“Of course! I think so.” He had, in fact, glanced only briefly at the paper . the entrance hall of the medical college on his way to prepare anatomical drawings for Monday’s class. “What did it say?”
Longfellow found the newspaper. Fields took it and read it aloud. “ ‘New revelations regarding the uncanny death of Chief Justice Artemus S. Healey,’ “ Fields read after opening a pair of square eyeglasses from his waistcoat pocket. “Typical printer’s error. Healey’s middle name was Prescott.”
Longfellow said, “Fields, please pass over the first column. Read how the body was found—in the meadows behind the Healey home, not far from the river.”
“ ‘Bloody… stripped fully of his suit and underclothes… found immoderately swarmed in…’ “
“Go on, Fields.”
“Insects?”
Flies, wasps, maggots—those were the particular insects cataloged by the newspaper. And nearby in the yard of Wide Oaks was found a flag that the Healeys could not explain. Lowell wanted to deny the thoughts that were being passed around the room with the paper, but instead he fell back into a reclining position in the easy chair, his bottom lip quivering as it did when he could not think of what to say.
They exchanged searching glances, hoping there would be one among them smarter than the next who could explain it all away as coincidence with a well-placed allusion or a clever quip, one who could banish the conclusion that the Reverend Talbot had been roasted with the Simoniacs and Chief Justice Healey thrown in among the Neutrals. Every detail further confirmed what they could not deny.
“It fits together,” said Holmes. “It all fits together for Healey: the sin of neutrality, the punishment. For too long he had refused to act on the Fugitive Slave Act. But what of Talbot? I have never heard even a whisper that he abused the power of his pulpit—help me, Phoebus!” Holmes jumped when he noticed the rifle leaning against the wall. “Longfellow, why in the land is that out here?”
Lowell was shaken with the remembrance of why he had corne to Craigie House in the first place. “You see, Wendell, Longfellow thought he might have seen a burglar lurking outside. We sent the yardman’s boy to fetch the police.”
“A burglar?” Holmes asked.
“A phantasm.” Longfellow shook his head.
Fields stomped on the rug with a graceless leap to his feet. “Well, perfect timing!” He turned to Holmes. “My dear Wendell, you shall be remembered as a good citizen for this. When the policeman arrives, we explain that we have information on these crimes and instruct him to return with the chief of police.” Fields had mustered his greatest tone of authority, yet he tapered off with a glance to Longfellow for endorsement.
Longfellow did not move. His stone-blue eyes stared ahead into the richly cracked spines of his books. It was not clear whether he’d remained a part of the conversation. This infrequent, remote look, when he sat silently running his hand through the locks of his beard, when his invincible tranquillity turned cool, when his maiden complexion seemed a bit dusky, put all his friends ill at ease.
“Yes,” Lowell said, trying to project something like collective relief at Fields’s statement. “Of course we’ll inform the police of our suppositions. This shall no doubt prove vital information to the unriddling of such a mess.”
“No!” Holmes gasped. “No, we mustn’t tell anyone. Longfellow,” the doctor said with desperation. “We must keep this to ourselves! Everyone in this room must keep the matter dark, as promised, though the heavens cave in!”
“Come, Wendell!” Lowell leaned over the diminutive doctor. “This is not a time to put your hands in your pockets! Two people have been killed, two men of our own set!”
“Yes, and who are we to meddle in such horrendous business?” Holmes pleaded. “The police are investigating, to be sure, and they will find whomever is responsible without our interference!”
“Who are we to meddle!” Lowell repeated mockingly. “There’s no chance the police will think of this, Wendell! They must be chasing their tails even as we sit here!”
“Would you rather they chase our wild tales, Lowell? What do we know of such a matter as a murder?”
“Why did you bother coming to us with this then, Wendell?”
“So we know to protect ourselves! I’ve done us all a good turn,” Holmes said. “This could put us in a dangerous way!”
“Jamey, Wendell, please…” Fields stood between them.
“If you go to the police, you can just count me out of this,” Holmes added with a treble voice as he took a seat. “Do it over my principled objection and my stated refusal.”
“Observe, gentlemen,” Lowell said with a demonstrative flick of his hand at Holmes, “Dr. Holmes in his usual position when the world needs him– sitting on his arse.”
Holmes looked around the room, hoping someone would speak up in his support, then sank deeper into his chair, meekly removing his gold chain, tangled with his Phi Beta Kappa key, and checking his watch against Longfellow’s mahogany clock, half certain that any moment all the timepieces of Cambridge would tick to a dead stop.
Lowell was at his most persuasive when he spoke with soft assertiveness as he did when turning to Longfellow. “My dear Longfellow, when the officer arrives, we should have a note prepared, addressed to the chief of police, explaining what we believe to have discovered here tonight. Then we can put this behind us as our dear Dr. Holmes wishes to do.”
“I’ll begin.” Fields reached for Longfellow’s stationery drawer. Holmes and Lowell began their argument again.
Longfellow breathed a small sigh.
Fields halted with his hand in the drawer. Holmes and Lowell shut their mouths.
“Pray, do not leap in the dark. First tell me,” Longfellow said. “Who in Boston and Cambridge knows about these murders?”
“Well, there’s a question.” Lowell was frightened enough to be impolite even to the one man, after his late father, whom he worshipped. “Everyone in the blessed city, Longfellow! One’s on the front page of every paper”—he grabbed the headlining page on Healey’s death—”and Talbot’s will follow suit before the cock crows. A judge and a preacher! You might as well try to lock up the beef and beer as to keep that away from the public!”
“Very well. And who else in the city knows about Dante? Who else knows how le piante erano a tutti accese intrambe? How many are strolling down Washington and School Streets peering into the shops or stopping in at Jordan, Marsh for the latest fashion in hats, thinking to themselves that rigavan lor di sangue il volto, che, mischiato di lagrime and imagining the fright of those fastidiosi vermi–the loathsome worms?”
“Tell me, who in our city—no, who in America today—knows the words of Dante in his every work, in his every canto, his every tercet? Enough to even begin to think how to turn the entrails of Dante’s punishments in Inferno into models of murder?”
Longfellow’s study, holding New England’s most sought after conversationalists, fell uncannily silent. Nobody in the room thought to answer the question, because the room was the answer: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Professor James Russell Lowell; Professor Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes; James Thomas Fields; and a small cross-section of friends and colleagues.
“Why, dear God,” Fields said. “There’s only a handful of people who would be able to read Italian, not to speak of Dante’s Italian, and, even of those who might make some of it out with a heap of grammar books and dictionaries, most have never beheld a copy of Dante’s works!” Fields should know. The publisher made it his business to know the reading habits of every litterateur and scholar in New England and everyone who counted outside it. “That is to say,” he continued, “will never behold one until there’s a completed translation of Dante to be published in all corners of America…”