The Blackest Bird Read online

  All grew very quiet as they awaited Poe’s answer. The Rogers murderer still remained very much unknown, High Constable Hays and the Watch concentrating as their chief suspects first on any number of gangs of ruffians, then on a long list of spurned lovers, all to little gain.

  Poe pursed his lips. “My enterprise is in three installments,” he pronounced, his dramatic intonation precise, although considerably fueled by port and the undivided attention of the gathered. “With the third, gentlemen, all shall be known.”

  James Harper, in his surliness, would not let it sit, would not allow Poe his moment, even if drunk. “What will be known, Poe? Go on! What have you to tell us, sir? Do you have knowledge, something to which none of the rest of us is privy?”

  Poe stared at Harper.

  “How might you have come to that, sir? Perhaps you have discovered that Mary was in love with another. Some cad. A monster.” Harper persisted. “Perhaps you have discovered who the monster is. Surely she was in love with someone, or do you think she was still only enamored by you, sir?”

  Poe blanched, but before he had a chance to answer or even digest what had been said, the door flew open and a howl of wind and pelt of driven rain permeated the sealed environment. A troika of newsmen, bundled against the weather, Greeley of the Trib, Bennett from the Herald, and the dandy Whitman of the Eagle, bustled inside, brushing beads of moisture from their oilcloth coats.

  Poe looked up as the three made their immediate way toward the warmth.

  “Gentlemen,” Bennett croaked, reaching for the port, “we bring astonishing tidings in the Mary Rogers case. Are you aware, my friends, Mrs. Frederika Loss, the innkeeper over at the Elysian Fields, was shot late last night. We three have just come from across the river. Even as we speak she lies on her deathbed, talking of nothing else save Mary, and her own place in the poor girl’s death.”

  “What you say?” Anderson was nearly beside himself.

  “Shot, quite by accident in the knee, by one of her sons,” Greeley told him, “but the life is running out of her.”

  He had taken off his coat and hung it on a hook, and was lighting a small black segar. “The middle boy, Ossian, one of the two who found the collection of clothes and possessions near the Sybil Cave. In her final delirium Mrs. Loss is saying that the ghost of Mary Rogers is hovering over her bed and urging her to tell the truth.”

  Poe stared at him through dark, bloodshot, rapidly blinking eyes.

  “And what truth is it that Mrs. Loss would like us to believe on her deathbed?” inquired James Harper, glancing purposefully at Poe.

  “That the girl was at her inn in the company of a young physician who undertook to procure for her a premature delivery,” said Whitman. “According to Mrs. Loss and her ravings, Mary Cecilia Rogers died during the execution of the act.”

  The color drained out of Poe’s face as he half rose from his chair. “Lord help her,” he murmured.

  He groped behind him for his seat and fell back heavily into it. Suddenly he was quite sober.

  “Are you all right, Poe?” Halleck reached for him.

  Poe barely heard.

  He left the confines of the little shop, so rich in aroma and warmth, stumbling forward, sick, sick to his heart.

  25

  The Night Soil Cart

  It has stopped raining. In the cool night air, Poe staggers, catches himself.

  His senses have left him. Voices merge in his ears in one dreamy indeterminate hum.

  He moves slowly, deliberately, continues north from Anderson’s on Broadway, past Leonard.

  It is another city here, on this broad stretch of the Broadway. Here is where the fancy prance. Every night they can be seen, the privileged citizenry of the great metropolis in continuous tide of population, taking their evening stroll, their noses in the air, top-hatted gentlemen, coats and pantaloons of black and brown, the architects and attorneys, the bankers and mercantilists, the stockjobbers and businessmen, men of leisure, and men actively engaged in affairs of their own. Even at late hours, by the time the lamps are well lit, they tarry beneath the cherry trees that line the promenade.

  The rays of the gas lamps, feeble at first in their struggle with the dying day, have at length gained their ascendancy, throwing their fitful and garish luster over astonishingly lovely ladies in crimson silk dresses, black satin hats, green velvet ribbons, demure peach-colored veils. It seems to Poe every eye falls on him. But it is his narcissism.

  He despises them. Hates them, one and all. He hates what he perceives as their disdain. Hates them for what they have. Hates them for what he has not. But above all else Poe hates himself.

  Mary Rogers died during an abortion.

  That is what they said.

  Oh, Mary, have you died so?

  On Canal Street he stumbles on the kerb. He rights himself, heading left toward the riverfront, where he hopes to find a cheap rooming house, a place to rest his heavy head for the night. From where he does not know a five-dollar gold piece has miraculously appeared in the pocket of his greatcoat. He does not remember asking Halleck for a shilling.

  Had he asked him? He might have. The moment escapes him.

  A night soil cart clatters on the cobblestones in front of him. The smell of the cart, the odor of human waste and open sewer, the great piles of horse offal and ashes, waist high, lining the sidewalks. He hears an oysterman shouting, offering his ware. A coal truck rumbles and rattles by. Pigs root in the gutter. They are the city’s scavengers. A sow with one ear, an ugly brute, with scanty brown back like the lid of an old horsehair trunk, spotted with unwholesome black blotches, watches Poe over her peaked snout.

  Mary. Mary. Mary.

  Poe nearly stumbles into a man in a camlet coat carrying a lantern in one hand, a large staff in the other.

  Poe mumbles, excuses himself, glares at the curious-looking fellow.

  The man has stopped. He is studying Poe from beneath his bowler hat. He is an older gent, no longer spry on his feet, if the large staff he is carrying is any indication. Poe glares back at him through drooping eyes. There is something familiar about this fellow, his dwarfish legs, his large upper torso, his passive, intelligent face. Strange tufts of hair, near antennae, grow from his large ears. But who is he? Poe cannot remember. Cannot place him.

  He staggers on, searching for his bed. “Mary,” he murmurs. “My darling Mary.” A thought suddenly entering his fevered brain: What sweet rest must lie in the grave!

  26

  Snowden’s Ladies’ Companion

  Coming in off the prison yard that dark and dreary night, pausing only momentarily to look in at the Bummers’ Cell, the high constable returns to his desk.

  Outside, the night is moonless, unseasonably cold and penetrating, especially for this early in November, the iced wind ripping off the North River and through the body with no regard for a constable’s camlet coat. The harsh weather is taking its toll on Old Hays.

  At his desk, by the stoked coal stove, it is warm.

  After shedding his outerwear, his constable’s lantern, and staff, the high constable rubs his legs, then marches away in the direction of John Colt’s cell, his clipped footfalls echoing off the floor stone.

  The man on the street, his countenance, has stayed upon him.

  Behind the grate, Colt’s curtain is drawn. Hays calls, “John Colt?”

  Dillback, the manservant, parts the green velvet. “Sir? Can I be of help?”

  “I need a word with your ward.”

  “Mr. Colt is not available.”

  “He will make himself available to me,” Hays tells him evenly.

  “I’ll see, sir.”

  The Englisher disappears. Hays can hear low voices before Dillback returns.

  “If you will, sir, the good gentleman will be with you shortly. He is just dressing.”

  The curtains reclose, only to reopen a few seconds later to their fullest.

  Colt is wearing the dressing jacket mentioned by Bennett
in his Herald diatribe.

  Hays admires the cherry red color of the facing. He runs seasoned eye over Colt. He deigns the man’s complexion too smooth, his mustache too clipped, the trimmed muttonchops too refined, the nose too aquiline. There is no noticeable surface defect, no ridge, no bump, no crook. Everything is too perfect. The facial epidermis, to Hays’ observation, does not bespeak confinement. John Colt’s skin is not enough callow, but shines with a peculiar polished veneer of high gloss. Even the eyes are hooded, the cornea glazed. The detective cannot see in. All of which tells Hays this is a malefactor, one who takes himself and his malfeasance above society.

  “The gentleman who visited you yesterday, the late night arrival?”

  “Poe?”

  “Poe? Is that his name?”

  “It is.” Colt’s eyes narrow. “Why do you ask?”

  “His appearance interests me. His military greatcoat. Does he always wear it?”

  “He attended West Point at one time. He claims to keep the coat as reminder. He is Poe the editor and poet. A critic of outstanding reputation as well. Edgar Allan Poe? Come, High Constable, you must know of him.”

  “I know of him. ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ Quite remarkable.” Hays smiles. “I was much taken by that fellow Dupin and the workings of his mind.”

  Colt smiles back. “I would think you would. The character is a shadow after all, modeled on a figure not unlike yourself no doubt. You should have introduced yourself to Mr. Poe when he was here. Shame on you, High Constable Hays. It would have pleased him greatly to have his talents recognized. It is what we all who toil by the pen live for. To be recognized by our readers. You and he, in my estimation, would get along quite well. He is a gentleman, a man of fine character, although of late he has fallen on harder times, and it has caused some aberration in his personality.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “He comes to add editorial eye to the work I have been committing to paper here.”

  “Spending your last days with your pen, are you, Mr. Colt?”

  “That is what I do. I am a writer. The pen is my sword.” Colt’s eyes gleam.

  “Indeed it is. Live by it, die by it. It is exactly what led you here, if I’m not mistaken, your writing, your sword, as it were.”

  Colt hesitates. “In a sense,” he says.

  Old Hays studies Colt coolly.

  “I remind you, High Constable,” Colt says, “the path down to hell is a facile one, but acting on the fierce moodiness of one’s temper need not qualify as capital offense.”

  “The court of oyer and terminer saw it differently, sir, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Now that you mention it, yes, they did.”

  “So you are adept at writing, but Mr. Poe is more so. Is that how it is?”

  “Perhaps. Yes, I would say so.”

  “Has he ever been in trouble with the law?”

  Another slow smile bends up the corners of Colt’s mouth. “Why would you ask that?”

  “Something about the man. I just now ran into him on the street. His physiognomy is of some remark.”

  As Hays watches, Colt’s countenance takes on a certain resolute shrewdness.

  “It is interesting you say that,” Colt ventures. “The man writes of horror and murder, foul deeds in foul places. Scarcely a tale passes off his pen that lacks a character being pecked at or bit, gnawed at or chewed. As a matter of fact, I have only right now read a new story of his based on the atrocity of the Mary Rogers murder case.”

  “Mary Rogers?” Hays is interested. “What has he to do with Mary Rogers?”

  “More than you might think. I know Mr. Poe and Miss Rogers to have been quite close at one point.” Colt turns, retreats a few feet back into his cell, where Hays can see him face his bookcase. He scans for a few seconds before finding what he is looking for. He plucks from the shelf a slim yellow magazine, the name Snowden’s Ladies’ Companion printed in brown ink on the cover.

  With a grim expression set on his lean, handsome face, he returns to the front of the cell and hands the journal through the bars to the eminent detective.

  “I refer you, sir,” Homicide Colt says plaintively, “to page 13.”

  27

  Murders

  in the Rue Morgue

  The name of the story is “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.” The high constable starts his reading of Poe’s obeisance to the Mary Rogers murder at his desk, but the light in the Tombs’ cell block is dim, and his rheumy eyes dimmer, even with magnifying spectacles and hand lens.

  As far as Old Hays can make out, the story begins with Poe theorizing, something about an ideal series of events which runs parallel with a real series of events. His reference, cited as an epigraph, is quoted ostensibly from Novalis, the German, whoever Novalis may have been.

  Two hours later the high constable is rudely awakened by one of the jailhouse cats jabbing a raptor claw into the fleshy end of his nose. He growls, swats the beast away, struggles unsteadily to his feet, immensely unhappy, and instead of continuing his reading there in the dark and chilly Tombs, decides to bring the magazine home with him for his daughter to read to him.

  How life reverses itself!

  How many times when she was a little girl did he rush home from the Bridewell to read to Olga before bed a chapter of her favorite, the novel Charlotte Temple?

  And now here he is, in need of her to do the same for him. What humbling rewards fatherhood brings!

  WHEN OLD HAYS, fatigued to the marrow of his bones, pushes slowly and heavily through the ground-floor door leading into the family kitchen, despite the late hour, he finds Olga still at the kitchen table awaiting him.

  She looks up. Behind her, on the stove, the black iron kettle is on the fire, the water boiling. In the half-light of the kitchen, the gas lamps flickering, Olga’s face, his precious daughter’s face—as he gazes upon her—is the face of a handsome, alert woman with a strong inner light, not his silent fear, not some dry spinster, not an aging woman without hope of ever finding—what?—a suitable husband.

  “Papa.” She brightens with first sight of him.

  He kisses her cheek, apologizes for the hour at which he has come home.

  She waves off his apology. Balboa delivered earlier that evening her father’s message that he would be late, and not to wait dinner for him. She was neither worried nor concerned, she assures him.

  He sits heavily.

  “I’m making hot water and lemon. Would you like some?”

  “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Of course I am.”

  He associates the concoction with illness and illness only. Jacob Hays could have his arm cut off with a dull saw and not blink, but when someone in his family takes ill, he becomes very nearly apoplectic. The only time he ever felt faint in his entire lifetime was when Olga at the age of nine badly cut her knee in the backyard with an ax. The only time he felt powerless was when he watched his four sons die in front of him, all in three days, all during the yellow fever epidemic of 1822, when he watched his wife succumb to congestion of the heart, how many years was it now?, only two, could it have been so recent, yet so long ago?

  He mumbles something.

  “What?”

  “Would you like some?”

  “Yes. Yes, I would.”

  He watches his daughter as she busies herself quartering a hard, dry Florida lemon. She manages a few drops of juice squeezed from one pale wedge, then another, into a flowered cup, drops in the stiff, pale rind, and fills the ochre and maroon cups with hot water.

  Hays coughs, and she turns to him as she sets the cups and saucers on the black enameled wooden tray. The tray is hand-painted, depicting a sparkling waterfall in the Kaatskills. With a glance toward her father, Olga carries the tray from the stove to the table.

  Hays bends, rummages through a battered leather satchel. “Olga, I need to ask a favor from you. John Colt has given me this copy of Snowden’s magazine. It features a story
of Edgar Poe, just published. Colt tells me Mr. Poe claims he has unraveled the Mary Rogers case once and for all.”

  Olga, now seated, picks up the magazine off the table.

  “Are you aware of any of this?” Hays asks.

  “As a matter of fact, I have heard something, Papa. When I went to pick up manuscripts at Harper’s, there was some talk. But I’ve not read Poe’s tale yet. It is certainly on my list. Especially now.”

  “My dear, can you fill me in a little on Mr. Poe? Certainly you have mentioned his name, and certainly we have read stories and poems of his together, but remind me, who is he exactly?”

  “I don’t know him personally, Papa. I know only of him. I have seen him at readings and lectures, and have encountered him once or twice at the offices of the Harper Brothers, although we have never spoken and there seems to have been a falling-out between him and James Harper. He is without question very ambitious. His parents are said to have been actors, and he has some of that highly dramatic air, the air of the stage. His life is one apparently tinged with tragic failure and unrequited genius. He has written many striking romantic poems addressed to vulnerable, doomed women.”

  He tells her about the hausfrau Frederika Loss dying in Hoboken from a bullet accidentally fired by her son, her raving of Mary dying during an abortion.

  “Seeing this gentleman earlier this evening, taking gauge of his countenance, his demeanor, I have one of my trepidations,” he says.

  “Trepidations? Meaning what?”

  “That Mr. Poe might be involved in something untoward.”

  “You mean involved with Mary Rogers beyond his endeavor in his written tale, I presume.”

  “As you say.”

  “How so, Papa?” she further inquires. He observes the glint in her eyes. “As lover or abortionist?” she persists.

  “If Mary Rogers had merely died during an abortion, my fury would be one thing, Olga. But her body, brutalized as it was afterwards, makes my fury something else.”

  “Perhaps the individual who committed such atrocity acted in need to hide the deed of the premature delivery, and in some perverse manner save the poor girl’s honor.”