11

Veronica Sutherland

I have to confess that Aidan Fraser’s fiancée stole my heart the moment I set eyes upon her. She had a presence that was compelling and a look that took my breath away. Her face was long and lean, yet full of life. Her green eyes were huge and accentuated by the strength of her eyebrows land her aquiline nose. It was a face you would not forget. It was a face that I felt I already knew—and, at the moment of our meeting, I told her so.

As Aidan Fraser presented her to me and I shook her hand for the first time, I found myself saying, quite absurdly, “I know we have not met before, Miss Sutherland, yet I feel that we have because your face puts me in mind of my favourite painting—”

“Oh!” cried Oscar in a mock-wail. “Robert is in love again!”

Veronica Sutherland squeezed my hand, laughed and said, “How thrilling! Which painting? Do tell me!”

“Well,” I stammered, “several as a matter of fact.”

“Robert!” called Oscar. “You go too far!”

“All by the same artist,” I said, stumbling on. “All by Millais—Sir John Millais. Do you know his work? You have the exact look of his favourite model—his sister-in-law, Sophie Gray.”

“Good God,” said Oscar, taking a step towards Miss Sutherland. “You are right, Robert. The resemblance is uncanny.”

“Really?” said Miss Sutherland. “I must see this Sophie Gray. Is she beautiful?”

“She is fascinating,” I said, not knowing quite what I was saying, “entrancing, extraordinary.”

“You shall see her,” said Oscar. “I shall arrange it. Sir John’s studio is not far from here. Robert will take you—won’t you, Robert?”

“Indeed.”

“With Aidan’s permission, of course.”

Miss Sutherland turned to her fiancé. “Who are these wonderful people, Aidan? Where did you find them? Why have you not introduced me to them before? All your usual friends are so dull—except for Dr Doyle, of course. I am always happy to see him.”

She had let go of my hand and was now giving her full attention to Conan Doyle. She had put her arm through his and, with her head to one side, with her enormous eyes she was gazing intently at his smiling face.

I looked around the room and saw that, thanks to her, each of us—including Fraser—was now smiling. Billy Wood, O’Donnell, Bellotti, Cowley Street, Cleveland Street: all had been forgotten. Veronica Sutherland had burst into Fraser’s drawing room like a gust of fresh air. There was an energy about her that was irresistible. We were invigorated by her presence—and held by it, too. She had a natural authority that belied her years and her gender. She was younger than each of us (she was just twenty-four), yet she was in command of us all.

Still linking arms with Conan Doyle, she glanced about her and said, “Aidan, fiancé, husband-to-be: no flowers? No refreshments? No tea for our guests? What have you been thinking of?”

She sighed a theatrical sigh, broke away from Conan Doyle, threw down the book that had been tucked under her arm and, shaking her head of glorious red hair, swept out of the room, crying, “Can men do nothing for themselves?”

Minutes later—while we were still standing in a circle by the fireplace, beaming blithely and singing her praises—she returned. She was carrying a large butler’s tray, with, on it, three champagne saucers, one wineglass, one sherry glass, and, in a silver ice bucket filled to the brim with fresh ice, a magnum of Perrier Jouet. “Aidan has a cellar in the basement and an ice house in his garden,” she said by way of explanation. “The cellar is almost empty and the ice house he never uses. It is probably the only ice house in Chelsea and I doubt that he’s been into it once. Has he shown you round the house and garden? He has ten rooms here; he uses three. The kitchen is a disgrace. Do not go. Even the mice find it inhospitable. He’s been in residence a year and still there is no furniture to speak of. Have you seen his bedroom? There’s an iron bedstead in one corner and a cheval looking-glass in the other—and that’s that. There isn’t a hook on the back of the door, let alone a wardrobe. He’s living out of a suitcase. What am I to do with him?”

Conan Doyle laughed. “Marry him!”

“If I must,” she replied, laughing, too. “Open the wine, Aidan. I want to toast your friends. I want to drink to Sophie Gray.” She looked at me and widened her eyes.

“I want Mr Wilde to recite one of his poems for us,” she said turning to Oscar, “or tell us one of his ghost stories,” adding, “you see, Mr Wilde, I do know who you are really…Aidan has told me all about this mysterious murder that you are intent on investigating. Dr Doyle believes you, even if Aidan still has his doubts.” Her candour was disarming. She turned to Conan Doyle and raised her glass to him. “I am so happy to see you, Dr Doyle. We can talk of my hero once more, can we not?”

“Are you, too, an admirer of Sherlock Holmes?” I asked.

“No,” she answered. “I do admire Dr Doyle’s writings, of course, but I did not mean Sherlock Holmes.”

“I believe Miss Sutherland is speaking of Dr Joseph Bell,” said Oscar.

“Indeed,” she said, acknowledging Oscar with a pretty tilt of her head. “How did you know?”

“I saw the book—his book—the one you were reading on the underground train on your way here,” said Oscar, indicating the red-bound volume that she had thrown down on the side table before fetching our champagne.

“How did you know she travelled here by train?” asked Fraser.

Conan Doyle picked up the book and brandished it before us. “Here is Miss Sutherland’s twopenny tube ticket used as a bookmark. Oscar misses nothing.”

“Who is Dr Bell?” I asked.

“A great man,” said Conan Doyle, examining the spine of the volume. “Not only the author of this definitive text—A Manual of the Operations of Surgery —but my mentor. He taught me at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh. As a surgeon, he was meticulous. As a lecturer, he had the quality of a mesmerist. As a master diagnostician, I do not know his equal. If anyone is the model for Sherlock Holmes, it is he. Dr Bell instilled in his students the critical importance of the powers of observation. He would have been proud of you, Oscar.”

Oscar smiled contentedly. Oscar was not averse to flattery.

Conan Doyle put down the book and continued: “Dr Bell made an extraordinary impression upon us at our very first lecture. Almost as he began, he produced a glass vial containing a noxious amber liquid and held it aloft before us.” Conan Doyle picked up his glass of champagne as if it had been Bell’s vial. “‘Gentlemen,’ he announced, in his rich Edinburgh burr, “this vial contains a most potent drug. It is extremely bitter to the taste—aye. But I want you to taste it! What, gentlemen? You shrink back?” Bell swirled the amber liquid with a finger, like so.” Conan Doyle, with his champagne, suited the action to the word. “‘Naturally,’ said Dr Bell, ‘I do not ask anything of my students that I would not undertake myself. I will taste the liquid before passing it around.’ The great man brought his hand to his mouth and sucked his finger. As he did so his features contorted as though he had sampled poison.”

As he told the tale, Conan Doyle re-enacted the drama before us.

“After a moment, Bell recovered himself and handed the vial to a student in the front row. ‘Now,’ he instructed, ‘you do likewise.’ Each of us in turn dipped a finger into the amber fluid and tasted it. It was indeed an awful brew, repellent to the taste. But when the vial had completed its rounds, Bell looked out over the rows of students spread before him and sighed. ‘Gentlemen,—’ he said, ‘I am deeply grieved to find that not one of you has developed his power of perception, the faculty for observation that I speak so much of, for if you had truly observed me, what would you have seen?’”

Oscar had the answer. “That while you placed your index finger into the amber liquid, it was your middle finger that found its way into your mouth!”

“Correct!” cried Conan Doyle, clinking the side of his glass against Oscar’s. “You do not miss a trick, my friend. You observe everything! I have decided that I am going to give Mr Sherlock Holmes an even more brilliant older brother and, with your permission, he shall be modelled on you! Holmes is based mostly on Dr Bell, but he has something of Fraser about him also. Holmes’s brother will be entirely you, Oscar—”

“But I am not like Holmes,” Oscar protested. “I am not a man of action. I am indolent.”

“Holmes’s brother shall be indolent then,” replied Conan Doyle. “Do not argue with me. I have decided. It is settled.”

As we all laughed and drank our champagne, I noticed that Miss Sutherland was cradling her copy of Dr Bell’s book to her chest. “Why are you reading Dr Bell?” I asked.

“Because it seems that I am never to sit at his feet,” she said.

Conan Doyle explained: “Miss Sutherland entertained hopes of becoming a doctor. She wished to study at Edinburgh University, but it was not to be.”

“You see, I am a woman, Mr Sherard, and women are not fit to be physicians. Women are not fit to be anything!”

“I don’t know about that,” protested Fraser in a jocular fashion.

“I do,” said Miss Sutherland, fiercely. “Aidan, you, and Dr Doyle, and Mr Wilde, and Mr Sherard have all enjoyed the benefits of a university education. Why? Because you are men. I am denied one. Why? Because I am a woman. It is appalling—outrageous. And you do nothing about it—except laugh! The only women allowed within the hallowed walls of our ancient universities are cleaners and concubines. It is scandalous, Aidan, and you know it.”

For a moment, silence fell. Oscar broke it by taking the book that Miss Sutherland was clasping to her bosom and asking her, “So what do you do, Miss Sutherland—by way of occupation?”

“Nothing,” she cried. “I do nothing—except live off my parents and await the day when I marry, when I shall live off poor Aidan here. You are right, Mr Wilde. I am frustrated in my ambitions. I long to make my mark on the world. Perhaps your friend Sir John will paint my portrait and I shall achieve fame that way. I am determined to join the ranks of the immortals somehow.”

“You might try committing a murder,” suggested Oscar, casually, leafing through Bell’s book.

“Come, Oscar,” said Conan Doyle, reprovingly, “do not make light of murder.”

“I am quite serious,” said Oscar. “If Miss Sutherland is bent on immortality and the conventional paths are blocked to her, perhaps she should try murder. After all, a hundred years from now, who will be best remembered? Lord Rosebery? Henry Irving? Sir John Millais? Or Jack the Ripper?”

“Oh, Mr Wilde,” exclaimed Veronica delightedly, “what an amazing man you are! Why are you here? Why are you in mourning? Tell me all about this murder you are investigating. Tell me everything. Do, please.”

Fraser protested, in vain. Conan Doyle mumbled his demurral, to little effect. I stood by, in admiration, sipping my champagne, as Oscar took centre stage and told Miss Sutherland his story—our story: the story of the murder of Billy Wood.

Despite interventions from the detective and the doctor, Oscar omitted none of the salient details. When he had completed his narrative, Miss Sutherland, who had listened with rapt attention throughout, asked, “This boy, Billy Wood, did you care for him, Mr Wilde? You say he had talent and youth and beauty—”

Oscar interrupted her: “He had genius, Miss Sutherland. Beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has a divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those that have it. Billy Wood was a prince.”

“But did you care for him, Mr Wilde?” she repeated. “You talk of beauty in the abstract and that perplexes me. For all your protestations, I am not sure how much you really loved the boy.”

Oscar smiled at her and said, “In so vulgar an age as this, Miss Sutherland, it is not wise to show one’s heart to the world. We all need masks, do we not?”

Aidan Fraser broke the mood, with some finality. “At all events,” he said, gathering up the now-empty glasses and returning them to the tray, “Oscar has decided to ignore our advice. He is pursuing the case, willy-nilly. He is determined to solve it, with or without our help.”

“I must,” said Oscar, “and not only for poor Billy’s sake. After all, if the murderer is not apprehended, may he—or she—not strike again?”

Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders
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