On Night's Shore

by Randall Silvis

  “Only those who ingest their employer’s diamonds.”

  “Jesus. Is that what killed him?”

  “Toxemia. Obstruction of his bowels.”

  “So you’re saying he died because his arse was plugged up?”

  “Let that be a lesson to you.”

  If this was the extent of wisdom to be gleaned from an intimacy with death, it suggested to me that there was not much wisdom to be had from dying. It was at that moment, no doubt, that my fascination with death began its wane. In any case, I exited, took one last sidelong glance at the riven man, and made for the stairs, plunging upward through the darkness two steps at a time.

  Poe stood waiting for me outside the morgue, ten yards beyond the glowering guard. The moment the sunshine hit my face, I gasped for air.

  Poe’s first words to me were, “And what did you think of him?”

  “I think he should of stuck to meat and potatoes.”

  Poe crinkled his brow and cocked his head at me.

  “Oh, you mean the doctor. Well, as for him, he wasn’t much of a talker, was he?”

  “He was not. But as to the little he did have to say, how did it strike you?”

  I knew enough of Poe’s methods by now to guess that he was trying to coax from me what he had already surmised. I hazarded a response. “Like he knew more than he was saying?”

  “It was more than a mere omission of facts, I think. A deliberate misdirection.”

  “Like he was maybe…lying through his teeth?”

  His nod signaled approval of my conclusion. “Less clear is the man’s motivation for deceit. Have you any thoughts on that matter?”

  “Well, from the looks of him, he’s either worn to the bone, or he’s got dropsy, or else—”

  “You’ve seen that look before. As have I. The gaze of Morpheus.”

  “I was thinking he’s an opium fiend.”

  “In which case,” Poe said, “our thoughts agree. Yet that alone does not explain a deliberate misdiagnosis.”

  “Somebody must of put him up to it, don’t you think?”

  “What I think, Master Dubbins, is that we must retrace our steps a bit. I have an insistence to make.”

  Back we went then to the heart of the city. Back to the newspaper building and upstairs to Neely’s office. All along the way Poe kept muttering to himself, trying out the adjurations with which he intended to persuade the hard-nosed editor that the case of Mary Rogers warranted further investigation.

  On our way through the larger room, we passed another man on his way out, a man who looked for all the world like he was holding his breath and everything else he owned so close to his body that none of it might touch the desks or the rough and unkempt men or even the tobacco-heavy air. His manner was not so much effeminate as it was aristocratic, the ramrod carriage and imperious tilt of his chin, not to mention the flawless crease and hang of his linen suit and the near-radiant whiteness of his gloves.

  I noticed that a few of the newspapermen in watching him pass suppressed a snicker or tossed a smirk to one of their fellows. But Poe, as the man in white approached down the narrow aisle between desks, drew himself up straight and came abruptly to a halt. By the time the man in white was three paces from us, Poe already had his hand extended.

  “Sir, my name is Poe, and I consider it extremely fortunate that I should have the opportunity to meet you here.”

  The man’s reluctance to shake Poe’s hand was conspicuous. The handshake was brief and, it seemed to me, lacking actual contact. But if the man in white was repulsed by physical contact, it was not, apparently, specific to Poe. “I know your work,” he said. “I admire it.”

  “Ah, well, I am grateful for the compliment. And perhaps someday we might meet to pursue the subject of belles lettres—nothing would delight me more. In the meantime, sir, if you would not mind my calling on you in the not too distant future, there is another matter I should like to discuss. Concerning your pensionnat pour les garçons.”

  If Poe was attempting to obfuscate his meaning to me, the words, at least, were successful. But not the slight nod of his head in my direction, nor the quick glance leveled at me then by the man in white.

  “Certainly,” was all the man said. They nodded again, and then the man swept past us and was gone.

  Poe strode forward to Neely’s door and rapped once and stepped inside. I barely had time to find a vacant corner from which to survey the newspapermen at work, when Neely’s door reopened and out came Poe. I all but raced after him as he strode out of the room.

  “No luck?” I asked when I had caught up with him on the staircase.

  “On the contrary.” His eyes were jubilant. “It seems that my earlier remarks had their effect after all. For, between that meeting and this one, Mr. Neely experienced a complete change of heart. I am charged once again with probing the mystery of our young lady’s demise.”

  “Ain’t that something,” I said.

  “Ain’t it indeed.”

  “And that other fella up there, the one all done up in white. What was he all about?”

  “He was about the future,” Poe said. His tone was so optimistic, even reverent with hope, that I dared not ask him more.

  9

  Our next stop was but a lively stroll away—the emporium where, until her disappearance, Mary Rogers had been employed. At first glance, Anderson’s Tobacco Shop struck me as a haven of sorts, a room where bonhomie and the languid pleasures of a good cigar might be enjoyed unhurried by the clamor of greed and crapulence outside. Often I had watched gentlemen coming and going from such establishments, and always there was about these men, especially in the going, an air of fulfillment and satiation. (I would not then have thought the satisfaction sexual, but that was then. Now, a connoisseur myself of a fine Havana Imperial once a day, and at a time in my life when few other satisfactions abide, I might beg to differ.)

  But of the tobacconist’s shop, there was a headiness encountered immediately inside the door, which is where I stationed myself. This headiness owed itself perhaps to the undulating haze of azure smoke, the thick scents that entwined all about me like vaporous serpents in a coupling frenzy. But, more than the smoke, it was the company of men, the ambiance of a secret society, fraternity, the scoffing at solitude.

  It was not a large shop but nearly square, at least sixteen feet on every side. The eastern wall and half of the northern I remember as being paralleled by a wooden display case topped with a heavy oaken counter. Behind the glass panels of the case were crock after crock of tobaccos for Gotham’s chewing and sniffing and smoking indulgence, chopped leaves of every flavor and blend imaginable, each crock tightly stoppered against the leeching air. There were lovely wooden humidors holding neatly coffined cigars that ranged in circumference from that of my thumb to that of my wrist, and in length from my little finger to my forearm. And finally there were a few small boxes of the cigarritos then coming into fashion, the Opera Puffs and Three Kings. To a child who more than once had snatched a smoldering butt end from the street so as to cram it in the corner of his mouth, the place held at least as much appeal as a confectioner’s shop.

  The full western half of the room was given over to easy chairs, spittoons, and ashtrays. The seats were mostly wing chairs, as I recall, a half dozen of those perhaps, brocaded greens and blues of sturdy smoke-dulled fabrics. The chairs could be turned and moved about the room in various configurations conducive to discourse, for the tobacconist’s shop was as much a men’s social club as it was a sales outlet for the calming brown leaf.

  As to the denizens therein, I spotted a conversation group of three, all smoking cigars, and another of two sucking pipes, but I quickly looked away from all five pairs of eyes because half the excitement of being there was in knowing I did not belong. I assumed a posture that I hoped conveyed both nonchalance and defiance, then watched Poe ap
proach the counter.

  Anderson, seated behind the counter, was quick to leave the table where he had been measuring out tobaccos into individual pouches. He was more than a little portly and none too tall; only his head and shoulders were visible above the countertop.

  “Good day, good sir,” he said to Poe. He had a pale and bulbous head whose skull was fringed with bright red hair and bristly muttonchops. The bulb of his nose was as red as his hair, his mouth wide and lips pale.

  “Good morning,” Poe offered in return. He moved leisurely along the length of the display, perusing the tobaccos, his fingertips sliding along the counter’s rounded edge.

  “And what would your pleasure be today, sir?”

  “The Sumatra blend—how does it draw?”

  “It draws, sir, if you don’t mind my honest opinion, like the breath of Old Joe himself. Allow me to recommend instead the Pocahontas blend. The sweetest Roanoke leaves delicately mixed by yours truly with the rum-cured leaves of the Tortuga Islands. The result is a balm to the nose and throat.”

  “At four times the price of the Sumatra.”

  “For tenfold the pleasure, sir.”

  Poe withdrew his purse. “I will try a pipeful or two,” he said and turned slightly from the counter so that none could see the bareness of his purse.

  Anderson scooped out the tobacco and dipped it into a small cloth pouch and snapped the drawstrings shut. Poe laid a coin in the man’s hand. I almost winced to see him giving up what little he had so as to avoid the appearance of brusqueness. Like every Southern gentleman or lady I have ever encountered, Poe considered it indecorous to come too quickly to the point.

  “And what else for you this fine morning?” Anderson asked.

  Poe raised the tobacco pouch to his nose and inhaled through the cloth. “A lovely fragrance, I agree.”

  “Exactly as I promised.”

  “You did, sir, you did. And perhaps, if you would be so kind, you might tell me something else as well.”

  “At your service,” Anderson said.

  “My name, sir, is Poe. E. A. Poe, who authored the chronicle of your former employee, as it appeared in the Mirror.”

  At the mention of his name, the pair of gentlemen smoking pipes turned to look in his direction as if simultaneously prodded. One of the men moved so abruptly that the feet of his chair squeaked across the floor. I felt a sudden swell of pride that I had been befriended by a man so illustrious that the very utterance of his name could make heads turn.

  “I read the very same,” Anderson told him. “Well done, sir. Well done indeed.”

  “Well intentioned, perhaps. Though I now suspect there remains more to the story than I was first able to ascertain.”

  “How so?”

  “What I wonder,” Poe said, “is how you found Miss Rogers as an employee. By which I mean, was she prompt to work of a morning? Was she reliable and honest?”

  “To each of those particulars, yes. Otherwise I would not have grown so fond of her.”

  “She had worked for you for some considerable time?”

  “Two years all told, short of a month.”

  “And she was not, to your knowledge, prone to association with…the rougher elements of our city?”

  “That, sir, is an indelicate inquiry. To which the answer is a resounding no.”

  “What were her associations, then, as you were able to observe them?”

  “As I observed them, none. I observed Miss Rogers only during the hours of her employ.”

  “She never spoke of other interests?”

  “She attended the theater on occasion. She enjoyed dining out with her fiancé, whose name, as I recall, you are familiar with already. She assisted her mother with the business of the boardinghouse. She visited frequently with an aunt who lives in the country.”

  “All of which,” Poe said, “would leave her little time for other associations.”

  “My point precisely, sir.”

  Poe looked to the floor and again pinched the bridge of his nose, as if trying to shape a thought between his finger and thumb. He stood motionless for so long that the tobacconist leaned toward him over the counter. The two pipe smokers watched with unabating interest.

  “Sir?” the tobacconist said. “Are you in need of assistance?”

  Poe looked up and blinked. He inhaled sharply. “A passing dizziness. No need to worry.”

  “The tobacco-freshened air. It sometimes overinvigorates the lungs.”

  “Indeed,” Poe said. He smiled as he wiped a bit of dryness from the corner of his mouth.

  “In regards to what you may have had occasion to observe,” he continued, “concerning Miss Rogers and her acquaintances. I am sure that, from time to time, you can count a seaman or two among your customers?”

  “Frequently,” Anderson said.

  “And of these seamen, would you say that Miss Rogers was personally acquainted with any one of them?”

  “If you are insinuating, sir—”

  “I am asking only if she appeared to know one or more of these seamen as a friend rather than as a customer.”

  “My answer, then, is no. It did not so appear to me.”

  “Did she to your knowledge have friends who lived upriver of, say, Cortlandt Street?”

  “We attended to our business, Mr. Poe. We made no attempt to pry into one another’s personal life.”

  “Nor am I suggesting as much. But when she was absent from her counter for a full day, having offered, I take it, no preliminary reason for her absence, you were concerned for her welfare, were you not?”

  “If by that you mean for her health, yes, surely. I hoped she did not suffer from a serious illness. Though I assumed it was a recurrence of the catarrh that had caused her absence once before.”

  “And when would that have been?”

  “Eight, nine months ago more or less. It was shortly after Thanksgiving, as I recall.”

  “And how long was she absent on that occasion?”

  “A Monday and a Tuesday. I recall because on Mondays, first thing, she restocks the humidors, but on that occasion I attended to the chore myself.”

  “She returned to work on Wednesday?”

  “She did.”

  “And offered as excuse an incidence of catarrh.”

  “She did just that.”

  “And you, of course, had no cause to doubt her word on it.”

  “Nor do I now.”

  A pause then. Poe stroked his chin.

  “At any time during her tenure in your establishment,” he finally said, “did you perhaps take notice of any of your customers who displayed an untoward interest in the young lady?”

  “My customers? Never! Each and every one of my customers is, like the fine gentlemen here this morning, of the highest character and demeanor. High Constable Hays patronizes my shop, sir, as do the likes of Samuel Ruggles, Philip Hone, Johnston Hobbs, the Reverend Isaiah Green. Are you familiar with the names of Aspinwall, Grinnell, Roosevelt, Verplanck, for example? Each and every day, sir, it is men such as these who pass through my door!”

  We were all startled, I think, by the explosiveness of Anderson’s response. The hue of his cheeks now matched that of his nose.

  And then, out of the reverberating silence, came a voice from the other half of the room. “The only untoward interest in the girl appears to be coming from none other than yourself, Poe.”

  Of the two pipe-smoking gentlemen, the one who had spoken was the younger by several years. The older man’s face was squarish and open, with wide-set eyes whose smoky blue appeared not at all cold but soft and forgiving, avuncular, his thin mouth slightly crooked as if wanting to smile. The speaker’s face suggested much less innate beneficence, his face long and thin, pointed at the chin and nose, his mouth upturned in a smile that did little to
conceal the underlying sneer. There was something of the lupine to the man’s countenance, an autocratic rigidity.

  Poe only half turned to face them. He cocked an eyebrow.

  “No doubt you intend to denounce the girl as you have denounced the rest of us,” the man said.

  “If I have denounced anyone, sir, it was with the purest of intentions.”

  The man laughed derisively. “Mr. Bryant will be glad to hear it,” he said, “having been labeled by you as a fool. As would Mr. Longfellow, the thief. And Mr. Keskie, the master of inestimable balderdash.”

  “Ah, I see. But that is not denunciation, sir. Is it not the duty of the literary critic to call attention to an author’s weakness as well as to praise his strength?”

  “And were you praising my strengths or pointing out my weaknesses, I wonder, when you referred to my work as ‘a flashy succession of ill-conceived and’—let’s see, what was that lovely phrase you employed?—‘miserably executed literary productions, each more silly than its predecessor’?”

  By now Poe had gone pale. He blinked several times. “Mr. Cooper,” he said. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  “If so, the pleasure is yours alone.”

  I would not have thought it possible to smile while at the same time puckering up as if to spit, until I saw the simper of Mr. James Fenimore Cooper (whose Leatherstocking Tales I would later read with a guilty pleasure, thrilling to their wildness and adventure while recalling Poe’s discomfort at this meeting).

  Poe smiled wanly and seemed on the verge of bowing, a gesture of humility, penitence; but at the last moment, he stopped himself.

  “And when,” Cooper now said, trying hard not to sputter with rage, “when you referred to my friend here, whom I am sure you must recognize as the most beloved storyteller in America, when you referred to his work as wandering and aimless, are we to assume that you were praising his strengths?”

  Again Poe flinched. “Mr. Irving,” he said and nodded toward the older gentleman.

  Washington Irving smiled in return. “Mr. Poe.”

  “Perhaps you would like to praise his strengths now,” Cooper challenged. “Face-to-face.”