The Blackest Bird (37 page)
Authors: Joel Rose
60
P
oe and Patrick Brennan, Mrs. Brennan’s husband, with Old Hays directing their movement, carried Virginia upstairs, where she was put to bed in her room. Within a few moments she had lapsed into a state of unconsciousness, and remained therein, occasionally moaning softly.
Hays’ family physician Dr. John Francis, who had administered to Old Hays’ wife Sarah at the end of her life, was sent for immediately from his home in Greenwich Village, Balboa dispatched to fetch him.
Poe paced the room, not for a moment leaving his wife’s side, while Muddie applied cold compresses to keep her daughter’s temperature down.
Hays eventually left the vigil, shown to sit in Poe’s study through the center hall by Mrs. Brennan, where he made himself relatively comfortable in a stiff horsehair chair under a small shelf nailed to the wall displaying a plaster bust of Pallas Athena.
“It was left by a previous renter,” Mrs. Brennan explained to him when she saw Hays observing the curious object of sculpture. “A French lieutenant who had served under Napoleon.”
In addition, the walls were decorated with assorted French military
prints and hangings of the Empire manner, also the detritus of the Gallic militarist. There was a clock on the wall and books and magazines on the shelves. The remaining furniture was covered in cloth. Two windows looked out over the yard with a view of the river and the New Jersey Palisades across it, the very bluffs of Weehawken where the body of Mary Rogers had been recovered.
After Mrs. Brennan’s departure, Hays remained seated for a long period before picking up a folder from the desk labeled in neat, near-calligraphic hand: the packet of stories numbering 66: tales and letters to editors. He held the folder briefly, weighing its heft, and then opened it. The stories were listed and numbered on a sheet within the folder. The letter on top of the pile was addressed “Dear Bennett” and expressed this sentiment: “Can you not send me $5? I am sick and Virginia is almost gone. Come to the Bloomingdale Road and see me. Word is you suspect me of a cruel deed. I hope you know this impossible. Please bring your open mind along with you when you make the visit you promised to Mrs. Clemm. I will try to fix the matter soon.” It was signed “Yours truly, E.A.P.”
It was some two hours later when Hays became aware of the arrival of his friend John Wakefield Francis, entering through the downstairs mudroom.
“Where is the patient?” Hays could hear the medical man’s booming voice as he crossed through the kitchen.
Dr. Francis was led up the carpeted stairs to Sissy’s room. From the open door Hays observed him, a wise, florid fellow, in steel-rimmed spectacles, with white flowing locks and high boots.
Within a few moments Poe, head hanging, trudged into the room. He showed surprise to find Hays in his private sanctum in his favorite chair at his study desk. “Oh, you,” he said, glancing at the manuscript letter laid out in front of Hays. “You are still here?”
“Is she all right?” asked Hays.
Poe shrugged. “From what ails her, I do not think there is reprieve.”
“So the doctor has diagnosed what it is?”
“I do not need a doctor to tell me. It is death in life, sir.”
“I see,” Hays said. “I am sorry.”
“The doctor said he would make his examination and then speak with me. Muddie is with her. I should never have asked Sissy to sing that song.”
“It’s good that her mother is there. Mrs. Clemm seems devoted to her daughter.”
“She is.”
“And she seems devoted to you as well.”
Poe looked at him. “She is as well,” he said slowly. “To each three of us, family is everything.”
“I appreciate that. For me, the same. Family takes precedence over all things.”
Poe sighed.
“Something more worries you, Mr. Poe? What is it?”
Poe shook his head.
Hays waited.
“I do not have money enough to pay the physician.”
“Don’t concern yourself with that right now. I will pay the doctor’s charge. He is an old friend, and you can repay me when you can.”
“Under the circumstance, your visit here, I could never accept that,” Poe muttered, but both he and Hays knew this was only to uphold whatever fragile semblance of personal honor to which the man held. That he would accept Hays’ offer, nothing further need be said in regard to this matter.
“Only a few moments ago I was standing there at the window, gazing out at the river, thinking this must be your daily view,” Hays said. “It is there, nearly directly across, where the body of Mary Rogers was discovered. Back then, when it happened, I thought the puzzle would be easily solved, but here we are nearly four years later, and nothing. I have had some discussion with my daughter. As I may have told you, she is an avid reader, and so much admires your insight and obvious intelligence. She has explained to me how in your three stories of reason, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ ‘Marie Rogêt,’ and now ‘The Purloined Letter,’ the puzzle that you have invented as author, and the
clear, precise manner in which you unravel it for your readers, this is something not seen before in the annals of literature.”
Poe stared at him wearily. “That may be so,” he said slowly. “I never thought about the antecedents of my process. I am grateful to your daughter for her kind words and cognizance.”
“I must say, however, Mr. Poe,” Hays continued, “from my own particular vantage point, there is great gap in solving a puzzle purposely set forth to be solved by a calculating literary practitioner, from unraveling a mystery, taken place in a true reality by a criminal mind specially hell-bent to deceive.”
Poe blanched. “Point granted. I could not have said it better myself, High Constable. You wouldn’t happen to have some more tobacco, would you, sir?”
Hays patted his pocket, searching for his leaf. When he found it he held the sock to Poe. Poe reached to his desk and took a cheap corncob pipe from a ceramic mug. He filled it from Hays’ pouch while Hays struck a locofoco and lit both Poe’s bowl and his own.
They sat smoking. The voices coming from Virginia’s bedroom were infrequent and muffled.
“You have family?” Poe asked him.
“I have the daughter. I think you must know her. Olga Hays. She works sporadically for the house of Harper as a proofreader.”
Poe nodded. “We have spoken a few times. She has attended some of my lectures, I believe.”
“My wife died some four years ago. We had four sons, but none survived.”
“I am sorry to hear that. My sincere condolences.”
“My daughter is an ardent attender of your public presentations. She much admires you.”
“I am flattered.” He half smiled. “She shows good taste,” he added facetiously.
“She tells me you have a new story in
Godey’s Lady’s Magazine
.”
Poe’s eyes narrowed again with added suspicion.
“I’m sorry, I’m sure my daughter told me, but what is the title?”
“‘The Oblong Box.’”
“That’s it! ‘The Oblong Box.’ Veritably the coffin. If I’m not mistaken, in some ways inspired by the John Colt murder affair, no?”
“Only insofar as the offender sepulchres a corpse in a crate, here the oblong box of the title.”
“As did Mr. Colt sepulchre the body of his victim, Samuel Adams, in a similar crate.”
“As did Mr. Colt.”
“And ‘Thou Art the Man’?”
“You are indeed an ardent follower of my work, High Constable. You keep up surely.”
“As I said, my daughter reads assiduously. She funnels to me all matters of interest. The manner in which the corpse of Mr. Shuttle-worthy is nailed into the crate, only to burst forth, it again brings to mind Mr. Colt’s unfortunate treatment of Mr. Adams.”
“Yes, I admit I thought of John Colt as I wrote it.”
“You have had no recent correspondence with Mr. Colt, have you, Mr. Poe?”
“Correspondence with John Colt?” Poe smirked with some slyness. “Since his suicide you mean?”
“As you wish.”
“No, none,” he said. “In my imagination I may communicate with the dead, but in life, I daresay, I have had none.”
“Come now, Mr. Poe, neither of us believes John Colt to be dead, do we? These two stories of yours, followed by ‘The Premature Burial’…”
“This is the time, High Constable Hays, where you should be again admonishing me: ‘Good citizens speak the truth.’”
“Good citizens speak the truth, Mr. Poe.”
“No, I have had no communication with Mr. Colt, dead or alive. And ‘The Premature Burial’ speaks of my own fears to be mistaken for dead, and prematurely entombed. I have nothing more to allay, and furthermore, sir, for your information, no matter what you might think, I did not in any way murder Mary Rogers.”
“P
lease believe me, sir,” Poe said, gazing out at the still night, at the two hundred or so silent acres of the Brennan farm, at the flowing river beyond, at the place where Mary Rogers died. “I have not killed her. Nor have I partaken in her death.”
“I have not said that you did, sir,” Hays responded. “Not yet, in any event.”
“I loved Mary Rogers,” he breathed softly. “I would not have harmed her.”
“But did you disguise her death to preserve her honor?”
“How do you mean?” Poe turned from the window, toward he who was his pursuer and accuser; he who had remained seated but was watching him. He exhaled. “I make admission,” he said, “she, Mary, was with me in Poughkeepsie. I was visiting river cities, lecturing and reading poetry at local halls. She joined me as companion on my tour. Of that I am guilty. I betrayed my wife. But, again, I am not Mary’s murderer.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“I was at Anderson’s, some weeks before her death, with John Colt.”
“John Colt? Was he a frequent visitor to that establishment?”
Poe grimaced. “By all means, yes,” he said. “The tobacco shop is only across the street from his office on Chambers. What with the free port and free food, not failing to mention the companionship of those he admired and envied, I daresay Mr. Colt virtually lived in the establishment.”
“And you went there to see Mary, and John Colt accompanied you?”
“Mary no longer worked for Anderson. Surely you know that, High Constable. She had stopped employment some two years or more before. Her name came up, however. I cannot remember the context exactly.”
“So you went to see her?”
“John Anderson gave me her address. Mary had put an end to our liaison. Truthfully, under difficult circumstances for us both. It was shortly after our sojourn to Poughkeepsie. I was married. She desired a life for herself free from the rigors I offered. I did not begrudge her. That day at Anderson’s, there was some talk of difficulties she was having. I went to the boardinghouse on Nassau Street to see how she was faring.”
“Faring?”
“Was she well? Was she happy? Was she fulfilled?”
“And was she?”
“A new gentleman had entered her life after me. I knew not who he might be. At Anderson’s that was the talk in her regard. That her gentleman had abandoned her, but when I asked her, she said, no, they were still together, and that there were prospects of marriage.”
“This must have been disconcerting to you?”
“I was relieved, for her sake.”
“Yet she gave you not his name?”
“No.”
“And you did not insist?”
“I did not.”
“There are those who suggest that gentleman was you, sir.”
“It was not.”
“Were you still in love with her?”
Poe did not answer this question directly. “She told me she was pregnant,” he said instead.
Hays glared. “Why didn’t you say this before?”
“I promised I would not tell. I gave my word.”
“But she told you she was going for an abortion?”
“No, she did not. And if she did, it could only have been against her will. She had already felt the quickening. God knows I knew her, she never would have put an end to that life.”
At that instant Dr. Francis, looking tired and haggard, entered the study. Poe’s voice broke off. From beneath the bust of Pallas, both he and Hays faced the humbled physician.
“I am sorry to say,” said the doctor in a subdued voice, “I can hold out little hope.”
Poe asked few questions. There was little to ask that he did not already know. Consumption, the white death, was on hand. The blue-veined eyelids, the rouged-looking cheeks, the bright-eyed flush, often mistaken for loveliness, were all alight. The tubercle bacillus killed without disfiguring the body or destroying the mind.
“It will not be today,” said the doctor quietly, “and it will not be tomorrow. But her days are in short supply. She may have as long as a year, but surely not much more than that.”
Mrs. Brennan held her position in the kitchen, at the plank table, when the men came downstairs, moving slowly. A kettle was on the stove. She rose and offered both Hays and Dr. Francis beds for the night. She assured Hays his man—she referred to Balboa—could sleep comfortably enough in the barn on fresh hay, and there were stalls in the same building enough for the horses.
Hays thanked her for her kindness but refused, saying he would prefer to return home that evening for the express purpose, if nothing else, of sleeping in his own bed.
“My old bones,” he apologized.
Mrs. Brennan smiled, said she understood. Again she offered tea. Again she was refused. Hays and the doctor left the house through the back door. Balboa was standing under a solitary willow tree, gazing out at the dark river. The carriage was nearby, the more slender of the matched steeds stamping his left front hoof impatiently in the soft, moist ground, ready to be back in his own familiar stall.
Balboa helped both Hays and Dr. Francis up. At that moment Poe hurried out of the house. He said he found himself in dire financial straits, necessitating him traveling immediately to the city. He inquired if he could not ride with them. Hays answered that of course he could.
They rode for some time, each man staring straight ahead, lost in his own thoughts, before anyone spoke. It was Poe who broke the silence.
“I loathe to leave my Virginia ailing so. From my infancy,” he said, “I have been noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions. I married my wife early, and was happy to find in her a disposition not uncongenial with my own. My uncomplaining wife, my adoring wifey, alas! is the most usual and the most patient of sufferers. Forgive me, gentlemen, I know not what to do.”
Both Hays and Dr. Francis commiserated with their carriage companion’s anguish. Both men, eldered and vulnerable to chill, had wool blankets thrown over their laps, but Poe, where he sat opposite, facing them, shivered, and refused the offer of cover.
He continued. “Do you know that modern discoveries in what may be termed ‘ethical magnetism’ render it probable indeed that the most natural, and consequently the truest and most intense, of human affections are those that arise in the heart as if by electric sympathy?”
He began searching in his pocket, taking out a pencil.
“I dwell alone,” he suddenly blurted, “in a world of moan …”
He fell silent then, before beginning to scribble in an unsteady
hand on a small assemblage of paper scraps rummaged from his coat pockets. In the east the dawn gave evidence of breaking. His inspiration suddenly broken off, the poet now stared into space for some minutes before falling back to the bits and tears.
Referring from one to another, he began a recitation anew in lilting, murmured voice: “And my soul is a stagnant tide…” he said.
“Till the fair and gentle Virginia became my blushing bride—
Till the raven-haired young Virginia became my smiling bride
.
Ah, less, less bright
The stars of the night
Than the eyes of the radiant girl,
And never a flake
That the vapor can make
With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,
Can vie with the modest Virginia’s most unregarded curl—
Can compare with the bright-eyed Virginia’s most humble and
careless curl
.
Now Doubt—now Pain
Come never again,
For her soul gives me sigh for sigh
While all day long
Shines bright and strong,
Astarté within the sky,
And ever to her dear Virginia upturns her maiden eye—
And ever to her young Virginia upturns her violet eye.”
Staring at him as he ended, Hays asked, “Have you only just com posed this?”
Dr. Francis by this time was snoring softly, his head lolling.
“What inspires the poet,” Poe enounced, “what inspires me, is a
prescient ecstasy of the beauty beyond the grave, High Constable. It is through the music of poetry that we reach out to those departed, those beyond life.”
He glanced at the sleeping Dr. Francis.
“The mere thought of my wife’s departing drives me wild. Forgive me. There can be no barrier against the fear of death, because death knows no limits. Darkness and decay and red death hold dominion over all. My wifey is victim for an early grave. I know that. I know the darkness can devour us. I know it can annihilate us. Yet the darkness is astir. I hold that the dead in some form survive and return. I like to tramp the woods. I detest the dirt of the city, the din of the wagons. I loathe the insufferable noise of traffic rumbling over round paving stones, the loud-throated voices of clam and catfish peddlers. Who can blame me? Ah, broken is the golden bowl, the spirit flown forever! Let the bell toll for a saintly soul, let the burial rite be read. A dirge for the most lovely dead that ever died so young. For my Virginia, weep now for me, sir, or nevermore.”
In the first glinting rays of dawn, a tear glistened in Poe’s eye.
W
HEN THEY FINALLY REACHED
the city, morning was at hand. Hays gently woke the doctor and they dropped him at his home not so far from the once home to John Colt on the Washington Square in Greenwich Village. Hays and Poe then continued south below the open sewer of Canal Street to the high constable’s own home on Lispenard. The hour had now reached half past eight.
“Would you not like to come in for a cup of Javanese before proceeding on your way?” offered Hays.
Poe had announced his intention to find his way to his magazine publisher’s (a place of previous employ). He had the idea (he said, brought on by necessity) to try to sell his poem of the black bird.
Poe acquiesced feebly to the high constable’s invitation. He was enamored with coffee, he admitted, and the prospect of a brimming
cup at this early hour, after a night of sleeplessness and emotional upheaval, seduced him. He stepped down from the carriage, following the high constable, and with him entered the comfortable home of Hays and his daughter.
The early hour notwithstanding, Olga Hays was already fully awake and busy in the kitchen at the stove. The house was warm and the smell of bread, freshly baked, and brewing coffee prevailed.
“Ah, our preeminent reader and critic,” Poe smiled at first glimpse of Olga, his voice soft and alluring. “Miss Hays, we meet again.”
Olga was a woman with even, symmetrical features. She was now approaching her thirty-third birthday, but thanks to her bright, intelligent eyes and smooth skin looked younger than her years, save for her chestnut hair, which was streaked with three prominent tresses of a gray, so pale as to be almost white. Her father, hard on his own blood, thought her striking, if not beautiful.
“Mr. Poe, this is an honor as great as I have ever enjoyed, to have you in our home. As I have told you on previous occasion and you might even remember, there is no greater acknowledged fanatic of your work than I, sir.”
She held out her hand to be shaken.
Poe bowed in acknowledgment before slumping at the kitchen table.
She brought for her father a porcelain basin and filled it with warm water, heated on the stove. Hays washed his face and hands at the sink stand, using strong soap, and rubbed them dry with a coarse towel.
“Papa,” Olga said, noting her father’s red-rimmed eyes, the deep black stain beneath, “you need sleep. Why not off to bed with you?”
“No, no,” he protested, “I am fine. Is the Javanese ready yet, dear?”
She rose to the stove. With a thick blue potholder woven years before by her mother, she removed the coffeepot from the heat and poured out three large cups.
“Cream?” she asked Poe.
“Thank you. And, if possible, sweetener, please, miss.”