2007 - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders
Page 7
“Are we to tell her?” I asked.
“If she does not already know,” said Oscar, “we must.”
“But if there is no body—”
“I saw the body of Billy Wood, Robert. He is dead. Mrs Wood will not see her boy again. And he was her only child.”
“You know that?”
“He told me so. He spoke often of his mother. He loved her dearly. He told me that his mother did not understand him, but that she understood herself well enough to know she did not understand him. He was a clever boy. And kind. He told me he had come to London to make his fortune so that one day he could care for his mother as she had once cared for him. And he would have made a fortune, Robert…”
“You think so?”
“I know so, Robert. He had no education to speak of—he could barely read—but when I read Shakespeare to him, he would memorise the words almost at once and then declaim them with an instinctive authority, intelligence and feeling that were remarkable. He was perhaps the most gifted young actor I have ever known. We were working on Romeo and Juliet when he died. I had planned to introduce him to my friend Henry Irving at the Lyceum. Irving, great actor-manager that he is, would have recognised Billy’s gift. Billy Wood had the makings of what they call ‘a star’. He was luminous. He shone. He would have gone far, Robert. He would indeed have made a fortune. I was proud to be nurturing his natural talent. His loss to me is grievous. His loss to his mother will be terrible.”
“What sort of woman is she?” I asked. “Do you know?”
“I have dark forebodings about her, Robert,” Oscar replied, blowing his nose and mopping his mouth with his handkerchief. He shifted in his seat. “I am not optimistic. You must remember, she lives in Broadstairs.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, sensing that Oscar’s mood was moving rapidly from the elegiac to the playful.
Oscar shook his head, muttering with a sigh, “Broadstairs…ah me!”
“What is wrong with Broadstairs?” I ventured. “Is it not one of Queen Victoria’s favourite watering holes?”
“Her Majesty is not the problem, Robert. It is Dickens who is the difficulty.”
“Dickens?”
“Dickens! Yes, Robert, Charles Dickens, the late, lamented. Broadstairs was his favourite holiday retreat. It was Dickens who put Broadstairs on the map. He wrote David Copperfield there—in a cliff-top villa that, naturally, now glories in the name of Bleak House. If you are so inclined, you may visit it. There is a twopenny tour. And if you take it, when you reach the room that used to be the great man’s study you will learn of the legend that says, “Leave a note for Mr Dickens in the top drawer of his writing desk and he will come in the night to read it…” Oh, yes, in Broadstairs the spirit of Dickens is everywhere—he is everywhere. You cannot escape him, try as you might, because, by way of unconscious tribute to their most celebrated visitor, the good people of Broadstairs have each and every one transmogrified themselves into characters from their hero’s oeuvre. The stationmaster looks like Micawber, the town crier is Mr Bumble, the benevolent landlady at the Saracen’s Head takes her cue from Mrs Fezziwig…”
“You exaggerate, Oscar.” I laughed.
“Would that I did,” he sighed. “Our Mrs Wood, I fear, poor Billy’s mother, will be playing her part like all the rest. She will be Mrs Todgers, I imagine, “affection beaming in one eye, calculation shining out of the other”—or, more likely, Mrs Gummidge, a lone, lorn creature for whom ‘everythink goes contrairy’. Broadstairs is not as other towns are, Robert, mark my words.”
To my astonishment, when we alighted from the train, it seemed that Oscar was right. It must, of course, merely have been the power of his suggestion, but, as we walked the short distance down the hill from the railway station towards the centre of the town, every passer-by appeared to be a caricature of humanity, decked out in elaborate period costume, playing a role in a vast Dickensian pageant. We passed an obsequious muffin-man who touched his cap to us (“Uriah Heep,” murmured Oscar); a fair-haired, shoeless, ragged boy to whom Oscar tossed a halfpenny (“Oliver Twist?” I asked); a beaming, bon-homous, bespectacled gentleman who raised his hat to us unbidden with a “Capital morning, is it not?” (“Mr Pickwick!” we whispered merrily, together and at once); and several more. But the game stopped—the game was forgotten—the moment we reached The Castle, Harbour Street.
The house itself was tall and narrow, running to three floors. It took its name from the castellated design of the decorative brick-and-flint work above the ground- and first-floor windows and the front door. The Castle looked to be what it was: a small seaside hotel that had known better days. The dilapidation was evident: the curtains at the unwashed windows were faded and ill hung; the stone front steps were chipped and badly worn; the boot scraper was broken; the brickwork was weather-beaten and discoloured; and the paint was peeling on the hanging sign that announced the hotel’s name as well as on the wrought-iron railings and the gate that led to the area steps.
It was on these steps that we first encountered the man who, we later learnt, was Edward O’Donnell.
Had we still been playing Oscar’s game, we might, in unison, have cried, “Bill Sikes!” for the man—unshaven, unkempt, and unsteady on his feet—was clearly a brute and a drunkard. Nevertheless at that moment I do not believe that either Oscar or I gave Dickens a moment’s consideration. Edward O’Donnell inspired fear, not playfulness. He was not young—he might have been fifty—but he had the build of an ox and there was madness in his eyes.
As we approached the house, he lurched from the area steps onto the street and stood before us, confronting us, blocking our way. We froze, quite terrified. With one hand outstretched he steadied himself on the iron railings; with the other he gesticulated wildly towards our faces, jabbing his extended forefinger close to Oscar’s eyes first, then to mine. “Have you come for her?” he bellowed. “Have you come for the bitch, the slattern? I wish you joy of her—and her beloved boy. God rot them both. She is the devil’s whore. God knows, I’ve always hated her. La putaine!”
As he finished his vile utterance, he turned suddenly and spat into the gutter, and then, pushing himself away from the railings, muttering oaths and obscenities, he rolled away from us along the street towards the harbour.
We stood in silence and watched him go. High above us, a seagull screamed. I turned to Oscar. “Let us leave this place now,” I implored him. “This is not for us.”
“Oh,” said Oscar simply, “but I fear that it is. That, I take it, was Mr Wood. Billy never mentioned him. I am not surprised, are you? I had taken it for granted that Mrs Wood was a widow. It seems I was mistaken.”
Lightly, Oscar climbed the three front steps and, unhesitating, knocked firmly three times on the hotel’s front door. Reluctantly, I joined him. We waited, side by side, saying nothing. Oscar knocked again and, as he did so, from behind the door we heard the turning of a key in the lock and the pulling back of one bolt and then another. Slowly the door opened and a thin, pale woman, dressed all in grey, stood before us. Her face was white, but her eyes were red and rimmed with tears. She trembled as she spoke. “We’ve no rooms,” she said, barely above a whisper. “The hotel’s closed.”
“We don’t wish for rooms,” said Oscar, gently. “We have come to call on Mrs Wood.”
“I am Susannah Wood,” she said.
“My name is Oscar Wilde,” said Oscar, making a small bow as he spoke, “and this is my associate, Mr Robert Sherard.”
“What do you want?” said Mrs Wood, sharply. “Who sent you?” She looked beyond us into the empty street. “Who sent you?” she repeated, more loudly. “Was it him? Was it him?”
“Nobody sent us,” said Oscar. “We have come of our own volition. We have news—grave news—about your son.”
“About Billy?” she cried. “Is he in trouble? What has happened? Has he come to harm?”
“I fear so,” said Oscar, solemnly. “Madam, may we come in?”
Quietly Oscar closed the door behind us. He turned back to Mrs Wood and removed his hat. He said, “Billy is dead, Mrs Wood. He has been murdered. I am so sorry.”
“No,” shrieked the poor woman. “No. It isn’t so. It can’t be.”
“I fear it is,” said Oscar, stepping towards her. “God have mercy on his soul.”
He put out his hands as if to take her in his arms, but, violently, she pushed him away, shrieking through her sobs, “Who are you? Why do you come here? Why do you tell me these lies?”
“These are no lies, dear lady. I was Billy’s friend, believe me, and on Tuesday last, in London, I found his murdered body, by candlelight, in an upstairs room.”
“It wasn’t Billy,” she sobbed. “It can’t have been.”
“It was,” said Oscar.
“I don’t believe you!” she cried.
“You must,” he said. “I bring you proof.” He handed me his hat and, reaching into his coat pocket, he produced a tiny paper package. He placed it in the palm of his hand and unfolded the paper to reveal a thin gold wedding band, smeared with blood.
“My wedding ring!” she cried.
“I know,” said Oscar. “Billy told me. He wore it always. When I found his body, I took it from his finger to bring it to you.”
8
The Secrets of The Castle
Susannah Wood snatched the wedding band from Oscar’s hand and pressed it to her lips.
“My boy,” she whimpered, “my boy is dead…”
“I fear he is,” said Oscar, placing both his arms about the poor woman’s shoulders.
“Why?” she wailed. “Why? Who has done this to my darling boy?”
“I do not know,” said Oscar, now holding the bereaved mother close to him, “but as I was Billy’s friend I will be your friend, also. I will discover the truth, Mrs Wood. I promise you that.”
Suddenly, she pushed herself away from him. “I must come to London at once,” she cried. “I must see his body. I must see his beautiful face one last time. Is my boy dead? How was he killed? When was this? On Tuesday, you say—by candlelight? In an upstairs room? Why? Why?” She sobbed as she spoke and began to toss her head violently from side to side.
“Be calm, dear lady,” said Oscar, “I will answer for you what questions I can. Be calm, I beseech you.”
“Forgive me,” said the distraught woman, taking a deep breath and attempting to contain her grief. “He was my only joy.” Slowly, she brought her hand up close to her face, opened it and gazed upon the bloodied wedding band. She leant forward and kissed the ring once more before slipping it onto her third finger and pushing it up against the wedding band that she already wore. She looked up at Oscar. “Who are you?” she asked. “How did you come to know my son?”
“I am a writer,” said Oscar, “and a teacher. I met your son by chance.”
“In London?” she asked.
“In London,” he said, “about a year ago. I liked him at once. He was a bright boy—and eager to learn. He hoped to become an actor, you know.”
“I know,” she said.
“We met, perhaps once a month, sometimes more often. I gave him lessons in ‘spoken English’. We read Shakespeare together. He was a quick student and, in truth, he had not much need of me. He was blessed with a natural gift: an athletic voice, an easy grace and such a sparkle in his eye! Above all, he had energy—boundless energy—and energy is the secret of all worldly success.”
“I realise who you are now,” she said, touching his hand. “Billy spoke of you. He called you ‘Oscar’.”
“We were friends.”
“He was grateful to you, Mr Wilde, I know,” she said. “He spoke very little of his life in London, but he spoke of you. He trusted you.”
“I am glad of that,” said Oscar.
“May I get you some tea?” she asked, wiping the tears from her face.
“That would be a kindness,” said Oscar. “Let us have tea—and let us talk. If I am to help you, Mrs Wood, if I am to find who has murdered your son, you must tell me everything—about yourself, about Billy, about the man we met in the street just now…”
She nodded. “And you must tell me all you know of Billy’s death,” she said.
“I will tell you what I know,” said Oscar.
In the dimly lit, faded front parlour of The Castle, seated at a table laid for breakfast some weeks before, over many cups of hot, sweet tea—the beverage that only the English turn to in times of sorrow—Oscar told Susannah Wood all he knew of the circumstances of the death of her son. It did not take long. And when he had finished, he asked her: “Did Billy have enemies, Mrs Wood? Can you imagine who would have wished to take his life in this horrible way?”
The poor woman sat in silence, staring blankly at the table. Eventually, she spoke. “I knew virtually nothing of his life in London,” she said, “I am so ashamed.”
Oscar took her hand in his. “Tell me of your own life,” he said, gently. “Tell me your story, and Billy’s story, too. Tell me everything.”
“Actors are so fortunate,” Oscar wrote to me in a letter once. “They can choose whether they appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. There are no choices. All the world’s a stage, but we must play as we are cast.”
As she told her story, told us of the part that real life had thrown her way, I sensed that Susannah Wood had waited a long time to unburden herself. She spoke fitfully, but with an apparent openness that was disarming. As she spoke, occasionally her grief came crashing in upon her like huge waves upon a beach. When a wave struck, suddenly she sobbed uncontrollably and clung to Oscar as she might have done to a beloved father; when the wave had broken and the water had crept back across the sand, she dried her eyes and spoke fluently and fast as though desperate to say what she had to say before the next wave should overwhelm her. She directed everything she said to Oscar—only to Oscar—but as I listened to her tale and, at Oscar’s behest, took written notes of the essential points, I believed it all.
Oscar had been mistaken about her: she was neither a Mrs Todgers nor a Mrs Gummidge. To begin with, she was only thirty-four years of age and she was handsome. She was not blemish-free—her copper hair was flecked with grey; her pale green eyes were bloodshot; there were tight lines around her mouth and a livid red birthmark on her neck—but she had a dignity and grace about her that I would not have expected to find in the landlady of a small seaside hotel. Despite her coarse-grained, workaday grey dress, she had the figure of a lady, not a drudge. She was especially striking, also, because she was of above average height and, even in her sorrow, held her head high.
She told us she had been born in 1855, on 11 August—“Ah,” murmured Oscar, “the feast of St Susan”—and was the bastard child of a Mr Thomas Wood, a solicitor of Gray’s Inn Road, London WC. Her mother, whose name she had never known, had died in childbirth. Her father, who had been born in the year of the Battle of Trafalgar, died at about the time of her fifth birthday, in the summer of 1860. She had been brought up by an elderly couple—Mary and Joseph Skipwith, now deceased—who lived in Bromley, a suburb in south-east London, and who, once upon a time, had worked for her father as cook and gardener.
The Skipwiths were austere, God-fearing folk. They had no children of their own and cherished no particular fondness for Susannah. They did their duty by her, because of their respect for her father and because he paid them to do so. He did not pay them very much—Mr Skipwith made that plain to her—but he paid them ‘sufficiently’, and in this life (in which, as the Psalmist teaches us, we can expect no more than to be fed upon the bread of tears) a ‘sufficiency’ must be counted a blessing.
The Skipwiths were devoted to the words of the Psalmist and assiduous in counting their bl
essings. They required Susannah to follow their example: to read her Bible every morning and every night, and to thank God for her good fortune at every opportunity. As a child, Susannah was never idle. From the age of eight to the age of twelve, she attended the Poor School in Bromley, but, except for those hours when she was in the classroom, or walking to or from school, or in church, or walking to or from church, she was always occupied doing the work that God, and the Skipwiths, had ordained for her: sweeping, scrubbing, mopping, scouring, peeling, shelling, washing, sewing, making, mending. Mrs Skipwith taught her how to run a house. Mr Skipwith taught her how to manage a garden, grow and pick vegetables, light fires, chop wood and wield a knife.
Joseph Skipwith was skilled with a knife. He could slaughter and skin a rabbit or a hare and have it ready for the pot, in a matter of minutes. He was also skilled at woodcarving, and from him Susannah learnt to use a simple kitchen knife and pieces of wood gathered at random—small logs and fallen branches—to craft models of every kind. With Mr Skipwith’s help, when she was eleven, Susannah carved a Noah’s ark of beechwood—the ark was more than two feet in length—and a complete menagerie of creatures, great and small, to dwell within it. She was fifteen when, one Sunday evening after evensong, Mr Skipwith forced himself upon her, attempting to kiss her on her lips and to place his hands upon her body. When she resisted him, he threw the ark and all the animals upon the fire, railing against her vanity, her arrogance and her ingratitude.
While she lived with the Skipwiths, Susannah wanted for nothing, except happiness. Her life in Bromley was as she expected it to be: a vale of tears. She knew—she had known ever since she could remember—that she would not always live with the Skipwiths, that on her eighteenth birthday it was preordained that her life would change, but she had no notion until the day itself what that change might be. The Skipwiths had told her that, although she was a bastard child, nonetheless her father was an honourable man who recognised that, in this world as much as the next, there is a price to be paid for every sin and that, in consequence, he had provided for her future—and theirs. And so it proved.