Victorian Villainy

THE PICTURE OF OSCAR WILDE

I make no apologies for what follows, it begins. It is my intention that none shall read these words for the next-let us say-100 years. But that is not as much out of the well of modesty for which I am widely known and justly admired; but from a desire that I shall trouble no one with my peccadillos, and no one shall trouble me with their approbation. I am quite able to disapprove of myself without outside assistance. ”

There it breaks off. Below it on the page are a few random thoughts. Without the approbation of one’s friends where would one be?

And: One lives for joy and wit and friendship-but I can’t make out what one dies for.

These words are on the first page of an otherwise pristine notebook on the cover of which is printed “OFOW January 91.”

The playwright, poet, novelist and gadfly Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wilde left the notebook in my house sometime during the second week in, as it happens, January of 1891. He never called to reclaim it; perhaps in the flurry of that month’s events, he forgot its existence. Perhaps he began again in some other notebook, recounting the events to their sad conclusion, and put the narrative someplace where, in time, his version of the tale will be revealed.

Here is my version.

My name is Benjamin Barnett and I am the proprietor of the North Atlantic Cable News Service, bringing news of Britain and the Continent to North American readers. And I am a friend and erstwhile minion of Professor James Moriarty, who figures largely in this story. The professor rescued me from a Turkish prison some years ago, and in recompense for this service I stayed in his employ for a number of years upon my return to London before establishing the news service.

Oscar Wilde had been writing an irregular column for me on the London theatre scene for the past two years, under the pen name of Fingal Wills. When I asked him why he refused to use his own name, he had told me, “Writing for the American public is like appearing as the rear end of a musical hall horse. One does it only for the money, and one would as soon not be recognized.” I couldn’t argue with him.

It was around eight o’clock on a Tuesday night early in January, if memory serves, when our maid entered my study, where I was going over the accounts of some recent murder trials to see if any might interest a Boston newspaper whose readers seemed to relish British gore. “That’s all right, Tilda,” I told her. “You can go to bed. I’ll turn down the lamps and chivvy my own cup into the pantry.”

“There’s a gentleman,” she said. “At the door.”

“A gentleman?”

“He says he’s a gentleman,” she told me, holding out the small silver tray on which rested the gentleman’s card.

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wells Wilde

“A gentleman indeed,” I agreed. “Although what…never mind. Show the gentleman in, Tilda, and then you may retire.”

A few moments later Wilde came through the door. His face was paler than usual and his hair was disarranged in an artless manner. “Thank you for seeing me with no notice,” he said, flopping onto a chair. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything. Thank God you’re home. Your wife-how is your wife?”

“Cecily is upstairs suffering from a headache. She finds both light and sound painful when these come on her, so I try to annoy her as little as possible.”

“Cecily,” he said. “Lovely name.” He sat bolt upright as though a sudden spasm had gripped his body and an expression of extreme pain-anguish? — flitted across his face. “Benjamin,” he said, “you must help me. It is a trick of the gods that I am acquainted with you and that you, I understand, are acquainted with a man named Professor Moriarty.”

“I am,” I said. I was, I confess, puzzled. I could not picture two men less alike than the intense, reserved man of science, Professor James Moriarty, and the mercurial, effervescent, witty aesthete, Oscar Wilde. They both possessed massive intelligence and keen intellects, but they directed these gifts in entirely different directions.

“I must meet him. I must speak with him,” Wilde said. He was tugging at his cravat as though it were the source of his troubles, but he did not seem to notice what he was doing. “And as soon as possible. The business is private, but urgent. Very urgent. Can you take me to him?”

“Of course.” I considered. “I’ll send him a note first thing in the morning and arrange a meeting.”

“My dear boy,” Wilde said, “who knows what evils might befall us between now and the morning? Could you not arrange a meeting this evening?”

“Now?” I asked, surprised.

“Why not?” Wilde asked, his voice sharp and anxious. He gestured toward the study window. “It has stopped snowing, the night is pleasant, the streets are moderately clear. I assure you the need is vital.”

Putting aside my misgivings I gave in to his evident distress and rose from my chair.

“Good, good,” Wilde said. “Thank you, thank you. I have held my Hansom, which awaits by the door.”

“Then let us go,” I said, shrugging into my jacket. “If the professor is home, and will see us, we’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Wilde retrieved his overcoat, top hat and walking stick from the rack by the door and I assembled my gear from the hall closet and we left. No more than ten minutes later we were knocking on the door of 64 Russell Square. Mr. Maws, Professor Moriarty’s butler, admitted us, relieved us of our outerwear, and bade us wait in the front room while he went to see if the professor would receive his unexpected guests.

We had no more than sat down-well, I had sat down and Wilde had commenced pacing back and forth on the oversized Khasmani rug (a gift from the Grand Mufti of Rumelia for an extraordinary-but I digress)-when Professor Moriarty appeared in the doorway. A tall, thin man with a slight forward stoop, as though he were perpetually adjusting to living in a world of people smaller than himself, Moriarty had deep-set dark eyes under heavy brows, giving him the visual aspect of a brooding hawk. One eyebrow was raised quizzically as he looked over his visitors.

“Barnett, what an unexpected pleasure,” he said, stepping into the room. “And this must be the amazing Mr. Oscar Wilde whom one can’t help hearing about wherever one goes in London these days.” He extended his hand. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“I fear I cannot shake hands with you, sir,” Wilde said, stepping back from the offered hand and thrusting his own hands theatrically into the pockets of his jacket. “Mr. Sherlock Holmes has told me all about you!”

“Oh dear,” Moriarty said. “My own personal Javert is busy again. What slander is he spreading now?”

“His, ah, belief is that you are responsible for all the important crimes committed in London, and for many of the lesser ones,” said Wilde.

“So he has averred to Scotland Yard time and again, and yet I am still here.”

“And that you are most assuredly the mind behind a devious and infernally pernicious plot against me.” Wilde made a vague and somehow plaintive gesture in the air, suddenly looking very tired. “I come here to find out whether this is true.”

“Ah!” Moriarty said. “I think I can safely say that it is not. Come into my office, and tell me of just what crime I stand accused.”

We crossed the hall and Moriarty paused to turn up the gas lamps and then settled into the large oak chair behind his massive oak desk and waved us to seats. Mr. Maws came in behind us bearing a tray holding several cut glass decanters and a gasogene. “If you’ll excuse me, sir,” he said. “I thought perhaps…”

“Yes, of course,” Moriarty said. “What have you brought us?”

Mr. Maws indicated each decanter in turn. “O’Brian’s Reserve Irish Whiskey,” he said, “Louis XVII closed cask Cognac, and Port wine Garrafeira, 1826. Just coming into its own, I think.”

“O’Brian’s…” Wilde looked interested.

“A good choice sir. And just a splash?” Mr. Maws poured two inches of the golden liquid into a glass, worked the handle of the gasogene to add an equal amount of soda water, and handed the glass to Wilde.

I admitted that the concoction looked good to me, and had one of the same. The professor took a small glass of the port.

“Now,” Moriarty said as Mr. Maws left the room, closing the door gently behind him. “Tell me the story. I know you suspect me of being intimately involved in it, but relate it as though I know nothing.”

Wilde glared suspiciously at Moriarty, but the glass of Irish whiskey in his hand seemed to reassure him, and sipping at it to fortify him and raise his, if you’ll excuse the expression, spirits. “Blackmail,” he said shortly.

“Ah!” Moriarty replied. “And in what manner are you being blackmailed?”

Wilde shook his head, his face turning an uncharacteristic red color.

“Surely, sir,” Moriarty said, “if I’m the one blackmailing you, then I must already know how it’s being done. And if I’m not-and I assure you I am not-then perhaps I can help.”

Several emotions, and I am not qualified to say just what they were, but I would judge they were not pleasant, played across Oscar Wilde’s face. Then in one gesture he pulled a stiff card from his inner jacket pocket and thrust it toward Moriarty. “Here,” he said.

Moriarty took the card and, holding it under the lamp on his desk peered at it through a powerful pocket lens, going over it slowly and carefully.

Wilde’s manner made it clear that I would not be welcome to cross to the desk and investigate the item for myself, but I subsequently had the opportunity to examine it closely. It was a photograph of two men reclining on what appeared to be a rug in front of an unlit fireplace. They had no clothes on. Their positions and proximity made them appear to be, shall I say, intimate friends. One of them was Wilde. I trust this is enough of a description to explain the situation without being sufficient to excite pruriency. And to those of you who profess shock at even so brief a description, well, all I can say is that I find your shock suspect and wonder what emotion resides behind it.

“This picture has been staged, I believe,” Moriarty commented.

“Indeed,” Wilde agreed.

“At first I thought that perhaps it was some sort of composite, putting your head on the body of another. But that is difficult to do well, and there is no sign of it here. And the body itself is, ah, identifiable.”

“Yes,” Wilde agreed. “I’m afraid that, were I to remove my clothes, there would be little doubt the head is attached to the correct body.” He gave a tired smile. “Such flaws as are evident cannot in this case be blamed on my tailor.”

“It looks to me as though you have been posed. Were you conscious at the time?”

“As I have no memory of the event, I must assume not,” Wilde told him.

“Do you have any idea when the, ah, event might have occurred?”

Wilde considered. “Saturday last,” he said. “I was napping in an office on the second floor of the theater. I awoke several hours later with a violent headache to find my clothing strangely disarranged.”

“What did you think at the time?” I interjected.

Wilde turned to look at me. “I assumed it was some sort of practical joke. Several of my friends have rather robust senses of humor. I thought this was rather over the top, but I didn’t know who to blame or what the intent was-at the time. The next day I received the photograph in the afternoon mail. With it was a very brief note.”

“Ah!” Moriarty said. “Do you still have the note?”

Wilde took a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket, smoothed it out, and handed it to Moriarty. In large print, which I could easily make out from where I sat, the note said simply:? 10.000

“Succinct,” Moriarty commented.

“I thought so,” Wilde agreed.

“And you have heard nothing further?”

“Not yet.”

“Do you have access to that sort of money?”

“Not if I sell all I own. Not if I sell my soul.”

Moriarty turned to me. “You see why, Barnett, were I to resort to blackmail, I would not choose artists, writers or actors as my targets. Few of them have sufficient wealth for the project to be worth the effort.” He returned his attention to Wilde. “Do you know who the other gentleman in the photograph is?”

“His name is Rob Reynard,” Wilde said. “He is an understudy in the theatrical company that is now putting on a new play of mine. ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan.’ The play is now in rehearsal.”

“And what does he know of this?”

“I have not had the opportunity to speak with him since receiving the picture. He did not appear at rehearsal yesterday or today.”

“Have you actually had any, er, relationship with this young man?” Moriarty asked.

Wilde shook his head. “Even were I interested in such a liaison, Mr. Reynard is not my type. He’s much too earnest a young man. I must have frivolity and clever badinage, and poor Rob seems incapable of either.”

Moriarty thought for a moment. “Do you have any idea where this photograph was taken?” he asked.

“I believe it’s the drawing-room set of Lady Windermere,” Wilde said. “It looks as though we were placed and, ah, arranged on stage.”

“And this stage is?”

“At the St. James Theater.”

Moriarty rose. “Then let us go forth,” he said. “I would tread those boards.”

“At this hour?” I asked.

Moriarty pulled out his pocket watch and consulted it. “It’s barely ten o’clock,” he said. “Surely the theater will still be inhabited.”

“Rehearsals often go on until past midnight,” Wilde affirmed. “But I trust it won’t be necessary to mention why you are there.” I noticed that Wilde had accepted the professor’s innocence of involvement without further discussion.

“Of course not,” Moriarty agreed. “Incidently, if you went to see Mr. Sherlock Holmes, why did he not take your case?”

“Apparently he believed some of the more outrageous stories about me, even if he wasn’t convinced that the photo was genuine.” Wilde said. “His words were that he doesn’t choose to defend immorality.”

“Ever the prig,” Moriarty commented. “Well, let us be off!”

The rehearsal had ended for the night when we arrived at the theater, and Moriarty had the stage to himself. He spend some time comparing the stage to the photograph, measuring distances and angles with a tape measure and a protractor, and jotting notes and formulas in a small notebook. He had Wilde show him the room from which Wilde had presumably been abducted and he examined the staircase off the front vestibule that led to it.

It was about an hour and a half later when the professor closed his notebook and returned it to his jacket pocket. “I suggest we adjourn for the night,” he said.

“Have you discovered anything?” asked Wilde.

“I believe I see a course of action that might be not without profit,” Moriarty told him.

“Umph,” said Wilde.

“Be at my house tomorrow at, say, three in the afternoon, and I may have some news for you.”

And we had to be satisfied with that.

I was not sure that I should include myself in the invitation to return to Moriarty’s house on the morrow, but Wilde assured me that he desired my continued presence, and so I acquiesced. I confess that I had a strong desire to see the thing through.

Wilde and I showed up at the professor’s doorstep within moments of each other at three on Wednesday. Mr. Maws showed us into the professor’s office, where we found him behind his desk fiddling with a square black object about the size of a small footstool. “This is the cause of your troubles,” he told Wilde, placing the object on his desk.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s the new Baum-Lamphier self-loading camera.” He spun it around and demonstrated. “Lens here, ground glass viewing screen on the back.” He turned the thing upside-down. “A film pack of twelve glass plates is loaded in here, and then you turn this lever.” He swung it upright again. “And now it’s loaded and ready to take the first picture. A modern advance in photography which allows the taking of pictures more rapidly if not more artistically.”

“That machine took the photograph?” Wilde asked.

“Well, not this very one, but something very much like it.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“There is a slight black bar at the top of Mr. Wilde’s photograph,” said Moriarty.

“Not my photograph,” Wilde interjected bitterly.

“Ah, yes. But nonetheless there is the bar. Approximately an eighth of an inch long by a sixteenth of an inch wide, and three-eights of an inch from the top of the photograph on the left-hand side.”

“Not much of a bar,” I opined.

“But sufficient,” Moriarty said. “Sufficient.”

“What does it signify?” Wilde asked.

“Observe,” Moriarty said, raising the camera. He pointed it toward the window and clicked the shutter. “Now that one negative plate has been expended,” he said, “we need to put a new plate in position. But we don’t have to remove the used plate first, a process that is time-consuming and destructive of the artistic impulse. Instead-” Moriarty pulled a lever and turned the camera upside down. A loud click and a soft thud sounded from inside the camera. Moriarty released the lever and righted the camera. “ Voila! The fresh plate is now in position.”

“Clever,” I said.

“Oh the wonders of modern science,” Wilde said, “will they never cease?”

“Held in place,” Moriarty continued, “by a spring and two pins, one on each side of the plate. And, due to what I must assume is a slight but normally unnoticeable manufacturing flaw, the left pin protrudes slightly into the frame of the photograph.”

Wilde looked thoughtful for a moment, and then smiled. Perhaps for the first time in days. “I see,” he said. “By, I assume, an eighth of an inch?”

“Precisely,” Moriarty agreed.

“So this is the camera…”

Moriarty lifted a folded piece of foolscap from his desk. “The camera is only recently been brought over from Bohemia, where it is manufactured,” he said. “And only two stores in the London area have them. I have here the names of the fourteen people who have purchased a Baum-Lamphier since they first arrived six weeks ago.” He handed the paper to Wilde. “Do you recognize a name?”

Wilde perused the list, his finger running down the page, muttering the names to himself. Then he suddenly sat back and exclaimed a sharp epithet which I will not record here.

“Ah!” said Moriarty. “There is a familiar name on the list?”

“Bromire,” Wilde said, spitting the name out. “Alexis Bromire.

“And he is?”

“The company’s lighting director.”

“I suspected as much,” Moriarty said. “The contrast and the lack of shadow in the photograph made me suspect that the scene had been carefully-and perhaps professionally-lit.”

“A strutting little man with a repulsive toothbrush of a mustache occupying much of his upper lip,” Wilde said. “Dresses in overly-tailored black suits like a-” Wilde searched for a phrase “-like a dancing mortician.”

“What do we do?” I asked. “We can’t very well go to the police.”

“I suggest we pay Mr. Bromire a visit,” Moriarty said. “Perhaps we can convince him of the error of his rather repulsive ways.” Rising, he opened the left-hand drawer of his desk and removed a Webley service revolver, which he thrust into the pocket of his suit jacket.

“I say,” I said, “you’re not going to-”

“It is best to be prepared for any eventuality,” Moriarty said.

“It does rather ruin the, ah, hang of the jacket,” Wilde commented. “I’d rather go unarmed into the fray than have the line of my suit compromised.”

“I have an underarm holster somewhere,” Moriarty said, “but that makes an unattractive bulge over the heart.”

“An insufficiently explored sartorial challenge,” Wilde said. “Do you have Bromire’s address?”

“I do,” said Moriarty. He lives in Notting Hill.”

“I should have guessed,” said Wilde.

It was an unattractive gray day and the snow had turned to slush when we left Moriarty’s house. Mr. Maws ran to the corner and, after several blasts on his whistle, managed to secure us a four-wheeler.

It was about quarter past four when we pulled up in front of the house, an old Georgian with four Doric columns astride the front door and a round window above. It had been broken up into flats in the distant past, and Bromire occupied the first floor left front. The front door was off latch and we entered and started up a wide staircase that had probably been one of the features of the house before it had been cloven.

We heard the yelling when we reached the first landing. It came thinly through the walls, but there was no doubt that it would be a quality performance if we were in the room from which it emanated. Two voices: one shrill and the other low and growling like an angry dog. There was a staccato quality to the sounds, as though the actors were taking short breaks for air, or to dredge up new and fresh invectives before recommencing their mutual verbal abuse.

“What do you suppose-” I began, when the remainder of my supposition was cut off by two sharp cracks and a scream. Then silence.

“Gunshots!” Moriarty exclaimed, running up the stairs ahead of us. We followed close on his heels.

Bromire’s door was closed, and Moriarty knocked, waited for a second, and when he got no response slammed his foot powerfully against the lock. At the third kick the door burst open and we rushed into the room.

The scene that greeted us was like a tableau from the Grand Guignol: to our right a slim young man in his shirt sleeves, collar askew, hair scrambled, eyes wild, panting violently from fear and panic. His face and neck seemed to be covered with small scratches. He was holding a small revolver limply in his right hand, which was mottled with a curious blue stain. To our left, an overturned table, papers, photographic plates, envelopes and writing materials scattered about the floor. And, behind it, the crumpled body of a small, immaculately-dressed man lying in an ever-widening pool of his own blood.

The young man started away from us in a panic but stopped as a look of recognition crossed his face. “Mr. Wilde,” he exclaimed. “Is it you? Ah, I see that it is. I’m glad that you’ve come. But how did you-” he broke off and stared down at the body. “But never mind. It’s too late-too late!”

“Reynard!” Wilde said. “What are you doing here?”

“The same as you, I fancy,” the young man said. “Trying to come to terms with a blackmailer.”

“Unsuccessfully, I gather,” Moriarty said.

“He came at me and-” Reynard shook his head. “But who are you?”

“My name is Professor Moriarty. I’ve come to assist Mr. Wilde in resolving this, ah, matter.”

“What on earth happened here?” Wilde asked.

“Let us come inside and close the door,” Moriarty suggested. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone else in the building-or at least on this floor-now, or someone would assuredly have appeared in the hall. But people should be coming home from their day’s work any time now, and we don’t want to attract unnecessary attention.”

We entered the flat and closed the door behind us as best we could. Most of the door was still in place, but the lock had burst out from the last kick. “What other rooms are there?” Moriarty asked.

“There’s a bed room and a lav, and a sort of kitchen-the sort that isn’t much good for actually cooking,” Reynard said.

Moriarty nodded. “Now,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“Are you going to call the police?” Reynard asked, keeping has voice steady.

“Should we?” Moriarty responded.

“Needless to say, I’d prefer it if you didn’t,” said Reynard. “He was a vile blackmailer, and he’s better off dead, don’t you think?”

“There is a law against killing people,” Wilde commented. “Even blackmailers and wealthy maiden aunts.”

We turned to look at Wilde, who shrugged. “It just came out that way,” he explained. “When I begin a sentence it often wanders off in unexpected directions. That, I fancy, is my genius.”

“In this case,” I said, “if there was any way-surely Moriarty, there must be some way…”

“I think I should thank you, Reynard,” Wilde said, “and then perhaps we should all get out of here and let the police make what they will of this. Does anyone know you’re here?”

“Only you gentlemen,” Reynard answered.

Moriarty shook his head slowly “I think perhaps we had better call the police after all,” he said.

I looked at him in surprise. “You? Of all people, you?”

“It’s one thing to cover up for a man who has just rid the world of a blackmailer,” Moriarty said deliberately. “It’s quite another to help his accomplice escape justice.”

“What?” Wilde exclaimed. “But why do you think-?”

“I’m sure of it,” Moriarty said. “Look at his hand.”

“His hand?”

“That blue stain. It’s from the developing solution. Mr. Reynard has been developing the plates. He is not a victim. He is an accomplice. It took two people to do this-to carry you downstairs and set you up for the scene, if nothing else.”

“Well, I’ll-” Wilde began. “Reynard, why would you…?”

Reynard raised the pistol and held it rock-steady in his hand, pointing at Moriarty. He pulled back the hammer. “All right, Professor Whatever-Your-Name-Is. Think you’re smart, do you? Well I’m-”

That was as far as he got. One shot from Moriarty’s Webley, fired from in the coat pocket, tore into his chest, and he was dead before he hit the ground.

There was a moment of shocked silence, and then Wilde said, “I’ll be-I don’t know what I’ll be.”

“Unfortunate, but perhaps it’s better this way. You’d never have been free of him if he got away,” Moriarty told Wilde. “Search the flat for photographic plates, while I arrange the bodies to make it look like mutual destruction. Then we’d best cautiously leave the scene.”

“He was not a gentleman,” Wilde said decisively. “One can tell by the cravat. A true gentleman has an unerring taste in cravats.”

“And we’d best take the camera, too,” Moriarty said.

And so we left. None of us, to my knowledge, ever spoke of the incident again.