On Night's Shore Read online

  I stood on the threshold and watched as Poe examined each of these objects. I could not bring myself to step inside. It was a girl’s room after all, which is to say sufficiently titillating to freeze me in my tracks. On top of that, the girl was dead. I could all but see her swollen gossamer corpse in the way the lace curtains fluttered at the windows.

  “It strikes me as somewhat curious,” Poe said.

  “And what is that, Mr. Poe?” The widow stood with a hand on her daughter’s pillow, another hand flattened to her bosom, eyes bright with grief.

  “Is there not a bedroom or two on the first floor where she would have been more comfortable? Something more spacious?”

  Before she could answer, he turned to her and smiled. “My mother-in-law once ran a boardinghouse in Virginia. On the first floor of that house, there were two sleeping rooms—one for Mrs. Clemm, another for Mrs. Poe and myself. But perhaps I draw the wrong conclusion. All houses are not the same.”

  “The master bedroom is downstairs, yes. Mary shared it with me until she moved up here.”

  “And when was that?”

  She thought for a moment. “Not yet two years. And how I have missed her company, Mr. Poe. She was such a comfort to me in the darker hours.”

  Poe nodded and stroked his chin. “She had reached that age, I suppose, where she required a certain degree of privacy with her own thoughts.”

  “She liked to read at night, my girl did. And worried that the lamp would keep me awake.”

  Poe did not speak for a while then. He went to the window and looked out. Half a minute later, he said, as if to himself, “I wonder if the tea is ready yet.”

  “Oh my yes,” said Mrs. Rogers and came hurrying toward the door.

  “Might I remain here for just a moment longer?”

  “Indeed, yes. You mustn’t hurry your observations.”

  “We will join you shortly,” he said.

  Once she was on her way down the stairs, he stepped straightaway to the bureau. He raised the lid on the jewelry box and peered inside. He lifted out a string of beads, a tortoiseshell comb, a red hair ribbon. Each of these he held to the light from the window and studied briefly before returning it to the box. But the last item he examined, a brooch in the shape of an angel and as yellow as sunlight, this he held longer than the others before finally returning it to the box.

  Finally he withdrew his hand and closed the jewelry box lid. He came out into the hallway and stood there for a full minute, staring at the faces of the three closed doors.

  Then he asked, “Did you save room for a cup of tea, Augie?”

  I swallowed the last of my second ginger cake and grinned sheepishly. “Half a cup maybe.”

  With that we returned to the kitchen. Poe sipped politely from his tea while engaging the widow in considerations of the weather and in what he called “the execrable din” of city life. He did not speak of Mary Rogers until his cup was nearly empty. Then he cleared his throat softly and turned his eyes to the ceiling.

  “Would you say that your daughter was intuitive?” he asked.

  “In what way, Mr. Poe?”

  “As I recall,” he said, “when first we spoke, you told me of your premonition, your sense, upon learning of your daughter’s disappearance, that you would never see her again.”

  “It’s true,” she said. “A shiver like none I’d ever felt raced through me from head to toe.”

  “And sadly, proved correct.”

  “It did. Sweet mother of Jesus, it did.”

  “And your daughter,” Poe asked. “I wonder if she too possessed the gift.”

  “For seeing the future? Is this what you mean?”

  “I only ask because of her apparent fondness for seraphim.”

  “The figurine on her dresser.”

  “And the brooch as well.”

  “They were gifts from Mr. Anderson,” she said. “The brooch last Christmas. The figurine the Christmas before.”

  “Lovely, lovely gifts indeed. The figurine, if I’m not mistaken, is delft.”

  “And the pin is purest gold. The angel’s eyes are tiny sapphire stones.”

  “It is obvious that Mr. Anderson had a very high regard for your daughter.”

  “His success depended on her, that’s what he always said. An attractive young woman behind the counter, in a business that caters to gentlemen…”

  “She was his angel. Indeed.” Poe turned his tea cup a half circle. He turned it back. “And how it must have warmed your heart to hear these sentiments from Mr. Anderson’s own lips.”

  “It was what Mary told me he said of her. Having never met the fine man myself.”

  “Of course. You are kept too busy here to make day trips into town.”

  “It was Mary did all the shopping for us. Every night she would bring home whatever was needed for the next day. Whatever few things I couldn’t get from the mongers passing by.”

  “And this would have brought her home each night, even with a bit of shopping, at what hour?”

  “Half past six at the latest,” she said. “Except on Saturdays of course. When she remained an hour later so as to restock the inventory for the week to come.”

  Poe nodded and smiled to himself but said nothing more.

  He drank off the last of his tea, set the empty cup on the table but kept both hands wrapped around it. “Your hospitality is more than generous,” he told her. “I apologize for troubling you again.”

  “You’re a welcome distraction from my other thoughts. Once all my boarders are gone for the day, if not for the work to be done, I think I would take to my bed and never rise out of it again.”

  “And how many boarders have you in all?”

  “At the moment there are four.”

  “All of whom have rooms on the second floor?”

  “Mr. Andrews, Mr. Graybill, and Mr. Palmer do. Fine gentlemen every one.”

  “And Mr. Payne?”

  “He has one of the rooms on the upper floor.”

  “And how many rooms does that floor comprise?”

  “Two,” she said. “Just the two.”

  “I wonder,” said Poe.

  “Yes?”

  “It would be interesting to know the term of each of your boarder’s residency here.”

  “Mr. Payne is my oldest resident. He’s lived with us going on four years now. Unusual to keep a tenant so long, but he had his reasons to linger, you might say. Right from the beginning he was exceedingly fond of her. It took him a good while to win her over, but he kept at it. Only to end in such despair, poor man.”

  “And the others?”

  “Let me think now. Mr. Palmer is the newest, he’s been here just over a month. Mr. Graybill, he came here in the winter. This past January. Mid-January to be exact. And Mr. Andrews…two years and several months.”

  I could tell by the distant look in Poe’s eyes that some puzzle was piecing itself together in his mind.

  “So when Mary moved out of the room she shared with you,” he said, “of your present boarders, only Mr. Andrews and Mr. Payne were men in residence?”

  “That’s right, yes.”

  “And in their present rooms?”

  “The very ones. Plus one other gentleman at the time, a Mr. Jackson it was. From Ohio. Come here looking for work as a printer. Stayed just two weeks and then struck out for Albany.”

  “You have an estimable memory, madam.”

  “Most all of them have been like family to me. You don’t forget family,” she said. “Gather all the gold and silver you want, young man, make yourself as rich as a king, and you’ll see, you mark my words, it will all be as nothing when stacked up against the gentle sweet love of your family. Now isn’t that right, Mr. Poe?”

  “Nothing could be more right, madam.”

 
It wasn’t long then before Poe was making our good-byes. She walked us to the gate and seemed likely to follow us farther had Poe not promised to call on her again soon.

  We were half a block from the boardinghouse when Poe laid a hand on my shoulder. I paused beside him. He asked, “Your insights, sir?”

  “Her cakes were good.”

  He laughed softly. Then, “The seaman,” he said. “The seaman is the fulcrum about which we now turn. Because of the sailor’s knot in the strings of Miss Rogers’s bonnet. Did you hear nothing of interest concerning the seaman?”

  I tried to remember.

  “Perhaps your youth precludes observations that smack of the prurient.”

  “I seen that you was thinking up a storm,” I answered, “so I concentrated on feeling. Like you told me to do last night.”

  “And what did you feel?”

  “Her cakes were good.”

  Again he responded with a smile. But he had his hands on something now and would not let go. “Miss Rogers’s decision to vacate the bedroom she shared with her mother,” he told me, “is roughly synchronous with the date upon which Mr. Andrews assumed his tenancy there. And on which floor did Miss Rogers choose to sleep?”

  “Second, wasn’t it? Same as the lieutenant’s.”

  “When in fact the bedroom on the third floor, adjacent to the one in which then as now her fiancé resides, was also available.”

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “And of Miss Rogers’s hours of employment. Were you struck by an inconsistency of information in that regard?”

  This one I knew. “She said that Mary stayed late every Saturday night to restock for Monday. But didn’t Mr. Anderson already tell us that restocking was done first thing every Monday morning?”

  He smiled and patted my shoulder. Then suddenly his hand fell flat upon me and lay there heavily. I followed his gaze down the street and soon discerned the object of his attention, a man among the pedestrians who distinguished himself by his curious gait. Unlike the others on the street, this man was neither sauntering nor striding, not pausing to gaze in the shop windows or to mutter a greeting to any he passed. He was coming toward us, in a fashion, but oblivious to everything but the ground before his feet. He would shuffle forward a few steps, pause, gaze downward, sigh, wobble a bit, move forward a few more steps. It took him three full minutes to cover the thirty yards between us.

  We did not move until the man was a stride away. Then Poe said, clearly but not loudly, “Mr. Payne. Good morning.”

  Miss Rogers’s former fiancé stopped as if he had run into an invisible wall, but because of his slow pace, there was nothing abrupt in his movements, no strength or vigor as he lifted his head a bit to see who had hailed him. His eyes were dull, the skin around the sockets gray.

  “Edgar Poe, sir. Do you remember? We spoke briefly not long ago. At the boardinghouse?”

  “Poe. Yes.” It seemed all he could manage to part his lips enough to push a few words out.

  “How are you faring, sir?”

  “Sent home,” Payne said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The bank,” he said. “Sent home from work.”

  Poe nodded. If there was one thing he understood, it was grief. He put a hand on the man’s arm. “We’ve just now come from the boardinghouse ourselves. Would you like us to walk back with you?”

  “They said I look ill. But I am no risk, I have no fever. What I have is not contagious, you could tell them that for me.”

  “I think it might be wise, however, for you to rest.”

  “A man needs his work. His work is his dignity.” His face screwed up, his eyes pooled, he seemed three seconds from collapsing in pieces before our very eyes.

  And there, in the middle of the street, Poe stepped up square and close to him, seized him by both arms just below the shoulders, gave him one firm shake, and said, “His love is his dignity, sir. The truth and loyalty with which he loves.”

  Payne closed his eyes and inhaled slowly, deeply. As his lungs filled, the muscles of his face gradually relaxed, as if he breathed in not city air but the opium smoke of memory, the lightness of a pleasure remembered. When he opened his eyes, he seemed to be standing slightly taller.

  Poe told him, “There is no indignity in a day or two of rest.”

  Finally a corner of Payne’s thin, drawn mouth canted upward.

  Poe’s hands on the man’s arms tightened briefly, a kind of embrace. Then Poe released him and stepped back. Payne squared himself, nodded once, and strode on.

  We watched him for a moment. Then Poe, now more energized himself, turned me sharply to the right and set us walking at a brisk pace.

  “Just so I know,” I said. “Where are we off to now?”

  “We are off,” he answered, “to inquire after angels.”

  17

  We passed the tobacconist’s shop three times before it emptied of customers. This opportunity, Poe explained, would allow us to enter at a time when Mr. Anderson would least resent our intrusion.

  Perhaps it is an unfair speculation on my part that Poe did not wish a reprise of his previous encounter in that establishment, and that is why he was so careful to enter when no clientele were in sight. In any case, customers or no, Mr. Anderson was noticeably cooler to our presence this time. And Poe, whose pockets were no doubt now as empty as Anderson’s wing chairs, made no pretense of considering the wares.

  “I have come just now from a visit with the widow Rogers,” Poe said. “There are two matters of concern to her at the moment, and it is her wish that you might be of some assistance.”

  “Matters of what nature?” Anderson asked.

  “The first of a practical nature. Her daughter’s wages were not an insignificant portion of the household income.”

  At this the shopkeeper’s eyebrows went up and his cheeks reddened. “My goodness, I owe her a week’s wages. I had forgotten it entirely.”

  “As had Mrs. Rogers in her grief.”

  “I assure you, sir, it was an oversight owing to my own confusion and sadness over the matter. I meant nothing intentional.”

  “Nor would anyone ever suspect as much.”

  “I will have the packet delivered to Mrs. Rogers within the hour.”

  “She will be exceedingly grateful for your kindness. To the mistress of a lodging house, the wages of fifty-five hours’ labor is, especially at a time such as this, a godsend.”

  “Of course, of course. And I must send her a note as well, my profoundest sympathies and apologies…” He was searching about for a clean sheet of parchment, opening this drawer and that, when he added, “Though it is only fifty-three hours, as a point in fact.”

  “No doubt I am mistaken, sir. But did the girl not serve you from nine to six each day, with an hour additional on Saturday?”

  “One hour less on Saturday,” Anderson said.

  “I apologize. I misheard.”

  Anderson dismissed this with a flick of his hand. Just then a customer entered; Poe, I couldn’t help but notice, went slightly stiffer in his posture, but he did not turn to consider the interloper, whom I recognized all too clearly as the greengrocer from Canal Street. Fortunately, owing to my relative good grooming, he failed to recognize me.

  Anderson offered him a smile. “One moment, sir, if you would be so kind.”

  The greengrocer went to one of the wing chairs and made himself comfortable. I turned to consider the fly specks on the window glass.

  “The second matter,” Poe said, now sotto voce, “and I will waste no more of your time. It is a mother’s method, I suppose, of assuaging her grief. She asked only that I extend to you her heartfelt thanks. For the kindness you showed her daughter these past and precious years.”

  I could not resist a peek at the tobacconist now. He stood there blinking, cheek
s and forehead florid, a man on the verge of blubbering.

  “And to thank you as well,” Poe continued, “for the angels. They will become cherished keepsakes and an enduring comfort throughout the days ahead.”

  Mr. Anderson blinked once more and then steadied himself. “Your meaning, sir, is not clear to me. Of what angels do you speak?”

  “The pin and the figurine, of course. Your Christmas gifts to the girl.”

  Anderson stood there blinking and moving his head back and forth, small quick shakes that gave him the appearance of a man with tremors.

  “Forgive me, forgive me,” Poe said. “Apparently I have misspoken once again. We talked about so much, so many names—I was certain Mrs. Rogers said the angels came from you.”

  “It troubles me now that I was not more generous with the young lady. That I might have shown her greater magnanimity. And would have, certainly, had I ever suspected that something like this…”

  “It is impossible to know these things,” Poe said.

  “I imagined that she would one day be married, yes, and I would be left to find another countergirl. But this. Something like this.”

  “It is an imperative of life. Yet one that takes us always by surprise.”

  “Especially in one so young and full of life.”

  “Especially then,” Poe said. The softness with which he uttered this line, the way his gaze drifted away from the tobacconist—I knew at once that he was thinking now of more than just Mary Rogers, thinking instead about the whole inscrutable mechanism, what he once referred to as “the fever called Living.”

  It was a contagious contemplation, this matter of mortality, and I turned away to ponder my own by gazing out across the street. What I saw instead shot me full of life.

  “Glendinning!” I shouted. “He’s there across the street!”

  “Thank you, sir,” Poe said to the tobacconist while hastening toward the door. “I am most grateful for your time.”

  “The packet will be dispatched to Mrs. Rogers within the hour!”