Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers by Gyles Brandreth

fireplace, put the cigarette box on the mantelpiece, beside a Meissen porcelain shepherd and shepherdess.
    ‘Now, gentlemen,’ he said, crisply, turning to us, ‘to business. And to the point. The Prince of Wales wishes to avoid a scandal. So do I. A scandal would hurt me. A scandal could ruin him. But the prince, because of his profound fondness for my late wife, also wishes to know all there is to know about her death. This is where His Royal Highness and I differ. I believe I know enough already. I do not need to know more.’
    Oscar looked up at the duke. ‘You do not need to know more?’ he repeated quietly.
    ‘I know what Lord Yarborough has told me and that is sufficient. Yarborough is a man I trust. He likes to call himself a “psychiatrist”, but by training he’s a medical man. His judgement can be relied upon. He was my wife’s physician. He signed her death certificate. He is convinced that Helen died of a heart attack – and so am I.’
    ‘But what provoked that heart attack?’ asked Oscar. ‘What of the wounds about her body and in her neck?’
    The Duke of Albemarle blew a great cloud of cigarette smoke across his morning room and laughed out loud. ‘Oh, Mr Wilde,’ he exclaimed, ‘I thought that you of all men would understand! Are you not familiar with unnatural vice?’
    Oscar made to speak, but stopped before he did so.
    ‘Five years ago,’ the duke continued, ‘when I married Helen, I did so in good faith. I loved her dearly. By the time she died, I loved her not at all. There was residual affection, perhaps, but no love left.’
    ‘And no respect?’ asked Oscar.
    ‘She had forfeited that.’ The duke turned to gaze out of the window as he spoke. ‘Lord Yarborough is convinced that she was mad. He wanted to take her to his clinic, to cure her of her cravings by hypnosis.’
    ‘She craved other men?’ asked Oscar gently.
    The duke laughed once more – more gently this time – and looked back at Oscar. ‘That’s not a madness, Mr Wilde. Craving other men? That’s commonplace. Half the wives in London crave men other than their husbands, so I’m told.’
    Oscar smiled. The duke shook his head and drew slowly on his cigarette.
    ‘No, what Helen craved was violence – the thrill of it and the pain of it. My wife was a woman who wanted to be thrashed – and went with any man who was willing to do her bidding.’
    A different silence filled the room. The Duke of Albemarle sighed and threw the remains of his cigarette into the empty grate.
    ‘I am sorry,’ said Oscar.
    ‘My wife brought her own death upon herself, Mr Wilde. Lord Yarborough had told her that her heart was enfeebled. She knew the risk that she was taking – but the risk, the danger, was half the excitement.’
    ‘Whom was she with on the night she died? Do you know?’
    ‘I do not. I neither know nor care. It does not matter. Whoever he was, he was not responsible for her death.’
    ‘But he was responsible for the wounds about her person.’
    ‘She would have welcomed those,’ said the duke. ‘It was the wounds she craved.’
    The clock upon the mantelpiece struck one. The duke took a timepiece from his waistcoat pocket and inspected it. Oscar rose to his feet.
    ‘How much of this does the Prince of Wales know?’ he asked.
    ‘All of it. I called upon His Highness last evening and told him everything.’
    ‘Did you tell the prince who you thought the man might be?’
    ‘It might be any man, Mr Wilde – any man at all. At least, any man who was in this house at about half past eleven last Thursday night.’
    ‘Half past eleven?’ repeated Oscar. ‘But the duchess died just before midnight, did she not?’
    ‘Helen was seen on her way to the telephone room at half past eleven. She went to receive a call. She passed Parker on the landing. She told him that she had been called to the telephone as a matter of urgency.’
    ‘By whom?’
    ‘She did not say.’
    ‘At half past eleven?’
    ‘At half