Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death (37 page)

Constance
did not hear him. She was talking with Heron-Allen. ‘It’s all a bit sad, is it
not?’ she said.

‘There’s
nothing sadder than an unloved garden,’ said Heron-Allen.

Vyvyan
ran up to his mother holding a handful of weeds and grasses. ‘I’ve picked a
posy for you, Mama,’ he announced, bowing low and presenting his mother with
his little bunch of greenery.

‘Thank
you, my darling,’ said Constance, moved by her child’s offering and bending
down to kiss the little boy. ‘Perhaps Uncle Edward can tell us what you’ve
picked for me.’

Constance
handed the green posy to Heron-Allen, who examined it carefully.

‘There
are herbs here, as well as weeds,’ he said approvingly. ‘Well done, godson.’ He
knelt down beside the boy and, like a good teacher, took him through each leaf
in turn. ‘This, I think, is wild carrot. This, believe it or not, is the leaf
of a parsnip. You can eat the parsnip, but you can’t eat the leaf. This leaf you
can eat, however. It’s delicious.’ He bit into the curly sprig of vegetation. ‘It’s
called parsley.’

‘Correctly
known as
“petroselinum”
,‘ added Oscar, bringing Cyril over to join in
the lesson. ‘We Wildes are all classicists, Edward. My boys have been Latin
scholars
ab ovo.’

Heron-Allen
laughed obligingly. ‘Well,’ he went on, ‘this then, I think, is
conium
maculatum.
It’s a pretty flower, but you mustn’t eat it.’ He pulled out the
smooth green stem and threw it onto the bank. ‘But this one—which isn’t quite
so pretty—is really delicious.’ He held the delicate leaf beneath Vyvyan’s nose
and scratched it. ‘Can you smell it? It’s very good for you.
It’s foeniculum
vulgare.’

‘Common
fennel?’ I guessed.

‘Indeed,’
said Heron-Allen, getting to his feet.

‘Beloved
of the Persians also. They call it
“raaziyaan”.’

On the
return journey to Tite Street, Constance walked ahead pushing Cyril in the
chariot, with Heron-Allen, with Vyvyan back on his shoulders, at her side. Each
time they crossed a road I felt an absurd pang of jealousy as the young
solicitor put out his hand to touch and steady Constance’s slender arm.

As we
walked, Oscar and I smoked our cigarettes, but said very little. As we turned
into Tite Street itself, Oscar paused. ‘There’s much to be done between now and
Friday, Robert. We know who killed the parrot, don’t we?’

‘Do
we?’ I asked.

He
smiled. ‘I think we do … But who killed David McMuirtree? That’s the
question. And why? And the blades that slashed the poor man’s wrists … were
they cockspurs?’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

QUESTIONS

At the end of the
afternoon Edward Heron-Allen went on his way. The family gathered at the front
door of 16 Tite Street to wave him off. Oscar embraced his young friend warmly;
the two boys threw their arms around his legs to try to prevent him from taking
his leave; I watched Constance tenderly stroke his ear and cheek as she kissed
him goodbye.

‘I must
go, too,’ I said, when Constance had taken the children upstairs for their
bathtime and fairy stories.

‘A
glass of champagne before you go?’ suggested Oscar. He went to the end of the
corridor and called down towards the kitchen: ‘Arthur!’ He took me into his
red-and-yellow study on the ground floor. The floor was cluttered with untidy
heaps of papers and tottering piles of books. Like an overweight frog hopping
between lily-pads, Oscar negotiated his way across the room towards his
celebrated writing desk—the desk at which Thomas Carlyle had written his
History of the French Revolution. ‘Look at this,’ he said.

‘What
is it?’

Between
his thumb and forefinger he held up a tiny curved object that looked like the
clipping of a fingernail encased in silver. ‘It is a Mexican cockspur—according
to Heron-Allen. It’s the pride of his collection, apparently. He brought it
over this morning. He thought I’d be intrigued to see it.’ He handed me the
miniature blade. ‘Take care,’ he said. ‘It’s razor-sharp.’

I
examined the shiny cockspur carefully—it was highly polished: it gleamed—and
returned it to Oscar who placed it back upon the desk. ‘So many questions,
Robert,’ he murmured. ‘So many questions and so little time.’

‘If
this is a race against time, Oscar,’ I said, lowering my voice, ‘if you truly
believe that your life could be threatened on Friday, is your visit to Oxford
tomorrow essential?’

‘It
is,’ he said, not looking at me but picking up a book from the top of one of
the piles and leafing through it. ‘And not just for Bosie’s sake.’

‘Who
killed the parrot, Oscar?’ I asked. He said nothing, but carried on reading. ‘
Who
killed the parrot?’
I hissed.

He
looked up at me. ‘You’re beginning to sound like Charles Brookfield, Robert.’

‘But if
you know, Oscar, you must tell me.’

He
laughed. ‘Now you’re beginning to sound like Bosie. You must write your own
essay, Robert: test the evidence yourself, Robert; make your own deductions;
come to your own conclusion.’

‘Ah …’
I said, smiling, leaning back and folding my arms across my chest. ‘You don’t
know for certain, do you?’

He
snapped shut his book. ‘You are right, Robert. I think I know, but I am not
certain. I am not at all certain. As Socrates reminds us, true knowledge exists
in knowing that we know nothing. The jigsaw is still a jumble. There are
secrets still waiting to be found out.’

Arthur
the butler arrived with the Perrier Jouët.

He placed
the champagne tray on the side-table by the study door and bowed towards his
master. Oscar bowed back.

‘Pour
the wine, Robert. We need to empty the bottle and clear our heads. Do you have
your pencil and notebook handy?’

As we
drank the sparkling wine—it was wonderfully crisp and cool: ‘as pure and yellow
as a May moonbeam,’ said Oscar—I took a note of my friend’s instructions. While
he was to be in Oxford, I was to remain in London. I was to return to Byrd at
the Cadogan Hotel and reserve the private room there for a dinner on Friday
night. Oscar told me to instruct Byrd to invite all those who had been present
at the Socrates Club gathering on Sunday 1 May to return to the Cadogan for a
special dinner—’a commemorative dinner’—on the evening of the thirteenth. ‘Tell
Byrd there will be fourteen for dinner, as before. Tell him I want the same
menu as before and the same wines.’

‘And
the same seating plan?’ I asked.

‘Not
exactly,’ he said. ‘You can tell Byrd that I shall look after the
placement.
And, Robert, you can contact Inspector Gilmour at Scotland Yard and ask him
if he might be free to join us. Ask him to bring a fellow officer as his
guest.’

‘You
want the police at the dinner?’

‘Yes,’
he said, looking into his champagne somewhat dreamily. ‘Without David
McMuirtree and poor Bradford Pearse, we’ll be two short at table.’

He
stepped carefully between the lily-pads of books and papers and stood gazing
out of the window onto Tite Street. ‘And while you’re with Gilmour, try to find
out what progress he is making in rounding up the “notorious villains” he
suspects of McMuirtree’s murder. And see if he’s had any news from
Eastbourne—from either the police there or the coastguards.’

I
emptied my glass and returned it to the tray. ‘I shall be busy,’ I said, pocketing
my pencil and notebook.

‘I hope
so,’ he replied, turning to me and smiling. ‘And, if you’ve time, perhaps you
could call on more of our witnesses. We’ve not interviewed young Willie
Hornung. We’ve not heard all that Wat Sickert has to say.’

‘Will
they have “secrets”, Oscar?’

‘They
will have secrets, Robert—that is certain. Whether their secrets are relevant
to the case in hand—that is the only issue.’ He looked back out of the window.
‘And here is your two-wheeler,’ he announced, ‘on cue.’

‘I
didn’t order a two-wheeler,’ I said, surprised.

‘I
know,’ he answered, beaming at me. ‘I did. It’s my treat.’

‘When
did you order it, Oscar?’ I asked suspiciously.

‘Just
now,’ he said.

‘Just
now?’ I repeated, bemused.

‘Yes,’
he said. ‘Just now.’

I
looked at him. The wine had given colour to his cheeks. He appeared suddenly
exultant.

‘When
Arthur brought in our champagne,’ he explained, ‘I gave him the signal. It’s an
arrangement we have. I bring my hands together by way of a salaam. If I bring
together the four fingers of each hand it means that I require him to go out
into the street and find me a four-wheeler. If a two-wheeler is required, in my
salaam I just press together the tips of two fingers from each hand.’ He bowed
towards me and brought his hands together by way of demonstration. ‘I knew that
you needed to get home after we had had our drink. I thought you might
appreciate a cab. That’s all.’

‘You
are extraordinary, Oscar.’

‘I like
to think so,’ he said happily. ‘And you are a good friend, Robert—although you
do need to learn to be a little more observant.’ From his jacket pocket he
produced his green snakeskin wallet (it was his favourite) and extracted three
pound notes. He held them out towards me. ‘Your expenses for tomorrow, my
friend. Don’t protest. You have very little money and I have plenty. If I don’t
give it away now, it will merely be stolen from me in the fullness of time.’

‘Thank
you,’ I said. ‘I’ll keep a note of what I spend.’

‘Don’t!
For God’s sake, don’t!’ He sounded quite alarmed at the prospect. He put his
arm about me as he walked with me towards the door. ‘You’re not a bank clerk,
Robert. You’re not a bookkeeper. You’re a published poet, the great-grandson of
a laureate. You of all people should know that ordinary riches count for nothing.
Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the
treasury-house of your soul there are infinitely precious things that may not
be taken from you.’

I
looked at his flushed face and smiled. ‘Have I heard that somewhere before, Oscar?’

‘Did we
drink the champagne too quickly?’ he asked, kissing me on the forehead.
‘Goodbye, Robert.’ He waved me on my way. ‘If I get back in time tomorrow
night, we’ll take a nightcap at the Albemarle. Shall we say ten o’clock—eleven
at the latest? Meanwhile,
bonne chance, mon brave!’
As I stepped into
the waiting two-wheeler, he called out: ‘I don’t think Heron-Allen’s our man,
do you?’

I did not know what to
think. I did not know where to begin my thinking. Oscar made a fine detective
because, though he was a poet, he was also a classicist. His way with words was
elaborate and ornate, flowery and full of fanciful flourishes, but his way of
thinking was precise. He was not just a spinner of fine phrases: his
understanding of grammar and syntax was profound. He had a poet’s imagination,
a painter’s eye, an actor’s ear and a scholar’s nose for detail and capacity
for close analysis. On the following morning—the morning of Wednesday 11 May
1892—I was grateful that, at least, I had a written note of his instructions.

I did
exactly as he had bid me. I began the day by taking a cab to the Cadogan Hotel
in Sloane Street. I saw Byrd and asked him to make the necessary arrangements
for the Socrates Club dinner on Friday night. He assured me he would be happy
to oblige. From the hotel, I telephoned Arthur Conan Doyle and, from him, got
the details of where I might expect to find his young friend, Willie Hornung.
From Sloane Street I took another cab to Fleet Street and found Hornung, in his
shirtsleeves and
pince-nez,
sitting in the darkest corner of the ill-lit
basement offices of a ‘popular publication’ of which I had never heard.

Hornung,
it transpired, was the recently appointed assistant editor of the
Gentlewoman:
An Illustrated Weekly Journal for Gentlewomen.
The poor fellow, perched on
a high stool, inky pen in hand, managed to look distraught and despairing at
the same time. ‘I can’t stop to talk,’ he said, putting down his pen and running
his hands anxiously through his thick fair hair. ‘I have to finish an article
about chewing-gum by lunchtime. Chewing-gum! I ask you! They say it’s all the
rage in America and that over here by Christmas every forward-thinking
gentlewoman will be chewing Mr Wrigley’s extraordinary sweetmeat. I just don’t
believe it but the editor insists. He’s an ogre. I wish I’d taken the job on
Forget-Me-Not.
That’s another women’s weekly, but it’s mostly pictorial. I would only have
had to write captions for photographs. Arthur said I should go for this job—so
I did. But I’m not enjoying it, I can tell you. I’m not enjoying it a bit.’

I stood
for a few minutes with the unhappy youth in his desultory corner, consoling him
with the thought that Oscar had served his time as editor of a women’s
magazine, while plying the poor boy with questions about the night of 1 May and
pressing him to reveal to me his ‘secrets’. He said he remembered very little
about the Socrates Club dinner. He had been ‘rather overwhelmed’ by the
occasion. He did recall that Bradford Pearse, who sat opposite him during
dinner, appeared to have drunk a great deal and he recollected what he
described as ‘an unhappy exchange’ between Charles Brookfield and Arthur Conan
Doyle.