The Dante Chamber

by Matthew Pearl

  Here, another example: A woman walked by in a dark blue cloak. She did not appear quite young enough to be one of the country runaways that fathers railroaded into London searching for. But she still had that bloom on her pretty cheeks that made her look as though she were freshly kissed. Her auburn hair fell loosely in waves as she staggered from one side of the sidewalk to the other. She waved her hands to catch herself and appeared as though she might lose her balance at any moment. In a more civilized quarter of the city, some Good Samaritan or at least Halfway Decent Samaritan or at the very least a pickpocket would have taken hold of her arm. The police might be notified—a fellow human was in trouble. Not here. Nobody here liked sending for police. A few people did notice her; a man laughed at her, a woman in the early stage of inebriation shook her head in sisterly disapproval.

  Besides, this passerby was not the first young woman to be staggering and swaying over these sidewalks. In fact, she was not even the only one who met that description at this moment in time. There was a distinct air about her, though. A profound urgency.

  A man followed a few feet behind her, watching her with an expression blending concern and fascination. His coat was buttoned up to the throat. His body was muscular but not athletic. His very round face exhibited the interest that, in spite of our better natures, each of us takes in a scene of distress. Something more sparkled in his hypnotic, deep-set dark eyes, which in narrowing emphasized the penciled ridge over his nose. Dante Gabriel Rossetti was studying every move, committing them to memory.

  She stumbled again, this time off the sidewalk. She wandered into traffic and found herself spun around. There was a loud thump as her body collided with an oncoming omnibus and was thrown high into the air, landing clear on the other side of the street.

  She came down on the iron railings in front of a house. The railing impaled her in four places.

  Blood poured from the wounds, first slowly, then with a gush. Onlookers rushed over—now that she was mortally wounded, interest in her increased at a fast clip. The force of the impact was so great that, as the bystanders attempted to lift her off, one of the spikes of the railing broke off into her chest, causing her to howl in anguish. She remained sensible for a few more moments. She even spoke, though it was a struggle to eject her peculiar words, which sounded like, “There is no more wine.”

  Gabriel Rossetti joined the onlookers briefly, but when he felt eyes on him, he turned on his heel and walked away, as he had at the North Woolwich Gardens.

  Meanwhile, those who had moved closest to the dying woman—a tavern keeper, a barmaid, the intoxicated workman who had laughed at the victim minutes before—could see her face clearly now under the glow of the gaslight. What they saw horrified them. What they saw was more terrible, if possible, than the spikes tearing apart her flesh. It was not drunkenness that had made her stagger and stumble into death.

  * * *

  —

  It was true what everyone said. Dolly Williamson hated to ever rest during a case in progress. This was not a product of impatience, to which Dolly hardly could be accused of succumbing. When he first moved from his family’s home in the Scottish hills to London, he earned a name for himself as a very methodical clerk in the War Office. Then he resigned from civil service to apply to the police. “You’re joking, Dolly. Turn yourself into a common policeman?” his friends protested. “I want an open-air life,” he retorted, “and I won’t be long in uniform.”

  No, as a rule he did not hurry life along. But he also hated missing any opportunities due to inaction.

  As the superintendent of the detective division, Dolly was forever pushed and pulled at by the other detectives. Inspector Thornton needed him to authorize a bargain he was cooking up for his investigation into the latest Fenian activity. Thornton sent for Dolly from the back of a beer shop, up a flight of dilapidated stairs, and through a corridor stinking of stale liquor and burnt narcotics. After passing through two more doors, Dolly and Branagan came to a small chamber where Thornton waited for him. He wore an oilskin cloak and had a twitchy mouth that looked determined to yawn.

  “I believe the Fenian bastards are planning something big,” Thornton told Dolly.

  “You always believe that, Thornton,” Dolly said. “We just put four of them in Clerkenwell, and for two of them we still don’t have enough evidence to take them to Old Bailey.”

  “Well, I believe that big, dark devil over there can help me nab some even choicer blackguards.”

  At the far end of the room was a large man wearing a turban and with skin the tint of brown parchment. He was kneeling on the floor toward the wall and emitted a chant in his resonant voice.

  “What did you do to him, Inspector Thornton?” asked an alarmed Branagan.

  “He’s not hurt, Constable. He’s praying, that’s all,” Thornton answered.

  “Morning and evening,” Dolly said, nodding. “Twice a day he prays toward the sun in Zend, an ancient tongue that few people on earth still know, Constable Branagan. That’s Ironhead Herman.”

  Thornton gave a meaningful nod of agreement.

  Confusion lingered over Branagan’s face as he watched the scene.

  “Opium is no longer the province of druggists and doctors alone,” Dolly explained to the constable. “People have discovered an escape from the crush of the modern world around them, in forms and amounts never before consumed in England. Unavowed shipments come from India and other ports, away from official channels, never passing through tariffs or inspection for adulteration. Herman over there, Branagan, is one of our city’s leading suppliers for hole-and-corner opium dens and the like, and I suspect that’s where Inspector Thornton sees a move to make—isn’t that so, Ironhead Herman?”

  Dolly projected his question in a loud voice, and Herman turned toward them. The dark dots of his eyes danced with what seemed—for a moment, at least—amusement.

  “You know I don’t like waiting, Dolly,” Herman said. “I hate waiting.”

  “I’ve come across evidence that can link our friend over there with some shady transactions,” Thornton said.

  “Bring him in, then,” Dolly said. “Herman’s been to the Yard enough; he can lead the way.”

  “See, that’s where I have a better idea this time, Inspector,” Thornton said excitedly. “I have reason to believe one of the Fenian leaders, McCord, has been trying to buy some of Herman’s surplus phosphorus and other material for arms and explosives. If Herman keeps us informed, we can foil whatever scheme McCord and his Irish rats are hatching.”

  McCord—who boasted a dozen other aliases—was one of the generals of the Fenian movement.

  “McCord is back in London?”

  Thornton nodded. “He’s boarding for now at Sixteen Lombard, Chief, but I haven’t enough to pick him up yet.”

  “Very well, Thornton,” Dolly replied after thinking for a minute. “I’ll sign off with the Home Office if you wish, but don’t underestimate Herman. He is as dangerous in his own way as the Fenians.”

  Thornton turned and glanced skeptically at Herman, who was now lying facedown on the floor, as though taking a very uncomfortable nap.

  “Didn’t you notice, Inspector Williamson,” Branagan commented to Dolly as they exited, “even that big fellow sleeps.”

  Branagan would practically push Dolly out of Scotland Yard at intervals during their inquiries to force him to go home. Instead of going to bed as he promised he would, Dolly gardened. Or he walked around London. He could remember the feeling of freedom when he left the War Office as a young man and put on his blue “bobby” uniform to patrol the streets and direct traffic. His former colleagues in their fine suits would stop and gawk with pity. At night, instead of imitating other policemen of his rank by taking on private security assignments to supplement his reduced income, he took lessons in French and German, having observed the rapid growth of London’s foreign n
eighborhoods.

  He had been right about not remaining in uniform for long, and wasn’t directing traffic for very long, either. He happened to run across a man near a mansion where a daring robbery had occurred. When the man gave Dolly an innocuous reason for being there, Dolly replied: “That’s a lie.” He had noticed the residue of lime on the man’s boots and knew the substance came from the scene of the recent crime. The commissioner, hearing how the suspect came into custody, ordered that Dolly be transferred to the recently established detective division. Criminals came to fear being pursued by Dolly, who was assigned many a daunting mystery—that word Dolly himself came to hate as an excuse to leave a case unfinished—and he became so well-known that a number of English novelists based characters on him. Once, when it was reported that Dolly was given an infamous case of poisoning, the poisoner turned himself over to Scotland Yard instead of waiting for Dolly to hunt him.

  The murder of the Honorable Mr. Morton was different, though. Dolly could sense that nobody was out there cowering in fear that he was on the trail. It was not the criminal but the public—and Dolly himself—who seemed to fear what might come. Every moment was of importance, he told Branagan. Yet here he was, wandering the streets at dusk, bracing himself against the cold, thinking about Dante Alighieri. Dolly had been a reader of all kinds and categories of books, but he began to believe there was something different about Dante, different from any other author he had read or learned about. Not only the subject matter of the afterlife, which most writers were too wise to approach. Dante had done what so many writers could only imagine—turned poetry into a living power, and a living power was something no one could cage inside the covers of a book.

  The character Dolly liked was not Dante, the fervent and nervous poet journeyer, but his guide, Virgil. However out of place Virgil was on the mountain of Purgatory, he kept his composure and maintained control. Virgil played the part of a kind of detective—having been sitting quietly keeping his own counsel, when a troubled visitor, Beatrice, arrived to send him on his assignment. To save Dante’s life.

  Dolly heaved a big sigh as he kept on walking, and his eyes met those of a dirty child in ragged clothes. The boy’s glance was shifty, uneasy, and the detective recognized the signs of desperation that led to petty crimes and, later, far worse.

  Dolly stuffed a little money into the boy’s pocket. “Good gracious, use it for food,” he warned in German, recognizing the way the trousers lay on the boy’s boot as being typical among that community. The boy nodded.

  Crossing a footbridge over the Thames, Dolly gazed around at the dark, silent river lapping away at docked boats and at old wooden posts. He thought of the secrets—bags of stolen money, at least a dozen bodies—that the black water had given up to him over the years.

  Nearing Smith Square, Dolly knew the quiet and solitude waiting in his parlor would only throw his mind back into the case. The time would hopefully come for a wife, maybe children, to join him there—but that was another realm of life in which he remained patient.

  As Dolly got to his gate, a bobby waited on his front steps.

  Dolly exclaimed, “Take me there!” before the policeman could say anything.

  The visitor climbed onto the driver’s seat of the carriage and raced Dolly through the night to the scene.

  It had begun to drizzle. Branagan was searching for Dolly at the scene, with a host of other police and city officials.

  “Inspector Williamson . . . ,” Branagan began, seeming to brace himself for what he had to say.

  “The eyes are sewn shut,” Dolly said.

  Everyone in earshot turned and stared at Dolly in amazement. Branagan raised his eyebrows, then nodded.

  The crowd of blue coats stepped aside for Dolly. He moved closer to the body.

  Dolly snapped his fingers. “Constable, the cyclops!”

  Branagan opened his greatcoat wider. At the center of his belt was a lamp or “flaming eye,” nicknamed by police as the cyclops, which Branagan shone over the scene.

  “Name,” Dolly ordered, frustrated not to recognize her.

  “Miss Lillian Brenner, the prima donna of one of the opera companies, Inspector,” someone answered—Dolly didn’t bother turning around to see who was telling him.

  “Lillian Brenner,” Dolly repeated to himself. He cursed himself for knowing little about opera.

  He ordered lanterns and candles be placed around the body for his examination. Blood continued to stream from where she had been impaled on the railings. Her face gave the appearance of being thoughtful. Her mouth hung open, her teeth white and regular. Just as Dolly predicted, her eyelids were sewn closed with wire. That had caused her blind stumbling into the street.

  “Iron wire, looks like,” Dolly said, wiping his brow from the hot lamps. “‘The sin of envy is scourged within this terrace,’” he said under his breath, continuing: “‘No man walks the earth that he would not be pierced with compassion for what I saw.’”

  “Inspector?” Branagan replied.

  “We’ve reached the next terrace, Branagan.”

  There was no blood around the iron wires—someone had taken care to clean it off, so as not to detract from the effect. Dolly gently pushed up one of the sewn eyelids with the tip of his finger. Tears, which had been caught inside, rolled down her cheek.

  IX

  Oliver Wendell Holmes steadied himself as he boarded the Paris-bound steamship at the Liverpool harbor. In what had become a kind of catechism the last few days, his daughter asked yet again if he felt himself coming down with something. Holmes swore he was healthy—as a lion. But once on deck, he immediately dropped himself into a chair and requested his medical valise. He extracted the breathing trumpet he used when he felt the signs of his asthma.

  Everybody remained on deck as long as possible before they’d have to go below, even in this gusty, murky weather, which at least was a little warmer than previous weeks. Glancing around through the fog at the passengers, all wrapped up in blankets and rugs on the chairs, the deck looked as if it had a row of mummies on exhibition. Holmes didn’t often experience the asthma that plagued his youth, but as Dolly Williamson’s words circled his brain, he felt his chest constrict. He inhaled air through the long, hollow neck of the trumpet device.

  Just by looking at you, I can see well enough that you couldn’t help hunt a murderer.

  The unwelcome feelings seemed—he convinced himself—attributable simply to preparing for a voyage on the ocean. He could never help but picture the ocean floor white with the bones of humans swallowed up by the waves over the ages. An old sea captain once told him the only way to get rid of those thoughts was to keep oneself under opiates until reaching the destined port—then again, opiates were the solution to every problem of mankind these days, as if the lotus-eaters of Tennyson’s poem were in charge. Holmes did not mind the sounds of the rushing winds that would soon greet them at sea, nor the sight of the billows, nor even the impression of unending depths brought by looking over the side. But the sight of the boats hanging along the sides of the deck, which most people found reassuring, suggested doom to him.

  He thought of the legendary figure of Ulysses telling Dante in a low circle of Hell how he piloted his ship toward the sight of Mount Purgatory, trying to skip right to salvation, when the waves began to overtake him.

  There he was again! Dante, back in his thoughts!

  Along with the usual baggage and mail being shuttled on and off the ship before departure, Holmes noticed something less typical, which disrupted the Dantean images in his mind. Constables. They strolled through with a highly artificial and unconvincing casualness. Holmes walked to the rails and looked across to another docked ship: more constables. Looking out from the port side, there was a ship that had just arrived that had not attracted the presence of the blue-coated officers. They don’t care who’s coming in, no, they’re looking for someo
ne who might be trying to leave, Holmes thought to himself.

  He returned to his chair to close his eyes, but when he did he saw the scenes of Inferno-inspired death he tried so hard for the last four years to forget. These memories mixed with a vision of Christina Rossetti he’d been seeing ever since Dolly Williamson implied she was searching for her brother Dante Gabriel (and probably for Holmes, as he now suspected she had been a party to the telegram from Browning): the lovely and soft-spoken Miss Rossetti in fear for her brother, with the dashing Browning assisting her. All this swirled with the fragments of sentences he could hear from two constables conversing with each other as they walked by: impaled . . . bloody . . . eyes wired shut.

  Holmes envisioned Dante Alighieri, pressing closer to the shades who suffered together on the second terrace up Mount Purgatory. “No man walks the earth,” Dante cautions his readers, “that he would not be pierced with compassion for what I saw.” The Envious lean on each other for support and guidance. Dante examines their eyes, sewn shut, and compares it to the hawks who undergo the same treatment to be trained not to fly away from their masters.

  Was Holmes really hearing the constables correctly? Or was his treacherous brain tricking him, inserting Dante where he didn’t belong? His eyes widened like a man trying to wake from a bad dream.

  After Amelia settled the arrangements for the passage, she took the sea chair adjacent to Holmes. “Father, I refuse to even ask you again if something is wrong, because I know something is dreadfully wrong, even if you won’t admit it to me. It has to do with that detective from Scotland Yard you met on the train, doesn’t it? Terrible Inspector What’s-his-name?”