until Thursday," Fields said. "But, Holmes, you said that Jennison was still... is it possible that for such a time... ?"
"For it... him... to have been killed on Tuesday yet be alive when I arrived this morning? For the body to be thrown into such convulsions that were I to drink every drop of Lethe I shall never be able to forget the sight of it?" Holmes asked despairingly. "Poor Jennison had been mutilated without hope of survival - that is to be sure - but cut and bound just enough to slowly lose blood, and with it his life. It was a good deal like inspecting what remains of fireworks on the fifth of July, but I could see that no vital organs had been punctured. There was careful craftsmanship amid such wild massacre, done by one very familiar with internal wounds, perhaps a doctor," he said thickly, "with a sharp and large knife. With Jennison, our Lucifer perfects his damnation through suffering, his most perfect contrapasso. The movements I witnessed were not life, my dear Fields, but simply the nerves dying out in a final spasm. It was a moment as grotesque as any Dante could have envisioned. Death would have been a gift."
"But to survive for two days after the attack," Fields insisted. "What I mean to say is... medically speaking... mercy, it's not possible!"
" 'Survival' here means simply an incomplete death, not a partial life - to be trapped in the gap between the living and the dead. If I had a thousand tongues, I would not try to begin to describe the agony!"
"Why punish Phineas as a Schismatic?" Lowell tried his best to sound detached, scientific. "Whom does Dante find punished in that infernal circle? Muhammad, Bertrand de Born - the malicious adviser who split apart king and prince, father and son, as once was done to Absalom and David - those who created internal rifts within religions, families. Why Phineas Jennison?"
"After all our efforts, we haven't answered that question for Elisha Talbot, my dear Lowell," said Longfellow. "His thousand-dollar simony - for what? Two contrapassos, with two invisible sins. Dante has the benefit of asking the sinners themselves what has brought them to Hell."
"Were you not close with Jennison?" Fields asked Lowell. "And yet you can think of nothing?"
"He was a friend; I did not look for his misdeeds! He was an ear for me to complain about losses in stocks, about lecturing, about Dr. Manning and the blasted Corporation. He was a steam engine in trousers, and I admit sometimes he cocked his hat a bit too much - he had a hand in every flashy business enterprise over the years that I suppose had an underbelly of brine. Railroads, factories, steelworks - such business matters are hardly comprehensible to me, you know, Fields." Lowell dropped his head.
Holmes sighed heavily. "Patrolman Rey is as sharp as a blade, and likely has suspected our knowledge all along. He recognized the manner of Jennison's death from what he had overheard at our Dante Club session. The logic of the contrapasso, the Schismatics, he connected to Jennison, and when I explained more, he immediately understood Dante in the deaths of Chief Justice Healey and Reverend Talbot, too."
"As did Grifone Lonza when he killed himself at the station house," said Lowell. "The poor soul saw Dante in everything. This time he happened to be right. I have often thought, in like manner, of Dante's own transformation. The mind of the poet, left homeless on earth by his enemies, making its home more and more in that awful otherworld. Is it not natural that exiled from all he loved in this life, he would brood exclusively on the next? We praise him lavishly for his skills, but Dante Alighieri had no choice but to write the poem he did, and to write in his heart's blood. It is no wonder he died so soon after he finished."
"What shall Officer Rey do with his knowledge of our involvement?" Longfellow asked.
Holmes shrugged. "We withheld information. We obstructed an investigation into the two most horrendous murders Boston has ever seen, which now have become three! Rey may very well be turning us and Dante in as we speak! What loyalty does he have to a book of poetry? How much should we have?"
Holmes pushed himself to his feet and, pulling at the waist of his baggy pantaloons, paced nervously. Fields raised his head from his hands when he realized Holmes was