fixed on Oscar. “What did you do then?” he asked.

  “I fled the scene,” said Oscar, lowering his eyes as if in shame.

  “Did you question the housekeeper?”

  “No.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “No. I walked along the embankment, towards Chelsea, towards my house in Tite Street. I must have walked for an hour, and as I walked, and watched the sunlight glinting on the black sheen of the river, and passed by other walkers intent on the pleasures of an afternoon stroll, I began to wonder whether what I had seen had been but a figment of my imagination. I reached my home and greeted my wife and kissed my boys, but as I sat in their nursery and read to them their goodnight fairy tale the picture of the body of Billy Wood would not leave my mind’s eye. He was innocent, as they are. He was beautiful, as they are…”

  “But this Billy Wood,” Conan Doyle interjected, “he was not a relation?”

  Oscar laughed. “By no means. I doubt that he had any known relations. He was a street urchin, a waif and stray, an uneducated lad of fifteen or sixteen. He had few enough friends. I am sure he had no relations.”

  “But you knew him?”

  “Yes, I knew him—but I did not know him well.”

  Doyle looked perplexed. “Yet you had gone to Cowley Street to meet him? You had an assignation.”

  Oscar laughed again and shook his head. “No, of course not. He was a street urchin. I barely knew him. I had a professional appointment in Cowley Street—nothing to do with this matter.” Doyle’s eyes widened, but Oscar went on, with energy: “Nothing to do with this matter, Arthur, I assure you. Nothing. My appointment was with a pupil, a student of mine. I found the boy there quite by chance.”

  “But you were familiar with the house? You had been there before?”

  “Yes, but I had not expected to find Billy Wood there—alive or dead. I had not seen him for a month or more.”

  Arthur Conan Doyle pressed his broad fingertips against his moustache and murmured, “Oscar, I am confused. You went to Cowley Street to meet a ‘student’ of yours who, you tell me, has nothing to do with the case. Where was this ‘student’ when you arrived in Cowley Street?”

  “Unavoidably detained. There was a note waiting for me at Tite Street when I got home.”

  “And in the room where you had expected to find your ‘pupil’, in his place you found the body of a street urchin, a boy barely known to you, apparently the victim of a brutal attack—”

  “A brutal murder, Arthur,” said Oscar, with emphasis. “A ritual murder, I believe.”

  “A ritual murder?”

  “Billy Wood’s body was laid out as though on a funeral bier: his arms were folded across his chest. There were lighted candles all around him and the smell of incense was in the air.”

  Conan Doyle sat back, with arms folded, and appraised his new friend. “Oscar,” he said kindly, “are you sure you have not imagined all this?”

  “Do you doubt me?”

  “I don’t doubt that you believe that you saw what you say you saw. I don’t doubt your word, not for a moment. You are a gentleman. But you are also a poet—”

  “Enough!” Oscar pushed back the t
able. He rose to his feet. “This is not a poet’s fancy, Arthur. Come! We shall go to Cowley Street. We shall go now! I will show you what I have seen. You, too, shall be a witness. It is no hallucination, Arthur, though it be the stuff of nightmares. Waiter, our bill! Robert, will you come also? Arthur is wary of mad poets—rightly so. You may be his chaperone.”

  “But, Oscar,” Conan Doyle protested, “if all you tell me is true, this is a matter for the police, not a country doctor. I must return to Southsea. My wife is expecting me.”

  “And she shall have you, Arthur. We will take you to Waterloo Station by way of Cowley Street. You will miss one train; you may miss two; but we shall have you in Southsea in time for tea, I promise.”

  Conan Doyle continued to protest, but he protested in vain. Oscar got his way. Oscar always got his way. The poet, William Butler Yeats, a fellow Irishman, to whom Oscar introduced me that same year, wrote later of Oscar’s ‘hard brilliance’, of his ‘dominating self-possession’. Yeats recognised—as few did in Oscar’s lifetime—that our friend’s outward air of indolence masked an inner will that was formidable. “He posed as an idler,” Yeats said, “but, in truth, he was a man of action. He was a leader. You followed him you knew not quite why.”

  Conan Doyle and I trooped out of the Langham Hotel in Oscar’s wake. He strode ahead of us, en prince. He was neither grand nor arrogant, but he was magnificent. He was never handsome, but he was striking, having the advantage of height and the discipline of good posture. Waiters bowed instinctively as he passed; other guests—men and women alike; even, in the hotel forecourt, a King Charles spaniel—looked up and acknowledged him. None of them may have known precisely who he was, but all of them seemed to sense that he was somebody.

  Some minutes later, as our four-wheeler turned from the main thoroughfare of Abingdon Street into the warren of cobbled lanes and alleys leading to Cowley Street, Conan Doyle enquired, “This Cowley Street—is it a reputable address?”

  “I do not know,” answered Oscar, with a smile. “It is very near to the Houses of Parliament.”

  Conan Doyle, intent on looking out of the cab window, did not seem to register the jest. Oscar, so earnest when he rose from the breakfast table at the Langham Hotel, suddenly appeared not to have a care in the world. It was often like that with him. He was a man of deep emotions, yet frequently he hid his feelings behind a mask of insouciance. He did it deliberately, I believe, the better to be able to observe the reactions of those around him. Now, blithely, he continued, “Abraham Cowley himself came to a disreputable end, as is the way with minor poets. He was found in a field after a drinking bout and died of the fever. He is buried in Westminster Abbey and has this street as his memorial. Do you know his work, Robert? According to the literary critics, his poems are marred by elaborate conceits and artificial brilliancy. I have always found them simple and affecting. He was a child prodigy. He composed an epic romance at the age of ten—the perfect age for epic romance!—and published Poetic Blossoms, his first volume of verse, when he was just fifteen. Whoa, cabby, whoa! We are here. And look, gentlemen, there’s a poetic blossom of a sort awaiting our arrival.”

  The hansom cab pulled up immediately outside number 23 Cowley Street. Seated on the doorstep, resting wearily against the shiny black front door, was a stout woman of riper years, more overblown fuchsia bush than poetic blossom. Her appearance was both arresting and preposterous: her boots were blue-black, her skirt was brown, her jacket was striped Lincoln green and vermilion. I felt that she would have done credit to a Drury Lane pantomime: her cheeks were excessively rouged, her lips were scarlet, and her extraordinary ensemble was completed by a plum-coloured toque perched precariously on top of a mass of vivid orange curls. At her side was a large carpet-bag; in her lap was a sheaf of papers and a small bundle of keys.

  “Is this the lady who admitted you yesterday?” Conan Doyle enquired of Oscar as we clambered out of the cab.

  “Nothing like her,” said Oscar, bowing towards the unlikely-looking female who was now struggling to her feet. “I think we can take it that today is this good lady’s first day at number 23.”

  “Indeed, sir,” said the woman, dropping a curtsey towards us and revealing a small ostrich feather in her toque as she did so.

  “Well done, Oscar,” said Doyle. “Sherlock Holmes would be proud of you.”

  “I think, Arthur, that even Dr Watson would have surmised as much. The lady has pages torn from a gazetteer in one hand and in the other a set of keys with which she is obviously unfamiliar. It is the first of the month, 1 September, or, as she thinks of it, the feast of—here Oscar turned towards the lady who immediately mumbled the words ‘St Giles’ before curtseying again—“her first day in her new employment, hence the hat, her best hat. The lady wishes to make a good impression on her first day. Am I not right, Mrs O”—”

  “O’Keefe, sir,” said the good lady, bobbing down before us for a third time.

  “Do you know this lady?” asked Conan Doyle.

  “I know nothing of her,” said Oscar, lightly, “beyond the obvious fact that she is a widow, recently arrived from Dublin, who, having worked in the theatre, as dresser to some of Ireland’s most distinguished leading ladies, is now set to try her fortune in the capital of the empire. She will do well here, do you not think? She is evidently a woman of spirit, though understandably wearied by her long walk from Ludgate Circus this morning.”

  Mrs O’Keefe and Arthur Conan Doyle gazed at Oscar Wilde wide-eyed in amazement.

  “This is beyond belief, Oscar,” said the doctor. “You must know her, you must.”

  Oscar laughed. “Come, Arthur, this is elementary stuff—basic observation and deduction. I am merely following the rules of the master. Please understand: now that I have met you, Holmes is where my heart is!”

  I was equally amazed. “How did you do it, Oscar?” I asked. “Tell us.”

  “We must not let daylight in on magic, Robert. The conjuror’s trick once explained seems very commonplace.”

  “Tell us, Oscar,” I insisted.

  “I believe you are a mind-reader, sir,” whispered Mrs O’Keefe, her voice hushed in astonishment.

  “No, dear lady,” said Oscar, amiably, “would that I were. However,” he continued, turning towards her, “I come from Dublin also, so I recognised your accent right away. I noticed, too, the small crucifix around your neck, which suggested to me that yours is a good Catholic soul. I surmised, therefore, that you would know your saints’ days and I was certain you would not leave your husband unless he had been taken from you by God himself. Your fine clothes, interestingly juxtaposed, suggested to me theatrical costumes handed down to you by others—the leading ladies for whom you worked as a dresser—and your lively make–up hinted also at a theatrical way of life. You are more accustomed to dressing for night than for day.”

  “But how did you know I’d come here from Ludgate Circus?”

  “Messrs O’Donovan & Brown of Ludgate Circus are London’s leading suppliers of domestic staff from the emerald isle. They have supplied several maids for us in Tite Street. I guessed that you had collected the keys for this address from them first thing this morning and had then walked here, getting a little lost along the way.”

  “Amazing, Oscar, simply amazing,” muttered Conan Doyle, clapping his hands in admiration.

  “But, Oscar, how did you know the lady’s name?” I asked.

  “I didn’t,” he replied, revealing his uneven yellow teeth in a broad smile. “I made a stab at the initial letter, that’s all. More than half the surnames in Ireland begin with an O. The odds were with me…”

  “Are you a mind-reader?” repeated the awe-struck Irishwoman who had now taken up an attitude of semi-genuflection before us.

  “No, dear lady,” said Oscar, adding, to our further amazement, “I am a musician and accustomed occasionally to using the first-floor sitting room at this address to rehearse chamber works with colleagues. Dr Doyle and Mr Sherard here
are new members of my trio and have come to inspect the premises. We are working on Mozart’s Divertimento in E flat major. Would you be so kind as to admit us?”

  As Mrs O’Keefe fumbled with the keys, Conan Doyle said, “Oscar, you astound me. I do not begin to understand you.”

  Oscar laughed again, more loudly than before, but his laughter was bleak. “I astound myself,” he said. “I am here on the pavement playing games, indulging in childish charades, when I am about to confront you with unparalleled horror. I do not understand myself at times.”

  3

  Nr 23 Cowley Street Street was a two-storeyed, single-fronted, red-brick house built in the 1780s as part of a terrace of modest dwellings originally intended for clerks and choristers attached to Westminster Abbey; The exterior of the house had a certain unassuming dignity; the interior, airless and box-like, and seemingly unfurnished, was curiously without character. Mrs O’Keefe, having found which of the keys fitted which of the locks, admitted us to an incommodious entrance hallway, little larger than a sentry box. Immediately ahead of us lay a steep wooden staircase, narrow and uncarpeted.

  “Shall we go up?” suggested Conan Doyle.

  “If Mrs O’Keefe will allow us,” said Oscar.

  “Oh yes, sir,” said the good woman, semi-genuflecting once more and pointing us towards the stairs. “You make yourself at home now. You know the way. I’ll find the gas lamps.”

  “No need,” said Oscar, “there’s light enough.”

  A gentle beam of sunshine shone through the fanlight above the front door, illuminating the dust that hovered in the air above the stairs.

  “Come,” said Conan Doyle, “let’s get the business done.”

  We climbed the stairs and quickly reached the landing.

  “Is this the room?” asked Doyle.

  “It is,” said Oscar.