“And then there is the bullet-riddled body of a dead assassin. Three of us saw it and yet the commissioner showed not a jot of interest.”
Wilde shrugged. “You know the police: why let evidence stand in the way of a good trial and execution?”
Wilde’s comment sprung a frown to Conan Doyle’s lips. “If that happens, it will be a grave miscarriage of justice. Surely we must do something?”
“It is no longer our concern. Let us not forget Commissioner Burke’s generous offer of free accommodation in one of Her Majesty’s least luxurious prisons. I have been known to abandon a first-class hotel on a moment’s notice should I find the towels a tad scratchy. I doubt I would find Newgate much to my taste.”
Conan Doyle rumbled a grunt and said, “Point taken. I shall think no more on it.”
Wilde snatched up the day’s newspaper from the end table and vanished behind it, rattling the pages from time to time. But after several moments he lowered the paper and glowered at his friend. “Arthur, that is undoubtedly the noisiest silence I have ever not heard. Could you possibly think a little more quietly?”
Conan Doyle shifted in his chair and apologized. “Sorry. Still… bad business.”
“Very bad for business,” Wilde agreed. “This fog is caning my box office receipts.”
“I meant the murder of Lord Howell.”
“Yes, that, too.” The paper rattled violently and Wilde emitted a strangled sound. “Listen to this review of An Ideal Husband: ‘Whilst Mister Wilde’s words were filled with light and illumination, the same could sadly not be said of the theater, which at one point was so obscured by fog and the footlights so dimmed that the play took on the aspect of a rather witty séance.’”
Wilde crumpled the paper and tossed it to the floor. “This blasted fog is ruining me!”
The paper landed against Conan Doyle’s shins. When he leant forward to pick it up, a large photograph and its accompanying headline caught his eye: “Fog Committee Sees No Solution.”
He glanced at it a moment, and then folded the paper back upon itself and held up the article for his friend to see.
“It seems as though the government has already taken your advice, Oscar. They have appointed a ‘Fog Committee’ to look into the problem.”
Wilde squinted doubtfully at the newspaper. “‘A Fog Committee’?” he echoed, and choked on an ironic laugh. “Forming a committee is always the best possible way to achieve the minimum in the maximum time. Even the spelling is redundant: two m’s, two t’s, and two e’s. Why not save labor and spell it c-o-m-i-t-e? It would save precious ink and be equally ineffectual. Really, what would the world have gained if the English had not had such a spendthrift attitude to consonants?”
Conan Doyle chuckled as his eyes skimmed the text. The committee had concluded that the unusually dense fogs of recent months were purely a function of the vagaries of the English climate and that the much-bruited theory that the burning of coal in any way contributed to the fog was precisely that, a fantastical theory. The article went on to cite the historical record, with bad London fogs being reported as early as the time of King Stephen.
Wilde dredged the champagne bottle from its bucket, recharged his glass, and waved the bottle at Conan Doyle who, by way of declining, rattled the ice in his brandy. Wilde took a long sip, and wryly observed, “The government invariably forms committees to look into problems they have no intention of doing anything about. It is a classic stalling tactic employed in the hopes that either the problem will resolve itself or the government will eventually be voted out of power, at which point they can use the issue to cudgel the incoming administration.”
“Good Lord!” Conan Doyle said, reacting to something he had seen in the paper. “Look at this!” He held the paper up for Wilde to see. Accompanying the article was a photograph of the “Fog Committee.” It was a prime example of the kind of formally posed portrait indulged in by minor dignitaries to boost their sense of self-importance. The Fog Committee comprised of a group of well-dressed gents puffing away at pipes or cigars (apparently with no sense of irony) so that a nimbus of smoke curled about them. The majority were well-fed men in expensive suits with double chins strangling beneath starched collars and cinched-tight ties. There were eight in all — sporting an imposing assortment of beards, muttonchops, and mustachios, most veined with gray whiskers. They looked out of the photograph with the humorless glares of busy-men-who-have-better-things-to-do-than-to-interrupt-overburdened-schedules-with-activities-as-trivial-as-posing-for-a-portrait. One could practically hear the exasperated voice of the photographer trying to corral such men in perpetual motion to hold still long enough to allow light to refract through the lens of a camera and burn their images onto a photographic plate. One figure in particular, a man in a tall stovepipe hat, had turned his head at the vital moment so that his features registered as nothing more than an amorphous gray blur of motion. A caption at the bottom of the photograph identified the committee members, and now Conan Doyle read the names aloud.
“Look here, our friend, Police Commissioner Burke.”
Wilde snorted. “There’s a face badly in need of a fist.”
Conan Doyle chortled at Wilde’s quip and continued reading. “‘The Right Honorable Judge Robert Jordan; Sir Lionel Ransome, financier; Retired Admiral Peregrine Windlesham; Tarquin Hogg, president of the Bank of England; Tristram Oldfield, railroad magnate; George Hardcastle, owner of Oxton Coal…’”
He reached the stovepipe wearer, who was listed only as UNKNOWN. Seated next to the anonymous figure was a face he knew only too well.
“‘… and Lord Howell, Minister of War!’”
Conan Doyle dropped the paper to look at Wilde. “War minister? I could see a reason for the police commissioner, but what has a war minister to do with the issue of fog? It hardly seems a coincidence.”
Wilde sighed aloud. “Honestly, Arthur, I know that you and your confederates in the Society for Psychic Silliness do not believe in coincidences, but they do happen. My days are full of coincidences. I arrive at my table at The Savoy and there is always a chilled bottle of champagne and a plate of Oysters on Horseback waiting. You call it coincidence. I call it sterling service.”
“You could be right, Oscar. It could be a coincidence. The war minister’s photograph appears in the morning paper and by the evening he is assassinated.” Conan Doyle’s brown eyes swept the photograph. “But if another of the committee members were to be assassinated, then the odds of coincidence have just greatly fallen.”
Wilde chuckled. “A war minister? A judge? A banker? If you drew up a list of professions most likely to be assassinated they would all top the list. Who has never had a bank manager they would not wish to murder? I myself would happily strangle mine, would it not leave my many creditors orphaned and inconsolable.”
There was a long silence, finally broken by Conan Doyle. “I should like to speak to that poor Italian chap, Lord Howell’s valet. As the sole surviving witness, only he knows what really happened.”
Wilde fixed Conan Doyle with an abject stare. “You speak in jest, I hope. Commissioner Burke warned us in no uncertain terms about being caught meddling.”
Conan Doyle nodded grimly and tossed off the dregs of his brandy. “That is why it is imperative I am not caught.”
Wilde said nothing for several thoughtful moments, and then he, too, drained his champagne glass, dabbed his lips with a napkin, and set the glass aside. “You mean, that is why it is imperative we should not be caught.”