Despite his shackles, Burndy managed to tear open the envelope with his teeth and unfold the thrice-folded fine-quality stationery. He examined it for a few seconds before ripping it in two in wild frustration, kicking wildly and banging his head against the wall and table in a pendulum motion.
Oliver Wendell Holmes watched the newsprint curl up at the corners, slowly yielding its edges before caving into the flames.
…ustice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court found stripped with insects and in…
The doctor fed in another article. The flames rose in appreciation.
He thought about the outburst from Lowell, who was not precisely right about Holmes’s blind belief in Professor Webster fifteen years ago. True, Boston had gradually lost its faith in the disgraced medical professor, but Holmes had reason not to. He had seen Webster the day after George Parkman’s disappearance and had spoken to him about the mystery. There wasn’t the least sign of deceit in Webster’s amiable face. And Webster’s story as it later emerged was entirely consistent with the facts: Parkman had come to collect on his outstanding debt, Webster paid him, Parkman canceled the note, and Parkman departed. Holmes sent contributions to help pay for Webster’s defense team, enfolding the money in reassuring letters addressed to Mrs. Webster. Holmes testified to Webster’s sterling character and the absolute implausibility of his involvement in such a crime. He also explained to the jury that there was no method to positively say that the human remains found in Webster’s rooms belonged to Dr. Parkman—they could belong to him, yes, but they could as easily not.
It was not that Holmes lacked sympathy for the Parkmans. After all, George had been the Medical College’s greatest patron, funding its facilities on North Grove Street and even endowing the Parkman Professorship of Anatomy and Physiology, the very chair that Dr. Holmes held. Holmes had even performed a eulogy at Parkman’s memorial service. But Parkman could well have gone mad, wandering away in a fit of confusion. The man could still be alive, and here they were ready to hang one of their own on the most fantastic circumstantial evidence! Could not the janitor, fearful of losing his job after poor Webster caught him gambling, have secured bone fragments from the Medical College’s large supply and positioned them throughout Webster’s rooms to appear hidden?
Like Holmes, Webster had grown up in comfortable surroundings before attending Harvard College. The two medical men had never been particularly close. Yet from the day of Webster’s arrest, when the poor man tried to swallow poison in distress over the disgrace to his family, there was no one with whom Dr. Holmes felt a closer bond. Could it not as easily have been he who had found himself in the middle of damaging circumstances? With their short statures, full sideburns, and clean-shaven faces, the two professors were physically similar. Holmes had been certain that he would yet play some small but noteworthy role in the inevitable exoneration of his fellow lecturer.
But then they had all found themselves at the gallows. That day had seemed so remote, so impossible, so alterable during months of testimony and appeals. Most of polite Boston had remained at home, ashamed for their neighbor. Teamsters and stevedores and factory workers and launderers: They were most publicly enthused by the Brahmin’s demise and humiliation.
A heavily perspiring J. T. Fields slipped through a ring of these bystanders to reach Holmes.
“I have a driver waiting, Wendell,” said Fields. “Come home to Amelia, sit with the children.”
“Fields, don’t you see what this has come to?”
“Wendell,” Fields said, putting his hands on his author’s shoulders. “The evidence.”
The police tried closing off the area but hadn’t brought long enough ropes. Every roof and every window in the buildings crowding the Leverett Street Jail yard showed the single-minded overflow. Holmes had at that moment felt the most paralyzing urge to do more than watch. He would address the mob. Yes, he would improvise a poem proclaiming the city’s great folly. After all, was not Wendell Holmes the most celebrated toastmaster in Boston? Verses extolling Dr. Webster’s virtues began to meet piecemeal in his head. At the same time, Holmes pushed up on his toes to keep an eye on the carriage path behind Fields so that he might be the first to see the clemency papers arrive or George Parkman, the supposed murder victim, stroll into view.
“If Webster must die today,” Holmes said to his publisher, “he shan’t die without praise.” He pressed forward toward the scaffold. But as he took in the hangman’s noose, he stopped cold and emitted a choking wheeze. This was the first time he had been in sight of that unearthly loop since boyhood, when Holmes had snuck his younger brother John to Gallows Hill in Cambridge just as a condemned man was writhing in his final suffering. It was this sight, Holmes always believed, that had made him both doctor and poet.
A hush swept the crowd. Holmes locked eyes with Webster, who was ascending the platform with a wobbly step, his arm held tightly by a jailer.
As Holmes took a step backward, one of the Webster daughters appeared before him clutching an envelope to her chest.
“Oh, Marianne!” Holmes said, and hugged the little angel tight. “From the governor?”
Marianne Webster held out her delivery at arm’s length. “Father wished you to have this before he’s gone. Dr. Holmes.”
Holmes turned back to the gallows. A black hood was being fitted over Webster’s head. Holmes opened the flap of the envelope.
My dearest Wendell,
How dare I strive to express my gratitude with mere sentences for all you have done? You have believed in me without a shadow of doubt on your mind, and I shall always have that feeling to support me. You alone have remained true to my character since the police snatched me from my home, when others have one by one fallen away from my side. Imagine how it feels when those of your own society, with whom you have banqueted at table and prayed at chapel, stare at you with awful dread. When even the eyes of my own sweet daughters unwillingly reveal second thoughts about their poor Papa’s honor.
Yet for all this I am beholden to tell you, dear Holmes, that I did it. I killed Parkman and hacked up his body, then incinerated it in my laboratory furnace. Understand, I was an only child, much indulged, and I have never secured the control over my passions that I ought to have acquired early; and the consequence is—all this! All the proceedings in my case have been just, as it is just that I should die upon the scaffold in accordance with that sentence. Everybody is right and I am wrong, and I have this morning sent full and true accounts of the murder to the several newspapers and to the brave janitor whom I so shamefully accused. If the yielding up of my life to the injured law will atone, even in part, that is a consolation.
Tear this up directly without another look. You have come to watch my time pass in peace, so do not dwell on what I write so tremblingly, for I have lived with a lie in my mouth.
As the note floated down from Holmes’s hands, the metallic platform supporting the black-hooded man dropped away, hitting the scaffold with a clang. It was not so much that Holmes had no longer believed in Webster’s innocence at that moment, but rather that he knew they could have all been guilty if put in the same circumstance of desperation. As a doctor, Holmes had never stopped appreciating how roundly defective was the design of humankind.
Besides, could not there be a crime that was not a sin?
Amelia stepped into the room, smoothing her dress. She called her husband. “Wendell Holmes! I’m talking to you. I can’t understand what’s come over you lately.”