“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.”
“You heard what he said to that young swell. Plus, I noticed the other night that he wore a pendant about his neck — a pentacle.”
“A pentacle? Then perhaps he truly is an aficionado of the occult.”
“He seemed quite boastful of the fact when his friend ‘Bunky’ recognized him.”
“I thought that was a jest. How very odd.” Wilde mused a moment and said, “Still, it is the meek and mild Doctor Lamb that intrigues me.”
“How so? He struck me as a noble man. He has renounced monetary gain to volunteer his talents to the least fortunate in society.”
Wilde’s mouth puckered skeptically. “Yes, he said as much, and yet his clothes argue volubly against his claimed state of penury. You did notice his attire?”
Despite being the author of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle was embarrassed to admit he did not share his fictional creation’s powers of observation. He shook his head, abashedly.
“Our poor-as-a-church-mouse physician was kitted out in fawn doeskin trousers, a very fine shirt of Irish linen with French cuffs, and a beautifully tailored waistcoat from a gent’s haberdashers I only frequent when I am feeling at my most self-indulgent. The prison doctor may indeed receive a pittance of a yearly stipend, but he obviously enjoys someone’s patronage when it comes to procuring his wardrobe.”
“Perhaps he supplements his income by other means.”
“A darker, but entirely credible possibility.”
Conan Doyle frowned. “Of course, bodysnatching is largely a thing of the past, but medical schools still require fresh corpses for students of dissection.”
“And as prison physician of Newgate, the selfless Doctor Lamb would be in a most convenient position to procure the very freshest of pickings.”
“I am curious to witness the fate of the body. The executed are left hanging for a full hour to ensure death. We will just have to wait—”
He was interrupted as the prison’s smaller gate-within-a-gate flung open. A cadre of uniformed prison guards jogged out and began to drive the crowd back with threats, curses, and the occasional jab of a truncheon in the ribs. The main gate opened behind them and a hearse drove out drawn by two black horses with plumed heads. The well-heeled spectators that had been allowed inside the prison now also spilled out of the main gate, joining the mob.
“But there’s the hearse now,” Wilde pointed out. “Surely an hour has not elapsed?”
Conan Doyle’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “No, it has not. Clearly they are not following protocol.”
With jeers and cheers, the waiting rabble surged forward to greet the hearse, a sea of upraised hands, all jostling for a single touch of the dread black carriage.
“What are they doing?”
“A morbid tradition. They all seek to lay a hand upon the hearse… for luck.”
“Ugh!” Wilde had had enough and was about to insist they depart when he spotted a mane of fiery red hair among the scrum of figures darting dangerously close to the turning wheels.
The Marquess of Gravistock.
Meanwhile, Conan Doyle’s attention was fixed upon the driver’s seat of the hearse. The noble Doctor Lamb rode alongside a funeral groom in a top hat draped in black crepe: a man with a familiar port-wine stain.
Conan Doyle suddenly flung open the carriage door and dropped to the cobblestones. “I will leave you now, Oscar.”
“What? Wait! Where are you going?”
“To follow the hearse. I want to see the body placed in the ground. I suggest you return to your club until you recover.”
Without waiting for a reply, Conan Doyle plunged into the milling crowd and soon vanished from sight. Wilde strained to keep his eyes on the long mane of fiery red curls amongst the river of bobbing top hats. He followed the marquess’s progress along Newgate Street until he climbed into his personal carriage.
A very distinctive carriage, as it turned out.
Wilde rapped his knuckles on the carriage ceiling.
“Yes, sir?” his driver called down.
“Gibson, I want you to follow that carriage.”
“Which one, sir? I see a number of carriages.”