2007 - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders

by Gyles Brandreth

  When Oscar and I were shown into his office, on the third floor of the new building at Scotland Yard, it was a little before four o’clock. We discovered Fraser standing, alone, behind his desk, with his back to us, apparently gazing out of a narrow window onto the Thames Embankment below. “Please,” he said, turning sharply as he heard us enter, “I was not looking idly out of the window, I assure you. I was examining your cards. This is my first day in this office. It’s a brand-new building and the architect is Scottish, but the light is terrible in here. I apologise.”

  The room was indeed dark, cramped and inhospitable, but Fraser’s welcome was as warm and sunny as we could have wished for. He shook our hands; he clapped his own; he beamed upon us.

  “Welcome,” he said. His mouth was quite small, but his smile was remarkable because his teeth were so perfect. They were white and even, and gleamed like newly polished, mother-of-pearl shirt-studs.

  “Welcome,” Fraser said again, seating himself on the edge of his bare wooden desk while inviting us to ‘take a pew’. There were just two hard, upright chairs ranged side by side against the office wall. Oscar eyed them suspiciously.

  “We apologise for troubling you,” he began, perching himself, somewhat awkwardly, on one of the chairs.

  “You do not trouble me,” said Fraser, cordially. “You honour me. Any friend of Conan Doyle’s is a friend of mine.” His face was so white, his skin so smooth, his eyes so dark, that the ebullience of his manner, by contrast, and the dazzle of his smile, were quite disconcerting. “This is my first day in a new job and you are my first visitors. May I offer you both a cup of tea?”

  “No—thank you,” said Oscar quickly, fearing, no doubt, that the quality of the tea would be consonant with the comfort of the furnishings. “Let me introduce myself—”

  Fraser interrupted him. “You do not need to, Mr Wilde. I know your reputation. I admire your work. I have done so for several years, since chancing on one of your early essays when I was an undergraduate, in fact.”

  “Oh,” said Oscar, gratified. “May I ask which one?”

  “‘The Truth of Masks’,” Fraser replied, slowly switching his steady gaze from Oscar’s eyes to mine. “And Mr Sherard,” he went on, “I was reading your article on the great Emile Zola in Blackwood’s Magazine only this weekend. You are a social reformer, sir—as I hope to be.”

  Aidan Fraser charmed us and disarmed us. He put us completely at our ease and, having done so, invited us to tell our tale.

  Oscar told it. He told it well, in detail, but without embellishment. Fraser listened. He listened intently, his eyes glancing between us, occasionally nodding assent or gently tapping his chin with his forefinger to indicate that he was following Oscar’s narrative in every particular, but never interrupting. He listened carefully and, when Oscar was done, he allowed a prolonged silence to fall before he spoke.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, eventually, leaning towards us, his eyes narrowed, his smooth brow almost furrowed, “we have a problem.”

  “A problem?” Oscar repeated.

  “Yes, Mr Wilde, a problem…You see, a murder where there is no body is indeed a mystery—”

  “But I saw the body!” Oscar exclaimed.

  “Yes,” said Inspector Fraser calmly, “so you tell me. Twenty-four hours ago you saw a body—but the body has disappeared.”

  “I saw the body,” Oscar repeated, plaintively.

  “And you recognised the body…” Fraser continued.

  “It was Billy Wood—”

  “—whom you knew, but did not know well?”

  “I knew the boy, but I…” Oscar hesitated. He waved his right hand in the air in a sort of dismissive gesture. “I knew him, but I did not know him…intimately.”

  Fraser observed Oscar’s awkwardness. He let another silence fall. “Did you know the housekeeper?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Did you recognise her?”

  “No.”

  “Could you describe her for me?”

  “No, I paid her no attention.”

  “What was her age? What was her height? Had she no distinguishing features?”

  “None that I recall.” Oscar hesitated. “There was a touch of red about her, I think—a flower perhaps, a kerchief, I don’t know. I brushed past her. I paid her no heed.”

  The inspector glanced in my direction and spoke as if soliciting my support. “You see the problem? So many questions, so few answers.” He looked steadily at Oscar. “You tell me that there was a housekeeper at the scene of the alleged crime, Mr Wilde, but you cannot describe her. You tell me that there was a body, but it seems that it has disappeared. You tell me that this body was that of a boy you knew, but did not know ‘intimately’…Why, I wonder, have none of those who did know him intimately—his family, his friends, his contemporaries—not come forward to report him missing? Where is his body now? Where, in short, is the evidence of murder?”

  “There is the blood on the wall!” Oscar protested.

  “Which you saw?” asked Fraser.

  “Which Doyle saw,” said Oscar.

  “Ah, yes,” murmured Fraser, almost to himself, “Arthur’s tiny spots of blood…” He clapped his hands and got to his feet. “Those we must investigate,” he said, emphatically. “That we can do. I will send a man to Cowley Street directly—this afternoon. Number 23, you say? If we find evidence we can make a start, but without evidence, Mr Wilde, without a body—”

  “The body must be found!” cried Oscar.

  Fraser was now standing behind his desk, resting his long thin fingers upon it. “Our resources are meagre, I fear,” he said, almost dolefully. “We have thirteen hundred men to patrol a city of five million. We cannot go out looking for bodies like needles in haystacks, Mr Wilde. And the sad truth is that, even when we stumble upon them, even when we come face to face with the bloodiest evidence imaginable, we are still, all too often, unable to solve the mystery…Do not raise your hopes, Mr Wilde. Think of those unfortunate women in Whitechapel.”

  For months on end the previous year, the notorious ‘Jack the Ripper’ case had filled the pages of the popular press.

  “There was another one found recently, was there not?” I said.

  “Yes,” said Fraser, “six weeks ago, in Castle Alley. Alice McKenzie. We have her body—or what remains of it. We know her history. We know of her movements in the hours leading up to her death. We have tracked down and interviewed all those closest to her, those who saw her last. We have a mountain of evidence—we even have a letter purporting to come from her killer—and still we are nowhere near a solution to the crime…It is possible we never shall be.”

  “Was her throat not cut?”

  “It was,” said Fraser, “but do not get carried away, Mr Sherard. Her abdomen was mutilated too. The Whitechapel murderer preys on women in dark alleys, not young men in candlelit rooms.”

  It was clear that our interview was coming to an end. Fraser stepped from behind his desk and moved towards the door. Oscar and I got to our feet. As he stood up, Oscar swayed for a moment and looked pale. John Simpson’s fine wines and Aidan Fraser’s airless room had taken their toll. The police inspector put out a hand to steady him.

  “I am sorry if I disappoint you, Mr Wilde,” he said. “I do not want to promise more than I can deliver. But, rest assured, I will do what I can. I will send a man to Cowley Street this afternoon.”

  “Will you let me know the outcome?” asked Oscar.

  “Of course,” said Fraser, retrieving our cards from his waistcoat pocket. “I will send a wire to Tite Street, without fail.”

  “To my club, if you don’t mind,” said Oscar, quickly.

  “Of course,” said Fraser. “The Albemarle, is it not?”

  “You know?” said Oscar, surprised. “Are you a member?”

  “No,” said Fraser, revealing a line of perfect teeth. “I am a detective.”

  Oscar, regaining his colour, laughed softly and shook Fraser
by the hand. “Thank you for your time, Inspector. Thank you for listening. I hope you do not think I have acted amiss in coming to see you today.”

  “Quite the opposite,” said Fraser. “You have done your duty—you have reported a suspected crime to the proper authorities. You have acted entirely correctly, as a gentleman should.” He paused for a moment and looked directly at Oscar. “I am only surprised that you did not call upon us yesterday, immediately after you made your discovery. Is there a reason why you waited twenty-four hours before coming forward?”

  Fraser smiled slyly as he asked the question. To my surprise, Oscar was not discomfited. “I am the prince of procrastination,” he said. “It is my besetting sin. I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do—the day after.”

  Fraser laughed. “Well, you’ve done your duty now, Mr Wilde, and, having done your duty, sir, take my advice: leave well alone. Murder is a sordid business. It is a matter for the police, not for the prince of procrastination, nor yet the fastidious champion of aestheticism. You have done all you can in this matter. You have done well. I salute you.”

  The sun was still shining brightly when we reached the street, but the air was cooler. Oscar turned back towards the building and looked up to the third floor. At a narrow latticed window we saw Inspector Aidan Fraser gazing down upon us. Oscar raised his hand and waved. Fraser inclined his head and waved back.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Now,” said Oscar, “I need to clear my head. I shall walk home, along the river—by way of Cowley Street, I think. I have a favour to ask of Mrs O’Keefe.” As I began to speak, he raised a finger to silence me and then, with both hands, straightened my tie and lightly brushed my shoulders as he might have done to his sons as they readied themselves to go to school. “And you, my dear Robert,” he said, “need to go home to clear your desk. There is work to be done, a mystery to be solved, and I shall be grateful for your assistance—and your company. Meet me at the club at eleven, or a little after. Meantime, return to your room and finish whichever of your unfinished articles is nearest completion. And wire your wife’s solicitor. Tell him a divorce is out of the question just at present. You are currently engaged in a matter much more pressing: murder. He will be baffled by the truth. The mediocre always are.”

  At 11.15 that evening, as arranged, I met Oscar at the Albemarle. I found him alone in the library, drinking champagne and reading Wordsworth.

  “Your great-grandfather is a great man,” he declared. “He teaches us to accept the ‘burthen of the mystery’, “the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world”—does he not?”

  I was spared the challenge of summoning up a suitable response by the arrival of Hubbard. The club servant stood obsequiously by the door, holding a small silver salver in his hand. “A telegram for you, Mr Wilde,” he said.

  “It will be from Fraser,” said Oscar, picking up the small yellow envelope and passing it to me. “What does he say?”

  I tore open the envelope and read out the communication. SEARCH COMPLETE STOP NO EVIDENCE FOUND STOP REGRET NO FURTHER ACTION POSSIBLE AT THIS STAGE REGARDS FRASER.

  Oscar said nothing. Hubbard was still hovering at the door. He gave a little cough, like a butler in a stage comedy, and murmured, “And there’s a person to see you, sir. In the entrance hall.”

  Oscar was galvanised. “Come, Robert, come,” he said, throwing down the Wordsworth and sweeping us past Hubbard into the hallway. “The game’s afoot.”

  The person who had come to see Oscar was waiting nervously in the club’s outer lobby, by the porter’s lodge. I recognised her at once. It was Mrs O’Keefe. As we appeared, she made her deep obeisance. Oscar raised her by the hand and said simply, “Well, madam?”

  “I did exactly as you instructed, Mr Wilde. I did not leave 23 Cowley Street until your cab came to collect me at eleven o’clock. Nobody has been near the house since you last called by. No police, nothing—nobody, nobody at all.”

  “God bless you, Mrs O’Keefe,” said Oscar.

  “And you, sir,” said Mrs O’Keefe. “I’ll pray for you.”

  “Let us pray for one another,” said Oscar, handing her a sovereign.

  6

  2 September 1889

  The following morning, at eleven o’clock, as instructed by Oscar, I presented myself at number 16 Tite Street, off the Chelsea Embankment, the house that he and Constance had shared since the start of their marriage five years before. From the foutside, it was a handsome house: tall, brick-built, solid. Inside, it was exquisite. As Oscar’s friend and neighbour, James Whistler, the painter, who had assisted with the decoration, often said: “The exterior is thoroughly dependable; the interior is wholly Wilde.”

  The decoration reflected Oscar’s taste and Constance’s fortune. At the time of their marriage, Constance inherited five thousand pounds from her grandfather; every penny—and more—went into Tite Street. Everything in the house was of the best, and everything in the house—well, almost everything—was of just one colour: white. In the drawing room the curtains were white, the walls were white, the floor coverings were white, even the furniture was white. In the dining room, also, everything was white, with the exception of a cherry-red lampshade hanging from the ceiling in the centre of the room, immediately above a terracotta statue that stood on a diamond-shaped red cloth in the middle of a white table. It was all picture-perfect.

  My friend William Yeats, the poet, had spent Christmas with Oscar at Tite Street the year before—I was in Paris at the time, in pursuit of Kaitlyn—and he wrote to me, describing the day, and Tite Street, and ‘the perfect harmony’ of Oscar’s life there, ‘with his beautiful wife and two young children’. Yeats said it suggested to him ‘some delicate artistic composition’. Yeats also told me that he had embarrassed himself that day by wearing yellow shoes. Undyed leather was then the fashion, but the moment that he set foot inside the house, Yeats realised that the livid ochre of his festive footwear—he had bought the shoes specially for the occasion—was completely out of keeping with the snowscape whiteness of Tite Street. When he saw the shoes, Oscar started visibly, and, throughout the day, he kept glancing at them surreptitiously, wincing on each occasion.

  Yeats, I think, felt uncomfortable in Tite Street. I always felt easy and at home there. Perhaps that was because Constance made me feel so welcome.

  That sunny September morning when Constance Wilde opened the door to me I had never seen her looking lovelier. She was dressed in white, with a violet ribbon in her hair and a matching ribbon around her waist. She held the door wide open and smiled at me. “Welcome, Robert,” she said. “It has been too long.” Her figure was fuller than I remembered; she seemed taller, too, and older, I suppose. She was thirty-one, but her face was not careworn; she looked happy, confident and gay. She shook my hand and then, with her knuckles, fleetingly caressed my cheek. “It is so good to see you,” she said. “I think of you often.” In the hallway, she pointed to the umbrella-stand and said, “Look, I have your swordstick still. It is here to protect me.”

  I said, without thinking, “Constance, I will protect you always,” and, as I said it, I blushed.

  She laughed, took both my hands in hers and squeezed them tightly. “You are such a romantic, Mr Sherard,” she said. “I am not surprised that Oscar is planning to take you on a great adventure. He tells me you are going to play Dr Watson to his Sherlock Holmes.”

  “You have read A Study in Scarlet?” I asked.

  “Indeed,” she replied. “Oscar insisted. And I enjoyed it. Oscar has become quite obsessed with ‘Mr Holmes’ and his powers of observation and perfect reasoning. To be truthful, I think Oscar may be a little jealous of Arthur Doyle and his creation. Let us go and find him.”

  She took me by the hand and led me, like a playmate, through the house in search of Oscar. We found him in his Moorish smoking room, where nothing was white except for the narrow plume of smoke rising from his carefully held cigarette. He was lyi
ng back on a divan, with his eyes half closed. He must have heard us coming— he must have heard me arrive at the front door—but he did not stir. As we came into the room, languidly he lifted his cigarette into the air and, gazing on it, rolling it around deliberately between his thumb and forefinger, observed, “Cigarette smoking is the perfect type of perfect pleasure, is it not? It is exquisite and leaves one unsatisfied.”

  Constance smiled; I laughed; Oscar sat up and turned towards us. “Constance has told you of the plan, I trust?” he said. “She is leaving us, Robert. She is taking the boys with her. She is going to North Yorkshire, to the moors, to stay with her little friend, Emily Thursfield.” Needless to say, Constance had told me none of this. Oscar turned to his wife and added, conspiratorially, “Do not introduce Robert to Emily, my dear. She is far too pretty. He will fall in love with her at once and be unable to sleep for a fortnight. I don’t believe he has slept at all since he first met you.”

  I blushed once more. Oscar got to his feet, laughing, and placed his hands upon my shoulders.

  “Constance is going on holiday, Robert, and we are going to work. We are going to unravel this mystery, Robert. We are going to solve this crime, with or without the assistance of Inspector Fraser.”

  “Oscar has told me of the horrible murder he stumbled upon,” said Constance, seriously. “I feel for the poor boy—and for his family, whoever they may be.”

  “We shall begin with his family, Robert,” said Oscar, extinguishing his cigarette. “That is where we shall start.”

  I was puzzled. “But, Oscar,” I said, “I thought you said that the boy had no known relations. Isn’t that what you told Conan Doyle and the police?”

  Oscar offered me a half-smile, but no answer.

  “I cannot understand why the police will not help,” said Constance.

  “Constance has seen Fraser’s outrageous telegram,” Oscar said. “I have given it to her—for her collection.” I looked at him, uncomprehending. “She has a special box in which she stores such items,” he explained. “She began the collection on our wedding day, with the telegram Whistler sent to us at the church: FEAR I MAY NOT BE ABLE TO REACH YOU IN TIME FOR THE CEREMONY. DON’T WAIT. Fraser’s missive is less amusing, I grant you, less well phrased, but I want it kept. I believe it may prove of interest in the fullness of time.”