2007 - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders

by Gyles Brandreth

  He did not sound convinced.

  “Tell me about the man who wasn’t there,” I asked.

  “Drayton St Leonard?”

  “You know him?”

  “No.”

  “But you knew his name.”

  “I guessed his name,” said Oscar.

  “Guessed it?”

  “It was not difficult. Aston Upthorpe, Aston Tirrold, Sutton Courteney, Berrick Prior, Stoke Talmage…Drayton St Leonard. They are all the names of villages in Oxfordshire, probably in the parish where ‘Canon Courteney’ was rector before he was defrocked. Don’t look so shocked, Robert. A nom de guerre does not make a man a criminal. Henry Irving’s real name is John Brodribb, after all.”

  19

  27 January 1890

  “Moods don’t last,” Oscar liked to say. “It’s their chief charm.”

  Certainly, the mellow mood in which I had left my friend after our tea together at the Savoy Hotel on Tuesday afternoon had wholly evaporated by the time I joined him on the nine o’clock train to Broadstairs on Thursday morning. He sat in the corner seat of our first-class carriage, huddled in his coat, with the astrakhan collar pulled about his ears, gazing disconsolately at the greasy raindrops as they chased one another down the dirty window-pane. “This is not cosy, Robert,” he muttered. “Not cosy at all.”

  I realised too late where the problem lay. He had forgotten to bring his cigarettes. I had none either, and our train was on the move.

  “There’s a tobacconist on the platform at Tonbridge,” I said.

  “Tonbridge!” Oscar sighed. “That’s an hour away, longer than Stainer’s Crucifixion! And as mortifying. I am sorely tried.”

  As our train rumbled sluggishly through the suburbs of south London, Oscar drummed his fingernails on the lid of the metal ashtray affixed to the carriage door.

  “Divert me, Robert,” he commanded. “Distract me. Tell me about your divorce.”

  “There is nothing to report,” I said.

  “There must be something?”

  “Foxton, the solicitor, has gone quiet. I’ve heard nothing from him for weeks. Or from Marthe. I am content to let sleeping dogs lie. There really is nothing to report, I’m afraid.”

  Oscar sighed once more and closed his eyes. Between Coulsdon South and Nutfield, we travelled in silence. At Godstone, when the train stopped briefly, I had hopes of procuring a cigarette from a young man whom I noticed on the platform. He was dressed in a glengarry cap and cape, and his face was shrouded in an encouraging cloud of smoke. He had just lit a cigarette and was still holding his cigarette case in his hand. At first he looked as if he might be about to join us in our compartment, but when he reached the door and saw us he moved on. As the train juddered out of the station, Oscar stirred. He stifled a yawn and gazed at me reproachfully.

  “How long have you known John Gray?” I asked.

  “That’s a curious question,” he answered, slowly sitting forward. “Why do you ask?”

  “For no reason,” I replied, immediately regretting that I had not broached the subject in a more roundabout way.

  “There must be a reason, Robert,” he said, tetchily.

  “No reason,” I protested. “I was just making conversation.”

  “Asking after Henry living’s Richard III, or the weather in Dover, or the consequences of the abolition of slavery on the economy of Cuba, is ‘making conversation’, Robert. Asking when one gentleman met another gentleman is ‘making enquiries’. Why do you ask?”

  “It’s unimportant,” I said, waving my hands about in front of my face in the hope that they might waft the subject away.

  “The answer to the question is unimportant, to be sure,” said Oscar who was now on the edge of his seat and leaning directly towards me, “but the fact of the question is significant. You ask it in the way that you ask it—directly, unadorned, of a sudden—because it has been preying on your mind. You have been waiting to ask it. I suspect that you ask the question because Aidan Fraser has been asking it, has he not? Am I right?”

  I said nothing. I did not wish to lie to my friend.

  Oscar began to tap the lid of the metal ashtray once more. “Inspector Fraser is an odd one,” he said, quietly. “He is handsome, he is intelligent, he is a friend of Conan Doyle’s—he and I should get on so well and yet…”

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s evident that he neither likes nor trusts the company I keep, Robert.”

  I began to protest.

  “No, Robert, it’s true. With the exception of Arthur and yourself—and possibly the Prince of Wales, the prime minister and the poet laureate, and maybe, at a pinch, Mr Irving and Miss Ellen Terry—Inspector Fraser is profoundly suspicious of the associates of Oscar Wilde. He as good as told me so. Were you not there when he tried to warn me off our case? He sees my friends as ‘the enemy’. I believe Fraser despises John Gray because he suspects that he is musical.”

  “Is that a crime?”

  “Since the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, apparently it is.”

  I laughed.

  “Why do you laugh?” he asked.

  “Is it not a joke?” I said.

  “By no means, alas.”

  I was puzzled. A silence fell.

  “I had no idea that John Gray was musical,” I said, eventually. “‘What instrument does he play?”

  “He doesn’t play an instrument.”

  “He is not a composer, surely?”

  “No.”

  “A conductor, then?”

  Oscar smiled. His lips parted and he grinned at me, showing his ungainly teeth. “Ah, Robert. We are speaking at cross-purposes. You have clearly spent too much time in France. You are unfamiliar with the argot of the English demi-monde. To say a man is ‘musical’ is a colloquialism, Robert. It suggests that when it comes to his gross bodily appetites, he may be an apostle of Greek love.”

  “Oh,” I said, “I see.” I blushed. Another silence fell.

  I do not believe that the word ‘homosexual’ was known in 1890. If it was, I never heard it. Nowadays, at any cocktail party, you can hear expressions such as ‘homo’ and—‘queer’ bandied hither and yon without embarrassment, but the Victorian age was more discreet—and none the worse for that. Nowadays, what Oscar and his friend, Lord Alfred Douglas, came to call ‘the love that dare not speak its name’ can be heard bellowing its universal presence from the rooftops, but then it was different. Fifty years ago a man of the world would doubtless have been familiar with the phenomenon of sexual inversion, but it was not a subject that he would have expected, openly, to discuss.

  “Well,” I said, after a moment, “is he musical?”

  Oscar laughed. “John Gray? Yes. And he is troubled by it, poor boy. He is taking ‘the cure’—cold baths, wet runs, sleeping on wooden boards, praying incessantly. The last is a mistake: I have told him. The Almighty loves a sinner, but cannot abide a bore. He won’t be gainsaid, however. He wants to be ‘pure’ before he is received.”

  “‘Received’?” I repeated the word carefully, suddenly anxious that this might be another unfamiliar euphemism. “Received by whom?”

  “The Catholic Church. John Gray has been taking instruction for some months now. He is hoping to be received in a fortnight’s time—on 14 February. Under the circumstances, I fear the date is inauspicious.”

  “And how long have you known him?” I sensed that it was safe to ask the question now.

  “Not long enough. I would like to know him better. I met him at a party in the King’s Road, a gathering of poets. He was the only one who was not prosaic. He came over and introduced himself.”

  “He sought you out?”

  “Yes, I was blessed—for he is beautiful, is he not? Even you and Fraser must be able to see that. He told me that he had secured an invitation to the party with the express purpose of meeting me. He told me that I was his ‘obsession’. He said it most charmingly. I was flattered. Who would not be?”

&
nbsp; “And when was this?”

  “Several days after the murder of Billy Wood. I do not see how you or Fraser could possibly implicate him in this affair.”

  “I do not seek to,” I protested, “not for a moment, but—”

  “But what?”

  I drew breath before I spoke. “It is curious that a young man, whom you barely know, whom you have met apparently by chance, out of the blue, suddenly starts turning up at all the key moments in the drama…That is all.”

  “‘Key moments’?” Oscar snapped. “What ‘key moments’?”

  “When you were attacked in Soho Square, when the head of Billy Wood was delivered to your house—”

  “Robert! Robert! Robert!” Oscar rocked slowly backwards and forwards in his seat, gazing at me with baleful eyes. “Think what you are saying! When the head of Billy Wood was delivered to my house, you, too, were there! So were Fraser and Miss Sutherland—and Constance and the Conan Doyles! Are you telling me that Mrs Conan Doyle is one of your suspects too?”

  “No, Oscar, of course not, but I do say that whoever murdered Billy Wood must be someone who knows of your interest in the case—and where you live. The poor boy’s head was delivered to your front door.”

  “It was delivered to my club, Robert, and the list of those who know of my interest in Billy Wood and of my membership of the Albemarle Club is a very long one indeed. It starts with the unhappy Mrs Wood and the wretch O’Donnell, then stretches from Bellotti and his band of merry men to Fraser and, through him, I imagine, to half the Metropolitan Police—especially, no doubt, those officers involved in what Fraser likes to term ‘the unsavoury Cleveland Street affair’. Even Mrs O’Keefe knows of my membership of the Albemarle. She came to meet me there, remember. Have you got her on the list?”

  I was vanquished, overwhelmed by Oscar’s torrent of words. I glanced out of the window. The rain was abating. “We will be in Ashford soon,” I said. “We change trains there.”

  Oscar exploded. “What happened to Tonbridge?” he demanded. “I was promised a cigarette in Tonbridge!” It was evident that he could not decide whether to laugh or grumble. He began to cough, a short, dry, hacking cough; but could not shake himself free from it. He leant forward and indicated that I should bang him on his back to beat it out of him. He was now laughing, coughing, wheezing, speaking all at once. “And, Robert,” he spluttered, “do not assume that whoever sent the severed head is necessarily the murderer.” He indicated that I should hit him harder. “The head was sent to tell me something,” he gasped, “but what?” The cough would not dislodge itself. “Lower,” he rasped. “Hit me lower.”

  He was now perched on the edge of his seat, bent double, with his head between his knees. I was standing over him, my left leg braced against his, my right kneeling on the seat adjacent to him. I was still beating the small of his back rhythmically with the edge of my clenched fist when the train juddered to a halt at Ashford Station. Abruptly, the carriage door was flung open and a brute of a railway attendant jumped in. With one heave, he pushed me violently to the ground. “Get off!” he roared at me. He turned to Oscar. “Are you all right, sir?” He was fumbling in his pocket for a whistle.

  Oscar looked up. His lungs had cleared and he smiled at the attendant. “I’m well, thank you. No need for the police, I assure you. This gentleman is my friend. He was assisting me.”

  “What?” growled the railwayman. “He was beating the living daylights out of you.”

  “No, I assure you—I had a cough,” said Oscar, now reaching into his own coat pocket. “Appearances can be so deceptive.” He found a coin and handed it to his rescuer. “Thank you,” he said, “thank you for your kind intention.”

  The attendant felt the weight of the coin and muttered, “Thank you, sir.” He looked at me with disdain, as though he might have spat upon me had a gentleman not been present. I returned his glance and realised that he must have been in his mid-sixties. His face was deeply lined and weather-beaten; the hair beneath his cap was as grey as ash. Oscar got slowly to his feet and allowed the man to help him down onto the platform. “Anything more you need, sir? A porter or something?”

  “A cigarette,” said Oscar, smiling at the man, “if you have one.” The railwayman took a cigarette from behind his right ear and presented it to Oscar, who reached at once for his coat pocket and handed over another coin. Gingerly, keeping my distance, I clambered out of the carriage after them.

  “We need the Broadstairs train,” I said.

  “Platform three,” said the attendant, “at twenty past.”

  Oscar presented him with a third and final token of his appreciation. “Robert,” he said, as the attendant stepped back, touching his cap to Oscar and throwing me one last contemptuous glance as he went, “do you have a light?”

  I was confused. My head and heart were still pounding following the unexpected assault of a moment before, but I reached into my pocket and found a box of matches. My hands were shaking slightly, but Oscar did not appear to notice. “Will you share this cigarette with me?” he asked. “We can have half each or take alternate puffs.”

  “You have it,” I said. I struck a match and held it cupped between my hands as I lit the cigarette. We were still standing on the station platform, by the compartment from which we had just alighted. Oscar had his back to the train, but, as the whistle went and the train lurched forward, going onward towards Folkestone, over Oscar’s shoulder I saw into the compartment that had been adjacent to ours. In the corner seat by the window sat the young man in the glengarry cap and cape. He was no longer shrouded in a haze of cigarette smoke. I could see him quite clearly. It was John Gray.

  The train moved noisily forward. Oscar drew on his cigarette with his eyes closed and a look of supreme contentment on his lips. When the train was gone, he opened his eyes and smiled at me. I was unsure what best to say.

  I began, “This is passing strange, Oscar—”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Do you know who I have just seen?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Is it a coincidence, do you think?”

  “I do not know, but—”

  “We shall soon find out. She has seen us. She is coming towards us now.”

  I turned and there, hurrying towards us along the platform, half walking, half running, was a tall young woman in a long black coat. Beneath her hat she wore a veil, but as she came close I saw fear in her eyes and tears of desperation on her cheeks.

  “Mrs Wood,” said Oscar, throwing his cigarette to the ground and taking her hands in his, “we were on our way to find you and you, it seems, were on your way to find us.”

  “Oh, Mr Wilde,” she said, “they have taken him. They have arrested Edward, Mr Wilde. He is to be charged. He will be hanged.”

  “And he is your husband?” said Oscar.

  “He is my husband…” she whispered and she fell, fainting, into Oscar’s arms.

  20

  Ashford Station

  Susannah Wood hung limply in Oscar’s arms. From the far end of the platform my railwayman assailant saw what had occurred and, at once, ran to offer his assistance. Between us, we carried the poor lady to what the railwayman called ‘the stationmaster’s snug’, a dark, low-ceilinged room, the size of a railway carriage, tucked behind the ticket office. There, by a coal fire no bigger than a colander, we propped her in an old armchair and revived her with a cup of sweet tea, fortified with a nip of the stationmaster’s ‘special reserve brandy’. Oscar accepted a nip for himself. It made his eyes water.

  “Reviving, isn’t it, sir?” said the railwayman.

  “It would bring Lazarus to life,” said Oscar.

  When Mrs Wood had recovered herself; Oscar, seated on a hardwood chair facing her, held both her hands in his and said, earnestly, “Dear lady, hide nothing from me now.” I sat on the corner of the stationmaster’s desk and took out my notebook.

  She looked piteously into Oscar’s eyes and said: “How did you know that Edward O�
��Donnell is my husband?”

  “He wears a ring of rose-gold on his wedding finger,” said Oscar. “I noticed it when I first encountered him on your doorstep and he jabbed his hand towards my face.” Oscar held Mrs Wood’s left hand before him. “You wear an identical ring of rose-gold on the third finger of your left hand,” he said. “I noticed it first when I returned to you this other wedding-band of yours, the one that Billy wore.”

  Susannah Wood closed her eyes. “Will Edward be hanged?” she asked.

  “It is possible,” said Oscar. “I do not know. Tell me about his arrest.”

  Hesitantly, coaxed by Oscar, she told us what had happened. It was that morning, between five and six, before the break of day, that the police had called at The Castle. The noise of their truncheons beating on her front door had awoken her. She came to the door, she said, ‘bewildered, half asleep’. She thought at first that it must be O’Donnell returning to the house in one of his drunken rages, but then she recalled that she had heard him coming in by the basement entrance a few hours before. As she began to unchain the front door, the beating stopped. “There was a moment of sudden stillness,” she said, “and in that moment I knew something terrible was about to happen.” She opened the door and, as she did so, five or six policeman, all in uniform, all wielding truncheons, rushed past her into the house. As they came, one of them shouted, “We’ve come for O’Donnell. Where is he? Where is he, woman?”

  It did not take the policemen long to find their prey. O’Donnell, still dressed from the night before, still in his cap and coat and boots, lay fast asleep, spread out like a crucified man, on a mattress on the scullery floor. “That’s where he slept when he was in drink,” said Mrs Wood. As two of the policemen dragged him to his feet, he barely stirred. When two others slipped handcuffs around his wrists, he opened his eyes and began to curse. Gradually, as the policemen pushed and pulled him up the basement steps, he regained his strength and, uttering terrible oaths and imprecations, struggled to break free. “He has the strength of an ox,” said Mrs Wood, “but he was outnumbered. They subdued him with their truncheons. They beat him about the head. They rained blow upon blow upon him until, at last, he fell, unconscious, to the ground. Then they bundled his body into the back of the Black Maria.”