Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death (46 page)

‘Are
you sure?’ I asked. ‘I thought that you put your trust in Mrs Robinson.’

‘I do.
I have done. And, no doubt, I will again. But I must remember that
fortune-telling is allied to the world of entertainment. It’s sometimes
difficult to tell the truth from the trickery … Leastways, Brookfield was not
our murderer.’

‘But he
despises you, Oscar.’

‘Does
he not have cause? I snub him. I reprove him for wearing gloves indoors. At
dinner, I have him seated below the salt.’

‘Brookfield
despises you and yet he can’t keep away from you. He’s like a moth about a
flame. He despises you not because you snub him, but because he envies you.’

‘Ah,’
said Oscar, smiling. ‘Is that it?’

‘It
is,’ I said, emphatically.

We had
reached 16 Tite Street. Oscar had his key in the door. ‘Beware of envy,
Robert,’ he said, looking at me earnestly. ‘Look what envy did to Byrd … Look
what envy’s done to Brookfield … Envy is the ulcer of the soul.’

‘“Envy
is the ulcer of the soul”,’ I repeated. ‘That’s brilliant, Oscar—one of your
best. I’ve noted it in my journal, have no fear.’

‘But
have you given credit where it’s due? It was Socrates who said it first.
Socrates—known
just by the one name, you note. Socrates, I think we can agree, has joined
the ranks of the immortals.’ He turned the key in the lock. ‘What will become
of us, I wonder, Robert? Will we join the ranks of the immortals? What will be
our destiny?’

He
sighed and pushed open his front door. The house was silent, but not unwelcoming.
There, set on the small side table in the hallway, beneath a flickering gas
lamp, was a Chinese malacca tray. And on the tray were two champagne glasses,
an ice bucket, a chilled bottle of Perrier Jouët and a note in Constance’s
round, firm hand:

Bravo,
Oscar—best of husbands, best of men.

Oscar’s eyes were full of
tears. He looked at me and smiled. ‘I’m not inclined towards a hot toddy—
whatever that may be. But a glass of champagne before bed, Robert … isn’t
that the way to end the day?’

POSTSCRIPT

‘What will become of us, I
wonder, Robert? What will be our destiny?’

The
world knows what became of Oscar Wilde. After the triumphs of 1893 came the
trials of 1895 and disgrace, imprisonment and exile. Constance died in Genoa in
1898. Oscar died in Paris in 1900. He was forty-six. As he said, ‘My cradle was
rocked by the Fates.’

The
world knows, too, what became of Arthur Conan Doyle. Thanks to Sherlock Holmes,
he found fame and fortune around the world. Thanks to his manifold
qualities—his integrity, his courage, and his service to his country during the
Boer War he found honour, too. He was knighted by King Edward VII in 1902.

Thanks
to Conan Doyle, young Willie Hornung found fortune, also. At Arthur’s
suggestion, Willie created a best-selling character to rival Sherlock Holmes—a
professional confidence trickster and jewel thief named Raffles, ‘the amateur
cracksman’. And, thanks again to Arthur, Willie Hornung found love as well. In
1893, Willie married Conan Doyle’s younger sister, Connie, and he named his
first-born ‘Arthur Oscar’ in honour of the two men he most admired: his
brother-in-law and Oscar Wilde.
‘Nomen est omen,’
he said at the child’s
christening.

Bram
Stoker, having created Dracula, died in 1912. Willie Hornung died in 1921.
Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930. Walter Sickert and EdwardHeron-Allen are
living still. Wat is now one of the grand old men of English art and Edward is
best known, I suppose, for his scurrilous novel,
The Cheetah Girl.
Bosie
is alive still, too. We meet now and again, when I’m in England, and talk of
old times and drink vintage champagne in Oscar’s honour.

Bosie
married. I never much cared for his wife. (I don’t believe that he did,
either!) His brother, Francis Drumlanrig, died in 1894, aged twenty-seven—shot
dead while out hunting in Somerset. Was it an accident? Or suicide? Or murder?
No one knows for sure. To the last, his father, the Marquess of Queensberry, remained
convinced that Drumlanrig and Lord Rosebery were lovers. It was Queenberry’s
great obsession. And to Queensberry’s great disgust, in the same year that his
son died, Lord Rosebery succeeded as prime minister.

Rosebery
kept faith with his promise to Arthur Conan Doyle. His administration outlawed
cock-fighting in Scotland. And, in his turn, in the same year, 1894, Bram
Stoker kept faith with Conan Doyle. He persuaded Henry Irving to produce and
star in a play by Conan Doyle. The piece was called
A Story of Waterloo.
It
was the last of the great actor’s great successes.

Henry
Irving, however, could not be persuaded to play the part of Sherlock Holmes on
the stage. The first actor to portray Holmes in the theatre was Charles
Brookfield. Yes, it’s true.

Brookfield
maintained his obsessive interest in Oscar as the years went by. In the early
months of 1895 it was Charles Brookfield who supplied the police with the names
and addresses of several of the disreputable young men who, at his trial, gave
evidence against Oscar Wilde. And on the evening of 25 May 1895—the day on
which, at the Old Bailey, Oscar was found guilty of gross indecency and
sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour—Charles Brookfield and
the Marquess of Queensberry organised a gala party to celebrate the verdict.
They shared the cost of it. Brookfield contributed thirteen guineas.

GYLES BRANDRETH

Gyles Brandreth was born
on 8 March 1948 in Germany, where, in the aftermath of the Second World War,
his father, Charles Brandreth, was serving as a legal officer with the Allied
Control Commission and counted among his colleagues H. Montgomery Hyde, who, in
1948, published the first full account of the trials of Oscar Wilde. In 1974,
at the Oxford Theatre Festival, Gyles Brandreth produced the first stage
version of
The Trials of Oscar Wilde,
with Tom Baker as Wilde, and, in
2000, he edited the transcripts of the trials for an audio production starring
Martin Jarvis.

Gyles
Brandreth was educated at the Lycée Français de Londres, at Betteshanger School
in Kent, and at Bedales School in Hampshire.

At
Bedales, the young Brandreth got to know the school’s founder, J. H. Badley
(1864—1967), who, over a series of Wednesday afternoon games of Scrabble at his
home in the school’s grounds, provided Brandreth with vivid accounts of Oscar
Wilde’s manner and conversational style— including Wilde’s habit of trying out
lines on family and friends that would later resurface in his stories and
plays. John Badley had been a friend of Oscar and Constance Wilde, and their
older son, Cyril, was a pupil at Bedales at the time of Wilde’s arrest.

Like
Robert Sherard, Gyles Brandreth went on to New College, Oxford, where he was a
scholar, President of the Union and editor of the university magazine, and
then, again like Sherard, embarked on a career as an author and journalist. His
first book,
Created in Captivity
(1972), was a study of prison reform;
his first biography,
The Funniest Man on Earth
(1974), was a portrait of
the Victorian music-hall star, Dan Leno. More recently he has published a
biography of the actor, Sir John Gielgud, as well as an acclaimed diary of his
years as an MP and government whip
(Breaking the Code: Westminster Diaries
1990—97)
and two best-selling royal biographies:
Philip and Elizabeth:
Portrait of a Marriage
and
Charles and Camilla: Portrait of a Love
Affair.

Robert
Sherard’s forebears included William Wordsworth. Gyles Brandreth’s include the
somewhat less eminent poet, George R. Sims (1847—1922), who wrote the ballads
‘Billy’s dead and gone to glory’ and ‘Christmas Day in the workhouse’. Sims was
also the first journalist to claim to know the true identity of ‘Jack the
Ripper’. Sims, a kinsman of the Empress Eugénie and an acquaintance of both
Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle, was arguably the first ‘celebrity
columnist’. He was also well known in his day for his endorsement of an
‘infallible cure for baldness’:

‘Tatcho—The
Geo. R. Sims Hair Restorer’.

As a
broadcaster, Gyles Brandreth has presented numerous series for BBC Radio 4,
including
A Rhyme in Time, Sound Advice
and
Whispers—
coincidentally
the title of Robert Sherard’s first collection of poetry. He is a regular guest
on
Just a Minute
and
Countdown,
and his television appearances
have ranged from being the guest host of
Have I Got News for You
to
being the subject of
This is Your Life.
On stage he has starred in an award-winning
revue in the West End and appeared as Malvolio in a musical version of
Twelfth
Night
in Edinburgh. With Hinge and Bracket he scripted the TV series,
Dear
Ladies;
with Julian Slade he wrote a play about A. A. Milne (featuring Aled
Jones as Christopher Robin); and~ with Susannah Pearse, he has written a new
musical about Lewis Carroll,
The Last Photograph.

Gyles
Brandreth is married to the writer and publisher, Michèle Brown. They have
three children: a barrister, a writer and an environmental economist.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing a book is a lonely
business. This is the second in my series of Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries. In
writing it I have been encouraged by the great generosity shown towards the
first. I am especially grateful to a number of distinguished writers—David
Robinson, Alexander McCall Smith, Anne Perry, Stephanie Barron, Stephen Fry,
Roger Lewis, Lee Langley and Theo Richmond among them—for their kind words and
generous encouragement. During the bleaker hours imprisoned at the word
processor, such kindness makes a difference.

I am
grateful, too, for the sustaining support of a variety of friends—ranging from
my best friend, Michèle Brown, to my good friend, Merlin Holland, Oscar Wilde’s
grandson and biographer, who put me right when I went wrong with Volume One
(and did so with great grace) and I trust will do the same again should he have
cause. I hope that my portrait of Oscar Wilde is accurate: if you spot any
errors do please write to tell me.

As
ever, I am indebted to my literary agent, Ed Victor—and to more than the tune
of fifteen per cent. I have been involved in publishing for forty years: he is
simply the best. He also employs the best and I am especially indebted to his
foreign rights manager, Morag O’Brien, who, with charm and skill, has
introduced this series of books to publishers throughout the world. I am
grateful to her, not only for her professionalism, but also for the fact that,
because of her, I have made, and am making, new friends in countries as various
as Spain and South Korea, Lithuania and Brazil.

In the
United Kingdom and Australia, the series is published by John Murray—the
publishers of Arthur Conan Doyle. I am profoundly indebted to Roland Phillips
and Kate Parkin and their colleagues at John Murray in London, to Trish Grader
and her colleagues at Simon & Schuster in New York, to Emmanuelle
Heurtebize and her colleagues at Editions 10/18 in Paris, among many others,
for their considerable creative and commercial contribution to the series. From
the first, Kate Parkin has also been a matchless editor, guide and friend. I am
very grateful to her and to Jitesh Patel, the inspirational designer of the
covers for the UK and US editions.

‘Nothing
that actually occurs is of the smallest importance,’ said Oscar in his
Phrases
and Philosophies for the Use of the Young.
I don’t believe he meant it.
Saying thank you is important. I am very grateful to all those who have made a
contribution to the making of this book—the named ones and the unnamed, too and
I am especially grateful, of course, to you for reading it. There would not
have been much point otherwise. Thank you.

GB

London, 2008

For details of the first
and forthcoming titles in the series, for reviews, interviews and material of
particular interest to Reading Groups, see:

www
.oscarwildemurdermysteries .com