By: KENNETH MAXWELL

Folha de São Paulo - Op-ed section - page A2   

In Agatha Christie novel "Bertram's Hotel", the indomitable sleuth, Miss Jane Marple, returns to the hotel she had stayed at while visiting London as a child.

She was struck, all those decades later, by the very odd fact that not a thing at Bertram's had changed. She became suspicious that this was a facade behind which all sorts of skullduggery was taking place. The novel recounts how Miss Marple unravelled the real mysteries Bertram's.
When In London I used to stay in a Bertram's like Hotel called the Basil Street Hotel. On a quiet side street in Knightsbridge, quite close to Harrods and Sloane Street. it was unchanged since the early twentieth century. The Basil was still entirely Edwardian in decor, full of antiques, and was a place much loved by elderly dowager duchesses visiting from Scotland. But last year the Basil succumbed to the astronomical property values in that part of London. There was an interesting Brazil connection to the Basil Hotel.

The historian Jose Honorio Rodrigues stayed there. Among his collected letters published some years back by the Instituto Historico e Geographico Brasileiro is a note to Charles Boxer, the British historian, inviting him to dinner at the Basil. So I had been in very good company. With the Basil gone, this week I am staying at the Cadogan Hotel further up Sloane Street The doorman from the Basil moved there so I am greeted like an old friend. The Cadogan has a lively history.

It was here that King Edward VII, while he was the Prince of Wales, visited his mistress, Mrs. Lilly Langtree. At a Cambridge College recently I slept in the room that Prince Charles, the current Prince of Wales, uses when he visits his old college. It did cross my mind that I was moving from the bed frequented by great grandfather and mistress to that frequented by great grandson and his mistress.

But when I got a taxi at King's Cross Station and asked to be taken to the Cagodan, Hotel the driver said: "..But you know what happened there?" I said of course I knew. That is where King Edward VII had consorted with Mrs. Langtree. "Oh no said. That is where Oscar Wilde was arrested." He was right. So with the addition of Oscar Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, the famous beds I have slept in are getting quite crowded.

KENNETH MAXWELL is a weekly op-ed columnist (every Thursday) for Folha de São Paulo, Brazil's leading newspaper.