Мэтью Перл - The Dante Chamber

Browning was often asked about the seventeenth-century figure of Pompilia, the young wife murdered by her husband in The Ring and the Book . She was the center of his poem that had brought him a boost of wealth and respect. But so was Ba. It was why he’d dreaded to write it and why he knew he had to.

Could she have survived?

At the close of the opera, Browning accepted an invitation to attend the banquet with the performers and the supporters of the opera company, including many beautiful ladies sparkling with diamonds.

This night of opera and celebration was unusual. All the proceeds would go to the family of Lillian Brenner, the company’s recently deceased prima donna. ( Deceased sounded peaceful. Recently destroyed .) The proceeds left over, that is, after the expenses of the elaborate performance and banquet.

In the banquet room, through the glittering crowd, Browning’s eyes fell on a young woman in the corner, covering her face with her hands. Typical Robert Browning — to be interested in the one woman who was hidden.

He began to make his way over to her when he was interrupted by the proprietor of the opera company, who insisted on presenting him to other distinguished guests invited to the banquet.

“Some people of your tribe are here,” whispered the proprietor, taking him by the arm and pulling him in a different direction. “I mean the literary sort. Come.” Then, louder, “Perhaps you already know one another? Mr. Browning, may I present an esteemed visitor from Boston, the famed ‘Autocrat’ Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes — poet, essayist, medical professor, is there nothing he doesn’t do? — and over at this table, the dear, one and only, Miss Christina Rossetti, who, believe it or not, had been in the stalls among ordinary people.”

“What a happy surprise,” Browning said with a fulsome smile.

Poets investigate. Don’t we? Isn’t that what we do every day?” Browning had philosophized back at Tudor House.

This was four days before the opera.

Browning sounded as if he wanted to reassure himself, though ostensibly he made the comment to convince Christina and Holmes as they plotted how to expand their search for clues after Lillian Brenner became the second victim.

Tudor House had completed its metamorphosis from being the home of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to being their own version of Scotland Yard. William refused to play any further part in what he called their mad quest since Christina last met him outside the omnibus, though he still came to Chelsea to help organize Gabriel’s outstanding correspondence and bills and tend to the animals and property; the arrival of Dr. Holmes compensated for the loss of William’s help, as did consultations with the translator Cayley on obscure portions of the Dante text.

Holmes’s medical and scientific expertise was a particularly welcome addition to their examinations. As he reviewed the vast amount of information they’d harvested, Holmes came to the conclusion that the perpetrator had to have been a master in anatomy to have designed the device attached to Morton and to have employed such a precise method of sewing Brenner’s eyes.

Holmes, not belonging to this side of the Atlantic, had not known the Rossettis very well and knew Browning only slightly better, though all the celebrated American and British writers kept up with each other through regular letter writing and sent each other copies of new books and articles. To be asked personally for help — as Christina and Browning had asked Holmes, first through the cryptic telegram and then in person as they explained all that happened — was a matter of camaraderie between literary nations. That tradition could be traced back, at least in a symbolic sense, to the long-ago handshake of James Fenimore Cooper and Sir Walter Scott, when the two gods of the page crossed paths inside a Paris stairwell.

Holmes could not in good conscience let anyone — litterateur or not — be left with the haunting feelings that he carried around.

To his new comrades Holmes spoke about what he had taken pains to hide from both Amelias (wife and daughter), from his two sons, from Inspector Williamson and Constable Branagan on the train — from everyone in the world, really, outside the circle of intimate friends who experienced the events with him and Longfellow. Holmes’s introductory speech, as it were, was given shortly after his arrival at Browning’s house.

“It was four years and a smattering of months ago when it began — when Dante’s Inferno came alive before our eyes in Boston. What followed changed us. That sensation pamphlet by the scoundrel Simon Camp eventually made it a topic of morbid fascination, but I watched the horrors too closely to feel anything a reasonable man would call fascination. If one had proposed that I would find myself in London in Robert Browning’s drawing room with Browning himself and Christina Rossetti, how many matters I would have wanted to speak about instead of... Well, my friends, we’ll postpone leisurely conversations. We have too much work to do, and we must do it with much caution, with the police watching you closely.”

Christina dropped an edition of Purgatory , the pages fluttering from her place. Browning leapt to his feet. She and Browning in unison asked Holmes what he meant — or rather, Browning demanded:

“What on earth did you just say, Holmes?”

While Christina’s unflappable politeness came out as:

“Dr. Holmes, please elaborate your point regarding the police.”

Holmes told them every detail of his encounter on the train with Inspector Williamson. Dolly not only brought along his own copy of The Dante Murders — the detective made it very clear he had seen Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s copy of the same with notes written upon it by Browning and Christina. Holmes came to the conclusion that Gabriel’s copy of the booklet must have been studied by the police inside Tudor House, or taken from the house for that purpose and then placed back inside.

Christina nodded her head vigorously. She was especially tidy and careful handling her brother’s belongings, in part out of a vague superstition that keeping his belongings in good order would make him more likely to return. She recalled the times over the last month that objects in Tudor House seemed to migrate an inch or two from where she remembered putting them. The culprit had not been her brother’s monkey, nor one of the poltergeists Gabriel sometimes searched for; it had been the wily operatives from Scotland Yard.

After Holmes’s revelation, whenever the trio was at Christina’s house at Euston Square, which they avoided so as to not disturb her mother or worry her about Gabriel, or at Browning’s house on Warwick Crescent or Tudor House — their base of operations — they made certain to keep an eye out for any signs that they were followed or observed. They took pains to arrive separately and to conceal papers and books that contained their more important notations.

It no longer helped Christina to will herself not to fall into the trap that had plagued her father and Gabriel — that anxiety about being watched and followed by some outside menace. This time those anxieties were justified.

They planned expeditions to try to learn everything else they could about the deaths of Jasper Morton and Lillian Brenner. There were discreet visits to the deadhouse to see the bodies. It was customary for victims to be displayed for the public in case people remembered anything of value to the police by looking at the faces of the dead or their articles of clothing (which were hung on hooks next to the bodies, while the bodies were washed with a stream of water to keep them fresh). Browning dutifully went but could hardly remain in the observation area for two minutes without sobbing; Holmes studied the bodies with an expert’s eye, and Christina seemed to take in the gruesome sights with an unflinching glare, taking a special interest in Miss Brenner’s clothing before rushing out with her head down, nearly crashing into several other bystanders.