Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (4 page)

‘The envelope
is unmarked?’

‘Quite.’

‘There’s
no note inside? No message of any kind?’

I
looked inside the envelope. ‘No, there’s nothing.’ I put down the envelope and
took a sip of the iced champagne. It was strange to taste champagne so early in
the day. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘The
hand is the message,’ mused Oscar, still studying the brown wrapping. ‘But what
does it signify? Is it a cry for help?’

‘Or a
warning?’

‘Or a
threat?’

‘Or an
act of madness?’ I put down my glass and smiled. ‘Is it simply a practical joke?
An English admirer of Edgar Allan Poe once sent Holmes a dead raven.’

Oscar
looked up at me and pursed his lips. ‘Yes, well, we know an Englishman’s idea
of ready wit is a bucket of water perched on top of a half-opened door — but
this isn’t an Englishman’s work. This hand was sent to Holmes from Italy.’

‘Is the
handwriting on the label Italian?’

‘Impossible
to tell.’ Oscar scrutinised the wrapping once more. ‘The stamps are. The
postmark is. “Roma, 8 marzo 1892”‘

‘Marzo?
That’s March, Oscar. It’s now July. The package was
sent four months ago.’

‘Is
that significant?’

‘It may
be. If this was a cry for help and it has gone unheeded, there may be others,
yet more desperate.’ I turned to my portmanteau on the floor beside my chair
and pulled out four more bundles of correspondence. ‘We must go through all
this, I’m afraid, every item.’

‘How
far back do these letters and packages go?’ asked Oscar, pushing his glass and
ashtray to one side and taking a bundle from me.

‘To the
beginning of the year. I have let it all accumulate since Christmas. I’ve been
ignoring it because I find it so oppressive. I’m a doctor, Oscar. I’m a writer.
I have no wish to be correspondence secretary to an imaginary detective. I’m
not interested. I haven’t the time.’

‘Calm
yourself, Arthur,’ my friend said, soothingly. ‘These letters are the fruits of
your success. Take pride in the fact that you have created a character so
vivid, so real, so
tangible
that strangers turn to him in their hour of
need.’ Oscar was now rifling through a substantial handful of the
correspondence, noting the postmark on every letter. ‘London, London, London,
Chester, Plymouth, London, Glasgow, New York, Babbacombe, Leeds, London,
Milwaukee, Moscow, the Isle of Wight …‘ He paused and looked up at me. ‘Holmes
has conquered the
world,
Arthur. Be happy.’

‘I have
a dead man’s hand in my pocket, Oscar,’ I said.

‘And
between my thumb and forefinger,’ cried my friend exultantly, holding up a
small cream-coloured envelope and waving it towards me, ‘I have another letter
from Rome — look! “Roma, 22 gennaio 1892”.’

‘That’s
January — open it, open it!’

Oscar
tore open the envelope and peered inside.

‘What
is it?’ I asked. ‘A note this time?’

‘No,’
he said. ‘It is a lock of hair.’ Oscar tipped the contents of the envelope onto
his open palm. It was indeed a lock of hair, a thick loop about an inch in diameter
and two inches in length. ‘It is hair the colour of honey,’ he said, gazing
down at it.

‘It’s a
brackish yellow, Oscar.’

‘It is
golden,’ he persisted. ‘It’s the colour of a leaf in early autumn. It’s
beautiful. Look at the shape. It might be a kiss-curl from a young boy’s
forehead.’

I
lifted the lock of hair from his palm. It was surprisingly rough to the touch.
‘Or it might be a ringlet cut from an old lady’s wig,’ I suggested. ‘The hair
feels very coarse.’ I held it to my nostrils. ‘It smells musty. It smells of
overripe apples.’

‘There
you are,’ said Oscar, raising his glass to me. ‘The very smell of it evokes
Keats’s season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.’

I laughed
out loud. ‘Three glasses of champagne in lieu of breakfast, Oscar, and you’ll
say anything.’

‘But
isn’t it possible?’ he asked, earnestly, putting down his glass and leaning
across the table towards me. ‘This lock of hair, the severed hand in your pocket:
they could have been cut from the butchered body of some poor Italian youth…’

‘Yes,’
I replied. ‘Or the hair could have come from a wig — that’s what it feels like.
And the hand could have been cut from a legitimate cadaver, in the dissecting
room of a hospital or in a respectable mortuary.’

‘Then
why send them to Sherlock Holmes?’

‘As a
hoax? As an unpleasant joke?’

‘Or as
evidence of a terrible crime. You must concede that is at least a possibility,
Arthur?’ Quickly, he lit another of his home-rolled cigarettes and, sucking on
it urgently to draw the smoke, he continued to rifle through the piles of
correspondence on the table. I joined him in the task. ‘We must look at every
envelope,’ he said. ‘There may be more from Rome.’

There
was. Among the last batch of letters we inspected — it was, in fact, the batch
that had contained the original package with the severed hand — I came across a
third, and final, envelope bearing Italian stamps. The postmark read: ‘Roma, 15
maggio 1892’.

Oscar
raised his glass to me, as if in triumph. ‘Is the handwriting the same as
before?’ he asked.

‘It
appears to be. With capital letters it’s difficult to tell. But the address is
written in black ink, as before, and in a steady hand. It’s a different
envelope, smaller than the first, larger than the second. But it’s evidently
from the same source.’

‘Open
it up,’ commanded Oscar. ‘What will it be this time?’

‘A
photograph of the sender, I hope, with a detailed letter of explanation —
preferably in English.’ I opened the envelope. There was no letter. I saw at
once what was inside and tipped the contents onto the littered table.

‘Ah,’
cried Oscar, narrowing his eyes, ‘just what I’ve been wanting: a small cigar.’

‘I
think not, Oscar,’ I said. ‘You really have drunk too much. Look at it, man.
It’s a finger — a human finger — an index finger, I’d say, severed at the
knuckle.’

Oscar
peered down at the table suspiciously. ‘It looks like a small Havana to me.
Look, there’s the cigar band.’

‘That’s
a ring, Oscar.’ I shook my head and sighed, unable to decide whether my friend
was being playful or perverse. ‘May I borrow your handkerchief?’ I asked.

‘If you
must,’ he said, fishing into his top left-hand coat pocket and handing me an
apricot-coloured square of silk.

Carefully,
I laid out the finger on Oscar’s handkerchief and, from my own pocket, produced
the severed hand, laying it, palm down, alongside the severed digit. ‘What do
you think?’ I asked.

‘I
think the members of the Godalming Gardening Society would be in for a treat if
one took these along as exhibits.’

‘Don’t
you see, Oscar?’ I said, somewhat impatiently. ‘Concentrate, would you? Focus.’

‘What
don’t I see?’ he asked, pouring himself yet more champagne. ‘It’s plain enough,
alas. I see a dead man’s hand and a dead man’s finger.’

‘But
you don’t,’ I said. ‘Or, at least, not necessarily so. Who is to say these
limbs belong to a man?’

‘Do
they belong to a beast?’ he cried, melodramatically.

‘No,
but the hand might be a woman’s. It is small and smooth. We must not make
assumptions, Oscar. We must consider the evidence.’ My friend sipped his wine,
gazing steadily at the hand and finger that lay on the table before him. When I
sensed that I had his full attention once more, I went on: ‘These limbs do not
come from the same person, Oscar.’

‘Do
they not? How can you tell? Their colour is identical.’

‘They
have been preserved in the same way, pickled in the same fashion. But look at
the hand: it is a complete right hand. And look at the finger. From the shape
of the joint and the curvature of the nail and the tip, you can see that it is
a finger from a right hand also, and an altogether larger hand than the other.
The hand and the finger come from different bodies.’

‘Good
God,’ murmured Oscar, putting down his glass. ‘A double murder.’

I
laughed. ‘Or no murder at all. These could simply be limbs cut from two people
who have died of natural causes. Or, alternatively, limbs cut from individuals
who are still living.’

‘Is
that possible?’

‘Quite
possible,’ I said. ‘Have you heard of the Mafia?’

‘Is it
a restaurant?’

‘It is
a secret criminal society based in Sicily, Oscar. Members of the Mafia are
sophisticated bandits whose power and influence grow by the day. They hold sway
far beyond the toe of Italy. They are brutal and they are fearless. Cross them,
betray them, and they will exact their revenge in barbaric ways.’

Oscar
gazed wide-eyed at the severed limbs laid out on the handkerchiefs before him.
‘I am beginning to warm to the Godalming Gardening Society. Dismemberment has
never been a feature of everyday life in Surrey.’

‘But,
of course,’ I added, ‘this horror may have nothing whatsoever to do with the
Mafia. The Mafia simply sprang to mind because I have been considering
involving them in one of Holmes’s yarns.’

‘Have
you told anyone of this?’

‘No
one. No one at all. That’s what makes it so curious.’ I glanced towards the
bottle of Perrier-Jouët. ‘Is there any left? I think I’m ready for a drink now.’

‘I’ll
order more,’ cried Oscar, as he poured the remains of the champagne into my
glass.

‘No
more, thank you. This will be enough. We must keep our heads clear. We must
think. And think carefully.’

‘No,
Arthur, we must act. And act recklessly. We must pack our bags. We must order
our tickets. We must be on our way.

‘What
do you mean, “on our way”? I have only just arrived.’

‘Yes,
but you can’t wait to leave and neither can I.’ He looked around the deserted
hotel lounge. Outside, the sun was shining; within the room, there was a
settled gloom. ‘We don’t belong here, Arthur. This ghastly place is for the old
and the decrepit—’

‘Some
of the guests are younger than you are, Oscar.’

‘They
are older in spirit, all of them. They don’t drink, they won’t smoke, they
can’t talk — why do they bother to breathe?’ He threw back his head, expanded
his chest, raised his broad shoulders and drew deeply on his little cigarette.
Turning towards the window, he looked out on to the road leading to the spa.
‘These sad folk, look at them, with their dreary faces and their ludicrous
lederhosen, “taking the cure”, “drinking the waters” — they don’t live. They
exist. And then they die.’ He turned back towards me, tears in his eyes. He
raised his glass and bumped it gently against mine. ‘That’s not our way,
Arthur. Whatever our age, we are to be young. Here’s to us! Here’s to Life!’

‘Here’s
to you, Oscar,’ I said, oddly moved by his sudden outburst. He was thirty-seven
years of age, but, in truth, because of his bulk and his crooked teeth, with
his blotchy complexion and his red-rimmed eyes, he looked older. ‘Where do you
want us to go, my friend?’ I asked.

‘Is it
not obvious?’

‘To the
police, I suppose. We should. We should indeed. But what would the police make
of this? Are they going to scour the streets of Rome in search of a man with a
missing finger and a woman who has lost her hand? Why should they?’

‘We are
not going to the police, Arthur. You are right: there would be no point. But we
are going to Rome, Arthur, this very afternoon. We must. We are going to solve
this mystery, you and I.’

‘Why?’

‘Because
it’ll do us good! It’ll be an adventure — and that’s the only “cure” we need.’
He looked down at the littered card table and touched the brown wrapping paper
and the envelopes that had contained the severed limbs and the lock of hair.
‘Besides, for whatever reason, someone has sought to make contact with Sherlock
Holmes. Holmes is your creation, Arthur. You need to discover what is going on.’

‘I need
to be back in London in ten days.’

‘You
will be, I promise you, and when you get there, what a story you’ll have to tell.
And if you don’t get there — if the Mafia get to you first — what a way to go!
The obituary writers will have a field day.’

‘Oscar,
you have drunk too much.’

‘On the
contrary, I have drunk too little.’ He pushed back his chair and beamed at me.
‘I can see the headlines, Arthur: “Scottish author cut down in prime. Creator
of Sherlock Holmes slain by Sicilian bandits.”’

‘Oscar,
you are drunk and you are absurd.’

‘Nevertheless
I am taking you to Rome to unravel the mystery, to unmask the murderer!’ He
clapped his hands in glee.

‘Who is
to say there’s been a murder, Oscar?’

My
friend looked down at the table and indicated the hand and finger lying there
before us. ‘There’s clearly been a murder, Arthur, and, by the look of it, more
than one.’