The Dead Assassin

CHAPTER 12 A WONDERFUL EVENING ENDS HORRIBLY

Conan Doyle and Jean Leckie emerged from the Haymarket Theatre to discover that the fog had grown ponderously dense, so much so that the usher’s torches stained the fog with a seething crimson glare that made the theatergoers waiting for carriages and cabs appear like well-dressed citizens queuing to enter Hell. Conan Doyle had thought ahead to retain the four-wheeler for the entire evening, and now it drew up at the curb and he escorted Miss Leckie toward it, already practicing what he should say as he bid her good night. The coachman dismounted and held the carriage door.

“I am so sorry the evening proved a disappointment—”

“Heavens, no!” she interrupted. “I have had the most wonderful day of my life! Feeding the swans in Hyde Park. Shopping for toys at the Emporium. Attending the theater and then meeting the Prince of Wales and your friend Oscar Wilde — all on the same day! I am certain I shall not sleep at all tonight.”

“I find that a glass of warm milk often helps to—”

She interrupted him with a laugh and took both his large hands in hers.

“But I don’t want to sleep. I want to remember every last detail.” Her smile took on a special quality. “But mostly, I want to think of a dashing and handsome man I have become good friends with.” She suddenly bounced up on the balls of her feet and bussed him on the cheek. It was a quick peck. Quite chaste. The kiss of familiar friends.

But it was a kiss that knocked him dizzy.

Conan Doyle watched, rapt, as the young woman climbed into the carriage. She wrung his heart with a final smile and then pulled her skirts clear as the driver closed the carriage door. He suddenly realized he still did not know her address and frantically rapped on the glass. She lowered the window and looked at him inquisitively.

“Have you a calling card?”

She searched in her purse and handed him a card. Even the calligraphied script was elegantly feminine. He smiled and doffed his hat to her.

“Where to, sir?” the driver asked.

“Blackheath,” Conan Doyle said, and read aloud from the card: “Number 34 Loxley Avenue.”

“Be sure not to lose it,” she chided playfully.

“I shall guard it with my life.”

The cabbie shook the reins and the carriage lumbered away. She called out “au revoir” and left him with a wave before drawing up the window glass.

Conan Doyle slipped the precious calling card into his breast pocket and patted it reassuringly. The day that had begun so badly was ending on a note of triumph. He noticed Wilde’s waiting carriage and strode toward it. Vaguely he registered two large men in bowler hats sauntering toward him, but his mind was bounding in the fields of happiness and the cold hard pavement felt as if he were walking on cushions.

The men parted to pass around him, when OOOF! One of them stumbled into him; at the same moment he felt a blow in the kidneys that drove the wind from his lungs. Stunned, he staggered to keep his footing and threw a shocked look behind at their retreating backs. At that moment, one turned and flashed him a cheeky grin. As they marched shoulder-to-shoulder into the wall of scarlet-tinged fog, he recognized the vaudevillian bowler hats and the long black raincoats.

Cypher’s men.

Was this a less-than-subtle warning that he was being watched? It was an unwelcome end to what had been a wonderful evening, but Conan Doyle shook it off and readjusted his dress as he walked to the waiting carriage.

“I saw that,” Wilde said, as Conan Doyle climbed into the carriage and slumped into the seat opposite.

“Saw what?”

“Those two clumsy oafs who collided with you. At first I thought they merely wished to dance, but then I realized my mistake: Arthur Conan Doyle does not dance. You should have informed them your ticket was full.”

“Just a couple of drunken swells.” He did not want to get involved in a discussion that could lead to revealing his adventure with Cypher.

“I also watched you bid good night to the ravishing Miss Leckie. And I saw the kiss.”

“What? Oh, that? Just a friendly peck.”

“Very friendly. My wife, Constance, no longer kisses me with such ardor.” Wilde tapped on the ceiling and called out, “Home to the Albemarle, Gibson.”

As the carriage jolted away, Conan Doyle said, “What do you mean about Constance? And why are you always at your club? Why are you not living at Tite Street? Are you two having… difficulties?”

“No difficulty at all. The simple truth is that I am no longer in love with my wife…” Wilde interrupted himself to spark a lucifer and ignite a Turkish cigarette. “… and the indifference is reciprocated.”

Conan Doyle’s scalp prickled with disbelief. “But you cannot be serious, Oscar. What about your marriage?”

Wilde chuckled ironically.

“What about your sacred vows?”

Wilde chuckled louder. “When it comes to matrimony, there are two types of people: those it is suited to and those it is not; unfortunately, it is the latter who insist on getting married.”

“But Constance is a great beauty. An adoring wife. A wonderful mother to your two strapping boys.”

“All true. Nonetheless, I feel nothing for her anymore. When Constance and I married we agreed to try matrimony for seven years. We have been ball and chain these thirteen years now. Six more than our original bargain. We remain very fond of one another, but our marriage has run its course. To continue the pretense would be dishonest. And Oscar Wilde abhors dishonesty.”

His friend’s offhand confession stunned the Scotsman into momentary silence. Finally he spoke up and asked, “But what about your children? What of Vyvyan and Cyril?”

Wilde released a tortured sigh. “Ah yes, children, the barbed wire that binds a man and woman together at the heart.”

“No, you cannot divorce Constance. It would be the ruin of you.”

But the fact that Wilde could voice such outrageous things out loud set Conan Doyle’s mind reeling with giddy possibilities.

Wilde gestured with his lit cigarette as he spoke. “Of course, Constance will keep Tite Street as her domicile and the children will remain with her. I shall visit as regularly as I am able. In truth, I suspect they will notice little difference.”

“But what about appearances? What will people think?”

“I have no doubt people will be scandalized. The Great British Public is never truly happy unless it has a scandal to gossip about. But society and appearances can go hang. Society does not care a jot for my happiness.”

Conan Doyle sat in stunned silence, heart skipping, brain bubbling over with thoughts he could no longer suppress. He had great affection for his wife. He could never abandon Touie, no matter what. But for years they had lived more like brother and sister. He was a physical man and longed for passion and the sensual pleasures of romance. He could, as many gentlemen did, visit one of the high-class “introduction” houses scattered about London. Touie had as much as given her permission, albeit obliquely. However, as a physician, Conan Doyle worried too much about the ravages of syphilis to risk it. But now, Wilde’s confession seemed to give him tacit approval to seek a paramour. What if he pursued happiness with Jean Leckie — discreetly? Would society condemn him for it? Could he ever be like Oscar? Could he not care what the world thought of him?

Wilde used the opportunity to light up an opium-tipped cigarette. He lowered the window to toss the match out, allowing a chill tendril of fog to snake in through the open window and coil above their heads like a question mark. With his next breath, he blew it to atoms by exhaling a stream of his own narcotic fog.

Conan Doyle’s brooding suddenly erupted in an outburst of honesty, things he had not allowed himself up until now to say aloud, to even think. “I, too, have something to share. I confess I find myself embroiled in the moral crisis of a lifetime.”

Wilde sniffed at the comment. “Moral crisis? I suffer those daily. But please, do go on, it sounds so much more interesting than what I was about to say.”

“I’m sure you can guess what I hint at.”

“The pulchritudinous Miss Leckie?”

Conan Doyle nodded grimly.

“But I do not see the cause of your dilemma.”

“Although I have only known Jean scarcely two days, she has given me certain signs of encouragement — I think you know what I mean — and I believe that something could well come of it.”

“I am listening.”

“You know that Touie has had the consumption for years. By now the disease is far advanced. Every morning I am relieved to awaken and find that she still draws breath…” He trailed off as his throat began to constrict. He swallowed his sorrow and continued. “I know the inevitable will happen. Perhaps soon. Perhaps not so soon. But what am I to do? I made a vow on our wedding day and I must remain true to that vow. And yet I have feelings for Miss Leckie. Powerful feelings. She is possessed of great beauty and a keen intellect. Jean is the type of woman one is lucky to encounter once in a lifetime. But I am morally forbidden from pressing my suit. What am I to do, Oscar? I feel as though my soul is torn apart.”

His friend remained sequestered behind the flaring orange coal of his opium cigarette for a moment and then spoke in a low and serious voice: “You must follow the Wildean Maxim.”

“And what is that?”

“I don’t know. I just made it up. There is no Wildean Maxim. But if there were, it would be this: ‘Do whatsoever makes you happy.’”

“That’s hardly profound.”

“True, but it has worked for me thus far.”

Abruptly, the carriage rumbled to a standstill and swayed violently as the driver clambered down. He appeared at the window and Wilde drew down the glass. Gibson tugged loose the muffler that had been masking his nose and mouth and coughed up a plug of fog before he could speak.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, master, but the fog’s thick as treacle and I can’t see no further than the horses’ snouts. All this while I been looking for Albemarle Street, only I can’t seem to find it. I’m sorry, sir, but I reckon we’re lost.”

Wilde shook his head calmly. “You misunderstand, Gibson, we are not lost. Oscar Wilde is never lost. We have merely misplaced London.”

“Well, that’s as may be, sir, but if you wish to proceed, I must ask that you and the doctor step down and walk ahead of the carriage.”

Wilde answered the request with a groan.

If the Irishman had reason to complain about the fog while he rode inside the carriage, now as the pair of them trudged the gleaming cobbles ahead of the carriage, a glowing lantern swinging in each man’s grip, he had real reason to complain. The fog was at once chillingly cold while simultaneously suspended with hot particles of ash and scorching embers. Even with their noses and mouths muffled beneath scarves, they wheezed and choked on the stifling air. The fog pumiced their faces raw. Soot sifted down from the skies above, speckling their white shirt collars and cuffs with greasy black smudges — a rain of filth commonly referred to as “the blacks.”

“London is transmuted into Hades and the Thames its Lethe,” Wilde moaned. “If we meet a large red fellow coming in the opposite direction, do not hail him. It will likely be Mephistopheles making the rounds of his kingdom.”

“Do we even know what street we’re on?” Conan Doyle called up to the driver.

“Piccadilly, sir,” Gibson called back. “Or, at least… I hope we are.”

Wilde peered skeptically at the torn-paper silhouettes of trees looming at the edges of the streetlamp’s glow. “Unless the Ritz has been demolished to make way for a forest, I would say yonder lies Green Park. Which suggests that we have overshot Albemarle Street by a considerable—”

“Shush!” Conan Doyle urged, and grabbed one of the horses’ bridles and jerked so that the carriage rumbled to a halt. “Listen. What’s that noise?”

From the roiling fog ahead they heard a faint sound, growing more audible by the moment: wisssshthump… wisssssshthump… wissssssshthump…

Two glowing orbs appeared in the fog ahead. At first Conan Doyle thought they were gas lamps, but as their perspective changed, it became clear the lights were floating toward them, accompanied by that noise: wisssshthump… wisssssshthump… wissssssshthump…

Conan Doyle glanced at his friend, who was staring into the fog with a gaze of dread fixity. “That sound…” Wilde breathed. “The very sound I heard that night.”

Both men froze, listening.

Wisssshthump… wisssssshthump… wissssssshthump…

The sound grew louder. Nearer.

A dim shape appeared. Fog swirled and something with the shape of a carriage tore loose, the two lights its powerful headlamps.

“It’s a steam car!” Conan Doyle said.

Wheezing and hissing, the vehicle trundled toward them and drew up in a squeal of brakes. The driver, whose features could not be dredged from the shadows beneath his tall top hat, leaned around the flat glass windscreen and bellowed in a thick Yorkshire accent: “Why the bloody hell are you sitting in the middle of the road? Shift, you daft buggers!”

Without thinking to object, the two friends took hold of the horses’ harness and led the carriage to the side of the road.

The way clear, the driver leaned back behind the enormous spoked steering wheel and began snatching at levers protruding through the running boards. The gearbox emitted a teeth-curling succession of graunching noises until the driver happened upon a gear more to his liking. The steam engine picked up revs and the vehicle rumbled past, curling wisps of steam from the boiler mixing with the fog, giving the illusion of a man riding past on a small cloud.

Both men stood watching, openmouthed, as the steam car merged with the fog and vanished, and the wisssshthump… wisssssshthump dwindled from hearing.

“How disturbing,” Wilde said.

“What? Meeting a motor vehicle on such a night?”

Wilde shook his head. “No, the driver was wearing a stovepipe hat.” He threw a doubting look at his companion. “Who wears a stovepipe these days?”

But Conan Doyle’s mind was calculating other possibilities. “A steam car,” he said. “Perhaps that’s what you heard the other night. Perhaps a steam car was used to whisk the body away.”

Wilde looked doubtful. “But the noise I heard was not so loud. And that steam car looked as if it could barely accommodate two passengers, with no room to stow the corpse of a large man.”

It seemed a cogent observation, and Conan Doyle mulled on it as they turned the coach around and headed the other way up Piccadilly, back toward Albemarle Street. But they had barely gone twenty feet when they heard a familiar sound: wisssshthump… wisssssshthump… wissssssshthump…

“Sounds like our friend with the steam car is returning,” Wilde noted. “No doubt he is as lost as we are.”

But the sound was quieter this time, and Conan Doyle noticed something missing. “If it’s the steam car driver, I see no coach lights.”

Up ahead, a wispy filament of fog calved from the gray mass, shifting shape until it coalesced as the tenuous shadow of a walking human form.

Slouching fast toward them.

The walking figure crashed from light back into darkness as it passed by the glow of each streetlamp, accumulating solidity with every step.

Wisssshthump… wisssssshthump… wissssssshthump…

It reached the glow of a nearby gas lamp that peeled the shadows from it and revealed a man in tattered clothing. A gray cloak fluttered about his shoulders like ragged bat wings — no, not a cloak, but a wispy veil of steam that wreathed about his head and shoulders. He lurched toward them with a faltering, foot-dragging gait.

“Remember what I said about Mephistopheles?” Wilde muttered in a despairing voice. “I wish to retract it.”

Wisssshthump… wisssssshthump… wissssssshthump…

By now, the shambling figure loomed large. It seemed ready to pass them on the far side of the street when, suddenly… it stopped. The eyes remained fixed ahead while the whole head turned to look their way, as if noticing the carriage for the first time. The figure was a large man with a bull’s chest. His clothes hung from him in rags. A greasy tangle of lank hair fell over both eyes. Thick arms hung leaden at his side. In the ghastly light, he looked like something that had stepped through a portal and arrived hot and smoking from hell. A charnel house reek of corruption shivered in the air.

The two friends stood transfixed, aware of being in the presence of something uncanny and utterly inhuman.

“G-good Lord…!” Conan Doyle breathed in a low whisper.

As if it heard, the head tilted back, the greasy fringe parted, and the white marble of a single eye fixed them with its glaucous gaze.

Time elasticated. The moment stretched to a trembling breaking point ready to snap. Wilde snatched aside the scarf wrapped about his mouth, unable to draw a breath. For long, silent moments, the thing studied them as they studied it. Finally, it seemed to lose interest. The lurid face turned away. Abruptly, the thing resumed its shambling walk and slouched away up Piccadilly, dragging a pall of wispy steam with it.

Wisssshthump… wisssssshthump… wissssssshthump…

Its crippled stride carried it beyond the glow of the streetlamps and the fog smothered it up. The wisssshthump… wisssssshthump… grew fainter until it dropped from hearing.

Shaken to the quivering core of his being, Conan Doyle turned to look first at Wilde and then up at Gibson.

“You both saw it, too?”

The driver sat mouth agape, eyes wide. Too stunned to speak, he nodded dumbly.

“I have seen that face before,” Wilde said in a quavering voice.

“The man called Charlie Higginbotham?”

Wilde nodded manically. “Not a man… a monster.”