Solved! The murder IN THE dark
A beautiful actress lies in a pool of blood. So which of the Prince of Wales’s glamorous guests could have killed her? Oscar Wilde and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have their suspicions...
IN THE first part of our brilliant Christmas whodunnit last week, a game of Murder at a starstudded Buckingham Palace party hosted by the future King ended with a blood-curdling scream – and the discovery of a body. Now detectives Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle must sift through the clues to unmask the killer…
WE REALISED at once the victim sprawled at the foot of the Christmas tree in the Yel l o w Di n i n g Room at Buckingham Palace was Miss Ida Turner, the principal boy from the Drury Lane pantomime and the Prince of Wales’s newly found fairytale princess. The Prince turned towards the scene and said: ‘I must say, she’s a damned fine actress.’
Still no one moved. I felt I was caught in some dreadful dream – in a half-lit dining room at the Palace, of all improbable places, with the future King of England standing at the head of the table chuckling and a beautiful actress lying spreadeagled on the floor.
‘Is she play-acting?’ muttered Lord Suffield, the Prince’s lord-in-waiting.
‘I do not think so,’ said Florrie Stoker, the wife of Dracula author Bram Stoker, another of the guests. ‘She looks quite dead to me.’
‘For God’s sake, do something somebody,’ squawked the Prince’s friend the Countess of Stechford, getting to her feet. She turned to me, fiercely. ‘You’re a doctor, aren’t you?’
I had not practised medicine for several years, but I was a doctor. Galvanised, I woke from my reverie and began to move around the table towards the body.
‘ No,’ said the young woman who had been seated next to me. As she got to her feet, she pushed me back. ‘No, I am a doctor, too – and a woman. I’ll see to it.’
Dr Roberta De’ath hurried round the table, past the Prince and knelt by the body on the rug. She did what I would have done: she felt for the girl’s pulse, both at her neck and in the wrist of her right arm. She turned back to look at us all now standing around the table. In the half-light we could not see her face clearly, but we saw the white of her eyes. ‘She’s dead,’ she said.
She spoke calmly, with a quiet authority that belied her years. ‘She is quite dead, I am afraid.’
Dr De’ath turned back to the motionless figure and, with both hands holding the dead actress’s right arm, lifted the body briefly to reveal a torso covered in blood and gore. Florrie Stoker whimpered. The Countess stifled a scream. ‘Too much blood,’ murmured my friend Oscar Wilde. ‘Too much.’
‘Oh, poor girl,’ cried the Prince. ‘She was here as my guest. How can this have happened? It was only to have been a game.’
He collapsed into his chair, shaking his head, bewildered. ‘We must call the police,’ I said. ‘ No,’ protested Lord Suffield, urgently. ‘ That is not possible. That would cause a scandal. We must protect His Royal Highness at all costs.’
‘It’s the girl who’s dead,’ I answered sharply. ‘ His Royal Highness is not in any danger.’
‘It’s his reputation that is in danger,’ said Lord Suffield coldly. ‘ We must not involve the police at any price.’
When I had first encountered the red- cheeked lord- in- waiting two hours earlier, he had seemed like Santa Claus to me. Now I took him for the devil incarnate.
‘ We must call t he police,’ repeated.
‘A murder has taken place,’ said Bram Stoker, staring bleakly at the body lying at the foot of the Christmas tree.
‘Has it?’ queried Oscar. He was leaning across the table to light another of his Turkish cigarettes from the candelabra on the table. ‘Has she been murdered?’
‘ She is dead,’ said Dr De’ath, who remained crouching by the body. Her hand was resting of the actress’s bare shoulder.
‘So one of us must have killed her,’ said Bram Stoker.
‘ Don’t be absurd, sir,’ barked Lord Suffield.
‘She is dead and we are here. The footmen have left the room.’ Bram gazed around the table. ‘There is no one else. It must be one of us.’
Lord Suffield harrumphed disdainfully. ‘ And why would one o f u s wa n t t o mu r d e r that wretched girl?’
‘Why indeed?’ I asked. ‘Had this been a game,’ I said, ‘ His Royal Highness wished that I play the role of the detective. In that capacity, I might have suggested, my lord, that you had a motive for murdering “the wretched girl”, as you call her.
‘ You did not wish to see your Prince and master fall into the clutches of another young actress, so you thought you would r e move h e r from the scene before His Royal Highness became too smitten.’
‘You are impertinent, sir. I did not kill the girl.’
‘I do not suggest that you did – but I do say that you have a motive for doing so.’
‘This is outrageous,’ hissed the lord-in-waiting. The Countess of Stechford took Lord Suffield’s arm in a show of courtiers’ solidarity.
‘ And you, Your Grace,’ I said, turning to the Countess, ‘perhaps you had a motive, too?
‘Jealousy has provoked many a murder. And you could be forgiven for suffering a pang of jealousy seeing the Prince so taken by such a young and pretty rival.’
‘You go too far, Dr Conan Doyle,’ said the Prince.
‘My apologies, Your Royal Highness. I was only trying to show how a number of our party might have been provoked to take the poor girl’s life.’
As I spoke, my eye caught that of Florrie Stoker. ‘ Mrs Stoker, for example, seemed troubled by the attention her husband was giving to the beautiful young lady.’
I looked across at my friend Bram. ‘And Mr Stoker, of course, is well known for his curious interest in vampires – creatures who take advantage of darkness to prey upon innocent young women.’
‘The young woman was anything but innocent,’ said Lady Rogerson, the poet. She was staring at the body on the floor. She spoke without emotion. ‘I did not like her. I had picked the Knave of Hearts. Had we be playing the game, I was to be the murderer – but I do assure you, I did not kill her.’
‘None of us killed her,’ said Oscar, ‘of that you can be certain.’
He blew a thin purple plume of cigarette smoke into the air as all eyes turned towards him. ‘The young lady was not murdered. She has taken her own life.’
‘Of course, Mr Wilde,’ muttered Lord Suffield. ‘Exactly.’
‘ Ah, yes,’ sighed the Countess. ‘That must be the explanation.’
Oscar, holding his cigarette between his fingers, pointed towards the dead girl’s body. ‘See, she is holding the knife in her left hand. I noticed at dinner that she was left-handed.
‘When His Royal Highness extinguished the candle at the start of the game, we only heard one pair of feet moving. We all sat as we were as the girl rushed at once from the table and plunged the knife into her own heart.
‘ This i s not a murder, but a tragic suicide.’
The Prince of Wales turned in his chair and looked bleakly over at the body beneath the Christmas tree. ‘Oh, poor dear girl. I am so sorry.’
‘Should we not call the police?’ I persisted. ‘No,’ said Lord Suffield sharply. ‘ If it is suicide, we can throw her body into t h e Ri v e r Thames. Let’s wash away all the evidence.’
I laughed. ‘You might be seen, Lord Suffield. You might be caught in the act.’ ‘The Palace footmen can do it,’ he said wildly.
‘ And would t hey keep your secret?’ I asked.
‘I fear Dr Conan Doyle is right,’ said the Prince, with a heavy sigh. ‘We should call the police.’
‘There is no need,’ said Dr De’ath. ‘I can take her to the morgue at St Thomas’ Hospital. I shall say that we found her body in the street. The police can come and take her from there.’
‘ It is the twenty- first of December,’ said Oscar, ‘ the feast of St Thomas, as chance would have it. Perhaps that is an omen. Let us do as Dr De’ath suggests.’
‘And, for the sake of His Royal Highness,’ said Lord Suffield, ‘can I ask that we all take a vow of silence and promise never to speak of tonight’s unhappy events to a living soul?’
Around the table we murmured our assent.
‘ Thank you,’ added the l ordin-waiting.
‘There will be publicity, of course,’ said Bram Stoker, ‘even if it does not touch the Palace. Her death will not go unnoticed. She was the principal boy in the Drury Lane pantomime, after all.’
‘I think not,’ said Oscar. ‘At best, I think she was her understudy.’
He looked over to the body one more time. ‘She is beautiful and she is an actress, but she is not Miss Ida Turner.’
‘But I met her at Drury Lane,’ protested the Prince. ‘In her dressing room.’
‘Just the once,’ said Oscar, gently. ‘ And she was in her principal boy’s costume then, as you acknowledged when you told us of your first encounter. This young lady was an impostor. As Lady R pointed out, she was too well-endowed to be a convincing principal boy.
‘And she arrived here at the Palace just after ten o’clock, dressed as a fairytale princess – when the real Ida Turner was still on stage at Drury Lane dressed as a principal boy and taking her bows.’
‘Who is she then?’ asked Bram Stoker.
‘Ida Turner’s understudy or her dresser, I imagine,’ said Oscar. ‘She intercepted His Royal Highness’s note inviting Miss Turner to join him for this impromptu Christmas supper and decided to substitute herself for her mistress.
‘When she got here, dressed in a costume from the Drury Lane wardrobe, the Prince gave her a beautiful necklace to wear and she played her part to perfection – until she overheard Lady Rogerson remarking that she did not look like a convincing principal boy and until she caught my eye. She saw at once that I knew she was an impostor.’
‘And facing the possibility of exposure,’ suggested Bram, finishing Oscar’s thought, ‘she took her own life as her only means of escape.’
‘I knew it,’ said the Countess, with an unattractive air of triumph. ‘She was a gold-digger and she’s paid the price. You’d better retrieve your mother’s precious necklace from her throat, Bertie.’
‘ I shall return it to the Palace in the morning,’ said Dr De’ath, straightening the poor dead girl’s arms and legs and wrapping her body in the rug on which she had fallen so that only her face and hair could be seen. With a gentle touch, she closed the actress’s eyes. The Prince of Wales rang the bell to summon the footmen. He explained
that one of the guests had suffered ‘ a stroke of some kind’ and that Dr De’ath would accompany the ‘unfortunate lady who is now sleeping’ to St Thomas’ Hospital nearby.
Oscar volunteered that he and I accompany Dr De’ath and her patient and take the carriage that Oscar had kept waiting in t he Palace forecourt.
We nodded brief farewells to our fellow guests and bowed to the Prince at the door of the Yellow Dining Room.
We followed t he footmen and Dr De’ath as they made their way along the darkened corridors of the Palace, down the stairway and out into the courtyard.
The footmen laid the girl wrapped in the rug across the back seat of the carriage and Oscar and I sat alongside Dr De’ath facing her. The Prince’s page waved us on our way. ‘ Merry Christmas,’ he said solemnly. ‘Merry Christmas,’ answered Oscar, smiling. ‘ Please thank His Royal Highness for a most memorable evening.’
Light snow was still falling as our carriage trundled along The Mall and down Whitehall towards Westminster Bridge.
As we approached the Victoria Embankment, Oscar began to chuckle, softly at first and then more loudly, and louder still. He pulled down the carriage window and called up to the cabbie: ‘Pull over, driver. Two of us will get out here.’
‘ Thank you,’ said Dr De’ath. ‘I’ll handle matters at the hospital. The porters there can help me with the body.’
‘No,’ said Oscar. ‘You’re not going to the hospital. You never were. Whether you are medically qualified, Dr De’ath, I neither know nor care, but tonight’s little pantomime is over now.’
He turned his head and looked directly into the young woman’s eyes. ‘ I must congratulate you. You and your beautiful young partner-in-crime almost got away with it. First, with great charm and even greater effrontery – calling yourself Dr De’ath, what a nerve! – you wheedled your way into Royal service, and then this young lady…’
Oscar pulled the edges of the rug from the young actress’s face. ‘Whoever she may be, she seized the moment to beguile a Prince who is, let us be frank, all too ready to be beguiled.’
The ‘dead’ young actress opened her eyes and gazed steadily at Oscar. ‘Remove that necklace, young lady,’ he said, ‘and give it to my friend, Dr Conan Doyle.’ The girl did as she was told. I sat holding the gold and porcelain necklace, and marvelling at the way in which Oscar had unravelled the mystery.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognises genius. Oscar had genius – and heart. ‘Dr Conan Doyle was taken in by both of you,’ he went on. ‘So was the Prince. So was our friend, Bram Stoker. I must be less innocent than they are, because I had my suspicions about each of you from the start.
‘ I recognise a chancer when I see one – and you are two of the best. Of course, you overplayed your hand, as chancers so often too. That scream, Miss, it was far too shrill – and that stage blood, there was far too much of it. Now, get out of our carriage and make yourselves scarce.’ Oscar pushed open the cab door and the two girls climbed down into the street. ‘And one more thing ,’ said Oscar, holding out his hand to Dr De’ath. ‘Kindly give me those two Fabergé eggs you took from the table setting under cover of darkness. They don’t belong to you. You don’t need them. You have youth, beauty and spirit on your side. You can make your own way in the world.’ The dark-haired young woman opened her evening bag and took out two diamondencrusted enamel eggs and handed them to Oscar. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And here’s a silver sovereign for you to share.’ He dropped the coin into the young woman’s open bag. ‘Go home now, clean yourselves up and light a fire. Christmas is the time for home and hearth. Goodbye.’
As our carriage drove on over Westminster Bridge, the two girls stood speechless on the pavement gazing after us. ‘You astound me, Oscar,’ I said. ‘ I’m glad to hear it,’ he replied, smiling. ‘And now you have another story to tell – and Sherlock Holmes didn’t feature in it anywhere. ‘Merry Christmas, Arthur.’ ‘Merry Christmas.’
Gyles Brandreth’s latest Arthur Conan Doyle / Oscar Wilde mystery, Jack The Ripper: Case Closed, is published by Corsair.