The Blackest Bird (49 page)

“Your brother was present at the death of Mary Rogers, was he not, sir? Admit it! Your careless sibling carried on an affair with that young woman, which resulted in her pregnancy, and then arranged through Mrs. Loss a young doctor to perform a premature delivery. The doctor botched his work and her death was the horrid result. I am aware now of who that doctor is and where he is, and I shall have a word with him, you can rest on that. Not only did your brother lose his love, Mr. Colt, but his agitation in so doing also led to the needless death of Samuel Adams, and the ruin of his own life. It was because of these circumstances, was it not, he thought no sacrifice too grim?”

Colt said nothing.

“Where is your brother, Colonel? Is he here in New York? Is he in Baltimore? Has he not arranged the murder of yet another, his ostensible friend Edgar Allan Poe?”

“What would you like me to say, High Constable? That I am shocked? My brother is dead.”

“Stop! We both know he is not. Good citizens will tell the truth! Answer me, Citizen Colt, why would Edgar Poe ensconce your name in such poem, a verse that so closely mimics the crime against Mary Rogers, a message saying ‘LOOK NO FURTHER THAN SAMUEL COLT’?”

“I cannot say.”

“Come now, sir. Cannot or will not?”

“Perhaps it is as you say, Mr. Hays. The late Mr. Poe implicates me not for me to point my finger back at my brother, but because he himself is guilty.”

“I would hate to learn it was not your brother but you, Colonel Colt, who felt compelled to hire a gang of cutthroats to inebriate Edgar Poe and in so doing poison him with spirits and send him on to his untimely death because he somehow threatened your brother’s whereabouts.”

“Mr. Poe needed no cutthroats to entice him to death’s door, High Constable. We both know with full certainty Mr. Poe, God rest his soul, needed only himself.”

H
E COULD NOT HAVE BEEN
any more fatigued than he was when he returned home that evening. The house was cold and empty. He was thoroughly cautioned, and for an instant remained undecided what to do. To the substances of terror Old Hays was sufficiently alive, but of its shadow he had no apprehension. He reminded himself the word “shadow,” the sobriquet with which he had been known and so long associated, was but another word for ghost. He who in his heyday patrolled the city afoot by day and by night slumped in the recliner chair that was once the sole property of the murderer John Colt. Purposefully, he searched out on his chair-side table a copy of one of Olga’s many subscription numbers,
Sartain’s Union Magazine
. Quickly thumbing through the pages, he found the poem of Poe’s he sought, his last, entitled “The Bells,” the very rhyme he had penned so painfully with Olga that sunny afternoon not so long ago in the back garden:

His eyes may have grown heavy. So heavy they closed. In any event, some hours later, through his trancelike slumber, he hears Olga enter.

She had been up again in Fordham. Upon entering the parlor, she glared venomously at the two Colt revolvers in their case on the sideboard, the blue steel oiled and shimmering, sitting atop John Colt’s manuscript. She bespeaks venomously:

“These are—”

“A gift from Colonel Colt.”

“I see.” She picked up one, felt its enormous heft. Picked up the other. Did the same. “The Colonel must hold you in great esteem, Mr. Hays. Is this your likeness, sir?”

“By his account it is.”

“Very nice, Papa. I am so happy for you to be immortalized thusly with such frill and elegance on such a canvas.”

“Olga, your sarcasm is unwarranted. Frederika Loss’s sons Oscar and Ossian are being held in the Tombs. Superintendent of police Matsell picked them up on unrelated charges on the wharves. They had just arrived from Baltimore.”

“What has that to do with anything?”

“Much disturbing has come together in your absence. I took opportunity to have two conversations with the Kallenbarack boys, one before speaking with Colonel Colt and one after. I thought of using logic on them, as you have so often urged, but my patience wore thin and my crude instincts took over, telling me to clock each on the big toe with my staff, and I would get the answers I sought quicker and with less mental anguish.”

She could not help herself and half smiled. “And did it work, Papa?”

“It did.”

Olga studied her father. “How so?” she asked under steady gaze.

“Police superintendent Matsell received a letter from Baltimore from a doctor who claims to have administered to Edgar Poe during his final hours. I knew this particular physician, you see, many years ago here in New York. He was a young man then much caught up in the art of body snatching, particularly the bodies of young women. I had my suspicions, and asked the Kallenbarack brothers if this gentleman might have been the young doctor so oft mentioned in the course of my investigation who performed the premature delivery on Mary Rogers at their mother’s inn.”

“What did they say?”

“They said yes.”

“Papa!”

“I asked under what circumstance, and they were forthcoming.”

“They were? How so?”

“Upon my second visit, I persisted. I thought it John Colt, Olga, who employed the abortionist.”

“John Colt?”

“I was wrong.”

“Oh? Who was it then? I refuse to believe it was Edgar Poe.”

“It was Samuel Colt, Olga, not John. Samuel Colt is the homicide.”

“Papa!”

“He will get his, I promise you. The good citizens of this city will stand for nothing less than his public execution. Caroline Henshaw might have been packed off to Europe. It is no secret she is using the name Julia Leicester. Colonel Colt says she is in Germany, with the child, but I think her in France. He claims she has remarried in Europe, but perhaps we can induce her to return to testify against him in front of the oyer and terminer.”

“Was everything staged?”

“John Colt certainly killed Samuel Adams. In response, I fear, to the emotional toll taken up by his knowledge of what had happened to Mary Rogers; the realization of callous indifference manifested by his brother. As John Colt himself admitted to me during his initial
confession, a large part of the inspiration for his crime against the printer came from that fragile state in which he found himself. That he made argument that such instability came from insult to his skills and credibility as a wordsmith by Mr. Adams, I accepted at the time, but now know as fabrication or, at the least, embellishment. In actuality, with unremitting certainty, John Colt’s difficulties emanated directly from that certain knowledge his own brother was at center to the death of Mary Rogers. What followed, all that transpired in court and in the Tombs and after, was by craft and design of Samuel Colt’s device. The marriage between John and Caroline Henshaw, a sham. John’s suicide, the same. The fire, the escape, the grave robbing, all mere device choreographed by the marionetteer to cover his tracks. I now know from family friend and confidant, the actor and composer John Howard Payne, it was Samuel Colt who, on a European expedition for his Paterson Manufacturing Company, made the acquaintance of Caroline Henshaw initially in Germany when she was just a girl, became infatuated, married her, and brought her back to New York, but never acknowledged the marriage publicly, quickly coming to believe her beneath him societally, and a deficit to his ambition. She was with child, his child, when he cast her out, and that very well may have been part of it.”

“Yet his brother took up with her?”

“John Colt took it as his filial duty. Perhaps he loved Miss Henshaw. I think, perhaps, the indignation he suffered beneath his brother’s thumb made him susceptible to another treated similarly by such tyrant. Alas, we might never know. John Colt is in either Texas or California. We most assuredly shall never see him again in this lifetime. Samuel Colt was introduced to Anderson’s segar emporium by his brother. Quickly he became one of those enamored gentlemen who frequented that establishment all too often. He had fallen in love with Mary Rogers and pursued her with urgency, even though, at the time, she was secret companion and paramour to Edgar Poe. All was clandestine, but in short order Mary had been separated from Mr. Poe with promise from Colonel Colt of marriage to him, and, too, like
Caroline Henshaw before her, she found herself with child. Samuel could ill afford to make the same mistake twice. Without her knowledge he arranged a premature delivery at Nick Moore’s Inn, enticing her there with the promise of marriage.”

“She thought she was going to be married?”

“She did. It was what she had been told. According to Ossian Kallenbarack and his brother, instead Dr. Moran was brought in upon the recommendation of Mrs. Loss, who knew this physician from similar procedures on her premises. Upon learning of the nature of this betrayal, Mary Rogers was seized by an hysteria. She fought her assailants futilely, resulting in the many bruises later to be discovered on her body. Instead of the bridal veil, the unfortunate girl was drugged by ether.”

Olga visibly cringed.

“She was not blessed by good fortune, and did not survive the invasive procedure to end her pregnancy,” Hays continued. “Samuel Colt, trying to disguise the circumstances of her death, removed her body from the inn in the dead of night with the aid of Mrs. Loss’s sons. She was trussed and thrown in the river with the hope the body would not be found, but, of course, it was.”

“My God, Papa, can it be true?”

“That’s not the all of it, Olga. Not only is Samuel Colt the murderer of this innocent girl, but I fear he has arranged for the murder of Edgar Poe as well.”

“What? How? How can you say this? Do you feel your footing firm for such accusation?”

“Unfortunately, I do.”

“But why Edgar? Why in the world would Samuel Colt find necessity in killing him? He had finally found everything that he ever wanted. He had literary fame, he would have money, he was reunited with his childhood love.”

“Too late. His fate was already settled when he went to Samuel Colt with John’s book of poetry, looking for funds to mollify Muddie and wrest Fanny Osgood from her husband.”

“Papa, I am concerned. Worried. Have you confronted this man? This monster?”

“I have had my conversation earlier in the week, when he handed me the prize of his pistols. But I have only just come upon the consequence and solution of these offenses. I shall require solid proof, not mere speculation. Need I remind you, Olga, sadly, neither you nor I reside on the Rue Morgue, and I am no chevalier.”

“Enough! I can bear no more. Papa. Was it wise to confront Samuel Colt so?” All color had left Olga’s face. “There is need for me to prepare your dinner,” she said, her voice toneless. She stumbled for the kitchen.

Hays called his protestation, said he was not hungry, but his daughter, through a veil of tears, insisted he needed his sustenance, must eat to protect his health. She rummaged through the victuals available in the larder.

“Papa,” she spoke through cracked voice, “I am running out to the greengrocer’s. I shall be right back.”

She poured him a brandy before she left. Had a short one herself. “You need to keep up your strength,” she said to her father, placing the brandy, it was Armagnac, what would be the last for each, on the low table atop the now few days’ old copy of the reprehensible Bennett’s
Herald
with the obituary signed “Ludwig.”

Once she was gone he took up the glass, grateful for the sharp bite of the spirits. He glanced down at the print the last line of the Reverend Griswold’s foul testimony magnified improbably through the facets of the cut-glass crystal:

He heard the kitchen door open and close as Olga departed the house for the street. She turned left on Lispenard and made her way on the board sidewalk.

At the corner, and down the block three storefronts, there was an active greengrocery, next door to a busy haberdasher with birds, English
finches, in the window that chirped incessantly, “Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!”

Olga had the thought to buy a bird, a tough rooster displayed plucked yellow and hanging by its feet in the greengrocer window, some equally yellow Long Island potatoes, an onion, orange carrots, and green celery in order to make a soup nourishing for her father.

As she entered onto the crush and ceaseless rumbling of the Broadway, five young coves, strutting abreast, crowded her off the sidewalk. Tight-faced and rough, they take no notice of her, stepping hard left onto Lispenard as she continued right, down Broadway.

One of these rowdies sports a sparkling white suit, very natty, if somewhat soiled in two or three spots at the knees and elbows and along the collar line. The second imp is debilitated by a painful-looking limp, his leg cruelly withered and dragging, his foot turned out. The third spits on the sidewalk, the sputum plentiful, blossoming brown through the gap of four missing teeth. The fourth boasts arms that dangle, fists as big as hams. The fifth is lean and sinewy, a dapple of down, in lieu of real beard, disguising his weak chin. This one would put you in mind of his late mother, Mrs. Loss, if you had known her during her lifetime. All wear battered and grimy soft caps.

Olga Hays could not have known their mission—Tommy Coleman, Tweeter Toohey, Pugsy O’Pugh, Boffo the Skinned Knuckle, Charlie Kallenbarack—although as they pass she steals one furtive glance at them, and they at her, before quickly looking away and continuing to the grocer.

C
OLT’S LEATHER
reclining chair is supple, the angle set right. In the parlor, in front of Old Hays, the phantom warmth of grayed embers and charred black remnants of a fire, hours dead, affords him nothing. A chill seizes him, he who with pride was the city’s first detective, what was known in his time as shadow, what was known as shade.