Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers Read online

  Inspector Walter Andrews of Scotland Yard, one of the officers investigating the ‘Jack the Ripper’ killings, attended the scene of the crime in Leicester Square last night and said afterwards: ‘We are ruling nothing out at this stage, but at first sighting this does not look like the work of the man known as Jack the Ripper. Throat cutting and abdominal mutilation have been a common factor in the Ripper murders, all of which have taken place in and around the Whitechapel area of East London. In this case the physical attacks on the deceased, though similar, are distinctly different, and Leicester Square is a long way from Whitechapel.’

  Top of the bill at the Empire last night were Dan Leno and the Scottish Bard, the Great McGonagall. The house was full for the performance and the audience is said to have included certain very distinguished persons.

  Tonight’s performance will commence at 7.15 p.m. as usual, but will not include Les Ballets Fantastiques as a mark of respect for the deceased.

  52

  From the journal of Arthur Conan Doyle

  Yarborough and I examined the body together. We were left in peace to do so. The royal party departed at once – we agreed it was best. They took Onofroff with them and left, without ceremony, via the stairs that led directly from the ante-room to the street. Oscar and his young men took charge of Dvorak and his daughter, giving them brandy and sandwiches from the sideboard. Parker, the Duke of Albemarle’s butler (a better man than I had realised), kept cave at the door to the vestibule, while the duke helped us lay out the dead girl’s body on the floor.

  She was only just dead: her flesh was still warm and soft to the touch. I closed her eyelids, but allowed Yarborough, the senior man, to examine her first. He proceeded exactly as I would have done – meticulously, with care and concentration, swiftly but not in haste – and reserved his judgement until I had examined the body also.

  Our conclusions, when we shared them, proved identical. The poor girl had died not from her stab wounds, but from a broken neck. To the right side of her jaw were the impressions of finger marks, suggesting that a hand had been placed across her mouth. Her head had then been pulled from left to right with so mighty a force that the vertebrae at the top of her spine had snapped, severing her spinal cord and killing her outright.

  ‘Is this the work of one man?’ I wondered.

  ‘One devil incarnate,’ said Yarborough.

  ‘Or of two men? While one brute held her down, the other broke her neck …’

  ‘Either with his bare hands or smashing the neck violently against a solid surface – a step or the edge of a wall. The force used must have been considerable.’

  ‘And what about the wounds to her chest and neck? Do you recognise them?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Lord Yarborough. ‘I do.’

  We were kneeling on either side of the girl’s body. The Duke of Albemarle stood at her feet, gazing down on us. He turned away.

  Lord Yarborough continued quietly: ‘The marks on the breasts are superficial, as you can see – cuts and tears executed with a knife and intended to disfigure and mutilate, not to kill. It is exactly as it was with the Duchess of Albemarle.’

  ‘But the incisions in the neck are not quite the same.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘They are not so neat, nor so subtle. This murder is more brutal, more brutish – more quickly done.’

  ‘But the work of the same man?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Or designed to seem so.’

  ‘Is she a patient of yours?’ I asked.

  ‘This girl? Miss Lavallois?’ He sounded surprised by my question, but not affronted. Looking up from the bloody body that lay on the floor between us, he smiled bleakly. ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘She was not a patient of mine. Alas.’

  We got to our feet. ‘We’d best alert the theatre manager,’ I said. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Drowning his sorrows with the Great McGonagall, I imagine,’ replied Yarborough, with a chuckle. ‘Leaving us be – as the prince requested.’

  ‘We must find him,’ I said. ‘We must call the police.’

  ‘Let us not be precipitate,’ urged the Duke of Albemarle, glancing towards the ante-room. ‘Let us send the others on their way first.’

  ‘But they are witnesses,’ I protested.

  ‘Witnesses to what?’ responded the duke. ‘Not to the murder.’

  ‘No, not to the murder – but Miss Dvorak discovered the body.’

  ‘She went to the water closet, opened the door and discovered a body, yes – but what of that? Does it signify? Will knowing that in any way assist the police?’

  ‘We were all here,’ I said. ‘We are all witnesses.’

  ‘Witnesses to what? We saw nothing. We heard nothing. We were standing in a ludicrous fairy ring, playing some tomfool game at the moment when the body was discovered. What’s it to do with us?’

  Against my better judgement, and urged to it by Lord Yarborough, I allowed the duke’s view to prevail.

  Leaving the Lavallois girl’s corpse stretched out on the floor of the vestibule, we joined the others in the ante-room. Dvorak’s daughter was no longer weeping, but there were still tears in her red-rimmed eyes and she clung pathetically to her father. Dvorak himself glistened with nervous perspiration.

  ‘Are the police coming?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said the Duke of Albemarle. ‘The police are not coming.’

  ‘There were thirteen in the circle,’ said Dvorak distractedly. ‘Thirteen. It is a bad number. And that talk of secrets—’

  ‘Forget it now,’ said the duke. ‘Return to your hotel. Look after your daughter. Mr Wilde and his friends will escort you.’

  ‘I set sail for America on Thursday. I am fearful.’

  ‘Do not be,’ said Oscar gently. ‘The Atlantic is much misunderstood.’

  ‘But if the police have questions—’

  ‘Go to America, Monsieur Dvorak,’ urged the Duke of Albemarle, ‘take your daughter with you – and put all this out of your mind.’

  ‘But if there is to be an investigation—’

  ‘It need not concern you. Return to your hotel, sir. Speak of this to no one. Pack your bags and set sail on Thursday as you planned. Who knows that you were here tonight?’

  ‘Nobody – other than those who were present.’

  ‘Then forget that you were here. Wipe this dreadful experience from your mind – entirely. It will be best.’

  ‘And for your daughter also,’ added Lord Yarborough.

  ‘Very well,’ muttered Dvorak. ‘Another secret, but perhaps for the best.’ Sighing heavily, he held his daughter close.

  Oscar, I noticed, had broken from the group and gone into the vestibule to collect Dvorak’s hat and cane and his daughter’s evening cloak. As he returned I saw him look down at the body of the dead girl. He studied her face and did not flinch. I was surprised: Oscar is not one to lightly look on death. He makes a fetish of beauty. And he has a horror of the disfigured and the grotesque.

  ‘Goodnight, gentlemen,’ said the Duke of Albemarle. ‘Goodnight, mademoiselle.’

  Oscar, Sherard and LaSalle escorted the Dvoraks into the street. As they were departing, Oscar paused to pick up a small package from the sideboard. It was wrapped in a linen napkin. He held it up.

  ‘My supper – lamb cutlets and lobster claws. There’s nothing quite like an unexpected death for quickening the appetite.’

  ‘Goodnight, Oscar,’ I said.

  ‘Goodnight, Arthur. I will call on you at breakfast. We must report all this to the Prince of Wales.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ asked the Duke of Albemarle sharply.

  ‘Because he was not here,’ said Oscar, smiling. ‘Because he left before the body was discovered – don’t you recall, Your Grace?’

  The duke laughed. ‘Yes, of course. I had forgotten. Thank you for reminding me. Thank you, Mr Wilde. Goodnight.’

  The moment Oscar and the rest of his party had gone, the
Duke of Albemarle declared: ‘Wilde is right. We must protect the prince at all costs – both princes.’ He looked back towards the vestibule. ‘We must move the body.’

  ‘What?’ I cried, dumbfounded.

  ‘We cannot hide the fact that the Prince of Wales was here tonight. There are a thousand witnesses to his presence in the royal box. But we can hide the fact that a young woman’s mutilated body was discovered immediately adjacent to the royal box. We can move the body.’

  ‘I think not,’ I said coldly.

  ‘Think again,’ said the duke. ‘A scandal could ruin the prince. We have a duty to protect him.’

  ‘We have a duty to the truth.’

  ‘We are not hiding the truth, Doctor. We are protecting the reputation of the heir to the throne.’

  ‘And of his eldest son,’ added Lord Yarborough, ‘our someday king – and a man once rumoured to be Jack the Ripper.’

  Standing between Lord Yarborough and the Duke of Albemarle, I looked each man frankly in the eye.

  ‘I cannot be party to this, gentlemen. Do as you think fit. Do as you think proper. So long as the course of justice is not perverted by your action, I will not speak of this to others – ever. But I will not be party to it. Forgive me. Goodnight, gentlemen.’

  ‘Goodnight, Doctor.’

  They spoke the words in unison.

  7 a.m. Wednesday, 19 March 1890. I have barely slept. I have written up my journal, but now I think I must destroy what I have written – destroy it to protect the reputation of the Prince of Wales, and my own reputation, too.

  How have I become enmeshed in this? I am sworn to secrecy. I cannot even whisper of it to my darling Touie. My hero was right: ‘Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive!’

  53

  Telegram from Arthur Conan Doyle to his wife,

  Louisa ‘Touie’ Conan Doyle, despatched on

  Wednesday, 19 March 1890, at 7.30 a.m.

  UNEXPECTED BUSINESS. SADLY DELAYED IN LONDON UNTIL FRIDAY. DEEPEST REGRETS. KINDLY ASK CARTER TO BE LOCUM FOR SURGERY TODAY. LETTER FOLLOWS. YOUR EVER LOVING ACD

  54

  Telegram delivered to Oscar Wilde at 16 Tite Street,

  Chelsea, on Wednesday, 19 March 1890, at 7.30 a.m.

  CERTAIN PERSON REQUIRES YOUR PRESENCE AT TWELVE NOON TODAY WEDNESDAY AT SARAH CHURCHILL RESIDENCE. REQUEST BRING DOYLE. STRICTEST CONFIDENCE. OWL

  55

  From the diary of Rex LaSalle

  The night has been unruly: where we lay,

  Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,

  Lamentings heard i’ the air; strange screams of death …

  I pictured the girl’s face and thought of my mother.

  Oscar would not come back to my room. Once we had taken the composer and his daughter to their hotel, we went on to the Café Royal for a nightcap – brandy and champagne.

  Sherard said little. Oscar said much – but none of it to any purpose. He said nothing of the horror of the night, nothing at all. He talked of Shakespeare (as he often does when in wine) and of love and death – and of the death of love in marriage. He quoted Macbeth. He spoke of Henry Irving’s Macbeth and Ellen Terry’s Lady Macbeth – and of his love for Ellen Terry and Lillie Langtry and Queen Victoria.

  ‘I would marry any one of them willingly – or all three at once – if I believed in marriage. But I don’t any more. Marriage ruins a man. It is as demoralising as cigarettes and far more expensive.’

  He was, by turns, absurd and capricious. When it was gone one in the morning and the café was closing up about us, he said, ‘I’ll take a two-wheeler to Tite Street. How will you get home, Rex? Robert will walk to Gower Street, I know, but how will you travel? How does a vampire get about town these days – on foot or by wing?’

  ‘Since you ask,’ I said, ‘I shall be an owl tonight.’ I looked him directly in the eye as I spoke.

  He returned my gaze and replied, ‘You do not surprise me. “It was the owl that shrieked – the fatal bellman which gives the stern’st good-night.” Goodnight, sweet Rex.’

  What does he know?

  56

  From the notebooks of Robert Sherard

  I reached the Langham Hotel at 9 a.m. and found Oscar and Arthur Conan Doyle seated alone at a quiet table in the farthest reaches of the Palm Court. Doyle, in a pepper-and-salt tweed suit, looked out of place and out of sorts. His eyes were rheumy, the dark bags beneath them swollen and creased.

  Oscar, by contrast, appeared remarkably well rested and full of the joys of spring. His cheeks were pasty and pallid as ever, but his eyes sparkled and his costume was a riot of contrasting colours: a lime-green frock-coat (with sea-green silk facings), a rose-pink waistcoat, a lemon-yellow shirt, an azure-blue necktie, a pearl tiepin and, in his buttonhole, a daffodil.

  He smiled as he watched me appraising his attire. ‘Fashion is what one wears oneself,’ he began, then glanced teasingly at Conan Doyle before adding: ‘What is unfashionable is what other people wear.’

  ‘Fashion be damned,’ snapped Doyle. ‘At the Empire Music Hall last night a young woman was brutally murdered.’

  ‘Indeed,’ sighed Oscar. ‘And at the Savoy Hotel today, I understand they are introducing pink tablecloths to flatter the complexions of their female diners. What is becoming of the world?’

  ‘Dammit, Oscar,’ barked Conan Doyle, ‘do you have to make a joke of everything?’

  ‘Pink linen at the Savoy is no joke, Arthur.’

  ‘Must you laugh at everything you encounter?’

  ‘If I laugh at any mortal thing, my friend, ’tis that I may not weep. You know that. We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.’

  I took my place at table and, pouring myself some coffee, I looked at Conan Doyle’s melancholy face. His eggs and bacon sat cold on his plate before him. His newspaper lay open on the table.

  ‘What happened after we left last night?’ I asked.

  ‘I take it you’ve not read the paper?’ he replied. ‘It seems that the body of Miss Louisa Lavallois was discovered late last night – by a lamplighter – in a dark alley off Leicester Square.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Oscar lightly, buttering a piece of toast. ‘You moved the body. Your conscience pricks.’

  ‘I did not move the body,’ hissed Doyle.

  ‘Albemarle moved the body, then – or rather Albemarle got his butler to move the body, with Lord Yarborough assisting. I see it all.’

  Conan Doyle said nothing.

  ‘’Twas well done. ’Twas necessary.’

  ‘Was it?’ demanded Conan Doyle tetchily.

  ‘Yes, Arthur. The Prince of Wales is next in line to the throne of England. One day, probably quite soon, he will be king, ruling over a mighty empire that reaches across the globe. Protecting the royal reputation is in the national interest. To distance the prince from murder was the right thing to do – without question. To move the poor girl’s body was a patriotic duty.’ Oscar bit into his piece of toast. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘no harm was done.’

  ‘Was it not?’

  ‘I think we can safely assume that His Royal Highness was not personally involved in the girl’s death.’

  ‘Can we? Clearly he knew her. Clearly he loved her.’

  ‘And all men kill the thing they love?’

  ‘No, of course not. But Miss Lavallois’s association with the prince may have had some bearing on her murder, don’t you agree?’

  ‘I do,’ said Oscar, pushing his plate to one side and reaching for his cigarette case. ‘That’s why we are going to Paris – almost at once.’

  ‘Paris?’ Dr Doyle shook his head despairingly. ‘If I am going anywhere, Oscar, I am going to Southsea.’

  ‘By way of Montmartre, mon ami. Robert and I are off to the city of light, and you are coming too, Arthur. Not this morning – we have an audience with the Prince of Wales at noon. Not tomorrow morning – we are attending the Duchess of Albemarle’s funeral. But t
omorrow afternoon, Arthur, by the two o’clock train, we are going to Paris, to the Moulin Rouge. We are going for an evening of cabaret and detective work. We shall have solved this mystery before the police have got their boots on.’

  ‘The police already have their boots on, and their laces tied,’ said Conan Doyle, passing his newspaper across the table to Oscar. ‘Scotland Yard have one of their top men on the case.’

  Oscar drew on his cigarette and perused the newspaper. ‘Inspector Walter Andrews,’ he sniffed, ‘not a name to conjure with.’ He raised a supercilious eyebrow. ‘And the officer’s claim to fame appears to be an involvement with the Jack the Ripper murders – so the bright spark has at least ten unsolved crimes to his credit.’ He dropped the newspaper disdainfully. ‘I don’t think we need be fearful of the competition, Arthur.’

  ‘This isn’t a game, Oscar. This is murder.’

  ‘Yes, murder most foul. And Jack the Ripper isn’t our murderer. As I recall, in the Ripper murders, throats were cut and stomachs eviscerated. Our man has a much lighter, defter touch – if our man be a man at all, of course.’

  ‘What are you suggesting, Oscar?’ I asked. ‘That the murderer isn’t a man but some strange creature of the night?’

  Conan Doyle gave a hollow laugh and said mockingly: ‘Such as a vampire?’

  ‘No, not a vampire … but a woman, perhaps?’

  Oscar returned Conan Doyle’s newspaper to him.

  ‘I observed the finger marks to one side of the dead girl’s face. A hand had been placed across her mouth – to hold her down, to silence her. The bruising was considerable, but the impressions left by the assailant’s fingertips suggested a small hand rather than a large one – a woman’s rather than a man’s.’