“LOOK AT THE POSTSCRIPT”
“Who are these ‘spies’?” I asked, as our cab rumbled through Clarence Gate, out of Regent’s Park and into Baker Street.
“Good-hearted boys, like Jimmy there,” he said. “Street boys—ragamuffins, urchins, call them what you will. Their lives may be rackety and irregular by the standards of the sons of stockbrokers and civil servants, but they are good lads, my ‘spies,’ hard-working and as honest as the day is long.”
“They work for you? You pay them?”
“I give them the odd sixpence and keep them out of mischief. They run errands for me—carry messages about town, deliver flowers, get me cabs…”
“And ‘spy’ on your behalf?”
He smiled. “When necessary. They are my roving eyes and ears, Robert, and—more to the point—my roving legs. As you’ve observed, I’m not much given to exercise. I wasn’t built for it. These lads are nimble and fleet of foot. They can throw a girdle round the capital in forty minutes. Each one’s my Ariel.”
“How many of them do you have, then?”
“Across London? Two dozen perhaps, thirty at the most. I count them among my truest friends. Conan Doyle has given Holmes a similar band of youthful assistants, but I came up with the idea first. Posterity will give me no credit for it, of course—unless you put the record straight. You are my Recording Angel, Robert. My reputation rests with you.”
Oscar did not keep a diary, but he knew that I did and he encouraged me to do so. He was fond of remarking that he had put his genius into his life but only his talent into his work, and he told me, regularly, that he was relying on me and my journal to show posterity where his genius lay.
I took this responsibility seriously. For example, when we parted after our encounter with Gerard Bellotti, the first thing I did on getting back to my room was write up the record of the morning’s adventure. Indeed, it would be true to say that, during the years when Oscar and I were closest, my journal is as much an account of his life as it is of my own. Perhaps that is not so surprising. His life was infinitely more remarkable than mine.
Re-reading my diary of January 1890, what do I appear to have achieved that month? Very little. My days, it seems, were spent in pursuit of Veronica Sutherland. My evenings, until I met up with Oscar at around 11:00 P.M. for our customary nightcap at the Albemarle Club, were mostly empty. Usually, I dined in my room alone and then wandered the streets of Bloomsbury and Soho for an hour or so. Occasionally, I treated myself to a solitary glass of beer at a public house in Chenies Street. I went to the theatre twice (to the Drury Lane pantomime and, with Oscar, to the revival of an H. J. Byron farce at the Criterion) and one evening, so the record shows, I took a young lady named Lucy (of whom I have no recollection whatsoever) to the Agricultural Hall to witness an American cowboy on horseback race a French bicyclist on a penny-farthing! (I reckoned the outing “a costly failure”: the novelty of the entertainment quickly wore thin and Lucy, apparently, spent the entire evening explaining to me that her brother would be most anxious if she were not home by half-past ten.)
In the exact same period, by contrast, Oscar, according to my journal, dined out on twenty-six nights out of thirty-one. He spent his evenings in the company of the outstanding personalities of the age—poets, playwrights, politicians, artists, and actresses, men and women whose names still resonate half-a-century later—and his days seated at Thomas Carlyle’s writing-desk, writing, reading, reflecting. That month, while I wrote not one worthwhile word (and appear to have read nothing of note except, appropriately enough, Jerome K. Jerome’s Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow), Oscar’s reading encompassed (to my certain knowledge) Goethe, Balzac, Baudelaire, Plato, Petrarch, and Edgar Allan Poe, and his writing included two articles, one lecture, three poems, the outline of a play (for George Alexander), and 10,000 words of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
He made light of his industry. (His account of spending a morning deciding to place a comma in a paragraph, and then spending the afternoon deciding to take it out again, was one of his favourite jeux d’esprit.) And he made a point when we met of enquiring about my endeavours before giving news of his own. As soon as we had each been served with our eleven o’clock glass of champagne, he would ask, “How is Miss Sutherland today? Is she still pretty? Is she still pleasing? Is she more pliant?” He gave the impression of being truly interested. Oscar had the charmer’s gift of looking you in the eye and making you feel that, in that moment, he cared more about you than about anybody else in the world.
Usually, once we had spent five minutes discussing Veronica (and her infuriating ability to encourage and resist me at the same time), Oscar would throw in a casual reference to Aidan Fraser. Did Miss Sutherland have news of her fiancé? “No, we never speak of him. He is her fiancé—you understand?” Of course, of course, but had I chanced to see him? “In the hallway, in passing.” Yes—and? “And nothing, Oscar. He said good-day. That was all. He did not ask after you. He did not mention our case.”
“‘Our case’!” Oscar would explode. “It’s his case now! And he appears determined to keep it to himself.”
One evening towards the middle of January—it was the evening of our outing to the Byron farce at the Criterion—Oscar said to me, “Do you not think it more than curious, Robert, more than strange, perverse in fact, that friend Fraser—whom you encounter sometimes twice, sometimes three times a week—makes no reference—no reference of any kind—to his ongoing investigations in the matter of poor Billy Wood? Has he made a forensic examination of the poor boy’s severed head? Has he traced O’Donnell? Has he interviewed Bellotti? He knows of your interest in the matter. He sees you, yet he says nothing.”
“I do not think his behaviour either strange or perverse, Oscar,” I said. “I think it is a matter of professional pride. He wants to solve the mystery in his own way, on his own terms. Veronica has told me as much.”
He pounced. “Has she now? I thought you said that you and she never discuss Fraser…”
“It is Fraser-the-Fiancé we don’t discuss. Occasional references to Fraser-of-the-Yard are permitted.”
Oscar raised a cynical eyebrow. “Do you not also wonder, Robert, why Fraser tolerates you as a rival for his fiancée’s affections?”
Of course, I had wondered this, but I did not want to admit as much to Oscar. “I do not think Fraser sees me a rival,” I said quickly. “He works long hours. He appears grateful to me for keeping Veronica occupied and entertained in his absence.”
Oscar said nothing, but gave a little murmur suggesting he found my answer less than convincing. After a moment of reflection he added, “All I’ll say is that both Fraser-the-Fiancé and Fraser-of-the-Yard seem oddly uninquisitive. He doesn’t ask you about your intentions towards his bride-to-be. He doesn’t ask me about the ring I removed from the body of the murder victim…”
“He keeps his own counsel,” I said.
“Yes,” said Oscar, “I suppose that’s admirable in its own way.” The thought seemed to amuse him. He threw the remains of yet another cigarette onto the smoking-room fire. “Does Miss Sutherland, at least, make the occasional enquiry about the progress of the case?” he asked.
“She does,” I replied, “but have no fears—I am circumspect.”
“There is no need to be, Robert. Feel free to tell Miss Sutherland everything—especially if it helps you secure another kiss. I’m pleased to hear of her interest. “‘Our case,’” as you call it, has become the unicorn in the corner of the drawing-room: all are aware of it, but no-one mentions it.” He began patting his coat pockets as if feeling for something. “I had a ten-page letter from Arthur Conan Doyle today—ten pages! in a neat Edinburgh hand—and not one reference to the case.” He found the letter and brandished it before me. “Arthur makes extensive enquiries about my ‘spies,’ but says not a word about Billy Wood! Two weeks ago, in my house, in his own hands he held the severed head of the murdered boy—yet today he writes to tell me about his plans for a new Sherlock Holmes story and to report, in extenso, that the weather in Southsea is surprisingly clement for the time of year! Come, come, Robert, something’s up.”
I laughed. “Are you suggesting a conspiracy of silence, Oscar?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Read the letter for yourself.” He passed it to me. “It’s mostly about the weather, as you’ll see, but he mentions you, sends you his kind regards—and hopes that, if you read The Sign of Four, you’ll notice the quotation from La Rochefoucauld. Entirely your doing, apparently. I am responsible, it seems, for the references to Goethe and Thomas Carlyle, and for Holmes’s addiction to cocaine.”
It was my turn to raise an eyebrow.
“Since, as you know, Robert, cocaine has never been one of my enthusiasms, I find this a trifle bizarre, but I have no doubt that it is intended as a compliment. Arthur is, essentially, a good man.”
I was glancing through the letter. Conan Doyle’s hand was most precise. “Much of this seems to be about your father, Oscar,” I said.
“Yes. Sir William Wilde was a distinguished eye and ear man in his day—a pioneer, in fact. Arthur, it seems, wishes to follow in his footsteps. He proposes to specialise in ophthalmology. Some people will do anything to get out of Southsea.”
As Oscar was speaking, my eye had moved on and I was reading the passage of the letter that referred to The Sign of Four and Sherlock Holmes’s addiction to cocaine. “I don’t see where he says that you are responsible for Holmes’s addiction, Oscar,” I said.
“He does not say so explicitly, I grant you.”
“He does not say so at all, Oscar. This is not about you. It’s all about Holmes. Arthur simply says that he is anxious that the general reader will not take against Holmes because of the great detective’s weakness for cocaine.”
“Read the next paragraph.”
“‘It was to guard against this that I put a rebuke of my own into the mouth of Dr. Watson.’”
“And what does he have Watson say to Holmes? Read, Robert, read!”
“‘Surely the game is hardly worth the candle…Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed?’”
“Do you not see, Robert? Wearing the mask of Dr. Watson, Dr. Conan Doyle is sending me his own rebuke. A mask tells us so much more than a face…”
I scanned the page again. “I do not see it, Oscar.”
“Arthur does not like the company I keep. I do not mean you, Robert…I mean others. He is fearful for me. He thinks, for ‘mere passing pleasure,’ I am putting at risk the ‘great powers’ with which I’ve been endowed. It is well-meant, I’m sure.”
“I think you are being over-sensitive, Oscar,” I said.
“Look at the postscript,” he replied.
I turned to the final page of the letter.
“In a letter,” Oscar continued, smiling the sly smile he employed when he was about to say something he hoped you would find amusing, “what you cannot read between the lines, you will usually find in the postscript. It is like a codicil to a will. It is where you discover the meat of the matter.”
Beneath Conan Doyle’s signature, I read his postscript: “P.S.: For how long have you known Mr. John Gray?”
I folded the letter and returned it to Oscar. “What do you make of that?” I asked.
“That Arthur did not care for John Gray when they met—which is tedious, for they are both charming, in their different ways. I should have liked them to get on.” Oscar replaced the letter in his coat pocket, tapping it gently as he did so. “It is an interesting communication nonetheless—as much for what it does not tell us as for what it does. Why is there no reference to Inspector Fraser? Why is there no allusion to Billy Wood?”
“Have you replied?” I asked.
“I have,” said Oscar, smiling his sly smile once more. “I have sent the good doctor a detailed report of the weather conditions in the vicinities of Sloane Square, Albemarle Street, and the Strand—together with a line from The Picture of Dorian Gray by way of a postscript.”
“And the line is?”
“‘Nobody ever commits a crime without doing something stupid.’”
“Do you believe it?”
“I do. I know it to be true.”
“And you have sent the line to Arthur for what reason?”
“By way of a gentle rebuke of my own. I want him to know that I am still on the case. That is all. He may choose to ignore the unicorn in the corner. I choose not to. I am going to solve this mystery, Robert. We are going to solve this mystery, Robert!”
“We are indeed, Oscar,” I said, raising my glass to him. His enthusiasm was infectious—and endearing.
“And I think you will find our next set of interviews especially rewarding,” he continued. “I am hopeful that one of Mr. Bellotti’s luncheon guests will supply us with the final clue.”
“‘The final clue’?” I expostulated. “I’m not sure I yet have the first clue, Oscar!”
“Come, Robert. We are nearly there. Surely you see that? Re-read your notes, consult your journal. And meet me next Tuesday at noon. Shall we rendez-vous at Westminster Bridge—on the north side? I am off to Oxford for five days. John Gray is coming with me. I am to give a lecture on ‘Poetry and Suffering.’ The truth is, a poet can survive anything but a misprint—but is Oxford the place for the truth? I don’t know. All I know is that I shall attempt to inflame the undergraduates with my words and John Gray will then attempt to pacify them with locks of my hair. We shall have fun. Take care while I am gone, Robert.”
Oscar told me—quite clearly—that he was going to Oxford for five days. But four days later—quite clearly—I saw him in a two-wheeler travelling along the Strand.
In fact, it was Veronica Sutherland who saw him first. We had been lunching at the Savoy Hotel—an absurd extravagance on my part, but it was a cold and gloomy day, and Veronica had told me that she had a craving for the warmth and excitement of the Savoy’s electric lights—and thus it was that we stepped into the Strand at a little after half-past three. We stood together on the pavement, arm in arm. I was gazing down the street, pretending to be looking for an empty cab, but hoping not to find one (the train journey from Charing Cross to Sloane Square was both quick and inexpensive), when Veronica suddenly cried, “Look! Across the road. It’s Mr. Wilde—with a beautiful young lady. Do you think she is an actress?”
I turned to look in the direction in which Veronica was pointing and, indeed, there in a cab that was turning off the Strand into the small side-street that leads to the back of the Lyceum Theatre, was Oscar. It was certainly he. He was extravagantly dressed, in a bottle-green winter coat with an astrakhan collar, and his head was thrown back in laughter. He looked as happy as I have ever seen him. Oscar was certainly Oscar, but the young lady was by no means beautiful. Though I could not see her features distinctly—there was a hood to her cape—I could see enough to know that she was the young woman from Soho Square, the young woman with the disfigured face.
“Do you think she is an actress?” repeated Veronica.
“I have no idea,” I said, “but I would not call her beautiful.” “Would you not?” said Veronica. “Men have such odd ideas about women’s beauty. I would say she is very lovely indeed. Mr. Wilde has a passion for beauty, has he not?”
“And a horror of ugliness,” I said. “I have known him to cross streets to avoid the sight of someone he considered ill-favoured. He regards ugliness as a form of malady—which is why I find it strange to see him in the company of that particular young lady.” The cab had now disappeared from view in the gathering gloom of dusk.
“She is not ill-favoured, Robert. If you think she is, you are the one who is strange.”
“Perhaps all women seem plain to me in comparison with you,” I said.
“You are very gallant, Mr. Sherard,” she said, squeezing my arm with hers and turning me in the direction of Trafalgar Square. “I should enjoy a promenade with such a gallant gentleman. Would you walk me to Charing Cross? We can then catch the twopenny tube.”
I leant towards her and kissed her on the forehead. “Tell me,” she said as we proceeded along the street, “I have been meaning to ask—for how long has Mr. Wilde known Mr. John Gray?”