Last Nocturne Read online

  Grand shrugged. ‘Not having seen her alive – or dead, come to that – it’s hard to say.’

  ‘G.F. Watts,’ Batchelor made a lunge for the Turkish delight and beat Grand to it by a country mile, ‘exhibits at the Grosvenor, doesn’t he?’

  ‘He does.’ Grand got up and wandered to the fireplace; his cigar had gone out. ‘Time we paid the man a visit,’ he said. ‘James.’

  ‘Hmm?’ Batchelor was not impressed with what was left on the top layer; he may have to break the gentleman’s code and rummage in what lay beneath.

  ‘You know that Oscar Wilde’s been following us?’

  ‘Yes.’ Batchelor did.

  ‘Who’s that, then?’ Grand was looking out of the window, down to the street, where a large man in a loud check suit was lounging against a lamppost.

  Detective Constable Alfred Twisleton checked his half-hunter. Nearly eight o’clock. His shift had ended over an hour ago. Surely, those two amateurs wouldn’t be going out again tonight? The American might call on that tart he was knocking off. The Englishman didn’t have any friends at all. Time to call it a night. And he didn’t notice his current charges staring at him out of the window.

  There was nothing like a night in the cells for forging new friendships. On the other hand, how do you say sorry for having knocked out a doyen of the art world when you yourself had not yet graduated from Oxford and your whole life lay before you?

  ‘I can only apologize, Mr Whistler,’ Wilde said. He had long ago lost all feeling in his left buttock and his throat was bricky dry. ‘Again.’

  ‘Yes.’ Whistler was resting his throbbing head against the cool iron of the cell door. ‘I heard you the first time.’

  Wilde buried his head in his hands and Whistler took pity on him. ‘You’ll agree, however,’ the artist said, ‘that I am the wronged party.’

  ‘Indubitably,’ Wilde nodded. ‘If Ruskin is responsible …’

  ‘If, sir? If?’ Whistler sat bolt upright and held on to the edge of the bunk as the room swam. ‘Don’t speak to me of “ifs”. Even if Ruskin hasn’t been despoiling my painting, he is still guilty of the most appalling slander. Tell me, Mr Wilde, when you leave Oxford, what do you intend to do with your life?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Wilde leaned back on the impossibly hard, narrow bed. ‘The fact is that Literae Humaniores doesn’t exactly qualify a chap for the nineteenth century. I thought perhaps, writing poetry? Plays? Even children’s stories pay good money these days, I’m told.’

  ‘Good luck with that,’ Whistler grunted. ‘Whatever you heard, there’s no money in any of it. Two hundred guineas per canvas is what I get. What would you make for a play? Ten pounds? Something like that?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Wilde said. ‘But can we really put a price on art, Mr Whistler? Art of any kind. What, for example, would you say this is worth? Umm … let me think … Yes, I have it.’ He cleared his throat and struck a rather less lacklustre attitude. ‘Like two doomed ships that pass in storm, We had crossed each other’s way: But we made no sign, we said no word, We had no word to say; For we did not meet in the holy night, But in the shameful day … Let me see, now … Yes … A prison wall was round us both, Two outcast men were we: The world had thrust us from its heart, And God from out His care: And the iron gin that waits for Sin, Had caught us in its snare.’

  Wilde relaxed from his declaiming and looked across at Whistler. ‘So, how much?’

  ‘Who’s it by?’

  Wilde was puzzled. ‘Well … me. I just made it up. It’s about us, you see. In prison.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Whistler was not immediately impressed. ‘Tell me it again. I wasn’t really listening.’

  Wilde turned his back to the artist and looked fixedly at the wall.

  Whistler was not a sensitive man when it came to other humans but he could see he had hurt the man’s feelings. ‘It sounded very good,’ he said, placatingly. ‘Very … very’ – he didn’t mix much with poets – ‘tumpty. Something you could easily remember.’

  Wilde was implacable.

  Whistler gave him a while. He seemed like a nice enough lad, just a bit hot tempered. And sure enough, eventually, mainly because the bed was so hard, he turned over and sat up.

  Whistler decided to try and make a fresh start. ‘So,’ he said, brightly, ‘you work for Grand and Batchelor do you?’

  ‘No,’ Wilde said, a little sulkily. ‘I am kicking my heels for a couple of weeks before my final examinations. Hanging around, as we have it in Oxford these days, with my friend, Ganymede Martin. He works for them.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Actually, I thought I might actually enjoy sleuthing – ah, there I go, repeating myself again. But I don’t. Do you know, Batchelor actually seemed to be accusing me of following him yesterday morning?’

  ‘Did he? Were you?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Wilde was outraged. ‘I can only assume that the more you delve into other people’s private lives, the more paranoid you become. I think we’re a lot safer with painting and poetry, don’t you, Mr Whistler?’

  There was a crash of locks and a rattle of keys.

  ‘Visitor, Whistler,’ the turnkey grunted. He was one of Nature’s gentlefolk.

  ‘My dear fellow,’ the visitor said, extending a hand. ‘I just heard. Are you all right?’

  Whistler bounced to his feet. ‘Keen,’ he seized the man’s hand. ‘Thank God – and about time. Can you get me out of here? I am a celebrity.’

  ‘Of course,’ the QC said. ‘My clerk has the paperwork.’

  ‘Oh, Wilde,’ Whistler turned to his cellmate. ‘This is Perceval Keen, QC, my attorney … lawyer.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Keen,’ Wilde said, picking up his hat.

  ‘What for, young man?’ Keen looked the reprobate up and down. ‘Hell will freeze over before I represent people like you.’

  The keys rattled and the locks crashed. And Oscar Wilde was alone.

  TEN

  Mrs Rackstraw had been more vigilant that morning and had managed to get some breakfast down her gentlemen. They had no idea that giving them the food of champions before nine in the morning had become her main aim in life, and ate it with their usual mix of relish and total lack of concentration that was their typical morning mood. She stood at the baize door, her hands folded serenely in front of her apron as they bustled out into the street, leaving a wrecked table in their wake, the melange of kipper bones, eggshells and crumbs that made her so happy.

  ‘Is it me?’ Grand said as he hailed a cab on the corner, ‘or is Mrs Rackstraw getting a bit peculiar?’

  Batchelor looked nonplussed. ‘Getting a bit peculiar?’ he asked.

  Grand chuckled as he climbed into the hansom. ‘Nightingale Lane,’ he told the driver, and with a flick of a whip they were trundling west. ‘That’s true, but she watches us like a hawk these days. It’s getting a bit creepy.’

  ‘I suppose she’s worrying about what will happen when you marry Lady Caroline,’ Batchelor suggested. And she wasn’t the only one.

  ‘Why?’ Grand was the nonplussed one now.

  ‘Well … you’ll have your own establishment. I can’t afford to keep myself the way you have been keeping us. On my share of the business, I’ll need to take rooms somewhere. And we have the added expense of Martin now.’ He hadn’t meant to have this conversation yet, and certainly not above the rattle of a hansom through the morning traffic, but here he was.

  ‘I suppose I had never really thought about it. I know Caro has been looking at places. And dresses. And honeymoon destinations. And bridesmaids …’ His voice died away. ‘It looks as if this marriage might actually happen, James.’

  ‘Isn’t that the idea of an engagement?’ Batchelor was wryly amused. His friend and colleague had swum around the edges of marriage often enough, but now he was caught in the vortex and circling the drain.

  ‘I met her mother last night.’ Grand couldn’t suppress a small shudder.

  ‘You’ve met the
woman before, surely?’ Batchelor said. Even he, who had never even contemplated marriage, had met enough mothers to give him nightmares till doomsday.

  ‘Of course, of course. But only when there are other people there. Her pa is a nice enough old cuss. Quiet, sits by himself a lot, drinking port.’

  Both men were silent for a moment, taking in the import of that thought.

  ‘But the mother. Oh, my land!’ It must have been talk of mothers that made Grand temporarily regress; the phrase was pure Boston.

  That seemed to be all there was, so Batchelor prompted him a little. ‘Difficult lady?’

  ‘Difficult doesn’t even begin to describe her,’ Grand said. ‘She’s … she’s … impossible. That’s all.’ He sank his chin on his chest and contemplated his toes.

  ‘And you’re afraid Lady Caroline is going to be like her?’ Batchelor said, gently.

  Grand looked at him with eyes hollow with worry. ‘Is she?’ he asked, grabbing Batchelor’s sleeve.

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ Batchelor said, shaking him off. ‘You’re the expert where women are concerned. I know you love Lady Caroline, or at least, I assume you do. She has lasted longer than any woman you’ve ever known; she’s beautiful, she’s clever, she’s well-connected …’

  ‘She is a bit of a harridan,’ Grand said, gloomily.

  Batchelor nodded and patted his friend’s arm. ‘She can be, I admit. But also, surely, she has a softer side?’

  A slow smile crept across Grand’s face. ‘Oh, has she! Oh, yes, James. She can be …’ He became aware of the cabbie leaning in to listen and turned his face upwards. ‘Oi!’ he shouted. ‘Are we there yet?’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ the cabbie said. He loved a bit of upper-crust tittle-tattle; it gave him something to tell the wife when he got home.

  Grand subsided into his seat. ‘So, the long and short of it, James, is I’m not at all sure. Do I want to become a quiet old geezer drinking myself to death on port? Or do I get out while the going’s good?’

  ‘It’s never too late, these days,’ Batchelor said. ‘There’s always divorce.’

  ‘I’m too long in the tooth to look at it like that,’ Grand said. ‘And Lady Caroline’s no spring chicken. If we want little uns, that is.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll work it out, never you fear.’

  ‘Nearly there, guv,’ the cabbie called from above.

  ‘So, enough about me. What about this Watts guy?’

  ‘Well, he was married to Ellen Terry for less than a year—’

  ‘Got to interrupt there, guv,’ the cabbie leaned forward. ‘My missus is a bit of a follower of the theay-ter, you know what I mean. She knows all the wossname, gossip. And the gossip is, he’s only just got his decree thingummy.’

  ‘Nisi?’ Batchelor suggested.

  ‘Prob’ly. And it’s been ten years since she buggered off wiv that bloke.’

  ‘Godwin.’ Batchelor wasn’t as good as Martin, but he wasn’t bad.

  ‘Thass him.’

  That seemed to be the sum total of the cabbie’s knowledge, and they had arrived at their destination. To show his displeasure at being eavesdropped on, Grand didn’t give him a tip. To show his gratitude for a bit of gossip, Batchelor slipped the man sixpence.

  The hansom rattled away and they looked at the house, set back behind a shrubbery from the pavement. To their right, a portion of the building was glass-roofed like an orangery and was obviously a studio. The rest was simply a large London residence for a gentleman of comfortable means. Behind it, the trees of Frederic Leighton’s estate were coming into full leaf and brought light and movement to a rather dour pile of brick and tile.

  ‘These tales of artists starving in garrets, James?’ Grand ventured.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Do they? Ever starve in garrets?’

  ‘I suppose so. But not as often as the stories would suggest, I imagine.’ Batchelor looked along the impressive frontage of Watts’ house. ‘You could starve in here because you couldn’t find your way out, but that would be the only reason, I would think. Anyway,’ Batchelor extended a hand, ‘your turn to knock?’

  ‘I believe it is.’ Grand opened the low, wrought-iron gate and walked up the tiled path. Windows looked blindly down at him from the first floor and the house seemed empty. He knew from experience that behind the scenes, servants of every level would be beavering away keeping everything spick and span – even an artist needs to have clean clothes and fires lit. And sure enough, on his knock, the door was flung open by a young man in the generic uniform of a footman who also brings the coal in and cleans the windows.

  ‘Mr Watts?’ Grand asked.

  The footman looked at him dubiously. ‘I’m not sure he’s At Home,’ he said, through his nose. He was obviously taking condescension lessons from a retired butler somewhere in the suburbs. He hadn’t quite got it pat yet; he just sounded as if he had a heavy cold.

  ‘Could you find out?’ Batchelor said, leaning forward and proffering a card.

  The footman took it as if it might have rabies and bore it away.

  Grand said, rummaging in his pocket and coming out with a florin, ‘Two bob says he comes back and tells us Mr Watts says he isn’t here.’

  Batchelor thought. The footman looked fairly dim, but that kind of thing was very much for the newly employed and he had noticed his uniform had wear around the buttons. ‘You’re on,’ he said, checking he had a florin, just in case.

  After a pause, the footman was back. ‘Mr Watts says he isn’t here,’ he said.

  Batchelor pressed the coin into Grand’s hand, held behind his back for the purpose.

  It was time to lean. ‘Did you not see what’s on the card, boy?’ Grand said, ratcheting up the hard-boiled American. ‘Enquiry agents?’

  ‘I seen … I mean, I saw it, sir,’ the footman said, nasal as ever.

  ‘That means we work with the police,’ Grand said, putting a lot of emphasis on the ‘p’ word.

  ‘They’ve just left,’ the footman said, in the tones of one scoring a point.

  ‘Precisely,’ Grand added smoothly. ‘We’re here to just clear up a few questions. They’re busy men, the police. They can’t keep on coming back for nothing.’

  The footman was undecided. Nothing in his Instructions for Footmen by a Gentleman’s Gentleman told him how to cope with this eventuality. He chewed his lip and looked the enquiry agents up and down. They seemed to be respectable enough, pressed clothes, clean boots – he had just come up from boot boy, so knew you could tell a gent from his footwear – so he decided to go and make sure that Mr Watts realized who he was turning away. ‘Mr Watts is painting,’ he said in his normal voice, which was a little high and whining. ‘He’s got behind and—’

  Batchelor realized the lad was unsure of his ground and reassured him. ‘Mr Watts will be saved an awful lot of bother if he sees us today,’ he said. ‘Saves him having to go to the police station, give evidence, perhaps even go to court …’

  The footman legged it and was back red-faced in a moment. ‘Mr Watts will see you now,’ he said, remembering to use his nose. ‘Will you walk this way?’

  The lad was noticeably pigeon-toed and Grand and Batchelor did their customary step or two in the same style, before reverting to their sober, grown-up selves to be ushered into the presence.

  Watts was only just turned sixty but looked older. The Old Testament prophet look was definitely in vogue this year. The spring sunshine shone harshly on his balding head, the sparse hair springing up and looking almost like a halo. The old man was clearly in a towering temper and the footman disappeared back through the studio door like a jack rabbit.

  ‘Mr Watts?’ Grand began, politely.

  ‘No, of course not!’ the old man said, irritably. ‘I am actually the bloody Akond of Swat. Why would George Frederic Watts, after all, be in the studio of George Frederic Watts, dressed in his painting garb and holding a paintbrush? It isn’t as if – is it? – he is the foremost allegorical painter of
the age or anything. Well? Don’t just stand there like an idiot. Answer me.’

  Batchelor butted in. ‘Very amusing, Mr Watts,’ he said, employing his best police speak. ‘Not just an allegorical painter, but an extremely amusing raconteur, I can tell. But actually, your answers could be construed as perverting the course of justice, interfering with the police in the pursuance of their—’

  ‘Don’t give me that, Batchelor,’ Watts snapped. ‘I remember you when you were a bloody cub reporter on the Telegraph. I never forget a face. In fact, I think if you look in the background of one or two of my larger works, you may find yourself there. You have an interesting face, if a little weaselly. I was not taken in, gentlemen, by your threats of being connected with the police. I happen to know they wouldn’t touch you with a bargepole. I merely find myself with time to spare because my goddamned model hasn’t turned up. Again. Excuse my French.’

  Grand and Batchelor looked meaningfully at each other.

  ‘If it’s Evangeline French you’re waiting for …’ Batchelor said.

  ‘I’ll wait for ever,’ Watts said, dabbling his brush in some oil of turpentine and carefully drying it on his smock. ‘She’s dead as a nit, according to the policemen who have just left.’

  ‘You don’t seem … upset,’ Grand ventured.

  ‘Upset? Upset? Well, any man’s death diminishes me, if I can quote John Donne for a moment there. But she was only a model, you know. Not the queen or anything. Not my wife.’

  ‘Or your mistress?’ Batchelor hinted.

  ‘I think you must be confusing me with animals like Rossetti and his ilk. Excellent painter, don’t get me wrong, but can’t keep it in his trousers for love nor money. They’re all the same, deep down. Marrying each other’s wives, getting their models pregnant, there’s no end to it. That’s why I don’t have much to do with them. I really can’t be doing with it. I keep up with Valentine Prinsep and John Stanhope, two of my students, you know, but that’s about all. They are only second-rate, alas, but they make a living, as I understand it. But even those two I see less of these days – they do so love to hobnob.’