Poe shadow (9 page)

“Officer, but you may wish to refer to these further in your examination.”

“There will be no examination, Mr. Clark,” he said conclusively as he settled back into his chair. Only then did I notice another man gathering his hat and walking stick from a table. He had his back to me, but then turned around.

“Mr. Clark.” Neilson Poe greeted me quietly, after a slow blink as though making an effort to remember my name.

“I called on Mr. Neilson Poe,” Officer White said, gesturing with satisfaction at this guest. “He is known to us from the police courts as one of our most highly esteemed citizens and was a cousin to the deceased. You gentlemen are acquainted? Mr. Poe was kind enough to discuss your concerns with me, Mr. Clark,” Officer White continued. I already knew what would come next. “Mr. Poe believes there is no need for any examination. He stands quite content with what is known about his cousin’s premature death.”

“But, Mr. Poe,” I argued, “you yourself said you were not able to learn what had happened in Edgar Poe’s final days! You see there is some great mystery!”

Neilson Poe was busy covering himself in his cloak. As I looked upon him, I thought of his demeanor during our meeting and his manner toward his cousin. “I’m afraid there’s nothing more I can tell you about the end,” he had said to me in his office chambers. But, I now considered, did he mean he
knew
nothing else or he
would tell me nothing else
?

I leaned in close to where Officer White sat, trying to confide in him. “Officer, you cannot—Neilson believes Edgar Poe is better dead than alive!” But Officer White cut me short.

“And Mr. Herring here agrees with Mr. Poe,” he went on. “Perhaps you know him—the lumber merchant? He is another one of Mr. Poe’s cousins, and he was the first relative to be present at the Fourth Ward polls, which were at Ryan’s hotel, the day Mr. Poe was found delirious there.”

Henry Herring stood at the door of the station house, waiting for Neilson Poe. At the mention of his early presence upon Edgar Poe’s discovery, Herring dropped his head. He was of a stouter build and shorter stature than Neilson, and wore a dour expression. He took my hand stiffly and without the least interest. I knew him immediately as another one of these four negligent mourners at Poe’s lonely burial.

“Let the dead rest,” Neilson Poe said to me. “Your interest strikes me as morbid. Perhaps you are like my cousin more than in handwriting alone.” Neilson Poe bid us all a quiet good afternoon and walked briskly out the door.

“Peace be to his ashes,” said Henry Herring in solemn tones, and then joined Neilson in front of the building.

“We have enough problems to concern ourselves with in all events, Mr. Clark,” Officer White began once we were left without Poe’s relatives. “There are the vagabonds, the night-strollers, the foreigners, harassing, corrupting, robbing our stores, demoralizing the good children more every day. No time for
small issues.
”

The officer’s speech went on and, as he spoke, I cast a glance out the window. My eyes followed Neilson Poe and Henry Herring to a carriage. I saw a petite woman waiting inside as the door was opened. Neilson Poe climbed in next to her. It took me a moment to realize how eerily familiar she looked. In another moment, I remembered with a chill through my bones where I had seen her or, rather, a woman just like her. That death portrait in Neilson Poe’s office that had so disturbed him. This woman was almost a double, a twin, for Edgar Poe’s deceased young love, Virginia. She was Virginia—Poe’s darling Sissy!—as far I was concerned.

Remembering the countenance of Sissy Poe, captured only hours after her death, some lines of Edgar Poe’s inserted themselves in my mind.

For her, the fair and
debonair,
that now so lowly lies,

The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes
—

The life still there, upon her hair
—
the death upon her eyes.

But stay! I could not believe it. Poe’s description of the beautiful girl Lenore at her death—“that now so lowly lies”—were the same two words at the end of the Phantom’s warning.
It is unwise to meddle with your lowly lies.
The warning
had
been about Poe after all, just as I had thought! Lowly lies!

I leaned out the window and watched the carriage disappear safely.

Officer White sighed. “Realize it, Mr. Clark,” he said. “There is nothing more here, sir. I beg you to give these concerns to the wind! It seems you have an inclination to think of affairs as extraordinary that are quite ordinary. Do you have a wife, Mr. Clark?”

My attention was pulled back to him by the question. I hesitated. “I will soon.”

He laughed knowingly. “Good. You should have much to occupy yourself without needing to think of
this
unhappy affair, then. Or your sweetheart might give you the mitten.”

Faithful use of the blank page before me would describe the ensuing despondency as I sat at my misted window overlooking the exodus of people from the offices surrounding ours. I stayed until even Peter had gone. I should have felt at ease. I had done all I could. Even speaking with the police. There was nothing remaining for me to attempt to do. A pall of routine seemed to stretch out before me.

Days passed like this. I entered into an advanced state of
ennui
that no comforts of society could diminish. It was then I received a knock at the door, and a letter. It was a messenger sent from the athenaeum; the reading room clerk, not having seen me for some time, had decided to send me some newspaper cuttings he had come upon. Newspaper cuttings from several years before; noticing some that had occasion to allude to Edgar Poe, and no doubt remembering my inquiries, he had thought to enclose them in a letter to me.

One seized me entirely.

Think of it.

He had been out there all along.

I HELD THE
newspaper clipping in my hands. I felt an unnameable difference in myself and in my surroundings as I read it. I felt transported.

A few minutes after the messenger from the athenaeum had exited my chambers, Peter burst in with an armful of documents.

“What are you looking at with such intolerable excitement, Quentin?” he asked. I think it was only a rhetorical question. But I was so enthused that I answered him.

“Peter, see for yourself! It was sent over with some other articles by the clerk at the athenaeum.”

I do not know why I did not restrain myself. Perhaps consequences no longer mattered to me.

Peter read the newspaper clipping slowly, his face dropping. “What is this?” he asked with clenched teeth. I cannot pretend not to understand his ensuing reaction. After all, we had an appointment at court the next morning. Peter had been running about the office, frantically preparing, until he’d come in just now. Imagine how he found his partner. Studying documents for our client’s hearing? Checking them one last time for errors? No.

“There is a real Dupin in Paris—I mean Poe’s character of a genius investigator,” I explained. “‘Recognized widely in the regions of Paris.’ You see? It is a miracle.”

He slapped the extract onto my desk. “Poe? Is this what you have been doing here all day?”

“Peter, I must find out who this person spoken of in the article is and bring him here. You were right that I could not do this myself.
He
can do this.”

There was an edition of Poe’s
Tales
I kept on my shelf. Peter grabbed the book and waved it in front of my face. “I thought you were finished with this Poe madness, Quentin!”

“Peter, if this man exists, if a man with a mind so extraordinary as C. Auguste Dupin’s is really out there, then I can complete my promise to Poe. Poe has been telling me all along how to do it, through the pages of his own tales! Poe’s name can be restored. Snatched away from an eternity of injustice.”

Peter reached for the newspaper extract again, but I grabbed it out of his hand and folded it into my pocket.

He seemed angered by this. Peter’s massive hand now shot forward, clutching, as though needing to choke something, even the air. With his other hand, he flung the book of Poe tales straight into our hearth, the flames of which had been stoked up into a cheerful fire by one of the clerks just a half hour before.

“There!” he said.

The hearth fizzled with its sacrifice. I think Peter was instantly sorry for his action, since the fierceness in his face transformed into sourness as soon as the flames reached for the pages of the book. Understand, this was not one of the volumes I prized for its binding or from any particular sentimental attachment. It was not the copy I had found myself reading in the quiet days after receiving the telegram of my parents’ deaths.

And yet, unthinkingly, with the swiftest motion I had ever shown, I reached in and pulled out the book. I stood there in the middle of my chambers, the book ablaze in my hand. My sleeve became a burning ring at the cuff. But I stood resolutely in place as Peter blinked, his helpless eyes large and glinting red with the fire as he took in this sight: the sight of his partner gripping a flaming book while the sizzling fire was beginning to engulf his arm. Strangely, the more delirious his expression became, the more tranquil I felt myself become. I could not remember ever having felt so strong, so decided in my purpose as in this single moment. I knew what was necessary for me now.

Hattie had come into the room looking for me. She stared at me, stared at the burning object I held in front of me, not shocked, exactly, but with a rare flash of anger.

She threw a rug from the hall over my arm and patted the flames until the fire was out. Peter recovered himself enough to gasp at the incident and then check the rug’s damage before conferring with Hattie. The two clerks hurried over to me to stare, as if at a wild beast.

“Get out! Out of these offices now, Quentin!” Peter shouted, pointing with a trembling hand.

“Peter, no, please!” Hattie cried.

“Very well,” I said.

I stepped out of my chamber door. Hattie was calling for me to return. But I did not turn back. I could see only faraway things in my mind as though they were stretched out before me in the wings of these halls: the long promenades, the din of the busy cafés, the unabashed, dreamy musical chords of dancing and fêtes, the redemption waiting to be uncovered in a distant metropolis.