Home » Book Reviews » Gyles Brandreth » The Ring of Death by Gyles Brandreth
Possible spoilers ahead
I’m excited about reading this book as I really like Gyles Brandreth when I’ve seen him on TV. I hadn’t realised that he writes detective books too! I have a feeling that I’m going to enjoy his books as I love Brandreth’s use of words, it seems to me like he revels in language and words and description, I could listen to him talk for hours, so I feel sure that he will be a very good author. I realise though, after already purchasing this book, that this is the second one in the series so I wonder if I perhaps should read the first book first, but I can’t bear to wait so I am just going for it! The blurb on the back of this book sounds delicious, that a game is played where the guests each write down the name of a person they would like to be murdered…and then one of the people named dies, eeek!
A large group of people are gathered at a fundraiser, organised by Oscar Wilde’s wife Constance. Wilde is speaking to his friend, Arthur Conan Doyle, about the guests at the fundraiser, and also about that night’s meeting of his supper club, named the Socrates Club, whose members meet on the ground floor of the recently opened Cadogon Hotel. The seven members of the club (along with Wilde and Doyle) are Wilde’s good friend and biographer Robert Sherard, Bram Stoker, Lord Alfred Douglas (also known as Bosie), Walter Sickert, and Alphonse Byrd (who is secretary of the supper club and also the night manager of The Cadogan Hotel). Each of the members bring a different guest along to each supper club meeting, and the guests on this evening (1st May 1892) are Edward Heron-Allen, Lord Drumlanrig (brother of Bosie), The Honourable The Reverend George Daubeney, Willie Hornung, Bradford Pearse, Charles Brookfield, and David McMuirtree. Ooooh, I do love a good map and I see there is a map of London dated 1892 at the start of the book, which I am enjoying poring over! And I wonder if Sherard is going to be the narrator, as the preface is from him (written in 1939 in France) in which he states that he is writing of the events which happened in 1892. I like the description of the characters as it is all very detailed and I can picture them all beautifully in my head (I just felt sure that Brandreth was going to be an author I’d love and I feel these descriptions prove me right!). I don’t know much about Wilde but I like the portrayal of him here, and I was intrigued that Doyle said he had based Sherlock Holmes’ older brother on Wilde, was that really the case, I wonder? And eeek, Bram Stoker is there too, I love his Dracula book (although it sounds like he hasn’t yet written it in 1892 so that classic is yet to come!). So presumably there are going to be 14 potential suspects (from the men at the supper club meeting that night), although I guess we can discount Wilde and Doyle and Stoker as suspects as they’re real-life people, which makes me wonder if some of the other men at the supper club are real-life people too as they then can’t be either murdered or be the murderer! I will have to google and see how many are real-life. I think I recognise Hornung’s name, and oooh I’ve just googled and he wrote the Raffles books which I read not too long ago, although again (as with Bram Stoker) I don’t think he had yet written those books at this time in 1892. And I’ve had to google The Cadogan Hotel for pictures, wow, it looks very grand and historic and beautiful, both inside and out (and the afternoon teas look sublime!). I noticed that the quote at the front of the book was by Socrates, so I guess that fits with Wilde forming the Socrates Club.
At the supper club meeting, Wilde suggests they play a Murder Game, with each person writing down the name of a person they’d like to be murdered. The names are then read out, which include Bradford Pearse and David McMuirtree who are present at the supper club meeting, McMuirtree’s name having been written down four times, and Doyle is keen to stop the game at this point. Wilde’s name is then read out, and also Mrs Wilde, as well as one piece of paper being empty. Most of the party are now feeling uncomfortable and the general consensus is that it’s time to go home, and the supper club meeting breaks up. Sherard and Doyle stay over at Wilde’s house that night. Oooh, how fun and dramatic, a Murder Game, tee hee! But it was a surprise with the names being read out of people who were actually there, and poor McMuirtree, I wonder why he got so many votes, he surely must be worried! And I was going to begin pondering who of the names read out would be the one to die (going from the blurb on the back of the book, as we know that there is going to be a murder), but obviously it can’t be Wilde who dies, and I’d like to think his wife wouldn’t be killed either!
The following morning, Daubeney knocks frantically on Wilde’s door saying that Elizabeth Scott-Rivers (the first name to be read out the previous evening) has died. He says he wrote her name on his piece of paper, adding that this was because she had bankrupted him after he stood her up a week before their wedding and she had sued him for breach of promise and won. He explains that he was walking along the water’s edge after the supper club meeting and found himself near her house although he hadn’t intended to go there but was drunk, he says he then fell asleep on a bench alongside the water and woke up to fire boats arriving and noticed that Elizabeth’s house was on fire so ran towards it. He got there before the firemen and found her burnt to death with her face all burnt away. He adds that he panicked and ran away from the scene, so has come to them for help. Wilde asks who inherits with her death, and Daubeney says that when they were engaged she altered her will to favour him but he presumes that since the cancelling of the engagement she has altered her will again. The others tidy him up and urge him to go to the police. Later, Wilde tells the others that he was watching Daubeney yesterday evening during the supper club meeting and he hadn’t actually drunk that much so he doubts that he was drunk, as he had claimed. Hmmm, so Wilde obviously suspects that Daubeney was pretending to be drunk for some reason, that’s intriguing, and makes me think we can’t fully trust Daubeney’s story. And I’m surprised that the others tidy Debauney up, as potentially they are destroying evidence if he is the murderer! And gruesome as this sounds (!), I did wonder if Elizabeth’s face being all burnt away means that she is unidentifiable so it perhaps isn’t actually Elizabeth? And I wonder if Elizabeth hadn’t yet altered her will and Daubeney knew this, which would be very tempting for him to then kill her, particularly as her suing him has taken all his money, indeed could he have actually viewed inheriting this as being just his own money being returned to him? But he has such an odd name, being The Honourable The Reverend George Daubeney, is the word ‘The’ actually needed twice in one name?! And is he a clergyman (as in a Reverend) or is this not the case when the name ‘Honourable’ is also attached to his title?
Wilde and Sherard and Doyle go to Elizabeth’s house, which Wilde recognises because Stoker used to live there. The police are still investigating at the property but Inspector Gilmour of Scotland Yard knows Wilde so answers his questions, though Gilmour says they are viewing it as an accident because she was alone in the house (as the servants don’t sleep there on Sunday nights) and she had locked all the doors, so no-one could have got in, and they presume she had stepped too close to the fireplace and her gown had caught alight, which was when the fire was spotted by a passing fire boat. Wilde asks where the body was found and Gilmour says it was on the hearth, Wilde also asks if she was laying on her front or back and Gilmour says she was laying on her back, Wilde also asks if her eyes were open or closed and Gilmour says they were open. Wilde comments that Daubeney had said Elizabeth’s face was all burnt away so he double-checks again if her eyes were visible and Gilmour confirms that they were and were open. Oooh, it seems strange that Daubeney said that Elizabeth’s face was all burnt away when this clearly wasn’t the case, though I guess if there was fire and smoke in the room then he may not have seen things clearly? And I’m wondering at the convenience of the servants not being there that night and the murderer knowing this beforehand, or was it a common occurrence that servants don’t always sleep at their workplace on Sunday nights? But it seems a bit odd to me that they weren’t there in readiness for their duties the following morning, was one of the servants in league with the murderer perhaps so arranged for them all not to be there to leave the coast clear, or had the murderer enticed the servants away somehow? Wilde’s questions about how the body was found are interesting and I can’t guess his thoughts relating to the questions, apart from if he expects her likely to have curled up in a ball with her eyes closed as she was dying? I instinctively wanted to suspect Stoker of the crime seeing as he clearly knew the house well and its layout, with him having previously lived there, but I guess he can’t be the murderer as he’s a real-life person! I’m distressed to learn how tragically common it was at that time for ladies’ gowns to catch light, and indeed it is detailed that Wilde’s wife has formed a society to campaign for a change in fashion so ladies don’t have to wear these gowns of flammable material and which are cumbersome to then get out of, the whole idea just fills me with horror! Also, I had wondered a few pages ago about if Daubeney was a clergyman, but I see that Sherard indeed refers to him as a man of the cloth, so he clearly is. And I also notice that Sherard mentions that he first met Daubeney in a bookshop, so if the man is keen on books then I’m tempted to think he can’t be a murderer, tee hee!
The following day, Bosie brings a newspaper to Wilde detailing the death of Lord Abergordon, which was the second name read out at the Murder Game. Bosie says that he thinks that his brother, Drumlanrig, wrote Abergordon’s name on his piece of paper, and adds that his brother inherits at Abergordon’s death. Doyle remembers that Drumlanrig had told him that Abergordon was present at the death of Drumlanrig and Bosie’s uncle during a mountaineering expedition, their uncle having fallen off a mountain but it having been difficult to conceive how an accident could have happened as the conditions at the time were good, and that his body was never found, Doyle adds that Drumlanrig had suggested that Doyle could use this method to kill off Sherlock Holmes. Oooh, so this second death was the second name read out, so are all the people read out going to be killed and in the order in which their names were read out?! I’d just presumed that there was going to be one murder which would then be investigated, but several murders and them occurring in a set order is a very tantalising idea (tantalising from a murder mystery fan’s point of view, of course, not in real life, that would be very macabre!). And it just occurs to me that another difficulty with potentially guessing who the murderer is, is that we don’t know who wrote which name on their piece of paper (apart from a couple of people who said on the night which name they’d written) so we don’t know who had a grudge against that person named. Though this makes me wonder if Bosie could be lying with him saying that his brother wrote Abergordon’s name, perhaps Bosie himself wrote Abergordon’s name and just lied at the supper club meeting when he said he wrote someone else’s name! And another difficulty is that surely no-one knew apart from Wilde that this Murder Game was going to be played, so the murderer can’t have planned beforehand to put the name of the person he wished to murder onto a piece of paper (or talk someone else into writing their name) in order to then be able to effectively hide his murder within a list of other deaths, so is it all just opportunistic, or did the murderer plant the idea of the Murder Game in Wilde’s head? Obviously if Wilde wasn’t a real-life person, then I’d suspect him of designing the whole game just so he could murder someone! And eeek, I loved this reference to a mountaineering fall being a possible way to kill off Sherlock Holmes, as this is just what Doyle did, even down to the same waterfall, the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland! I wonder if Drumlanrig is a real-life person and his uncle did die at those falls and he did suggest this idea to Doyle, how intriguing would that be! But the death of the uncle certainly sounds like a mysterious accident and like it possibly wasn’t an accident at all, and I wonder if this is all a red herring or if it has a bearing on the culprit!
The following day the third name read out at the Murder Game, the parrot Captain Flint, is found dead. Wilde and Sherard go to see Doyle, as Sherlock Holmes was the fourth name read out. Doyle says that he wants Holmes dead but that he didn’t write Holmes’ name for the Murder Game, that Hornung told him that he wrote Holmes’ name as he is envious of Doyle’s success with that character, and Doyle adds that he then advised Hornung to write a book with a clever criminal character to rival the character of Holmes. Sherard says that he was one of the people who wrote McMuirtree’s name because he doesn’t like the way that McMuirtree gossips about people and spreads nasty rumours as he had overheard McMuirtree the other day saying that Mrs Wilde’s father used to expose himself. Wilde says that this story about Mrs Wilde’s father is actually true. Hmmm, more developments! I am grateful to have the complete list of potential murder victims written out here, but this reminds me that there are three names on the list who aren’t actually people at all so presumably can’t be murdered, ie Sherlock Holmes, Old Father Time, and Eros, so what will happen then? Or are there people with those nicknames and they’ll be murdered just to keep to the method of each being killed in turn? And I’m a bit surprised that the other attendees at the supper club aren’t all clamoring in panic with these people dying, particularly Pearse and McMuirtree whose own names were read out, but perhaps these deaths aren’t widely known yet, particularly the parrot’s, and I guess Elizabeth’s death was reported to be an accident and Abergordon’s death was thought to be natural as he was an elderly man. But surely these deaths aren’t accidents or natural…! And Wilde seems very Sherlock Holmes-like with noticing little details of clothing, etc, from which he learns where someone has been or what they have just been doing, I know Doyle said that he’d based Holmes’ older brother on Wilde but I wonder if he actually based Holmes himself on Wilde (if indeed this is how Wilde was in real life). And I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for Doyle when he said that he’d like to write other things and not just be known for Sherlock Holmes in 100 years’ time, as oh dear, how prophetic that seems as that is indeed what he is known for, and he didn’t have any luck with trying to kill Holmes off either, bless him! And I did chuckle at Doyle saying that he’d advised Hornung to create a clever criminal character, as this is what he did with Raffles, and I think too that he might have credited Doyle in the foreword of his book for his encouragement or inspiration or something like that, I’ll have to check my copy of the book. And I feel like there are lots of red herrings being given here! Well, obviously I can’t be sure if they are red herrings or if they are relevant to the story, but it’s hard to know what I might need to remember and focus on and what I can discard, which is the sign of a good murder mystery book, of course! For example, not only Abergordon being on the mountaineering expedition when Drumlanrig’s uncle died, but also this about Mrs Wilde’s father, and also Wilde having offended Brookfield who now seems to hate Wilde, arrrggh!
Sickert speaks to Wilde about his concerns about Pearse and shows him a letter he’s received from Pearse saying that he’s in a play in Eastbourne and thinks that he’s being pursued. Wilde remembers that Pearse was the fifth name read out at the Murder Game. Wilde and Sickert and Sherard go to Eastbourne to see the play which Pearse is in. Pearse is shot on stage at the end of the play as part of the story but when the curtain comes back up to show the line-up of the cast Pearse is no longer there on stage. A fellow cast member says that Pearse ran off stage immediately the curtain came down, and the doorman of the theatre says that Pearse has gone out of the building. The theatre manager thinks that they will find Pearse in a bar, or that he will come back to the theatre before it is locked at midnight as he sleeps there due to not having any money for accommodation. They look in all the bars and don’t find him, and he doesn’t come back to the theatre before it is locked at midnight. Wilde takes the others to nearby Beachy Head, telling them to prepare themselves for the worse. They find Pearse’s travelling bag at the edge of the cliff, but there is no sign of Pearse. When they return to the railway station to head home, they see Drumlanrig at the station. Omg, is it looking like Drumlanrig is the killer then? What on earth is he doing in Eastbourne? And phew, I felt sure that Pearse was going to be killed on stage when his character was shot, I was certain that the curtain would go up and there would be a pool of blood, omg, what a tease Brandreth is! But now it does look like he’s dead, either suicide at Beachy Head or murdered and made to look like suicide. And I’ve googled Beachy Head, it really is a stunning place, such beautiful white cliffs and apparently they are the highest cliffs in England, so it’s a shame it’s mainly known for being a suicide spot. And I was excited that the Duke of Devonshire is mentioned (with him having a connection to Eastbourne) as he lives at beautiful Chatsworth House which is one of my favourite stately homes to visit! Oooh, and I loved the cleverness of Wilde spotting the missing comma in Pearse’s letter, which potentially alters what it says, as with the comma (as Sickert read it) it states “I’m frightened, to be honest with you” which implies he is fearful for his safety, but without the comma (as Wilde reads it) it states “I’m frightened to be honest with you” which then implies that Pearse has secrets which he is cautious of sharing with Sickert, that’s so gorgeously neat with the ambiguity of the missing comma, I love it, and as I said before I feel sure that Brandreth loves language and words, I can imagine him always noticing commas! And I’m a bit concerned that Wilde and the others have left Doyle alone while they’ve gone off to Eastbourne, with Holmes being the fourth name read out, I’m not sure that this doesn’t make Doyle (as Holmes’ creator) potentially a victim! And as an aside, Wilde is wearing a fedora?! That seems bold, tee hee! And I also didn’t appreciate Wilde’s mockery of Little Nell’s death in Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop, I really don’t feel he is able to criticise the great man’s writing like that!
Wilde points out to Sherard and Sickert that ‘on the four consecutive days since we played it…the first four of the game’s so-called victims have each met their fate’, and he adds that someone at the supper club must be a murderer and could also just be killing people for the sole reason that their name was read out in a game. Sickert says that he wrote McMuirtree’s name but this was because he realised from doodling on the paper that the letters from David McMuirtree’s name spelt out the words ‘a murdered victim’ in an anagram so it then seemed fitting to him, whilst playing a game of murder, to write that name. Wilde decides they must tell Inspector Gilmore what happened with the Murder Game, as well as warning McMuirtree. Wilde is also anxious about his wife, and Sickert urges him to borrow Bosie’s gun to protect himself and his wife. What??!!! Is that really so, that David McMuirtree’s name spells out the words ‘a murder victim’?! That is amazingly clever, I love it, and surely there must be more to this coincidence, it can’t just be a coincidence! Is McMuirtree not his real name, did he somehow know ahead of the Murder Game that it would be played and then altered his name accordingly, or did he plant the idea for the game in Wilde’s head and then alter his name to McMuirtree? But why, what would he gain by doing that? And actually it can’t be a fake name, surely, as he is a famous boxer so he is known professionally as McMuirtree. But there must be more to this coincidence, as I say, something this clever can’t mean nothing bigger than the statement by Sickert! And Wilde saying that the murderer is just killing people because their name is on a list makes me wonder if there is just one person the murderer wants dead and they saw the opportunity to hide this killing by murdering all the people on the list. Or is it, as Wilde seems to be implying (if I’ve understood him correctly), that the murderer just likes the crazy logic of following a list of names and murdering them all, he doesn’t particularly want any one of them dead? And part of me was a bit surprised that it’s taken Wilde so long to connect the deaths to the Murder Game, but I guess I had the blurb on the back of the book to go on! And I see the significance now of the book’s title The Ring of Death, as it is mentioned that the boxing ring which McMuirtree fights in is called The Ring of Death, so I wonder if the fact that the title links to McMuirtree makes his death (if indeed he will be murdered) of more significance than the others’ deaths? And I’m querying Wilde’s statement that a victim has died on each of the four days, as Holmes hasn’t died, has he? And this does remind me (with one of the names on the papers being Old Father Time) that Jude’s son in Jude The Obscure was nicknamed Little Father Time (though I admit I can’t see any link beyond that, tee hee). I’d like to think that something sneaky and clever regarding these ‘nothing/spare’ names (as I’ve called them in my head) of Holmes and Old Father Time and Eros, and indeed the blank piece of paper too, will be introduced by Brandreth, such as (like I’d wondered before) people with those nicknames die, or even (to link in with Pearse’s theatre) actors who have played those characters die? I’d be a little disappointed if they don’t have any relevance to the plot in the end. And this has prompted me to go back and look at the order of the names read out, so I can remind myself. So 1 was Elizabeth Scott-Rivers, 2 was Lord Abergordon, 3 was Captain Flint (the parrot), 4 was Sherlock Holmes, 5 was Bradford Pearse, 6 and 7 and 8 and 9 were David McMuirtree, 10 was Old Father Time, 11 was Eros, 12 was blank, 13 was Oscar Wilde, and 14 was Mrs Wilde.
Wilde and Sherard and Sickert go first to McMuirtree where he is practicing in The Ring of Death boxing ring at Astley’s Circus Amphitheatre, in order to alert him to the danger he may be in. McMuirtree says that he and Wilde have actually met before at a shooting party in 1879, though Wilde doesn’t remember this, and that he grew up near to Wilde’s home in Ireland and that his girlfriend left him for Wilde (and then left Wilde for Stoker), but McMuirtree adds that he is not a gentleman or of the same social standing as Wilde. He performs magic to produce a cigarette for Wilde, and also says that he wrote Eros on his piece of paper at the Murder Game, and shrugs off the possibility of being murdered himself. Later, Daubeney confirms to Wilde and Sherard that Elizabeth had made an appointment with her lawyer to alter her will but hadn’t attended the appointment so the will still favoured him and he has inherited her money, and he says that the inquest has decided that her death was misadventure. Oooh, I looked up Astley’s Circus Amphitheatre on Wikipedia after Sherard was reminiscing about going there as a child and how magnificent it was, and it certainly looks magnificent with lots of tiered seats going up and up and up, and it was described as ‘one of the great glories of Victorian London’. Sadly, though, it says it was razed to the ground in 1893 so is no longer there, but also I realise that it was destroyed just a year after this scene was set in! And it’s very interesting that Bosie’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, redefined the rules of boxing to make it safer rather than the brutal fight to the death which it was previously (ick!), but I’m imagining this information is something else that’s not really relevant to the plot as in containing clues, though it is interesting information about what was going on at the time, and even though Queensberry wasn’t a suspect in my mind as he wasn’t present at the Murder Game, it does make me think that he surely can’t be the killer with him actively trying to conserve life in this way. And again it makes me wonder if Bosie and Drumlanrig and Queensberry are all real people, in which case they surely can’t be the murderers (or possible victims, even though their names aren’t on the list) and so the list of suspects is reduced again. And is all this history between Wilde and McMuirtree relevant, or just another red herring (like I am presuming the information about Queensberry is)? It could be that McMuirtree has a grudge against Wilde for taking his girlfriend and feels bitter that because he’s not a gentleman then Wilde hasn’t noticed him before, and he is obviously very good at tricks involving concealment and sleight of hand which would be useful for a murderer, so are we in fact being led to consider him as the possible murderer? I note that he knows a lot about Wilde and his wife too, and also that he seems to remember the order of the names that were read out, so again is all this pointing to his guilt? But then there’s Daubeney again inheriting Elizabeth’s money, so did he know that she hadn’t yet altered her will, did he kill her before she could alter it, and there are still those questions about her body that Wilde asked that haven’t been cleared up yet so I wonder if Wilde suspects Daubeney?
Wilde and Sherard go to see Inspector Gilmore to tell him about the Murder Game and to share their concern that someone from the supper club is murdering the people named. Gilmore does not agree with their fears, saying that Elizabeth’s death was an accident, Abergordon was an elderly man who died in his sleep, and Pearse was in debt and killed himself. Wilde asks for police protection for McMuirtree, but Gilmore says he already has police protection as he is a police informer (and used to be a policeman) and therefore has enemies in the criminal world. Wilde and Sherard then meet with Bosie and Drumlanrig, the latter confirming that he wrote Abergordon’s name on his piece of paper because Abergordon was spreading rumours that Drumlanrig was gay. He adds that he was in Eastbourne as he had been invited to dine with the Duke of Devonshire. Later, Wilde gets a report from a boy from Astley’s Circus, called Antipholos, who he had employed to follow McMuirtree, who says that McMuirtree had arrived safely at home that evening but then went out again to a pub to watch bare-knuckle boxing with Daubeney. Omg, so McMuirtree used to be a policeman and left that profession to be a boxer but he still informs on criminals for the police, all of that information was a surprise! And I’m thinking that he probably isn’t the murderer then, with him being involved with the police (although obviously there can be police officers who are bad!). But it’s interesting that there’s a connection between McMuirtree and Daubeney too, is that significant, I wonder? I also smiled at the mention in this section of the new telephone that had recently been invented! And I liked the names of the pubs and restaurants in London which Wilde and Sherard visit, and I’m pretty sure that Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese was a pub that Charles Dickens used to frequent!
Wilde attends a fundraiser he has organised for his Boys Club of Earls Court, which teaches working-class boys pursuits such as boxing providing them with fitness and discipline. Byrd is the magician at the fundraising event, and McMuirtree is his assistant. They perform a trick with a guillotine where McMuirtree seemingly has his head chopped off, but then shows the audience that he is unharmed. At the end of the show, McMuirtree appears to suffer a heart attack and falls down Wilde’s staircase, but Wilde just laughs and says he knew McMuirtree was just tricking them as he relaxed his body when he fell so as not to hurt himself whereas his body would have tensed if he’d really had a heart attack. Omg, I felt sure that the guillotine trick was going to be a way to actually murder McMuirtree, I can’t believe he didn’t die!! That was sneaky of Brandreth again, teasing us like that, tee hee! And then again with the fall down the stairs, phew! I admit I had to flick forward to the next chapter just to find out if he was dead or not, such drama! I am beginning to think, though, that this man will indeed beat the murderer and survive, he seems full of tricks and surprises and such confidence that he has the ability to outwit any possible murderer! At most, I wonder if there might be an attempt on McMuirtree’s life which fails, and this then leads to the murderer being caught. Or I still half wonder if he is the murderer himself and so he will make an attempt on his life in order to divert suspicion away from him. But if it’s not McMuirtree who is the murderer, I’m beginning to wonder if one of the people at the supper club was a criminal that McMuirtree had informed on, so he is now determined to kill McMuirtree for revenge (and kill the others to disguise the fact that McMuirtree is the main victim), or perhaps if this person is a gentleman then his criminality was hushed up and he avoided a jail sentence but McMuirtree still knows of his crime so he wants to kill McMuirtree in order to preserve his secret?
McMuirtree dies from loss of blood during his boxing match due to shards of metal having been tucked at different angles into his boxing gloves which then pressed through the material and into his wrists and veins when he punched his opponent, and he didn’t feel the pain of the cuts due to the adrenalin rush of the boxing match. Later, Wilde discusses the case and the latest developments with Sherard and goes back over the killings so far, noting that the parrot didn’t make a sound when he was killed so wondering if this indicates that the murderer was someone the parrot trusted or someone that was confident handling birds. Omg, omg, omg, omg, I can’t believe McMuirtree is actually dead! As I said before, his confidence that he would outwit the murderer convinced me that he would do so. And what an elaborate and complicated way to kill someone! Surely there was a chance that the shards of metal in the boxing gloves would have been discovered before the boxing match, would no-one be examining the gloves in order to ensure that standards were being kept to? And I’ve been pondering if there is anything to be learnt about the murderer from them choosing this bizarre method of killing someone, but I’m at a bit of a loss, to be honest, it seems such an unusual and overly-complicated way to choose to kill someone, so beyond thinking that the murderer must be a person who sees things in very odd unique ways (!) I can’t really see it takes me any further towards his identity! And of course I have now lost one of my suspects, McMuirtree, as he’s dead! But another suspect has occurred to me just as readily (!), as I wonder if Bradford Pearse faked his own death (if he’s not actually been murdered, of course) because he is the murderer! It is stated that everyone liked him and he supposedly had no enemies, which (not to be too cynical!) sounds unlikely, surely no-one is that nice! And his body hasn’t been found to indicate that he is actually dead, so if I’m right then he can now do what he pleases unobserved and unsuspected…! And thinking about the parrot’s death, as Wilde has prompted me to do, the bird was Byrd’s (I’ve just realised how amusing that sounds, ‘bird’ and ‘Byrd’, tee hee!) so he presumably could handle it and kill it without the bird being alarmed and making a noise, and also (and I must give credit for this idea to my friend who is reading this book alongside me and had observantly noticed this) Heron-Allen has had experience of handling birds during his time abroad, plus he is in love with Mrs Wilde so could want Wilde out of the way, plus he is often at the Wilde’s home so could he perhaps have seen some notes that Wilde had made about proposing to play the Murder Game at one of the supper club gatherings so made his plans around that?
Wilde has created a grid showing the victims’ names and who chose them, and when and how the victims died. He works out that the attempt on his life will be on 13th May (today being the 10th), as there will be one day for Old Father Time and one day for Eros and one day for the blank piece of paper. Doyle says that he put a blank piece of paper in for his entry in the Murder Game, which surprises Wilde as he also put in a blank piece of paper and yet there was only one blank piece of paper pulled out rather than two. Wilde says he needs to know which names the remaining supper club attendees wrote. He and Sherard visit Byrd, who says he wrote his friend McMuirtree’s name on his paper, he doesn’t give his reason for this but Wilde surmises that it was because McMuirtree’s life was already in danger due to him being a police informer. Byrd says he thinks that a criminal killed McMuirtree, and shares that he is upset about both the parrot’s death and McMuirtree’s death. He gives Wilde and Sherard a short history of his own life, explaining that he and McMuirtree worked well together as a magic double-act as McMuirtree could engage the crowd whereas Byrd knew he didn’t have that skill, but the partnership was broken up when McMuirtree left to be a policeman. Byrd also expresses bitterness about being born a gentleman but having fallen to the level of a hotel manager. Later, Wilde tells Sherard that he knows who killed the parrot. Hmmm, I’m not sure if Wilde is being foolish presuming that he has three days to investigate until the attempt is made on his life, how can he be that certain that the murderer will stick to his own rules like that, isn’t there a chance that he could take Wilde by surprise and kill him tomorrow or on the 12th rather than giving Wilde more time to prepare and potentially to guard himself? But I’m then reminding myself again that surely Wilde can’t die so this must be the end of the killings and the murderer must be about to be discovered, perhaps while attempting Wilde’s life (although I am chuckling at the irony that Wilde doesn’t have this knowledge that I have that he lives past 1892!). And how interesting that both Wilde and Doyle put in a blank piece of paper but there was only one blank piece of paper pulled out, so I can only conclude that this means that Byrd read out a name to suit himself whilst looking at a blank piece of paper, as no-one else had access to the bag to be able to write a name on one of the blank pieces, did they? And I note that Byrd is bitter about not being a gentleman, just like McMuirtree was, this being a gentleman (or not) seems almost an obsession, perhaps it was very important back then, but if so then could this be important enough to drive someone to murder if they felt their social status was being unfairly judged? And grrrr, who does Wilde think killed the parrot, don’t leave us hanging like that!
Wilde tells Sherard that he intends to arrange another Socrates Club dinner on 13th May (the day he expects there to be the attempt on his life) and that he will invite Inspector Gilmour and one of Gilmour’s police colleagues to join them in order to fill the empty seats left by Pearse and McMuirtree. Sherard visits Hornung and Gilmour and Sickert to invite them to the supper club meeting and also to ask for their recollections of the previous meeting. Wilde meets with Drumlanrig who admits that he had met McMuirtree one time before the supper club meeting as McMuirtree had told Drumlanrig that there were rumours that he was the lover of Lord Rosebery, but Drumlanrig assures Wilde that he informed McMuirtree that the rumour was a lie and threatened him not to repeat it, and adds that he didn’t kill McMuirtree. Sherard suspects Drumlanrig is the murderer, because he had a motive to kill Abergordon and McMuirtree, and also a possible motive to kill Wilde and his wife because Drumlanrig’s father disapproves of Wilde’s friendship with his sons. Wilde and Sherard go to see Stoker and Brookfield, but Brookfield doesn’t turn up. Stoker says he wrote the name Old Father Time on his paper as he feels he is getting old. Wilde is due to meet Daubeney the following day so asks Sherard to stay with his wife all day and make sure she is safe, Sherard does this and thoroughly enjoys her company, though he also notices that Wilde has placed another friend of his to watch the property from across the street. Hmmm, I wonder if Drumlanrig actually named McMuirtree rather than Abergordon as he was presumed to have done, but then who named Abergordon? And Wilde’s clothes are always described in great detail by Sherard (as the narrator), he always seems to be very colourfully dressed and also to always have a flower in his buttonhole which has some significance to the day, so he clearly enjoys spending time on his appearance and cares about how he is dressed, and I presume this is how he was in real life. And of course Wilde has detective skills too, which I also wonder if he had in real life. As I said previously, I don’t know much about Wilde and have only read a few of his stories which I generally found a bit disturbing as they often had endings which left me sad or troubled at the character’s fate, so I presumed when beginning this book that I wouldn’t much like Wilde, however I do like the way he appears in this book. Oooh, I’ve just looked Wilde up on Wikipedia and got very distracted reading about his dramatic life, being arrested for sleeping with men and sentenced to a two year jail term with hard labour! It makes me wonder what his wife and children thought of that (in fact, I have delved further and his wife was clearly extremely angry (!), as she changed hers and the children’s surnames and moved to Switzerland, forced Wilde to give up his parental rights and the children never saw him again, and she refused to send him any money when he was bankrupt unless he stopped seeing Bosie!). And Wilde’s arrest was in 1895, so just three years after the setting of this book so I wonder if Brandreth will deal with that in later books. And it’s even true that Wilde once loved the lady who eventually chose Stoker! I also realise now from reading about Wilde’s life that so many of the characters in this book were actually real, such as Bosie (who was the man that Wilde was jailed for sleeping with), Drumlanrig, Queensberry (their father, who was the one who reported Wilde, resulting in his jail term!), and Sherard! So that therefore reduces the suspect list enormously, I’m even more confused now about who the murderer could be! But I’m heartened to see that the next chapter (chapter 27) is entitled Answers, yay, eventually, I could do with some answers!
It is the supper club meeting on 13th May. Wilde tells the attendees that the murderer is there at the dinner that night, and the police officer with Gilmour asks why the murderer has turned up but Wilde says that not to turn up would have been an admission of guilt and that the murderer would be determined to be there in order to protest his innocence. Wilde gives his glass of wine to Daubeney, saying that Daubeney had written down Elizabeth’s name as his choice of victim, but Wilde adds that the way in which Daubeney later explained his choice of name at long length to the group made Wilde suspicious of him and also that Daubeney said several times that he was drunk when Wilde knew that he wasn’t as he’d watched how little he had actually drunk. Wilde says that Daubeney murdered Elizabeth, that he knocked on her door and she let him in, he then strangled her (and Wilde adds that he guessed this because her eyes were open), he then locked all the doors from the inside and then placed her dead body on the hearth and set it alight (and Wilde adds that he guessed this because a woman who is on fire would instinctively leave the fireplace in order to try and help herself rather than just staying there beside the fireplace), he then smashed the window from the inside to escape and pretended when seen by the firemen that he had instead smashed the window from the outside in order to enter and help (and Wilde adds that he guessed this because there were more shards of glass outside the window than inside the window). Wilde explains that Elizabeth had broken off the engagement to Daubeney as she had learnt that he trafficked child prostitutes, and she then pretended that he had broken off the engagement and sued him for breach of promise making him bankrupt, so he killed her for revenge and also to ensure that she couldn’t share his secret, though he hadn’t realised that she hadn’t yet altered her will so he would also inherit by her death. Wilde adds that he knows this because Daubeney mistakenly thought that he was interested in children himself and brought a child to him. Omg, this has all got horrible and disgusting with the child prostitutes, oh god, why couldn’t it just have been that Daubeney had killed Elizabeth because he knew the will was still in his favour and he wanted his money back, that would have been far less disturbing a motive! And I’m surprised that Elizabeth didn’t report Daubeney, as she could have then saved more children from harm! But I will try to think no more about the horrible motive for this crime, and focus instead on Wilde’s wonderful deducting, yet also feeling disappointed that I didn’t spot these things myself (the fact that a woman on fire would immediately leave the fireplace, and the fact that there was more glass on the outside of the window indicating that it was smashed from inside), sigh, though how did Inspector Gilmour not spot these things too? And I immediately noted that Wilde gave his glass of wine to Daubeney which made me wonder if he suspected that it had poison in it, but now that the murderer is Daubeney then I guess that can’t be the case as Daubeney wouldn’t have accepted a poisoned glass of wine. I can’t see why Daubeney would murder McMuirtree though, unless he also knew Daubeney’s secret as he seemed skilled at ferreting out information in his role as police informer, or perhaps it was just to conceal that Elizabeth’s death was the main one.
Byrd gives Wilde another glass of wine as Wilde continues to speak to the group, saying that Abergordon’s death was natural causes, that Pearse isn’t dead, and that Daubeney didn’t murder McMuirtree. Pearse then steps forward as the waiter there serving the supper club members. He says his debts were overwhelming so he wrote his own name on his piece of paper and decided to pretend to kill himself, he adds that Wilde saw through this though as the contents of his travelling bag that he’d left on the cliff at Beachy Head didn’t contain any important documents so Wilde concluded that Pearse had kept these important documents with him so must therefore still be alive, and that Wilde also recognised Pearse’s disappearance as being very theatrical so thought it must be fake. Pearse adds that Wilde found him where he was hiding at the lighthouse near Beachy Head, and had brought him along to this supper club meal as well as paying his debts. Well, I didn’t see that coming, I had presumed that Pearse was dead! And how nice of Wilde to pay Pearse’s debts. But who murdered McMuirtree then if it wasn’t Daubeney?!
Wilde continues by stating that Byrd murdered McMuirtree because he was angry at him for leaving their magic double-act which meant that Byrd then had to work as a manager rather than being a gentleman, and also that McMuirtree used to force Byrd to give him secrets about the hotel’s guests which he then used to blackmail them with. Wilde adds that Byrd pulled out the Murder Game papers in a different order to how he read them, having seen first what was written on the papers when he collected them, and he had noticed that three people had named McMuirtree on their papers, including himself, so he also changed the second blank piece of paper for McMuirtree’s name. Wilde says that Byrd killed his own parrot (and Wilde adds that he guessed this because the parrot didn’t make a sound which showed that he trusted the man who killed him), that he then killed McMuirtree by putting cut-up pieces of the guillotine razor from the magic act into McMuirtree’s gloves, though Wilde adds that this may not have killed McMuirtree on its own but that it was likely that Daubeney pushed the blades into McMuirtree’s wrists further when he arrived at the ring in his role as boxing chaplain, and that this was probably because McMuirtree was blackmailing Daubeney about the child prostitution. Wilde adds that Byrd had put poison in his glasses of wine that evening but that it wasn’t actually a strong enough dose to kill him. Byrd and Debauney are arrested. Wilde walks home with Sherard and tells him that Heron-Allen put in his name as he hoped to marry Mrs Wilde, and that Brookfield put in Mrs Wilde’s name, presumably thinking that this would put her out of the misery of being married to Wilde.
Wow, so that’s the end of the book! What an incredibly gripping read, and full of devious twists and turns such as there actually being two murderers! Oooh, that did seem a little mean as I was struggling to connect the murders together and find one person who would want both Elizabeth and McMuirtree dead (and possibly the parrot and Abergordon too), but of course there was no connection really between the deaths (apart from the convenience of the victims’ names on the Murder Game papers) as they were killed by two different people for different motives. Sneaky Brandreth, but such great writing as I didn’t guess that at all and it all tied together beautifully in the end, with a few red herrings added for good fun too! The book was a little grittier than I’d expected it to be with some subjects I found a little disturbing to read about, but I guess they were an accurate reflection of the time and things that went on then.
I do love looking back through all the notes I’ve taken when I’ve been reading a murder mystery, to see if any of my guesses were correct (very rarely, tee hee!), and if all my questions have been answered (not that I’m an obsessive murder mystery reader, of course!), and to consider the thoughts I am left pondering (it’s always very satisfying to be able to ponder things after putting down the book!). I find I’m mostly left pondering about Byrd and if he can actually be classed as a murderer (I know that might sound ridiculous, but bear with me!). It seems like his attempt on McMuirtree’s life may not have killed him, it was actually Daubeney who grabbed the opportunity provided by Byrd and pressed the blades further into McMuirtree’s wrists ensuring that he did actually die. So can Byrd actually be considered as a murderer in the book, or is it Daubeney who actually murdered both the victims? Yes, Byrd planted the weapon of the blades in McMuirtree’s gloves (as he planted the poison in Wilde’s glass), but I guess I just question if he really intended to kill both McMuirtree and Wilde or if he actually shied away from doing enough to actually kill and instead would just be guilty of something like grievous bodily harm or aggravated assault (or whatever the term might be), as Wilde seemed to think that the poison in his glass was too mild to actually kill (and indeed it didn’t seem to greatly harm Daubeney, who Wilde gave his first drink to), indeed was Byrd not actually meaning to kill Wilde at all, was it just an attempt to scare him with what seemed to be an attempt on his life, did he hope that this would then halt Wilde’s investigations into the crime? Perhaps I’m being soft with Byrd here, but he certainly seems very different to Daubeney whose actions had very definite intentions. Plus presumably it was only with Elizabeth’s murder and then Abergordon’s death by natural causes (and I’m still a little uncomfortable at the coincidental nature of this, particularly with him conveniently dying in the correct order of his name being read out too!) that Byrd got the idea to murder McMuirtree, whereas Daubeney left the supper club meeting straight away with the intention to murder Elizabeth, even probably getting the idea of this when the Murder Game was first suggested during the meeting as he deliberately didn’t drink much but conveyed the suggestion that he had, so again could it be said that Daubeney was the more vindictive criminal of the two because he thought of his crime so quickly whereas Byrd seemed to have got his idea due to Daubeney’s actions rather than it being immediately in his mind? But I’m puzzled again at the choice of title for the book, as The Ring of Death seems to imply that McMuirtree’s death was the killing of significance, but wasn’t it actually Elizabeth’s death which was the one of significance as didn’t this then prompt Byrd to seriously consider attempting to kill the person he wanted dead (hiding McMuirtree’s death within the list of names and having it presumed that Elizabeth’s killer was killing them all), as well as my feeling that Daubeney was the more serious murderer of the two? So I guess I wonder if Brandreth himself actually viewed Byrd as the main murderer and McMuirtree’s death as the one of significance, with him naming the book after this death (and therefore my feeling that Byrd isn’t really a murderer is entirely wrong, tee hee!). And Byrd did of course kill the parrot, there is no escaping that horrible fact!
I’ve also been pondering what Byrd was intending to do about Mrs Wilde, would he have killed her or made some kind of attempt on her life in order to scare her, or was he hoping that his attempt on Wilde’s life would result in Wilde giving up the investigation so therefore Byrd wouldn’t need to do anything to Mrs Wilde? I imagine Byrd would have been keen to not kill any more, as of course the more people he kills the more chance he will be found out and the more alibis he has to invent, etc etc, when it was only really McMuirtree that he wanted dead.
I’ve also been pondering the significance of the map at the start of the book, and if it actually had any significance. I realise that I hadn’t flicked back to it again throughout the book, though I very much enjoyed looking at it at the start, and looking at it now I can’t see that there were any clues on there that would have helped, though it is interesting to see where Astley’s Circus was situated and some of the other locations mentioned. Unless I’ve missed something and I could have been closer to the solution if I’d have seen something crucial earlier on the map?
One of the questions I am still left with is the convenience that none of Elizabeth’s servants were at the house on the night Daubeney murdered her, as obviously he couldn’t then have entered and prepared the staging of her dying in a fire if they were there. So did servants regularly go to their own homes on a Sunday, what about preparing breakfast for the Monday mornings? I don’t remember hearing this in other books detailing houses with servants, I thought the servants lived in. Or was Elizabeth’s house just a small establishment perhaps, so her servants didn’t live in, did they go home every night and return each morning and was this something that Daubeney knew so therefore planned to kill in the night as the servants weren’t there?
And I’m also left questioning the inclusion of the names of Sherlock Holmes and Old Father Time and Eros, and what clever intention Brandreth had for their inclusion, as (to my mind) nothing seemed to happen with those names or on those days. Am I to conclude that they were possibly only introduced in order to provide spare days for detection between McMuirtree’s death and the day that Wilde was due to die (as this meant, along with the blank piece of paper day, that Wilde had three days spare to investigate before it was due to be his day of death). Unless I have missed something, of course. But I guess I’m a little disappointed that there wasn’t some other really clever twist for the inclusion of these names apart from just providing time.
And I’m also a bit gutted that there was no further significance to David McMuirtree’s name spelling out ‘a murder victim’ as that was so extremely neat, I absolutely loved that and I was desperate for it to lead to something more, and as it didn’t then I am left wondering why Brandreth brought it in at all. Or was it possibly because he just loves words and perhaps takes great pleasure in creating anagrams (which I’m fine with, I certainly enjoyed its inclusion, I just wanted there to be more significance to the cleverness of it)? And there was also no real relevance in the end to the missing comma in Pearse’s letter, was there, which was another clue I adored, but I wonder again if this was just Brandreth amusing himself with his love of language (which I like).
And this is clearly me being reluctant to let the mysteries go, but when I was googling the real people mentioned in this story I saw that Lord Drumlanrig died in a shooting accident (sadly aged very young, I think he was only 27), but there seems to be a question mark about his death, was it an accident or suicide (or murder?!), just like the question mark over his uncle’s death in the mountains! I’d love to have an answer/theory to both those deaths, which then makes me wonder if Brandreth will keep the same characters in future books so Drumlanrig’s death may be dealt with then, and perhaps Drumlanrig’s uncle’s death might be referenced again, and possibly even Wilde’s arrest too? I look forward to finding out, as I will definitely read more of his books. Oh, and when I look at the list of books that Brandreth has written, I see that his middle name is Daubeney! How odd that he should give that name to one of the murderers in this book!
So The Dead Man’s Smile is the next book in the series, although perhaps I really ought to go back and read the first book in the series which is The Candlelight Murders. But wow, Brandreth has written so many books about such a range of subjects! I am particularly fascinated by his book about AA Milne, called Somewhere A Boy and A Bear, as I read Milne’s murder mystery book a while ago called The Red House Mystery and thoroughly enjoyed that so I’d be keen to learn more about the author. And of course, I’m also tempted to re-read Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and continue reading EW Hornung’s Raffles series (and I see the Raffles books are handily altogether in The Complete Raffles), and of course it’s always a pleasure re-reading some of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books but I think I’m tempted most to re-read The Final Problem as this features Holmes’ apparent death at Reichenbach Falls, seeing as this was mentioned in Brandreth’s book. I’d also very much like to read Constance Wilde’s children stories, and I see her book was called There Was Once, so I’m tempted to purchase that too.
