The Blackest Bird (17 page)

T
he 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!

W
HEN
O
LD
H
AYS
, 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.”

The keenness of his daughter’s mind continually startles Hays, and pleases him. “It is possible,” he says. “From the little I know of Mr. Poe, from the tone and aspect of the stories he chooses to tell, to his most distinctive physiognomy, all my experience tells me this is a troubled man, Olga. How that trouble manifests itself is my sworn duty as high constable of the city of New York to discover. Mary Rogers’ honor or not.”

“I shall not argue with you that Mr. Poe seems troubled,” Olga concedes. “As I say, I don’t know him personally, but my own instincts, everything I see and hear of him, tells of a man at sea. But that does not make him a man capable of committing such crime upon this poor girl. I reserve my judgment. I certainly know his work, Papa. Last
May, as you might remember, I went to the New York University with Lynchie to hear him lecture and recite.”

“And how did you find him?”

“I thought him transfixing.”

“And this new work?” Hays asks, studying his daughter. “What do you know of it?”

“He calls it a sequel to his story ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ You remember that tale, Papa? I thought it wonderful, although I think it annoyed you at the time. It is the one set in Paris with an orangutan ape as murderer. It struck me as quite amusing in its own perverse way, with witnesses mistaking the monkey’s harsh chatter for a foreign language.”

Hays looks harshly on her. “Murder is never amusing, my dear.”

“I don’t mean to say that it is, Papa. The story appeared about a year ago.”

“Shortly after Mary Rogers’ murder, you mean?”

His eyes are steady upon her. She blinks before continuing.

“If you recall, I read the story to you in the sitting room downstairs. It involves a man, in fact, not unlike yourself, Papa, a detective, who, although not an officer of the law, works closely with the Parisian gendarmerie to unravel mysteries too puzzling for the limited skills and imagination of the police. As for the story’s author—Mr. Poe—he is feared for his tomahawk, if not well respected or well liked among his peers. Personally, I know I look forward to articles and criticism bearing his name.”

“You say he is feared. Feared by whom?”

“He is prone to wield his criticism with a savage hand. The literati justly watch him with wide-open eyes.”

Hays removes his handkerchief and wipes away some discharge from his eyes. “As an author, he appears consumed by murder and detection, dear,” he says.

Olga shrugs. “In these—what he is more and more calling his tales of ratiocination—ratiocination being the act of deducing consequence
from premise, Papa—he fixates on the detective process, the proposition arrived at by logical and methodical reasoning, leading to the deciphering of crime.”

She pours more hot water into her father’s cup, sits down next to him at the kitchen table. The clock in the hall strikes 2 a.m.

“‘Rue Morgue,’” she murmurs in satisfying memory. “If nothing else, Mr. Poe is master of the strange and vague pleasures of the written word.” She picks up her own brimming cup and carries it carefully to her lips. “The part I liked best, of course, Papa,” she says, almost gushing with delight, “was the beast—the orangutan.”

Old Hays removes
Snowden’s
from his satchel, squares the magazine on the table with large, blunt fingers. “With this tale, according to John Colt, Mr. Poe is claiming to uncover the murderer of Mary Rogers, accomplishing what the constabulary have been unable to do. As I say, I have had a careful look at this man, Olga. His demeanor, his air. His physiognomy is striking. He is self-absorbed and long-suffering. In the end, taking all in collusion, I do not trust him.”

Her eyes grow wide. “Trust him for what?”

“John Colt has made allegement that Mr. Edgar Poe and Miss Mary Rogers were once very much emotionally embroidered. In my investigation there was always vague talk of a lover, a gentleman that much older than she, someone I was never able to identify. Because here is only the first installment, with second and third installments to follow, one in each of the next two months, we shall apparently have to wait for Mr. Poe’s revelation. Until then I think I would be remiss in my duty if I did not closely examine the text thus far to ascertain exactly what it is your Mr. Poe knows. And if his miraculous fictional tale does reveal some theory or bit of information gleaned from the fact of real life to which I myself am not yet privy, I shall want to know how this savage genius of yours with his cruel tomahawk has gained knowledge of what he speaks.”

She almost grins. “Papa,” she says, patting her father’s age-spotted hand, “he is not
my
Mr. Poe, savage or otherwise. Papa, I’ll gladly read
his story tonight, under the covers where he is surely meant to be read, and we can talk about it in the morning. Meanwhile, why don’t you take yourself upstairs and get some rest. Papa, you look so tired.”

He nods, kisses her cheek, wishes her good night, and, head down, tired feet plodding forward, Old Hays, high constable of the city of New York, makes his way toward the stairs, his bed, and the much-needed sleep to which his daughter refers.