Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol: A Mystery Read Online Free Page B

you met there. I want it told chronologically, simply, unadorned.’
Melmoth gazed upon the pen and chequebook and smiled. ‘An unvarnished tale – in the tradition of Bunyan and Defoe?’
‘If we’re to make a proper fortune from it,’ said Dr Quilp, ‘more in the tradition of Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe. Readers look for a touch of murder nowadays.’
Melmoth extinguished his cigarette. ‘I’m no murderer, Dr Quilp.’ He looked carefully at his interlocutor. ‘At least, not yet.’
‘But you’ve considered murder, I imagine?’
‘Who has not?’
‘And you have known murderers – men like Sebastian Atitis-Snake. Men who have killed – and hanged for it. Atitis-Snake was found guilty on the same day that you were, I believe.’
‘So he told me.’
‘He was the man who claimed to be the Emperor Napoleon?’
‘He was.’
‘Tell us his story, as well as your own.’ Quilp poured out more wine. ‘ Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol – by Sebastian Melmoth. There’s a book we can sell around the world. Readers want murder.’
Melmoth put out his hand and with his forefinger lightly touched Quilp’s pen. ‘And I want money. I admit it. I need money. I have none of my own – none at all. I am dependent on the generosity of friends – and the kindness of strangers. And on a small allowance from my dear wife – which she threatens to withdraw if she does not approve of the company I keep. I am in urgent need of funds. And I take it, Dr Quilp, that you are, too. The suit that you are wearing is new, I notice – and from an excellent tailor. The fragrance that you are wearing is a particular favourite of mine – and costly.’
‘Tell me your story – tell me of the murderers you have known – and we shall be as rich as Croesus.’
‘I only wish to be as rich as Conan Doyle.’
‘He is paid a pound a word – and his murderers are creatures of fancy. Yours are real. Tell me your story, Mr Melmoth. Begin at the beginning. Tell it all – spare me no detail – and we shall have Perrier-Jouët night after night.’
What follows is the story that he told.
     

1
25–7 May 1895
Newgate

    E verything about my tragedy has been hideous, mean, repellent, lacking in style.
    If I begin at the beginning, the very moment that I stepped from the dock at the Old Bailey was both grotesque and absurd. As I was jostled down the stairwell from the vast and echoing courtroom to the warren of half-lit corridors and soulless cells that lies beneath, I stumbled on the worn stone steps and lost my footing. I lurched forward and reached out to catch hold of the warder who led the way. But my grasp failed me. Arms flailing, knees buckling, like a marionette whose strings have suddenly been cut, I tumbled downwards to land in a crumpled and humiliated heap at the stairs’ foot.
    The warder coming down the steps behind me laughed. ‘One moment it’s Oscar Wilde, the next it’s Clown Joey.’ It was this man’s jostling that had propelled my fall.
    I lay, motionless, my face pressed hard and flat against the cold, black ground. I closed my eyes. I held my breath. In that ghastly moment I did not so much want to die – given the circumstances, that would have been too grandiose an aspiration – I simply wanted to vanish into thin air: to dematerialise, to ‘cease’, to be no more.
    ‘Up,’ bellowed the voice of a second warder. This was the man who had been leading the way. ‘Up,’ he barked again. I heard him turn. With the toe of his boot, he prodded me sharply in the small of my back. ‘Get up. Now. Now .’
    With difficulty, and without assistance, I pushed myself to my knees and then to my feet. As I began to brush the dust from my clothes, the first warder said, ‘We’ve not got time for that.’
    The second added, smiling as he spoke, ‘You’d be surprised how many fall down these stairs. But there’s no point. Take my advice, Wilde. Accept your fate. Don’t fight it.’
    That night,