The Blackest Bird (34 page)

Not an hour later, with Balboa at the reins, the police barouche parked at the kerb, the landlady, dressed in a well-worn housecoat, opened the door, a fat woman with pop eyes that became even more pronounced with the recognition of High Constable Hays at her entrance, his hand still on the rapper.

She told him, upon his examination, that Mr. Poe was indeed in residency there, that he had initially arrived at her doorstep alone. He had first arranged to occupy one room on her premises at the rear of the first floor, but recently, over the last few days, with his big success (she spoke behind her hand that he had bragged something awful about some confabulation, something involving a flying balloon, she did not know how, of which he said he was the author), he had sent
for his wife, her mother, and their cat, and taken an adjoining room for their comfort.

Although Mr. Poe was not at home, she said, smoothing her faded housedress, his mother-in-law and wife were. “The poor dear seems sickly,” the landlady whispered. “Such a young thing.”

The door to the rooms occupied by the Poe family was then pointed out to him by this landlady, and it was she, the young, infirm wife, who answered the door when Hays knocked.

A
n elderly woman appeared from behind Mrs. Poe. Hays assumed her to be the mother-in-law, Mrs. Clemm. She was severe and manly, square and heavyset, dressed in a plain black dress with a stark white bib collar and apron.

“Can I help you?” she said, stepping in front of her daughter, who literally fell back behind the broad obstruction of her mother before catching herself.

Hays introduced himself, touching the brim of his bowler hat. “I am High Constable Jacob Hays of the New York City Day and Night Watch,” he said, failing or ignoring to remember the crucial bit of knowledge that the Watch had suffered most recent dissolution, and in fact, even if he needed reminder, he now represented that newly birthed body, the New York municipal force of police.

No matter, Mrs. Clemm gave no indication of being impressed.

“I am Maria Clemm,” she said evenly.

Hays glanced past her at Poe’s wife. She looked a child, but Hays knew her to be at least twenty years. She had a full flush to her cheeks, which if he did not know better would have bespoken health.

“This is my daughter, Virginia Poe,” Mrs. Clemm introduced her.

“Pleased to meet you both.” Hays bowed slightly to each. “Is the man of the house at home?” he asked.

“Mr. Poe is about town, seeing to his work,” said Mrs. Clemm.

“I see.”

“Can I help you in any way? If this is about funds owed, Eddie has had some recent success, and I know he is currently at work on an article already promised. You can be certain consideration will be coming, and all bills will be paid.”

Hays shook his head. “I am not here about accounts,” he assured her.

A shadow passed over Mrs. Clemm’s suspicious eyes that did not escape the high constable. He registered her concern, and felt more than a small amount of empathy for the elderly woman, alone and fearful for the well-being of her children. “I am unaware of when he will return,” she said.

She turned to her daughter then, and asked wouldn’t she feel better to go back into the apartment out of the chill. It was not a question and the girl smiled at Hays, but without a word obediently stepped back from the threshold and retreated into the interior, repairing to a small sitting alcove where she took up some handwork. From the angle and distance Hays could not quite be sure if it was crewel point or crocheting she was about.

From what he could garner, behind the broad and severe obstacle of Mrs. Clemm, the boardinghouse apartment seemed to be composed of two rooms. There may have been an additional small closet or sleeping alcove. There seemed to be no kitchen, although there was a cast-iron stove that must have been stoked despite the already mild spring temperature, because the rooms, even from where he stood, were very warm.

He had remained standing in the public hall. Flock wallpaper adorned the walls, and worn carpet stretched down to the corridor end.

“Were you expecting to come in and wait for Edgar, sir, because my
daughter is not quite well, and I fear your presence…” Her strong but febrile voice trailed off. “That would be impossible.”

“No,” Hays stated, “I would not be so bold, nor would I want to impose on your hospitality, madam. If you would simply inform Mr. Poe that I was here, and that I need to have a word with him. I can be found at my office on the ground floor of the Men’s House of Detention on Centre and Leonard streets. If I don’t hear from him, please let him know that I will return.”

“I shall do that.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you, High Constable.”

“He knows who I am, Mrs. Clemm. Please say Old Hays needs a word with him.”

“
N
ote well, Papa,” Olga Hays forewarned her father, “his first tale of ratiocination, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ begins with a quotation, the words of Sir Tom Browne: ‘What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women.’”

“And who is this Sir Tom?”

“That doesn’t matter, Papa. A seventeenth-century English author who concerned himself with Christian morals. We are here to discern Mr. Poe’s intent, not Sir Thomas Browne’s hidden meaning.”

“And what are you supposing this hidden intent of Mr. Poe to be?” asked Hays.

She looked her father straight in the eye. “Mr. Poe is likening him self to the strongest and bravest of men, one not even to be outdone by such of a magnitude as a Greek hero. Yet through his authorial voice he is telling us of his vulnerability, that he is not above hiding behind the skirts of females.”

“I see,” Hays said.

Olga was not totally convinced that he did.

Both Olga and her father had dishes of China tea in front of them at the kitchen table. Olga had not touched hers. Hays had both his thick hands woven round his, warming.

Some nights before, he had returned from Wiley & Putnam’s laden with books and page proofs. These he had turned over to his daughter. Since then she had taken up her chore. For the intervening three days and much of the three nights she had kept bent over at her desk perusing Poe’s well-worked words in what had once been her mother’s sewing room.

“It is a tantalizing puzzle he presents,” Olga observed. “As you have described the scene at Greenwich Street, it is not beyond all conjecture.”

“That he hides behind his wife and mother-in-law?”

She cocked her head at her father. “That he obfuscates behind them, his women, just so.”

She saw him wince, almost imperceptibly, at her use of his phrase.

“And what of the alteration of text in the ‘Marie Rogêt’ story from its first appearance in the
Ladies’ Companion
until now?” he asked. “What of that?”

“There are fifteen changes that I have counted. Three are deletions, the rest additions.”

“Putnam said he thought there were seventeen.”

She shrugged. “Maybe so. But I only counted fifteen.”

“Do these fifteen change the story perceptibly?”

“They do. As before, they make a case for the possibility of an accidental death at the hand of an abortionist performed at the innkeeper Madame Deluc’s roadside house, rather than outright cold-blooded murder by a scorned lover. These alterations are designed to make it appear that right from the start, the author was kerrect in his exercise of deciphering the crime.”

“And what precisely are these alterations?”

“The deletions first. As I stated, there are three. The first two refer to the thicket as the scene of the crime. The third made reference to an individual assassin who purportedly made confession of the murder of Marie to the gendarmerie. By these three cuts he exculpates himself from his initial implication that one man, ostensibly a lover, committed this sordid crime perpetrated against the innocent Marie in a thicket near the Parisian woods.”

“Can we imagine the one man mentioned, he, the author, trying to draw attention to himself?”

Olga shrugged. “As you wish, Papa. I would think not, but you are free to think what you will.”

Hays chose to ignore his daughter’s implication. “And the additions?” he inquired.

“As I said, the additions are crafted to insinuate Marie’s death occurred during a premature delivery at Madame Deluc’s roadhouse, rather than in a lover’s fit of jealousy or rage. There are twelve instances of text added that I have counted, and in all they encompass something less than one hundred and fifty words in a story that spans some twenty thousand words.”

Olga continued. “Twenty-four footnotes have also been added to the story. Most simply identify the author’s research, the true-to-life participants, the newspapers cited, the varied venues. For example, Madame Deluc is noted as Frederika Loss, the Seine as the Hudson, Jacques St. Eustache as Payne, Monsieur Beauvais as Crommelin, et cetera. Allow me to read this to you, Papa.” She referred to her notes, proceeding to a place in the text.

“‘Ultimately,’” she begins her reading, “‘let us sum up now the meager yet certain fruits of our long analysis. We have attained the idea’—and here is perfect example of Mr. Poe’s calculated change, Papa—‘either of a fatal accident under the roof of Madame Deluc, or’—and here he resumes from the original
Snowden’s
—‘of a murder perpetrated, in the thicket at the Barrière du Roule, by a lover, or at least by an intimate and secret associate of the deceased.’”

“I see. And there you have it: if one chooses to believe Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, as author, perhaps as criminal, not about to get caught; not in one role, not in another.”

“Let me read you, additionally, the first footnote, because that is really the only one of any interest. As far as I can ascertain, each of the fifteen changes made in the manuscript by the author, from one version to the next, are simply designed to absolve Mr. Poe of some kind of self-perceived ignorance to the true nature of the crime. In other
words, Mr. Poe had it wrong to start, but now, with no reference to the first published draft, he desires for his reader to hold no other belief than he has had it right from the start and always. It is all about him; it is about no other; in my opinion, nothing more nefarious. Here it begins: ‘Upon the original publication of “Marie Rogêt,” the footnotes now appended were considered unnecessary; but the lapse of several years since the tragedy upon which the tale is based, renders it expedient to give them, and also to say a few words in explanation of the general design. A young girl,
Mary Cecilia Rogers
, was murdered in the vicinity of New York; and although her death occasioned an intense and long-enduring excitement, the mystery attending it had remained unsolved at the period when the present paper was written and published.’”

“It bereaves me it is so. Does Mr. Poe provide a date for that, Olga?”

“He does. November 22, 1842.”

“Four days following the date of the Colt execution.”

“Yes.”

“Go on. Excuse me for having interrupted. I was under the impression it was his editor who insisted these changes upon him.”

“Knowing the way a publishing house works, doubtful,” Olga said. “His editor, Mr. Duyckinck, might have made suggestion, but ultimately it is the author’s choice, Papa. It is Mr. Poe’s name attached, not his editor’s. Again, I quote: ‘Herein, under pretense of relating the fate of a Parisian grisette, the author has followed, in minute detail, the essential, while merely paralleling the inessential, facts of the real murder of Mary Rogers. Thus all argument founded upon the fiction is applicable to the truth: and the investigation of the truth was the object.’”

Hays made a sour face. “Is there more?”

“Indeed there is. The author continues in what might be seen as an effort to exculpate himself. This is interesting, Papa. I must say, almost as if Poe finds necessity to provide himself alibi. Here is what he
writes: ‘“The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” was composed at a distance from the scene of the atrocity, and with no other means of investigation than the newspapers afforded. Thus, much escaped the writer of which he could have availed himself had he been upon the spot and visited the localities. It may not be improper to record, nevertheless, that the confessions of
two
persons (one of them the Madame Deluc of the narrative), made at different periods, long subsequent to the publication, confirmed, in full, not only the general conclusion, but absolutely
all
the chief hypothetical details by which that conclusion was attained.’”

“Is it so much he is providing alibi for himself, or, rather, does he make gesture to pat himself on the back? As I am coming to see it, first, above all else, his intent was to appear to his readers as if he had special knowledge, but now, with Old Hays breathing down his neck, he wishes me to think his information all comes from the public prints.”

“He protects himself. He knows your reputation.”

“Perhaps,” he said.

“He has employed you in his latest story, Papa.”

“What?” Hays stared at his daughter. “How so? What do you mean?”

“He has absconded with some very select but recognizable attributes of your personality and added them to the fictional chevalier Dupin.”

“Attributes of personality?”

She could see from her father’s face that he was perplexed.

“Such as what?” he very nearly growled.

“For one, from the ‘Rue Morgue’ to ‘Marie Rogêt’ to this third tale to which I refer, ‘The Purloined Letter,’ Monsieur Dupin now blows his clouds of smoke from a pipe. But more than that bit of all-too-familiar idiosyncrasy, let me again cite from his text. This is Dupin himself speaking:

“‘When I wish to find out how wise, or how stupid, or how good,
or how wicked is any one, or what are his thoughts at the moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.’”

She looked up from the written word and grinned at her father, whose hard countenance registered both annoyance and confusion.

He glanced away. Outside in the night air, rain seemed to be pelting off the window. “Mr. Poe is an expressive writer. He listens well.”

“Yet he perceives himself above all others. To prove to be anything less than all-seeing would strike him an enormous personal failure. I verily admire his power of observation, his clear, calculating approach. As an author he is masterful. In his three tales of mystery and logic thus far, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,’ and now this new effort, ‘The Purloined Letter,’ he uses the clever device of a seemingly simple character, employed as narrator and foil, a veritable everyman, to bring out his sly detector, the chevalier Dupin. In each of these works, he illuminates the pointing finger of unjust suspicion, and the detective’s penchant for deducing, by putting himself in another’s position, concealing by the obvious, posing an ever-enticing puzzle which we cannot possibly unravel. Papa, this is an exceedingly shrewd individual. From my perspective, Mr. Poe cannot possibly conceive that he is
not
somehow integral to Mary Rogers’ death, and this self-importance leads to feelings of guilt and paranoia—each and all, part of his grandiosity.”

Hays had listened. Now he spoke, wondering, “Since when, Olga, does grandiosity preclude murder?”