Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders

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from the previously unpublished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