Dante Club

  Fields tried not to show his panic. “I have appointments to attend to, Mr. Camp.”

  Camp smiled blissfully. “Then I thought of that Pliny Mead boy, spilling everything on his tongue’s end about the uncivilized, gruesome punishments against humanity in that Dante poem. It started coming together for me. I called on your Mr. Mead again and asked him some specific questions. Mr. Fields,” he said, leaning forward with relish. “I know your secret.”

  “Stuff and nonsense. I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, Camp,” Fields cried.

  “I know the secret of the Dante Club, Fields. I know you know the truth about these murders, and that’s why you paid me to vamoose.”

  “That is wanton and malevolent libel!” Fields started out of the alley.

  “Then I shall just go to the police,” Camp said coolly. “And then to the newspapermen. And on my way, I will stop in to see Dr. Manning at Harvard too—he’s been sending for me frequently anyhow. I’ll see what they make of all this ‘stuff and nonsense.’”

  Fields turned back and gave Camp a hardened stare. “If you know what you say you know, then what makes you certain we’re not the ones doing the killing, and will kill you too, Camp?”

  Camp smiled. “You’re a good bluff, Fields. But you’re bookmen, and that’s all you’ll be till they change the natural order of the world.”

  Fields stopped and swallowed. He looked around to make certain there were no witnesses. “What will make you leave us alone, Camp?”

  “Three thousand dollars, to start—in exactly a fortnight,” Camp said.

  “Never!”

  “The real rewards offered for information are much larger, Mr. Fields. Maybe Burndy had nothing to do with all this. I don’t know who killed those men, and I don’t care to know. But how guilty you will look when a jury discovers you already paid me to go away when I came to ask about Dante—and lured me in to pull a gun on me!”

  Fields realized all at once that Camp was doing this to avenge his cowardice in the face of Lowell’s rifle. “You are a small and unclean insect,” Fields could not help saying.

  Camp didn’t seem to mind. “But a trustworthy one, as long as you abide by our bargain. Even insects have debts to meet, Mr. Fields.”

  Fields agreed to rendezvous with Camp at the same location in two weeks’ time.

  He told the news to his friends. After their initial shock, the Dante Club members decided they were helpless to influence the outcome of Camp’s scheme.

  “What’s the use?” said Holmes. “You already gave him ten gold coins, and that did no good. He’ll just keep coming with his hand out for more.”

  “What Fields gave him was an appetite,” Lowell said. They could not trust that any amount of money would secure their secret. Besides, Longfellow would not hear of handing out bribes to protect Dante or themselves. Dante could have paid his way out of exile and had refused, in a letter that was still fierce after all these centuries. They promised to forget about Camp. They had to continue to vigorously pursue their military exposition of the case. That night, they pored over records from the army pension office that Rey had borrowed, and visited several soldiers’-aid homes.

  Fields did not return home until nearly one in the morning, much to Annie Fields’s exasperation. Fields noticed as he entered the front hall that the flowers he sent home each day were piling up on the foyer table, pointedly un-vased. He took up the freshest of the bouquets and found Annie in the reception room. She was sitting on the blue velvet sofa, writing in her Journal of Literary Events and Glimpses of Interesting People.

  “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 semiliter
ate, 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’.”

  “You didn’t see anything or you can’t remember, Mr. Burndy?”

  Burndy chewed at his lip. He said reluctantly, “There is one thing. He was one of you.”

  Rey waited. “A Negro?”

  Burndy’s pink eyes flamed and he seemed about to have a fit. “No! A Billy Yank. A veteran!” He tried to calm himself. “A soldier sitting right there in full uniform, like he was at Gettysburg swinging the flag!”

  The soldiers’-aid homes in Boston were locally run, unofficial, and unadvertised, except through the word of mouth of the veterans who used them. Most homes stocked baskets of food two or three times a week to be dispersed to the soldiers. With six months passing since the war, City Hall was less and less willing to continue funding the homes. The better ones, usually aligned with a church, ambitiously strove to edify the former soldiers. In addition to food and clothing, sermons and instructional talks were offered.

  Holmes and Lowell covered the southern quadrant of the city. They had engaged Pike, the cabman. Waiting outside the soldiers’-aid facilities, Pike would take a bite of a carrot, then give one to his old mares, then take another bite himself, keeping track of how many horse and human bites together would complete the average carrot. The boredom was not worth the fares paid. Besides, when Pike asked why they were traveling from one home to the next, the cabman—who had that shrewdness that came from living among horses—found that their false answers made him ill at ease. So Holmes and Lowell hired a one-horse coach, whose horse and driver would fall asleep every time the coach came to a stop.

  The latest soldiers’ home to receive their visit seemed to be one of the better-organized ones. It was housed in an empty Unitarian church that had been a casualty of the long battles with the Congregationalists. At this particular home, local soldiers were given tables to sit at and a warm meal to sup on at least four evenings a week. The supper having concluded shortly after Lowell and Holmes arrived, the soldiers were making their way into the church proper.

  “Crowded,” Lowell commented, leaning into the chapel, where the pews were being clogged with blue uniforms. “Let us sit in. Get off our feet at least.”

  “Upon my word, Jamey, I can’t see how it can help us anymore. Perhaps we should head to the next one on the list.”

  “This was the next one. Ropes’s list says the other is open only Wednesdays and Sundays.”

  Holmes watched as one soldier with only a stump for a leg was pushed in a wheelchair across the courtyard by a comrade. The latter was little more than a lad, with a mouth caved inward, his teeth having fallen out from scurvy. This was the side of the war that people could not learn from the reports of the officers or the letters of reporters. “What’s the use of spurring an already beaten out horse, my dear Lowell? We are not Gideon watching his soldiers drink from the well. We can tell nothing by looking. We do not find Hamlet and Faust, right and wrong, the valor of men, by testing for albumin or examining fibers in a microscope. I cannot help feeling we must find a new course of action.”

  “You and Pike both,” Lowell said, and shook his head sadly. “But together we will find our way. At the moment, Holmes, let us just decide whether we should remain or have the driver take us to another soldiers’ home.”

  “You men are new today,” interrupted a one-eyed soldier with tightly drawn, heavily pocked skin and a black clay pipe protruding from his mouth. Not having expected a conversation with a third party the astonished Holmes and Lowell were both at a loss for words and politely waited for each other to answer the speaker. The man was garbed in a full-dress uniform that had not seen a launderer since before the war, it appeared.

  The soldier started making his way into the church and looked back only briefly to say, with some offense, “Beg your pardon. I just thought perhaps you fellows came in to see ’bout Dante.”

  For a moment, neither Lowell nor Holmes reacted. They both thought they had imagined the word he had uttered.

  “Hold there, you!” Lowell cried, barely coherent in his excitement.

  The two poets sprinted into the chapel, where they found little light. Facing a sea of uniforms, they could not pinpoint the unidentified Dantean.

  “Down!” someone yelled angrily through cupped hands.

  Holmes and Lowell groped for seats and positioned themselves on the aisles of se
parate pews and contorted themselves desperately to search the faces in the crowd. Holmes turned to the entrance in the event that the soldier tried to escape. Lowell’s eyes scanned the dark stares and hollow expressions that filled the chapel and finally landed on the pocked skin and the single, shimmering eye of their interlocutor.

  “I’ve found him,” Lowell whispered. “Oh, I’ve done it, Wendell. I’ve found him! I’ve found our Lucifer!”

  Holmes twisted, wheezing with anticipation. “I can’t see him, Jamey!”

  Several soldiers violently shushed the two intruders.

  “There!” Lowell whispered, frustrated. “One, two . . . fourth row from the front!”

  “Where?”

  “There!”

  “I thank you, my dear friends, for inviting me once again,” a shaky voice interrupted them, floating down from the pulpit. “And now the punishments of Dante’s Hell shall continue . . .”

  Lowell and Holmes immediately turned their attention to the front of the stuffy, dark chapel. They looked on as their friend, old George Washington Greene, coughed feebly, adjusted his stance, and settled his arms to his sides at his lectern. His congregation was spellbound with expectation and loyalty, greedily waiting to reenter the gates of their inferno.

  CANTICLE

  THREE

  XV

  “O Pilgrims: Come now to the final circle of this blind prison that Dante must explore on his sinuous journey downward, on his fated journey to relieve mankind of all suffering!” George Washington Greene raised his arms wide above the compact lectern that stopped at his narrow bosom. “For Dante seeks nothing less than that; his personal fate is secondhand to the poem. It is humankind he shall lift up through his journey, and so we follow suit, arm in arm, from the fiery gates to the heavenly spheres as we cleanse this our nineteenth century of sin!