The Blackest Bird Read online

  “Emphasis is added to this suspicion, Papa, after the character based on Archibald Padley comes forward to say a few days prior to Marie’s disappearance that he had observed a rose in Beauvais’s keyhole, and the name ‘Marie’ inscribed on the slate outside his door.”

  “All this has been thoroughly investigated, Olga. Arthur Crommelin did receive a rose from Mary Rogers. Her name was inscribed on his chalkboard in her hand. There is nothing new here,” he grumbles.

  “Indeed, as you say, Papa, in the story, as in real life, all these men and admirers of Marie are eventually exonerated, and so, despite all else, the generally held opinion falls back on a gang of desperadoes, that they had seized Marie, borne her across the river, maltreated her, and then murdered her.

  “After still further analysis of the facts, however, a newspaper Poe here christens Le Commerciel—obviously, the Journal of Commerce—weighs in, concluding that because a piece of one of Marie’s petticoats had been torn from her dress and tied under her chin and around the back of her head, evidently in order to prevent screams, the murder could not have been committed by such a gang of common ruffians. Mr. Poe reasons these fellows too much revere their pocket handkerchiefs, so this act must have been carried out by fellows who had no pocket handkerchiefs. The correlation being, that if rogues such as these had had pocket handkerchiefs, they would have used them. The reasoning, therefore, the deed was not carried out by ruffians of the common sort.

  “Logic does hold its wonder,” allows Hays, straight-faced.

  Olga glances up but chooses to ignore her father’s flippancy. She goes on. “Soon follows the discovery in a thicket in the Paris bois that parallels the discovery by Mrs. Loss’s sons. She is here called Madame Deluc. Deluc, as you well know, Papa, being the name of the chemist on Nassau Street where Daniel Payne procured his laudanum.”

  “I am impressed by your diligence, Olga.”

  “Thank you, Papa. I’ll take that as a compliment. To go on: Further included here is a description of the alleged scene of the crime, including the stone throne, the display of petticoat, and silk scarf. Poe’s narrator describes the scene thusly: ‘The earth was trampled, the bushes broken, and there was every evidence of a struggle. The ground around bore indication of some heavy burden, as if a body had been dragged from this hidden spot down to the riverside.’ The narrator here refers to a public print, Le Soleil—in our language, the Sun—and their breathless declaration: ‘There can be no doubt that the spot of the appalling outrage has been discovered!’

  “Madame Deluc is immediately deposed. She is said to remember the Sunday in question. A young girl arrived at her inn in the company of a dark-complexioned man. She claims she particularly noticed her because the dress she wore matched perfectly the dress of one of her relatives, recently deceased. Also the girl wore a noticeable scarf, which Madame Deluc admired, and therefore remembered. According to the madam’s testimony, the couple stayed for a short time, then left, taking the road which soon led into thick woods.

  “Shortly after, a boisterous gang of miscreants made their appearance. Madame Deluc alleges they ate and drank at her establishment, then left without paying, upon their departure following the same route as the young girl and man. According to her, the rowdies returned to the inn at dusk before once more recrossing the river, this time in great haste.

  “Having never left his apartment, but based on all these newspaper accounts, Dupin concludes Marie’s murder is an ordinary crime, although a particularly atrocious one. There is nothing, he claims, outré about it. Because it is so ordinary, he charges, the solution to the mystery was hoped by the local police, therefore, to be easy. Yet their conclusion, it follows, should have been the opposite. The solution is difficult, Dupin offers, dictated by the crime’s very ordinariness.”

  “I’ll give him in this he may be kerrect,” admits Hays.

  “In this story, Papa, unlike that of the masterful ‘Rue Morgue,’ author Poe, as I see it, makes use of his fictional detective as mere prop, in transparent groping, I suspect, in order to have we readers marvel at the uncanny power of his own marvelous deductive insight and logic. Mr. Poe writes those covering the mystery for the newspapers and public prints have made it their business to picture a mode for the crime. Many modes even. And, in turn, a motive for the criminal, many motives. According to Mr. Poe, each of these modes and motives holds at least some possibility to afford solution to the mystery, and within their number then, he contends, must lie by necessity the actual and inevitable solution.”

  “What is he saying? Within the realm of all possible must lie the inevitable?” Hays almost laughs.

  “I shall neither argue nor object,” says Olga. “Mr. Poe is sometimes prone to cite the obvious, Papa. But lest we forget, he reminds us the sole objective of our newsprints is to create sensation rather than to further the cause of truth, all in the seminal interest of selling more newspapers. Dupin sets himself the task, therefore, to dismember every point made in the press, emphasizing, however, that it is not with the prints that he has issue, but with the truth. He insists on proceeding methodically through the entire scope of the investigation, stating he will discard the interior points of this tragedy to concentrate his attention upon its outskirts. Not the least usual error in investigation such as this, he charges, is the limiting of inquiry to the immediate, with total disregard of the collateral or circumstantial event. As example, he alleges it is the malpractice of the courts to confine evidence and discussion to the bounds of apparent relevancy. The larger part of truth, he charges, arises from the seemingly irrelevant. The criminologist must calculate upon the unforeseen. A comprehensive survey of the public prints, says Dupin, will afford us some minute points, which shall establish a direction for his inquiry. His goal is to point his finger at the shortcomings of the police, the limitations of their inquiry, ultimately resulting in their inevitable failure.

  “He affords himself a week to conduct such study. At the conclusion of that period he comes back to his friend and confidant, the narrator, and places a series of newspaper extracts in front of him. The first, from the Evening Paper, ostensibly focuses on the disappearance of Marie.

  “Although earlier in the story Poe wrote it was merely three months before that Marie had first disappeared, he now states it was actually two or three years since a disturbance very similar to the present was caused by her disappearance from the parfumerie of Monsieur Le Blanc in the Palais Royal. It appears an oversight on the author’s part. The crux of the account is that at the end of a week after her first disappearance, Marie reappeared at her customary comptoir as well as ever, with the exception of a slight paleness not altogether usual. Given this previous absence, therefore, we of a rational and ordered mind should assume that the present absence is a freak of the same nature, and that, at the expiration of another week, or perhaps a month, Marie will be among us again.

  “The second extract is marked from Le Mercurie. Again the referral is to Marie’s previous disappearance. Here, however, it is now unequivocally stated as well known that during the week of that first absence from Le Blanc’s parfumerie, Marie was all the time in the company of a man much noted for his debaucheries. Le Mercurie claims to have the name of the Lothario, but, for reasons of their own, forbears to make this information public.”

  “Does Mr. Poe ever see fit to name this individual?”

  Olga shakes her head. “No, he never does. Not yet at any rate.”

  “Do you feel he knows who it is?”

  “I cannot say. Let me go on, Papa, please. The third extract is from the Morning Paper, in which the author calls attention to an outrage of the most atrocious character perpetrated near Paris the day of Marie’s disappearance. A gentleman with his wife and their daughter, engaged about dusk the services of six young men who were idly rowing a boat to and from near the banks of the Seine. The family was conveyed across river by this crew, where they left the vessel. The daughter, however, soon realized she had
forgotten her parasol. She returned for it, was seized by the gang, carried out into the stream, gagged, brutally treated, and finally taken to the shore at a point not far from where she had originally entered the boat with her parents. The villains escaped, but the police are said to be upon their trail, and the article asserts some of them will soon be taken. Concurrent to this outrage, Poe writes, the Evening Paper received anonymous written communication to the effect that Marie at the same time, or nearly the same time, was the victim of a band of blackguards.”

  “What is the point, Olga?”

  “It is interesting you voice the question, Papa, because Poe’s narrator asks the same of Dupin. ‘What is the point?’ Dupin insists it is mere folly to say that there is no supposable connection between Marie’s first and second disappearance. ‘Let us admit,’ he writes, ‘the first elopement to have resulted in a quarrel between Marie and her lover, eventually leading to her return home, even if at first she was planning to never return home again, but run off with him forever. We are now prepared to view a second elopement as indicating a renewal of Marie’s unnamed lover’s advances, rather than as the result of a new proposal by a new individual. In other words, we are prepared to regard this second disappearance as a making up of the first amour, rather than as the commencement of a new one.’”

  “So Poe wants us to believe one man was involved in Mary Rogers’ life, then and now, the instigator of her first disappearance, and the instigator of the second as well?”

  “Dupin supposes this lover may have been interrupted in his first villainy by some unnamed necessity of departure, so he has seized the first moment of his return to renew the base designs not yet altogether accomplished. He concedes it is possible to say in the first instance there was no elopement as imagined. But what if there was subterfuge at the base of not only the first but also the second? According to the chevalier, we may imagine Marie on the occasion of the second instance thinking thusly: ‘I am to meet a certain person for the purpose of elopement. It is necessary that there be no chance of interruption—there must be sufficient time given us to elude pursuit—I will give it to be understood that I shall visit and spend the day with my aunt. I will tell St. Eustache not to call for me until dark. In this way, my absence from home for the longest possible period, without causing suspicion or anxiety, will be accounted for, and I shall gain more time than in any other manner. And since it is my design never to return, the gaining of time is the only point about which I need give myself any concern.’

  “Dupin insists this is but his imagined thinking for Marie. He calls our attention to it because earlier in the story he spoke of the culpable remissness of his competitors, the police. Now he asserts the police may not have been remiss at all, but only dupes. He concludes, adjudging from his notes, that the most general opinion in relation to this sad affair is, and was from the first, that Marie had been the victim of a gang of blackguards. Now, he reminds us, the popular opinion, under certain conditions, should not be disregarded. Sometimes, however, we should look upon the two instances as analogous, utilizing that intuition which is the idiosyncrasy of the individual man of genius. In ninety-nine cases from the hundred the detective would abide by its decision. But here is how Dupin chooses to discern the details:

  “‘All Paris is excited by the discovered corpse of Marie, a girl young, beautiful and notorious. Her body bears marks of violence, and has been found floating in the river. It is made known that on the very day in which it is supposed that she was assassinated, an outrage of a similar nature to that endured by the deceased, although less in extent, was perpetrated by a gang of young ruffians, upon the person of a second young female. Is it wonderful that the one known atrocity should influence the popular judgment in regard to the other unknown? Marie was found in the river; and upon this very river was this known outrage committed. The connection of the two events had about it so much of the palpable, that the true wonder would have been a failure of the populace to appreciate and seize it. But to the philosophical detective, the one atrocity, known to be so committed, is if anything, evidence that the other, committed at a time nearly coincident, was not so committed. It would have been a miracle indeed, if, while a gang of ruffians were perpetrating, at a given locality, a most unheard-of wrong, there should have been another similar gang, in a similar locality, in the same city, under the same circumstance, with the same means and appliances, engaged in a wrong of precisely the same aspect, at precisely the same period of time. Unlikely. If not impossible!’”

  “So Poe discards the blackguards to make case for a wronged lover to have committed the crime? Again, he from the first assignation, the murderer from the second.”

  “Just so. This, it seems, is where Mr. Poe is leading us, Papa, although the third chapter with his definitive solution remains in abeyance. When I saw my man at Snowden’s, I asked after this final installment. He said it had been initially scheduled for the January issue, already typeset but not yet locked down. Then, suddenly, at the apparent request of the author, the story was withdrawn, and abruptly pulled from the magazine.”

  “Not to be ever published?”

  “My imp did not know for sure. He had heard it might appear in February, after revisions by Mr. Poe.”

  Hays had, by this time, risen from his uncomfortable chair and was vigorously pacing the room. “Good work, Olga,” he said, repeating, “February. Very good work.”

  29

  A Bitter Reunion

  The harelipped guard stood in the corridor outside Tommy Coleman’s cell until young Tommy, annoyed enough, finally stood, moved over to the grate, and asked what the surly keeper wanted.

  “I don’t want nothing from the likes of you, hackum,” the guard smirked. “Just looking.”

  Tommy wore a striped taupe and black prison shirt and pants too big for him. He tried his best to ignore the keeper’s fat, florid face pressed to the grille. The man stood for a good long time glaring at the little gangster before finally taking it upon himself to announce Tommy had a visitor.

  “Screw you,” Tommy said.

  “Watch what you say,” the guard glowered.

  “Why? What you gonna do to me? Them jack coves who run this college can only kill me once.” Tommy looked the big screw square in the dorchester and laughed. “Ain’t that right, Hamlet?”

  “You want to see your guest or should I send ya straight to the earth-bath?” the keeper asked, not backing off. “Don’t pay to give me no jabber if you want to see yer dear sweet mudder who has traveled here from dem dismal, pig-infested P’ernts where the likes of youse live ta pay her respects to you, her miserable, woirthless paddy son.”

  Pleased at giving as good as he got, the guard grinned, showing black-edged teeth, what there were of them.

  “We’re all men of one God here, captain,” Tommy said. He reached for the guard’s hand through the bars, gained it, clasped it. “I didn’t mean nothing,” he said through a leer.

  The guard tore his hand away. Big as a bear, meat-faced, native-born, to his mind an American of the first order, he turned his back on Tommy and stalked to the end of the death row cell block where there was a gate.

  Another keeper stood on the far side. The second guard wore his keys on a ring at his waist. He fit the key in the lock. The door swung open, letting the first keeper pass.

  The second guard was about as jocose as the first. He opened the door where Mother Coleman, a soft-bosomed, white-haired woman older than her years, waited for admittance.

  “Why if it ain’t the darlin’ fresh-faced mudder from Eyre here to pay a social visit to her condemned offspring,” the first keeper said.

  “So I am,” Tommy’s mother muttered.

  “Don’t it just warm the cuckolds of yer heart,” the first keeper said to the second.

  “Life don’t seem hardly worth living. Not when one’s on one’s last legs like our poor little bird there,” the second keeper responded.

  “Bless us, but pity him,
if we’re not cooped up, caged day and night same as tha’ black Irish boy of yers, mama,” the first lamented to Mrs. Coleman.

  “Ain’t it the truth, b’hoyo,” the second guard agreed, and laughed.

  They led her down the corridor. Tommy embraced his dear old ma through the bars of his cell door. He asked after his da.

  Dead-eyed, dead-faced, dead-spirited, Mrs. Coleman, already the loser of one son to the hangman’s noose and five daughters to disease, fell back on her haunches. She peered at her boy, her last surviving child, her youngest, her baby Tommy, caged in front of her.

  He, too, was dead-eyed, dead-faced, dead-spirited. Not so much because he wasn’t happy to see her, his tortured ma, but because the two of them were crafty, wanting to give nothing away, aware of their antagonists staring at them, the blue-clad, ham-faced keepers, the high beak, Old Hays, down the prison corridor, in his office.

  “God give us strength,” Mother Coleman said loud enough for eavesdroppers to hear.

  “I pray he will, Ma. For your sake.”

  The harsh voice of the harelipped guard suddenly ringing out. “What are you two Irish dogs whispering about? I don’t like no whispering.”

  Tommy and his white-haired mother did indeed have their heads together.

  Tommy looked up, said, “What do you think? I’m telling my poor old innocent ma I love her. Want her to tell my poor old innocent da at home I love him. Is there anything wrong with that?”

  “My heart bleeds fer yer,” the guard commiserated. “All that wasted love. No whisperin’.”

  “It’s a death blow, plain and simple.” Tommy’s ma was saying to him, ignoring the guard and turning back to her son. “Yer da, he’s suffering. Even if you being here don’t kill him outright, he complains he got pains gnawing at his chest, gnawing at his maw, inside and out.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. Across the corridor John Colt was standing at his cell door staring at them.