England. 1897

Bunny.

It was in the pages of every newspaper and in the shouts of every duteous paperboy out on each street corner. It was the only thing that anyone in London — perhaps in all of England — could talk about. It was impossible to avoid it even if you tried, and I did not try.

THE CHARGE OF LIBELLING MR OSCAR WILDE: THE TRIAL OF THE MARQUESS OF QUEENSBERRY
OSCAR WILDE UNDER CROSS EXAMINATION

SCANDAL IN THE COURTS!

OSCAR WILDE IN THE DOCK

SCANDAL IN HIGH LIFE!

WILDE SCANDAL!

THE OSCAR WILDE SCANDAL!

Scandal, scandal, scandal. I had seen it typed and heard it spoken so many times that the word had begun to lose all meaning to me. It was a word which, for me, came to spell the beginning of the end.

The winter which bridged 1894 to 1895 had been exceptionally harsh. As late as early March, the Serpentine was still frozen over and littered with ice-skaters. The snow which blanketed the streets glittered in the bitter, bright sunshine like so many diamonds, crushing out the hopes of all the reckless young blossoms who had dared show their faces as early as December. The dismal rains and oppressive fogs so characteristic of the great metropolis of London were nowhere to be seen; the skies blazed fathomless and without a cloud to mar them, icy blue and freezing from earth to aether, dawn to dusk. The landscape of that booming, bustling, brilliant city was transformed into a dazzling winterland straight out of a children's picture-book, and the impact was deadly. Pipes burst, heating failed, fires died in their hearths as chill winds whipped in from every crack and crevice and people died of exposure in their thousands,whilst the ruthless, relentless winter ploughed on into Spring. And then the heavens finally burst their dams and the rain came.

This was the backdrop to the scandal shaking the country to its core, and me to mine.

As the cold which had malingered so long melted away with the warmth of early Spring, I found an icy chill persisting within me, striking me at times with a near frozen paralysis. For on the third of April, 1895, Oscar Wilde would take the Marquess of Queensberry to court. The whispers which had been fluttering since February, and earlier still in some circles, soon turned to open gossip, and since the Marquess' arrest on the second of March, the papers were out in full force.

For my part, from the very beginning I found myself torn between an anxious desire to hear nothing whatsoever of the proceedings, and a morbid, perhaps even masochistic, need to know everything that was to be known; to study every last detail, read every last newspaper analysis and every gossip columnist's worthless opinion until I could recite them in my sleep. It did me no good, and I knew so even as I carried on, poring over every new development and having half an ear open at every restaurant, club, or party I attended in the self-defeating, self-torturing hope of overhearing some conversation or another on the matter. It reached the point where even hearing the name "Oscar" had begun to set my rabbit heart hammering in my chest; a particularly irritating circumstance in light of the fact that the lady in the flats across from mine had a cat by that name which she would insist on calling in at all hours of the day and night.

I voraciously consumed the scandal from the outset, and was in turn consumed by it.

Raffles, on the other hand, was no more troubled by the case than he was interested in it. This surprised me, for at the very least I knew him to be a great admirer of the man's work. And yet he seemed to have no interest in the case at all, other than the passing interest he had in any society drama, which was little enough. Whenever I mentioned it, I would get no more than a casual, apathetic word of acknowledgement before the subject was changed. As my own anxieties grew, so too did his indifference. It had begun to grate on me.

We were in his rooms at the Albany the evening that the matter was raised to a row for the first time — but not, unfortunately, for the last. Raffles was dressing for dinner and I was sitting at his desk, still in my outer coat having flown in from the rain, shivering with the evening's paper under my arm, and anxious to skim through to check for any new developments before we left to dine.

'Bunny, Bunny, my dear, drowned Bunny, have you not heard of an umbrella?' said Raffles, shaking his head at me as he fumbleď to put in the pearl collar pins which always gave him such trouble. Usually I would offer to set them for him, but on this occasion I found myself somewhat distracted. 'You're dripping wet, and dripping puddles all over my Indian rug. Take off your coat and hang it to dry, would you?'

'Sorry, Raffles,' I muttered, making no move to do as he asked. 'I'll take it off now. Just a moment.'

'My sopping rabbit,' he chuckled, 'whatever can be so important that you can't—' He stopped mid-sentence as he glanced over my shoulder at what I was reading, and his laughter faded. 'Ah.'

In other circumstances I might have taken umbrage at the unpleasantness which he had managed to inject into that "Ah", but my mind was already fully occupied.

'Bunny!'

'What?' I snapped, finally distracted from my paper by Raffles leaning in front of me and clicking his fingers in my face.

'You — are — dripping — on — my — rug,' he said slowly, as though speaking to a particularly recalcitrant and slow-witted child. 'Take off your coat, or go stand in the hall.'

'I'm reading.'

Raffles stood back up straight, grey eye cynical. 'I suppose you must be considering chucking up crime and going in for a career in law? I can see no other reason for this idle gossip to demand so much of your attention. Why you are so obsessed with this case, I cannot for the life of me understand, Bunny.'

'I can't understand you,' I retorted. 'How can you not be interested, Raffles? Even aside from— I thought you were such a great admirer of the man and his work!'

'Cricket's my game, not boxing.'

'Not Queensberry, Wilde!'

Raffles shrugged.

'How can this not concern you, A. J.?' I continued. 'The potential ramifications of this are—'

'—yet to be seen.'

'Hardly! One requires little imagination to see where this is headed!'

'And a great deal of imagination to blow it all out of proportion, as you are doing.'

'I'm not blowing it out of proportion, I'm merely—'

'Yes, it is a deuce of a situation for all involved,' he said, interrupting my heat with all the placid immovability of a brick wall. 'And yes, I feel sorry for Wilde and his little pals that they're in this situation at all — though having that old blighter Queensberry arrested seems to be asking for trouble, if you ask me. But as far as "potential ramifications", Bunny, you'd be just as well served poring over stories of tamed tigers escaping and ripping off people's faces, or ghosts chasing unsuspecting school-children under railway bridges, for all the practical purpose it might serve you! Do drop it.'

'I don't know why you have such an aversion to me merely taking an interest.'

Raffles sighed and spoke to the ceiling. 'There is just no talking to the boy! Bunny,' he said, turning back to me, 'you're making yourself sick. That is my aversion. What good is this doing you? What good is it doing anyone?'

'Raffles it's— it's important to know what's happening, to stay informed.'

'Even if for the sake of argument I accept that all you're doing is "staying informed" — which, by the way, I hotly contest — notwithstanding my scepticism; why, Bunny? Why is it so deathly important?'

'Well, because— Because if it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone,' I replied, morosely. Even saying the words sent unpleasant sensations down the back of my neck and thumping into the pit of my stomach.

'You couldn't be further from the truth, Bunny. You know the details as well as I do. Unless you're planning on riling up some loathsome and pugnacious old man with more money than soul, and suing him for accusing you of making love to his son — a particularly unlikely occurrence in our case, unless you are a crack hand with the planchette or are up to things I don't know about — then I really can't see how this could "happen to anyone". Least of all you.'

'That is a disappointingly reductive argument, even for you, A. J.,' I growled back.

'Only because I'm trying to get it through that thick skull of yours that you're driving yourself half mad, Bunny! If I am being reductive it is because you're being—' he waved a hand as though theatrically searching for the correct word and failing, '—conductive?' His eyes flashed teasingly as they met mine, his anger disappearing as swiftly as it had arisen, his quick, bright, ridiculous humour making me laugh in spite of myself and relieving more tension than I'd realised I had been carrying. Raffles always knew exactly how to make me laugh, and when I needed to, as no other ever has, before him or after.

'Not quite, old boy,' I replied with a reluctant chuckle. 'Not unless I'm an electric lamp.'

'You weren't last time I checked,' he laughed, before pinning me with a look half-playful, half-incisive. 'What word am I looking for then, would you say, Bunny?'

I sighed and folded up the newspaper, having half-willingly fallen into his trap. 'Oh, paranoid, masochistic, irrationally morbid, absolutely terrible company… Something along those lines, I'd imagine.'

Raffles smiled gently, almost masking the touch of sadness which laid beneath, and shook his head at me. 'Tsk, come now, I wouldn't go in for all that, rabbit. You're far too hard on yourself, my dear boy, coming and going.' He slung his arm around my shoulders, pulling me into a half embrace and kissing the top of my head in spite of my dampness. '...Ugh, Bunny, you really are soaking wet.'

'The weather's horrible.'

'Yes,' he said upon finally moving away and glancing out of the window at the rain. 'I've little hope for the early cricket season, if this keeps up. But look here, please take your coat off, Bunny, and go sit by the fire for a bit to dry. That's an order, not a request. And pour yourself a drink, if you like — I shan't be long finishing up, but we're not going anywhere until you are thoroughly warmed up, my boy!'

I did as he bade, and threw the newspaper into the waste bin as I went, with a vow to myself that I should stop that which was becoming, as Raffles rightly identified, an unhealthy obsession.

It was one more vow I would break before this epoch concluded; but it was far from the worst.