Edgar Allan Poe and the Jewel of Peru

by Karen Lee Street

  Was it possible that I had nothing more to fear from that creeping, malevolent imp called Revenge? Perhaps success had indeed changed the pair for the better. I could not help but wonder, though, if in truth it was the festering of the actress’s ill intentions that had corrupted her beauty so mercilessly.

  5

  WEDNESDAY, 14 FEBRUARY 1844

  It is uncanny how much the fabric of one’s life can be altered by an unforeseen event, how its quiet weave is disrupted by dread. Two years previously we were enjoying an evening, as we often did, listening to Virginia sing as she played the piano, when blood began to seep from her mouth and fall like the Devil’s rain upon her dress. As much as I declared the episode a ruptured blood vessel that rest would cure, that moment was a scar on my memory and every subtle shift in my wife’s constitution, whether a vague discomfort of the throat, increased pallor or mere fatigue, would plunge me into despair, and when she improved my heart would dance with relief.

  My oscillation between hope and fear aggravated my wife, as did the way Muddy and I hovered over her, as she put it, like vultures watching for any sign of weakness. And so I had done my best to live in the moment, to enjoy each day in her company and to pretend that she was perfectly well. More often than I would like to say, this sent me on a spree to drown my fears.

  But the arrival of the ghastly package of dismembered birds had jarred me into sobriety. I was determined to protect my family from this more tangible threat and so I took the hatbox with its grim contents to St. Augustine Church, knowing that Father Keane would understand my need to conceal the gruesome birds from my family and yet keep them as evidence. And he did the same when another strange package arrived for me at the post office almost a full month later on the sixth of February. It contained a carefully packed rectangular glass box with a hinged lid, about two feet long, eighteen inches wide and a foot high. This Wardian case was filled with several inches of soil that was covered in verdant moss. A painted backdrop was affixed to its interior back panel, an amateur work of what appeared to be green mountains tall enough to reach the clouds. There was a rectangular hole dug in the mossy earth near the front right corner of the container, like an open grave.

  When I asked the postmaster about the origin of the package, he had no information for me. No message had accompanied it, but I felt in my soul that only Williams, who had tormented me with his delivery of letters four years ago, would do such an insidious thing.

  A third parcel, left at the post office on the twelfth of February, was even more disconcerting. It contained a small wooden table, no more than four inches by three inches. A collection of miniature knives and sharp implements was neatly arranged at one end of it and glued in place. I had wanted to believe Mrs. Reynolds when she said that she and her husband had reinvented themselves and that, truly, they had put the past to rest, but how could it not seem like a false pledge when the table, with its array of blades, so blatantly recalled the crimes of the London Monster?

  Of course I made no mention of the threatening items to my wife and maintained a wary composure, which abruptly ended when my mother-in-law rapped on my study door two days after the third package arrived, and stepped inside with another.

  “I was on Market Street and called into the post office. They had this for you.” She handed me a small parcel.

  “Thank you,” I managed to whisper.

  Muddy squinted at me, attuned to my disquiet, but I offered no explanation and she left without another word.

  I stared at the package for a time, filled half with dread and half with anger, for it was the fourteenth of February, a day that was meant to be filled with joy and declarations of love. I took a pair of scissors from my desk, cut the twine and immediately removed the brown paper that covered the box, which was about twelve inches long, eight inches wide and six inches deep. I took a deep breath to steel myself, lifted the lid and removed the strips of soft paper that concealed the contents. There, nestled in that makeshift coffin, was a small dead man, or more precisely, the effigy of one. The manikin was dressed in the type of clothing one might wear for an arduous ramble: knee-high leather boots, a wide-brimmed hat, and fawn-colored breeches and a jacket of a heavy cotton. A large hessian bag was slung over his shoulder and a cross fashioned from wood, roughly half the figure’s height, was next to him in the box. The figure was modeled from wax, and hair—dark in color—had been affixed to his head. When I lifted him from the box, I saw that a knife was buried in his back.

  Fifteen minutes later I was on my way to see Father Keane, the rewrapped parcel tucked under my arm.

  I waited in the library, where the quiet industry of the students from St. Augustine Academy helped to soothe my disquiet. The boys were aged from about six to twelve; some had previously attended Philadelphia primary schools, others were newly arrived from Ireland: all attended mass at St. Augustine Church. I had sent a note with a thin, studious-looking boy, and it was not long before a shadow fell over me.

  “Mr. Poe,” said a soft voice with a mellifluous Irish accent. “It is good to see you.”

  “And you, Father Keane.”

  He raised his brows at the package on the table. “Shall we?”

  I nodded, and we left the silence of the library to make our way down a long hallway. Father Keane opened a door near the end of the corridor and revealed his sanctuary, a small study where he kept his personal library and a number of scholarly curios: an antique globe, a microscope, binoculars, small creatures preserved in jars and a collection of bird eggs, with a large teal-blue emu’s egg in pride of place within a glass display box.

  “When did it arrive?” he asked.

  “This morning. Again, there was no message with it, no information regarding the sender.”

  “May I?” Father Keane indicated the hastily rewrapped package.

  “Of course.”

  He untied the string and the brown paper fell away. When he saw what the box contained, he did his best to hide his shock.

  “A threat, you must agree,” I said gravely. There was no doubt in my mind that the figure was meant to be me.

  Father Keane frowned. “Surely this is all too complex to be a mere threat.”

  “You do not know my nemesis.”

  “That is true,” Father Keane said, “but whether a threat or a more complex message, we have failed to solve the riddle presented so far.” He took the gruesome little doll from the box and examined it carefully. “The clothing is neatly made by someone possessing great facility with a needle and thread, that is obvious.” He tugged open the hessian sack and huffed with surprise. He produced a pair of long tweezers from his desk and gently retrieved something from the sack—it was a black crow, perfectly constructed in miniature. Father Keane extracted two more birds from the little bag.

  “Quite marvelous,” he declared. “The feathers are genuine, the proportions perfect. They look as if they might take flight.”

  “Indeed, for they are all in one piece, unlike the dismembered creatures delivered to me,” I said.

  Father Keane nodded, unperturbed. “You are meant to see that connection and understand that the same person sent both packages.”

  “I would hardly presume otherwise, given the peculiar—nay, sinister—contents of each,” I muttered.

  My friend did not seem to hear my words, so engrossed was he in the construction of the miniature bird. He had been equally intrigued by the ominous creatures that were first delivered to me, and had, back in mid-January, arranged the bird parts on his desk with large, gentle hands.

  “Very neatly done,” he had commented.

  “The . . . dissection?” I had not known what else to call it.

  “The taxidermy work. One would hardly know the creatures to be dead if they were not left unassembled.”

  “Indeed, I had feared them to be alive when I first opened the bag.”

  “An unusual thing for an experienced taxidermist to do, to leave his work so patently unfinished.” He
had looked to me as if expecting an explanation.

  “I can only surmise that my nemesis instructed the taxidermist to finish the birds in this manner to torment me, for truly it is a hideous design that threatens death.”

  “Crows are associated with death, it is true,” Father Keane had said, “but to hire a taxidermist to do this work is very odd—an extreme way to make a threat.”

  “It is not beyond the man. George Williams’s stated goal in life is to take revenge on my family for some imagined injustice. He is undeniably unbalanced.”

  I made no mention of the fact that Williams’s father had been imprisoned in London’s Newgate Gaol for crimes that my grandparents had truly committed or that Williams had followed me from London three and a half years ago, pledging revenge upon me and my family.

  “Perhaps this is the clue we need.” Father Keane’s voice broke my anxious recollections. He was triumphantly holding the tweezers aloft, a folded piece of paper held between their tips. “At the bottom of the miniature bird collecting bag,” he said, answering my unspoken question as he handed the paper to me.

  It was very fine, thin stationery sealed shut with a tiny dot of red wax that resembled a droplet of blood. I prized it open and examined the paper. It seemed to be a diagram and I presumed it referred to the Wardian case. A rectangle was drawn on the paper with numbers written inside it and a basic key to the diagram in the lower left-hand corner interpreted what each number represented.

  “I believe it’s a diagram that shows how to transform the Wardian case into a diorama.” We moved over to the Wardian case, which was situated on a table near the window, and I gave the diagram to Father Keane, who quickly studied it.

  “The painted mountains are annotated as ‘Chachapoyas’ and this hole in the earth is labeled ‘J.M.’ The wooden cross is meant to go here.” He situated it at one end of the rectangular hole, which immediately confirmed my initial impression that it represented an open grave. I placed the wax figure of the dead man into the sepulcher and there was no doubt that it had been fashioned to accommodate him.

  “Very strange. But is it a threat, a warning or some other message?” Father Keane tapped at the diagram key. “J.M.—someone’s initials, perhaps.”

  “The victim’s or the killer’s? Or perhaps they are not initials at all, but an abbreviation of some sort.”

  Father Keane ignored my suggestion and placed the killing table near the left front corner of the Wardian case. “The diagram shows that the table is to be placed here, yet the key labels it as ‘H.L.’ Given the scene before us, perhaps these are the initials of the would-be murderer of J.M.” he concluded.

  It was a logical interpretation that held no meaning for me. H.L.? The initials did not fit anyone I might suspect capable of murder, not George Williams, his father, Rhynwick, his accomplice, Rowena Fontaine, nor indeed their aliases. I could think of no one with the initials J.M. either.

  “I am bewildered. If these are initials, they mean nothing to me.”

  Father Keane nodded. “Then we must consider the other clue: Chachapoyas.”

  I shook my head.

  “The Chachapoyas is a region in Peru. We Augustinians have a connection with the place. In the mid-sixteenth century, Father Juan Ramírez traveled there and brought many of the natives to our faith,” Father Keane said.

  “Do you think the diorama has some relation to St. Augustine’s? Or is it a threat to someone here?” As I said the words, I did not quite believe them.

  “It seems unlikely. Do you have any connections with Peru yourself?”

  “Peru? I have never been there nor anywhere at all in that region.” The question seemed absurd until a flash of a memory came to me of a day spent in the Regent’s Park, London, with my good friend C. Auguste Dupin during that terrible summer of 1840. As we ventured through the zoological gardens there, Dupin noticed some llamas and revealed that he had travelled to Peru. I was still unable to imagine the urbane Dupin in such a location, but if his words were true, might the diorama suggest a threat to him?

  “Has something occurred to you, Mr. Poe?”

  “Indeed it has. My friend the Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin travelled to Peru in his youth. He rescued me on several occasions from my nemesis. I wonder if this diorama suggests that he might be in danger.”

  “You must of course warn him,” Father Keane advised. “His link with Peru may be only a coincidence, but there is no harm in taking precautions.”

  “Unfortunately, he lives in Paris and it will take two weeks for my letter to reach him by steam packet, and several weeks longer if it goes by sail packet.”

  “We must pray then that anyone who may wish him harm is on these shores as opposed to the other side of the Atlantic.”

  His words filled me with dread. We had not discovered the origin of the packages—they might have been sent from within Philadelphia or indeed from Paris. My friend picked up the metal hatbox and carried it to his desk, where the miniature crows were arranged in a neat line. He retrieved the mummified bird parts and laid them out on the desk top also.

  “What does it mean?” he said softly. “Three crows in miniature—constructed—and three real birds, killed and dismembered but preserved with the art of taxidermy. And this scene of a man’s death ... Six crows ... A murder of crows. Of course. Somehow we must put the pieces together”—he looked down at the dissevered birds—“and prevent the murder.”

  “Assuming it has not already occurred,” I said grimly.

  “I don’t think so. Your enemy has gone to much effort to send you these items. We might think of it as a ransom note in puzzle form,” Father Keane suggested.

  “I hope you are correct. Indeed, I pray it.”

  But I could not get Dupin’s oft-spoken pledge from my mind: Amicis semper fidelis. Of course that promise was reciprocated, but how was it possible to stand by my friend in the face of danger when we were on opposite sides of the Atlantic? And how would I ever forgive myself if Dupin were murdered by the man who wished me dead?

  6

  A sense of foreboding would not let me sleep, so I made my way to my desk as quietly as a thief. Catterina wrapped herself around my shoulders like a feline shawl and purred contentedly as I penned my warning to Dupin, then immediately rewrote it, trying to strike a calmer tone. I knew he would pay little heed to a letter of caution that was, in his opinion, a product of my overwrought imagination. I described in detail the strange items that had been sent to me, the diagram with its key for constructing the morbid diorama, and how the clues within it suggested that Dupin was the target.

  “I fear you are in danger,” I wrote. “And that my enemy intends to harm you simply because you are my friend. Please take every precaution and write immediately to tell me that you are safe.” I sealed my letter with wax and knew there was nothing more I could do except perhaps pray, or entreat Father Keane to do so on Dupin’s behalf.

  And yet a morbid restlessness would not let me return to my bed, and before truly cognizant of my actions, I was crouched down levering up the floorboards next to my desk. My hands seemed to move of their own accord, scrabbling and searching, until they held the mahogany box that was hidden in that makeshift crypt. I had not looked at it since we had moved home to Seventh Street, and I had interred it under my study floor, for I knew that its malignant power was taking too great a toll on me. But now that it was before me and the key that had been in my desk drawer was in my grasp, I could not resist unlocking it and opening up the lid. As I leaned to look inside, I was half-expecting to see only emptiness—the result of some dark magic—but to my relief, or perhaps truly it was terror, the bundle of letters lay there like a corpse and the malevolent violet eye stared back at me.

  Did you truly believe you might escape by entombing me? That my gaze would not find you from this crypt? I see everything, I know everything. I am the testament to truth and to securing justice.

  Terror had found me again. Or perhaps it had merely risen up
like a half-dead thing that had never truly succumbed to the conqueror worm.

  7

  SUNDAY, 10 MARCH 1844

  There was an odd sound, a rhythmic tap-tap-tapping, which I took to be nothing more than the wind, until Sissy cried out: “How curious!” She left the breakfast table and crept to the kitchen window, where there was a flittering shadow. When I peered over her shoulder, I saw a robin perched on the sill, tapping at the glass.

  “Does it wish to come inside?” she asked. And as she spoke those words, the robin whirled away with a flutter of wings.

  “We will have a visitor today,” Muddy announced.

  “Really? And whom are we expecting?” I asked.

  “You must ask that of the robin,” she said, shrugging. “It’s an old country saying: ‘See a robin red-breast in the morning and you will have a guest later that day.’”

  Sissy laughed. “How clever of the robin to warn us in advance. Now we will have the chance to prepare for our mysterious guest.”

  “There is little to do, surely,” I said. “For there is not a speck of dirt within the house.”

  Muddy offered half a smile, but her pleasure at my words was clear.

  “We might prepare some tidbit to serve with tea. We have blackberry conserves, walnuts and dried apple,” my wife suggested.

  Muddy nodded as if creating something delicious from those ingredients was the simplest thing in the world.

  “I would dearly love a visitor,” Sissy mused. “Truly February is the longest month, and while March promises spring, it seems a false promise when we are already a third of the way through it and the icy weather still holds me prisoner indoors.”

  “Spring will be here soon, dearest. And I think tea is quite enough for any visitor who is but a figment conjured from an old wives’ tale.” The sight of Sissy’s downcast expression made me regret my words. “But I will go out in search of some small delicacy for the person your robin has promised us.” And I kissed her cheek in pledge.