'Be free, my Ariel! At least for this afternoon ... Go back to Gower Street. Get to grips with your wife's solicitor. I'm looking in briefly on Inspector Gilmour. I need to be certain he'll be with us tomorrow night. Then I have my a.s.signation with the Hon. the Reverend George Daubeney-in Beak Street, behind the arras. He a.s.sures me I'll not be disappointed ... And then, Robert, believe it or not, I am going home. I am returning to the bosom of my family. I shall be dining with my wife tonight.'

'I'm glad to hear it,' I said, suddenly shaking my friend warmly by the hand. 'That's as it should be, Oscar. And tomorrow?'

'Tomorrow is the thirteenth,' he said. 'Tomorrow is another day.'

'Shall we take breakfast?' I asked.

'No, not tomorrow,' he said, waving his swordstick towards a pa.s.sing cab. 'Tomorrow, Robert, I shall be spending the day in Eastbourne. I shall be taking the early train. And you, Robert, if you would be so kind, if you can spare the time, will be spending the day in t.i.te Street. Mr Heron-Allen will not trouble you. Mrs Heron-Allen is back in town, so Mr Heron-Allen, also, is returning to the bosom of his family ... Tomorrow, Robert, I need you to be Constance's guardian angel. Go to t.i.te Street tomorrow morning at ten o'clock, Robert. And, until I send you word, do not let my wife out of your sight.'

The seating plan for the Socrates Club dinner at the Cadogan Hotel on Friday 13 May 1892 Oscar Wilde The Hon. the Rev. George Daubeney Willie Hornung Edward Heron-Allen Lord Alfred Douglas Arthur Conan Doyle Lord Drumlanrig Robert Sherard Walter Sickert Inspector Roger Ferris Bram Stoker Charles Brookfield Inspector Archy Gilmour Alphonse Byrd

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH.

In south-west London, Friday 13 May 1892 was as Sunday 1 May had been: a crisp, cold day, though the sun shone clear and bright. I did as Oscar had asked. I arrived at 16 t.i.te Street, Chelsea, at a minute before ten o'clock. Arthur the butler seemed to have been expecting me, but Constance did not. When Arthur showed me into the first-floor drawing room I found Mrs Wilde seated at the table by the window, reading a book.

She looked up and, as she saw me, she cried out: 'Robert! What a lovely surprise! You've just missed Oscar. He's gone to Eastbourne. You will stay and visit with me instead? I am so happy to see you. Edward's wife has come home. He's returned to his nest. I've no one to play with. I'm all alone.'

She closed her book. She got to her feet and ran towards me and kissed me lightly on the mouth. She thought nothing of it, I am certain: it was just her way. I held her in my arms. I felt the warmth of her body against mine. I revelled in the softness of her touch. Oscar had told me, not long before-one night, at the Albemarle Club, when we had drunk two bottles of champagne that he could no longer love his wife as a husband should. 'I don't blame her, poor creature-I blame nature,' he said. 'Nature is disgusting. It takes beauty and it defiles it. It defaces the ivory-white body we have adored with the vile cicatrices of maternity. It is loathsome. It befouls the altar of the soul.'

I had known Constance for eight years, since the time of her engagement to Oscar, and, to me, her allure had increased, not diminished, across the years. She was now thirty-four and her figure was a touch fuller than it had been in the days of her virginity, but time and motherhood had given her a bloom-a radiance-that she had lacked as a girl. When I first met her, her natural loveliness was masked by her natural reticence. She was pretty, but she was so shy she was almost gauche. Now she was beautiful and, though still sometimes awkward among strangers, as a rule she had a composure-an una.s.suming self-confidence-that I found utterly compelling. Oscar was my dearest friend: being with him was always exhilarating, but, to be candid, it was not always comfortable. In Oscar's company I was often on edge: in Constance's company I was always at ease.

When I released her from my arms, she did not move away from me. She looked up into my eyes and smiled. I wanted to kiss her again. Instead, I glanced towards the table by the window and said, 'What are you reading?'

She blushed. 'My own book, I am ashamed to say!' She broke from me and, laughing, covered her face with her hands. 'I have been reading my own stories, Robert!'

'Is this your new book?' I asked, moving with her to the table. 'I loved your first book, as you know.'

'They were children's fairy stories, Robert,' she teased. 'You can't have "loved" them!'

'I did,' I insisted. 'What is the new book called?'

She picked up the slender volume, bound in blue leather, and pa.s.sed it to me. 'A Long Time Ago,' she said. 'More fairy stories. Oscar has been most complimentary about them.'

'I shall be, too!' I declared. 'Read me one, will you, Constance?' I pressed the book into her hands. 'Read them all to me!'

'You are ridiculous, Robert,' she said, but she did as I asked.

We sat together all morning, side by side, at the table in the front window of t.i.te Street. The stories were delightful, as charming and fantastical as Oscar's own fairy tales, but not quite so melancholy, nor so baroque in their phrasing. Each time Constance finished one of the tales, I pressed her to start another. Each time she protested; each time she acquiesced. And while she read, turning the pages of the book with her right hand, I held her left hand in mine. Now and then, as she read, she lifted her eyes from the page and smiled at me. Once, when I had laid the back of her hand flat against the table and was slowly caressing her palm with the tips of my fingers, she asked: 'What are you doing, Robert?'

'I am studying the lines on your hand,' I said. 'I want to know what the future holds for you.'

She closed her fingers over mine. 'Do not look too close,' she said. 'Even Mrs Robinson will not tell me all that she sees hidden in my hand.'

At a little after twelve noon, Gertrude Simmonds, the boys' governess, knocked on the drawing-room door. She was holding little Vyvyan Wilde by the hand. She had come to ask if Mrs Wilde wanted to join her sons for luncheon and to enquire whether or not I would also be of the party.

'Oh, yes,' cried Constance getting to her feet and going to the door, 'Mr Sherard certainly wants to see the boys.'

As Constance was talking to the governess, and kissing her young son, I stood looking out of the window onto t.i.te Street. On the pavement opposite, standing beneath a lamp-post, looking up at the house, I recognised two familiar figures: Antipholus, the black boy from Astley's Circus, and his sister, Bertha. He was holding his sister's hand and she was holding the wooden hoop that George Daubeney had given her. When they saw me staring down at them, Antipholus raised his arm and gave me a friendly wave. I raised my arm and waved back.

'Who are you waving to?' asked Constance.

'n.o.body,' I lied, turning towards her. 'Somebody I thought I recognised,' I added, 'but I was mistaken.' When I turned back to the window, Antipholus and Bertha were gone.

We lunched with the boys in the nursery. They were delightful children, well-mannered and wise beyond their years. When Cyril said, 'Papa is teaching us Latin, but it's all Greek to me,' and I laughed, Cyril added proudly: 'That's my own joke, you know-it isn't one of Papa's.' When we had eaten, we left the boys to take their afternoon rest and returned to the drawing room.

Over coffee, Constance told me how much she loved Oscar and what a perfect husband and father she found him to be.

When I said, 'I fear he neglects you sometimes,' she protested.

'Never! We are always in his thoughts-always. I expect a telegram to arrive from Eastbourne any minute now. He sends me loving messages wherever he goes.'

'What's he doing in Eastbourne?' I asked. 'Do you know?'

'It will be some literary matter, I expect,' she said sweetly, 'or Bosie suddenly needing a breath of sea air. Oscar needs more stimulus than we can supply here. I understand that.' She smiled at me. 'I don't resent it. I am married to Oscar Wilde, the cleverest man in Europe. And one of the kindest. I count my blessings, Robert.'

A silence fell between us. I glanced towards the window.

'Before lunch,' she said, 'when you waved to someone in the street, was it a young black boy and a little girl?'

I looked down into my coffee cup and murmured that it was.

'They are often there,' said Constance. 'I believe Oscar sends them to watch over me.'

That afternoon in t.i.te Street gave me something that none of my three marriages has afforded me-a taste of domestic contentment. Constance and I played piquet; we took afternoon tea (with Mrs Ryan's best scones and home-made plum jam and thick, b.u.t.tercup-yellow Cornish cream); together we helped Gertrude Simmonds bath the boys and I read them one of Constance's fairy tales as their bedtime treat. At six o'clock, Arthur lit a small fire in the drawing-room grate and Constance and I stood in front of it and raised a gla.s.s of sherry wine to one another. It was all so uncomplicated and easy, so comfortable and comforting. It was what, I realised, I most wanted for my life.

As the clock on the mantelpiece struck seven, we heard the sound of hooves and rattling wheels in the street. Constance ran towards the window.

'That'll be Oscar,' she cried.

We looked down as a hansom cab drew up outside the front door. We expected somebody to step out, but n.o.body did. Instead, a boy suddenly jumped down from the driver's seat. It was Nat, the freckle-faced page-boy from the Cadogan Hotel. He was holding an envelope.

A moment later, Arthur entered the drawing room bearing the envelope on a small silver salver. 'It's for Mr Sherard, Ma'am.'

'It's from Oscar,' I said. I tore open the envelope and read the note: All is well-and we are ready. Come to the Cadogan now. Come as you are and come at once. Do not delay. Constance will be quite safe. Antipholus is on guard and the police are apprised. Tell my wife nothing-except that her husband loves her and will be home by just after midnight.

I folded the note and slipped it into my jacket pocket. 'I must go,' I said.

'Oscar calls?' she asked. 'Oscar summons?'

'Yes.'

She asked nothing more-not where he was or with whom or why.

'He says he'll be home just after midnight,' I added.

'Oh good,' she said, walking with me to the door, linking her arm with mine. 'I'm glad of that. Give him my love. I am so grateful to him for sending you to me today.' She held her shining face up to mine. 'It has been lovely, has it not?'

'It has been perfect,' I said and I kissed her on the lips.

Twenty minutes later, when I arrived at the private dining room of the Cadogan Hotel, to my amazement, I found the room en fete. Laughter, loud conversation and the sound of clinking gla.s.ses filled the warm and smoky air. 'Everyone seems very jolly,' I remarked to Walter Sickert, whom I found standing alone by the door nursing a large whisky and soda.

'Very jolly,' he repeated. 'You've heard of the condemned man who ate a hearty meal? I think the principle's the same. They're all here and they all seem to be in riotously good form. Have a cigar!' He offered me one of his favourite Manilas. I took it, remembering to put it in my mouth the wrong way round.

'Are we celebrating something?'

'We are,' he said, striking a match and holding it for me. 'That picture I hoped to sell I sold it! No more one-man exhibitions and gallery shows for me. I no longer believe in vomiting your whole past, present and future in a lump into a dealer's room for three weeks-the virginity of the pictures gone ... No, like a cunning mother, I now marry my daughters one by one, quietly, some well, some badly. This one-well! Have another cigar-for later.' He pushed a second Manila into my breast pocket.

Wat was clearly already drunk. It was barely half past seven and yet I sensed that he was not alone. The mood in the room appeared to border on the hysterical. To the right of us I caught side of the Hon. the Reverend George Daubeney, his face flushed with wine, his right hand resting on Willie Hornung's head, apparently offering the lad some kind of absolution. Just in front of us stood Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker, booming at one another.

'News of the giant rat of Sumatra,' cried Arthur. 'That is a tale for which the world is not yet prepared!'

'Tell it, man,' thundered Bram, beating the doctor on the shoulder with a clenched fist. 'Tell it-and terrify your public. That's what they want. That's what I plan to do with my vampires.'

'You will, Stoker, you will,' chipped in Charles Brookfield from the sidelines.

'I'd better go and show my face to Oscar,' I murmured to Wat Sickert.

'No need,' said Wat, draining his gla.s.s. 'He'll have seen you. He doesn't miss a thing.'

Oscar was standing with Lord Alfred Douglas and Francis, Lord Drumlanrig, at the far end of the room, by the head of the dining-room table. Sickert was right. Oscar had already noticed me. As I pushed my way towards him through the throng, he struck the side of his champagne gla.s.s with a fish knife and called for silence.

'Mr Sherard has arrived. Dinner can be served. A table, gentlemen, a table.'

The company gathered and shifted around the dining table, peering at the name cards to check their places.

'The menu and the wines are as they were when last we met,' Oscar called out, 'but the placement has been altered in certain instances.' With his forefinger he beckoned George Daubeney and Willie Hornung towards him. 'I'm having the padre and the Gentlewoman's friend on either side of me.'

'I see that I'm below the salt as usual,' remarked Charles Brookfield, 'between the police and the club secretary.' He called down the table: 'Am I your chief suspect, Oscar?'

'You're seated with men of rank, Charles,' Oscar answered genially. 'I thought that you would appreciate that.'

When everyone had found his place, Oscar tapped his champagne gla.s.s once more. 'Silence, gentlemen, please.' We took up our positions behind our chairs and looked towards our host. He lowered his gla.s.s and returned the fish knife to the table. As the room fell quiet, he held the moment. Lit from below as he was by the table's flickering candlelight he looked like a figure in one of Wat Sickert's theatrical paintings: the leading actor standing before the footlights about to deliver the prologue to the play. In truth, of course, that's what he was.

Slowly his eyes scanned ours. 'Gentlemen,' he said, eventually, 'thank you for your kind attendance tonight. I am grateful to you all for making yourselves available at such short notice. When we have eaten, I shall explain exactly why I have brought you here- and why I have asked Inspector Gilmour and Inspector Ferris of Scotland Yard to be of the party. We welcome them wholeheartedly to this unusual gathering of the Socrates Club.' He nodded in the direction of the police officers as a low murmur of approval rumbled around the dining table. 'They've not come unaccompanied,' he added, casting his eyes towards the dining-room door. 'I understand there are eight policeman in and around the hotel tonight-one of whom you'll recognise, Robert.' He lowered his voice and leant across the table towards me. 'The ugly little man from the Turkish bath turns out not to be an a.s.sa.s.sin, but a police spy. And it's not us he's been watching~ Robert. It's Lord Rosebery. Apparently, the former Foreign Secretary and his a.s.sociates are kept under permanent police surveillance ...

Lord Alfred Douglas clicked his tongue impatiently. 'I thought you said dinner was about to be served, Oscar.'

'Quite right, Bosie.' Oscar beamed at his young friend and nodded apologetically to the table. 'Let us say Grace and, as we do so, let us pause for a moment and remember those we have lost since we last met in this room a dozen nights ago.'

Oscar lowered his head and closed his eyes and with his long, elegant fingers gripped the back of his chair. We stood in silence for at least a minute-it may have been longer-and then, without prompting, George Daubeney spoke the Grace.

'In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Benedic, Domine, nos et haec tua dona, quae de tua largitate sumus sumpturi, per Christum Dominum nostrum.'

In unison, briskly and quite loudly, we chorused: 'Amen.'

As we sat down to eat, the heightened festive spirit that I had sensed as I arrived in the room returned immediately. As the hotel waiter-our only server-laid the hors d'oeuvres before us, Alphonse Byrd, the only one of us in evening dress, moved about the table serving the first of several fine wines. It was an extraordinary cremant d'Alsace that bubbled and sparkled and complemented the caviar, lobster and pickled tunny quite perfectly. I was seated opposite Wat Sickert. He raised his gla.s.s towards me and whispered: 'The condemned men enjoyed a hearty meal.'

As I sipped my wine, I looked about the table. I looked at each of the faces in turn. I could not see a murderer in our midst. Not one of my fellow diners appeared to me to have the mark of Cain upon him.

Even Edward Heron-Allen-talking loudly across the table to Lord Alfred Douglas of fornication among male monkeys in the rain-forests of Peru- gave the impression of a man with a wholly easy conscience. At every corner of the table, I saw guilt-free fellows engaged in comfortable conversation. At the foot of the table, Charles Brookfield was chatting amiably with the two police inspectors. At the head of it, Oscar, smiling, was holding both George Daubeney and Willie Hornung by the sleeve. He leant across them and called to Conan Doyle: 'How goes the sculpture, Arthur? It's nearly finished, I imagine.'

'It is, as it happens. Did Touie tell you?'

'No-but you have been so deeply engaged upon it I a.s.sumed that you were working to a deadline. It is a gift I take it-for a birthday?'

'Right again, Oscar. But whose birthday? Are your powers of deduction up to that?'

'It's bound to be a lady,' said Oscar. 'No man cares about giving a birthday present to another man.'

'Except when you give me cigarette cases for mine!' cried Bosie. 'Beautiful cigarette cases, charmingly inscribed.' He produced one from his pocket and waved it in the air.

Oscar ignored his young friend. He continued to look beadily at Conan Doyle: 'It won't be for your wife, Arthur her birthday is in August, I remember. It won't be for your mistress-I know you, my friend: you're a gentleman: you'll never have one. So, it must be for some female relation ... your mother, your aunt-or your sister?' He let go of Daubeney's sleeve and with his right hand banged the table triumphantly. 'Do you have a sister, Arthur? I think you do!'

'He does,' cried Willie Hornung, 'and she is very beautiful. Very, very beautiful.'

Oscar swivelled round in his chair and looked upon Conan Doyle's young friend. I saw tears glistening in both their eyes. 'You are in earnest, Willie, I can tell. You are in love with Arthur's sister. I'm certain of it. Propose to her, my boy-on her birthday!'

Willie Hornung turned crimson and Arthur Conan Doyle laughed and beat his fingers on the table by way of applause. Oscar called down the table to Alphonse Byrd who had just taken his seat between Charles Brookfield and Inspector Gilmour. 'Byrd!' he cried. 'Byrd! What does Socrates say about matrimony? You're a cla.s.sicist, you're a New College man, you must know ...'

Suddenly the table fell silent and all eyes turned on Alphonse Byrd. The club secretary hesitated for a moment, then rose slowly to his feet and looked towards Willie Hornung.

'"My advice to you is to get married. If you find a good wife, you will be happy. If not, you will become a philosopher."'

'Yes!' cried Oscar rapturously, leading the table in a chorus of laughter and applause.

As we ate our meal the mood in the room remained mellow, but as one course followed another-and Byrd and the waiter filled and refilled our gla.s.ses with fine wine-the banter subsided. The conversation around the table continued easily, but the edge of hysteria began to dissipate. At ten o'clock-I was seated next to Conan Doyle and he checked his Hunter regularly-when the roast meats had been cleared away, but before the desserts or savouries had been served, I watched as Oscar summoned the waiter and, shaking his head, whispered some instructions in his ear. He then said out loud, to no one in particular, 'We are all much calmer now. I think we can begin.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.

ANSWERS.

Oscar pushed back his chair and laid his napkin carefully on the table. Alphonse Byrd was at his side with a fresh gla.s.s and a small decanter of yellow wine. 'Just half a gla.s.s, thank you, Byrd. I've work to do.'

He tapped the tips of his fingers lightly on the table's edge and rose to his feet. The room fell silent. The candles flickered obligingly.