The Blackest Bird (42 page)

O
lga Hays rushed into the parlor, stamping snow from her shoes. Her father had been dozing in front of the fire, stretched on Colt’s leather recliner, wrapped in a tartan wool blanket, but her return had awoken him.

“Papa, I was at the Jefferson Market, hoping to get home and out of the snow, when Annie Lynch approached me as I was haggling with the butcher. She took me aside and said, ‘Have you heard?’ to which I, of course, responded, ‘Heard what?’ and she proceeded to tell me Mrs. Osgood has separated from her husband. It is said she is with child, and not necessarily the child of Mr. Osgood.”

Olga continued in a rush. “There is more,” she said. “It is all coming out.”

Hays was by now wide awake.

“The prattlers are all saying how Fanny’s condition is only one in a series for Edgar. Popular talk is it was he who put Mary Rogers with child, and it was with him, none other, that Mary Rogers traveled to the inn of Nick Moore to secure her premature delivery; that he offered similar solution to Mrs. Osgood.”

Hays felt the weight of sadness and frustration descend. “The
tongues of wagging women can be lethal as a dirk,” he sighed before inquiring of Olga if she knew Poe’s most current address.

“Eighty-five Amity Street,” she replied.

N
EARLY A YEAR HAD PASSED
since James Harper had suffered crushing defeat. Running for his second term as a Nativist, he had been voted out of office by nearly seven thousand votes of forty-nine thousand cast.

As mayor Mr. Harper had failed to foresee that the mayoralty might so quickly be done with him. He had portrayed himself nothing less than a staunch populist, an advocate of frugal government, supporter of low taxes, limited city service, and social control. But he never fathomed how his vituperative posture directed against the papists assured him only defeat. He had deluded himself, failed to recognize dismally the new face of the city, the force of the slums, most of all, the ever-increasing voting power of the poor and downtrodden.

Since the turn of the decade the city’s population had mushroom-grown from three hundred thousand souls to five hundred thousand, largely Irish and German immigrants.

And most, if not all, ably harnessed to Tammany.

Within days of taking office, the new mayor, William Havemeyer, a Democrat, dissolved his predecessor’s Star Police (those who had become known on the street as “coppers” or, for short, “cops”) if not their copper-star badges, bringing in a man of his own choosing, George Washington Matsell, to oversee a new, handpicked municipal force of eight hundred.

Summoned to City Hall the day after elections, Old Hays had taken the news stoically that he would be out of a job.

Truth be known, Mr. Jacob Hays himself had cast his ballot for Havemeyer, knowing exactly what his resulting fate would be when the wealthy sugar merchant took office.

Having reached his seventy-fifth year, the encroachment of age
enjoyed a palpability not to be denied in the high constable. Aches and pains (a gumboil, an eye ache), Hays had not taken his sacking personally, and he was urged by the new mayor and new police commissioner, Matsell, to keep attached to his name for as long as he wished the rank and nomenclature of high constable.

Notwithstanding, since that day and before, his ire and frustration had not abated, his absorption with the name Mary Rogers had not desisted, but had lent his every day a source of remorse and inconsonance; yet indignation by itself had led him no closer to solution.

H
AVING REACHED
the address on Amity Street provided him by Olga, a small three-story structure off Sixth Avenue, Old Hays learned from the landlady, a thin woman manning a straw-bristled broom, the Poe family had moved yet again, and left no forwarding address.

Since he was only a few blocks from the residence of Annie Lynch, Old Hays decided to go there to inquire if she perhaps knew what had become of the Poes.

His knock found her in.

“What a surprise, Mr. Hays!” she exclaimed.

Made aware of his mission, without much encouragement she corroborated and, if anything, embellished the sordid tale circulating, told by Olga, in regard to Mr. Poe and Mrs. Osgood.

“Miss Lynch, do you know where I might find Mr. Poe?”

She did. “He is living on East Broadway. I have only yesterday been there to commiserate with his aunt and wife, if not with him. He claims the building once the residence of a wealthy merchant, but I think not. It is a common tenement. I must say he is living with his family in a sorry state on the third floor in the rear. If I am not wrong, let me see, yes”—she referred to her daybook— “here it is right here, the number is 195.”

“Thank you, Miss Lynch.”

“Thank
you
, Mr. Hays.”

Balboa had been summoned from his home along the Minetta Brook, and it was he this chilly day who had been ferrying Old Hays about the city, taking time out from his own life (having married three years before the Rogers family’s colored maid, Dorothea Brandywine, and presently being the father, despite his rather advanced age, of two little girls, with a third child on the way).

In the light carriage, the streets and buildings sparsely dusted with snow, they proceeded east on Waverly Place, turning right on the wide expanse of the Broadway, proceeding down to reach the back side of City Hall before turning east.

The home was as Annie Lynch had described: a low tenement squabble, not a great distance above Chatham Square. Hays made his way down the dark corridor to the rear of the building where the stairway rose. Gripping the banister for support, in the dim light he proceeded to the first landing, rested there, made his way to the second, rested there, cursing his age, his painful legs, his nagging back, and then on to the third, catching his breath in the hallway before knocking.

Mrs. Clemm answered his short, curt rap, inviting him in without enthusiasm.

Almost immediately Poe emerged from a back bedroom, his face flush, his hair wet as if he had been holding his head under a pump.

“Mr. High Constable,” he said, some confusion curtaining his features, “what are you doing here? Have you not retired from the force?”

“I have, sir. I am here as a private citizen, with some concern for you as a gentleman.”

Hearing this, Poe dismissed his aunt. Before she could leave the small room, however, he called her back, asked where his wife was, to be informed that she was sleeping in the front bedroom.

Once Mrs. Clemm had departed the room, Hays, mindful of his words and their volume, told Poe of the reason for his visit, asked him about Mrs. Osgood, if not about the pregnancy, and not yet mentioning the name Mary Rogers.

“I assure you. No need to worry,” Poe said. “It is evident there is a conspiracy among all other authors of America to belittle my genius and smother my work. I vow it will not stop me. I announce to you today, High Constable Hays, I am on my way to England where I shall read ‘The Raven’ to none other than Queen Victoria and the royal family. Of course, I am more than a little cognizant that this can only further incite the jealousy of my brother and sister writers. Even so, I shall persist. It can only be posterity that will judge my work. Future generations will sift the gold from the dross and then my black bird will be beheld, shining above all else, as a diamond of the purest water.”

“Mr. Poe,” Hays said gently, “are you in any way aware of how this all appears to the discerning eye, sir? I have been your defender, but more and more you presume a position untenable. I implore you, sir, as a good citizen of this city of New York, are you responsible for Mrs. Osgood’s state of pregnancy?”

“I am not,” Poe stated adamantly, if a little confused.

“You are not?”

“As I say.”

“I am troubled, because I have heard otherwise. And again, sir, I warn you, not only have I heard you are father to this child, but also, to my sorrow, your name arises again from the unseemly murk entwined with the name of Mary Rogers.”

“Do you dream, sir?” Poe deflected, as if he would have Hays believe he did not hear.

Hays puffed his cheeks and blew out a breath of unrestrained exasperation. “I do, sir,” he replied. “As do we all, I fear.”

“I mean sleeping dream,” maintained Poe.

“What other kind of dream is there, man?”

Poe stared at him as if he were trying to put the high constable in sharper focus. “My dreams are of the unknown,” he finally said. “If you must know,” Poe continued, unsullied, “I reside in the great shadowy realm of dream whose music is hidden from mortal ears, swells
through all space and gleams of more than mortal beauty. Ravish the eyes, come to me! That, sir, is to dream spiritually.”

“Do those sweet, shadowy faces to which you refer wear to you an expression of pain, sir?” inquired Hays.

Poe blinked. “Not so much pain as grave thoughtfulness—tender sympathy.”

“Ah-hah,” Old Hays rejoined, “so that is your mind, sir?”

“No, no, no,” the poet responded quickly. “Because, you see, Mr. Hays, even if my dreams are populated by the same ghosts as yours, I say to you, only mine wear a look of suffering—patient suffering— almost an appeal, sir—and I spread out my hands to reach them. I call to them in my dreams. I implore them. I am more to them than they to me. I call to them, sir, to speak, but they are silent and float away, pointing forever onward … but your spectres, Mr. Hays, I maintain when they call to you, sir, those spirits, your spirits, can only be looking backward.”

T
hree days after his visit to the Poe home, Hays returned to East Broadway, only to once more find the family gone.

No word or sign of this family’s whereabouts reached him for some time until Olga received word from Annie Lynch, over tea and cakes one afternoon on Elizabeth Street, that Mrs. Clemm had been seen in the city. She apparently had approached the poet and editor William Cullen Bryant, begging that gentleman for help, saying her son-in-law was crazy, his wife dying, and the whole family starving.

Bryant reportedly related to Miss Lynch how the countenance of this lady struck him simultaneously as both beautiful and saintly. He regarded himself, he conveyed, in the presence of one of those angels upon earth that women in adversity can be, and although he admitted he may have been a little astonished by this good lady’s request (“But not unduly so,” he stressed), he gave her twenty dollars with the understanding she need not pay him back.

During the course of their encounter, Mrs. Clemm stated to him that her family had left the city under the most undesirable of circumstances, the torrent of cruel gossips pursuing them, Sissy’s health in a continued torment of downward spiral, Eddie in a state of despair and
unable to write. They had found a place, Mrs. Clemm said, on the shore of the East River at Turtle Bay, and were now living in a home they could scarcely afford, even if they rented it for a pittance, from a kind farmer by the name of Miller, a friend of the Brennans.

The house was situated at the foot of Forty-seventh Street, she had told Bryant, a decidedly country district with fresh air, unlike the heavy, fetid stench they had endured in the cloistered city. The home itself was neat and freshly whitewashed, with lovely fruit trees and cows and chickens grazing and pecking by the riverbank.

Upon receiving this information, Hays once again enlisted Balboa. But from where the carriage sat now, a quarter-mile distance inland from the aforementioned Turtle Bay, Old Hays was unable to spot Poe about the property. To Hays’ instructions, Balboa eased horse and buggy out of sight, under a copse of crab apple trees, welcome shade from the sun’s strong rays this spring day.

It was not long before Hays observed the door to the white clapboard house open and Mrs. Clemm come out onto the porch. Hays watched as this broad, staunch old woman, her face set square and impassive, remained momentarily on the porch, her slash mouth clamped tight. Then, apparently seeing not at all what she sought, she trudged to the riverfront, looked up and down the bank, scanning the little islands that sat midstream. After a few moments of so viewing, her lips moved, she muttered something to herself before hurrying off, back and shoulders bowed, in the direction of a second house, a larger version of the first, a nearby neighbor, Hays judged Farmer Miller’s.

Hays delayed some moments before descending the carriage. He used his constable’s staff as he moved purposefully along the muddy path, approaching the Poe house. He climbed the stair, stood on the porch, peered in the window.

Inside, through the glass pane, all stood still, all silent. He could see Poe’s writing desk, pen and inkpot, books piled on the floor.

He knocked on the door, called softly, “Hello?”

No one answered, and he heard nothing.

Then a cough, wet and ratcheting.

Virginia Poe emerged from the back room wearing an ill-fitting red felt dress, decidedly homemade, with curious yellow ribbon piping. Her hair appeared stringy and damp, less glistening than previously observed, her complexion more peaked.

“High Constable Hays,” she murmured. “I thought I heard someone calling.”

“Forgive me for disturbing you, Mrs. Poe. I seek your husband.”

She forced a smile, fidgeted with her fingers. “I know not where he is,” she said. “I was asleep. My mother? Is she not here?”

He indicated outside in a westerly direction. “I saw her go in the direction of the neighbor’s.”

“Ahh,” she said, as if that explained all. “Forgive me, sir, for being so bold as to ask, but I am at a loss why you pursue my brother so doggedly.”

“Your brother?”

“As I call him, Eddie, Buddy, I’m sorry, I refer to my husband.”

“Dear lady, I do not pursue him so doggedly. But my duty remains my duty, and in the course of conversation with Mr. Poe, I have become aware of your husband’s acute power of reason. I seek only his capable aid in my investigation, that is all.”

“What investigation is that of which you speak?”

“The death of the segar girl, Miss Mary Rogers.”

“I assure you, sir, Eddie has nothing to do with such horror.”

“I do not say that he does, dear lady.” His eyes had wandered to Poe’s writing table. A leather-bound binder lay atop a pile of manuscript pages.

She mistook his gaze. “I wrote that,” she said. “For Eddie on Valentine’s Day.”

“What?”

“The poem you are looking at.”

It was pinned to the bottom shelf of the bookcase, overlooking his desk. The phrases were neatly penned in her girlish hand. He put on
his spectacles, the magnification increased recently by the increment of three, in order to decipher the sentiment.

“Very nice,” he said, nodding his encouragement. “You wrote this?”

She grinned, obviously pleased by his solicitation. “There is a secret message hidden within. See if you can decipher it, High Constable.”

He looked but saw nothing.

“What is it I am looking for?”

“Read the first letters of each line in progression down the page,” she said. “It spells out Eddie’s name: E-D-G-A-R A-L-L-A-N P-O-E. Don’t you see?”

“So it does.”

“And you a detective!” she teased.

He smiled back at her. A mere child, grinning, so taken with herself and her accomplishment. Her violet eyes shifted. He looked where she looked.

Through the window glass he could see Poe out on the river a short way off, standing in a rowboat, wending his course toward shore, using an oar to push himself through the reeds.

Evidently the poet had been on the other side of one of that group of small islands midstream. As Hays came out of the house, Poe had reached the shallows. Seeing the high constable, he remained in the boat as it bobbed at the rocky shore.

Hays came down the front stair, making his way to the bank. “Mr. Poe, how are you?” he called. “Are you coming ashore, sir? I need a word with you.”

When no response came from him, Hays said, “Mr. Poe, I have come a distance from the city to speak with you.”

The boat continued a few yards offshore. Poe stood the gunnels. “How have you found me?” he said.

“Have you tried to elude me, sir? I would hate to think it so.”

“Elude you? My intention was nothing of the kind. Poor Sissy suffers. I do anything I can to ameliorate her pain.”

“For all our hundreds of thousands of citizens, we both know Gotham to be a curiously small place, Mr. Poe. It is no great accomplishment to find what one seeks here. How is your health? How does your work go?”

Poe now navigated the last few yards of river to achieve land.

“I have been too consumed to write,” he said as he leaped, somewhat unsteadily, from boat to rocky shore, grabbing Hays’ solid forearm for support, “although the idea for a new masterwork plays about in my head. I am going to explain the universe. For the here and now, however, I am sorry to say only a few pathetic words do I find cascading from my brain to my pen: ‘The moaning and groaning,’” he recited, his dark eyes gleaming. “‘The sighing and sobbing, quieted now with this horrible throbbing. And, ah, of all tortures that torture, the worst has abated, the terrible torture of thirst. The sickness, the nausea, the pitiless pain, have ceased with the fever that maddened my brain.’” He grinned tightly with his performance while remaining somber. “You see, High Constable,” he admitted, “it’s not all bad.”

They stood together gazing out at the river, an estuary really.

“I was a champion once,” Poe said. “As a youth I swam six miles
against the current in the James River. And once I held the nation’s record for the standing broad jump.”

“You don’t say.” Hays nodded.

Poe paused. “I have known an inordinate number of young women to whom the master, Death, has come all too soon. At that exact moment where their life comes into blossom, they are taken. What am I to believe?”

“Is Mary Rogers one you count among these?”

“You know what my darling little wifey told me?” he said, seeming for all intent and purpose to discount the question. “She promised me that after she is dead she will come back to me as my guardian angel and protect me.”

“If she is in any way able, I am sure she will,” said Hays.

He looked through Hays in an unearthly manner, and after securing the beleaguered watercraft on the bank, trudged past the marsh grass and reeds, up the flagstone path to the little white house, Hays following him.

“Do you think it true, High Constable? Do you think I need protection from beyond?”

“I cannot answer that. Only you can know. Have you sinned under such circumstance whereas you will need protection in the hereafter? For your sake, sir, I hope not.”

What struck Hays most upon reentering the house was not the cramped quarters, but the order and cleanliness of the living space, the dignity of Mrs. Clemm’s dogged determination to keep a spotless and decent home for her children.

The parallel, he felt unexpectedly, to his own deceased wife’s predilection toward orderliness overwhelmed and saddened him.

The elderly woman responsible for such scrupulousness came in soon after, her apron full of turnips and dandelion greens from the field. Upon her seeing Hays, her expression hardened, but she was cordial and polite, apologized, said these were meant for Eddie’s lunch, but she would go right out again and pick more, her not knowing the high constable coming for luncheon.

He begged her not to bother, protesting it was impossible for him to stay.

Out of politeness she asked after his health and the health of his family, having met his daughter Olga on occasion at Amity Street during several supportive visits to Sissy from the starry sisterhood. She made no mention of her distrust of Old Hays, too polite to press on in recrimination, insisting on taking to the field in search of more dandelions, saying no matter, it was no trouble, the greens and turnips both meant for the cows, not human consumption.

Hays pressed on her that she did not. Finally acquiescing, she returned to the stove, where her preparation had begun for what she called dandelion soup, although as far as Hays could see she had no chicken broth, nor salt pork.

On her straw bed Virginia must have fallen asleep, but as he prepared to leave, Hays heard her stir in the back room, her heartbreaking cough muffled somewhat by space and distance.

Because of her illness she had been given the choice room for her own in the rear of the house, the family cat, Caterina, mewing for affection at her bedside.

Muddie and Poe shared a room with a single bed in the front, adjacent to the kitchen. A small pallet had been set out for Poe in a closet of that room.

Virginia was calling, “Eddie. Eddie, darling brother, come see me.”

Mrs. Clemm insisted on dismissing them. “Go, Eddie. Attend to your business with this man. Your sister knows how deeply you love her. I’ll see to her.”

He kissed her. “My Mother,” he said, looking at Hays as he said it, “without you, I am nothing.”

Together he and Hays returned outside and stood briefly on the porch watching the ships steam up the East River on their way to the Long Island Sound, or down, from Hell’s Gate to the harbor.