Edgar Allan Poe and the Jewel of Peru

by Karen Lee Street

  “I hope our guest did not terrify you too much. She is much more a scientist than the exotic witch she looks.”

  My wife smiled. “Miss Loddiges is charming, not terrifying at all. Indeed, I find it difficult to comprehend how such an unworldly creature got herself from London all the way to Philadelphia unassisted. You mentioned in your letter that she seems to live in an imaginary kingdom populated solely by birds and rarely leaves the house, so I am puzzled as to why she did not write to you about this new endeavor, but instead made such an unpleasant, frightening journey alone and arrived in Philadelphia unannounced.” Sissy looked up from her needlework and waited calmly for the truth.

  I knew that my face had been the picture of surprise when I first saw Miss Loddiges, so it was no good fabricating a forgotten letter in which she had announced to me her intention to travel to Philadelphia. Furthermore, my wife had clearly committed my letters to memory, whereas I had very little recollection of what I had written to her during my fearful adventure in London. There seemed no point in trying to protect Sissy from Miss Loddiges’s peculiar request. I could only hope that my benefactress would continue to pretend that I had worked on her ornithology book while in London—I was not willing to compromise all that I held dear in life by telling the truth about the life my grandparents had led or the harm my nemesis wished to me and my family.

  “Miss Loddiges’s journey from London surely was an ordeal for her,” I said, “and honestly I do not know why she failed to write to me about her intended arrival in Philadelphia.”

  “One can only assume that her family did not wish her to make the journey.”

  I had met Mr. George Loddiges very briefly, but Sissy’s hypothesis seemed accurate.

  “Perhaps Miss Loddiges persuaded her father to allow her to conduct some business on the estate’s behalf,” I said, thinking aloud. “She does know a great deal about botany as well as ornithology, and the Bartram and Loddiges families have business connections through trade in plants and seeds and the like.”

  Sissy shook her head. “No, I think not. If Miss Loddiges were here on family business, there would have been an announcement in the newspaper of her arrival, particularly if she were visiting with the Carrs at Bartram’s estate, and I would have noticed her name in the newspaper—I’ve read her book, after all. Miss Loddiges has undoubtedly come here without her father’s permission to undertake some task that he does not wish her to pursue. She may have used the Bartram connection to her advantage, but her real purpose was to see you, and it was not to do with editing another ornithology book.” She waited, needle dipping in and out of the cloth, her mild and patient gaze more potent than any violent inquisition.

  “Miss Loddiges asked for my assistance in solving a mystery,” I confessed. “Quite why I do not know. Her father’s bird collector, a man named Andrew Mathews, died while on an expedition for Mr. Loddiges in 1841. They were told he was killed in a fall, but Miss Loddiges believes that Mr. Mathews was in fact murdered. His son Jeremiah died by drowning here in Philadelphia last October. She believes that he too was murdered. She is also convinced that she has seen his ghost,” I added, signaling my skepticism with raised eyebrows and a worried shake of the head.

  Sissy absorbed this for a moment. “You met Mr. Mathews and his son?”

  “Yes, I met them both at Miss Loddiges’s home.”

  “Tell me about the day you met him. I do not recall any mention of him in your letters.”

  “It was but a brief meeting during my first trip to Paradise Fields—and my initial impression of Miss Loddiges greatly overshadowed that of both gentlemen,” I said truthfully. I remembered the charismatic Andrew Mathews, but could not fix his quiet son as clearly in my mind. There was mention that Jeremiah’s mother was Peruvian, and I had presumed the young man favored her with his dark good looks and shorter stature. I tried to take myself back to the very beginning of my journey, hoping more details would spring to mind as I recounted them to Sissy.

  “It was a bright morning, and I set off at nine o’clock in a hackney cab. As we travelled east, my journey seemed guided by saints: Dunstan, Bride, Martin, Paul, Mary and Leonard—it seemed fitting that some of London’s most venerable ecclesiastical structures marked my path from Piccadilly to Paradise Fields in East London. The vast fields surrounding my destination were a welcome relief from the city’s grime, and the famous Loddiges hothouses—I am certain I told you about them in my letters—were as impressive as their reputation suggested. When I arrived, quite a number of day-trippers were assembled to tour the great glass structures with their array of exotic plants.”

  As I described the start of my visit, I became immersed in my memory of Helena Loddiges’s peculiar home. The details of that morning sharpened in my mind until I was within them, as if in a dream, and I described what I saw to Sissy.

  “A young maidservant invited me into the house and led me along a dark corridor to the sitting room, where the girl abandoned me with a cheerful grin, saying that Miss Loddiges would be down to meet me presently and I should take a seat. I did as she suggested and observed my surroundings. While the room was spacious, it was made to seem a quarter of its size by the number of articles crammed into it. Ferns pressed against the glass of enormous Wardian cases, as if intent on creeping into the very room. Etchings of tropical birds and plants decorated the walls, obscuring the dark green paint. Books dedicated to botany and ornithology filled the shelves, which were topped with a heterogeneous flock of bird-life. I flinched when I spied a raven perched right above me, remembering the antics of Mr. Dickens’s infernal pet, but soon realized that the ebony bird with its tilted head and glistening eye was perpetually captured in quizzical repose. All the other birds were equally inanimate, but posed so convincingly I felt that I had entered some ancient avian kingdom.

  “The rattle of china made me turn to the door just as the maidservant arrived with a wooden trolley carrying tea paraphernalia, cakes and a bowl of some exotic fruit. I nearly jumped from my skin when I noticed that the armchair nearest to mine was now occupied by a creature that could have been half woman, half bird—our whimsical Miss Helena Loddiges, of course.”

  “I am picturing it perfectly,” Sissy said, crumpling up her embroidery in her pleasure. “What a curious place. So perfect for Miss Loddiges.”

  “Her natural habitat, no doubt. But her maidservant is less at home in that environment. She rebuffed my efforts to assist with laying out the tea things, despite her struggles to move a magnificent scarlet macaw and a collection of smaller brightly colored birds that filled the occasional table placed between our two armchairs.”

  “Dusting Miss Loddiges’s flock must present the girl with awful problems,” Sissy said, shaking her head with mock gravity. “Mother would find some way to cook them up for dinner if she were forced to deal with them.”

  I smiled to imagine that very likely scenario. “Perhaps that was what the girl meant when she nearly dropped the macaw and grumbled, ‘I’ll cook your goose, you wretch.’”

  Sissy giggled. “And did you manage to hide your astonishment at Miss Loddiges’s appearance?” she asked. “I suspect you did not, and hope you didn’t ruffle the dear lady’s feathers too much. Miss Loddiges is much more astute than one might presume from her eccentric garb.”

  Just as my wife was much more astute than her charmingly light-hearted manner suggested, I thought.

  “I believe I managed initially, but fear I gawped in an ungentlemanly fashion when I noticed her adornments, which are gruesome in my opinion. In fact, that is something I found interesting about Mr. Andrew Mathews and his son. Neither was in the least discomfited by Miss Loddiges’s attire or demeanor or her peculiar sitting room. Perhaps they were merely accustomed to the lady and her surroundings, or perhaps such adornments are pleasing to those who collect and skin birds.”

  “That is a horrible thought,” my wife shivered. “Were Mr. Mathews and his son also assisting with Miss Loddiges’s ornitholog
y book?”

  “In a sense. Obviously père Mathews provided birds for Mr. Loddiges’s collection, which our dear lady studied and preserved. And of course he described the exotic places he visited to Miss Loddiges. Mr. Mathews was a jovial character, not at all how I imagined an explorer of the most remote parts of South America to be.”

  “Not a fearsome pirate or a grizzled fellow with uncombed hair, dressed all in animal skins?”

  “I’m afraid not. But my first encounter with Mr. Mathews was quite remarkable all the same. After tea, Miss Loddiges took me to see the great glasshouses where they keep exotic orchids and ferns and the like. The heat made me feel quite drowsy, and I thought I was dreaming when a fairy creature appeared before me, darting to and fro inside a diaphanous bubble.” The memory of that improbable creature drew me back to Paradise Fields, as if a mesmerist had directed me there . . .

  “May I present Mr. Edgar Poe, writer and literary editor,” my hostess had said to a dark-haired man, small in stature, who looked like a tropical woodland satyr in his dark green suit, and a young man who surely was no more than eighteen. “This is Mr. Andrew Mathews, botanist and bird collector. He has captured all the finest birds in my father’s collection. And this is his son Jeremiah, who is studying ornithology.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Poe,” the bird collector said and grasped my hand enthusiastically.

  “And you, Mr. Mathews,” I muttered, with my attention utterly fixed on the tiny fairy that hovered in front of him.

  Andrew Mathews noticed where my gaze was directed and laughed. “This is Enfys,” he said. “Trochilus colubris. I have at last succeeded in bringing one of its species back alive. I hope it might prove possible to establish a small colony of them in one of the glasshouses. What a fine thing that would be.”

  I bent closer to the gauzy bubble with its flittering prisoner and saw that it was indeed a tiny emerald hummingbird, its throat decorated with red.

  “The bag is kept distended by a rod of whalebone. She is quite content inside.” Mr. Mathews pulled a small bottle from his pocket and held it up to the thin gauze. “Saccharine water – they are partial to it.”

  I watched with disbelief as the tiny creature thrust its long bill through the fabric and supped from the sweet nectar. When it finished feeding, the hummingbird nestled down at the bottom of its cage, which was attached to Mr. Mathews’s jacket button. If I had not witnessed his unusual pet myself, I would have condemned the tale as a hoax. It was some time before I noticed that our hostess was also staring at the hummingbird, an anxious expression upon her face.

  “Are you quite all right, Miss Loddiges?” I asked.

  She nodded unconvincingly.

  “Have you spied a message, Helena?” Jeremiah Mathews asked softly.

  She closed her eyes and shook her head, but it was clear her denial was a polite fabrication.

  “Helena believes in ornithomancy, a useful art when in the wilds of South America, where the actions of birds may alert the traveler to danger, but rather less helpful when it makes the practitioner afraid to go outdoors,” Andrew Mathews explained. His words might have been insulting, but they were delivered with the tenderness of an elder brother to a beloved sister with no offense intended.

  None seemed to be taken, for Miss Loddiges merely said, “I feel the need for more tea. Will you join me?” Without waiting for a response, she led us to her sitting room.

  Before we could take our seats, Andrew Mathews said, “You must see Helena’s most impressive work.”

  He led us to a large box draped with a cloth that dominated one corner of the room and unveiled it to reveal a hummingbird cabinet, truly the largest I had ever seen. It was as if a host of miniature angels was captured within its glass walls, so perfect were those winged creatures, so myriad their vivid hues. The tiny birds were perched upon tree branches or crouched in petite nests, while some were suspended by gossamer threads and appeared to hover mid-air. It was a vision of the sublime rather than the mundane, for there looked to be over one hundred species of hummingbirds displayed inside the cabinet . . .

  “How lovely,” Sissy whispered, waking me from my vision.

  “Yes, it was. And at the center of the cabinet was a pair of the most elusive birds in their collection: Loddigesia mirabilis—the marvelous spatuletail—named after Miss Loddiges’s father. Andrew Mathews had collected them, and Miss Loddiges had preserved them forever in the midst of their courtship ritual.”

  “What an uncommon thing to see, but how sad to kill such beautiful creatures,” my wife said.

  “Precisely what I thought, my dear. But it is the passion of her father and of many other collectors. Mr. Mathews seemed to have a paradoxical love of the birds; he delighted in observing them in their natural habitat, but did not flinch at extinguishing them in the name of science, as he put it. And he had a treasure trove of tales about his many hazardous expeditions through South America—Andrew Mathews was a most charismatic fellow. Conversely, his son was clearly intelligent but less gifted in the art of conversation. It was a delightful interlude to our working day, and Miss Loddiges seemed to wilt like a cut flower when they took their leave.”

  “And that is when you realized that Miss Helena Loddiges was in love with the bird collector’s son.”

  In truth I had not realized that at all, but I knew then that Sissy was absolutely right. Helena Loddiges was in love with the recently deceased Jeremiah Mathews, who, in her view, succumbed to the ill will of another human being just before he sailed back to England.

  “And so of course you must assist Miss Loddiges, for she is heartsick with grief. It was her affection for Mr. Mathews that made her find a way to Philadelphia against all odds. We cannot send her home disappointed and still grieving for her lost love. You must discover whether Jeremiah Mathews died by drowning, as was reported, or if truly he was murdered here in Philadelphia, as she believes,” Sissy declared. “And if he was, the specifics of the terrible crime might indicate whether his father too was murdered.”

  “But, my dear, how do I even begin such an impossible task? Truly I cannot see how I can help the woman, as much as I would like to.”

  “You meet with Miss Loddiges at Bartram’s estate tomorrow and you listen to all she has to say. I do not doubt that you will hear something in her full story that gives you an idea as to how to begin solving her mystery. And if you find that you truly cannot help her or her instincts regarding Mr. Mathews’s death are wrong, then you will at least have comforted her in her grief, which is a noble thing in itself.”

  “All right. I will do as you suggest.”

  “And invite her to spend the day with us on Tuesday. She is lonely and grieving and I like her very much.” My wife got up from her chair and leaned over to kiss me. “And now I must go to dream of a Peruvian forest filled with hummingbirds. Please do not stay up half the night reading, my love.” She kissed me again.

  For the second time that day, I was charged with finding the perpetrator of a murder that I was not convinced had truly occurred, for there was no body, no murder suspect nor any weapon—no concrete evidence at all that the likable Andrew Mathews had been sent to an early grave by human malevolence rather than an unfortunate whim of nature, or that his son had suffered the same terrible fate.

  10

  MONDAY, 11 MARCH 1844

  The journey to Bartram’s estate might have been a pleasantly refreshing one if it were not for the malevolent pixie that crouched in my pocket. With each bump and twist of the carriage I felt it shift and flex its limbs as if it were a live thing, not merely a doll constructed from wax and cloth. I had decided that the best course of action was to pay my respects to Miss Loddiges, see precisely what she wanted from me, and then journey on to St. Augustine’s to reveal the new poppet to Father Keane.

  When we arrived at last, I made my way up a path through a garden that was dormant but impressive in size and would produce quite a display of roses, daffodils and other f
lowers when they sprang from the earth in the next few months. The house itself was rather plain at first glance, constructed from local Wissahickon schist, gray in color but flecked with mica that glinted when the sun’s rays glanced upon it. Three imposing Ionic columns gave it a quiet grandeur and curved embellishments carved around the main front windows added a certain prettiness. The house appeared to have three floors, with dormer windows—a trio—arising from the roof. I stepped onto the covered entranceway and let the knocker fall several times. The door opened moments later and there was a handsome woman, three score years or more, dressed in the severe clothing of a Quaker.

  “Please come inside, Mr. Poe,” she said, ushering me into the hall. “I am Mrs. Ann Carr, as you must have gathered.”

  “It is a great pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Carr.”

  She led me toward a crackling fire. “Helena is expecting you. She sends her apologies for her tardiness. She lost all sense of time while setting up her work table. Please, take off your coat and warm yourself.” Mrs. Carr indicated a chair and I happily sank into it while she took my overcoat. The house was decorated simply but comfortably. A painting of an elderly man—no doubt a Bartram—was hanging above the fireplace, and I wondered briefly if it was by the same peculiar artist responsible for the portrait I so detested in our own parlor. Hanging opposite the window was a more appealing still life of blossoms arranged in a turquoise bowl. The flowers were very striking, white with vivid yellow stamens and long oval leaves of claret.

  As Mrs. Carr settled herself into another armchair, she said, “Franklinia alatamaha. We cultivate them. The leaves change from green to scarlet in autumn, when occasionally they will also blossom.”

  “Quite the spectacle,” I said.

  “Have you visited our gardens previously, Mr. Poe?”

  “We came last June. My wife was captivated by the peonies in particular.”