Мэтью Перл: The Dante Chamber

Once the seven terraces of Purgatory — Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice-Prodigality, Gluttony, Lust — are each brought from the page to the life of England, the movement will have transformed humanity. Indeed, with each remarkable death, with the lines of people snaking around the deadhouse in London, with every breathless newspaper column coming closer to understanding, whispers succeeded in recruiting more and more members, until the group’s numbers swelled over fifty.

[The next few lines were blotted over with ink and rendered illegible.] Ironhead Herman has just left this room where I am at work writing this. I believe an occasion arises for my escape through an open door, if this paper should fall into your possession before these maniacs [illegible], send the police to find me — I am a close and personal friend of the venerable and august Allan Pinkerton in Chicago and Insp. Adolphus Dolly Williamson in London! — send him for God’s sake send anyone for me before it’s too late

Books. That was the last thing Holmes expected to find as cargo in the overturned carriage while he looked for any tools that could help him free Tennyson. The shipment inside the carriage contained pirated editions of novels, essays, and histories, mostly by British authors but a few American — including Holmes’s most popular work, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table , he was rather tickled to find, though not so tickled that his middle name was misspelled by the piratical printers as Wenndell. Booksellers in the villages were less likely to have their inventory inspected by customs officials than those in London, and the scoundrel of a coach driver obviously conspired in their delivery and distribution for extra income.

Holmes stacked a sufficient number of the books beneath the body of the carriage to raise it inch by inch. After several attempts, he was able to slide Tennyson’s leg out from underneath. First, Holmes felt like crying and laughing in relief that he had managed to release Tennyson by using, of all things, the fruit of shadowy book peddlers’ schemes. They would not be trapped in the snowbank, they would not fall to hypothermia in the middle of a deserted village lane. “Thank goodness Browning made The Ring and the Book as long as he did!” he called out about the thick counterfeit volume that had lifted the vehicle just high enough.

Relief quickly fled. Surveying his surroundings, the snowfall, the blackening sky, Holmes knew in an instant there was no chance any longer for them to reach the sanatorium. They would not be able to get to many places on foot from here even if Tennyson hadn’t been injured.

The first thing Tennyson did when he regained his senses was to insist he could walk the two miles in the snow to the sanatorium, in fact he could walk five if need be. Then, when he could barely make it just a few steps, the laureate urged Holmes to go without him to the sanatorium, but of course Holmes would not leave him. They had passed a small inn in a valley on their drive. With Tennyson’s arm awkwardly draped over the shorter Holmes’s shoulders, they trudged through the snow.

When they reached the isolated inn, marked outside with a large painting of a gold lion, they were completely exhausted from the journey.

“Who would believe I would welcome another lodger, in this storm,” the surly German-accented innkeeper said. Holmes, stuck on welcome being a very strong word compared to the innkeeper’s actual demeanor, did not think much of the wording of a different part of his statement — another lodger — until later on.

Once in their rooms, Holmes improvised a bandage for Tennyson’s leg and kept it raised.

What bothered Holmes about the turn of events was their lack of knowledge about any developments since leaving London. He hoped that their letters had been received at Scotland Yard and at Tudor House.

As Holmes expected, Tennyson’s pain grew much worse as he rested. Sometimes, when the body is in repose, the brain enhances discomfort.

Tennyson made a few nonsensical statements (for instance, “What I admire most in a man is when he does not press upon me any verses of his own”), then told Holmes, in stilted fragments, a story from his childhood.

Tennyson’s father collapsed to his death from a combination of alcohol and laudanum, a tincture of opium and morphine. Tennyson, twenty years old, climbed into bed with the body of his father, waiting up all night to see if his ghost would appear.

“That is when I learned,” Tennyson murmured drowsily, “poets do not see ghosts.”

“Why did you help Scotland Yard, Tennyson? It wasn’t just to follow your duty to the queen, was it?”

“I’ve heard it said it is my verses, Holmes, that made people believe poets were heroes. But we’re not, are we? I am called the leader of all poets of our land. If Miss Rossetti or Browning came to harm thinking they were heroes, I wouldn’t have forgiven myself. You won’t find much in me, after all, Holmes. I have had no life — mine has been one of feelings, not of actions.”

Mercifully, the laureate fell asleep while Holmes himself, without realizing it, dozed on the sofa.

Holmes dreamed of Dante, with the hard lines of his nose and chin, the laurel crown that represented his creative triumphs in contrast to his failures as a father, husband, and politician. The sneer on his lips for all that was weak in Holmes and in life, all the vulnerability that Dante had expelled from himself. Dante opened his mouth, but instead of words, discordant noises emerged — noises of death. He reached to shake Holmes’s hand, before his grip became a vise from which Holmes could not free himself.

Holmes jumped up from the sofa, his heart in his throat. He was soaked with perspiration. He realized the noises in his dream had intruded into his mind from somewhere in reality. Tennyson still slept soundly and nothing in the room was disturbed. Holmes took a candle and stepped out into the corridor. A coolness swept through him; there was an open window somewhere in the inn, and loose papers flew past him like leaves.

Grabbing one of these, Holmes glanced over it by the glow of the candle. He couldn’t believe his eyes. In his hand was a manuscript page about Dante — not just about Dante, but about the Purgatory-inspired deaths that had occurred in and around London. Holmes — mystified and mesmerized — followed the trail of pages, collecting them as he went. He read as quickly as he could. With the pages out of order and incomplete, their narratives came in spurts and fragments.

In Dante’s Shadow, a True Account of the London Purgations by the Author of The Dante Murders , read the title page he found.

One of the pages told of Sibbie waking from her coma and returning to lead her followers at the Phillip Sanatorium.

Our Sibbie? Holmes thought. Could it be? She had warned them the very first afternoon they questioned her about Loring: You cannot understand.

The followers, Holmes pieced together in a combination of his thoughts and what he could read from the assorted pages he gathered, were submitting themselves to be purged of their sins to provide examples for all of England. The murders were not murders at all, Holmes realized; they were by consent of the dead... they were suicides.

Then came an incomplete account that alarmed Holmes most of all: that Dante Gabriel Rossetti had returned to be purged of gluttony, with Christina as witness. They have taken the Rossettis.

Send the police to find me , was scribbled at the end of one page, for God’s sake send anyone for me before it’s too late .

Only then, scooping up a few more pages, did Holmes notice spots of red on some of them. He searched for the source of the papers. He turned the corner into another corridor, where he was met by strong gusts. An open door led to an open window, the panes rattling in the wind. On the floor were more pages being blown around, and in the corner of the room under the eaves, there was a body slumped over. Holmes approached cautiously, raising his candle.