Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (9 page)

The two
boys set down the luggage and began shouting, too.

‘This
is madness, Oscar.’

‘And
why not? There is nothing stable in the world, Arthur — uproar’s your only
music.’

He
stepped up to the front door again and raised his fist to beat on it once more.
As he did so, we heard the faint rattle of a chain within and the sharp crack
of a key turning in the lock.

The
door was opened by a dark-haired, sallow-skinned man in his mid-thirties. He
wore a white linen suit, a white shirt and a black tie knotted loosely at the
neck. His hair was cropped, his full beard and moustache were neatly trimmed
and he peered up at Oscar through a pair of round, thick, wire-framed
spectacles. He looked like a professor disturbed at his studies.

‘Si?’
he said, impatiently.

‘Buonasera,
signore,’
Oscar replied smoothly. He spoke good
Italian. ‘My name is Oscar Wilde. I am a poor Irish poet devoted to the
immortal memory of the great John Keats. My companion and I are newly arrived
in Rome and need a place to stay — for a week, no more. Two rooms for
preference, but one will suffice. My friend will sleep on a divan, if need be.
We pay cash, of course.’

‘This
is not an hotel,’ said the man at the door, blinking in the evening sunlight.
‘I am a doctor. Are you sick?’ He spoke in perfect English, but with the trace
of an accent. I took it to be German or Swiss: it turned out to be Swedish.

‘I am
sick at heart,’ answered Oscar, with a theatrical flourish. ‘Aren’t we all?’
The news that the house was not a
pensione
after all seemed not to
perturb him in the least. He turned and beckoned to me to come forward.
‘Although we may not be able to stay under this roof, might we trespass on your
hospitality for a moment nonetheless? You see, this is a wonderful coincidence,
for my friend is a doctor, also.’ He held his left arm out towards me and his
right towards the bewildered figure standing in the doorway. ‘May I present Dr
Arthur Conan Doyle? You may have heard of him.’

The
bearded doctor turned his head towards me and narrowed his eyes. ‘I have,’ he
said. ‘I know exactly who he is.’

6

‘Dr Death’

D
r
Axel Munthe was a Swedish doctor resident in Rome. He was, we quickly
discovered, Roman high society’s most sought-after personal physician. His
patients included royalty and cardinals, persons of wealth and distinction, men
of letters and women of leisure — and more of the latter than the former, he
explained to us, because leisure is an enemy to health.

‘We
need work: we need purpose. Too many of my patients are intelligent women locked
in loveless marriages, leading useless lives. They lie in bed all day, eating
too much or too little, feeling sick and sorry for themselves and not knowing
why. I cure them by telling them to take up good works and long walks. It is
not a complicated form of medicine, but I find it rewarding.’

Dr
Munthe never presented a bill to anyone who consulted him. He allowed them to
pay him whatever they wished and could afford. One grateful person gave him a
yacht, another a sculpture by Canova. Of his poorest patients he expected
nothing at all and many more of those who sought his help were poor than rich.
He spent much of his time in the filthiest corners of the vilest slums of Rome.

‘I
specialise in the ailments of the idle rich and the worthless poor,’ he said.
His first claim to fame was his published account of his work in the streets of
Naples during the deadly cholera epidemic of 1884, when, as he told us,
‘Fourteen thousand souls lost their lives and I ran frantically among them,
doing what little I could.’

He was
a physician and he was a writer — and it was because he was a writer that he
knew of me. As he stepped out of the doorway of number 26 Piazza di Spagna to
shake my hand, he smiled and said, ‘We are literary bed-fellows, Dr Conan
Doyle. We have appeared together, side by side, in the pages of
Blackwood’s
Magazine.
I forget which story of mine it was, but I remember yours
distinctly. It was called “A Physiologist’s Wife” and dealt with the conflict
between romance and reason. It was a fine tale, beautifully told. I was very
taken with it. I am honoured to meet you.’

That he
made no mention of Sherlock Holmes charmed me very much. That he immediately
invited us into the house to inspect the room in which Keats had died charmed
Oscar equally. He told us to leave our luggage with the boys on the doorstep —
‘I know those two,’ he said, ‘you may trust them, after a fashion’ — and to
follow him. As we climbed the narrow wooden staircase to the second floor, over
his shoulder he said, ‘Fear not, Mr Wilde, I recognised your name also —
though, I confess, I have not read your work.’

‘There
is no need,’ said Oscar, pausing on the stairs to catch his breath.

‘Perhaps
not,’ replied the Swedish doctor. ‘I think already I understand your style.’

Keats’s
bedroom was at the front of the house, overlooking the piazza. It was a small
room, rectangular in shape, sparsely furnished, with a red-tiled floor and
bare, whitewashed walls. A simple, single iron bedstead faced the window.

‘This
is where he died,’ said Dr Munthe, ‘and this is where I sleep. I sleep well.
This is a peaceful room, a good room in which to die.’

Oscar
said nothing.

‘You
are interested in death?’ I asked, as we stepped out of the bedroom into what
appeared to be the doctor’s study-cum-consulting-room. It was a much larger
chamber, windowless and candlelit, the walls lined with crowded bookshelves,
the floor covered with Persian rugs and piles of books and papers. Above the
fireplace, in the centre of the mantelpiece, between two amber-coloured candles,
stood a human skull. A second skull sat perched on top of a chest of drawers. A
third served as a paperweight on the doctor’s desk.

‘Death
is inevitable,’ he said, smiling. ‘It fascinates me — of course it does. But I
have seen so much of it that it holds no terror for me. Sometimes it is my
enemy; sometimes it is my friend.’ From a shallow metal tray that rested next
to the skull on the chest of drawers he picked up a small syringe and held it
up close to his face. ‘This morning, for example, I welcomed death. My patient
was suffering too much and to no purpose.’

‘You
assist your patients to die?’ I asked.

‘On
occasion, when appropriate. I know it is not your way, Doctor, but it is mine.
I make no secret of it. And because of it, in certain circles I am known, they
tell me, as “Dr Death”.’

‘You do
not object to the title?’

‘On the
contrary,’ he replied, returning the syringe to its tray, ‘I wear it as a badge
of honour.’

Oscar
had stepped into the room and was now standing at one end of the mantelpiece, scrutinising
what appeared to be the bones of a human hand. The hand was cupped, the fingers
upturned.

‘Does
this serve as an ashtray?’ Oscar asked.

‘It
does,’ answered Munthe, revealing his teeth in an impish grin. ‘Feel free to
use it, Mr Wilde.’

‘It is the
skeleton of a dead man’s hand,’ I said, quite shocked.

‘It is
the skeleton of a lady’s hand, in fact, Doctor. I keep it as a reminder of what
always lies beneath those soft caresses.’

As he
said this and Oscar, lighting a cigarette, began to laugh, from just outside
the room we heard the muffled sound of pots and pans cascading onto a stone
floor. We both looked towards the corner from whence the noise had emanated and
saw that there was a heavy brocaded curtain separating the study from a room
beyond — presumably the kitchen. The curtain twitched and then fell still.

‘I do
not live alone,’ said Dr Munthe. ‘You will meet my companion another time.’

‘I look
forward to it,’ I said.

There
was a further clatter of pans from beyond the curtain. Dr Munthe smiled
awkwardly. ‘I fear that too much drink may have been taken.’

‘If
your dinner here is spoilt,’ said Oscar, drawing on his cigarette, ‘perhaps you
would care to dine with us?’

‘I
should like that very much,’ said Dr Munthe. ‘It would be good to get out of
the house for a while. Thank you.’ He brought his hands together in a salaam.
‘Where are you staying, gentlemen? You must have a hotel. May I join you there
in an hour?’

Our faithful urchin
bag-carriers were waiting for us beside the boat-shaped marble fountain. We led
them back along the Via del Babuino, past the ancient church of Sant’ Atanasio
dei Greci and the bright new edifice of All Saints, to the Hôtel de Russie, at
the far end of the street, on the corner of the Piazza del Popolo. Oscar paid off
the boys with all the change in his pocket and the remainder of his supplies of
dried fruit. I told him he was being far too generous and that we’d now find
the boys at our heels night and day.

‘I hope
we do,’ he said. ‘We may need them. We can call them “The Rome Irregulars”.’

At the
hotel, we were expected and welcomed with oppressive obsequiousness. The hotel
manager turned out to be an admirer of my Baker Street sagas and found it
almost impossible to release from his grasp the hand that had held the pen that
had written
Sherlock Holmes e il segno dei Quattro.
Eventually, having
plied us with French champagne and Tuscan cheese straws, he showed us to our
rooms — the finest in all Rome, he assured us —and, at last, having personally
supervised the unpacking of our bags, he left us in peace to bathe and shave
and change for dinner.

‘I’m
too tired to send Touie a wire tonight, Oscar,’ I called to my friend through
the open door that connected our two rooms. ‘Remind me to send one in the
morning, will you? I mustn’t forget.’

‘I’ll
remind you,’ he replied. ‘And will you still be telling her the whole truth?’
he added, laughing.

He was
in high spirits that night.

When we
were both dressed, he came into my room and looked me up and down appraisingly.
‘And the finger? And the severed hand?’ he asked, an eyebrow raised. ‘Have you
moved them from one set of clothes to the next?’

I
touched my jacket pocket. ‘I have,’ I said.

‘Good.
We must keep the “evidence” about us at all times. Leave a stray limb in the
room and the next thing you know the hotel manager will have purloined it as a Sherlockian
souvenir.’

It was
a little after nine o’clock when we reached the dining room. Dr Munthe was
already at table. He had not changed for dinner. As we joined him he noticed
that I had noticed this and, as I took my seat, he said, touching my arm
lightly, ‘I hope my day clothes do not offend you, Doctor. I live by my own
rules. Whether it is arrogance or individuality, or a mixture of the two, who
is to say? I am who I am. I do not expect to change.’

‘I am
certain that you won’t, Doctor,’ said Oscar pleasantly. ‘In my experience there
is no such thing as changing one’s life. One merely walks round and round
within the circle of one’s personality.’

Munthe
raised his glass to Oscar. ‘I salute you, Mr Wilde.’ He turned to me. ‘And I
salute you, dear Doctor. I am so happy to meet you.