The Poe Shadow Read online

  “Why would you leave that flower at his grave?” I demanded. “To mock me?”

  “Flower? What do you mean? By the time I found where you had gone, you were kneeling on the grave, as though praying before some idol. That’s all I saw, and it was enough. Flower—do you think I have time for such things!”

  On this point, I could not help but believe him, as he truly sounded as though he had never heard the word “flower” before or beheld one. “And did you send that man to me? That warning not to meddle. To try to dissuade me from my interests outside the office? Tell me at once!”

  “Absurd! Quentin, listen to your own flat nonsense before they send for a straitjacket! Everyone understood you needed time after what happened. Your depression of spirits was…” He looked away from me for a moment. “But it has been six months.” Actually, it had been five months and one week since my parents had been laid to rest. “You must think of all this, beginning now, or…” He never finished this statement, only nodded with decision to impress the point. “It’s that other world you’re fighting against.”

  “The ‘other world,’ Peter?”

  “You think me at odds with you. But I tried to gain greater sympathy with you, Quentin. I sought out a book of tales by that Poe. I read half of one tale—but I could go no further. It seemed…” Here he lowered to a confessional whisper. “It seemed as I read that God was dead to me, Quentin. Yes, it’s that other world that I worry about for you—that world of books and bookmen who invade the minds that read them. That imaginary world. No, this is where you belong. These are your class, serious and sober people. Your society. Your father said that the idler and the melancholy man shall ever wander together in a moral desert.”

  “I know what my father would say!” I protested. “He was my father, Peter! Do you not think I keep a memory of him as strong as yours?”

  Peter glanced away. He seemed embarrassed by the question, as though I was challenging his very existence, though in fact I sincerely wished to know his answer. “You have been like a brother to me,” he said. “I mean only to see you contented.”

  A gentleman obliviously interrupted us, ending our discussion. I refused his offer of tobacco, but I did take a glass of warm apple-toddy. Peter was right. Unspeakably right.

  My parents had given me a post in society, but it was now my place to earn its luxuries and fine associations. What dangerous restlessness had I been dandling! It was to be able to enjoy the comforts and delights of good circles that I labored at our law practice. To enjoy the company of a lady like Hattie, who never failed as a friend and a steady influence. I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds—friendly sounds of contentment, which cordially surrounded me from every side and drowned out my riotous thoughts. In here people knew themselves, and never doubted for a moment that they understood the others around them and that they themselves were perfectly understood in return.

  When Hattie returned to the room, I signaled her to come to me. To her surprise, right away I took her by the hand and kissed it, then kissed her cheek in front of everyone. The guests one by one fell silent.

  “You know me,” I whispered to her.

  “Quentin! Are you unwell? Your hands feel warm.”

  “Hattie, you’ve known my feelings for you, whatever those who babble about me say, haven’t you? Haven’t you always known me, though they gape and simper? You know I am honorable, that I love you, that I loved equally yesterday and today.”

  She took my hand in hers and a thrill ran through me to see her so happy merely by a few honest words from me. “You’ve loved me yesterday and today. Tomorrow, Quentin?”

  At eleven o’clock on this night, her twenty-third birthday, Hattie accepted my marriage proposal with a simple nod. The match was declared suitable by all present. Peter’s smile was as wide as anyone’s; he forgot entirely about his rough words to me, and more than once he took credit for the arrangement.

  By the end of the evening, I had hardly even seen Hattie again, we were so bombarded on every side. My head was clouded by drink and exhaustion together with a feeling of satisfaction that I had done what was perfectly right. Peter had to gingerly put me in a carriage and direct the driver to Glen Eliza. Even in my stupor, though, I took the slender Negro driver aside before he left me at my house.

  “Can you return first thing in the morning, sir?” I asked.

  I laid down an extra silver eagle to ensure our rendezvous.

  The next day, the driver was there at my pathway. I almost sent him away. I was a different man than the morning before. The night had impressed me with what was real in this life. I would be a husband. It seemed, in this light, that I had obviously already gone far beyond any acceptable interest in the final hours of a man whose own cousin did not care a pin. And what of that Phantom, you ask?—why, it seemed obvious now that Peter was completely right about him. The man had been some uneasy lunatic who happened to have heard my name before in a courtroom or some public square, and merely was babbling to me. Nothing to do with Poe! With my private reading! Why had I let it (and Poe) drive away my peace to such a degree? Why had I felt so grand when thinking I could find an answer? I could hardly think about it at all now. I decided to send the carriage away. I think if the honest driver had not looked so anxious to please me, I would have done so; I would not have gone. I wonder sometimes what would now be different.

  But I did go. I directed him to the address of Dr. Brooks. Here would be my last errand in that “other world.” And as we drove, I thought about Poe’s tales, how the hero chose, when there were no longer any good choices, to find a certain impossible boundary—as did the fisherman traveler lost in “A Descent into the Maelström,” plummeting down into the whirlpool of eternity—which most would not dare cross. It is not the simplicity of a tale like Robinson Crusoe’s, who chiefly must survive, which is what we would all try accomplishing; living, surviving, is only a beginning for a mind like Poe’s. Even my favorite character, the great analyst Dupin, voluntarily and cavalierly seeks entrance uninvited into a realm that brings unrest. What is miraculous is not only the display of his reasoning, his ratiocination, but that he is there at all. Poe once wrote in a tale about the conflict between the substance and the shadow inside of us. The substance, what we know we should do, and the shadow, the dangerous and giggling Imp of the Perverse, the dark knowledge of what we must or will do or secretly want. The shadow always prevails.

  As we passed through shady avenues among some of the most elegant estates, heading to Dr. Brooks’s house, I was suddenly jostled forward out of my seat.

  “Why have we stopped?” I demanded.

  “Here, sir.” He came around to open my door.

  “Driver, that cannot be.”

  “Wha’? Sir…”

  “No. It must be farther, driver!”

  “Two-seven-zero Fayette, as you asked. Right here.”

  He was right. I leaned far out the window, looking upon the scene, and steadied myself.

  4

  WHAT I HAD imagined: conversation with Brooks, perhaps a dish of tea. He talking of Poe’s visit to Baltimore, recounting the poet’s purposes and plans. Revealing Poe’s interest in finding one Mr. Reynolds for some urgent purpose. Perhaps Poe even having mentioned me, the attorney who had agreed to protect the new magazine. Brooks offering all the particulars of Poe’s demise that I had thought Neilson Poe could have provided. I would convey Brooks’s story to the newspapers, whose reporters would grudgingly correct the languid reporting made since his death….

  That was the encounter for which I had been prepared when I had first heard Brooks’s name.

  Instead, outside No. 270 Fayette, the only person in sight was a free black, solitary and determined, dismantling a piece of the charred, broken wooden frame of the house….

  I stood before the address of Dr. Brooks and wished again that it were the wrong number. I should have brought the city directory itself to be certain I was at the right place—although I had ev
en written the address on two slips of paper now in separate pockets of my vest. I checked one slip—

  Dr. Nathan C. Brooks. 270 Fayette st.

  then reached into my pocket for the other—

  Dr. N. C. Brooks. 270 Fayette.

  This had been the house. Of course.

  The lingering stench of burnt, damp wood threw me into a fit of coughing. Broken china and charred scraps of ruined tapestries seemed to compose the floor inside. It was as though a chasm had opened up beneath and pulled out all the life that had been there.

  “What happened here?” I asked when I had regained my breath.

  “Pray God,” the joiner, a type of carpenter skilled in woodwork, repeated to himself under his breath. Thank the Lord, he said, the Liberty engine company had prevented more destruction. “If Dr. Brooks hadn’t hired himself an unskilled man first,” he told me, “and without the blasted rain, the repairs would long be done, and splendidly.” In the meantime, the owner of the house was living with relatives, but the joiner did not know where.

  The laborer was able to tell me further that the fire had occurred about two months earlier. I rapidly compared the dates in my mind and realized with numbness what it meant. The fire would have been just around the time…the very time Edgar Poe arrived in Baltimore looking for the house of Dr. Brooks.

  “What is it you wish to report?”

  “I have told you, if you could call for the officer, I shall give all the particulars.” I was standing in the Middle District police station house.

  After several exchanges similar to this, the police clerk brought out an intelligent-looking officer from the next room. All of my urges to see something done had returned forcefully, but with an entirely different bent. As I stood in front of the police officer and narrated the events of the last weeks, I felt a wave of relief. After what I’d seen at the Brooks house, after having breathed the last traces of destruction and looked upon the sleepy, now-vacant windows and the scarred tree trunks, I knew that this had surpassed me.

  The officer examined the newspaper cuttings I handed to him as I explained the questions the press had neglected or misunderstood.

  “Mr. Clark, I know not what can be done. If there were reason to believe there had been some wrongful act associated with this…”

  I grasped the officer’s shoulder as though I had found a lost friend. “You believe so?”

  He looked back faintly.

  “Whether there was a wrongful act,” I repeated his words. “It is precisely the sort of question for which you must find an answer, my good officer. Just that! Hear me. He was found wearing clothes that did not fit him. He was shouting out for a ‘Reynolds.’ I know not who that could be. The house he went to upon his arrival burnt down, perhaps near the very same hour he arrived at it. And I believe a man, one I had never seen before, tried to frighten me from inquiring into these matters. Officer, this mystery must not remain untreated a moment longer!”

  “This article,” he said, returning to the newspaper cutting, “says Poe was a writer.”

  Progress! “My favorite author. In fact, if you are a magazine reader, I would wager you have come upon his literary work.” I listed some of Poe’s best-known magazine contributions: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” “The Purloined Letter,” “‘Thou Art the Man,’” “The Gold-Bug”…I thought the subject matter of these tales of mystery, dealing in crime and murder, might hold special interest to a police officer.

  “That was his name?” The clerk who had greeted me upon my entrance interrupted as I recited my list. “Poe?”

  “Poe.” I agreed, probably too sharply. The phenomenon had always vexed me. Many of Poe’s stories and poems achieved great fame, yet managed to deprive the writer of personal celebrity by overshadowing him. How many people had I encountered who could proudly recite all of “The Raven” and several of the popular verses parodying it (“The Turkey,” for instance) but could not name the author? Poe attracted readers who enjoyed but refused to admire; it was as though his works had swallowed him up whole.

  The clerk repeated the word “Poe,” laughing as though the name itself contained great, illicit wit. “You’ve read some of that, Officer White. That story”—he turned chummily to his superior—“where the bodies are found bloody and mangled in a locked room, the Paris police can’t turn anything up, and don’t you know, it ends up all of it was done by a sailor’s damned runaway ape! Imagine that!” As though part of the story itself, the clerk now slouched over like a simian.

  Officer White frowned.

  “There is the funny French fellow,” the clerk continued, “that looks at things with all his fancy logicizing, who knows the truth at once about everything.”

  “Yes, that is Monsieur Dupin!” I added.

  “I do remember the story now,” said White. “I shall say this, Mr. Clark. You couldn’t use that higgledy-piggledy talk from those stories to catch the most ordinary Baltimore thief.” Officer White topped this comment with a coarse laugh. The clerk, at a loss at first, then imitated his example in a higher pitch, so that there were two men laughing while there I stood, somber as the undertaker in war.

  I had little doubt that there were an infinite number of talents these police officers could have learned, or tried to learn, from Poe’s tales—indeed, the prefect of police whom Dupin embarrassed in the stories had more aptitude than my present companions for understanding that which is classed as mysterious, inexplicable, unavoidable.

  “Have the newspapers agreed with you that there is more to find?”

  “Not yet. I have pressed the editors, and will continue to use my influence to do so,” I promised.

  Officer White’s eyes wandered skeptically as I gave him further details. But he ruminated on our talk and, to my surprise, agreed it was a matter for the police to examine. He advised in the meantime that I dismiss it from my mind and not speak of it to anyone else.

  Nothing particular occurred for several days after that. Peter and I prospered with some important clients who had recently retained our services. I’d see Hattie at a dinner or on Baltimore Street as she strolled on her aunt’s arm, and we would exchange tidings. I would be blissfully lost in her restful voice. Then one day I received a message from Officer White to call on him. I rushed over to the station house.

  Officer White greeted me at once. From the twitch of his grin he seemed eager to tell me something. I inquired if he had made progress.

  “Oh, there has been much of it. Yes, I should say ‘progress’!” He searched a drawer and then handed me the newspaper clippings I had left in his possession.

  “Officer, but you may wish to refer to these further in your examination.”

  “There will be no examination, Mr. Clark,” he said conclusively as he settled back into his chair. Only then did I notice another man gathering his hat and walking stick from a table. He had his back to me, but then turned around.

  “Mr. Clark.” Neilson Poe greeted me quietly, after a slow blink as though making an effort to remember my name.

  “I called on Mr. Neilson Poe,” Officer White said, gesturing with satisfaction at this guest. “He is known to us from the police courts as one of our most highly esteemed citizens and was a cousin to the deceased. You gentlemen are acquainted? Mr. Poe was kind enough to discuss your concerns with me, Mr. Clark,” Officer White continued. I already knew what would come next. “Mr. Poe believes there is no need for any examination. He stands quite content with what is known about his cousin’s premature death.”

  “But, Mr. Poe,” I argued, “you yourself said you were not able to learn what had happened in Edgar Poe’s final days! You see there is some great mystery!”

  Neilson Poe was busy covering himself in his cloak. As I looked upon him, I thought of his demeanor during our meeting and his manner toward his cousin. “I’m afraid there’s nothing more I can tell you about the end,” he had said to me in his office chambers. But, I now considered,
did he mean he knew nothing else or he would tell me nothing else?

  I leaned in close to where Officer White sat, trying to confide in him. “Officer, you cannot—Neilson believes Edgar Poe is better dead than alive!” But Officer White cut me short.

  “And Mr. Herring here agrees with Mr. Poe,” he went on. “Perhaps you know him—the lumber merchant? He is another one of Mr. Poe’s cousins, and he was the first relative to be present at the Fourth Ward polls, which were at Ryan’s hotel, the day Mr. Poe was found delirious there.”

  Henry Herring stood at the door of the station house, waiting for Neilson Poe. At the mention of his early presence upon Edgar Poe’s discovery, Herring dropped his head. He was of a stouter build and shorter stature than Neilson, and wore a dour expression. He took my hand stiffly and without the least interest. I knew him immediately as another one of these four negligent mourners at Poe’s lonely burial.

  “Let the dead rest,” Neilson Poe said to me. “Your interest strikes me as morbid. Perhaps you are like my cousin more than in handwriting alone.” Neilson Poe bid us all a quiet good afternoon and walked briskly out the door.

  “Peace be to his ashes,” said Henry Herring in solemn tones, and then joined Neilson in front of the building.

  “We have enough problems to concern ourselves with in all events, Mr. Clark,” Officer White began once we were left without Poe’s relatives. “There are the vagabonds, the night-strollers, the foreigners, harassing, corrupting, robbing our stores, demoralizing the good children more every day. No time for small issues.”

  The officer’s speech went on and, as he spoke, I cast a glance out the window. My eyes followed Neilson Poe and Henry Herring to a carriage. I saw a petite woman waiting inside as the door was opened. Neilson Poe climbed in next to her. It took me a moment to realize how eerily familiar she looked. In another moment, I remembered with a chill through my bones where I had seen her or, rather, a woman just like her. That death portrait in Neilson Poe’s office that had so disturbed him. This woman was almost a double, a twin, for Edgar Poe’s deceased young love, Virginia. She was Virginia—Poe’s darling Sissy!—as far I was concerned.