The Dead Assassin

CHAPTER 4 THE FOG COMMITTEE

It was the wrong side of 3:00 A.M. when Conan Doyle shuffled after Wilde into the smoking room of Wilde’s club, the Albemarle, both men drooping with fatigue. The space was furnished with enormous winged armchairs upholstered in buttoned oxblood leather, and now they flopped into adjoining seats and groaned in weary unison.

“Dear Lord,” Conan Doyle said. “What a night!”

A waiter bearing a silver salver glided into the room, bowed, and asked, “Would you gentlemen be requiring anything?”

“Ah, Cranford,” Wilde said. “We’ve had a beastly night and the trains do not run due to the fog. Would you have a guest room made up for Doctor Doyle?”

Cranford’s mournful expression telegraphed the news before he spoke it. “With regrets, sir, all our rooms are taken — what with the fog and all.”

“That’s all right,” Conan Doyle said. “A large brandy and I could sleep at the top of Nelson’s column. This chair will seem luxurious by comparison.”

“Bother,” Wilde said. “Oh, and I suppose the kitchens are closed at this hour?”

“I’m afraid so, sir.”

Wilde fished in a pocket, tugged out a half-sovereign and tossed it onto the salver. “Fortunately I possess the skeleton key that opens all doors.”

Cranford stole a glimpse at the coin. “Yes, sir, I believe I can rouse the chef. Anything in particular you fancy?”

“Oh, nothing much: a dozen oysters, some pâté and toast, fresh figs, a good brie and crackers, olives — green, not black — and, oh yes, a bottle of champagne.”

“Very good, sir. Vintage?”

Wilde answered with an insouciant wave. “You choose. I’m not fussy,” and quickly added, “But nothing that isn’t French. Nothing newer than an ’86. And nothing cheaper than five pounds a bottle.”

“I’ll check the cellar.” Cranford shifted his gaze to Conan Doyle. “And for Mister Wilde’s guest?”

“Your best brandy. Triple snit.”

“Ice or water?”

“Ice. Large chunk. Big enough to sink a ship.”

“As you wish, sir.” Cranford flourished his most obsequious bow and slid noiselessly from the room as if gliding on greased runners.

For several minutes, the two friends sat umbrellaed beneath an enervated silence as they awaited their drinks. Then a thought occurred to both men at the same instant.

“We left the body alone for scant minutes—” Conan Doyle began.

“And he was a big fellow—”

“So it would require two men, perhaps more, to lift him—”

“Even then, they could not carry such a weight very far.”

“And yet we heard no carriage come or go.”

“Perhaps the commissioner was right. Perhaps he did get up and walk away.”

Conan Doyle shifted in his chair and pondered. “How does one move a dead body without attracting attention?”

As he spoke the words, Cranford entered the room, balancing a tray with Conan Doyle’s brandy and Wilde’s champagne. Although he had undoubtedly overheard the remark, like all good British servants his demeanor betrayed nothing.

“What do you think, Cranford?” Wilde asked directly. “How would you move a dead body about London without attracting attention?”

The waiter paused to set the brandy down on Conan Doyle’s end table. “In a hearse, sir,” he said mildly. “That’s what they’re for, is it not?”

Wilde and Conan Doyle shared a look of surprised delight.

“Quite so,” Wilde laughed. “And we did see a hearse at the scene of the crime.”

“Yes,” Conan Doyle agreed, “but that hearse had come to take away the body of Lord Howell.”

“Who is to say how many bodies it took away?”

Conan Doyle sat up in his chair, his fatigue suddenly forgotten. “You have a point. And looking back on it now, from the moment he entered the fray, Commissioner Burke seemed in great haste to wrap things up and cinch tight the bow on a murder investigation!”

Cranford popped the cork on the champagne, charged Wilde’s flute with effervescence, and returned the bottle to its ice bucket. “Your food will be forthcoming shortly, sir.”

Conan Doyle waited until the waiter had gone before saying, “While you were alone with the body, did you see a carriage of any kind?”

Wilde shook his head as he swished a mouthful of Perrier-Jouët.

“Hear anything?”

The Irishman allowed champagne to trickle down his throat before adding, “I did hear something. A very odd sound.”

“Oh, really?”

“It was faint, but sounded something like: hissssss-ka-chung… hissssss-ka-chung…”

“A steamer? No, it couldn’t have been, we were too far from the Thames… and no steamers would be running in such a fog.”

They were about to continue when Cranford sailed back in with a knife, fork, and napkin, arranging them silently on Wilde’s table before nodding a bow and dissolving into the fine walnut paneling.

“The man’s a ghost,” Conan Doyle muttered as he hefted his brandy.

“Yes,” Wilde agreed. “Cranford does not exit a room as much as disparate from it.”

Conan Doyle grew serious. “Speaking of servants, you don’t believe for a moment—”

“The Italian valet was somehow involved?” Wilde paused to sip his champagne. “No. I believe the young man is entirely innocent.”

“What about those pamphlets? Awfully incriminating.”

“And awfully convenient. In the space of a few minutes the police commissioner’s man has time to locate the valet’s room, search it, and return with a handful of damning evidence.”

Conan Doyle thoughtfully swirled his brandy. “Careful, Oscar. What you are suggesting smacks of conspiracy.”

“And does that not describe most assassinations? I watched Vicente’s face as those pamphlets were produced. I am convinced he had never seen them before.”

“And then there is the bullet-riddled body of a dead assassin. Three of us saw it and yet the commissioner showed not a jot of interest.”

Wilde shrugged. “You know the police: why let evidence stand in the way of a good trial and execution?”

Wilde’s comment sprung a frown to Conan Doyle’s lips. “If that happens, it will be a grave miscarriage of justice. Surely we must do something?”

“It is no longer our concern. Let us not forget Commissioner Burke’s generous offer of free accommodation in one of Her Majesty’s least luxurious prisons. I have been known to abandon a first-class hotel on a moment’s notice should I find the towels a tad scratchy. I doubt I would find Newgate much to my taste.”

Conan Doyle rumbled a grunt and said, “Point taken. I shall think no more on it.”

Wilde snatched up the day’s newspaper from the end table and vanished behind it, rattling the pages from time to time. But after several moments he lowered the paper and glowered at his friend. “Arthur, that is undoubtedly the noisiest silence I have ever not heard. Could you possibly think a little more quietly?”

Conan Doyle shifted in his chair and apologized. “Sorry. Still… bad business.”

“Very bad for business,” Wilde agreed. “This fog is caning my box office receipts.”

“I meant the murder of Lord Howell.”

“Yes, that, too.” The paper rattled violently and Wilde emitted a strangled sound. “Listen to this review of An Ideal Husband: ‘Whilst Mister Wilde’s words were filled with light and illumination, the same could sadly not be said of the theater, which at one point was so obscured by fog and the footlights so dimmed that the play took on the aspect of a rather witty séance.’”

Wilde crumpled the paper and tossed it to the floor. “This blasted fog is ruining me!”

The paper landed against Conan Doyle’s shins. When he leant forward to pick it up, a large photograph and its accompanying headline caught his eye: “Fog Committee Sees No Solution.”

He glanced at it a moment, and then folded the paper back upon itself and held up the article for his friend to see.

“It seems as though the government has already taken your advice, Oscar. They have appointed a ‘Fog Committee’ to look into the problem.”

Wilde squinted doubtfully at the newspaper. “‘A Fog Committee’?” he echoed, and choked on an ironic laugh. “Forming a committee is always the best possible way to achieve the minimum in the maximum time. Even the spelling is redundant: two m’s, two t’s, and two e’s. Why not save labor and spell it c-o-m-i-t-e? It would save precious ink and be equally ineffectual. Really, what would the world have gained if the English had not had such a spendthrift attitude to consonants?”

Conan Doyle chuckled as his eyes skimmed the text. The committee had concluded that the unusually dense fogs of recent months were purely a function of the vagaries of the English climate and that the much-bruited theory that the burning of coal in any way contributed to the fog was precisely that, a fantastical theory. The article went on to cite the historical record, with bad London fogs being reported as early as the time of King Stephen.

Wilde dredged the champagne bottle from its bucket, recharged his glass, and waved the bottle at Conan Doyle who, by way of declining, rattled the ice in his brandy. Wilde took a long sip, and wryly observed, “The government invariably forms committees to look into problems they have no intention of doing anything about. It is a classic stalling tactic employed in the hopes that either the problem will resolve itself or the government will eventually be voted out of power, at which point they can use the issue to cudgel the incoming administration.”

“Good Lord!” Conan Doyle said, reacting to something he had seen in the paper. “Look at this!” He held the paper up for Wilde to see. Accompanying the article was a photograph of the “Fog Committee.” It was a prime example of the kind of formally posed portrait indulged in by minor dignitaries to boost their sense of self-importance. The Fog Committee comprised of a group of well-dressed gents puffing away at pipes or cigars (apparently with no sense of irony) so that a nimbus of smoke curled about them. The majority were well-fed men in expensive suits with double chins strangling beneath starched collars and cinched-tight ties. There were eight in all — sporting an imposing assortment of beards, muttonchops, and mustachios, most veined with gray whiskers. They looked out of the photograph with the humorless glares of busy-men-who-have-better-things-to-do-than-to-interrupt-overburdened-schedules-with-activities-as-trivial-as-posing-for-a-portrait. One could practically hear the exasperated voice of the photographer trying to corral such men in perpetual motion to hold still long enough to allow light to refract through the lens of a camera and burn their images onto a photographic plate. One figure in particular, a man in a tall stovepipe hat, had turned his head at the vital moment so that his features registered as nothing more than an amorphous gray blur of motion. A caption at the bottom of the photograph identified the committee members, and now Conan Doyle read the names aloud.

“Look here, our friend, Police Commissioner Burke.”

Wilde snorted. “There’s a face badly in need of a fist.”

Conan Doyle chortled at Wilde’s quip and continued reading. “‘The Right Honorable Judge Robert Jordan; Sir Lionel Ransome, financier; Retired Admiral Peregrine Windlesham; Tarquin Hogg, president of the Bank of England; Tristram Oldfield, railroad magnate; George Hardcastle, owner of Oxton Coal…’”

He reached the stovepipe wearer, who was listed only as UNKNOWN. Seated next to the anonymous figure was a face he knew only too well.

“‘… and Lord Howell, Minister of War!’”

Conan Doyle dropped the paper to look at Wilde. “War minister? I could see a reason for the police commissioner, but what has a war minister to do with the issue of fog? It hardly seems a coincidence.”

Wilde sighed aloud. “Honestly, Arthur, I know that you and your confederates in the Society for Psychic Silliness do not believe in coincidences, but they do happen. My days are full of coincidences. I arrive at my table at The Savoy and there is always a chilled bottle of champagne and a plate of Oysters on Horseback waiting. You call it coincidence. I call it sterling service.”

“You could be right, Oscar. It could be a coincidence. The war minister’s photograph appears in the morning paper and by the evening he is assassinated.” Conan Doyle’s brown eyes swept the photograph. “But if another of the committee members were to be assassinated, then the odds of coincidence have just greatly fallen.”

Wilde chuckled. “A war minister? A judge? A banker? If you drew up a list of professions most likely to be assassinated they would all top the list. Who has never had a bank manager they would not wish to murder? I myself would happily strangle mine, would it not leave my many creditors orphaned and inconsolable.”

There was a long silence, finally broken by Conan Doyle. “I should like to speak to that poor Italian chap, Lord Howell’s valet. As the sole surviving witness, only he knows what really happened.”

Wilde fixed Conan Doyle with an abject stare. “You speak in jest, I hope. Commissioner Burke warned us in no uncertain terms about being caught meddling.”

Conan Doyle nodded grimly and tossed off the dregs of his brandy. “That is why it is imperative I am not caught.”

Wilde said nothing for several thoughtful moments, and then he, too, drained his champagne glass, dabbed his lips with a napkin, and set the glass aside. “You mean, that is why it is imperative we should not be caught.”

Conan Doyle threw his friend a quizzical look.

“I am not asking to be included, Arthur. I am insisting. Your tourist’s Italian is clearly insufficient. You are not negotiating the purchase of a gelato from a street vendor in Napoli. You are questioning a man on trial for murder. You shall require my services as translator.”

Conan Doyle mulled the offer and finally acquiesced with a nod. “Quite right, Oscar, your language skills are far superior to mine. Very well, shall we go tomorrow?”

“Not tomorrow. Perhaps Friday.”

“Why Friday?”

“I have been living at the club of late. I must return to Tite Street to spend a few days in the bosom of my family. I should like to dandle my boys upon my knee one final time before I am tossed into the deepest, darkest, dankest cell in Newgate.”