The West End Horror (6 page)

Shaw thought again, his Mephistophelian brows arching in concentration. “Oscar has antagonised the world,” he began, choosing his words with care. “He delights in antagonising the world. He doesn’t take it seriously.” He put his hands on the table and interlaced the fingers. “But the world does. The world takes it very seriously and is not inclined to forgive him for it. The world is waiting to take vengeance. There are sacred rites and conventions which will not be flouted.”

“Mr. Gilbert has flouted them for years, hasn’t he?” I asked. “Are they howling for his blood, as well? I don’t believe it.”

Shaw looked at me. “Mr. Gilbert’s private life is beyond reproach. Or if it isn’t, Mr. Gilbert is discreet. The same cannot be said of Oscar Wilde.” He rose abruptly, as though annoyed with himself for having spoken too much. “Good day, gentlemen.”

Holmes looked up languidly. “Where can we find Wilde?”

“These days I believe he puts up at the Avondale, in Piccadilly. Good day,” he said again and bobbed his head in elfish acknowledgement before leaving with that curious dancing gait.

Sherlock Holmes turned to me. “Coffee, Watson?”

We proceeded after lunch to Dunhill’s, in Regent Street, where Mr. Fitzgerald, who knew the detective well, examined the bit of cigar we exhibited.

“Dinna tell me you’re at a loss,” the Scot laughed, his blue eyes twinkling as he took the cigar.

Holmes was not amused. “I can identify twenty-three kinds of tobacco from the ash alone,” he responded somewhat testily, it seemed to me. “When you have told me what this is, I shall have incorporated a twenty-fourth into my repertoire.”

“Ay, ay,” the honest fellow went on chuckling as he bent over the thing. “Well, it’s foreign but not imported by anyone I know,” he began.

“So much I had already deduced.”

“Did you, indeed? Ay, well that narrows the field.” He held it up and smelled it. “From the scent and the wrapping, I’d say it was Indian.” He turned it back and forth between his thumb and forefinger, holding it to his ear and listening to the crackle, then sighted along its length like a rifle. “A cheroot. Notice the square-cut end and the heavy proportion of Latakia? They’re a great favorite with the boys in the Indian army, but then those laddies’ll smoke anything. I doubt I’d have the stomach for it, but I’ve heard you can acquire a taste for them.”

“You can’t buy them in England?”

“No, Mr. Holmes, I don’t believe you can. They’re too tough for civilians, as I’ve said, though some of the lads come home with boxes because they know there’re none to be found here.

“Mr. Fitzgerald, I thank you.”

“Not at all, Mr. Holmes. Does it figure in a case?”

“It may, Mr. Fitzgerald. It may.”

Holmes and I had of course seen caricatures of Oscar Wilde. Over the years his strange haircut, corpulent physique, and outlandish mode of dress had become familiar to us–as to all–through countless pen-and-ink sketches in various papers. And though we had not seen either play, we were aware that the brilliant Irishman was the author of two comedies playing simultaneously to packed houses. His latest,
The Importance of Being Earnest,
had opened only a fortnight or so before and been highly endorsed by the critics and public alike.

Yet neither the cartoons nor the articles by or about the man nor yet his plays themselves (had we seen them) could have prepared us in the slightest for the living embodiment of Oscar Wilde.

After our stop at Dunhill’s we trudged ‘round to Piccadilly and presented ourselves at the Avondale, enquiring after the playwright.

“You’ll find him in the lounge,” the clerk informed us with a dour expression.

“I take
it
that is from whence all this noise emanates?” asked Holmes politely. The man grunted by way of reply and busied himself behind the counter.

There was certainly a great deal of noise coming from the direction of the lounge, and Holmes and I followed
it
to its source, frankly curious. The clinking of glasses and the babble of animated, overlapping voices were discerned, the latter punctuated by sudden, shrill bursts and hoots of laughter.

My first impression, upon entering the room, was that I had journeyed backwards in Mr. Wells’s time machine and stumbled upon a Roman Saturnalia of some sort, peopled by satyrs, Pan-like cherubs, and elves. A second glance assured me that the dozen or so young men gathered there, singing, reciting poetry, and drinking each other’s health, were all dressed in the garb of the present century, albeit some of
it
rather askew. It took but a moment to realise who was chiefly responsible for this Attic impression. Standing in the centre of the room and towering over his guests both in size and stature was the leviathan Oscar Wilde himself. His odd long hair was wreathed with laurel or something very like
it,
and his deep, rich, and sonorous voice dominated the place as much as did his person.

Oblivious of the pandemonium, he was declaiming a poem having to do with Daphnis and Chloe (I was able to catch only a snatch here and there through the confusion of sound), with his arm draped over the shoulders of a slender young man whose blond curls framed the face of an angel.

After a moment or two our presence on the threshold made itself felt, and one by one all the revellers subsided, their songs and jests dying on their lips–save only Wilde himself. With his back to the door, he continued unaware of the intrusion, until the gradual halt in merriment caused him to turn and face us. One disagreeably flabby hand reached up and tugged the vine leaves from his tangled dark hair. His face was astonishingly comely and youthful, though I knew he must be forty. Too much food and too much drink had taken their toll and bloated his features. Nevertheless, his eyes were grey and clear and alert, his expression pleasing. Only his thick, sensual lips and his girth told of the dissipations in which he indulged.

As he focussed his gaze upon us, subdued whispers circulated, speculating about our business. More than once I caught the word
policemen.

“Policemen?” Wilde echoed. His voice was soft as a caress and deep as a monastery bell. “Policemen?” He came forward siowiy, carrying his coronet, and inspected us attentively. “No, no,” he concluded with a ravishing smile. “I think not. By no means. There is nothing so unaesthetic on the planet as a policeman.”

This provoked a few titters in the background. I noticed that when he spoke he had the odd trick of covering his mouth with a crooked finger. He looked at Holmes with interest, and the detective returned his gaze with a steadfast regard of his own. Their grey eyes locked.

‘We may be less aesthetic than you think,” Holmes told him without blinking, and reaching into his breast pocket, he presented his card. The urban Dionysus took in its contents with a careless glance.

“Dear me, dear me,” he murmured without surprise.
“More
detectives. Not a very aesthetic lot, you force me to agree. I shall not dissemble, however, and pretend I haven’t heard of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.” The subdued revellers passed the name around behind him in reverential tones, a lone giggle marring the seriousness of the response. “And this must be Dr. Watson,” Wilde went on, swivelling his luminous eyes in my direction and taking inventory. “Yes, it must; it positively must. Well,” he sighed and collected himself with his charming smile, “what is it you gentlemen wish? Can I offer you some refreshment?”

“A minute or two of your time in private, sir, no more.”

“Is it about the Marquess?” he demanded, his voice rising and beginning to tremble. “If so, I must tell you the whole affair is now in the hands of my solicitor, Mr. Humphreys, and you must take the matter up with him.”

“It is about Jonathan McCarthy.”

The playwright’s dreamy eyes bulged briefly. “McCarthy? Then he has dared, after all–” his thick lips compressed with a show of annoyance coupled with resolve.

“He has dared nothing, Mr. Wilde. Jonathan McCarthy lies dead in his flat this day, the victim of a fatal assault by a person or persons unknown–some hours after his rendezvous with you at the Café Royal. I really think this interview might better be conducted elsewhere,” Holmes concluded in a low tone.

“Murdered?” It took Bacchus a moment or two to grasp the meaning of the word. In that instant I perceived the truth of Shaw’s observation. Wilde might antagonise people and defy convention, but he didn’t really mean it or understand it to be harmful. Underneath his carefully nurtured decadence and his depraved, perverse ideas, the man was an utter innocent, far more shocked by the idea of murder than I was–and I fancied myself a deal more conventional than he.

“Come this way,” he offered, composing himself, and on unsteady legs led us into the adjacent writing room. There was one elderly gentleman there, but his hat was over his eyes, his legs stretched before him, and it was clear that what the revelry next door had failed to accomplish, we need not even try. Holmes and I took seats, and Wilde threw himself heavily on to a sofa opposite. He made none of his public pretences to grace, but sat with his fat hands dangling between his knees, like a cabby’s on the box, wearily holding a pair of non-existent reins.

“I take
it
I am under suspicion in the matter?” he began.

“Dr. Watson and I do not represent the police. Where their suspicions may fall, we have no way of knowing, though I may say from past experience”–Holmes smiled–”they occasionally take some quaint directions. Can you account for your whereabouts after your meeting with Jonathan McCarthy?

“Account tor tnem?”

“It may be helpful–for the police–should you be able to furnish them with an alibi,” I pointed out.

“An alibi, I see.” He leaned back with something like a smile. I caught another glimpse of him then, and I was reminded of Cassius’s “aweary of the world.” Despite an essentially humourous and sunny disposition, the man laboured under some terrible burden.

“Yes, that’s all right,” he brightened now without çonviction, “I was with solicitor Humphreys. Tell me, how was
it
managed?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The murder, my dear fellow, the murder!” His eyes gleamed as he warmed to the topic. “Was there incense burning? Did you find the footprints of a naked woman who had danced in his blood?”

Ignoring his macabre associations, Holmes briefly outlined the circumstances of the critic’s death, omitting the business with the book and adding instead his own observation that no-one we had spoken with thus far appeared either surprised or grieved by the news.

Wilde shrugged. “I can’t imagine the West End will consider him a great loss, no.”

‘What was the nature of your appointment with him yesterday?”

“Must I tell you?”

“We have no means to coerce testimony,” Holmes answered, “but the police are another matter. At the moment they do not know of your appointment.”

Wilde’s eyes flashed with hope in an instant, and he sat up straight in his chair.

“Is that true?” he cried clasping his hands. “Is that really true?” Holmes assured him that
it
was. “Then all may yet be well!” He looked from one to the other of us, his elation subsiding as he realised we must still be dealt with. “Better you than the police, is that
it?”
he sighed. “How life sometimes resembles Sardou, don’t you find? What a pity! For Sardou,” He chuckled at his own wit and ran a chubby set of fingers through his unruly hair.

“Was your meeting connected with your visit to a solicitor this morning?” Holmes prompted.

“In a way, I suppose you might think so. You gentlemen did not know Jonathan McCarthy, did you? No, I can see you didn’t. How can I explain to you what that man was?” He rubbed his lips meditatively with the crooked forefinger. “Have you heard ever of Charles Augustus Milverton?”

“The society blackmailer? Our paths have not yet crossed, but I know of him.” *[
Holmes’s path crossed Milverton’s
right before
the
latter’s murder in
January 1899.
]

“That simplifies matters. Jonathan McCarthy pursued a similar line of country.”

“He was engaged in blackmail?”

“Up to the neck, my dear Holmes, up to the very neck. He did not prey upon society, as Milverton does, but rather upon us denizens of the theatre. He had his sources, his little spies, and he squeezed hard. Of course the world of the theatre overlaps the social world now and again. At all events, I’ve had some experience of blackmailers and know how they must be dealt with. They get hold of letters I’ve written from time to time and threaten me with them. But I have a cure for that.”

I asked him what that might be, and he smiled behind the crooked finger.

“I publish them.”

“Was McCarthy threatening you with a letter?” Holmes asked.

“With several. He’d heard about the business at the Albemarle*[Wilde’s club.] earlier in the day and sent me an earnest of his intentions.”

“You will have to speak more plainly, I’m afraid.”

Wilde sat back, pale, astonishment writ large upon his features.

“But you’ve heard! Surely you’ve heard! It must be across all of London by now!”

“Everywhere but Baker Street,” Holmes assured him drily.

Wilde licked his purplish thick lips and eyed us nervously. “The Marquess of Queensberry,” he began in a voice hoarse with emotion, “the father of that splendid young man back there in the lounge–but no more like him than Hyperion’s like Hercules–left a card for me at the Albemarle, yesterday. I do not propose to tell you the words the barbarian wrote on that card–beside the fact that he misspelled them–only that having read the words, I was not prepared to ignore them.*[Written on the card by Queensberry: “To Oscar Wilde posing as somdomite.” Watson must have known the contents of this notorious message when he set down the case but tactfully omitted them.] I was advised by several friends to do so, but I did not. I went ‘round to Mr. Humphreys after dinner (he was referred to me by my friend Mr. Ross), and this morning he accompanied me to Bow Street, where I swore out a complaint for criminal libel. By this time tomorrow, the Marquess of Queensberry will have been arrested and charged, and soon I shall be rid for ever of that monster in human clothing. Hence the little celebration next door,” he concluded with a sheepish grin.