Edgar Allan Poe and the Jewel of Peru

by Karen Lee Street

A bitter laugh escaped me at the thought of our meager possessions being purchased by the criminal fraternity. “If you persist with your lies, we will fetch the night watchman, who will take you directly to prison, and I will personally ensure that you are not released for many years,” I improvised.

  Perhaps my imagination got the better of me, but it seemed that the boy met the notion of life in prison with resignation rather than outright fear, and it occurred to me that he might already be in prison, or the nearest thing to it—Old Blockley, the city’s almshouse. It was a brooding complex, with its poor-house, orphanage, infirmary and insane asylum, crouched like a hungry beast on the west side of the Schuylkill, south of the city’s thriving center. When I took walks in that direction, its ominous presence left me feeling morose, for I knew that it was not difficult to end up in such a place. If one were unable to find enough work and debts accumulated, Old Blockley laid claim to even the most industrious.

  “Tell us who paid you and what you were looking for,” Dupin continued.

  The boy tried to appear brave, but as his eyes flicked from Dupin to me and back again, his face sagged in fear and his lower lip trembled. I began to feel sorry for him but tried to banish the emotion—it would do Miss Loddiges no good to feel sympathy for a thief, even if driven to his trade through his family’s impoverishment or through having no family at all.

  “We will let you go without charge if you give us the information we need,” I said. “And you will be able to keep the money from the villain who put you up to this.”

  “I wasn’t given any money,” the boy protested.

  “Your employer will not know that you’ve told us,” came Sissy’s voice from behind us. “What is your name, dear?”

  We turned as one to the kitchen doorway, where Sissy and Muddy stood huddled together, wrapped up in their woolen dressing gowns and nightcaps, each clutching a taper. Muddy was armed with her own walking stick and a very fierce expression.

  “Billy Sweeney, ma’am. My name is Billy.”

  “And who forced you to break the law, Billy?” she asked gently, and her kind words seemed to crumble the boy’s determination to protect the rogue who had put him up to his devilry.

  “It was a man who drinks at the Mermaid in Hell Town. I was to fetch a journal for him. He said I would know it from its leather cover, the letters on its edge and the drawings of birds inside.”

  Dupin held up the note. “These letters?”

  The boy nodded.

  “What else did your employer tell you?” Dupin asked.

  “If I found the journal, I would be paid double what he promised me to get inside. If I told anyone, he would murder me.” He grimaced with the last words, as if a dagger had already pierced his heart.

  “You will assist us if you wish to gain your freedom,” Dupin advised. “Then you will simply tell your employer that you could not find any journal.”

  The boy remained silent, a stubborn expression fixed upon his face, his eyes avoiding Dupin’s.

  “Truly you have nothing to gain by continuing to help a criminal,” Sissy reasoned. “There is nothing to say he would have paid you at all, for there is no honor amongst thieves.”

  “But he is not a thief!” the boy blurted out. “He told me that the man who lives here is a thief. That he stole the book from a lady friend of his.”

  Dupin and I looked at each other. Miss Loddiges’s abductor was undoubtedly behind this housebreaking.

  “Have you met the lady?” I asked.

  The boy shook his head, and Dupin shifted restlessly, his patience at an end. “It is clear we will get nothing more of interest from this miscreant, nothing that we cannot fathom ourselves. I believe there is only one course of action to be taken at this time.” He strode to the hall and returned with his overcoat, hat, and muffler. “You will take me to the tavern where you met with your employer.”

  “But it is the middle of the night,” Sissy objected.

  “In my experience, the haunts of thieves and liars rarely close,” Dupin said, a remark which only served to deepen the expressions of consternation on the faces of my wife and her mother.

  “It will take me but a moment to dress,” I told Dupin.

  “Shouldn’t you bring someone from the night watch with you, Eddy?” my mother-in-law said with alarm.

  “That would defeat what we hope to achieve,” Dupin said. “We will be quite safe, I assure you, madame.” Dupin deftly tossed his walking stick from one hand to the other and back again. Muddy frowned slightly, but handed her own walking stick to me. It was a rustic thing that she used on woodland rambles, and utterly unlike Dupin’s ebony cane topped by its golden cobra head with ruby eyes—an elegant accoutrement with a secret bite. But when I felt the weight of the wood and the solidity of its knotted handle, I realized that it might indeed serve me well should we find trouble at the Mermaid tavern and looked at my mother-in-law with additional respect.

  23

  We made our way down Seventh Street with linked arms, Billy the picklock between Dupin and I, his hands still bound behind him, our staggering walk lending us the air of a trio who had spent many hours in a tippling den. The young ruffian did his best to persuade us that we would gain nothing by accompanying him to the tavern, that his employer was not likely to be there waiting for him. Dupin countered this with the suggestion that if the boy preferred to spend the night in jail, we would take him there instead. We turned left on Sassafras Street and headed toward the harbor.

  The night itself seemed to grow darker once we stepped into the area known as Hell Town, and yet the place was perhaps the liveliest part of the city at that hour. There seemed to be a tavern or beerhouse on every corner, with their clientele spilling out into the streets, immune to the cold due to the quantities of rum or grog they had imbibed. Plumes of smoke mixed with laughter as mariners swapped tales of the sea or ladies intent on securing a man’s attentions pretended mirth at muttered inanities.

  A sign suspended above the tavern door featured a golden-haired siren perched on a rock, waves crashing around her as she strummed upon a small harp. We had at last reached our destination.

  “Go directly to the person who employed you, but do not attempt to alert him to our presence or you will regret it.” And with those words, Dupin surreptitiously revealed the rapier hidden within his walking stick, and young Billy’s eyes opened wide with fear. Dupin cut the boy’s bonds, then concealed the weapon again. “Tell your employer that you searched everywhere, but the journal was not at the house. Ask if they wish you to look elsewhere for it. You will inform us if he devises another plan.”

  “Remember, we know where to find you at Old Blockley,” I tested and the boy’s face revealed that my guess was accurate. “If you betray us we will have both you and your mother taken to prison.”

  Again my guess about his family circumstances proved correct as Billy nodded, his expression doubly fearful.

  We followed him inside as surreptitiously as we could, hats tipped low and mufflers pulled up to hide our faces, and sat at a grimy table in the shadows while Billy made his way across the room. Dupin handed me the green-tinted spectacles he often wore when applying his skills of ratiocination at the location of a crime.

  “In case his companions recognize your face,” he said. “They are less likely to know mine.”

  I quickly put on the glasses and had the sense of being submerged beneath murky seawater. I knew from previous experience in Dupin’s company that the darkened lenses obscured the wearer’s eyes and functioned as a useful disguise.

  Billy had joined two men at a table in the corner, one a hulking beast of a fellow, red-faced and round-bellied, the other as small and furtive as a rat, wearing a voluminous black coat and a wide-brimmed hat that successfully hid a good deal of his face. It was impossible to hear what was being said, such was the din from drunken revelers, ill-advised songsters, a chattering parrot at the bar and an old dog near the fire that howled at regular intervals.
I hoped the two rogues would soon go so we might follow them to the place where Miss Loddiges was being held captive. Unfortunately, they decided to deplete their bottle of rum before leaving the establishment, so I bought us two tankards of beer and we waited.

  The tavern was a peculiar theater, full of drama, its cast drawn from around the world due to its proximity to the docks. There were characters that Mr. Dickens himself might people his novels with—thieves, vagabonds, ladies of dubious repute, eccentrics in dandified attire and servants who had sneaked out to enjoy the entertainments Hell Town had to offer. A card sharper lured a group of innocents into playing cards for money, while a group of seasoned gamblers threw dice at another table. An elderly woman in greasy clothes with an aged hyacinth macaw perched upon her shoulder was ensconced at a table near the fireplace, sipping at a tankard of ale and playing the part of local apothecary. A constant stream of customers paid their respects to “Mrs. Mermaid” and, after slipping her a few coins, left her company with some useful potion—a tonic for seasickness, salve for bug bites, tincture of opium, Jesuit’s Bark for swamp fever, or Spanish flies for a sailor’s carnal woes, according to her loud commentary. If the buyer did not have the requisite coins to pay Mrs. Mermaid, I noticed she was willing to accept odd bits of jewelry or other items of value that looked unlikely to belong to her customer.

  There was a yard out behind the tavern, and I watched as disagreeable-looking fellows collected bets on that night’s cockfight, then lugged cages of unlucky birds through the back door, where they would battle to the death. Thankfully, we were spared the roars of that despicable contest, for the two ruffians seated with the young housebreaker stood up to leave. I gulped back the contents of my tankard, and Dupin and I slipped out of the door. Water Street was still crowded with people, many of whom staggered one way, then the other, interfering with our view, but we managed to stay with them as they proceeded west on Sassafras Street and watched as the trio split at Second Street, Billy heading south and his employers walking north. We continued to follow the ruffians, who seemed unaware of our presence as they turned onto Vine Street, moving west. So intent was I upon concealment that I did not consider our surroundings until our quarry’s destination was clear.

  “You are surprised?” Dupin whispered.

  “Most completely, but you are not?”

  “Why would I be, given the book I found in the library and the fate of your friend there? Now we know for certain that someone at St. Augustine’s is in allegiance with the person who kidnapped your benefactress or possibly did the deed themselves.”

  “Father Moriarty,” I muttered.

  “Perhaps, although we must not presume so merely because he strives to hide the fact that Father Keane was murdered. But we do know that the person responsible has two accomplices and now it seems very likely they are priests. And then there is the third person,” he murmured.

  “Young Sweeney?”

  “No, the person who made the bird call outside your house—something like the sound of a crow. Did you hear it?”

  “Yes, it woke me up. I purely forgot about it with all that has happened.”

  “Most strange,” Dupin murmured. “If Sweeney had an accomplice, his bird calls made me aware something was amiss, which was clumsy, yet he was skillful enough to remain invisible if he followed us to the tavern. And if he is trailing us still, he is like a ghost.”

  I peered into the darkness that surrounded us, but could only see the two men who had hired the young lockpick to break into my home. They stepped through the door in the stone wall that surrounded the hulking shadow that was St. Augustine Church.

  24

  SUNDAY, 17 MARCH 1844

  “There were nine in the band and each was almost ten feet tall; they crouched on the very edge of the cliff face, morose giants transformed into stone, who might awaken should their eyrie kingdom be threatened. The altitude and precarious location gave them supreme protection from marauders and the ideal vantage point from which to watch over their city and its people.” I did my best to convey Diego Fernández’s wonder and excitement at first setting eyes upon that remote Chachapoyan city, as described in his book Las Costumbres de la Gente de las Nubes, but it was difficult to adequately describe such a wild and strange place when in the hallowed confines of the Academy of Natural Sciences. Dupin, Sissy and I had traveled there at Dupin’s suggestion, due to its reputation for having the largest and taxonomically most complete ornithological collection in the world. We moved from display to display as I continued to recount what I had read in that ancient tome.

  “The giant figures captured the imagination of Diego Fernández and he was determined to examine them more closely. He and several intrepid men climbed up to the precipice and saw that one figure had been considerably damaged, enough to reveal that it was a sarcophagus. Inside was a mummified person wrapped in layers of wool and cotton, then covered in clay. A wooden frame, almost like a bird cage, had been constructed around the mummy, covered with layers of mud and straw to form the giant figure, then painted with sepia and ochre patterns in imitation of elaborate ceremonial robes. Fernández hypothesized that each of the giants contained a mummy and that the imposing sarcophagi had been built in situ.”

  “The figures he describes sound identical to those Jeremiah Mathews writes about in his journal,” Dupin said. “It seems likely that Andrew Mathews, or someone who organized the 1841 expedition, read Fernández’s book, Las Costumbres de la Gente de las Nubes, and used it as a guide to find the site—or that is certainly what your friend Father Keane thought if he hid the book for you. Jeremiah Mathews retraced his father’s footsteps, either following a map or perhaps with the same expedition crew that traveled to the lost city with his father.” Dupin paused to scrutinize a cabinet full of parrot skins that had been gathered in South America. A carefully written notice informed us that this was the most complete selection of birds from the Andes in any ornithological collection.

  “That sounds plausible, Dupin. Fernández notes that the local native population was aware of the ruined city and its tombs, but feared that the giant statues were the Chachapoyans’ gods waiting to take revenge for the city’s destruction. They also believed that dangerous, unearthly creatures inhabited the area. There was said to be a fair-haired mermaid living in the pool beneath an immense waterfall who would bring a curse upon any person unwise enough to swim there.”

  “Perhaps, in truth, the curse was to come upon the waterfall unawares and plunge down it,” Sissy observed.

  “You have read my thoughts again, my dear,” I said, smiling. “Last night, after reading the book, I dreamt that I near plunged into that waterfall.”

  “That is often how these superstitions begin. The frightening tale works as an effective warning,” Dupin observed as he led us to yet another cabinet of taxidermied birds, this time from Asia. He paused in his restless wandering before an elegant figure of a white crane standing upon one leg, and peered more closely to read the identification tag affixed to it. “‘Leucogeranus leucogeranus,’” he read out. “‘Habitat, Siberia, wintering in China.’” He turned to face us. “It is impossible that Andrew Mathews saw this bird in Peru.”

  “This was a bird noted in the pages from Andrew Mathews’s journal?”

  “Indeed. Your friend the priest was correct. There are several birds described in the journal that he could not have observed in the Chachapoyas region.”

  “Dupin has an unparalleled memory,” I told Sissy. “He observes something once—a person, a location or a page in a book—and can describe it as if it were still there in front of him.”

  “What a remarkable gift,” my wife said.

  “A useful one when faced with a mystery, but of little consequence without the skill of deduction,” Dupin said. “Please continue, Poe. What did the Spaniards discover?”

  “Fernández writes that the figures obscured a hole in the cliff face. When they ventured inside, he and his men found a cave decorated
with strange paintings that were similar in style to those on the sarcophagi. Some were geometric designs and others were primitive depictions of animals: jaguars, snakes, hummingbirds, eagles, condors.”

  “Figures like those depicted in Andrew Mathews’s strange drawing of the tree full of birds?” Dupin wondered.

  “The description would seem to fit them,” I said.

  “Most interesting,” Dupin mused. “We must then presume that the drawing is not merely an artistic fantasy, but provides a clue to something Mr. Mathews discovered on the expedition, particularly if his son chose to bring the picture with him to Peru.”

  “Father Keane and I discussed that very thought. He believed that all the birds depicted are found in Peru, as is the tree.”

  “Schinus molle,” Dupin said. “The Peruvian pepper tree. Andrew Mathews would be well acquainted with it. The Spaniards brought it to Europe as an ornamental tree because of the berries, which are used as a spice. The Peruvians make an alcoholic beverage from the berries, and indeed I sampled some when I was there.”

  “Would you recommend it?” I smiled.

  “Not that vintage,” Dupin replied. “Particularly as scholars write that the Incas used the berries in the mummification of their dead.”

  “Mummification of the dead? That is more than relevant given Fernández’s description of the chamber. He said it had numerous alcoves, all of which were filled with mummies.”

  “Fascinating,” Dupin murmured.

  “So Fernández thought. He writes that at first the bodies appeared to be children until they unwrapped one and saw it was bound with its knees bent to its chest, arms twisted around its knees. Its mouth was gaping open as if screaming and its mummified skin was stretched as taut as a drum. The illustrations in the book were quite gruesome, like shrieking demons in a medieval codex.”

  “How awful.” My wife shuddered.

  “Was anything placed with the mummies?” Dupin asked. “Any possessions or religious artifacts?”