Chapter 14 fourth quarter

The week in which Reverend Talbot's body was discovered was as quiet as ever in Boston's lower society.A mulatto was walking down the street with dignity, some people pretended not to see him, some people laughed at him, some wrinkled black men glared at him, they knew that Ray was a policeman, he was a mulatto, he was different from them.Blacks in Boston will not be harmed, and they can even sit on an equal footing with whites, go to school together, and ride the bus together, so they are very quiet and do not cause trouble.It was possible, however, that Ray might attract their hostility if he made a mistake in the execution of his duties, or provoked the wrong people.For these reasons the Negroes drove him out of the circle of his kindred, and because they thought they were justified, they

I didn't bother to explain or apologize to him. Several young girls with baskets on their heads chattered as they walked, suddenly stopped and looked at him sideways. His bronze skin was so beautiful, it seemed that even the lamp in his hand was fascinated by him. All of a sudden it went out.Nicholas Redden went up the narrow stairs of his rented apartment.He lived on the second floor, and the door of the room was facing the landing. It was already dark, and the lamp in his hand had already been extinguished. In the shadows, he found someone blocking his way into the room. Ray is preoccupied and shudders when he thinks about the events of the week.Lei drove Chief Kurtz to inspect the body of Pastor Talbot in a carriage, and the sexton led Kurtz and several police officers down the tunnel along the steps.Kurtz turned around abruptly, which really startled Ray. "Officer." He motioned for Ray to follow him.Going down to the tomb, Officer Lei stared at a corpse for a while, only to see that the corpse was stuffed face down and back up in an irregular hole, and then he noticed a pair of feet sticking out of the hole: Red and swollen, full of blisters, extremely deformed.The secretary told what he had seen at the time.

Those feet had been burned into deformities, the skin was completely burned, revealing a pink piece, the toes would fall off at any time, and the heels supporting the toes were blurred, and it was difficult to recognize the shape of the so-called heels in anatomy.The detail of the burnt foot, which might inspire a Dante scholar, was just absurd in the eyes of the police. "Are only the feet burned?" Police Officer Lei asked, then half-closed his eyes, stretched out a finger, and lightly touched the scorched muscle with his fingertips.As soon as he touched the corpse, he withdrew his hand suddenly. It turned out that the corpse was still very hot, and his fingertips were almost scorched.He didn't expect that this nearly burned corpse could still accumulate so much heat, and he was very puzzled.As the two officers carried the body away, Sergeant Greg, tearful and dazed, remembered something.

"Paper," said the steward, holding Lei's hand. Except for Lei, all the other policemen went up, "the paper that was scattered in the tomb. It is not allowed to scatter these things in the tomb. He shouldn't have come here! Thousands of dollars!" No, no, no, I shouldn't have opened the lock to let him in!" As he spoke, he burst into tears.Lei took the lamp and shone on the ground, only to see letters written on the paper scattered on the ground, like unspoken words of regret. Newspapers reported the murders of Healy and Talbot so frequently that Healy and Talbot became a couple in the public mind, and when they talked about the two murders in the streets, they often referred to them together as Healy and Talbot. Leigh Talbot murder.Could it be that this state of affairs of the public had already been revealed in Dr. Holmes?Hadn't he said something queer at Longfellow's the night Talbot's body was found? "To catch that murderer who haunts our city, something that sounds like a useless Latin prescription might help a little." Hearing the word "murderer," Ray's heart skipped a beat.Dr. Holmes used the singular, which means that he believed that both murders were committed by one person.However, apart from the fact that the modus operandi is extremely cruel, there is no conclusive evidence to prove that the perpetrators are the same person.As for other similarities, such as the nakedness of the victim and the neatly folded stripped clothes, the newspapers did not mention it at the time.Probably the little self-righteous doctor made a mistake for a moment.Eighty percent of them are like this.

Holmes followed Longfellow to the street, walking among pedestrians with different faces, listening to all kinds of sounds, and smelling all kinds of smells.Holmes had a strange feeling that Longfellow seemed to be from the same world as the man who drove the sprinkler to clean the streets.In fact, in the past few years, the poet has not been completely out of the house and isolated from the world. He just lives in seclusion and rarely participates in outside activities.Sometimes, he would go to the riverside to print social proofs, and he would eat with Fields at the Revere Hotel or the Parker Hotel when there were fewer customers.Holmes felt incredible and guilty that he was the first person to break Longfellow's peaceful life because of an accidental discovery.This person should be Lowell.If it had been Lowell who had made Longfellow go down this bewildering brick street, he would have felt no guilt.Holmes wondered if Longfellow hated him for it, if he still had resentment, or if he was immune to it, as he was to many unpleasant human emotions .

With a bouquet of flowers under their arms, the two arrived in a small-town area of ​​Cambridge.They walked around Talbot's church, carefully searching for the place where Talbot died tragically, bending down under the tree from time to time, and reaching out to feel the ground between the tombstones.Several passers-by took the opportunity to ask them to sign their handkerchiefs or hats, always from Longfellow, of course, though occasionally from Holmes.Although stealth was perfectly possible under the cover of night, Longfellow felt that it was better for them to visit the church vault in a dignified way as mourners, rather than stealthily like ghouls in disguise.

Holmes was glad that Longfellow had assumed leadership, since they had agreed... what had they agreed to do, encouraged by Ulysses's rhetoric?Lowell says to "investigate" (chest out, he always does).Holmes prefers to call it "inquiry," and that's the word he explicitly uses when speaking to Lowell.