Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders Read online

  For Michèle

  from first to last

  You know a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his trick; and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all.

  Sherlock Holmes to Dr John Watson,

  A Study in Scarlet, 1887

  Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders

  Drawn from the previously unpublished memoirs

  of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859—1930),

  creator of Sherlock Holmes and

  friend of Oscar Wilde

  Principal characters in the narrative

  Oscar Wilde, Irish poet and playwright

  Dr Arthur Conan Doyle, Scottish author and physician

  Dr Axel Munthe, Swedish author and physician

  The British community in Rome

  The Reverend Martin English, Anglican chaplain

  Catherine English

  James Rennell Rodd, First Secretary, British Embassy

  At the Vatican

  Cesare Verdi, sacristan at the Sistine Chapel

  Chaplains-in-residence to His Holiness Pope Leo XIII:

  Monsignor Francesco Felici, Pontifical Master of

  Ceremonies

  Father Joachim Bechetti

  Monsignor Nicholas Breakspear SJ, Grand Penitentiary

  Brother Matteo Gentili, Capuchin friar

  Monsignor Luigi Tuminello, papal exorcist

  Preface

  Rome, Italy, April 1877

  Letter from Oscar Wilde, aged twenty-two,

  to his mother

  Hotel Inghilterra

  Darling Mama,

  I am in Rome, city of saints and martyrs!

  I have just come from the Protestant Cemetery where I prostrated myself before the grave of ‘A Young English Poet’ —John Keats. He died here in Rome, not yet twenty-six, a martyr after his fashion, a priest of beauty slain before his time, a lovely Sebastian killed by the arrows of a lying and unjust tongue. I lay face-down upon the grass, amid the poppies, violets and daisies, and said a prayer for one who was taken from life while life and love were new. (Fear not, Mama, the grass was quite dry and the sun was shining. I will not catch a chill.) The grave is all simplicity — a hillock of green grass with a plain headstone bearing the epitaph Keats wrote for himself: ‘Here lies one whose name was writ in water.’ This is to me the holiest place in Rome.

  I say that despite having spent the morning at the Vatican! Yes, Mama, earlier today Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, your son, had the privilege of an audience with His Holiness Pope Pius IX. All here call him ‘Pio Nono’ and say that, in everything but name, he is a saint already. Certainly he must soon be with the angels. He has been pontiff for more than thirty years. He is eighty-four and cannot be long for this world. He is so frail. The English lady standing next to me in the receiving line said that, in his white dress, the Holy Father looks like a small child just put down to run alone. He is diminished by age and he totters.

  There were perhaps thirty of us admitted for the audience — Irish, English, American and French, as well as Italian. Audiences like this take place in a grandiose corridor somewhere between His Holiness’s private apartments and the Sistine Chapel. We arrived at noon and waited upwards of an hour for the Holy Father to appear. I assumed that he was about his devotions. The English lady assured me that he was attending to his midday broth. ‘His mind may not be what it once was,’ she said, ‘but his appetite is undiminished, thank the Lord.’ (Though an Anglican, the lady attends upon His Holiness as often as she is able. The English community here is devoted to the Pope.)

  When, at last, the Holy Father appeared in our midst he was surrounded by a fluttering retinue of priests and acolytes — old and young, half a dozen of them at least. Slowly, the pontifical party proceeded down the line, His Holiness giving each pilgrim a moment in turn. With some he was quite chatty, putting his hand to his ear to hear what was being said to him. Naturally, his attendants laughed at all his little jokes. Pio Nono’s body may be worn out, but his eye is beady and his voice still strong. To the Englishwoman next to me he remarked, ‘Inglese, no?’ — and that was all. (‘That’s what he always says to me,’ she told me later, proudly.) When he reached me and I gazed directly upon his face, I was much moved. He has lost his teeth and his underlip protrudes, but there is great sweetness in his smile. I genuflected and kissed the third finger of his right hand. He placed his left hand upon my head and gave me his blessing.

  I was almost the last in line. Beyond me were two Italians: a Capuchin father and a young girl, aged thirteen to fourteen. The girl’s beauty was extraordinary —she had the face of a Madonna by Botticelli, with hair the colour of moonbeams and eyes the hue of cornflowers. She was dressed in a simple white smock and she fell to her knees the moment His Holiness entered the corridor. Clearly the Holy Father knew her because, as soon as he reached her, he lifted her veil from her face and caressed her head and said warmly, ‘Dio ti benedica, figlia mia.’ He then took both her hands in his and raised her from her knees. She smiled shyly up at him. Beaming, he looked around at his attendants and back along the line of pilgrims, then, in Italian, told us: ‘Look on this child and give thanks. She is pure innocence. She is a lamb of God, surrounded by the seven deadly sins.’ He let go of the girl’s hands and, laughing happily, went on his way.

  I shall not forget this day.

  Ever your newly blessed son,

  Oscar

  1

  Homburg, Germany, July 1892

  From the unpublished memoirs of

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  I am a details man. I can tell you that in 1892, my thirty-third year, I wrote a total of 214,000 words, all too many of them concerned with the adventures of Mr Sherlock Holmes. My industry was well rewarded. My income for that year amounted to £2,729 — a substantial sum, an outrageous sum, you may think, at a time when a schoolmaster was earning, at most, £150 per annum and a housemaid no more than £40.

  On account of Sherlock Holmes I was prosperous. On account of Sherlock Holmes I was becoming famous. On account of Sherlock Holmes I was exhausted. The public could not get enough of ‘the world’s foremost consulting detective’: I was weary of his very name. Halfway through that year, at the start of July 1892, having completed seven Holmes stories in the space of six months, and having settled my wife and baby daughter in our new home in the London suburb of South Norwood, I decided to take a break. I wanted ten days (no more) of rest and recuperation. I needed, as the phrase now goes, to ‘get away from it all’. I took myself off to the foothills of the Taunus mountains, to the German spa town of Homburg. I went to catch up with a backlog of paperwork, undisturbed. I went in search of peace and quiet and solitude. As I arrived at my hotel on Kaiser Friedrichs Promenade, I came face to face with Oscar Wilde.

  Do not misunderstand me. In the hurly-burly of the metropolis, in the crush bar at the opera house or a drawing room in Mayfair, there could be no better companion than Oscar Wilde. He set every room he ever entered on a roar. I never knew a wittier man, and he was wise as well as witty. And his wit sparkled and soared: it was never mean or cruel, never exercised at a lesser man’s expense. But Oscar Wilde was not a quiet person. He was Irish and he would not — could not — stop talking. His was a talent to amuse, excite, delight and stimulate, not to soothe. He had genius and charm, and in the years that I first knew him, before his terrible downfall, he was, at all times, a perfect gentleman. But he was not restful company.

  Even as I came through the doors of the hotel, even before the hall porter had relieved me of my bags, I heard Oscar’s voice calling ou
t to me.

  ‘Arthur? Arthur Conan Doyle! Is that really you? Heaven be praised. Thank the Lord you are here.’

  My friend was bounding towards me. He appeared distraught. His pale-blue eyes were red-rimmed and shiny with tears. His putty-like features were flecked with beads of perspiration. He did not look well.

  He offered me no formal greeting, but simply cried: ‘I need cigarettes. Do you have some, Arthur? Turkish for preference. Or Algerian. American, even. Anything will do.’

  I gazed at him bemused. ‘Cigarettes? What for?’

  ‘To smoke, of course!’ he expostulated.

  ‘But you never travel without your cigarettes, Oscar.’

  ‘I arrived with a dozen tins,’ he wailed, ‘but I have exhausted my supplies and in this godforsaken town there’s not a tobacconist to be found. They have been outlawed by the burgermeister.’

  I put down my cases and felt in my coat pocket. ‘I believe I have some pipe tobacco,’ I said, laughing.

  He seized the tobacco pouch from my hands and kissed it reverently. ‘You are my salvation, Arthur. There’s a Lutheran bible in my room — a poor translation but printed on the most delicate rice paper. I shall use its pages to roll my own cigarettes.’

  ‘It’s a rough tobacco,’ I warned him, apologetically.

  ‘No matter, it’s tobacco and I shan’t overwhelm it. I shall begin with Hosea and confine myself entirely to the minor prophets.’ Bear-like, he put his arms around me. He was a big man: over six feet. ‘Thank you, Arthur. You are a good friend. Welcome to Bad Homburg. Dinner as my guest shall be your reward.’

  I looked about the cheerless hotel hallway. There were no pictures on the walls, no flowers in the pewter vase that stood on the heavy oak sideboard. ‘What on earth are you doing here, Oscar?’ I asked.

  ‘Suffering,’ he sighed. ‘And mostly in silence. The other guests are German. Conversation is limited. I find it is so exhausting not to talk.’

  I laughed. ‘Are you here for the cure?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered bleakly, ‘and it is killing me. I go over to the spa every day and drink the waters. The taste is utterly repellent. It takes a bottle and a half of hock to recover from it. I have never felt so unwell in my life.’ He grinned and waved my tobacco pouch in the air. ‘But your shag will set me right, Arthur. And over dinner you’ll tell me why you’re here.’

  ‘I’m escaping Sherlock Holmes,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll never do that, Arthur. You cannot deny your destiny. No man can. Besides, we may need Holmes’s counsel over dinner. We must discuss the sorry business of the murder of the pastry chef.’

  I stood amazed. ‘The hotel’s pastry chef has been murdered?’

  ‘Not yet,’ smiled Oscar, holding the tobacco pouch above his head as he made his way towards the stairs, ‘but it is quite inevitable. When you see the dessert trolley you will know why. A tout à l’heure, mon ami. We’ll meet in the dining room at eight.’

  I settled myself into my room on the hotel’s top floor, but at the back of the building, low-ceilinged, airless and sparsely furnished. My narrow window overlooked the hotel’s kitchen yard. My narrow bed faced a whitewashed wall adorned with the room’s only piece of decoration: a heavy crucifix carved from Black Forest oak. As soon as I had unpacked my bags, I changed for dinner and lay on the bed, disconsolate, gazing alternately at the crucifix and my pocket watch, willing the minutes to pass. As I reflected on the austerity of my surroundings, the prospect of dinner with Oscar seemed ever more enticing.

  My friend did not disappoint. On the stroke of eight, I made my way into the hotel dining room. The room (oak-panelled and candlelit) was filled with diners, yet felt deserted. At every table, mature couples sat face to face in accustomed silence.

  ‘You notice,’ whispered Oscar, as I sat down before him, ‘how they study their plates and their water glasses and the vacant middle distance just beyond their spouse’s left or right shoulder. Will it be like this for us in years to come?’

  ‘No,’ I said, smiling, ‘we are both happily married men. We can look our wives in the eye with a clear conscience. We talk to them and they talk to us. We are blessed.’ I gazed about the room as the waiter unfurled my napkin and, with a heavy hand, laid it across my lap. ‘Is there anything worse than a loveless marriage?’ I pondered.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Oscar. ‘A marriage in which there is love, but on one side only.’

  Despite the Lenten surroundings, my friend entertained me royally that night. Oscar Wilde was, as another Irishman observed, the greatest talker of his time —perhaps of all time — but he was not a monologue man. He was a conversationalist: he listened attentively before he spoke. He took as well as gave, and what he gave was unique. He had a curious precision of statement, a delicate flavour of humour and a trick of small gestures to illustrate his meaning, which were peculiar to himself.

  We had first met three years before, in London, introduced to one another by an American publisher who sought from each of us ‘a murder mystery’ for a monthly magazine. I had obliged with my second Sherlock Holmes adventure. Oscar had written The Picture of Dorian Gray. As writers we were very different. As men we were dissimilar, too, in age (Oscar was five years my senior), appearance (he was taller, stouter and not a man for a moustache) and outlook (Oscar was an aesthete: I was a medical and a military man), but from that first encounter we were immediately in sympathy. Ultimately, I believe it was an arrogance akin to madness that brought him low, but in the heyday of our friendship Oscar seemed to me to be among the best of men. I liked him and admired him. I was awed by his high intelligence, intrigued by his fascination with detective fiction and amused by his fondness for aping Sherlock Holmes at every possible opportunity.

  When the waiter had served us our turtle soup and poured us each a glass of excellent Moselle wine, Oscar remarked: ‘I feel sorry for the fellow, don’t you? He’s unhappily married, as you can see, and it must be humbling for a once-proud Bavarian officer to be reduced to this.’

  ‘Are you talking about our waiter?’ I asked.

  ‘I am.’

  I smiled. ‘Has he confessed all this to you, Oscar, or have you deduced it?’

  ‘You know my methods, Arthur,’ answered my friend, playfully tapping the side of his nose with his index finger. ‘We can tell that he’s unhappily married because, though he wears a wedding ring, there is a button missing on his jacket and his waistcoat is both stained and poorly pressed. His wife no longer cares for him. He was evidently a soldier because of his bearing. He is stiff and heavy-handed. And his accent tells us he is Bavarian.’

  ‘What tells us that he is a “once-proud officer”?’

  ‘His cufflinks and the duelling scar on his left cheek. The cufflinks bear the black and yellow badge of the German Imperial Army. As he poured your wine, you could clearly read the motto on the Imperial cross: Gott Mit Uns.’

  ‘I noticed the cufflinks,’ I said, ‘but not the duelling scar.’

  ‘It’s dark in here. They keep it deliberately crepuscular to prevent you from seeing too precisely what’s on your plate.’

  I laughed and looked once more around the gloomy dining room. ‘Why on earth are you here, Oscar?’

  ‘It was my darling wife’s idea. Constance wishes me to lose weight. I have put on two stone in two years. Here at Bad Homburg, I am advised, I can lose two stone in two weeks.’

  He said this with a mouth full of bread and butter, as the soup was being cleared away and a dish of turbot in mushroom sauce was being laid before us. Wiener schnitzel, boiled potatoes and sauerkraut were to follow, then cheese, then blancmange, then fruit and nuts.

  ‘I am on the strictest regimen,’ he declared. ‘Morning and afternoon, religiously, I cross the road to the bathhouse and take the repellent waters. At the end of the day a remarkable specimen of humanity named Hans Schroeder comes to my room. He has the body of a Greek god and the hands of a Teutonic prize-fighter. He is my personal masseur and he knows
me better than I know myself. For an hour each evening he pushes, pummels and pulverises me, without remission. He is ruthless, remorseless — and in the pay of the hotel. His ministrations leave me so enfeebled that I haven’t the strength to venture out to find a decent restaurant. I am forced to rebuild my strength as best I can in this dismal dining room.’ He drained his wineglass, shook his head, sighed and closed his eyes.

  ‘The wine is very good,’ I said.

  He opened his eyes and grinned. ‘I agree. It’s exceptional. I think we need another bottle right away.’ He waved towards our waiter. ‘We must toast your arrival, Arthur. You have heard my sorry tale. Now it’s your turn. Why are you here? You don’t need to lose weight.’

  ‘I’ve come to clear my head,’ I said. ‘And to clear my desk.’

  Oscar raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve brought your desk with you?’

  ‘I have brought a portmanteau of paperwork with me, yes. I am overwhelmed with correspondence, Oscar. No one told me this was the author’s lot. I have hundreds of letters demanding a response.’

  My friend looked alarmed. ‘Are these from creditors, Arthur? Are you in trouble?’

  ‘These are from readers, Oscar.’

  ‘You get hundreds of letters from your readers?’ Oscar sat back wide-eyed in amazement and, I sensed, a little in envy.

  ‘No,’ I reassured him. ‘I get only a handful, fewer than you do, I’m sure. It is Sherlock Holmes who gets hundreds of letters—thousands even.’

  ‘But Holmes is a figment of your imagination.’

  ‘He is, but the letters aren’t. The letters are all too real and my publishers insist that I at least glance at each and every one. Most can be dealt with by means of a printed postcard of acknowledgement, of course, but simply opening, scanning and sorting it all takes time — and gets in the way of my real work.’