The Dante Club

by Matthew Pearl

  Mr. George Washington Greene positioned himself across from a glowing marble statue that showed the Three Graces leaning delicately against one another, faces cold and angelic, eyes filled with calm indifference.

  “How could a veteran from the soldiers’-aid home who heard Greene’s sermons also know the minute details of our tension with Harvard?”

  This question had been posed inside the Craigie House study. Answers were proposed, and they knew that to find this answer would mean to find a killer. One of the young men consumed by Greene’s sermons could have had a father or uncle in the Harvard Corporation or the board of overseers who innocently related his stories over supper, not knowing the effect they might have in the shattered mind of someone occupying the next seat.

  The scholars would have to determine exactly who was present at the various board meetings involving the roles of Healey, Talbot, and Jennison in the College’s position against Dante; this list would be compared with the names and profiles of as many soldiers from the soldiers’-aid home as they could collect. They would require Mr. Teal’s help once more to access the Corporation Room; Fields would coordinate the plan with his shop boy once the night workers arrived at the Corner.

  In the meantime, Fields ordered Osgood to compile a list of all employees of Ticknor & Fields who had fought in the war, relying primarily on the Directory of Massachusetts Regiments in the War of Rebellion. That evening, Nicholas Rey and the others would attend the governor’s latest reception to honor Boston’s soldiers.

  Messrs. Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes dispersed themselves through the crowded reception hall. Each of them kept a watchful eye on Mr. Greene, and, in casual pretext, interviewed many veterans, searching for the soldier Greene had described.

  “One might think this was the back room of a tavern rather than the State House!” Lowell complained as he waved away some fugitive smoke.

  “Why, Mr. Lowell, have you not bragged of smoking ten cigars in one day, and called the sensation a Muse?” Holmes chided.

  “We never like the smell of our own vices in other people, Holmes. Ah, let’s steer here for a drink or two,” Lowell suggested.

  Dr. Holmes’s hands burrowed into the pockets of his moiré silk waistcoat; his words poured through him as through a sieve. “Every soldier I’ve spoken to either claims never to have met anyone remotely matching the description given by Greene or has seen a man exactly of that type just the other day but doesn’t know his name or where I might find him. Perhaps Rey will have better luck.”

  “Dante, my dear Wendell, was a man of great personal dignity, and one secret of his dignity was that he was never in a hurry. You will never find him in an unseemly haste—an excellent rule for us to follow.”

  Holmes laughed skeptically. “And you’ve followed this rule?”

  Lowell helped himself to a meditative sip of claret, then said thoughtfully, “Tell me, Holmes, have you ever had a Beatrice of your own?”

  “Beg your pardon, Lowell?”

  “A woman to have fired the awesome depths of your imagination.”

  “Why, my Amelia!”

  Lowell bellowed with laughter. “Oh, Holmes! Did you never sow your tame oats? A wife cannot be your Beatrice. You may trust my advice, for in common with Petrarch, Dante, and Byron, I was desperately in love before I was ten years old. What pangs I have suffered my own heart only knows.”

  “How Fanny would enjoy such talk, Lowell!”

  “Pshaw! Dante had his Gemma, who was the mother of his children but not the reach of his inspiration! You know how they met? Longfellow does not believe it, but Gemma Donati is the lady mentioned in Dante’s Vita Nuova, who comforts Dante over the loss of Beatrice. You see that young woman?”

  Holmes followed Lowell’s gaze to a slender young maiden with raven hair, which was shining under the hall’s brilliant chandeliers.

  “I remember it still—1839, at Allston’s Gallery. There was the most beautiful creature I had ever set eyes upon, not unlike that fair beauty enchanting her husband’s friends over there in the corner. Her features were perfectly Jewish. She had a dark complexion, but one of those clear faces where every shade of feeling floats across like the shadow of a cloud across the grass. From my position in the room, the outline of her eyes entirely merged in the shadows of her brows and the darkness of her complexion, so that you only saw a glory undefined and mysterious. But such eyes! They almost made me tremble. That one vision of her seraphic loveliness gave me more poetry . . .”

  “Was she intelligent?”

  “Heavens, I don’t know! She batted her lashes in my direction and I could not bring myself to say a word. There is only one way to go with flirtatious women, Wendell, and that is to run. Still, twenty-five years and more pass, yet I cannot banish her from my memory. I assure you we all have our own Beatrice, whether living near us or alive only in our mind.”

  Lowell stopped as Rey approached. “Officer Rey, the winds have shifted in our favor—I can tell as much. We are only fortunate to have you on our side.”

  “Your daughter must be thanked for that,” Rey said.

  “Mabel?” Lowell turned to him, aghast.

  “She came to speak with me, to persuade me to assist you gentlemen.”

  “Mabel spoke with you in secret? Holmes, did you know of this?” Lowell demanded.

  Holmes shook his head. “Not at all. We must toast her, though!”

  “If you grow warm with her over it, Professor Lowell,” Rey warned him with a serious upward lift of his jaw, “I shall have you arrested.”

  Lowell laughed heartily. “Incentive enough, Officer Rey! Now, do let us keep the pot boiling.”

  Rey nodded confidentially and continued across the room.

  “Can you imagine that, Wendell? Mabel going behind my back like that, thinking she could change things!”

  “She is a Lowell, my dear friend.”

  “Mr. Greene remains strong,” Longfellow reported as he joined Lowell and Holmes. “But I am worried that—” Longfellow broke off. “Ah, here come Mrs. Lincoln and Governor Andrew.”

  Lowell rolled his eyes. Their station in society had proved bothersome for this evening’s purposes, as handshakes and lively conversations with professors, ministers, politicos, and university officials distracted from their intended purpose.

  “Mr. Longfellow.”

  Longfellow turned to his other side to find a trio of Beacon Hill society women.

  “Why, good evening, ladies,” Longfellow said.

  “I was just speaking of you, sir, while on holiday in Buffalo,” said the raven-haired beauty of the trinity.

  “Is that so?” Longfellow asked.

  “Indeed, with Miss Mary Frere. She speaks so tenderly of you, says you are a rare person. She had such wonderful times with you and your family at Nahant last summer, from the sound of it. And now I happen upon you here. How wonderful!”

  “Oh? Well, how very kind of her to say that.” Longfellow smiled, but then quickly adjusted his gaze away. “Now, where has Professor Lowell run to? Have you met him?”

  Nearby, Lowell was loudly retelling one of his vintage anecdotes to a small audience. “Then Tennyson growled from his corner of the table: ‘Yes, damn ’em. I’d like to take a knife and rip their guts up!’ Being a true poet, King Alfred used no circumlocution—such as ‘abdominal viscera’—for that part of the body!”

  Lowell’s hearers laughed and jested.

  “If two men should try to look alike,” Longfellow said, turning back to the three ladies, who stood with their ears glowing bright pink and their mouths helplessly open, “they could not do it better than Lord Tennyson and Professor Lovering of our university.”

  The raven-haired beauty beamed gratefully at Longfellow’s swift flight away from Lowell’s indecency.

  “Why, isn’t that something to think about?” she said.

  When Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior received a note from his father that Dr. Holmes, too, would be attending the soldie
rs’ banquet at the State House, he sighed, reread it, and then cursed. It was not a matter of minding his father’s presence as much as a matter of others demanding for their entertainment that they account for each other’s welfare. How is dear old Dad? Still tinkering with his poems while he’s at his teaching? Still tinkering with his teaching while at his poems? Is it true that the little doctor can speak ________ words every minute, Captain Holmes? Why should he be bothered with questions on Dr. Holmes’s favorite subject: Dr. Holmes.

  In a crowd of other members of his regiment, Junior was now introduced to several Scottish gentlemen who were visiting as a delegation. At the enunciation of Junior’s full name there was the usual rehearsal of questions regarding his parentage.

  “Are you the son of Oliver Wendell Holmes?” a latecomer to the exchange, a Scot around Junior’s age, asked after presenting himself as some sort of mythologist.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I don’t like his books.” The mythologist smiled and walked away.

  In the silence that seemed to surround Junior, standing there alone amid the chatter, he felt abruptly angry at his father’s omnipresence in the world and cursed him again. Did one want to spread his reputation so indiscriminately wide that worms of men, like the one Junior had just met, could judge you? Junior turned and saw Dr. Holmes on the edge of a circle, along with the governor, and James Lowell gesticulating in the center. Dr. Holmes was on his toes, mouth drifting open; he was lying in wait for a chance to barge in. Junior tried to skirt around the group to the other side of the hall.

  “Wendy, that you?” Junior pretended not to hear, but the voice came again and Dr. Holmes pressed through some soldiers to reach him.

  “Hello, Father.”

  “Why, Wendy, don’t you wish to come and say hello to Lowell and Governor Andrew? Let me show you off in your dapper uniform! Oh, hold.”

  Junior noticed his father’s eyes wander.

  “That must be the Scottish coterie Andrew was talking about—over there, Junior. I should like to meet the young mythologist, Mr. Lang, and discuss some ideas I have about Orpheus fiddling Eurydice out of the infernal regions. Have you read anything of his, Wendy?”

  Dr. Holmes took Junior’s arm and pulled him toward the other side of the hall.

  “No.” Junior yanked his arm away hard to stop his father. Dr. Holmes looked at him, hurt. “I’ve only come to make an appearance for my regiment, Father. I must meet Minny at the Jameses’ house. Please excuse me to your friends.”

  “Did you see us? We are a happy band of brothers, Wendy. More and more still as the years roar by us. My boy, enjoy your passage on the ship of youth, for it too easily grows lost at sea!”

  “And, Father,” Junior said, looking over his father’s shoulder at the grinning mythologist. “I heard that dastard Lang talking down about Boston.”

  Holmes’s expression turned solemn. “Did you? Then he is not worth our time, my boy.”

  “If you say so, Father. Tell me, are you still at work on that new novel?”

  Holmes’s smile sprang back at the interest intimated by Junior’s question. “Indeed! Some other enterprises have taken up my time of late, but Fields promises it shall turn a penny when published. I shall have to leap into the Atlantic if it doesn’t—I mean the original damp spot, not Fields’s monthly.”

  “You shall invite the critics to assault you again,” Junior said, hesitating to continue his thought. Suddenly, he wished to heaven he had been quick enough to run the wormy mythologist through with his dress sword. He promised himself he would read this Lang’s work, knowing he would take satisfaction if it was poor stuff. “Perhaps I shall have a chance to read this one, though, Father, if some time appears.”

  “I’d like that very much, my boy,” Holmes said quietly as Junior started out.

  Rey had found one of the soldiers mentioned by the deacon of the soldiers’-aid home, a one-armed veteran who had just finished dancing with his wife.

  “There were some who says to me,” the soldier said proudly to Rey, “when they’d outfitted you boys, ‘I ain’t fighting a nigger war.’ Oh, and wouldn’t you know that made me red.”

  “Please, Lieutenant,” said Rey. “This gentleman I’ve described to you—do you think you might have ever seen him at the soldiers’-aid home?”

  “Certainly, certainly. Handlebar mustache, hay-colored. Always in uniform. Blight—that’s his name. I’m absolutely certain of it, though not positively. Captain Dexter Blight. Sharp, always reading. Good an officer as ever broke bread, seems to me.”

  “Pray tell me, was he very interested in Mr. Greene’s sermons?”

  “Oh, sure liked ’em, the old rowdy! And wouldn’t you know those sermons were some fresh air. So much bolder than anything I’ve heard. Oh sure. Cap liked ’em better’n anybody, seems to me!”

  Rey could barely contain himself. “Do you know where I can find Captain Blight?”

  The soldier plopped his stump into the palm of his only hand and paused. Then he threw his good arm around his wife. “Why, wouldn’t you know, Mr. Officer, my pretty filly here must be your luck charm.”

  “Oh my stars, Lieutenant,” she protested.

  “I think I do know where you can see him,” said the veteran. “Right ahead.”

  Captain Dexter Blight, of the 19th Massachusetts, wore an upside-down U mustache, hay-colored, just as Greene had described.

  Rey’s stare, lasting a long three seconds, was discreet but vigilant. He was surprised at the hunger, the curiosity he felt about every detail of the man’s appearance.

  “Patrolman Nicholas Rey? Now, isn’t that you?” Governor Andrew looked up at Rey’s intent face and ceremoniously extended his hand. “I wasn’t told you were expected!”

  “I hadn’t planned on attending, Governor. But I’m afraid you must pardon me.”

  With that, Rey retreated into a throng of soldiers, and the governor who had appointed him to the Boston Police was left standing in a trance of disbelief.

  His sudden presence, seemingly unnoticed by the others at the reception, eclipsed all other thoughts of the members of the Dante Club as they noticed him one by one. They consumed him with a collective stare. Could this man, seemingly mortal and ordinary, have overtaken Phineas Jennison and sliced him to pieces? His features were strong and brooding but otherwise unremarkable under his black felt hat and single-breasted dress tunic. Could this be him? The translator-savant who turned Dantean words into action, who had outdone them time and again?

  Holmes excused himself from some admirers and rushed over to

  Lowell.

  “That man . . .” Holmes whispered, filled with a sense of dread that something had gone wrong.

  “I know,” Lowell whispered back. “Rey has seen him, too.”

  “Should we have Greene approach him?” Holmes said. “There is something about that man. He does not seem . . .”

  “Look!” said Lowell urgently.

  At that moment, Captain Blight noticed George Washington Greene loitering alone. The soldier’s prominent nostrils flared with interest. Greene, having forgotten himself amidst paintings and sculptures, continued his browsing as if at a weekend exhibition. Blight contemplated Greene for a moment, then took slow, uneven steps toward him.

  Rey moved ahead to position himself closer, but when he turned to check on Blight, he found that Greene was in conversation with a book collector. Blight had crossed through the door instead.

  “Hang it,” Lowell cried. “He’s leaving!”

  The air was too still for clouds or snowfall. The wide-open sky showed off a moon so precisely halved that it appeared to have been sliced by a freshly honed blade.

  Rey caught sight of a uniformed soldier in the Common. He was wobbling away with the support of an ivory cane.

  “Captain!” Rey called out.

  Dexter Blight swerved around and regarded his solicitor through hard, squinting eyes.

  “Captain Blight.”

 
; “Who in the world are you?” His voice rang deep and bold.

  “Nicholas Rey. I need to speak with you,” said Rey, displaying his police badge. “Just for a moment.”

  Blight stabbed his cane into the ice, propelling himself faster than Rey would have thought possible. “I’ve nothing to say!”

  Rey caught up and grabbed Blight by the arm.

  “If you try to arrest me, I’ll rip your damned guts out and scatter them over the Frog Pond!” Blight yelled.

  Rey feared there had been a terrible mistake. This careless burst of anger, the uncontrolled emotion, belonged to the fearful, not the undaunted—not to the one they sought. Looking back at the State House, where the members of the Dante Club were hurrying down the steps, their faces lined with hope, Rey also saw the faces of the persons throughout Boston who had brought him to this pursuit. Chief Kurtz—with each death, his time growing shorter as the guardian of a city that was expanding too voraciously to accommodate all who wished to call it home. Ednah Healey—her expression fading in the dying light of her bedchamber, clinging to handfuls of her own flesh, waiting to be whole again. Sexton Gregg and Grifone Lonza: They were two more victims, not of the murderer, exactly, but of the insurmountable fear that created the murders.

  Rey intensified his hold on the struggling Blight and met the wide, careful stare of Dr. Holmes, who seemingly shared all his doubts. Rey prayed to God there was still time.

  Finally. Augustus Manning moaned as he answered the bell and let in his guest. “Shall we to the library?”