14

Billy Wood

It was Conan Doyle who took immediate command of the situation.

He got to his feet at once, while Constance was still screaming, and threw this napkin over the severed head, which had rolled to the centre of the table and come to rest—grotesquely, nose up—against the rim of a silver fruit dish. He looked at his wife and said, quite calmly, “Touie, take Mrs Wilde to her bedroom.” Mrs Doyle did not move. “Now, Touie,” he said, “now.” Mrs Doyle got to her feet. Her husband looked about him. “Veronica, you go too, please. Mrs Ryan, would you get some brandy for the ladies? And for yourself, of course. Mr Gray, would you escort the ladies? Thank you.”

People began to move. Mrs Ryan put a comforting arm around Constance’s shoulders. Mrs Doyle stood tentatively at her side. John Gray did as he was bidden and began to usher the womenfolk out of the room. As he went, he turned to Conan Doyle. “Should we not call the police?” he asked.

“That won’t be necessary,” said Aidan Fraser.

Everyone was now standing or in motion, except for Oscar who was still seated at the head of the table, gazing fixedly ahead of him, as if in a trance. When the women had all gone, Conan Doyle said, “Let us leave this room.” He leant across the table and, with both hands, scooped up the head, still covered in his napkin, and cradled it in his arms. “Come, Oscar, let us adjourn to your study.”

It is worth noting at this point that Oscar was right. The boy was beautiful—there was no doubt about that. The fact of the severed head was shocking and horrific, but the face of the boy was neither. It was perfect.

“He was a god,” said Oscar.

“He was certainly a good-looking lad,” said Conan Doyle.

The country doctor was holding the severed head in his hands, examining it, assessing it as if he had been the curator of antiquities at the British Museum inspecting the latest trophy from the excavations at Pompeii.

The head looked as if it had been lopped from a marble statue: the features were clear and strong; the forehead was broad and smooth; the cheekbones were high; the nose and chin were sharply defined; and the skin was flawless, grey-white in colour, firm and smooth as marble. The one disconcerting element—the one element that served as a reminder that this was not, in fact, an effigy, but the severed head of a human being—was the hair. There was so much of it. It was thick, dark brown and swept back as if newly brushed. He had thick eyebrows too and, on his closed eyelids, long, dark eyelashes, like a girl’s. His mouth was set almost in a smile and on his upper lip were the beginnings of a young man’s moustache.

“He looks at peace,” I said.

“He has been embalmed,” said Conan Doyle.

“Embalmed?” repeated Aidan Fraser, taking a step closer to Doyle.

“Preserved,” said the doctor, “with chemicals—most skilfully.”

“Where is the box it came in?” asked Fraser.

“In the dining room still,” I said. “I’ll get it.”

As I came out of Oscar’s study to retrieve the box from the dining-room table, I was surprised to find Veronica Sutherland at the foot of the stairs. She had her overcoat in her arms.

“Are you leaving?” I asked.

“No,” she answered.

“How is she?” I asked.

“Mrs Wilde? Disturbed. Understandably. She is weeping. I came to find some smelling-salts for her. She has none.” She indicated the coat in her arms. “I brought some with me. I was feeling faint myself a little earlier. The train journey from Scotland was exhausting.” She smiled at me. “How is Mr Wilde?” she asked.

“Shocked,” I said. “It is shocking. Horrible.” I moved towards the staircase. “Veronica, my dear, I love you still.”

“Robert, this is not the time.” She turned to mount the stairs.

“Forgive me.”

Burning with embarrassment (in those days I was such a fool!) I waited for her to climb the stairs and then made my way to the dining room. The cardboard box and wrapping paper were still at Constance’s place at the table. I took them and hurried back to Oscar’s study.

Oscar had recovered himself. He was standing behind his writing desk—his famous writing desk: the writing desk that had once belonged to Thomas Carlyle—leaning upon it, supporting himself on his fingertips, addressing Aidan Fraser who stood alone in the centre of the room. “You wanted evidence of murder, Inspector. I trust a severed head will be sufficient? I believe King Herod would have settled for less.”

Fraser laughed a mirthless laugh. “Oh yes, Mr Wilde, you will get your investigation now—you need have no fear of that.”

For a moment, as I re-entered the room, I could not see Conan Doyle, so I was startled when he spoke. He was standing away from the others, in a corner, leaning against the wall, still holding the boy’s head, but now holding it aloft beneath a gas lamp, examining it minutely through a magnifying-glass. “Holmes would have been proud of this,” he said.

“What?” snapped Oscar.

“No,” said Doyle, soothingly, “not my Holmes, Oscar. We are in the real world now, alas. Dr Thomas Holmes, the father of modern embalming. During the American Civil War he received the commission to embalm the corpses of dead Union soldiers to return them to their families. Embalming had been an art. Holmes made it a science.”

Conan Doyle walked slowly to the middle of the room and, having held the severed head close to his nostrils for a moment and sniffed sharply, he carefully placed it inside the cardboard box that I had put down on the writing desk. “This has been most skilfully achieved,” he said.

“Using formaldehyde?” asked Fraser.

“No,” said Conan Doyle, “arsenic, I think—which suggests to me the work of a skilled and gifted amateur rather than a professional. Your regular undertaker would not use arsenic nowadays.”

“Do you imagine that the rest of the body has been preserved?”

“Oh, yes. I think the decapitation is recent. Look at the clean cut across the neck. I imagine the embalming took place within hours of the murder.”

“The embalming—could anyone do it?” asked Fraser. “On their own, I mean, without assistance.”

“Certainly,” said Conan Doyle, “it’s a simple process. If you have the knowledge—and the pump.”

“The pump?” I repeated, involuntarily.

“No more,” said Oscar, “I beg you.”

Conan Doyle lowered his voice. “The embalming fluid is forced into the blood vessels, usually via the right common carotid artery, by means of a small mechanical pump. The embalmer has then to massage the corpse to ensure the proper distribution of the fluid. That’s where skill and experience play their part. As I say, this has been most skilfully done—though the boy’s youth will have helped. As a rule, the older the deceased, the poorer the circulation.”

“You appear remarkably well informed upon the subject,” said Fraser.

“Holmes is something of a hero of mine. He brought comfort to many grieving families. I have studied his work.”

Oscar had now come around his writing desk and was gazing into the cardboard box, looking fixedly at the face of the dead boy.

“Is this how you remember him?” asked Conan Doyle.

“Yes,” said Oscar.

“Is this how he appeared when you discovered the body?”

“Yes,” said Oscar. “I believe so. It is difficult to recall. There was so much blood. So much. But I believe his face was just as we see it now—serene.”

“Untroubled,” I said.

“Untroubled,” repeated Oscar. “Exactly.” He looked up at Conan Doyle. “Might he have been murdered in his sleep?”

“Quite possibly,” said Conan Doyle. “As you can see, his face has been dusted with powder, like a woman’s makeup, but beneath the cosmetic the skin is quite blemish-free. There is no damage to the eyelids, which suggests that his eyes were already closed at the moment of death—and remained so. And while the embalmer has secured his mouth with the assistance of a needle and a ligature, there is no sign of bruising as you might expect. I do not get the impression that the poor boy struggled in death.”

“Thank you for that,” said Oscar, resting his hand lightly on Conan Doyle’s shoulder. “That is something.”

An awkward silence fell, broken by Fraser. In my left hand I was still holding the brown wrapping paper and string that I had fetched from the dining room. Fraser said, abruptly, holding out his hand as if to confiscate contraband from an errant schoolboy, “Give them to me, if you please.”

As, obediently, I handed them over, there was a rap at the study door and Mrs Ryan entered, carrying a tray bearing a decanter of brandy and four glasses. “Mrs Wilde is much better, sir,” she said to Oscar as she came in. “She thought you gentlemen might be in need of refreshment.”

“Thank you, Mrs Ryan, thank you,” said Oscar, turning his back to his writing desk so as to hide the cardboard box from view.

Conan Doyle relieved the cook of her tray. “You have handled a difficult situation well, Mrs Ryan,” he said. She bobbed a grateful curtsey and started to retreat, when Fraser stopped her in her tracks.

“Before you go—if I may?” he asked, glancing at Oscar. “When you received the parcel at the door, how did you know it was intended for Mrs Wilde?”

“The cabman said so.”

“It was delivered by an ordinary cabman?” said Fraser.

“Yes, in a two-wheeler. He said he’d been sent from the Albemarle Club. He gave me the parcel. I gave him a tip. And he was gone.”

“What did he say? Precisely?”

“I can’t recall, exactly.”

“Try, woman!”

“Inspector,” said Oscar sharply, “treat Mrs Ryan with some respect. She has endured a hateful experience this evening. We all have.”

Mrs Ryan looked steadily at Inspector Fraser. “He said, “I’ve come from the Albemarle Club with a gift—for immediate delivery.””

“That is all he said?” asked Fraser. “Just those words? Are you sure?”

“Those words, or thereabouts. Yes, that was all he said, I’m sure. Other than ‘Goodnight’. He was a courteous fellow.”

“Thank you, Mrs Ryan,” said Oscar.

“Thank you,” said Fraser. “Thank you.” As the woman left the room, the detective held out the wrapping paper and asked us to read what was written on it. I read, ‘Mrs Oscar Wilde, c⁄o The Albemarle Club’. Arthur read, ‘Mr Oscar Wilde, c⁄o The Albemarle Club.’

“You see?” said Fraser. “It could be ‘Mr’ or ‘Mrs’, could it not?”

“I suppose so,” said Oscar, examining the paper. “Is it material?”

“It might be,” said Fraser. “Do you recognise the handwriting?”

“No,” said Oscar, “not at all. The hand looks uneducated to me. Beyond that…” Oscar’s voice trailed away as he turned back to the cardboard box and its macabre contents.

“Who would wish to send this to you, Oscar, let alone to Constance?” asked Conan Doyle.

“Who, indeed?” said Fraser. “I think we should go to the Albemarle at once. There is no time to be lost.”

“‘No time to be lost’?” Oscar offered up a hollow laugh. “It is four months since I first reported this murder to you, Aidan—and now, suddenly, there is ‘no time to be lost’!”

“There was no body then, Oscar, no evidence of murder…Come,”—he said it kindly—“if your young friend Gray will see Veronica and Touie into a cab, we can go to Albemarle Street now and be back in Chelsea within the hour, Are you happy to leave Constance with Mrs Ryan?”

“Indeed,” said Oscar. “She will be quite safe with Mrs Ryan. I have found our servants, to be among our truest friends.”

I was despatched to give John Gray his instructions. He was to ensure Miss Sutherland’s and Mrs Doyle’s safe return to 75 Lower Sloane Street, leaving Mrs Ryan to see Constance to bed, while Fraser led Oscar, Arthur and me on what he described as ‘the trail of this infamous package’.

It was a trail that ran cold at once. We found a four-wheeler in the King’s Road and reached the Albemarle Club within twenty minutes. Hubbard had plenty of information to offer (he was at his most obsequious; club members in general, and Oscar in particular, had been bountiful with their seasonal gratuities), but none that was especially helpful. Yes, he recalled the arrival of the package at about seven o’clock that evening. A nondescript cabman—not one he recognised, not one whose number he could recall—had brought the parcel to the porter’s lodge. The cabman—a south Londoner if he remembered aright, or maybe a Cockney; accents were not his ‘strong suit’—had said, “It’s a gift for Wilde for immediate delivery,” or words to that effect.

As soon as the cabman had gone, Hubbard noticed that the package was in fact addressed, as he read it, to Mrs Wilde and, knowing that Mrs Wilde rarely, if ever, visited the club, took it upon himself to order another cab immediately and get the gift sent on to 16 Tite Street straightaway. He had done what he had done for the best. He hoped he had done right. He hoped so most sincerely. Oscar assured him he had indeed done right, thanked him for his pains and gave him half a sovereign (half a sovereign!) to ensure that there was no doubt about the fullness of his gratitude.

“What do we do now?” I asked as we stood in silence in a small circle on the club’s front doorstep. It was gone eleven and the January night was chill and foggy.

Fraser was still cradling the ‘infamous package’ in his arms. “I must take this to Scotland Yard,” he said. “I suggest the rest of you go home to bed. We can catch cabs in Piccadilly.”

As he spoke, looking down the darkened street to see whether a cab might not be coming our way, I saw the outline of a figure that I sensed I recognised, standing, waiting, by the front step of the Albemarle Hotel, just a few doors away. I sensed that Oscar had seen it too because he turned from it to look at me directly and, as he did so, almost imperceptibly, he shook his head. “Gentlemen,” he said, quite suddenly, “we have not yet heard the chimes at midnight—shall we take a nightcap?”

“It’s late, Oscar,” said Conan Doyle.

“Come, Arthur, just the one.” Oscar brooked no argument; wasted no time. Ignoring the protests from Conan Doyle and Fraser, he proceeded briskly back into the club. Muttering, still in our overcoats, Fraser still clutching the package, we followed. “Gentlemen,” said Oscar, once we were ensconced in Keppel Corner, “Hubbard is at your service. What is your pleasure?”

Though Keppel Corner was deserted and, once Hubbard had served our drinks (iced champagne for Oscar and me; brandy and soda for the detective and the doctor), we were completely alone, for the next forty minutes, incredibly, no one made any mention of the curious and disturbing events of the night. Oscar led the conversation and led it in every direction except that of the murder of Billy Wood. He was, given the circumstances, almost bizarrely playful. He said to Aidan Fraser—who sat in his hat and coat, with the grim package fixed resolutely on his lap: “If I did not know you, Inspector, I’d take you for a Fenian on the run. You look exactly like a revolutionary nursing a home-made bomb.” He teased Conan Doyle in particular. “Is that to be your New Year resolution, Arthur—‘Just the one’? You are moderate in all things, are you not? But nothing is good in moderation. You cannot know the good in anything until you have torn the heart out of it by excess. This year may I urge you to live a little dangerously? Make 1890 the year in which you try to cultivate at least one redeeming vice.”

Fraser appeared perturbed by Oscar’s banter. Conan Doyle seemed only amused. “What is your New Year resolution to be, Oscar?” he asked.

“Let old acquaintance be forgot!” said Oscar, without hesitation.

“Surely not?” said Conan Doyle, laughing.

“There will be exceptions, Arthur,” said Oscar, “and you will be among them. We are friends for life, I know that—I believe that—but why should we not joyfully admit, both of us, that there are some people—other people—we do not wish to see again? It is not ingratitude. It is not indifference. They have simply given us all they have to give and we must move on.”

Conan Doyle raised his glass to Oscar and said, “I amaze myself, but I think I agree with you.”

“Oh, no!” cried Oscar. “Please, Arthur, no! Whenever people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong.”

We laughed.

“And Robert?” asked Fraser, turning to me. “What is your New Year resolution to be?”

I looked at Aidan Fraser and I thought of Veronica Sutherland. I said, with too much emotion in my voice, “To follow my heart, wherever it may lead.”

“And where might that be?”

Deftly, Oscar intervened to save me from myself. “Do not ask, Aidan. Robert does not know the answer, I assure you. But you, Aidan, is this the year in which you and Miss Sutherland will follow your hearts to the altar?”

“I think so. I hope so. I shall be thirty-three this year—”

“On 31 August,” said Oscar.

“Yes,” said the inspector, clearly taken aback. “How did you know?”

“I think you told us on the day we met—on 1 September, the day following your birthday. Either you told us, or I discovered it when I was reading up on you in the Metropolitan Police Directory.”

Fraser laughed. “You never cease to surprise me, Mr Wilde.”

Oscar looked at him reprovingly. “My name is Oscar, Aidan. We are friends…”

“Anyway,” resumed the inspector, “I believe thirty-three is the correct age for a man to marry.”

“There is never a correct age for a man to marry,” said Oscar, teasingly. “Marriage is as demoralising as cigarettes and far more expensive.”

“Do not listen to Oscar,” said Conan Doyle. “He is talking nonsense and he knows it.”

Now it was Oscar’s turn to laugh. “I will not argue with you, Arthur. It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.”

Oscar’s conversation was so brilliant that he could make you forget the toothache. That night, we sat in a dark corner of a London club with a dead boy’s head in a box before us and for forty minutes thought not a thing about it. (No doubt, the champagne and the brandy helped.)

Eventually, as midnight struck and our glasses were drained, it was Oscar who brought us back to reality. “Well, Inspector,” he said, looking steadily at Fraser, “what next? What now? Where do we go from here with this murder inquiry?”

“I hope you go nowhere with it, Oscar. Leave it to me now, please.”

Oscar gave a nod of apparent acquiescence. “What will your first move be?” he asked.

“I will get some of my men to try to trace the cabman who delivered this parcel. And tomorrow I shall go to Broadstairs. I must meet Mrs Wood. You have told me her story, but I must talk to her myself. And I must show her the boy’s head.”

“You cannot!” exclaimed Oscar.

“I must,” said Fraser.

“The shock will kill her.”

“It is a dangerous thing to do, Aidan,” said Conan Doyle.

“Fear not, I will take her to a police morgue. It will be a formal identification. The young man’s head will be placed on a slab with, below it, a bolster beneath a sheet to give the impression of a body. She will not know of the decapitation.”

“Is this really necessary, Aidan?” asked Oscar.

“It is essential. We must know for certain whose head this is.”

“It is the head of Billy Wood.”

“So you tell us, Oscar. So you say. But whose word do we have for this—for any of this—other than yours? You are a writer, Oscar, a raconteur, a teller of tales. I am a policeman. This is a police inquiry now.”