The Dante Chamber

by Matthew Pearl

  “Are you certain you don’t wish to stop for a while before we continue with these?” Browning asked Christina, hearing of her busy afternoon with their compatriots—but her answer was clear when she made no reply.

  Following the map of Loring’s addresses brought them through streets and byways that formed a different London altogether. One of the addresses had actually disappeared, the building having been demolished. A portly woman who answered the door at another one did not know Loring, but knew the name belonged to a man who had lived there once, and had last heard he was living in a place called Rat’s Castle in Dyott Street, in the notorious Saint Giles. “Number Twelve, I’ve been told.” She warned that region was “only fit for Jews and Irish.” Browning could not help replying, “Then we shall enjoy our time there.” The woman nodded without seeming to notice his self-righteous reproof.

  In truth, Browning was as much a stranger to the lost corners of the city he was entering with Christina as Dr. Holmes still was to England itself. Browning wished he wasn’t wearing one of the well-tailored suits in which he took so much pride, and crossed his arms as they walked, as though he could conceal it. He both feared for Christina’s safety here and leaned on her guidance. Even Christina, though, had her shoulders up in a way that people did who felt they might have to protect themselves. “Good afternoon, lady! Good afternoon, gentleman!” came sarcastic calls from windows, followed by chortling. Their path to the so-called Rat’s Castle was lined with animal bones rejected by scavengers.

  The boardinghouse, as large as a luxurious hotel might be, smelled of liquor, human waste, and the drowsy odor of opium. Most of the doors were numbered. Through a series of smoky corridors and a staircase they reached Number 12. The toll of a church bell striking the hour vibrated through the handle of the door. The door squealed open allowing Browning—thinking now he ought to take the lead—to step in first. Inside was darkness.

  “Empty,” Browning guessed, half relieved.

  Christina held out a candle they had bought from an old woman outside. “No, Mr. Browning,” she said. “Not quite.”

  Their steps were short and slow. Browning, without thinking, took Christina’s hand. To his surprise, she firmly gripped his. His heart raced in anticipation.

  There were papers scattered around the floor. It looked like someone had left in a hurry. Browning collected them as quickly as he could and handed them to Christina.

  She examined them under the light. After a while, Browning asked what she found. She replied: “If I’m understanding these, there is an ongoing exchange about some crime . . . Loring was arrested for murdering a man before, some years ago.”

  “It’s him,” Browning said.

  “It’s certainly suggestive evidence . . .”

  “No, no, it is him, it has to be. Miss Rossetti: look over there. The next terrace.”

  In the far corner, there sat a solitary piece of furniture. A low table. Lying upon it was a copy of Longfellow’s translation of Dante’s Purgatory—opened to Canto Fifteen, the third terrace, the purgation of the Wrathful.

  * * *

  —

  Constable Branagan stood in the shadows, waiting. The alley was dark and out of the way, made darker still by the overcast sky. It was only a few minutes’ walk from Scotland Yard, inconspicuous, and not visible from the street—in short, a perfect meeting place for secret conversations.

  An eternity seemed to pass. He still had reports to deliver to the Home Office for Dolly. As these made clear, one of the other cases Dolly was overseeing had fallen apart: Inspector Thornton had received the expected word from Ironhead Herman about the exchange of funds from the Fenians in return for explosive materials, but in the subsequent days had lost track of the location of the Fenian agent, McCord (alias Kadnar).

  Branagan had made up his mind to return to Dolly’s office when he heard heavy footsteps in puddles of water.

  The figure of a man paused at the opening of the alley, as though in contemplation, then moved toward him.

  “Tell Inspector Williamson to expect nothing more from me,” said Tennyson, handing him a piece of paper.

  Branagan unfolded the paper and, by the dim light, could make out a series of names and details scribbled out by the poet.

  It was on one of his walks around Farringford—the day one of his overzealous pursuers climbed a tree to gawk at him—that Tennyson was opening mail handed to him by the butler and, after reading his publisher’s note about Gabriel Rossetti’s illustrations, found half a yard deep in the heap of correspondence a letter from General Sir Charles Grey, Queen Victoria’s private secretary. He thought it might be an invitation to take tea with the queen again, or an expression of royal admiration for his latest lyrics. Instead, Grey explained in the letter that there were some literary individuals with information vital to Scotland Yard’s investigation of the recent shocking crimes around London, and that Inspector Williamson needed Tennyson’s help. That motivated Tennyson to go to Scotland Yard and meet with Dolly and Branagan that same wet afternoon before ending up at Tudor House and the opera in a night that ended with him joining Christina’s search.

  “Thank you, sir,” Branagan said, pocketing the note.

  “Ugh. Thank me by bringing this to a swift conclusion,” grumbled Tennyson, turning on his heel and shuffling away.

  XIV

  Interesting how four people could place themselves so differently in their seats on the train.

  Christina sat away from the window in their humid compartment, her frame entirely still, her fingers woven together, staring down in concentration and prayer.

  Browning peered out the window at the scenery, absorbed in the details of the little towns and villages and people they passed, while from the window behind him Tennyson looked dreamily through the thick lenses of his glasses into the blue sky.

  Holmes, for his part, couldn’t sit still. He sat on the edge of his seat, then would leap to his feet to walk up and down the corridor of the train.

  The train sped on its way toward the man they hoped could point the way to Reuben Loring.

  The night before—after Christina and Browning found Loring’s lodgings—the same group had sat around the Tudor House dining table.

  We must find him now and variations of that sentiment echoed around the circle, “him” standing sometimes for Dante Gabriel Rossetti, other times for Reuben Loring. Christina was staring at the photograph from Loring’s military file so long she felt she could see through to the man himself. Her concentration was broken when she heard the question of whether, armed with their latest discoveries, they oughtn’t return to the police.

  Christina looked over at Tennyson, who’d made the proposition. “If we’re right that Mr. Loring is preparing to unleash the punishment of the Wrathful upon Gabriel, by tangling ourselves up with Inspector Williamson we would be slowed to the pace of a lag-last snail, practically ensuring my brother’s demise. When Gabriel is back, when he is safe, we will shower the detectives with all we know—which, remember, Mr. Tennyson, they didn’t accept in the first place, and may still ignore.”

  “Do you really suppose we’d be able to stop this man by ourselves, Miss Rossetti?” Tennyson asked, without responding directly to her points, his words entirely devoid of the confidence he had shown since becoming part of the search.

  “We may have surpassed the knowledge of Scotland Yard.”

  Tennyson contemplated the answer with his pipe before leaning back in the armchair, seeming to resign himself to Christina’s iron will.

  The most interesting and relevant pages from the letters they had found scattered around Loring’s room represented communications with lawyers and assorted military officials about an incident that had occurred three years before while Loring was stationed with the British army in Ethiopia. Loring had a disagreement with a fellow soldier, and after the row between the two became v
icious, Loring accidentally killed him; but because of issues of jurisdiction, there had never been any prosecution. He was released a few months after his arrest.

  “Reverend Fallow all but admitted to us he knew more about Loring than he could share,” Holmes said. “The fellow thinks he is following an ethical path. But if we cannot find the soldier himself in London’s sea of life, we can at least find Fallow and try again to convince him to lead us toward the man.”

  Tennyson pointed out that Fallow mentioned helping oversee a sanatorium that served as a refuge to those alienated by London, and that the minister and his female assistant seemed prepared to return there after their brief interview. They sent a messenger back to the London church where Fallow served as one of the chaplains to soldiers; soon they were in possession of the location in Lancashire of his rural sanctuary, known as the Phillip Sanatorium. They chose the first train out of London on Wednesday morning that could bring them that far north.

  Christina, ever practical, at first suggested that one or perhaps two of them should stay behind to research other matters. But Browning argued that Fallow had already resisted their initial pleas, and that perhaps with a united effort they could succeed in recruiting his help.

  She mused on the topic: “Evidently I was unpleasing to Reverend Fallow and his associate, and could we exchange personalities, I have no doubt I should then feel the same with their feelings.”

  The comment was so reasonable and gracious, Browning could never imagine thinking it.

  Now, after Holmes paced through the railroad cars, he returned to his seat having gone entirely pale.

  “What’s wrong, Dr. Holmes?” Browning asked.

  “I thought that I saw a ghost,” Holmes said, then, trying to lighten his mood, added, “as people always say who don’t actually believe in ghosts.” He explained that after pacing through the smoking compartment, he thought he came upon a familiar face. Of all people, it was the rascal Pinkerton man Harvard had once hired to investigate their Dante scholarship—him, or a man who looked like he could be his twin. But Holmes rushed back through the car, examining every seat through thick clouds of smoke. The man was gone. He searched other compartments of the train and did not find any sign of the Pinkerton operative.

  “A figment!” Holmes concluded the topic.

  There were some lighter moments produced in the monotony of the four-hour train passage. They played a hand of cribbage only after they agreed to Christina’s terms that no money be wagered. Later on, Browning mentioned he could make a rhyme for any word in the English language. Tennyson immediately intoned, in a low, ominous voice: “rhinoceros.”

  There wasn’t a pause.

  Browning wrote furiously, then declaimed:

  O, if you should see a rhinoceros.

  And a tree be in sight,

  Climb quick for his might

  Is a match for the Gods, he can toss Eros.

  “Toss Eros!” was echoed throughout the compartment. Tennyson made strenuous objections but couldn’t help breaking them up with laughing fits, his glasses slipping down the steep bridge of his nose. Browning triumphantly tore up his poem into small pieces and threw them out the window of the moving train, even as Holmes tried to recover it for posterity. Christina covered her whole face in her hat as she shook with laughter.

  * * *

  —

  Simon Camp was certain Oliver Wendell Holmes had lost sight of him, and by this point the poor little doctor probably thought himself mad for believing Camp was on the same train he and his friends were riding. After Dolly Williamson at Scotland Yard inadvertently let it be known that Dr. Pipsqueak had something to do with this affair, Camp had easily traced the fellow American to a London hotel.

  I’m afraid you’re not going to be the first to know what happened, the Fenian McCord had taunted him. Nobody gets the jump on Dolly Williamson. The great Dolly. But hadn’t Camp already trumped him by finding out about Holmes?

  Camp soon enough discovered Holmes was conspiring with two other men, led as though on leashes by a peculiar-looking, yet somehow not altogether unattractive woman, all of whom Camp eventually identified as poets. Heavens, didn’t writers ever tire of each other’s company? Was nobody in London ordinary?

  More interesting still, that peculiar woman who walked around unadorned as a Quakeress, Miss Rossetti, was sister to Dante Gabriel Rossetti—whose book of poems Camp had seen in a prominent place on Dolly Williamson’s desk. After visiting Dolly, Camp had begun going to galleries around London with Gabriel Rossetti’s overdramatic paintings and studied two or three of the painter’s morbid poems he had dug up in a reading room.

  “A soul that’s lost as mine is lost,

  Little brother!”

  (Oh Mother, Mary Mother,

  Lost, lost, all lost between Hell and Heaven!)

  Such bleak poetical nonsense all blurred together in Camp’s eyes.

  If Holmes and his friends had been sticking their noses into the matter of the new Dante killings for a while, Camp may have stumbled into a shortcut. He would shadow them until he learned what they knew, then leave them behind in his dust. When all four of the fancy poets boarded a train north together, Camp knew it had to be important and followed behind them. That weaselly Holmes, with his quick-darting eye, looked right at him, but he managed to lose the nervous doctor in the train.

  Here was how Camp did it. He even wrote it into his notebook to use the scene in his new pamphlet (though he would have to change the harmless poet-doctor to a dagger-wielding rascal of the London underworld, maybe even a dreaded Fenian, to elevate the drama). When Camp spotted Holmes walking by him in the smoking compartment, while the doctor’s back was still to him, Camp switched seats. This was the real trick: he moved to a seat closer to Holmes’s position, knowing the doctor’s gaze would overreach in searching for him. Using the ample smoke clouds as cover, Camp switched hats with a sleeping man and picked up an abandoned newspaper. By this point, Holmes had doubled back through the car, then once more in the other direction. As the confused poet looked again, Camp rose from his seat as though going for a stroll and walked right behind the searcher before ducking into another compartment and convincing the occupants he spoke little English and was looking for his seat. Camp’s years as a Pinkerton man hadn’t been for naught.

  Camp had two paths he considered taking next: one, to follow the quartet of scribblers until they led him somewhere useful; and two, if one didn’t work, was to demand they tell him what they knew when they all returned to London. He’d brought his pistol along to make sure they complied with the latter.

  * * *

  —

  The day was unusually warm and muggy for early March. The literary passengers disembarked at Walsden, a sleepy market town in Lancashire. From there they took a wagon for half an hour. Gray clouds of smoke hung over factories in the distance that had avoided the ruin much of the neighboring industry experienced during the decline in trade from the American War of Rebellion. The open-air, horse-drawn vehicle came to a stop in sight of iron gates looming above them.

  Browning asked the driver to take them through the gates to the sanatorium’s offices.

  “Not permitted, sir. All this land ahead was once a busy mill and factory, but now it’s used to help men and women whose nerves need shelterin’, so it’s said, from the city and all its machines and commotion. Stuff and nonsense, if you ask me. That commotion includes anything pulled by a horse, they say, so this is where I must leave you.”

  Inhaling the fresh air, they walked along a winding path past the gates and into the meadows. London receded farther with every step. The grounds were expansive, with a half dozen buildings nestled in a hilly section of the property and arranged around a canal as black as ink, which seemed to reflect nothing on its surface despite sitting calmly. Outside the largest building, they came across a man whose uncovered head w
as shaped like an onion, draped in a white gown, the garb of the residents at the sanatorium. He was at work on the earth, occupied in what seemed to be weeding or digging. When he noticed visitors, a look of surprise passed over his seemingly implacable expression. Browning asked him if he knew whether Reverend Fallow was present.

  “Here, no,” answered the man, blinking hard as though he had not looked up in many hours. “I’ll tell you—I saw him leave for town to fetch some supplies.”

  Holmes asked: “What about his assistant Sibbie—Isobel?”

  The man’s surprise deepened with Holmes’s use of the nickname, and he had even less to say about her, which he did in a whisper. “He’s likely staying close by her, so I’d think.”

  The visitors decided to pair off to give themselves a better chance of spotting Fallow as soon as he returned so they would not waste more time away from their search for Loring than necessary. Christina and Tennyson took one path through the clover-covered meadows, while Holmes and Browning went along the water’s edge.

  Tennyson commented that some of the smaller, thatched structures looked as though they might purr to life if you petted them. Stone walls covered in ivy ran in irregular patterns, with doors cut into them from time to time. From a distance, they spied more of the white-robed residents—and a few wearing a light shade of green—on their way from one place to another, sometimes in clusters. Though the residents barely seemed to move at all, their pace was so slow, most appeared to be engaged in one variety of labor or another. One group, for instance, conveyed large sacks on their shoulders.

  “This place brings to mind a verse,” Tennyson said before he paused and, in his monotonous but smooth delivery, with fingers strumming the air, recited: