“So how did our Lucifer gain his entry here? If the vault exit to the street only opens from the inside… and the sexton says he was in the church and saw nobody come through the vestry…”

“Perhaps our rogue waited for Talbot to climb the stairs and exit the vault and then pushed him back underground from above the street,” Longfellow speculated.

“But to dig a hole deep enough in the ground for a man to fit in so quickly? It seems more likely that our villain ambushed Talbot—dug the hole, waited, and then grabbed him, pushed him in the hole, doused the kerosene on his feet…”

Ahead of them, the sexton came to a sudden stop. Half his muscles locked up and the other half shook violently. He tried to speak, but only a dry, mournful whimper emerged. By the extension of his chin he managed to indicate a thick slab sitting on the dirt carpeting the vault floor. The sexton ran back for the sanctuary of the church.

The place was at hand. It could be sensed and smelled.

Longfellow and Holmes together heaved with all their strength, to remove the slab. In the dirt was a round hole, big enough for a body of medium build. Stored by the slab and released by its removal, the smell of burning flesh attacked the air like the stench of rotted meat and fried onions. Holmes smothered his face with his neck cloth.

Longfellow knelt and cupped a handful of dirt from around the hole. “Yes, you are right, Holmes. This hole is deep and well formed. It must have been dug in advance. The killer must have been waiting when Talbot entered. He gains entry, somehow eluding our jittery friend the sexton, and knocks Talbot cold,” Longfellow theorized, “positions him headfirst in the hole, and then performs his horrible act.”

“Imagine the sheer torment! Talbot must have been conscious of what was happening before his heart gave in. The feeling of your flesh burning alive…” Holmes nearly swallowed his tongue. “I don’t mean, Longfellow…” He cursed his mouth for speaking so much and then for not taking a mistake quietly. “You know, I only meant…”

Longfellow did not seem to hear. He let the dirt slide through his fingers. He gingerly lowered the bright flower bouquet to a spot near the hole.” ‘Stay here, for thou art justly punished,’ “ Longfellow said, quoting a verse from Canto Nineteen as though he were reading it from the air in front of him. “That is what Dante cries to the Simoniac he speaks to in Hell, Nicholas the Third, my dear Holmes.”

Dr. Holmes was ready to leave. The thick air was nourishing a revolt in his lungs, and his misspoken words had broken his own heart.

Longfellow, however, directed the halo of his gas lantern above the hole, which had been left undisturbed. He was not through. “We must dig deeper, below what we can see of the hole. The police would never think of it.”

Holmes stared incredulously at him. “Nor would I! Talbot was put in the hole, not below it, my dear Longfellow!”

Longfellow said, “Recall what Dante says to Nicholas as the sinner thrashes around in the wretched hole of his punishment.”

Holmes whispered some verses to himself.” ‘Stay here, for thou art justly punished… and keep safe guard over your ill-gotten loot—’ “ He stopped short. “Keep safe guard over your loot. But isn’t Dante just displaying some of his not uncommon sarcasm, taunting the poor sinner for his money-grubbing actions in life?”

“Indeed, that is how I happen to read the line,” said Longfellow. “But Dante might be read to mean the statement literally. It could be argued that Dante’s phrase actually reveals that part of the contrapasso of the Simoniacs is that they are buried upside down with the money they immorally accumulated in life below their heads. Surely Dante could have been thinking of Peter Magus’s words to Simon in Acts: ‘May thy money go to destruction with thee.’ In this interpretation, the hole which holds Dante’s sinner becomes his eternal purse.”

Holmes offered a medley of guttural sounds at the interpretation.

“If we dig,” said Longfellow with a slight smile, “your doubts might be proven unnecessary.” He extended his walking stick to reach the bottom of the hole, but the pit was too deep. “I cannot fit, I suppose.” Longfellow gauged the size of the hole. Then he looked at the little doctor, who was wriggling with asthma.

Holmes stood stock-still. “Oh but, Longfellow…” He looked down the hole. “Why did nature not ask me my advice about my features?” There was no point in arguing. Longfellow could not be argued with properly; he was too invincibly tranquil. If Lowell were here, he would have been digging in the hole like a rabbit.

“Ten to one I crack a fingernail.”

Longfellow nodded appreciatively. The doctor pinched his eyes closed and slid feet first down the hole. “It is too narrow. I cannot bend down. I do not think I can squeeze myself in to dig.”

Longfellow helped Holmes climb out of the hole. The doctor reentered the narrow opening, this time headfirst, with Longfellow holding on to his gray trousers at the ankles. The poet had the easy grasp of a puppet master.

“Careful, Longfellow! Careful!”

“You can see well enough?” asked Longfellow.

Holmes barely heard him. He raked at the earth with his hands, the moist dirt rising under his fingernails, at once sickeningly warm and cold and hard as ice. The worst was the odor, the festering stench of burning flesh that had been preserved in the tight abyss. Holmes tried holding his breath, but this tactic, coupled with his heaving asthma, made his head feel light, as if it might drift off like a balloon.

He was where the Reverend Talbot had been; upside down, like him. But instead of punishing fire at his feet he felt the unflinching hands of Mr. Longfellow.

Longfellow’s muffled voice floated down, a concerned question. The doctor could not hear inside his vague sensation of faintness and wondered idly whether a loss of consciousness would cause Longfellow to release his ankles and if he, in the meantime, might send himself tumbling through the core of the earth. He suddenly felt the danger they had put themselves in by trying to fight a book. The floating pageant of thoughts seemed to go on endlessly before the doctor hit something with his hands.

With the feel of a material object, hard clarity returned. A piece of clothing of some sort. No: a bag. A glazed cloth bag.

Holmes shuddered. He tried to speak, but the stench and the dirt were terrible obstacles. For a moment he was frozen in panic, then sanity returned and he kicked his legs frantically.

Longfellow, understanding this was a signal, lifted his friend’s body from the cavity. Holmes gasped for air, spitting and sputtering as Longfellow tended to him solicitously.

Holmes wriggled to his knees. “See what it is, for God’s sake, Longfellow!” Holmes pulled the drawstring wrapped around the discovery and tore open the dirt-encrusted pouch.

Longfellow watched as Dr. Holmes released a thousand dollars of legal-tender notes over the hard burial-vault ground.

At grand Wide Oaks, the estate of the Healey family for three generations, Nell Ranney led two callers through the long entrance hall. They were strangely withdrawn, their bodies forcibly businesslike but their eyes rapid and mobile. Making them stand out even more in the maid’s mind were their fashions, for two such outlandishly conflicting styles were rarely seen.

James Russell Lowell, with a short beard and drooping mustache, wore a rather shabby double-breasted sack coat, an unbrushed silk hat made into a mockery by the casual suit, and in his necktie, done up in a sailor-knot, a type of pin that was no longer fashionable in Boston. The other man, whose massive russet beard cascaded in thick wiry rolls, removed his gloves, which were of a violent color, and pocketed them in his impeccably tailored Scottish tweed frock coat, below which was tightly strung, around his green-vested belly, like a Christmas ornament, a sparkling gold watch chain.