The Dante Chamber Page 8

  The model’s eyes widened with fear—she did not move a muscle.

  “If you leeches come here for rent,” Hughes now declared with contempt to the approaching footsteps, continuing his pantomime with the brush and never taking his eyes off the woman, “then let me finish this commission so it shall come into your filthy paws all the sooner!”

  “We do not come for money, Mr. Hughes.”

  Hughes put down his brush and slowly turned toward the woman’s voice.

  “Everyone!” he managed to say after a few sputtering attempts. “An honor, an honor. Everyone, at attention, please! What an honor, the queen, here in my studio!”

  The other artists barely raised their eyes from their canvases or, in the case of one, from a pile of sketches on the floor used as a pillow. Hughes had become one of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s better-known disciples, but Browning did not recognize most of the artists, each of whom were Hughes’s junior by at least half a dozen years. Hughes had been around in the days of the so-called Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a league of men with ambitions—mystical and artistic—to change the world. Christina had been the only woman among them, and was loved in different ways by all the men there, known as Queen of the PRB. Glancing around the cavernous and decaying paint-splattered studio, Browning noticed relics from the lost days of their bygone Brotherhood, including a page on display called “Creed,” with this somewhat sacrilegious heading:

  We, the undersigned, declare that the following list of Immortals constitutes the whole of our Creed, and that there exists no other Immortality than what is centred in their names . . .

  The names that followed included Shakespeare, Cervantes, the author of the book of Job, and, one that Browning underlined with his finger, Dante Alighieri. Each one had written of suffering and had suffered. The manifesto was in Gabriel’s handwriting.

  The Brotherhood exhibited their paintings around London and printed their poetry in select publications. They gradually received acclaim for revolutionizing art by overturning conventions—not by seeking out what was new but by salvaging the old and forgotten.

  “Christina Rossetti, such an honor,” Hughes reiterated. “And a pleasure to see you, Mr. Browning.”

  Hughes broke into a quote Browning heard regularly during encounters with his readers on London streets:

  In a sheet of flame

  I saw them and I knew them all. And yet

  Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,

  And blew. “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”

  “Oh, I have painted a few canvases inspired by your jaunty ‘Roland,’ which I admire so much, certainly far more than your Sordello. After reading it I still didn’t know if Sordello was a man or a city or a wine. What is it the magazines always call you—‘the greatest diner-out and second greatest poet in England’? They mean next to Tennyson, of course.”

  “Indeed,” Browning said, wanting to wring his neck.

  Hughes waved away his confused model and offered the sofa to Christina and Browning.

  “Excuse the crudeness of my current canvas. Is there no girl in London who can inhabit the exact form of Guinevere I seek? Dante—I mean your brother, not the medieval bard—always tried to coax the rest of us into painting more scenes of Beatrice and visions from the Divine Comedy, but my mind’s eye inevitably returns to our native legends. It is an honor to have two such esteemed poets in our studio, and always an honor to be in the presence of a Rossetti, or any friends of Dante’s.”

  Browning and Christina exchanged a brief glance at the mention of the Comedy, then Christina returned the artist’s compliments with a smile of benediction worthy of her nickname of queen. “Mr. Hughes, we do apologize for our making a visit without sending word first. But it is rather a pressing matter. We are curious about the day that Mr. Morton was found in such a horrifying state in North Woolwich.”

  The painter raised his brows in surprise. “Yes?”

  “It is our understanding you were passing through the same area where it happened,” she continued diplomatically, omitting that they were told this by a young prostitute. “We have personal reasons for wishing to better comprehend what might have been witnessed there by you or others.”

  “No,” Hughes said, dropping into an irritated whisper. “I daresay you have me confused with someone else.”

  “I beg your pardon, but I don’t believe we do,” Christina started. “The fourteenth of January, early in the morning.”

  “Come, we don’t care a straw about what you were doing there,” Browning said, forfeiting Christina’s patience and tact. When Hughes continued to profess ignorance, Browning added: “Perhaps your wife would wonder what you were doing out there under the cover of night!”

  The painter deflected further questions and insisted on resuming his work before he lost the train of his vision altogether.

  After they were back on the street, Christina did not say a word of reprimand. She would just as soon overturn a room of furniture as openly criticize anyone. But Browning knew she was silently condemning him for his temper. She had an inhuman way of withholding judgment so genuinely and completely, that whoever was with her presumed she must be judging as harshly as possible. He began defending himself against these imagined accusations, point by point. The more implacable her expression, the more he argued how the fault was Arthur Hughes’s and not his.

  “Mr. Browning! Miss Rossetti! Frigid as the North Pole out here.”

  Hughes came out of the building, walking toward them. Wearing a big smile, he shook their hands once again, and then apologized profusely for not answering their questions candidly. “You see, I did not want the others to hear that I had been at those gardens. Not because of the park whores, as you seem to believe, Mr. Browning. I have been doing a study of Londoners in gaslight and moonlight, from the highest to lowest members of society. Sometimes the whores are the best subjects, even if they tend to be shy about being painted, as they’ve lived such tragic lives. That’s why I was there. You see? I did these that night in the gardens.”

  He held out a pile of sketches. Browning took them and placed them where Christina could see—rapidly drawn faces of men and women surrounded by chalky outlines of the night sky.

  “Gentle with them, if you please, Mr. Browning! Those gardens are where I have been recruiting my best female models as of late, and I do not want any of those sneaks inside my studio to steal my territory. There is no honor as there used to be in the days of Dante’s Brotherhood, before our round table of art and life was dissolved by illnesses, marriages, financial disappointments. I am already short on passable Guineveres, as I mentioned, and do not want them poached from me by lesser or, worse still, better artists. Why, I suppose the word must have already spread, if that is what Dante was doing there.”

  “Do you mean my brother?” Christina asked with a gasp. “You saw him? At the gardens in North Woolwich?”

  Hughes’s face twisted into a state of confusion. “Isn’t that how you knew I was there that night? I just assumed Dante told you.”

  “You’re saying you saw Gabriel there? The same time Jasper Morton was killed?” asked Browning.

  “That’s right,” Hughes answered very slowly, suspecting their sanity. “He was in a funk, too, Mr. Browning. I tried to speak to him. ‘Dante, where have you been? Dante, is that you?’ I cried out. But he did not answer. He kept on walking before I could reach him. I believe Dante happened upon that poor politician, Morton, before anyone else who was there. He seemed to be standing right near the body before the rest of us noticed what had occurred. All right, my queen of us all?”

  Christina stumbled back. “My head is spinning, Mr. Hughes.”

  “I think she might faint, Mr. Browning!”

  “She does not faint,” said Browning.

  Browning steadied her anyway, and was glad she allowed him to help. He though
t back to how upset Christina was when she believed Browning noticed that she almost cried as she held Gabriel’s vial of choral hydrate—meanwhile, Browning could drop a tear just by finding Pen at his front door for tea! It was at that moment back in that dark bedroom of Gabriel’s Tudor House that Browning knew he would stay at her side until the matter of her brother’s disappearance was resolved.

  It was at that moment, too, he knew he was doing this for her as much as for her brother.

  He asked Hughes whether he had seen Gabriel since that day, which he swore he had not. Browning rattled off more questions for which Hughes had no helpful answers.

  “One last thing, Mr. Hughes,” Browning said before they parted from the painter. “Did you tell the police? That you saw Gabriel there?”

  “They buried me in questions. As if I hadn’t anything else with which to occupy myself. One of the ‘shadow police’—the detectives—a Scottish fellow with shrewd eyes and a beard worthy of Moses, seemed extremely interested in the fact I’d seen Dante there. His name was Williams or—no, that’s not it—Williamson. I believe he introduced himself as Inspector Williamson.”

  * * *

  —

  Dr. Holmes boarded the train to Liverpool, feeling his spirits lift. Having completed his tour of universities and libraries, entertained at dinners given by scientists and physicians and editors, he could move on to planning the next portion of their journey, on to Paris. Originally, father and daughter had expected a week or two in London before sailing. But since receiving the cryptic telegram from Robert Browning, Holmes made excuses to Amelia about the unhealthiness of smoky London, the Fenian threat, and the general degree of the city’s chaos, until she crossed London off the itinerary.

  When the train halted for more passengers on the way, Holmes recited a poem to a few delighted admirers while taking tea at the station before he and Amelia noticed the time and rushed back onto the train. As they reached their compartment in the first-class carriage, Holmes was beckoned. “Why, the famous Dr. Holmes!” Turning with a broad smile to greet another admirer, he found two somber men instead.

  “The famous Dr. Holmes. Now, you know there are many pickpockets in the trains these days. Take care with that, it’s quite handsome.”

  Holmes tucked the gold watch back in his vest pocket. “Do I know you, sir?”

  “I’m Inspector Adolphus Williamson, superintendent of the Metropolitan Detective force,” said this man, who was very tall and had a flowing beard. “Would the lovely Miss Holmes mind if we spoke privately?”

  Amelia took her leave to return to their seats. Holmes followed the officers to an empty compartment, which, by the newspaper on the floor and the smell of sweat, had just been cleared of other passengers. Across from Holmes, Dolly Williamson and the younger man, Constable Tom Branagan, settled in.

  Dolly gestured toward Branagan, who took this as a signal for him to hand Holmes a Morning Post. “Dr. Holmes,” Dolly began, “a man has been killed some two weeks back in my jurisdiction in the style of Dante.”

  Holmes was thankful to be sitting. The whole scene came out of the distant corner of a nightmare. Somehow he found his voice to reply to the detective.

  “How do you know about Dante?” Holmes asked.

  “I’m not a fool, Dr. Holmes,” Dolly replied. He gestured again at the constable, who this time reached into his satchel for a large volume he dropped on the seat next to Holmes. “Thank you, Branagan.” Back to Holmes, Dolly said: “I know the same way everyone does these days.”

  Holmes recognized the book’s green covers on sight. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s ubiquitous translation of Dante.

  “Inferno?” Holmes asked.

  Dolly spun around the book so the gold-lettered spine faced Holmes. “Purgatory,” the detective read aloud. “The man I’m speaking of had been crushed by a heavy stone, just as Dante reports witnessing on the—what is it he calls the different levels of the divine mountain?—the terrace of the Prideful. There was an inscription on the stone, and it even matched some of the language in the scene from Dante.”

  “Why tell me? It was a few years ago and I merely served as an occasional assistant, a kind of aide-de-camp, in Mr. Longfellow’s translation. You might say I was heard more in the dining room than in the study.”

  “Nevertheless. You know more than most about Dante. So I thought you could help me understand something, Dr. Holmes. Dante tells us he travels through Hell before being transported up the mountain of Purgatory, then is brought to Paradise. As Dante meets the shades trapped in Purgatory, he doesn’t feel the contempt he does for the residents of Hell. Does he?”

  “No, he doesn’t,” Holmes said, nodding thoughtfully. “Dante actually tries to embrace the shades he meets early on the mountain, only to find his arms go right through them. Looking down, he notices that he is the only one who casts a shadow in the sunlight. He doesn’t belong there. He is an outcast.”

  “Boccaccio offers a convincing explanation of how the terrors of Hell might be hard to look away from. What is it about Purgatory that commands a reader’s attention?”

  Holmes could have made any number of points. Purgatory, in some ways, was the most fascinating of Dante’s three-part narrative about crossing through the afterlife. The middle canticle was replete with human drama and humanity. And surprises. Inferno implies that all suicides are assigned to suffer in one of Hell’s circles, but guarding the entrance to Mount Purgatory is none other than Cato, the ancient warrior who stabbed himself with his sword instead of subjecting himself to the tyranny of Julius Caesar. Purgatory at first seems to chronicle Virgil’s authority over Dante, but in fact turns on the need to separate from Virgil, the need to accept the partial wisdom of many temporary leaders in order to complete that portion of the pilgrim’s quest. Even Virgil confesses he can only teach Dante so much, ultimately admitting: It’s for Beatrice only you must wait. Then, another surprise. Dante’s journey seems to be about reuniting with his beloved Beatrice all along, but upon reaching Beatrice, she behaves differently than anyone expects.

  All of our guides, all of our leaders, must inevitably disappoint, must fail, must leave us to ourselves. I crown you a lord and bishop over yourself, Virgil declares to Dante with hints of pride and sadness.

  There was another way Purgatory consumed its readers. Most people could feel that whatever flaws and mistakes they’d made in life, they in no way qualified to be placed among the ultimate evil of Inferno. Hell was for other people. But with the exceptions of some saintly types, Purgatory, with its excruciating torments, its long-enduring anguish, was for every single one of us.

  It was an idea more terrifying than Hell.

  “As I said,” Holmes replied after thinking about all this, “I merely lent Longfellow a hand.”

  “We brought another book with us, Dr. Holmes,” said Dolly, who again signaled the constable. This time a pamphlet was removed: The Dante Murders. “More booklet than book. I had a friend with a bookstall near Scotland Yard procure this particular copy for us, but from the interpretations I saw scribbled out by Mr. Browning and Miss Rossetti, we gather that one of the poets portrayed as being involved is meant to be you. Speaking of Miss Rossetti, her brother—the painter Dante Gabriel—was seen near the murdered man, and now cannot be found anywhere. Then there’s his preoccupations with Dante. Please.”

  Holmes waved away the invitation to look at the booklet. “I suppose there comes a time when every lowly book in the library is wanted by someone.”

  Dolly scrutinized Holmes’s face. “You’re familiar with it. Very familiar.”

  “That booklet is pure fiction,” Holmes answered, with the most conviction of anything he had yet said to the detective. “It was written by a disgraced Pinkerton detective who was mixed up somehow in the technology catastrophes a few years ago in Boston, and wrote something about that, as well. I believe he served time in prison
. Name was Simon Camp. Why, he just tries to squeeze a profit from speculating in the fertile horrors of the public imagination.”

  “Like Dante himself,” Dolly said.

  “Dante never profited from the Comedy, Inspector, not in that way. It stole what was left of his youth. That poem became his life and death.”

  “No poet is ever really young,” Dolly said quietly.

  Holmes glared at him.

  “Their delicate ears always hear the far-off whisper of death, which coarser souls must travel towards for years before their duller senses touch. It’s a quote from you, isn’t it, doctor?”

  “A paraphrase,” Holmes managed to admit.

  The detective directed a long stare at Holmes, the kind of stare that went through a man’s soul, and Holmes imagined, for a moment, he could trace the line of a kind of sly, lopsided smile beneath the detective’s dense bushel of a mustache.

  Dolly, the smile now fully exposed, removed a gold pocket watch from his coat—Holmes’s. Holmes patted his vest in disbelief.

  They all laughed. “I see your point about pickpockets,” Holmes said as he accepted his watch.

  “Well,” Dolly said, “I suppose we’re finished, Dr. Holmes.”

  “What?” Holmes was startled that, in the end, the detective relented so easily. “Why?”

  “Do you wish to speak further, doctor?”

  “For heaven’s sake! No! What I mean is, after all that, well, why end our interview there?”

  “Because just by looking at you, I can see well enough that you couldn’t help hunt a murderer, like the pamphlet claims. What I mean to say: I believe you. You can stop worrying. I will find out who killed our Mr. Morton, don’t doubt it, and with a little luck it will all stop there.”

  Holmes agreed, feeling relieved and, after another moment to mull it over, insulted.

  VIII

  Few stretches of London streets had this many dancing saloons, gambling houses, and grogshops. When night fell and lamps sputtered on over St. James’s Street, the crowds grew. Some of the people hadn’t woken up until shortly before. Others came here to forget the unpleasant or dangerous labors they carried out over the course of a long day among machines that kept up the industrial underpinnings of London and expelled their fumes. There were many sights that were commonplace around these streets but unacceptable almost anywhere else. Drunkards reeling, emptying the contents of their stomachs in the alleys while men and women in stupors, arms and lips linked, stepped over them.