Healey recoiled at the brusque response. “The chief justice. You were one of his favorite relations. Oh, he read your poetry with great praise and admiration. And whenever the new number of The North American Review would come, he would fill his pipe and read it from beginning to end. He said he felt you had a higher sense for things of truth.”

“He did?” Lowell asked with some bewilderment.

Lowell avoided his publisher’s smiling eyes and muttered a strained compliment about the chief justice’s fine judgment.

When they returned to the house, a hired man appeared with a bundle from the post office. Richard Healey excused himself.

Fields pulled Lowell aside quickly. “How the devil did you know where Healey was killed, Lowell? We had not discussed that in our meetings.”

“Well, any decent Dantean would savor the proximity of the Charles River to the Healeys’ yard. Remember, the Neutrals are found only a few rods from Acheron, the first river of Hell.”

“Yes. But the newspaper reports were not at all specific as to where in the yard he was found.”

“The newspapers were not fit to light a cigar on.” Lowell balked, delaying his answer to enjoy Fields’s anticipation. “It was the sand that led me.”

“The sand?”

“Yes, yes. ‘Come la rena quando turbo spira.’ Remember your Dante,” he rebuked Fields. “Imagine entering the circle of Neutrals. What do we see as we look upon the mass of sinners?”

Fields was a material reader and tended to recall quotes by page numbers, the weight of paper, the layout of the type, the smell of the calf leather. He could feel the gilded corners of his edition of Dante graze his fingers. “ ‘Accents of anger,’ “—Fields sounded out the poetry carefully as he translated in his mind—” ‘words of agony, and voices high and hoarse…’ “ He could not remember. What he would give to remember what was next, to understand whatever it was Lowell now knew that made the situation less uncontrollable. He had brought along a pocket edition of Dante in Italian and began thumbing through.

Lowell pulled this away. “Further along, Fields! ‘Facevano un tumulto, il qual s’aggira sempre in quell’ aura sanza tempo tinta, come la rena quando turbo spira’: ‘Made up a tumult that goes whirling on/Forever in that dark and timeless air, /Even as the sand doth, when the whirlwind breathes.’ “

“So…” Fields digested this.

Lowell exhaled impatiently. “The meadows behind the house are largely billowing grass, or of dirt and rock. But a very different, fine grain of loose sand was blowing in our faces, so I followed it. The punishment of the Neutrals occurs in Dante’s Hell accompanied by a tumult like sand when a whirlwind blows. That metaphor of loose sand is not idle language, Fields! It is the emblem of the shifting and unstable minds of these sinners, who chose to do nothing when they had the power to act and so in Hell lose that power!”

“Hang it, Jamey!” Fields said a little too loudly. The chambermaid was running a feather duster along an adjacent wall. Fields didn’t notice this. “Hang it all! Sand like a whirlwind! The three types of insects, the flag, the nearby river, that’s quite enough. But the sand? If our fiend can stage even such a minute metaphor of Dante’s into his acts…”

Lowell nodded somberly. “He truly is a Dantean,” he said with a tinge of admiration.

“Sirs?” Nell Ranney appeared next to the poets, and they both jumped back.

Lowell demanded ferociously to know whether she had been listening.

She shook her sturdy head in protest. “No, good sir, I vow it. But I wonder if…” She looked over one shoulder nervously, then the other. “You gentlemen are different than the others who come to pay their respects. The way you’ve looked over the house… and the yard where… Won’t you come back another time? I must…”

Richard Healey returned and, in mid-sentence, the chambermaid crossed over to the other side of the massive entrance hall, master of the household art of disappearance.

He sighed heavily, deflating half the bulk of his large barrel chest. “Since the posting of our reward, each morning I am taken in by the foolish revival of hope, leaping headfirst into the letters, truly thinking somewhere the truth waits to be shared.” He moved to the fireplace and tossed in the latest pile. “I can’t say whether people are cruel or merely crazy.”

“Pray, my dear cousin,” said Lowell. “Do not the police have any information that can assist you?”

“The venerated Boston police. Might I tell you, cousin Lowell. They brought in every demonish criminal they could find to the station house, and do you know what came of it?”

Richard was actually waiting for an answer. Lowell replied, hoarse with suspense, that he did not.

“Well, I’ll tell you then. One of them jumped out a window to his death. Can you imagine? The mulatto officer who supposedly tried to save him said something of him whispering words that could not be understood.”

Lowell sprang forward and grabbed Healey as though to shake more from him. Fields yanked Lowell’s coat. “A mulatto officer, you say?” Lowell demanded.

“The venerated Boston police,” Richard repeated with restrained bitterness. “We would hire a private detective,” Healey said, frowning, “but they are nearly as demonish corrupt as the city’s.”

Moans came from a room above, and Roland Healey ran halfway down the stairs. He told Richard that their mother was having another fit.

Richard broke away. Nell Ranney started toward Lowell and Fields, but Richard Healey noticed this on his way up. He leaned over the wide banister and commanded her. “Nell, finish the work in the basement, won’t you.” He waited until she had descended before continuing upstairs.

“So Patrolman Rey was investigating Healey’s murder when he heard the whisper,” Fields said when he and Lowell were alone.

“And now we know who it was that whispered—whoever died that day at the station house.” Lowell thought for a moment. “We must see what has frightened that chambermaid so.”

“Mind, Lowell. You’ll have her in hot water if the Healey boy sees you.” Fields’s concern held Lowell in place. “He said she’s been imagining things, in any case.”

Just then, there was a loud bang from the nearby kitchen. Lowell made sure they were still alone and then headed for the kitchen door. He knocked lightly. No answer. He pushed in the door and could hear a residual noise to the side of the stove: the vibration of the dumbwaiter. It had just bounced up from the basement. He opened the wood-paneled door to the dumbwaiter car. It was empty but for a piece of paper.

He hurried past Fields.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” Fields asked.

“We cannot call that a dumb waiter. I need to find the study. You stay and watch, make certain the Healey boy doesn’t return yet,” Lowell said.

“But, Lowell!” Fields said. “What shall I do if he comes?”

Lowell did not answer. He handed the publisher the note.

The poet rushed through the halls, peering into open doors until he saw one blocked by a settee. Pushing it out of the way, he stepped lightly inside. The room had been cleaned, but just barely, as though in the middle of the process it had become too painful a prospect for Nell Ranney, or one of the younger servants, to stay. And not just because this was where Healey had died but because of the memories of Judge Healey that lived on, sustained in the fragrance of old book leather.

From above, Lowell could hear Ednah Healey’s moaning climb to a terrible crescendo, and he tried to ignore that they were in a deadhouse all around.

Left standing in the hall, Fields read the note written by Nell Ranney: They tell me I must keep this to myself, but I cannot, and know not who to tell. When I took Judge Healey into his study, he groaned in my arms before dying. Won’t someone help?