Мэтью Перл: The Dante Chamber

“Just as Gabriel avoided his landlord knowing money would be demanded of him, I’m sorry to say we often found ourselves having to avoid Gabriel because of his demands for ‘tin’ — that’s what he calls money — from us.” William finished serving tea and sat on the velvet sofa, first flicking off a few layers of fur. “As I’m sure you’ve felt yourself, Mr. Browning, with those closest to him Gabriel wavers between indifference, neediness, and abuse. It’s not all his fault, mind you. He hasn’t been able to conjure a good night’s sleep for years. Not without the compound my sister found at his bedside, or similar concoctions, anyway, of opiates and other narcotics. He said it also helped his eyes, which often cause him pain, and the dizzy spells that plagued him since he was young. When he cannot sleep, he wanders the streets half the night — finding trouble that way, often, and sometimes thinking he was being watched or followed. It has all grown worse.”

“You mean since Eliz — Lizzie died,” Browning said, his voice trailing off.

“No, Mr. Browning,” Christina said, followed by a solemn pause. She felt as though she were breaking a vow of silence. “Since Lizzie committed suicide.”

William hung his head.

Browning’s hand froze as he lifted the steaming drink. “Suicide?”

“It was after her pregnancy—” Christina stopped herself and started again. “He came home from one of his walks to find her sprawled out, an empty bottle of laudanum nearby.”

“Now the poor man fills his bloodstream with similar classes of poison.”

“We wanted to protect our family and protect our brother, Mr. Browning,” said William. “He blamed himself for Lizzie. We try not to repeat that she took her own life.”

“Did she give him any kind of warning? An explanation?”

Christina looked at William. Her brother did not indicate approval for what she was going to do, but did not object. Christina crossed the room to a painting of Lizzie Siddal posed as a medieval damsel, her thick curls rolling down her back. Being so close to the painting made Christina feel as though Lizzie watched them.

He nicknamed her the Sid and Guggum. Or Guggums. Or just Gug. If she was not home, Gabriel would sometimes mutter “Guggums, Guggums,” over and over, to console himself as he painted.

She had luxuriant red hair and bright green eyes. Whether her skin was translucent or pale, her lips full or bloated, her expressions noble or crass, were impossible questions to settle. Lizzie appeared very different to different people, as though she transformed depending on which pair of eyes beheld her. Whichever details stayed with a particular person who met her, she was, in Gabriel’s vocabulary, a “stunner.” It all made her, in short, the ideal model to paint.

She became Guinevere, the Virgin Mary, and especially Beatrice. She became Lizzie Siddal instead of Lizzie Siddall. She became Rossetti. She became Guggums.

Christina reached behind the frame and removed a folded paper she passed to Browning. “He keeps this close at hand still.”

She appreciated how gingerly Browning held it as he read to himself, and then recited the second stanza of the long poem aloud:

Suicide announced by verse.

Browning cleared his throat of Lizzie Siddal’s words, nearly in tears, before he asked Christina what they should do.

“We find Gabriel, Mr. Browning,” she answered, “before he also does himself harm.”

The reporter frowned to the left and then the right, then squeezed himself through the indifferent forest of busy men, many of whom he knew and wished he didn’t. They greeted and grunted at him. The Three Tun’s dining room was separated into private boxes by miniature walls that, in fact, discouraged any privacy at all, since you had to peer over each compartment to find the party you were looking for. “Excuse me, pardon the bother,” Steven Walker was now saying as he did just this. Inside one of the boxes was the man who had sent him his card. A big book — The Decameron by Boccaccio — covered the bottom half of his face.

Walker would have thought he was shaking hands with just another early-middle-aged man in London who read too many books, if he hadn’t known Dolly Williamson was the finest and most formidable detective at Scotland Yard.

“Do you know why I’ve asked you here, Mr. Walker?” Dolly asked. “I’d like to invite you in the queen’s name to assist me.”

“Inspector, I didn’t even know you knew my name,” said Walker, who was a short man with saggy cheeks that made him appear to pout even the rare times he wasn’t. “Boccaccio. Leisure reading for a police detective?”

Dolly grinned. “I enjoy reading, true enough, though whatever leisure I get while the sun is up I try to give to my gardening or watching the rowers on the Thames.”

“I’m surprised to find you here. I’ve always heard you don’t even stop to sit down when you have an open mystery.”

“Hyperbole! Sometimes I — even I — put my feet up. I want to give you something, Mr. Walker. Something of considerable value in your field.”

Dolly pushed a folded piece of paper across the table, steering it through a maze of wet circles left by bumpers of beer.

Walker picked up the paper and unfolded it. “What is this?”

“Read it.”

A little reluctantly, Walker did. He read aloud some of the words: “‘Inscription... stone... Behold... handmaiden... Lord.’”

While Walker studied the note, Dolly waved his hand over his head, and a Scotch appeared as though dropped from the sky.

“Why pass this to me, Inspector Williamson? I don’t even much enjoy penning the police columns. There’s plenty of men — why, there’s a dozen in this room I could point out to you — who would salivate for something like this, or for a whisper about one of your Fenian cases. I’m just helping out with the police columns while my editor is shorthanded, but between us, I rather fancy—”

“Illustration.” Dolly completed his sentence.

“You know?”

“I’ve seen the drawings you’ve done in Punch . Quite entertaining, the lot of them!”

“Well, won’t yet pay my landlord, will they? So if you know my head isn’t in mysteries and police stories, why would you...” He stopped himself as Dolly sipped his drink through a smile. “You don’t want me to be too interested in this. Is that it, Inspector?”

Dolly lifted his drink in consent. “You’re better at this game than you think. Reporters who are too interested in a story want more, alas, than I can ever give them, and eventually turn on me. You are a tourist in the police columns, and that’s exactly why you are right for what I need. You wield an able pen but not an insatiable one.”

Walker gazed back at the words on the piece of paper. “May I ask one thing. Is this crime so different, to go out of your way like this?”

“Mr. Walker, at any given time I would estimate almost six thousand criminals in London, two hundred who are first-rate thieves, six hundred swindlers and dog stealers, forty burglars and garretteers. The rest, well, common pickpockets, pilferers, children who sneak and steal, and then of course there are the political criminals, the Fenians who want to hurt or embarrass England to change things in Ireland. This? This is different. You’ll remember what I wrote down, won’t you?”

Walker shrugged. “Yes, Inspector, though I’m sorry to say I still don’t really understand the point of it.”

Dolly plucked the paper out of his hand and ripped it in half. “It’s not you I’m counting on to understand it.”