23

The Elements

As we ran from the dressing room, La Grange stumbled in the darkened wings. Oscar and Garstrang helped him to his feet. We ran on, desperately, out of the stage door and down the steps into the cobbled alleyway. We smelt and heard the fire before we saw it: the stench of burning leather, the spit and crackle of burning wood. There, at the far end of the black alley, like a bonfire on a hilltop, stood a horse-drawn four-wheeler with its carriage all ablaze.

The carriage was a burning ball of fire, a roaring furnace, and outlined against it were the silhouettes of men frantically trying to douse the flames. The cab driver, the stage doorkeeper, Richard Marais, Carlos Branco, actors and stagehands were darting to and from the blaze with buckets filled with sand, and water from the nearby horse-trough. They did well: they contained the fire: it did not spread. The horse was saved, but not the carriage, nor the single figure within it: Bernard La Grange.

‘My God, Oscar,’ I whispered, ‘we could all be dead!’ We stood helpless, halfway along the alley, transfixed by the horrific scene. Repeatedly, La Grange tried to run towards the flames, but Garstrang held him back. ‘There’s nothing to be done,’ he said.

It must have taken half an hour for the fire to subside and the remains of the burnt-out vehicle to cool sufficiently for us to get inside the carriage and retrieve the charred body of the once beautiful young man. La Grange and Carlos Branco, both in tears, attempted to lift the body out of the carriage. The boy’s limbs came apart in their hands.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ wailed La Grange.

At Oscar’s suggestion, Richard Marais was sent to fetch the police.

‘Ask for Malthus,’ said La Grange.

‘It’s midnight,’ said Oscar. ‘Bring anyone who will come.’

The remains of Bernard’s body were carried into the theatre and laid out in the wings. From the rail of costumes that stood at the edge of the stage Carlos Branco fetched a cloak: it was the cloak he wore as the Ghost of Hamlet’s father. He placed the cloak over the corpse. We stood around the dead boy’s body in dismay.

Gabrielle de la Tourbillon, alerted by the noise, had come down from the apartment. She was wearing a hooded winter cloak over her nightdress. She brought us tumblers of brandy.

‘Where is Maman?’ asked La Grange.

‘In bed, asleep,’ answered Gabrielle.

‘Good,’ mumbled La Grange. ‘Leave her be.’

Within the half-hour, Marais had returned. The police officer he brought with him was not Brigadier Malthus. I did not catch the man’s name, but I smelt the wine on his breath and the sweat on his uniform. He did not detain us long. La Grange formally identified the victim’s body as that of Bernard La Grange: the young actor’s silk-soft black hair was burnt to a stubble, but his face, though scorched and charred, was recognisable. The cab driver confirmed what had happened. At half past eleven — he had heard a church bell strike — a young man came out of the stage door and walked briskly up the alleyway towards the waiting cab. The alley was quite crowded —the performance was not long over — but the cab driver noticed the young man at once because he was walking directly towards him and walking with purpose. As he reached the carriage, he called up to the driver: ‘It’s only one passenger after all. Le Chat Noir in Montmartre, if you please.’ Then he climbed aboard.

‘Was he alone when he got into your cab?’ asked Oscar.

‘He was on his own, yes, but there were other people nearby, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Did he open the cab door himself?’

‘Yes. No.’ The coachman hesitated. ‘I don’t recall. Possibly not. He was lighting a cigarette at the time. I remember that.’

‘Thank you,’ said Oscar.

‘Thank you,’ said the police officer, looking at Oscar with a weary eye. He licked the tip of his pencil and glanced down at his notebook before turning back to the cab driver: ‘And then?’

‘And then — a moment later, just as I was releasing the brakes to move off — I felt the explosion. The carriage rocked. It was like a small bomb going off, a sudden burst of noise and heat. I jumped down, uncoupled the carriage and pulled the horse to safety.’

Carlos Branco looked at the cab driver in disbelief. ‘You saved the horse before the boy?’

The cabman shrugged his shoulders.

‘It was a ball of fire,’ said Eddie Garstrang. ‘There was nothing to be done.’

‘And there’s nothing more that we can do tonight,’ said the policeman, closing his notebook and suppressing a yawn, ‘except leave you to your prayers.

‘Will you not examine the carriage at least?’ asked Oscar.

‘Not tonight,’ said the officer coldly. ‘It’s late, it’s dark. I’m going to bed. I advise you to do the same.’ The officer stared at Oscar, defying him to speak again. Oscar kept his silence. The officer turned to Edmond La Grange: ‘I shall leave a man in the street overnight.’

A police hearse had arrived to bear Bernard La Grange’s body to the morgue. Two porters — ‘burly men with butcher’s faces’ is how Oscar described them in his journal — arrived in the wings and, without speaking or acknowledging our presence, went straight about their business. Ignoring the cries of distress from La Grange and Carlos Branco, they uncovered the corpse, throwing Branco’s cloak unceremoniously to one side, and rolled the dead body, like a pig’s carcass, onto a canvas stretcher. Together, with a single grunt, they lifted the stretcher and, without pause, carried their grim cargo away.

‘Flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,’ whispered La Grange, watching them depart.

The police officer looked about the group of bleak and bewildered faces. ‘My condolences,’ he said. ‘Goodnight. Brigadier Malthus will take charge tomorrow. Please be so good as to stay in the vicinity in case any of you is needed for questioning again.’

‘We shall all be here,’ said Edmond La Grange calmly. ‘We have a performance of Hamlet to give tomorrow night.’

‘No,’ protested Branco. ‘You cannot play Hamlet without the prince.’ Desperately, he looked at La Grange and then at the policeman. ‘We have lost our Ophelia. We have lost our Hamlet. They were without equal. We cannot go on.’

‘The understudy knows the lines,’ said La Grange.

‘The play goes on.’

‘No,’ pleaded Carlos Branco. ‘For pity’s sake, no.

The police officer departed. The moment he had gone, Oscar touched my arm, pulling me gently from Gabrielle’s side. ‘I think that we should be on our way as well,’ he said. He offered his hand to Edmond La Grange: ‘I know not what to say …

‘Say nothing,’ answered La Grange quietly. ‘We will speak tomorrow.’ Oscar nodded and turned to leave. Suddenly, raising his voice, the old actor called him back. ‘Mon ami, one thing before you go,’ he asked. ‘Please.’ Oscar turned round. ‘When we heard that Bernard was dead, you said at once, “Consumed by fire?” How did you know?’

Oscar looked at Edmond La Grange. ‘Maman’s dog died buried in a case of earth,’ he said softly. ‘Your dresser — my poor friend Traquair — died by breathing poisoned air. Agnès was drowned. Earth, air and water; there was only element remaining: fire.’

On the morning following the horrific death of Bernard La Grange, Oscar picked me up by cab from my room in the rue de Beauce and, together, we drove out to Passy.

‘Do you honestly believe that these deaths are all connected?’ I asked my friend.

It was eleven o’clock and the sky was overcast. Oscar was dressed in a most improbable (and unseasonable) suit of canary yellow. He laid a straw boater hat on the seat between us and, from a paper cornet, offered me an aniseed ball. ‘Breakfast?’ he enquired. He was at his most shiny-faced and playful. ‘Are the deaths connected?’ he murmured. ‘Yes,’ he said emphatically.

‘And by the elements of earth, air, water and fire?’

He nodded. ‘I’m inclined to think so.’

I looked at him and shook my head. ‘And I’m inclined to think that this time, Oscar, you have allowed your creative juices to flow to excess.

‘Are you indeed?’ He laughed. ‘Creativity, we’re told, is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.’

‘Precisely. And I think you’ve made rather more out of it than the facts of the matter justify. Death — murder or suicide — by earth, air, water and fire? Frankly, Oscar, I’m incredulous.’

‘Oh, don’t be that, Robert,’ he cried, pressing another aniseed sweet upon me. ‘Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.’

‘Last night’s tragedy could have been an accident, Oscar. Have you considered that possibility?’

‘I have, Robert, of course I have. Like you, I heard the coachman tell us that Bernard was lighting a cigarette as he entered the cab.’

‘You noticed that?’

‘I did. But could a simple lighted match cause such a sudden conflagration?’

‘He had a lighted match in his hand — and in his pocket three phials of laudanum!’ I said, with a note of quiet triumph in my voice. (I had been waiting since last night to point this out to Oscar.) ‘You saw Rollinat place them there. You told me so.’

‘I did. And, yes, Robert, laudanum is a tincture of opium: it is prepared with ether. It is highly flammable. Somehow the lighted match could have come into contact with the laudanum; but by accident? Is not murder much more likely? Is it not much more probable that as Bernard La Grange stepped unsuspectingly into the cab some unknown hand threw an incendiary device into the carriage after him?’

‘Or perhaps it was suicide,’ suggested Dr Emile Blanche gently. ‘I do think, gentlemen, that suicide is the most likely explanation.’

We were ushered into the great man’s presence the moment we reached the clinic at Passy. We appeared to be expected: in the doctor’s library, coffee and Madeira were already set out on a tray by the bay window. Blanche blinked at us endearingly from behind his gig-lamps. ‘As old Madame La Grange reminded us yesterday, suicide is an inherited characteristic. It runs in families. Agnès La Grange took her own life. She was Bernard’s twin. Bernard will have felt that in losing his sister, he had lost half of himself. Bernard’s mother took her own life; Bernard’s sister took her own life. In doing so, they had given Bernard permission to do the same.’

‘It is all very sad,’ said Oscar, somewhat dreamily, holding up his glass of Madeira and gazing through the liquid gold towards the bay window and the grey sky beyond.

‘It is heart-breaking,’ said Dr Blanche. ‘And not only for the La Grange family. My poor Jacques-Emile is profoundly distressed by the news.’

‘Yes,’ said Oscar, coming suddenly out of his reverie. ‘Jacques-Emile. I feel for him. In truth, Doctor, it was to see him that we came out to Passy this morning.’

‘You have missed him, I am afraid. He has gone over to Montmartre to be with his friend, Rollinat.’ He sighed briefly and offered us more wine. ‘These poetic nihilists like young Rollinat, they talk of death easily enough, but the reality of it bites all the same. Bites — and hurts.’

‘Jacques-Emile and Bernard La Grange were friends?’ I asked.

‘Close friends,’ replied the doctor, smiling at me. ‘The closest. They fought together, mano a mano — they wrestled and they fenced. It was through their sparring that they expressed their love. It is often the way with men.’

‘And Agnès?’ enquired Oscar. ‘Did Jacques-Emile love Agnès?’

‘You know that he did. Passionately. Deeply. Desperately.’

‘And did she love him?’

‘Like a brother!’ The doctor gave a hollow laugh. He removed his wire-rimmed spectacles and shook his head mournfully. ‘As I told you the other day — when I should not have done so: I thought that you already knew —Agnès’s father was the love of Agnès’s life.’

‘Was that love —’ Oscar hesitated. ‘Was that love —achieved?’ he asked.

Dr Blanche sat forward and put on his spectacles once more. ‘What do you mean, Mr Wilde?’

‘Was it consummated?’ asked Oscar.

‘Good God, no.’ Dr Blanche got to his feet and moved towards the window as if to get closer to fresh air. He turned back and looked at Oscar. ‘What an idea!’ he exclaimed, shaking his head.

‘You are certain of this?’ said Oscar, leaning forward, with supplicatory hands outstretched. ‘Forgive me for persisting, but you see the significance; under the circumstances.’

‘I do, of course,’ said the doctor, calming himself. ‘If Agnès and her father had been lovers, self-loathing might have driven her to suicide — or shame might have driven him to murder.’

‘Quite so,’ said Oscar dryly.

‘But they were not lovers,’ the doctor continued, picking up the decanter and pouring us each a further glass of Madeira. ‘I am sure of it. Delicate as it was, I raised the matter with them both, separately and together. Edmond La Grange loved his daughter — naturally. That he should have known her carnally is inconceivable. He told me that the very notion of such a thing filled him with disgust. He told me so privately and, again, later, in Agnès’s presence.

‘And you believed him?’ asked Oscar.

‘I believed him. I have been a doctor for more than thirty years, Mr Wilde. I know when my patients are lying to me.’ He resumed his seat and sipped at his wine reflectively. ‘And I believed Agnès’s denials, equally. Her love for her father was complicated. It contained what nowadays we call an “erotic charge”. Are you familiar with the term?’

‘It sounds expensive,’ said Oscar. ‘Eros always was the costliest of the gods.’

Dr Blanche obliged Oscar with a little laugh. ‘Agnès’s feelings for her father troubled her,’ he went on. ‘They may indeed have been what drove her to her suicide; but, if they were, it was because of frustration not fulfilment.’

‘So Agnès and Edmond La Grange did not make the beast with two backs?’ mused Oscar, draining his glass slowly. He glanced towards the doctor. ‘Are you familiar with the term?’

Blanche smiled. ‘No, but I catch its drift. It sounds uncomfortable.’ The doctor got to his feet and turned towards Oscar, putting his hands together behind his back and raising himself on his toes as though he were addressing a classroom of students. ‘Mr Wilde,’ he said, ‘La Grange and his daughter were not lovers, I’m certain of that. Agnès told me that she was ready to take an oath on the Holy Bible that she had not shared her father’s bed. She knew that to do so would be a sin. She told me that she would never share the bed of a man she could not marry.’

‘She spoke of sin, did she? She had thoughts of matrimony even? You surprise me.’ Oscar placed his empty wine glass on the side table next to him. ‘She was a virgin then?’ he asked, sitting forward and looking up at Blanche.

The doctor raised an amused eyebrow. ‘I did not say that, Mr Wilde. She was an actress. She had a lover, I believe. Quite recently acquired.’

‘Not your son?’

‘No, not Jacques-Emile — though she spoke of him to Jacques-Emile.’

‘Did she mention his name?’

‘I don’t believe so. He was an older man, I think.’

‘Ah,’ sighed Oscar. “‘The older man”: there’s a term with which we’re both familiar. I don’t know a more depressing turn of phrase, do you?’