If there had been a death scene on the outside grounds of the Second Unitarian Church of Cambridge, it was not to be found today. Then again, if their speculations were accurate and there had been a hole in the yard where Talbot was buried, the church deacons would have covered it up with fresh grass hurriedly. A dead preacher set upside down out front would not provide the best advertisement for a congregation.
“Now, let us look inside,” Longfellow suggested, seemingly at peace with their complete lack of progress.
Holmes followed closely in Longfellow’s steps.
In the rear vestry, where the offices and changing rooms were located, there was an oversize slate door against one wall, but it did not connect to another room, and there was no other wing of the church.
Longfellow removed his gloves and ran a hand over the cold stone. A bitter chill was behind it.
“Yes!” Holmes whispered. The chill crept inside of him when he opened his mouth to speak. “The vault, Longfellow! The vault down below…”
Until three years ago, many of the area’s churches had maintained interments underground. There were lavish private vaults that could be purchased by families, as well as inferior public ones housing any member of the congregation for a minimal fee. For years, these burial vaults were considered a prudent use of space for crowded cities with spreading churchyards. But when Bostonians dropped dead by the hundreds from yellow fever, the Board of Public Health declared the cause the proximity of decaying flesh, and new vaults beneath church grounds were strictly prohibited. Families with enough money to do so relocated casketed loved ones to Mount Auburn and other newly fashioned bucolic resting places. But tucked away beneath the ground, the “public”—or poorer—portions of the vaults were teeming. Rows of unmarked coffins, decrepit tombs, subterranean potter’s fields.
“Dante finds the Simoniacs within the pietra livida, the livid stone,” said Longfellow.
A quivering voice interrupted. “Help you, gents?” The church sexton, who had first come upon Talbot roasting, was a tall, thin man in a long black robe, with white hair, or, more accurately, bristles, standing out in all directions like a brush. His eyes appeared to be staring wide, so that he looked permanently like the picture of a man seeing a ghost.
“Good morning, sir.” Holmes approached, flipping his hat up and down in his hands. Holmes wished Lowell were there, or Fields, both natural authority mongers. “Sir, my friend and I must request leave to enter your interment vault below if we can trouble you for admittance.”
The sexton made no indication of entertaining the idea.
Holmes looked back. Longfellow was standing with hands folded over walking stick, placid, as though he were an uninvited bystander.
“Now, as I was saying, my good sir, you see it is quite important that we… well, I’m Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. I have a chair in Anatomy and Physiology at the Medical College—really more a settee than a chair, for the breadth of its subjects. Probably you’ve read some of my poems in…”
“Sir!” The squeaky sting in the sexton’s voice approximated a shriek of pain when raised. “Do you not know, guvnor, that our minister was of late found…” he stammered in horror and then recoiled. “I tended the grounds, and not a soul came in-er-out! Upon the Eternal, if it happened on my watch, I own it was a demon spirit without the need of physical convey’nee, not a man!” He stopped himself. “The feet,” he said with a glazed stare, and looked as though he could not go on.
“His feet, sir,” Dr. Holmes said, wanting to hear it, though he knew precisely the destined lot of Talbot’s feet—knew of it firsthand. “What of them?”
The four members of the Dante Club sans Mr. Greene had collected all newspaper accounts available on Talbot’s death. Whereas the true circumstances of Healey’s death had been concealed for several weeks before their revelation, in the newspaper columns Elisha Talbot was slain in every conceivable manner, with a sloppiness that would have made Dante, for whom every punishment was ordained by divine love, wince. Sexton Gregg, for his part, did not need to know Dante. He was a witness to and a carrier of the truth. In this way, he had the strength and simplicity of an old prophet.
“The feet,” the sexton continued after a long pause, “were aflame, guvnor; they were chariots of fire in the dark vaults. Please, gents.” His head hung in dejection, and he gestured for them to leave.
“Good sir,” Longfellow said softly. “It is the Reverend Talbot’s passing which brings us here.”
The sexton’s eyes relaxed at once. It was not clear to Holmes whether the man recognized the silver-bearded visage of the beloved poet or whether he was calmed like the wild beast by the stirring quiet of Longfellow’s organ voice. Holmes realized that if the Dante Club were to make any progress with this endeavor, it would be because Longfellow had the same celestial ease over people through his presence that he had over the English language through his pen.
Longfellow went on: “Though we possess only our words of promise to prove ourselves to you, dear sir, we ask for assistance. I pray you have faith without further evidence on our part, for I fear we may be the only ones who can truly make sense from what has occurred. More than that we must not reveal.”
The vast, blank chasm stewed with mist. Dr. Holmes was fanning away the fetid air that stung his eyes and ears like pepper dust as they marched with small, cautious steps down to the narrow vault. Longfellow breathed more or less freely. His sense of smell was, advantageously limited: It allowed him the pleasure of spring flowers and other agreeable aromas but screened out anything noxious.
Sexton Gregg explained that the public vault extended underneath the streets for several city blocks in both directions.
Longfellow shone a lantern against the slate columns, then lowered the light to examine the plain stone coffins.
The sexton started to make a remark about the Reverend Talbot but hesitated. “You mustn’t think poorly of him, guvnors, if I tell you, but our dear reverend would walk along this vault passage for, well, not for church business, to be candid.”
“Why would he come here?” Holmes asked.
“A shorter route to get to home. Didn’t like it so much, m’self, say sooth.”
One of the scattered paper bits, with the letters a and h, missed by Rey, was trampled under Holmes’s boot and sank into the thick soil.
Longfellow asked whether someone else could have entered the vault from above the street, the place where the minister would have exited.
“No,” said the sexton definitively. “That door can only be opened from the inside. The police checked all the same, found no tamperin’. And there was no sign that the Reverend Talbot ever reached the door leading to the streets on that last evening he came through here.”
Holmes pulled Longfellow back, out of earshot of the sexton. He talked in hushed tones. “Do you not think it significant that Talbot would use this as a shortcut? We must question the sexton some more. We still do not know Talbot’s simony, and this could be an indication!” They had found nothing to suggest Talbot was anything but the good shepherd to his flock.
Longfellow said, “I think it is safe to say that walking through a burial vault does not qualify as a sin, inadvisable as it may be, don’t you? Besides, we know that simony must do with money—taking it or paying it. The sexton is as enamored of Talbot as the congregation, and too many questions about the minister’s habits would only dry up any information he has to volunteer. Remember, Sexton Gregg like all Boston, believes Talbot’s death to have been exclusively a product of someone else’s sin, not of his own.”