Edgar Allan Poe and the Jewel of Peru

by Karen Lee Street

  * * *

  The air was brisk and the footpath slick with islands of ice, but it was a bright morning, which imbued fellow pedestrians with an optimistic air, judging from the friendly greetings I received as I walked down Seventh Street. The cupola and clock of the market shed soon came into view and I made my way toward them, hoping to find some treat for Sissy there. The market shed was surrounded by a flotilla of wagons, where solemn farmers and fishermen were selling a variety of produce. A large country woman stood behind an artful display of fruit conserves; their glass jars were topped with pretty circles of fabric and tied with ribbon. If I could not find the shortbread that my wife was particularly fond of, I would return for a jar or two of peach preserves.

  The market normally held an amiable chattering crowd, but there was a murk of unease inside. Men and women roughly pushed by me, moving toward the doorway with uncommon speed. Near the market’s center there was a group of people hovering near a table where a woman who appeared to be Muddy’s age was selling fine linen handkerchiefs. Two brutes were planted in front of the lady’s stand, facing each other like fighting dogs in a tavern yard.

  “Get back to Kensington Market with your own kind,” the larger of the two men growled, his hands curling into fists.

  “She has every right to be here, as do we all,” the other man retorted. His voice had a clear Irish inflection, and I had no doubt the grey-haired woman selling handkerchiefs had left that same homeland.

  “This is our market. We’ve been selling our goods here for years,” the red-faced man said, jabbing his finger into the Irishman’s chest. “Your kind is taking the food from our mouths.” He shoved the man to emphasize his words.

  The woman fearfully gathered her wares with speed. If her table were knocked over, the snowy linen would be spoiled under the boots of the men before her. I wished I had the money to buy all her handkerchiefs. There was scuffling as two opposing camps formed, and I followed the crowd that hurried toward the exit, leaving behind the angry mob.

  As I headed away from the market, I was saddened to witness yet more conflict incited by those who called themselves “Nativists”—Philadelphia-born and of the Protestant faith—against immigrants to the city. I could not help but think of my own grandmother—an actress—who emigrated from London to join a theater in Boston, bringing my mother to a new and transient home with traveling players when she was just a young girl. When I myself was a child, my adoptive father took my adoptive mother and I to live in London, where we spent five unsettling years as he tried his fortunes in that city and brought us close to ruin. I knew, therefore, what it was to be newly arrived somewhere, to never fully belong. I understood how not being “native” or naturally born to a place or a family might bring unmerited suffering.

  My reverie was cut short when I found myself in front of a familiar red-brick building. Surely the imp of the perverse had drawn me to the post office for it was too soon to receive the return correspondence I awaited from Dupin. If there were a package waiting for me inside, it was one that would only cause me anxiety and grief.

  “Yes, I do have something for you, Mr. Poe,” the jolly postmaster told me. “Arrived this morning.” He handed a small package over the counter. My “Thank you” was an utterly false sentiment, and I carried the thing gingerly, as if it were infectious, to the first tavern I spied.

  After a large sip of brandy to steady my nerves, I unknotted the string and opened the brown paper that was wrapped around a small, rough wooden box. Inside, cushioned by strips of soft paper, was a figure—female this time—dressed in a plain black frock with ebony boots, gloves and a veil like the bride of Death. Her waxen face was very pale, and her tiny hand clutched a black feather. A murder of crows, I thought. There was no doubt in my mind that the figure was a miniature of my wife, Virginia, cloaked in funereal garb. I wanted to crush the loathsome manikin, but feared that if I did so, the infernal magic that had shaped it would steal her life away.

  8

  I hurried back home, my promises of finding some confection purely forgotten. How could I defend my family or myself from my aggressor when I did not know where he was or how he had discovered where I now lived? Was he stalking me, dogging my footsteps, secretly watching me as he had in London?

  When I reached our house at last, I found a fire burning merrily in the kitchen but neither my wife nor her mother in the room. Anxiety rose up in me, provoked by the evil doll I was carrying, and I rushed up the stairs hoping to find Sissy napping; but the bedroom was empty. My fear increased, and I dashed to my study and threw the poppet into a desk drawer to escape its malign influence, then I stumbled back down the stairs, puffing air until at last my constricted breath turned to words.

  “Sissy!” A raven might have croaked her name. “Sissy!” I called out again.

  “Yes, my dear?” Her calm voice came from the parlor.

  The dread that had surged into me ebbed away, and I opened the door with a relieved smile, but froze at the threshold, astonished at the sight before me. There, nestled in my armchair, was a creature from some dark fairy tale. She was very small of stature, petite of frame, with a chalky complexion and round green eyes that did not seem to blink. Her age was not easily determined, for while she in many ways resembled a child dressed in adult clothing, her demeanor was that of an elderly, world-weary person, and her peculiar garments added to this veneer of the ancient. The dress appeared black at first glance, but as sunlight dappled over it, dark green and purple hues were visible, like an English starling’s plumage. The full skirts were curiously layered and the voluminous sleeves were unexpectedly tight at the forearms; a large pelerine of black lace decorated with feathers gave its wearer the semblance of wings. The adornments she wore gleamed emerald and sapphire with a flash of ruby and topaz, but they were not fashioned from gems—hummingbird heads were mounted onto gold and hung from her ears and around her neck, while three of the tiny birds were left whole to nest in the twists of her pinned-up thicket of auburn hair. I would have appreciated the lady’s finery more had I not known that the wondrous birds that had once sipped flower nectar had been stilled by a taxidermist’s knife, indeed her knife.

  “It is a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Poe,” my visitor said in a whisper of a voice.

  Etiquette at last prevailed, and I managed to hide my shock with a welcoming bow. “And may I say the same, Miss Loddiges. A pleasure and a most unexpected surprise. What brings you to Philadelphia?”

  “A message from Grip.”

  Her words made no sense to me and that was clear from my expression.

  “Grip—Mr. Dickens’s raven,” Miss Loddiges said.

  Again, the lady managed to take me utterly by surprise, and I fear I stood there slack-jawed, unable to say a word. Dickens’s pet raven, Grip? Surely she was jesting. Dupin and I had encountered the creature at Dickens’s house and while it chattered incessantly, it spoke nothing but nonsense. Sissy noticed my discomfiture and intervened.

  “I was just telling Miss Loddiges about our other visitor this morning,” she said. “The robin is indeed a prescient fellow, and in future we must have more faith in his promises.”

  “Yes, we must,” I admitted. “For I am afraid I did not bring back any sweetmeats.”

  Sissy smiled, not in the least surprised by my negligence. “No matter, for Miss Loddiges does not wish for anything but some tea. I’ll just put the kettle on. Please sit and entertain our guest.”

  My wife left for the kitchen, leaving me alone with Miss Helena Loddiges, a woman I thought of as my benefactress due to the very generous fee she once paid me to edit her ornithological treatise. It was this fee that had allowed me to undertake my trip to London in the summer of 1840 to investigate a mystery regarding my family, and as I had not met Miss Loddiges before, I paid the reclusive young woman a brief courtesy visit at her home in Paradise Fields while I was there. It was more than a surprise to see this unusual lady outside the boundaries of the Loddiges’s esta
te, much less on the other side of the Atlantic or, most improbably of all, in my home. Miss Loddiges stared at me with her round, green eyes as I sat down in Muddy’s favorite chair.

  “You mentioned Grip, Mr. Dickens’s raven. I did meet the irksome fellow, but truly cannot fathom how he might have given you a message other than pure nonsense. I was not aware that you were acquainted with Mr. Dickens,” I said.

  “We are acquainted through my work. Grip expired three years ago, and Mr. Dickens asked me to immortalize his friend. He had seen my father’s hummingbird collection and felt I would preserve the raven with best regard to his spirit.”

  “What a pity for Mr. Dickens, for he was terribly fond of the creature, but I am certain you made him very happy with your work.”

  “I did my best.”

  “But, please, if the raven has expired, how did you receive a message from it?”

  Miss Loddiges tilted her head to one side and scrutinized me, much as a robin might stare at the ground before plucking an earthworm from it. “The boundary between life and death is but a shadow—who may say for certain where one ends and the other begins? Somehow the birds communicate to me, whether alive or gone to the other side.” She shrugged as if her pronouncement were the most natural thing in the world.

  “I see. And if I may be so bold, what was the message Grip delivered?”

  She paused for a moment, as if deciding how best to convey it. “It was regarding your skills of ratiocination. You see, Mr. Poe, I need your assistance in solving a terrible mystery—a murder. Do you recollect my father’s bird collector, Andrew Mathews, and his son Jeremiah?”

  “Yes, I had the pleasure of meeting them at Paradise Fields.”

  “Both are dead,” Miss Loddiges announced. “Andrew crossed over not long after Grip in 1841, while on an expedition. The cause was said to be a fall to his death, but Jeremiah did not believe the fall was accidental. And now I know for certain that he was correct and truly it was murder, for now Jeremiah has died—he was murdered this past October here in Philadelphia, directly after a bird-collecting trip for my father. We were informed that he had fallen from the ship and drowned the night before he was due to sail to London with all he had gathered during the expedition; but it is a lie. I need your skills to find the culprit who took his life.”

  Once again I was left slack-jawed and speechless. I had told her nothing of my family mystery or of meeting with Mr. Dickens’s irksome pet raven. Certainly I had no idea how she had come to the notion that I was skilled in the art of ratiocination, an accolade that was undoubtedly reserved for my friend C. Auguste Dupin, who seemed able to divine a man’s soul through mere observation and came to his solutions with a degree of acumen that appeared preternatural.

  “Perhaps you could tell me a bit more?” I muttered.

  “At first I had dreams of Grip. I would see him come alive again within the bell jar, and he would tap upon the glass, attempting to tell me something.”

  “What a terrible nightmare.”

  “Not at all. It was clear he was a friend, but I was frustrated not to understand his message. And when the birds began to move within the house, I knew it was vital that I fathom the auspices.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked, becoming increasingly certain that my benefactress was more than merely eccentric.

  “It was the birds on display in the parlor. My mother had set them out in a manner she found pleasing to the eye, utterly disregarding any scientific principle, but one morning all the birds from South America were gathered together upon the hummingbird cabinet, as if in a conference. My mother accused the maid of undoing her handiwork, but both my father and I knew that to be impossible given how the birds were grouped. He chastised me later for it and was dismissive when I told him it was a message from Grip.”

  “He does not believe in ornithomancy,” I suggested.

  Miss Loddiges shook her head. “Of course he does, which is why his reaction was peculiar. And the following night, when a person managed to enter one of the glasshouses, my father refused to report the crime.”

  “Was anything stolen?”

  “No, but the padlock on the glasshouse door had been removed and Enfys, our little hummingbird, had been released from her enclosure and was flying freely throughout the glasshouse. I feared the shock might kill her.”

  “Perhaps your father thought it merely an accident, that someone forgot the padlock and the enclosure door was not shut properly.”

  “Not possible,” she declared. “I checked on Enfys myself before I retired for the night.”

  I understood why her father might hesitate to bother the police with something so easily explained by human error.

  “The following night all was made clear to me when I awoke to see Jeremiah,” she continued. “The draperies were parted, the room dimly lit with moonlight—and there he was, standing in the doorway to my room.

  “‘Jeremiah!’ I cried out. ‘We were told you had drowned!’ When I spoke, shadow seemed to envelope him, and I realized with an aching heart that it was him in spirit only. ‘Don’t go,’ I said. ‘Do you have something to tell me? Some message?’ The moonlight seemed to grow stronger, dispelling the shadow, and he was there again.

  “‘La Joya,’ he whispered. ‘Where is the Jewel?’

  “‘What jewel? What do you mean?” But the moonlight faded, and I could not see him. I left my bed and made my way to the corridor, hoping to find him there, but it was empty. I went through the entire house calling his name, but Jeremiah had vanished,” Miss Loddiges concluded, her green eyes fixed upon me.

  “How disturbing,” I said. “Were you very frightened?”

  “Frightened? Of course not. It was Jeremiah. But when I woke my parents to tell them what had occurred, my father insisted it was but a dream and sent me back to bed with a calmative.”

  Her expression suggested that I should share her disgust at this injustice, but I could not help wondering if she had imbibed something rather stronger than a calmative before her vision. Fortunately, I was saved from expressing such thoughts when my wife entered with tea and thin slices of cake. She smiled brightly at our guest as she filled her teacup, and their proximity reminded me with a start that Miss Loddiges was but four years older than Sissy.

  “I never believed I would have the chance to meet you, Miss Loddiges. I greatly admire your book on ornithology. My husband so enjoyed working with you in London.”

  I flinched inwardly, for I had told Sissy that the reason for my journey to London was to work with Miss Loddiges, as I could not bring myself to divulge the awful mystery I had inherited. How could a woman as good as my Virginia love a man descended from criminals or remain with a husband whose grandparents should have hanged for their crimes? I waited for Miss Loddiges to reveal my fabrication, but the lady’s expression did not alter as she quietly took a sip of her tea.

  “Your husband’s work on my book was excellent,” she finally said, “and I am hoping he will do me the honor of a further collaboration.”

  “How wonderful!” Sissy exclaimed.

  There was no doubt to me that Miss Loddiges was referring to her unexpected request that I solve a murder, a task I had no desire to undertake, particularly when I was embroiled in my own mystery.

  “Of course I would like to be of assistance,” I said carefully, “but I fear I am not suitable for this particular work. It is quite different to our last collaboration.”

  “I will pay the same fee and any expenses,” Miss Loddiges announced as she retrieved a thick, sealed envelope from a reticule attached to her dress and handed it to me.

  Sissy’s smile brightened even more and her eyes met mine. I turned the envelope over several times. From the heft of it, the full amount was inside. The handsome fee that Miss Loddiges was offering would help us enormously, and to refuse her would invite questions that I did not wish to answer.

  “Miss Loddiges, if you truly believe I might be of assistance, then of course I am at y
our service.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Poe. I am so very grateful. Is it possible to begin tomorrow? I am staying at the Bartram estate with my acquaintance Mrs. Carr. If you could visit me there, we might go through all the details of the work.”

  “Yes, I am free tomorrow. Perhaps at noon?”

  “That would be ideal,” she said in her whispering voice.

  Sissy could barely contain her delight. And so, it seemed that I was to be Miss Helena Loddiges’s accomplice in tracking down a phantom murderer, whether I wished to be or not.

  9

  I should have understood at supper that something was amiss when my wife simply told her mother that the robin’s premonition was correct, that a visitor had indeed arrived. She did not describe our unusual guest or her strange attire, nor did she mention the offer of paid work, which would have greatly pleased Muddy. But I did not notice any of this at the time, so great was my relief that Miss Loddiges did not compromise the tale I had told my family about my sojourn in London.

  Muddy retired early as was her wont and my wife and I settled ourselves in the parlor, she with some needlework and I with a book that remained closed as I stared at the fire, which crackled and hissed, sparks floating up the chimney like fireflies from the grass in summer. The atmosphere was one of precarious rather than companionable silence.

  “Miss Loddiges is an intriguing woman,” Sissy finally said.

  “Yes, one might call her eccentric given her sense of fashion and occupation. Much could be attributed to her upbringing. Her father positively encouraged her taxidermy work, a useful service to him given his hobby of bird collecting.”

  Sissy nodded and continued to ply her embroidery needle through the hooped muslin, fashioning a bouquet of flowers on it stitch by patient stitch. “In your letter from London, you described her more than perfectly. Muddy and I could not imagine her ornaments fashioned from mummified birds, as you put it. To see them for myself was both fascinating and a little horrifying”