Мэтью Перл - The Dante Chamber

“Pack of lies! Do you notice Browning always believes the worst in me? I’m terribly fond of him, meanwhile,” said Tennyson. “And I admire his poetry more than he thinks, though if he got rid of two-thirds, the remaining third would be finer. Do you know in his last work, he makes ‘impulse’ rhyme with ‘dim pulse’? As long as the pronunciation of the English language were forgotten, Browning would be held as the greatest of modern poets. No matter, I’ve come to speak to you more than to the others. To tell you that you were right.”

The laureate found some port and they sat in Gabriel’s drawing room, which was almost immediately choked with smoke from Tennyson’s pipe.

“There is more about myself in my poem on Ulysses than I like to confess,” Tennyson mused. “Ulysses tries to rush fate, like so many of us, in desperation to know where he’ll end up after all. He dies — in Dante’s conception, at least — for trying to pass over Hell and reach salvation through his own will. My dearest friend at university was Arthur Hallam. A young man who had every right to live a long life, but was taken by disease of the brain not long before I wrote that poem. He died, to our eyes, healthy, and since that day I have done what I have to do to prevent myself from losing hope. ‘Ulysses’ was written under the sense of loss that all had gone by, but that still life must be fought out to the end. It’s hopeful, that poem, more than I am myself. Poetry, I daresay, is a great deal truer than fact. You were right to remind me of that. I could have done more.”

“With Gabriel to be released at any time, maybe even as we sit here, there is nothing more for you to do now.”

“Come! Do not punish me with my flaws. As far as I know my own temperament, I can stand any sudden thing. But give me an hour to reflect, and I should go here and there, and all will be confused. If a fiery gulf opened in London, I would leap at once into it on horseback like Marcus Curtius in ancient times. But if I had to think about it? No. It is the moral question, not the fear, which would perplex me. Yes, Holmes, I suppose Gabriel must be liberated by the police, but do you really think, in your bones, that the detectives will leave him in peace, unless someone unveils the full truth that only we can find?”

“I suppose I want to believe it for Miss Rossetti’s sake, and whatever I learn more from Sibbie may help the cause.”

“Sibbie must continue her recovery, and that will take time, won’t it?” Tennyson got up, went into Gabriel’s library, and returned with Simon Camp’s Dante Murders booklet, which he placed in front of Holmes. “See what you notice about this. Long before any of this happened, Gabriel was already reading about what transpired in Boston.”

“You think Simon Camp’s claptrap inspired him?” Holmes asked. “None of this makes sense any longer, including where Camp disappeared to after he so boldly accosted me. What am I supposed to notice?”

“The quality of paper, the ink, and — look at the illustration on the front — even the burning feet of the simonists, which are reversed from the other one.”

“What other one, Tennyson? Different from what?”

Tennyson explained that he’d come to realize there was another version of the pamphlet. “The copy Inspector Williamson showed me.”

“Showed you ? He showed me, you mean, on the train. When would Williamson have shown you his copy of this?” Holmes asked with an edge of accusation. “Then Browning was right. You have been secretly talking to the police.”

“Dolly Williamson had already been spying on Miss Rossetti, as you know. Yes, I obliged a request from the queen’s secretary to join your endeavors and give Dolly information so he could keep the people of London safer, and so the police could stop sneaking around Tudor House — at least he promised to call off his spies, though I had my doubts since that boat was still rowing around here. Never mind that, Holmes. You said Dolly had his version of the pamphlet when you saw him on the train, as well. Do you remember it?”

“How could I remember such minutiae about an old pamphlet he waved in my face?” asked Holmes, though the objection was halfhearted. Litterateurs such as Holmes and Tennyson took in the details of every book they saw without trying. “Perhaps I can recall something of it — perhaps it was slightly different in the ways you suggest. What of it?”

“This is a cheap production to begin with. In reprinting a booklet like this, one would avoid even the slightest extra expense. These changes have the markings of a pirated edition. If there was so much demand for more of these, the question is, where did it come from?”

“How do you suggest we find out the answer?”

“Come with me to try, then you can return to Sibbie’s bedside to your heart’s content.”

Tennyson explained he already arranged to rendezvous with a young bookseller whom he had met once before. It was said he performed tasks for operatives of the publishing trade who dealt with the pirating of books and other activities that happened in the shadows.

They found the man outside the British Museum. They heard his cheerful whistling first. “Well, it’s a brisk day — brisk!” said the bookseller, whose name was Fergins. In fact, it was a full-fledged snowstorm, one so late in April it had only been matched a dozen or so times in recorded English history. To Holmes, the fellow seemed oddly gregarious for someone who consorted with the most reviled profiteers of the literary world: book pirates. Tennyson handed him his walking stick.

“Oh, then you found it,” said the bookseller with delight.

“Where you said it would be,” Tennyson replied. “Do you have these hidden all over London?”

Fergins unscrewed the top of the walking stick, then whistled a note of approval. “How I enjoy this method. It reminds me of Don Quixote’s famous trial, when Sancho Panza realizes there must be treasure concealed in the cane of a man who inexplicably refuses to let go of it. Enough of me. Are you ready to see our mutual friend in the den?”

Fergins led them through the back of the British Museum into the printed books department. They had to go down a steep steel staircase that seemed to curl around itself. Along the way, their guide spoke with great expertise on the works of both Holmes and Tennyson. All around them were shelves of every shape and size holding books and papers. The place smelled of rotted leather and mold.

“One day everything ever written will be in the British Museum, even newspapers,” Tennyson said.

“There: the den,” said Fergins, catching his breath and pushing up his white-rimmed spectacles. It was a cage of steel bars, where a man with bright red hair sat at a table bathed in dim light.

Fergins bowed as he exited, while the man with abundant red hair invited them into the cage. It was hard to gauge just how far underground they had gone. It was suffocatingly hot.

“This den is where the transcribers work. I am not one of them, of course, but in return for providing some immeasurably rare books to the museum, I am studying some of theirs for my own purposes. I suppose you know who I am.”

Tennyson and Holmes exchanged glances. “We know what you do, but your friend dutifully kept us in the dark about your identity,” Tennyson said. He volunteered the names of some of the well-known agents who he’d heard aided the world of literary piracy.

“Frauds, all the ones you name! I am called Whiskey Bill, the most accomplished of them all, practically invented the profession.”

“You are all frauds, by the very definition of your work,” Tennyson cried out.

“We’re not here to debate the finer points of the dictionary,” Holmes said.