Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (3 page)

‘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.’

‘Cannot
your wife serve as your secretary?’

‘My
precious Touie does not enjoy the best of health, as I think you know. She has
a weak chest and a small daughter and a new house. She is frail. She cannot
take on anything more. No, I must clear the correspondence that has accumulated
and then stay on top of it. It can be done.’

‘It
will be done,’ said Oscar emphatically, as the waiter arrived with the fresh
bottle of Moselle. ‘And I shall assist you. Do not protest. We shall start work
tomorrow — immediately after breakfast. I shall forgo my morning cure to be at
your service.’ He raised his hand and shook his head. ‘Do not protest, Arthur,’
he repeated. ‘I insist.’

I did
not protest. I merely smiled. I was accustomed to Oscar’s sudden enthusiasms. I
had no doubt that his offer was sincere, but equally I had no doubt that once
the novelty of the enterprise had worn off, I would be working my way through
Holmes’s correspondence alone.

‘Thank
you,’ I said. ‘And thank you for dinner. This wine really is outstanding and,
for all that he’s an old soldier down on his luck, I’d say our waiter is
looking after us rather well.’

‘He
is,’ my friend conceded, smiling as he sipped at his wine.

‘But
just now, Oscar,’ I continued, ‘as he was serving us, I studied his face quite
closely. I saw no duelling scar.’

Oscar
raised his glass to me once more and narrowed his eyes. ‘You must allow a
fellow writer a little licence, Arthur.’

The following morning, at
ten o’clock, as agreed, we gathered in the hotel lounge to begin our work. When
I arrived, Oscar was already in place, seated alone at a card table by the
window overlooking the promenade. He was heavily built and massive, with a suggestion
of uncouth physical inertia in his figure, but above his unwieldy frame perched
a head so masterful in its broad brow, so alert in its blue-grey, deep-set
eyes, so full in its lips, and so subtle in its play of expression, that after
the first glance one forgot the gross body and remembered only the dominant
mind — and the outrageous garb. He was dressed in a bottle-green linen suit,
sporting a pale-grey shirt and an elaborate daffodil-yellow tie that exactly
matched the toecaps on his leather ankle boots. His overlong hair was swept
back over his large head. He was freshly shaved; his cheeks were pink and his
eyes sparkled.

‘You’ve
clearly breakfasted well,’ I said, by way of greeting.

‘I am
breakfasting now,’ he replied, indicating the small hand-rolled cigarette that
he held between the middle and the ring finger of his left hand. ‘And never
better. And I’ve ordered a bottle of iced champagne to help ease us into our
labours: Perrier-Jouët ‘86. I adore simple pleasures, don’t you? They are the
last refuge of the complex.’

‘Are
you going to be saying clever things all morning?’ I asked, opening up my
portmanteau and placing four bundles of correspondence on the table.

‘I hope
so,’ he replied, pulling one of the bundles towards him. ‘Are we opening these
at random? May I start?’

‘We
are,’ I said, ‘and you may.’ I looked about the empty lounge as I took up my
place facing Oscar across the card table. ‘Our fellow residents are all over at
the bathhouse taking the waters, I presume?’

‘Yes,’
he answered, drawing languorously on his little cigarette. ‘We shall have
nothing to disturb us now, except this correspondence and our consciences.’

‘Does
your conscience trouble you, Oscar?’ I enquired, untying the bundle of letters
before me.

‘Insufficiently,
I fear. Life’s aim, if it has one, is to be always looking for temptations —
and there are not nearly enough of them, I find. I sometimes pass the whole day
without coming across a single one. It makes one so nervous about the future.’

I
smiled. ‘You’re on form today, my friend.’

‘I am
hungry for excitement,’ he answered, waving his first opened letter towards me.
His eyes scanned the paper and he sighed. ‘However, it seems I am not destined
to find it here.’ He drew more impatiently on his cigarette. ‘Listen to this.
“Dear Mr Holmes, I am secretary of the Godalming Gardening Society. During the
winter months, when gardening is not possible, we run a series of lecture
evenings and trust that you may be able to accept our invitation to address us
on either
3
November or 1 December next at seven o’clock. We meet on the
first Thursday of the month. We expect a talk of sixty minutes in duration,
followed by questions from the floor. We are not able to offer a fee, but will
cover all reasonable expenses and provide refreshment on the night. Our hope
would be to hear something about the cases of yours that have not yet been
reported in the
Strand Magazine.
We look for
originality
in all
our speakers. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.
Yours most sincerely, Edith Laban (Miss).”’ Oscar let the letter fall from his
grasp. ‘Even the woman’s name is banal.’

I
smiled. ‘A postcard simply saying “Mr Holmes regrets he cannot oblige” will
suffice, Oscar.’

He
picked up the letter again. ‘She has underlined the word “originality”, Arthur.
The impertinence of the woman, the effrontery…’

‘Just
scribble a note of regret on a postcard and be done with it, Oscar.’

‘I’m
not sure we should reply at all — or perhaps I should reply on Holmes’s behalf
and explain that he is unavailable but that I am willing to come in his stead.
Yes, I think that Oscar Wilde should address the Godalming Gardening Society on
3 November. I am ready to be entirely original. I have things to tell the
members of the Godalming Gardening Society that they are certain never to have
heard before!’

I
laughed. ‘Give me the letter, Oscar. I shall reply.’

My
friend passed me the letter with a despairing snort and began to sort through
the remainder of the pile in front of him.

‘Be
warned,’ I said, ‘it’ll mostly be requests for autographs, photographs, and
the recipe for Mrs Hudson’s apple pie.’

‘Ah,’
cried Oscar, holding aloft a small packet, about eight inches long and four
inches wide. ‘This looks more promising.’

‘Do not
get too excited. It is probably a book of sentimental poetry — a gift from the
author. Sherlock Holmes has many female admirers.’

‘This
comes from Italy,’ said Oscar, inspecting the package more closely. He studied
the postmark. ‘From Rome. And the address is written out in capital letters. I
think it’s more likely to be from a man. It does not feel like a book. It’s
more malleable. Unbound proofs, perhaps.’

He tore
open the brown wrapping paper. Inside the package was a large unsealed
envelope. Oscar shook the contents onto the table. What fell from the envelope
appeared to be a human hand, severed at the wrist.

2

The tell-tale hand

O
scar
recoiled in horror and pushed his chair back from the table. ‘This is
grotesque,’ he hissed.

‘It’s
certainly a surprise,’ I said.

‘Don’t
touch it, Arthur,’ cried Oscar.

‘It’s
only a hand,’ I reassured him. ‘It won’t bite. And we’ve known worse. As I
recall, when we were investigating the case of the candlelight murders, a
severed head was delivered to your front door.’

‘I
remember,’ he said, flinching at the recollection. I took out my pocket
handkerchief and, using it, picked up the dismembered limb, holding it towards
the window light to examine it. The skin was dark, the hand small; for a moment
I thought it might have been the paw of a gorilla or an orang-utan.

‘It is
a human hand?’ asked Oscar, as if reading my thoughts.

‘Yes,’
I said, inspecting it more closely.

‘It’s
not made of wax or India rubber?’

‘It’s
the real thing, I’m afraid — flesh and bone. It’s a right hand, quite small,
quite smooth — almost delicate. I’d say it was a woman’s hand but for the rough
cut and shaping of the fingernails. Look.’

I held
the hand out towards Oscar. My friend summoned up his courage and, through
gimlet eyes, keeping his distance, he inspected the severed limb. ‘Yes,’ he
whispered. ‘It is quite delicate, I see.’

‘And
look at the wrist. Look at the bone, look at the stump. It’s a clean cut, but
brutally done. It’s the work of a butcher’s cleaver rather than a surgeon’s
knife.’

‘And
the black marks below the knuckles?’ enquired Oscar, peering closer.

‘Mottling,
I’d say, nothing more, signs of age. And yet the palm is smooth, almost
unlined. The hand looks young…

‘It’s
not diseased?’

‘I
don’t think so.’ Oscar winced as I brought the hand to my nostrils. ‘It’s been
pickled, I reckon, or embalmed. That would explain the dark pigmentation of the
skin —and the quality of the preservation. It’s a dead hand, but, apart from
its colour, it has all the appearance of a living one.’

I was
about to lay the hand back on the table when heavy breathing and the clink of
glasses alerted me to the arrival in the lounge of our Bavarian waiter from the
night before. Rapidly I wrapped the dismembered limb in my handkerchief and
thrust it into my jacket pocket.

‘Guten
Morgen, mein Herr,’
cried Oscar, a touch
over-exuberantly.

Ponderously,
in silence, the waiter opened the Perrier-Jouët and poured us each a glass.
With an utterly irrelevant quotation from Goethe (something about the land
where the lemon trees grow!), Oscar pressed an English florin into the man’s
hand, explaining that it was the only coin he had about him but, as it bore a
portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm’s grandmother, Queen Victoria, he trusted it would
be acceptable as a modest token of our appreciation. The waiter said nothing.
When he had gone, Oscar raised his glass and drank down his champagne in a
single gulp. He poured himself a second glass and said quietly: ‘Arthur, you
sit there with a dead man’s hand in your pocket. What does it mean? Why has it
been sent to you?’

‘It’s
not been sent to me. It’s been sent to Sherlock Holmes.’

‘Care
of your publishers.’

‘No.
Look at the label on the wrapping. It was sent to Holmes at 221B Baker Street,
London. There’s no such address, of course. Baker Street runs up only to number
100. The post office covering the Marylebone district kindly collects the
letters and forwards them to my publisher.’

Oscar
examined the brown wrapping paper. I looked at the envelope that had contained
the hand itself. ‘It’s a sturdy envelope,’ I observed, ‘and made of quality
paper.’

‘Is
there a watermark?’

I held
the envelope up to the window. ‘No, not that I can see. It’s thick paper — card
almost. It’s the sort of envelope that a lawyer might use to store deeds in, or
a will.’