Holmes looked into the glass jar of insect samples they had taken back from Agassiz. “Lowell, there is something I must say. But I do not wish to call up a row with you.”
“Pietro Bachi.”
Holmes nodded tentatively.
“This does not seem to fit with what we know of him, does it?” Lowell asked. “This knocks all our theories into a cocked hat!”
“Think of it: Bachi was bitter; Bachi was hot-tempered; Bachi was drunk. But such methodical, profound cruelty. Could you see this in him? Honestly? Bachi might have tried to stage something to show the mistake of bringing him to America. But to re-create Dante’s punishments so utterly and completely? Our mistakes must be thick throughout, Lowell, like salamanders after the rain. And a new one creeps out from under every leaf we turn over.” Holmes waved his arms frantically.
“What are you doing?” Lowell asked. Longfellow’s house was only a short walk and they were due back.
“I see a free coach up ahead. I want a look at some of these samples again under my microscope. I wish Agassiz had not killed this maggot—nature will tell the truth all the better for its not being put to death. I do not believe his conclusion that these insects will have already died out. We may learn something more about the murder from these creatures. Agassiz will not listen to the Darwinian theory, and this obstructs his view.”
“Wendell, this is the man’s vocation.”
Holmes ignored Lowell’s lack of faith. “Great scientists can sometimes be an impediment in the path of science, Lowell. Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles, and the first whispers of a new truth are not caught by those in need of ear trumpets. Just last month, I was reading in a book on the Sandwich Islands about an old Fejee man who had been carried away among foreigners but who prayed he might be brought home so that his brains might be beaten out in peace by his son, according to the custom of those lands. Did not Dante’s son Pietro tell everyone after Dante’s death that the poet did not mean to say he really went to Hell and Heaven? Our sons beat out their fathers’ brains very regularly.”
Some fathers more than others, Lowell said to himself, thinking of Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior as he watched Holmes climb into the hackney cab.
Lowell started hurriedly for Craigie House, wishing he had his horse. Crossing a street, he staggered backward with sudden vigilance at what he saw.
The tall man with the worn face and bowler hat and checkered waistcoat—the same man Lowell had seen watching him intently while leaning against an elm tree on Harvard Yard, the very man he had witnessed approaching Bachi on campus—this man stood out at the busy marketplace. That might not have been enough to hold Lowell’s interest in the aftermath of Agassiz’s revelations, but the man was conversing with Edward Sheldon, Lowell’s student. In fact, Sheldon was not merely speaking but barking up at the man, as though he were ordering a recalcitrant domestic to perform some neglected chore.
Sheldon then took his leave in a huff, wrapping himself tightly in his black cloak. Lowell could not at first decide whom to follow. Sheldon? He could always be found at the College. Lowell decided he had to pursue the unknown man, who was making his way into a knot of pedestrians and carriage traffic along the roundabout.
Lowell ran through some market stands. A marketman pushed a lobster in Lowell’s face. Lowell swatted it away. A girl passing out handbills stuffed one into the pocket of Lowell’s coat skirt. “Flyer, sir?”
“Not now!” cried Lowell. In another moment, the poet spotted the phantom across the way. He was stepping into a crammed horsecar and waiting for change from the conductor.
Lowell ran for the back platform as the conductor rang his bell and as the vehicle started down the tracks toward the bridge. Lowell had no trouble catching up with the lumbering car by jogging along the tracks. He had just secured his hand on the stair railing of the rear platform when the conductor turned around.
“Leany Miller?”
“Sir, my name is Lowell. I must speak to one of your passengers.” Lowell edged one foot onto the raised back stairs as the horse team accelerated.
“Leany Miller? Are you back to your tricks already?” The conductor produced a walking stick and started to hammer at Lowell’s gloved hand. “You shan’t blot our fair cars again, Leany! Not under my watch!”
“No! Sir, my name is not Leany!” But the thrashing of the conductor made Lowell release his grip. This sent the poet feet first onto the tracks.
Lowell shouted over the hoof falls and ringing bells to persuade the irate conductor of his innocence. But then it dawned on him that the ringing bell was coming from behind, where another horsecar was approaching. As he turned to see, Lowell’s pace was slowed and the horsecar ahead of him gained distance. With no alternative but to find his heels trampled by the oncoming horses, Lowell jumped off the tracks.
At Craigie House at that moment, Longfellow led into his parlor one Robert Todd Lincoln, son of the late president and one of the three Dante students from Lowell’s 1864 term. Lowell had promised to meet them at the house after seeing Agassiz, but he was late, so Longfellow would start Lincoln’s interview himself.
“Oh dear Papa!” Annie Allegra said as she skipped in, interrupting. “We are almost finished with the latest number of The Secret, Papa! Wouldn’t you like to see it in advance?”
“Yes, darling, but I’m afraid I’m occupied at the moment.”
“Please, Mr. Longfellow,” said the young man. “I’m in no hurry.”
Longfellow took up the handwritten periodical “published” in installments by his three girls. “Oh, it seems one of the best you’ve ever done. Very fine, Panzie. I’ll read it from beginning to end this evening. Is this the page you drew up?”
“Yes!” Annie Allegra answered. “This column, and this one. And this riddle too. Can you guess what it is?”
“The lake in America as big as three states.” Longfellow smiled and ran down the rest of the page. A rebus and a featured article reviewing “My Eventful Yesterday (from breakfast to nighttime),” by A. A. Longfellow.
“Oh, it’s lovely, dear heart.” Longfellow paused doubtfully over one of the last items on the list. “Panzie, it says here that you let a caller in just before sleep last night.”
“Oh yes. I had come down for some milk, didn’t I. Did he say I made a good hostess, Papa?”
“When was that, Panzie?”
“During your club meeting, of course. You say you must not be disturbed during your club meeting.”
“Annie Allegra!” Edith called down from the stairwell. “Alice wishes to revise the table of contents. You must bring your copy back up right away!”
“She’s always the editor,” Annie Allegra complained, reclaiming the periodical from Longfellow. He trailed Annie into the hall and called up the staircase before she could reach the private office of The Secret–the bedroom of one of their older brothers. “Panzie dear, who was the caller last night that you mention?”
“What, Papa? I’ve never seen him before yesterday.”
“Could you remember what he looked like? Perhaps that should be added to The Secret. Perhaps you can interview him yourself to ask of his experience.”
“How pretty that would be! A tall Negro man, very splendid-looking, in a cloth cloak. I told him to wait for you, Papa—I did. Did he not do as I said? He must have gotten bored just standing there and left to go home. Do you know his name, Papa?”
Longfellow nodded.
“Do tell me, Papa! I shall be able to interview him as you say.”
“Patrolman Nicholas Rey, of the Boston police.”
Lowell burst through the front door. “Longfellow, I have much to tell…” he stopped when he saw the pall on his neighbor’s face. “Longfellow, what’s happened?”