Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (5 page)

‘This
is not evidence of murder, Oscar.’

‘It’s
evidence of mutilation, at the very least.’ He pushed his chair further from
the table and got to his feet. ‘Kindly wrap up the exhibits. As you’re the
medical man, we will leave them in your care. Have a special regard for the
honey-coloured lock of hair and the finger. I shall enquire about the train.
You go and pack your bags. Rome calls.’

I began
to move, reluctantly. ‘It’ll be a wild-goose chase, Oscar.’

‘And
when we get there, we’ll be searching for a needle in a haystack. I know,
Arthur. But at least, thanks to the ring, we’ll have somewhere to start.‘

‘Thanks
to the ring?’ I repeated.

‘Ah,’
he said, smirking. ‘Can it be that Oscar Wilde, even when intoxicated, has
noticed the tell-tale clue that the creator of Sherlock Holmes, entirely sober,
has missed? Examine the ring, Arthur.’

Oscar
had removed the ring from the finger. He handed it to me. ‘It’s a simple gold
band,’ I said.

‘Rose-gold,’
said Oscar. ‘The colour is distinctive.’

‘Rose-gold,’
I agreed, ‘but otherwise unremarkable.’ I turned over the ring in the palm of
my hand. ‘A little scratched on the inside perhaps.’

‘Examine
the scratch marks carefully, Arthur.’

I
peered closely at the ring. ‘This is where I need Holmes’s magnifying glass,’ I
said.

‘Or
Wilde’s eagle eye,’ my friend countered. ‘Do you not see a shape in the scratch
marks?’

Screwing
up my eyes, I saw something. ‘The outline of a key?’ I suggested.

‘Exactly.’

‘Two
keys, in fact, lying end to end, overlapping.’

‘Crossed,
I think,’ said Oscar. ‘The keys of St Peter, I suggest. The symbol of His
Holiness the Pope. When we get to Rome, Arthur, we will start our
investigations in the Vatican City. We will begin at the basilica of St
Peter’s. The key to the mystery lies in the keys. The game’s afoot, my friend.’

3

The train to Rome

T
he
soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is
born young and grows old. That is life’s tragedy.’

On the
little local train that took us from Homburg to Mainz, Oscar was in a
philosophical frame of mind. He resisted all my attempts to get him to talk
seriously about the practicalities of the assignment we had embarked upon.
Instead, gazing dreamily out of the window at the passing mountain scenery, he
offered up epigram after epigram — some, no doubt, original; others, I suspect,
borrowed from Montaigne or Mark Twain. (Oscar maintained that he had an
arrangement with Mark Twain: on their respective sides of the Atlantic they
could appropriate one another’s quips with impunity and without
acknowledgement. Oscar liked to say that plagiarism is the privilege of the
appreciative man.)

At the
railway station in Mainz, Oscar bought cigarettes, salami, bread, cheese and a
small cask of red wine. For a man who worshipped youth and beauty above all
else, he most surely did not treat his own body as a temple. From Mainz to
Zurich, we had no choice but to travel third class, sitting on a wooden bench,
side by side, awkwardly, in the corner of a crowded and airless compartment,
consoling ourselves with our picnic and our cigarettes, and talking in
whispers. None of our fellow travellers (six dour-faced working men in blue
overalls) looked in the least likely to be English speakers, but nevertheless I
felt uneasy with Oscar’s line of conversation. He had moved from philosophy to
religion.

‘It is
curious how the love of God can lead to acts of unspeakable cruelty,’ he said,
chewing on a piece of cheese. ‘You were brought up by Jesuit priests, Arthur.
Were they unspeakably cruel?’

‘I was
brought up by my mother, Oscar, but I went to a school run by Jesuit priests,
yes. It was a boarding school and the regime was Spartan. Everything in every
way was plain to the point of austerity. Dry bread and well-watered milk was
all we had for breakfast. The life was harsh, but the priests were not cruel.’

‘Did
they beat you?’

‘All
the time.’ I laughed at the recollection. ‘And I was beaten more than most. The
corporal punishment at Stonyhurst was severe, I grant you that.’

I gave
Oscar a sidelong glance. He was studying me with disconcerting intensity. ‘Go
on,’ he said.

‘It was
peculiar, too, administered with an instrument of torture imported from
Holland, as I recall.’

‘An
instrument of torture,’ he repeated.

I
lowered my voice further. ‘It was called a “Tolley” — I don’t know why. It was
a piece of India rubber the size and shape of a thick boot sole. One blow of
this “Tolley”, delivered with intent, would cause the palm of your hand to
swell up and change colour. Nine blows to each hand was the customary
punishment and, once you’d taken it, you’d not be able to turn the handle of
the door to get out of the room. To take twice nine on a cold day was about the
extremity of human endurance.’

‘And
why were you, Arthur Conan Doyle, beaten more than most?’

‘Because
I was mischievous. Because, deliberately, I broke the rules. Because I wanted
to show them that I would not be cowed.’

‘Bravo,
Arthur.’

I
returned Oscar’s gaze. ‘In the end, I think the beatings may have done us
good, because it was a point of honour among us boys to show that we were not
hurt. And that’s a useful training for a hard life.’

Oscar
took a swig of the red wine. Now he looked at me with gently mocking eyes. ‘So
you emerged from Stonyhurst upright and uncowed, bruised but unbroken.’

I
smiled. ‘I like to think so.’

‘And
well educated?’

‘The
curriculum, like the school, was medieval but sound.’

‘And
chaste?’

‘That’s
a curious question, Oscar.’

‘I’m a
curious fellow, Arthur.’

I
lowered my voice still further. ‘Since you ask, the answer is “yes”. Jesuits have
no trust in human nature. Perhaps they are justified. At Stonyhurst we were
never allowed for an instant to be alone with each other and I think that in
consequence the immorality that is rife in other schools was at a minimum. In
our games and in our walks the priests always took part and a master perambulated
the dormitories at night — all night. Such a system may weaken self-respect and
self-reliance, but it at least minimises temptation and scandal.’

Oscar
exhaled a thin plume of blue-green cigarette smoke and murmured: ‘What is the
point of life without temptation and scandal?’

At
Zurich we changed trains once more. For the penultimate leg of our journey —
overnight from Zurich to Milan, via the Gotthard railway tunnel — Oscar had succeeded
in securing us a second-class sleeping berth. For the first time since leaving
Homburg, we had some privacy. At midnight, as the train departed and we stood
together alone in the narrow galley adjacent to our bunk beds, Oscar suggested
we ‘inspect the evidence’ once more before retiring. I still had the hand and
finger, wrapped in their respective white and apricot shrouds, hidden about my
person. Oscar had placed the lock of hair in its envelope inside his wallet. We
laid out the specimens on the upper bunk, immediately beneath the Pintsch
lighting gasolier, and stood, shoulder to shoulder, staring down at them.

‘What
do you think?’ asked Oscar.

‘We
have indeed embarked on a wild-goose chase,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how I’ve
allowed you to cajole me into this.’

Oscar
rubbed his knuckles against his chin. ‘Has a murderer sent these to Holmes as a
challenge?’ he mused.

‘It is
an extraordinary act of hubris if he has.’

‘Or is
it a witness to murder who has sent them? That’s more likely.’

I shook
my head. ‘I think this is the work of a rival author bent on distracting me
from my proper labours.’

Oscar
laughed. ‘Your rival must be exceedingly jealous to go to so much trouble to
keep you from your desk, Arthur. This is a human hand, this is a human finger,
this is human hair.’

‘The
hair does not feel like real hair to me,’ I said.

‘And
what about the ring? You’ll concede that the ring tells us something.’

Using
Oscar’s handkerchief, I lifted the finger to examine the gold band once more.
With my own finger, I touched it. The ring moved easily. ‘It’s loose,’ I said.

‘Remove
it,’ said Oscar.

I
obeyed his instruction and handed my friend the rose-gold band. He took it
between his thumb and forefinger and held it up to the gas lamp to examine.
‘These are the crossed keys of St Peter, without doubt, but there’s nothing
else. There’s no inscription and no other marks on the inside of the ring.’

‘And
there is no mark on the finger either,’ I said, inspecting the digit more
closely now that it was unadorned. ‘There’s no indentation where the ring was
resting. It seems that the ring and the finger do not belong together.’

‘The
ring was placed on the finger after the finger was severed?’

‘And
after it was embalmed. Look at the colour of the finger: it’s consistent along
its whole length.’

‘This
ring is a sign,’ cried Oscar, ‘and intended as such. It must be.’

‘It is
certainly all we’ve got, but if the pope had been murdered I rather think we’d
have heard, don’t you?’

‘Sarcasm
ill becomes you, Arthur,’ Oscar snapped. ‘This isn’t the papal ring, I know
that. The papal ring depicts St Peter the fisherman casting his net in the Sea
of Galilee. I have kissed the papal ring. I know what it looks like.’

‘I
know,’ I said. ‘You have told me often enough.’

‘This
ring is not the papal ring, but it does feature the keys of St Peter. It was
sent for a reason and, mock as you may, Arthur, popes
have
been murdered
— poisoned, strangled,
mutilated.
Leo XIII is not the beloved figure Pio
Nono was. He may be in mortal danger.’

‘Don’t
be absurd, Oscar. It’s a thousand years since a pope was murdered. Let’s get
some sleep. We’re both exhausted.’

I
wrapped up the severed limbs and returned them to my pocket; Oscar placed the
gold band and the lock of hair inside his wallet. We loosened our collars and
took off our boots, then turned down the gasolier and clambered onto our
bunks. Oscar lay above me, breathing noisily in the dark. I knew he was not
asleep. Eventually, in a low whisper, he said: ‘Yes, it is nine hundred years
since the murder of Pope John XII. He was a notorious debauchee, you’ll recall,
killed by an irate husband whom he had cuckolded. But, though some dispute it,
I am almost certain that Benedict XI was poisoned by a rival as recently as 1304.

I
laughed. ‘Goodnight, Oscar,’ I said. ‘I believe we have had enough excitement
for one day.’

He lay
silent for a minute or two, then, through the darkness, he spoke again. ‘Did
you send Touie the telegram from Zurich?’

‘I
did.’

‘And
what did you tell her?’