The Blackest Bird (29 page)

F
or his soul he could not have told you what he was doing on the riverbank. By a path obscure and lonely he made his way, until he stood on the rocky shore, gazing out on the water.

To the south the harbor lies, molten liquid pewter.

In the pit of his stomach he feels something—a queasiness—an unease.

He wades out into the low reeds, soaking his shoes, his wool trouser legs. The waves rise and fall, the river a chop. Nausea descends, momentarily dispelled by the relentless cold water lapping. The unrest returns, seizing his intestines, twisting them.

He closes his eyes, and he has a vision. He sees a hand, a woman’s hand, his Mary’s hand, break the water, reach out, beckon.

Hatless, dressed in black, he stumbles back into the woods, trying to remember where he is going, but cannot. He remembers his once-fiancée, Mary Starr, from Baltimore, but now married, with the name—he has learned—of Jenkins, and living somewhere in Jersey City. He has already crossed the Hudson three times that day looking for her. When he knew her, she was going by the name Mary Devereaux. He finds the path along the shore back to the ferry quay, past the Sybil’s Cave, past the lovely Elysian Fields.

At the dock, the ferryboat is waiting. He crosses back to the city again, pacing the deck, asking everyone he meets, do they know the lovely Mary Devereaux? do they know where the lovely Mary Devereaux lives?

He has already been to her husband’s place of business once that day to find her address, but now the information has wriggled from his mind and he is at a loss. The boat arrives at the Courtland Street docks in New York City. He rides it back to Jersey City without getting off, then back to New York, then back to Jersey City, with him still on board, still inquiring of anyone and everyone, do they know Mary Devereaux, he means Mary Jenkins, mumbling he will go to hell for the address of his Mary whateverhernameis, if he must.

Finally, he finds a deck hand who takes him at his word (later, when Mr. Jenkins, the husband, a merchant tailor, shows up on his way home from work, the navvy will tell him a crazy man was looking for his wife) and says he knows the place where she resides.

No one is at home. Mrs. Jenkins is shopping in the city with her sister when Poe arrives. Upon their return, from inside the house the door opens as if by its own volition, and Eddie stands beneath the jamb to greet them.

Mary, who has not seen him in a number of years, since she visited him and his child wife in Philadelphia, immediately sees he has been out on one of his sprees. His eyes do not focus, and his mouth is awry.

“Well,” she says, “Edgar, so nice to see you.”

His eyes flash, and he spits the words. “So you have married that cursed man!”

She is taken aback. “Yes, I have married,” she admits, “but he is not cursed. No, he is kind, and he is attentive.”

A slow smile creeps on Poe’s face. “Do you love him truly?” he asks.

“Truly?”

“Did you marry him for love?”

She is affronted. “That is nobody’s business. That is between my husband and myself.”

“You don’t love him,” he persists. Then his voice takes on a different tone, almost pleading. “You do love me.” He very nearly weeps. “You know you do. Oh, Mary!”

They stand and stare at each other.

Finally her face softens. She asks him if he would like to stay for tea.

He takes his seat at the table but eats nothing, and becomes so distracted by a bowl of radishes he seizes a table knife and with quick, hacking strokes so that pieces fly all over the table, reduces the red radishes to mincemeat.

At first Mary and her sister are stunned, but then Mary laughs, and her sister follows, and then so does Poe.

He insists she sing the song she knows to be his favorite, “Come, Rest in This Bosom,” penned by the Irish poet Thomas Moore, and so she does:

Almost immediately upon completion of this canticle, Poe gets up to leave. He compliments her, telling her she still sings with wondrous sweetness, and it is only a few days later his aunt, Mrs. Clemm, shows up at her door looking, she explains, for “Eddie dear.”

Mrs. Clemm tells Mrs. Jenkins she has tracked her son-in-law from Philadelphia to New York to New Jersey, and now finally to her home. She says Virginia is beside herself with anxiety and worry. “If he does not write her twice a day,” she confides, “my poor daughter begins to fret and descend into a state until she is nearly crazy, refusing to eat or drink, despite anything I can do.”

A search party is organized. Within hours Poe is found with twigs
and leaves in his hair, and moss and brambles stuck to his clothing, not far from the Sybil’s Cave, wandering in the woods on the northernmost outskirts of Jersey City.

“What a thing it is to be pestered with a wife!” he gripes when told of Sissy’s concern.

Undaunted, Mrs. Clemm corrals him to take him back to their home in the City of Brotherly Love, where she puts him to bed. He remains in delirium, distraught, for the better part of a week, moaning one word, the proper name “Mary,” over and over again, through his fever.

W
hat was it?

Images of her death never left him.

But of her murderer?

He could not picture him. Was it Poe? Was it another?

Some fourteen months before, in February of 1843, the third installment of the author’s “Marie Rogêt” story had appeared after a month’s delay in
Snowden’s Ladies’ Companion
.

Olga had impressed on the same printer’s imp of her acquaintance, even before that number hit the newsstand, securing proofs in January, only hours after the type had been locked down.

She returned home that day and pored over the galleys.

But what had come of it?

Hays, awaiting his daughter’s scrutiny, had hovered over her.

There was no real way to know what had been cut or added to the original text. It was clear Poe had afforded no real answer to any murder.

After much close scrutiny Olga made case at least for the final two paragraphs having been tacked on.

“I venture the original story stopped right here”—she pointed out
the words “With God all is Now” to her father. “The following paragraph after this sentiment takes up, ‘I repeat, then, that I speak of certain things only of coincidences…’

“Papa, here, at least in part, I would wager, is last-minute addition. To my thinking, this passage is out of character for Mr. Poe. Repetition of a nature so crude and poorly executed is not his style. He is far too elegant for such self-conscious stumbling. Not to mention, within the context, he digresses from Marie, names Mary Rogers, and labels her fate ‘unhappy.’ To my judgment, he has made sloppy work of his emotions and uncertainty, evidencing his confusion.”

Hays considered. “Is there more, Olga?” he had asked.

“He names no murderer,” Olga answered, “if that is what you are asking, Papa. He makes only sketchy reference to Marie dying in an aborted attempt to terminate a pregnancy. It would seem in the previous draft he made claim of a lover killing her in the clearing. I doubt Mr. Poe was in much condition to do much additional. Nor does it seem that he had the time. A single paragraph earlier where he makes clumsy case to charge, then excuse, the clearing as the scene of the crime. But, truthfully, even this is misconstrued. In my opinion, Papa, Mr. Poe has been taken up short by Mrs. Loss’s admission during her delirium that Mary Rogers died during the administration of a premature delivery.”

Hays hesitated. “So in the end, Olga, would you say Poe has exonerated himself or implicated himself?”

“By tone alone, his own ineptitude exculpates the author. If pressed, Papa, I would declare Mr. Poe an innocent. His crime not one of secret insight and murder, but of short time and poor writing.”

Studying his daughter, Old Hays noted the skill of her delving, the certitude of her thinking, the concert of her personal emotion.

He took her wisdom; his investigation, for what it was, going elsewhere (and nowhere) until some fourteen months later, in the early afternoon of April 13, 1844, sitting at his Tombs office, the high constable received official summons instructing him to report without delay to the office at City Hall of the newly elected mayor of the
metropolis, the Honorable James Harper, the same James Harper of the Harper Brothers publishing firm.

T
HE NEOPHYTE MAYOR-ELECT
sat large and lugubrious behind his polished black teak desk, carried over from his publishing house. He stood when Hays entered and extended his hand. “Good to see you again, High Constable,” he said.

“Sir,” Hays replied, taking James Harper’s hand and finding it, not for the first time, soft. “I offer my congratulations on your successful campaign.”

“Thank you very much, High Constable Hays. Please be seated.”

Hays lowered himself into the padded chair indicated and awaited his summons.

“Can you imagine why you are here, High Constable?” the mayor complied.

“You are putting the kibosh on me?” Hays answered without hint of a smile, and only half in jest.

James Harper laughed. “Very good, very good,” he said, his own grin wide. “But I would not dare, sir. Your daughter would have my head. Turn Old Hays out to pasture?” Harper shook his large head and chuckled more at the absurd humor in it.

In his election campaign Harper had portrayed himself the average working stiff, as if he were nothing more than some ordinary guilds-man plucked direct from the ranks of the General Society of Mechanics and Workmen. The Harper Brothers publishing concern was the city’s largest employer. Olga Hays continued to maintain her position as a copy editor at the firm, working from home, sometimes more than sporadically, on some Harper Brothers manuscript or another. Notwithstanding, as far as Old Hays apprised, James Harper was about as far cast from a regular workaday lout as one might possibly be.

“A man held as high in the public trust as you, High Constable?” Mayor Harper continued. “You are much too well-loved and feared; I might add, much deserved. Still, I admit to having an agenda, sir. But
I’ll confess it’s not quite so foolhardy as seeing you on the chopping block. Not yet, at any rate.” Harper chuckled once more, this time with the pleasure of his own lightheartedness.

He went on. “If I might so mention, and Lord knows I am sorry to draw attention to it, and be the unenvied bearer of such news, but even before I was able to assume this, my elected post, the state legislature already had usurped me, sir. In a clandestine maneuver, High Constable, last evening they have voted in Albany to put an end to the city’s force of police as it now stands. In so doing, these unseemly politicos have tried, for all intents and purposes, in one fell stroke, to put an end to your constabulary and the Day and Night Watch in favor of a new, professional regime of their own design, modeled, according to them, on the magnificence of the London Metropolitans. They have further, in an effort to make a neat package of it, and at the same time render me entirely impotent, seen fit to fold into this proposed democratic troop of theirs all the city’s fire wardens, health wardens, dockmasters, street inspectors, lamplighters, bell ringers, and every last one of the rest of our miseried city servants. I have been informed a law to this effect has now been signed by the governor.”

Hays said, “Mr. Mayor, in this city crime has never failed to keep its pace with commerce and culture. That the criminal element has infected the legislature comes as no surprise. The political machine of Tammany has made deft success of harnessing the ignorant and indigent. You Whigs will have a hard time in any quest to keep up with the postulants, more or less quell them.”

“Hear, hear, that is so, Mr. Hays, and certainly a concern. Yet the most erudite of my advisors tell me I am not bound to follow this state mandate. I am assured if I do not ratify the Democrats’ plan, the city’s present system, by law, must remain in effect.”

Hays maintained his gaze directly into Harper’s red-rimmed eyes and waited for the upshot.

“With my apologies, let us follow the opportunities afforded us,” Harper continued, looking away through the window where the omnibus station on Broadway at Ann Street could be just seen loading
passengers into a line of caravans. “This is, therefore, the course I find I must pursue, sir. Rather than follow the state’s lead, to offset them and render their hostile act harmless, I shall legislate in their sour faces so that I might hire two hundred men of my own choosing to comprise an existing force of my own. One and all, they will be native-born and loyal to my patronage. Not a papist, I daresay, will stand among them. Additionally, for the purpose of morale and to connote a new day, all officers will now wear uniforms.”

“With all due respect, sir, my men will object to uniforms.”

“I care not a whit for their objection. But might I ask, why is that, High Constable?”

“This is not the first time the discussion of uniforms has been engaged, Mr. Mayor. The feeling of the men is uniforms make them look like butlers.”

“As I have previously stated, what your men object to holds no consequence to me, High Constable. Your men have no say. I must not have made myself clear. All your men have been sacked, sir. Not by the state, but by me. You are hereby notified the city constabulary is dissolved, as well as the Day and Night Watch. A new police force will be put immediately in their place under my direction, and, with no disrespect meant, unlike your leatherheads, all will be professional, full-time officers, and all, sir, will wear uniforms as I see fit, acknowledging their allegiance and their professionalism.”

Hays did not flinch. Instead he said, “Yet, Mr. Mayor, you say your plan is to keep me in my post as high constable?”

“Precisely. At this point in time, I am not prepared to relieve you of your position, the position the public—and, I might add, sir, even if you find it hard to believe, I count myself among this number as well—feels you have occupied so ably for so many years. Again, with all due respect, how aged are you now, sir?”

“I am in my seventy-third year.”

“Seventy-three! Good for you. And you have stood your post since when?”

“1802.”

“Forty-two years. Through thick and thin. I admire you, sir, but when you step down—and given your longevity, I am going to make the assumption that will be sooner than later—your post will be necessarily consolidated.”

“Whatever my title, kept of my post of high constable at the whim of politicians or not, I am here to tell you the bloods and hooleys on the street will have a field day with
your
men in uniforms.”

“These officers will have to bear the brunt of any disrespect. They will be trained, and they will be armed. I am considering new Colt repeating revolvers for each man. I have already spoken with Colonel Colt on this matter, and each and every officer will be properly outfitted.”

Harper stood from his padded chair, rose to his full height, taking, as it were the high ground over the still-seated high constable. “I have seen fit to have a prototype of the intended dress tailored,” said the mayor. His chest expanded, he strode to a gleaming wooden armoire pushed against the wall in the room’s northeast corner. Opening the twin doors, he removed the garment in question.

“As you can see, the uniform is constructed from stiff, durable twill. It will consist of a frock coat, vest, and trousers. All will be this deep shade of blue. All buttons will be covered with matching blue serge, and each man will wear on his standing collar the letters
MP
embroidered in gold silk thread, signifying his affiliation to the force of Municipal Police. A number singular unto each individual will be assigned and also embroidered with bold silk thread on the collar for the purpose of identification of each officer, one from the other. In addition, pinned to each individual officer’s chest will be an eight-pointed, star-shaped badge, the prongs meant to honor each of the first eight Dutch officers to police this city in its infancy. The star will be made from copper, and is meant to signify the bearer’s allegiance to his duty.” Concluding with pride, Mayor Harper so stated, “They shall be known as none other than
my
Star Police!”

Here Harper saw fit to flip Old Hays a prototype of the proposed copper badge, which Hays managed to pluck out of the air with some
dexterity given the poor quality of the toss and the high constable’s ever-degenerating reflexes.

“By my order, the main concern of this new police concentrate on temperance, and all its implication,” continued the new mayor. “My feeling is that if we shut down the Irish groggeries and drinking emporiums, we have good chance to regain control of the greater metropolis, and for once put the papist immigrants in their place. First and foremost, from now on, High Constable, by my municipal decree, all Irish groggeries will be closed on Sunday Sabbath.”

“To what effect, sir?” Hays asked. “For many years, Mr. Mayor, I have fought the criminal element in this city. By foisting such pointed and discriminatory law upon a singled element of the general public you will serve only to further empower the very criminality you seek to disarm.”