Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers by Gyles Brandreth Read Free Book Online

ourenquiries in earnest. You go back to your hotel, Arthur. Write to your little wife in Southsea. Take supper in your room and do some work. Your paper is on histrionics, is it not?’
    ‘Hysteria.’
    ‘Quite so.’ Oscar chuckled and slapped his gloves against the horse’s flank. ‘We shall meet in the morning, Arthur. Breakfast at the Savoy at nine o’clock? Don’t be late. I want to introduce you to the world authority on vampires. You’ll like him. He’s Irish – like me. And the best of fellows – like you. He stole my first sweetheart from me, but I’ve forgiven him. She was too innocent. I like men who have a future and women who have a past, don’t you?’
    Conan Doyle smiled. The horse snorted. The hackney cab jerked into life and moved on. Doyle turned back and waved to us as the carriage left the square.
    As our friend’s cab disappeared at one side of Grosvenor Square, another four-wheeler – a fine brougham-landaulet, with a gold-embossed coat of arms on the nearside door – entered on the other. This elegant vehicle, pulled by a sprightly chestnut cob, was followed immediately by a second, more cumbersome one: a large, long, high-sided, enclosed four-wheeler, unmarked and all painted in black, drawn by a pair of heavy drays.
    ‘A Black Maria,’ I suggested.
    ‘No,’ countered Oscar. ‘No windows. It’s the death cart.’
    He took me by the elbow and steered me across the cobbles, away from the trio of newspapermen, towards the gate leading to the gardens in the centre of the square.
    ‘We can hide beneath the apple blossom,’ he said.
    The two carriages drew up outside 40 Grosvenor Square. Lord Yarborough stepped lightly down from the brougham-landaulet. Oscar describes him as unusually handsome – and so he is. He is around fifty years of age, but appears considerably younger. His profile is distinguished, his face is finely chiselled, his thick black hair is glossy, his walnut eyes shine. He wears no beard and dresses always in black and immaculately. In portraits, in photographs, at a distance, he looks magnificent. In reality, even in his riding boots, he is barely five feet tall.
    ‘He is a pocket person,’ whispered Oscar, as we closed the garden gate behind us. ‘Handsome, versatile and dangerous.’
    We watched as the gentlemen of the press approached his lordship. He waved them away dismissively. They shrank back, retreating without protest. A moment later, with a rattle and a clatter, the rear doors of the second vehicle were pushed open from within and five men, dressed in identical black serge suits, stepped out on to the pavement.
    ‘The undertakers,’ whispered Oscar. ‘And what plain-looking fellows they are. Death, here is thy sting.’
    Lord Yarborough climbed the steps to the front door of the Albemarle London residence. Even as he reached for the bell-pull, the door swung open. Parker’s face appeared in the doorway, but no words were exchanged. His lordship swept into the house and Parker came down into the street.
    Parker is easy to describe. He epitomises the caricature of the family retainer: he is sixty-five or thereabouts (and has been for ten years), silver-haired, ruddy-complexioned,clean-shaven with tufts of white hair growing from his cheeks; slightly stooped, a little slow, somewhat hard of hearing; utterly loyal, wholly unimaginative, thoroughly discreet.
    ‘The hallmark of a first-rate butler is his readiness to commit murder for his employers,’ observed Oscar, throwing a burnt match into the bushes and relishing a new cloud of cigarette smoke as it floated slowly through his nostrils.
    Parker approached the undertakers and gave them their orders. Four of the men climbed back into the vehicle at the rear while the fifth joined Parker on the box seat with the driver at the front. The carriage lumbered off in the direction Conan Doyle’s cab had taken.
    ‘Where are they going?’ I asked.
    ‘Not far. I imagine to the mews behind the house. It