like Agatha.
Agatha. He remembered the m eat and the refrigerator, a
spasm contorting his face. How he would love to be rid of
both! Then he could delight in his fancies uninterrupted.
There would be no prying eyes, no criticism. And someday,
somewhere, he could begin anew, commence the whole ro-
mance of courtship with someone more to his tastes, his
fitting mate . . . but, no, it wasn't possible . . . or was it?
A chill spread through him slowly, almost cautiously, as
THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE
13 1
if he had it under control. Was it possible that he had been
unconsciously thinking of it all the time so that the staggering
suggestion did not shock him as it should have? Was that
it? His thin face powered itself into his bony hands in sud-
den fear. Good God!
Slowly with dragging, thoughtful steps, he moved toward
the refrigerator and whipped the broad door wide.
“Agatha, I’ve been thinking—״
“What about, Roderick?״
“The refrigerator. I must confess in spite of my previous
thoughts on the subject that it is performing its functions
rather well. So much so that I have reversed my former atti-
tude and shall now do all in my power to retain it in per-
feet working order.״
“Well, its about time, I must say! I thought you under-
stood that by having such a thing I am able to stock up
on meat products without going to the butcher's so often. I
have so many other things to do around the house. The time
spent on shopping for food can be used to better advantage.״
“That's true, Agatha. Besides, there is the fresh meat—"
“Of course, Roderick. I'm glad you changed your mind
about it."
“I'm afraid it's none too soon."
“Whatever do you mean?"
“The cooling system seemed faulty to me last night. Some
sort of leak. Nothing I can't repair myself. So after supper,
I’ll be working down the cellar—"
“Wouldn't you rather I called the handyman from the
company? There’s a guarantee—"
“Oh, no. By no means. I'll fix it myself. I'm not without
ability along that line, you know. So if you hear any strange
noises from the basement after supper, pay no mind. It
will only be me."
“As you say, Roderick."
She had been too pleased by his affability to argue the
132
THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE
point. He had been too anxious to allay her suspicions to be
short-tempered with her.
His plan was very simple. Poe himself had pointed the
way with the bizarre cunning of the master. The method was
in the tale “The Black Cat.” It was cold, it was clear, it was
proper. The only difference lay in the motive. The harassed
protagonist of “The Black Cat,” driven to extremes of alcohol-
ism, had killed his wife in a fit of passion while they were
both in the cellar of their home. The body had been dis-
posed of by the process of sealing it in a section of decom-
posed wall. But he would go Edgar Allan one better. The
floor of his cellar was earthen. Thick, damp soil. He would
dig deep and dig hard and no one would know of his crime.
He chuckled grimly to himself. There would be no black cat
buried with her to reveal his secret by its terrible squalling.
And he would not boast of the foundations of his house, of
the firm, rock-like anchorage that it bedded on. He had no
one to boast to.
He would arrange it so that it would seem that Agatha,
tired of his misanthropic life, had run away in the dead of
night. He was not unaware of the strange light people held
him in.
“Did you fix it? You certainly took long enough.”
“Yes, I did. But it was the first time I have ever experi-
mented with a thing like that and I wanted to repair it
properly.” It had taken longer digging the hole than he had
thought it would. There was a good deal of rock formation
under the old house.
“I never thought one could get his hands so dirty working
on a refrigerator, Roderick. You look as if you’d been ditch-
digging.” What was behind that remark? Did she suspect
or had she just winged blithely past the truth?
“Fact is, Agatha, I have moved the machine around a
bit. It is nearer the steps than it was before. That way you
THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE
I 33
can get at it more easily.” For another day or so anyway.
After that it wont matter.
“Roderick—why not clean the whole cellar up? Throw all
that old stuff out? It frightens me, this fixation of yours for
old things.” It wont frighten you much longer, Agatha.
“Don’t you like to remember the past, Agatha?” Do it now,
my dear. You haveni much time.
“Not the way you do. Ugh! Old, dirty, crumbling things.
Decayed furniture. Always reading that Poe person. Can’t
you see what it’s done to you? To—us?”
Agatha dear, you have just signed your death warrant.
Destroyed the last vestige of human pity within me.
Friday night came with that maddening slowness that
typifies anything one waits for. Up until that point, Legrande
had felt no qualms, displayed no outward signs of his inner
tension, his eagerness for the little game of death to begin.
He had been sober and calm when dinnertime came, but
once the meal began, he toyed with his food and punctuated
his eating with sly glances at his watch beneath his napkin.
Agatha was oddly silent herself, only speaking to ask him to
pass the salt and briefly commenting on the vagaries of the
weather.
He knew he was nervous, could feel it in the sticky clasp
of his napkin to his fingers, the closed-in feel of his starched
collar. “Bread, please,” he mumbled and was amazed
when he caught himself repeating the idiotic phrase so that
she could hear and comply. Her full, peasant’s face stared
at him dumbly for an instant.
The meal wore on with aggravating slowness, stillness. His
reflection paled back at him from the oval, concave mirror
hanging beyond her chair. He saw the thinning black of his
hair, the sharp lines prematurely etched in his cadaverous
cheeks, and forgot the moment’s concern in self-fascination.
He was really so much like Poe, he thought. The same bitter,
1 3 4
THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE
disappointed mouth, the high forehead, the eyes with lights
in them . . .
“Roderick, are you feeling well?”
He came back from the world of the mirror. “Quite
well.” He stole a second from his watch. Why hadn’t it begun
yet? It was almost time. He couldn’t have misjudged his
calculations. He’d never be able to carry her down into the
cellar. It would have to be done down there. But first, she
would have to be in the cellar. Unsuspecting, of her own
volition, for a perfectly good reas
on—
“Did you like the lamb, Roderick?” she was asking. “I feel
as if it was especially good tonight.”
“It was, my dear,” he agreed without meaning. Damna-
tion! Wouldn’t it ever happen?
BOOO-MMMMI
A muffled roar noised up from what seemed directly be-
low the table, and Agatha dropped her fork with a squeal
of fright. The dishes rattled and Roderick shivered. The
sound was brief, ending as swiftly as it had come.
She stared at him in questioning wonder. “Gracious, w hat
was that?”
“It sounded like it came from the cellar—” Masking the
stab of elation within his breast, he pushed back from his
chair and bounded out of the room into the hall corridor,
confident she would follow out of curiosity alone, possibly
wifely concern. He was glad all over, glad that the thing
had begun, would soon be over.
He paused for the barest instant at the top of the cellar
steps, waiting for the scrape of her chair, the rapid click of
her heels. They came in that sequence and he pounded
down the wooden steps, the blood mounting in his veins. It
would not be long now.
He was down the steps and into the heart of the cellar
before the weight of her heavy heel thudded on the first
step. He had to hurry now. The scattered remnants of
blown wiring and tin can that he had set electrically the eve
THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE
135
ning before were strewn chaotically in the narrow bin where
he had placed them. In a breathless moment, spurred by
each descending thump of her shoes, he had spread several
stacks of the yellowed newspapers over the minor ruin. It
had been a simple enough trick. All that was needed was
some powder and an elemental knowledge of electricity.
"Roderick, what was it? W hat made that terrible noise?”
she was demanding in tempo to her falling feet. Gradually,
her body seemed to lower itself into view with timidity as if
waiting for his reassurances that everything was all right.
"I can’t be certain, dear. But come ahead and we’ll see.
Possibly the refrigerator is leaking and—”
"Oh, no. That can’t bel” She hove into sight, her face
bright and red in the proximity of the dangling bulb. "It
sounded like an explosion of some kind.”
"That may be.” He had stationed himself at the door of
the porcelain giant as if investigating his opinion. "But
there doesn’t appear to be anything of the sort. Do you sup-
pose something fell and caused the noise?”
She drew in closer, fanning her skirts as she did so, lulled
on by the private congeniality of his tone. For once they
both were interested in the same thing, something they had
not been guilty of in years.
"Well, this is your sanctum sanctorum, Roderick. You
would know more about that than I. Does it look as if some-
thing dropped accidentally? It would have to be something
heavy, of course, like—say the piano.” She moved over to it,
not remarking that it was farther out from its recess than
was normal, not questioning the abnormal expanse of
yawning blackness beyond it. But how could she? She had
seldom been in the cellar and then only to go to the re-
frigerator. She certainly wouldn’t dally down here for any
length of time. It would be out of keeping with her professed
feelings for old things.
His eyes never left her back as his hand, nervously twitch
136
THE M A N WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE
ing, reached slowly for the handle of the spade that poked
up from its narrow stall.
‘‘No, it doesn’t seem to be anything I can see—how about
you?” she murmured, and the turning loudness of her voice
warned him. At the last second, his hand whipped back
from its desired goal. She was facing him again.
He wondered if he was controlling his face as much as he
wanted to. A roaring flush was in his cheeks at her near
discovery of his plan. Pounding, pounding—
“Im confounded if I can see what made that sound,
Agatha.” He coughed with a sudden spasm. “It couldn’t be
that we imagined it?”
Her large eyes showed her scorn. “Don’t be an ass! There
most certainly was a noise of some kind and I mean to find
out what it was.” She swept by him with her big body to-
ward the refrigerator, her back once again turned helplessly
to his murderous design. Lightning-swift, with the boldness
of desperation, he swung the spade clear from its narrow
bin and held it noiselessly behind him. It was now or never.
He could not hold her down here much longer.
Cautiously, he tiptoed behind her as she half-crouched
before her time-saver, oblivious of the terror at her very
heels.
The light played on the little scene; the saffron glow of
the bulb adding the touch of the unreal to everything. No,
it would not be long now.
“I’m pleased to see you moved it as you said you would.
It is much easier this way, isn’t it?” Was she saying that?
He could hardly restrain a mad giggle as he raised the spade
in a high parabola of premeditated murder above his head.
“Still, I don’t understand what could have made such a
noise. Perhaps the mechanism has run down. . . .” Why
did she have to keep on babbling that drivel? Just another
second, Agatha. Hold your position. Don’t move. That’s it,
that’s it. Now, now . . . His muscles tensed for the killing
THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE
I 37
blow and the digging implement started down as if he
were driving a spike into a railroad tie—
“AGATHA!״
The cry knifed through his lungs with his overpowering
bewilderment, the complete change of the tableau. Arms as
fierce and as strong as those of the Seducers and Temptresses
of old were crushing him, punishing him with their steel,
bending his scrawny form back without mercy or remorse.
The wooden shaft of the spade spiraled from his senseless
fingers. She had whirled as if windswept at the zero hour
of her life and encompassed him with the embrace of
Death.
“—you crawling, slimy monster!״ The words hissed out at
him, close to his face on the wings of hot, furious breath.
“I knew it all along! You and your petty deceits! Your stupid
inconsistencies! Did you think me the complete foolish,
trusting wife? Did you imagine for one second that you
had me deceived?״
He gagged with the pressure of her blocky hands, the
overhead bulb dancing before his clouding vision like
some gigantic, new species of fly. “Aga—” he choked. The
blood in his skull ran riot and the pounding sensation of
faintness lurched on as in a dream. Dimly, he heard an
enormous click as of some mechanical thing in opera-
tion. . . .
“You would do away with me, was that it? You pedantic,
&nb
sp; morbid monstrosity! Old things, dead things, antiques!
Musty diaries and decadent histories of people not worth
knowing! You can have it all now, Roderick! I give it to
you of my own free will! I want the present and progress.״
A draft of cold air funneled up his legs in dread newness—
oh, good God!
“IVe been down here before, Roderick, as you shall pres-
ently discover. Now!״
He was so sickly. He was so pale. She was so strong. She
138
THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE
balled him up like some hateful package and threw him
away.
The door of the refrigerator clanged shut behind him.
The light was on. There was no meat and there were no
shelves. Only room for a man. Room enough for his body.
In the awful nakedness of the interior, he hurled himself
desperately against the cold walls. His hands drummed
madly—her voice mocked from somewhere on the other
side of the door, beyond the edge of darkness.
“You see, Roderick, I read Poe too. Remember ‘The
Cask of Amontillado/ dear? The catacombs, the mason’s
sign, and Montresor burying poor Fortunato behind that
wall of bricks—”
“FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, AGATHA!”
M ANUSCRIPT FOUND IN A DRAWER
“M anuscript F o u n d in a D ra w er” is o n e o f a trilogy o f short stori!
in sp ired b y P oe and w ritten b y Charles N orm an. O ne has ap peared
Vogue, a secon d in volvin g the cou n terfeitin g of a co p y o f Tamerlar
rem ains u n p u b lish ed , and this o n e is p u b lish ed for th e first tim e :
part o f this collection .
T h e tale is n ot o n ly an attem p t to w rite a m urder m ystery in tl
m anner of E d g a r A llan P oe b u t also in volves P o e h im self, im plyir
th at ex cep t for th e ev en ts d escrib ed in this story, th at m aster’s li
m ig h t h a v e b e e n ch a n g ed and len g th en ed .
C harles N orm an, w h o is a director o f th e M ystery W riters י
A m erica, has g a in ed a rep u tation as a w riter o f m ystery stories; b
w ork has a p p eared in Ellery Q ueens Mystery Magazine and T l
Saint, am ong others. H ow ever, in the m ore ethereal atm osphere י
scholarship, h e is b etter k now n for his su perb ly research ed biogr
p h ies. O ne o f th e b est of th ese is The Genteel Murderer, a life <
T hom as Griffiths W a in ew rig h t, th e fa m ed B ritish art conn oisser
The Man Who Called Himself Poe Page 18
