He had a favorite grouping for the loose bits of letters: I cant die as I’m… Rey always stalled at that point, but wasn’t there something to it? He tried one of the others: Be vice as I… What to do with that torn piece with g or q?
Central Station was flooded daily with letters of such spirited conviction that they might have been thought to clear up all questions had they shown the smallest trace of credibility. Chief Kurtz assigned Rey the task of reviewing this correspondence, in part to get him away from the “litter.”
Five people claimed to have seen Chief Justice Healey at the Music Hall a week after the discovery of his wasted body. Rey tracked down the thunderstruck fellow in question by his season-ticket seat number: He was a Roxbury carriage painter with a mass of untamable curls somewhat similar to the judge’s. An anonymous letter informed the police that Reverend Talbot’s murderer, an acquaintance and distant relative of the letter writer, had boarded a ship to Liverpool in a surtout borrowed without permission and, there, had been dealt with foully, never to be heard from again (with the coat, presumably, never to be reunited with the rightful wearer). Another note claimed that a woman had spontaneously confessed at a tailor’s shop to having committed the murder of Judge Healey in a jealous rage and had then escaped by train to New York, where she might be found in one of four listed hotels.
When Rey tore open an anonymous note comprising of two sentences, however, he felt the quickening sensation of discovery: It was a fine-grade stationery and the message was written in a blocky, broken penmanship—a mild disguise for the writer’s true hand:
Dig deeper under the Reverend’s hole. Something missed beneath his head.
The note was signed “Respectfully yours, a citizen of our city.”
“Something missed?” Kurtz responded mockingly.
“There’s nothing to prove here, no story to invent,” said Rey with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. “The writer simply has something to tell. And, remember: The newspaper accounts have varied widely as to what happened to Talbot. Now we must use that to our advantage. This person knows the true circumstances, or at least that Talbot was buried in a hole, and that he was upside down. Look here, Chief.” Rey read aloud and pointed: “ ‘Beneath his head.’ “
“Rey, the number of problems I have! The Transcript’s found someone at City Hall to confirm that Talbot was found with his clothes in a pile, just like Healey. They’re printing it tomorrow and the whole blasted city will know we’re dealing with a single killer. Then people won’t blame ‘crime’—they’ll want someone’s name.” Kurtz turned back to the letter. “Well, why would the letter not say what ‘something’ we might find in Talbot’s hole then? And why wouldn’t your citizen walk up to our station house and tell me to my face what he knows?”
Rey did not answer. “Do let me have a look in the vault, Chief Kurtz.”
Kurtz shook his head. “You’ve heard the heat we’ve taken from every cursed pulpit in the Commonwealth, Rey. We can’t go digging up the Second Church’s vault to pull out imagined mementos!”
“We left the hole intact in the event there was further observation required,” Rey argued.
“Just so. I don’t want to hear another word about it, Patrolman.”
Rey nodded, but his expression of certainty did not diminish. Chief Kurtz’s stubborn refusals could not compete with Rey’s unwavering silent disapproval. Later in the afternoon, Kurtz snatched his greatcoat. He walked by Rey’s desk and ordered, “Patrolman: Second Unitarian Church, in Cambridge.”
A new sexton, a merchantlike gentleman with red whiskers, ushered them inside. He explained that his predecessor, Sexton Gregg, had become increasingly distraught since his discovery of Talbot’s body and had resigned to look after his health. The sexton searched clumsily for the keys to the underground vaults.
“There’d better be something to this,” Kurtz warned Rey when the stench of the vault reached out to them.
There was.
After only a few strokes with a long-handled shovel, Rey unearthed the pouch of money exactly where Longfellow and Holmes had reburied it.
“One thousand. Exactly one thousand, Chief Kurtz.” Rey counted out the money under the glow of a gas lantern. “Chief,” Rey said, having realized something remarkable. “Chief Kurtz, the Cambridge station house—the night we found Talbot’s body. Do you remember what they told us? The reverend had reported his safe robbed the very day before the murder.”
“How much had been taken from his safe?”
Rey nodded to the money.
“One thousand.” Kurtz gasped in disbelief. “Well, I don’t know whether this helps us or confounds the matter even more. I’ll be damned if even Langdon W. Peaslee or Willard Burndy would blow a minister’s safe one night and butcher him the next and, if they did, leave the money behind for Talbot to enjoy from the grave!”
It was then that Rey almost stepped on a bouquet of flowers, the token left there by Longfellow. He picked them up and showed them to Kurtz.
“No, no, I haven’t let anyone else in these vaults,” the new sexton assured them back in the vestry. “Been closed off since the… occurrence.”
“Then maybe your predecessor did. Do you know where we can find Mr. Gregg?” Chief Kurtz asked.
“Right here. Every Sunday, faithful as could be,” the sexton replied.
“Well, when he’s here next, I want that you ask him to call on us immediately. Here’s my card. If he permitted someone inside there, we shall have to know.”
Back at the station house, there was much to be done. The Cambridge patrolman to whom Reverend Talbot had reported the robbery had to be interviewed again; they had to trace the legal-tender notes through the banks to confirm they originated from Talbot’s safe; Talbot’s Cambridge neighborhood would be scoured to find any information regarding the night his safe was broken into, and an expert in handwriting would analyze the note that provided the information.
Rey could see that Kurtz was feeling genuine optimism, probably for the first time since he’d been told of Healey’s death. He was almost giddy. “That’s what it takes to be a good policeman, Rey—a touch of instinct. It’s all we have sometimes. It fades with each disappointment in life and career, I’m afraid. I would have thrown that note out with the other rubbish, but not you. So tell me. What should we do that we haven’t?”
Rey smiled gratefully.
“There must be something. Come, come.”
“You won’t like what I say, Chief,” Rey responded.
Kurtz shrugged. “As long as it’s not more of your damned scraps of paper.”
Rey generally refused favors, but there was something for which he longed. He walked to the window framing the trees outside the station and looked out. “There’s a danger we can’t see out there, Chief, that someone who was brought into our station house felt more strongly than his own life. I want to know who died on our courtyard.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes was happy to have a task suited to him. He was neither entomologist nor naturalist and was interested in the scientific study of animals only insofar as it revealed more about humans’ inner workings, and more specifically his own. But within two days of Lowell’s dropping off the hodgepodge of crushed insects and maggots, Dr. Holmes had assembled every book on insects he could find from Boston’s best scientific libraries and began extensive studies.
In the meantime, Lowell arranged a meeting with the Healeys’ maid, Nell, at her sister’s home on the outskirts of Cambridge. She told him what it had been like to find Chief Justice Healey, how he had seemed to want to talk and could only gurgle before he died. She had fallen to her knees at the sound of Healey’s voice, as though touched by some divine power, and crawled away.