The Dead Assassin: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (23 page)

“The devil?” Conan Doyle repeated. “What does he mean, the devil? Ask him what he means, Oscar.”

Wilde put the question to the valet, who finally peeled his large hands from his handsome face. “He was a man. But he was not. He moved. He walked. But his eyes were dead and a boneyard reek hung about him. I scream and run. My master comes out as I run past him, back to the house, the dead man chasing me. Lord Howell draws his pistol and shoots. BANG! BANG! BANG! Three times. The devil man flinches. Blood spurts. But still he keeps coming. We slam the door. Turn the key. Throw the bolts. Then BOOM! A sound like thunder as the dead man flings himself against it. We back away and then BOOM! The hinges break and the door crashes down. The dead man bellows like a bear and shambles into the house. Lord Howell raises his pistol and fires, but the bullet hits me in the arm. I scream. The pain so bad. I fall down. The devil comes on. Lord Howell runs into the parlor. Slams the door. Locks it. I think I am dead, but the devil steps over me. He smashes down the parlor door. Then, BANG! I hear a shot. And another, and then click, click, the gun has no more bullets. I stagger to the parlor in time to see the devil grab Lord Howell by the throat, lift him off his feet, and then … and then … he twist his neck all the way around. I hear bones snap and crack…”

The Italian’s words dissipated and a silence heavy as syrup poured into their ears.

Wilde nudged the Italian on by saying, “And what happened next?”

By now the Italian was sweating, shivering—a man in a fever. “I faint. I faint away. When I awaken, the devil is gone. My master … Lord Howell … is dead. He is dead. I crawl into a cupboard to hide—in case the devil comes back for me. I find a bottle and drink. I fall asleep and into this nightmare, from which Vicente cannot awaken.”

The Italian began to weep and smite his chest with his own hands. “I did not kill my master! I did not kill my master!”

Conan Doyle was listening intently and heard Vicente quickly mutter something that Wilde did not translate, but which made the Irishman visibly rock back.

“What did he say, Oscar? My Italian’s very limited. Something like: ‘I love my master’?”

Wilde hesitated before answering. Fidgeted. Shot his cuffs. Finally, he leaned close and spoke in a low whisper so the guards could not overhear. “Not precisely. He said he would not kill his master because … because he and Lord Howell were lovers.”

Conan Doyle sat in stunned silence, mouth agape. Finally, he swallowed and said, “Y-you’re quite sure, Oscar? You’re sure he meant—”

“I am quite sure, Arthur. I am quite sure he meant that he and Lord Howell were lovers in the manner of the ancient Greeks.”

Neither man spoke for a full minute. The only sound was the Italian’s soft weeping.

“Well,” Conan Doyle finally managed to say. “That explains why the wheels of British justice turned so quickly for once.”

“Yes,” Wilde agreed. “It simply wouldn’t do for it to become common knowledge that the war minister, a decorated hero of the Crimea, practiced the Uranian way of love. And, most unforgivably, with his valet, a man of the lower classes.”

Both looked up at the approaching tread of heavy feet. A group of sober-faced men crowded in through the cell door: Prison Warden Bland, a black frocked priest, Dr. Lamb, and two uniformed prison warders. It was a few minutes before nine. They had come for Vicente.

The hour of execution was nigh.

The young Italian saw them, too. Realizing that his death was but moments away, his face turned ghastly white. He pulled something from beneath the woolen blanket and stared at it for one last time: a square of folded paper and a small photograph. He kissed the photograph, muttering in Italian, and then looked up at Wilde with tears in his eyes and pressed them into his hands.

Wilde glanced at them: a photograph of a young woman, by resemblance a sister or cousin, along with a tightly folded letter damp with tears and tattered from many readings.

The valet muttered something to Wilde, and even though Conan Doyle could not completely understand the meaning, he fully understood the intent: the valet was pleading for Wilde to write to the woman in the photograph, informing her what had become of him.

“Gentlemen,” the prison warden announced. “The hour is at hand. Please go. We must make the prisoner ready to face his sentence.”

*   *   *

“I want to leave this wretched place at once,” Wilde said in a taut voice. “I do not wish to witness what is about to happen.”

“Nor I.”

But to their surprise, instead of returning to the front gate, the thuggish guard led them into an open quadrangle milling with newspaper men, civic officials, the idly curious, and, most shockingly, a few well-dressed society women, all attending on the pretense of fulfilling some form of civic duty in witnessing an execution, and not at all idle thrill seeking.

“You fail to understand,” Conan Doyle explained to the guard, “we wish only to leave.”

The guard did not attempt to conceal his amusement. “Too late to get squeamish now. The gates are locked. No one comes or goes until the execution is over.” He flashed them a Marquis de Sade grin. “Sorry, gents.”

Trapped.

“What in God’s name is that?” Wilde said, pointing at something.

The corner of the yard featured a strange construction with a steeply pitched roof complete with a glass skylight to allow daylight in. A low fence screened the lower half from view.

“The execution shed,” Conan Doyle answered. “It contains the gallows and the trap door.”

“Surely not?” Wilde said in a tone of utter revulsion. “It resembles a macabre Punch and Judy theater!”

The two friends were pinned against a wall, helpless to escape. The restive crowd fell silent as the condemned man, his arms pinioned at his sides, was led out onto the gallows platform. Dr. Lamb and a chaplain preceded the executioner, with Prison Warden Bland following at the rear. As the chaplain wobbled forward to give the prisoner last rites, he tripped and nearly sprawled full length.

“Wonderful,” Wilde said. “As at any good execution, the chaplain is drunk. Could this get any more delightful?”

The crowd of gentlemen began to push and jostle, subtly scrumming for a spot with the best view of the gallows.

An elderly man stepped to his right and Conan Doyle glimpsed the back of a head with long fiery red curls tumbling down about the shoulders. The redhead looked at something to his right and Conan Doyle instantly recognized the face. “That is the Marquess of Gravistock, Rufus DeVayne! He companioned the Prince of Wales to your play the other night.”

“Really? Are you sure?” Wilde said, squinting at the figure. “I doubt I would have forgotten meeting a youth so handsome.”

“You didn’t, Oscar. You were in your dressing room, sulking.”

“Ah, yes.” Wilde remembered, rather sourly.

A raffish young swell in a white silk topper also clapped eyes on the marquess and called out to him, “Rufus, you young fiend, is that you?”

The marquess turned to look and unleashed a wicked smile. “Hello, Bunky,” he replied. “It
is
I, manifested in the flesh.”

“What drags you from your rooms to this pest hole? Are you an enthusiast for executions?”

“Don’t be dull, Bunky. Everyone here is an enthusiast for executions, you included. I am here because a taste of death fires the blood. And in the hopes of gaining a trinket.” He flashed a pair of scissors. “I hope to snip a lock of hair, an earlobe, anything. Such talismans are imbued with great power.”

The young swell barked a laugh and said, “Just like at school. Still worshiping the devil, eh?”

“You’ve got it wrong, Bunky. It is he who worships me!”

The marquess seemed impervious to the scandalized stares launched at him by everyone within earshot of the remark. Conan Doyle harrumphed his disapproval and commented, “The young marquess seems rather a cad.”

But Oscar Wilde did not answer. He was staring fixedly at the young aristocrat in a pique of rapture.

On the gallows, the chaplain meandered to the end of his prayer and made a rather sloppy sign of absolution. Vicente was shuffled forward onto the trap by a warder gripping either arm. One dropped to his knees out of sight behind the wooden palisade as he bound the Italian’s ankles together.

“I refuse to witness this,” Wilde said, turning his face away.

The executioner stepped forward and drew a white hood over Vicente’s face, the fabric of which sucked in and out with each quickening breath. A warder handed the executioner the thick hawser with its heavy noose, and he slipped it over the young man’s head. Vicente’s knees visibly quivered as he took the weight of the rope.

The crowd’s subdued murmuring drained away. From somewhere, the execution bell began to toll the hour.
Clong …

At the bell’s first strike, a flight of grubby pigeons burst up from the rooftops, wings creaking as they flapped around the courtyard, once, twice, three times, and then fled away.

 … clong … clong …

The executioner gripped the long handle of the trap release.

 … clong … clong …

Wilde’s head, against his volition, turned back to look.

 … clong … clong … clong … clong
. The bell tolled nine times and stilled. A resonating silence spread out in all directions.

The executioner yanked the handle, a catch released, and the double doors of the drop fell open with a guttural sound. Vicente seemed to hang suspended for a moment and then plummeted from view with a dreadful suddenness. The rope snapped taut and quivered with tension. All breath sucked from the crowd. Silence reigned. Some looked distraught. Some smiled. Others held a mystical look upon their faces, as if savoring the lingering taste of death.

A slow murmur began at the front of the crowd and swept back to where Conan Doyle and Wilde stood. For a moment they were puzzled, but then they understood why. The hanging rope was jerking from side to side and a sudden realization swept the crowd.

The executioner had botched the job.

The drop had not broken Vicente’s neck, and he was strangling to death. His muffled screams, though faint, rose from the drop pit. They continued for several long moments, the rope penduluming back and forth with its dread weight, until it shivered and stilled.

Conan Doyle’s mouth filmed with bile. The death had been neither clean nor instantaneous.

“Oh, badly done!” a voice chortled—unmistakably that of the marquess.

A chorus of boos went up, and suddenly apple cores, crumpled newspapers, and every missile that came to hand began to soar from the crowd, aimed at the bungling executioner. The chief warden, the executioner, and the prison guards cowered beneath the fusillade and looked from one to the other with dismay.

“I—I f-feel … r-rather … ill…” Wilde stammered out. His brow beaded with perspiration. His wan complexion had grown clammy and waxen.

“Take a deep breath. Fill your lungs. Breathe man, breathe!”

Wilde’s knees quivered. Conan Doyle gripped his friend by the arm and began to push him through the booing crowd toward an exit. The Scottish author was a large and strong man, but Wilde was over six foot and weighed several stone more. If the Irishman fainted in the press of the crowd, he would prove an immovable object.

“Come, Oscar. Keep walking. It’s just the shock. You’ll be all right. Breathe deep. Fill your lungs with—”

“Going dark … can’t see…”

“A few feet more,” Conan Doyle grunted through clenched teeth as he strained to hold his friend up. “Just a few feet more.”

“I f-fear…,” Wilde gasped, “… it . . is … rather … too … laaaaaaaayyyte…”

Wilde’s knees buckled and he sagged to the ground, dragging Conan Doyle down with him.

CHAPTER   19

RIGHT COFFIN, WRONG CORPSE

“Stop thrusting that dagger into my brain, Arthur, I am quite recovered!”

Wilde flailed a clumsy hand, trying to push aside the smelling salts Conan Doyle was wafting under his nose.

They were seated once again in the sanctuary of Wilde’s carriage. Conan Doyle reached over to let down the window and tried to guide the Irishman’s large head outside.

“What on earth are you doing?” Wilde demanded, firmly resisting.

“You need air. Take a good lungful.”

“Are you mad? The air is dangerously fresh. What I require is a cigarette.”

Against Conan Doyle’s repeated urgings, Wilde insisted on lighting up one of his Turkish cigarettes. Despite all logic, after several long, lung-tingling drags, he seemed to revive and was finally well enough to look about and take note of where he was. The driver had drawn up a little ways from the prison gates. Having slaked their blood lust, the mob was dissipating, as revelers repaired to alehouses and brothels to satiate other appetites.

“I’m afraid we’re trapped here until the crowd thins,” Conan Doyle said. “Plus, you still look a little green.” He tried again with smelling salts, but Wilde pushed his hand away.

“I am Irish. Those of us who hail from the Emerald Isle are given to mossy complexions.” He dug in his coat pocket and drew out a hip flask. “This is what I require to revivify body and soul.” He uncapped the flask, took a long swig, and offered it to his friend. “A nip for the doctor, too?”

“A tonic I fully concur with.” Conan Doyle took a swig and gasped out a liquorish breath as high-proof brandy burned down his throat, kindling a fire in his belly.

Wilde eyed the milling crowd with distaste and said, “I do not wish to tarry in this insalubrious place. Have you seen enough, Arthur? Why do we loiter?”

“I am struck by the presence of the marquess. A strange coincidence. First he is at the theater, bosom companion of the Prince of Wales, and now here.”

“When it comes to
bosom
companions, Prince Edward’s current mistress has few equals.”

“Yes, very droll, Oscar. I see you are fully recovered.”

“The marquess’s attendance at one of my plays is fully understandable—genius attracts the attractive—but I cannot imagine why such an elegant young aristocrat would frequent something so horrid as a hanging.”