“Could I honestly see you less, dear?” She did not look up, her beautiful mouth striking a pout. Her jacinth-colored hair was drawn over her ears on both sides.

“I promise things will improve. This summer—why, I shall do hardly any work in the least, and we shall spend every day in Manchester. Osgood is nearly ready to be partner. Won’t we dance on that day!”

She turned away and fixed her eyes on the gray rug. “I know your obligations. Yet I waste my substance on housekeeping, without even time with you as reward. I have hardly had an hour for study or reading except when too tired. Catherine is sick again, and so the laundress must sleep three in a bed with the upstairs maid…”

“I’m home now, my love,” he pointed out.

“No you’re not.” She gathered his coat and hat from the downstairs girl and handed them back to him.

“Dear?” Fields’s face fell.

She pulled her dressing gown tight and started upstairs. “A messenger boy from the Corner came frantically looking for you some hours ago.”

“At such a witching hour of the night?”

“He said you must go there now or it is feared the police will come first.”

Fields wanted to follow Annie upstairs but rushed to his offices on Tremont Street and found his senior clerk, J. R. Osgood, in the back room. Cecilia Emory, the front receptionist, was in a comfortable armchair, sobbing and hiding her face. Dan Teal, the night shop boy, was sitting quietly in the room, holding a cloth to his bloodied lip.

“What’s wrong? Why, what’s happened to Miss Emory?” Fields asked.

Osgood guided Fields away from the hysterical girl. “It’s Samuel Ticknor.” Osgood paused to choose his words. “Ticknor was kissing Miss Emory behind the counter after hours. She resisted, shouted to him to stop, and Mr. Teal intervened. I’m afraid Teal had to physically subdue Mr. Ticknor.”

Fields pulled a chair up and questioned Cecilia Emory in a kind voice. “You can speak freely, my dear,” he promised.

Miss Emory labored to stop crying. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Fields. I need this job, and he said that if I didn’t do as he asked… well, he’s the son of William Ticknor, and they say you shall have to make him a junior partner soon because of his name…” She covered her mouth with her hand, as though to catch the dreaded words.

“You… pushed him away?” Fields asked delicately.

She nodded. “He’s such a strong man. Mr. Teal… I thank God he was there.”

“How long has this been happening with Mr. Ticknor, Miss Emory?” asked Fields.

Cecilia wept out the answer: “Three months.” Almost since she had been hired. “But as God is my witness, I never wished to do it, Mr. Fields! You must believe me!”

Fields patted her hand and spoke paternally. “My dear Miss Emory, listen to me. Because you are an orphan, I will overlook this and permit you to retain your position.”

She nodded appreciatively and threw her hands around Fields’s neck.

Fields stood. “Where is he?” he asked Osgood. He was seething. This was a breach of loyalty of the worst kind.

“We have him in the next room waiting for you, Mr. Fields. He has denied her version of the story, I should tell you.”

“If I know anything of human nature, that girl was perfectly pure, Osgood. Mr. Teal,” Fields said, and turned to the shop boy. “Was everything Miss Emory said how you witnessed it?”

Teal answered at a snail’s pace, his mouth working up and down in its habitual motion. “I was preparing to leave, sir. I saw Miss Emory struggling and asking Mr. Ticknor to leave her be. So I punched him until he stopped.”

“Good boy, Teal,” Fields said. “I won’t forget your help.”

Teal didn’t know how to respond. “Sir, I must be at my other job in the morning. I am a caretaker at the College in the daytime.”

“Oh?” Fields said.

“This job means the world to me,” Teal added quickly. “If you ever require more from me, sir, please do tell me so.”

“I want you to write out everything you saw and did here before you leave, Mr. Teal. In case the police become involved, we need a record,” Fields said. He motioned for Osgood to give Teal some paper and a pen. “And when she calms down, let her write her story, too,” Fields instructed his senior clerk. Teal struggled to write out a few letters. Fields realized he was only semiliterate, bordering on illiterate, and thought how odd it must be to work among books every night without such a basic power. “Mr. Teal,” he said. “Let us have you dictate to Mr. Osgood so it will be official.”

Teal gratefully agreed, handing back the paper.

It took Fields nearly five hours of questioning Samuel Ticknor to elicit the truth. Fields was a bit awed by how humbled Ticknor looked, his face having been pummeled by the shop boy. His nose actually looked to be off center. Ticknor’s responses alternated between the vain and the shallow. He eventually admitted his adultery with Cecilia Emory and revealed that he had involved himself with another female secretary at the Corner as well.

“You’ll leave Ticknor and Fields property at once and from this day never return! “Fields said.

“Ha! My father built this firm! He took you into his home when you were little more than a beggar! Without him, you would have no mansion, no wife like Anne Fields! It is my name on our spine, even above yours, Mr. Fields!”

“You have been the cause of ruin to two women, Samuel!” Fields said. “Not to mention the wreck of your wife’s happiness and that of your poor mother. Your father would be more disgraced than I am!”

Samuel Ticknor was near tears. As he left, he cried out, “Mr, Fields, you shall hear my name again, I promise you that before God! If you had only taken me by the hand and introduced me to your social circle…” he trailed off for a moment before adding, “I was always counted a clever young man in society!”

A week passed without progress—a week without the discovery of any soldiers who might also be Dante scholars. Oscar Houghton sent a message to Fields after his inquiry telling him that no proof sheets were missing. Hopes were dimming. Nicholas Rey felt that he was being watched more closely at the station house, but he tried again with Willard Burndy. The trial had worn down the safecracker considerably. When he was not moving or talking, he looked lifeless.

“You will not make it through this without help,” Rey said. “I know you’re not guilty, but I know also that you were seen outside Talbot’s house the day his safe was robbed. You can tell me why, or walk the ladder.”

Burndy studied Rey, then nodded listlessly. “I did Talbot’s safe. Not really, though. You won’t believe it. You won’t—I don’t believe it myself! You see, some goosecap said he’d palm me two hundred if I taught him how to crack a particular safe. I thought it’d be an easy chore—and no chance of me getting pinched! Upon the honor of a gentleman, I didn’t know the house belonged to no brother of the cloth! I didn’t croak him! If I had, I wouldn’t have forked over his money back to him!”

“Why’d you go to Talbot’s house?”

“To case it. That goosecap seemed to know that Talbot wasn’t home, so I peeked in to see the layout. I went in, just to see the stamp of safe.” Burndy pleaded for empathy with a stupid smile. “No harm in that, right? It was a basic one, and it only took five minutes for me to tell him how to crack it. I drew it on a napkin of a tavern. I should’ve known the goosecap was cracked in the head. He told me he wanted only one thousand dollars wouldn’t take a copper more. Can you imagine that? Listen, moke, you can’t tell I robbed the preacher, or I’ll walk the ladder for sure! Whoever paid me to do the safe, that’s the madman—that’s who killed Talbot and Healey and Phineas Jennison!”

“Then tell me who paid you,” Rey said calmly, “or you will hang, Mr. Burndy.”

“It was at night, and I had been a little cup-shot, you know, from the Stackpole Tavern. It all seems so quick now, like I dreamt it and it only became truth afterwards. I couldn’t really notice nothin’ of his face, or at least I don’t remember nothin’.”