On Night's Shore

by Randall Silvis

  “And how fortunate for us that he did,” Poe said. “Else I might well have walked away without the very information I seek.”

  The sarcasm escaped Tarr completely. He relaxed now, relieved to assume his role as amicus curiae. “You wanted to know about them ruffians,” he said. Poe continued to smile.

  “There was a pack of them out in the woods there most of that week,” Tarr said. “The week that girl got done in. There was eight, ten—it’s hard to say how many there was in all. Had a big campfire going most every night, whooping and hollering, doing who knows what all. Then early Sunday morning we seen them heading across to the island in a couple of boats.”

  “We did?” Poe said.

  “I did, is what I mean. Wasn’t nobody else up that early from the looks of it. Wasn’t much after first light, lots of fog still laying on the river.”

  “And what, if I might ask, would require you to rise so early, especially now that you are convalescing from an ailment?”

  “Well I, you know, I’m used to it, being up and around at first light. And this pain I got in my side now, it don’t let me get much sleep. So I was just out walking, you know, trying to walk off some of this stiffness.”

  Poe said nothing. He waited.

  “Besides which, there’s the river and all. It’s been my life for so long now, I never stray too far from it. Lots of days I come up from my place and just sit here in my chair like I’m still good for something, you know?”

  “And where is it you live, sir?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your place of residence. Your home.”

  “Well, you know, it’s back there into Weehawken some. Back off the road apiece. It’s fairly hard to find unless you know where you’re going.”

  Poe nodded and stroked his chin and held his gaze on the waterman.

  “And then that same night it was, Sunday night, when I heard them again out there in the woods. Them ruffians, I’m talking about.”

  “They had returned.”

  “Yes, sir, they had. And it was later that same night I heard somebody screaming. A young girl’s screams, you know. There’s no mistaking a sound like that.”

  “And you were able to hear this unmistakable sound because you were out walking again, is that it? Or were you sitting here in your chair in the dark?”

  Tarr blinked a couple of times before answering. “I had come up here for my supper at the Onion. It was on my way back home that I heard the screaming and ruckus out in the trees.”

  “You are quite certain they were the cries of a female.”

  “Clear as a bell they were.”

  “You summoned the police, of course.”

  “The constable’s back there in Weehawken, you see. And me here without a horse. And the screaming, you know, well it didn’t last long at all. A minute at the most, if even half that. So at the time, you know… I mean looking back on it now, now that I know better what was going on and all…”

  “Of course,” Poe said. “And the gang of ruffians? They no doubt vacated the premises the very next day.”

  “They did just that, yes, sir. Up this road the whole gang of them went, kit and caboodle.”

  “Carrying their boats on their shoulders.”

  “Sir?”

  “Had they not employed boats to cross to the island on the previous morning? And, I assume, to return here?”

  “Well yes, of course they did. And some of them, that’s my guess, some of them must of skipped out with the boats in the middle of the night. That’s the only thing I can figure. ’Cause there weren’t more than half of them headed out of here up that road, and them without boats of any kind.”

  Tarr stood there blinking awhile longer, licking viciously at his lips. His broad forehead was speckled with a greasy perspiration.

  Finally Poe unlocked his gaze. His eyes turned toward the roadhouse now. “You have made my journey worthwhile, sir. I am most grateful for your candor.”

  “Nothing of it,” Tarr said. The muscles in his forehead relaxed. He smiled. “Glad to have been of some service to you.”

  Poe held out his hand to him. “Perhaps we will meet again, Mr. Lehnort.”

  “To be sure,” he said and eagerly seized Poe’s hand. Then his grin broadened, and he pulled Poe toward him and whispered, “Excepting that my name is Tarr, you remember?”

  “My apologies, sir. I have never had a good head for names.”

  “Nothing of it,” the man answered and massaged his huge belly. He leaned even closer. “We’re on the same side after all, now, ain’t we?”

  A muscle twitched in Poe’s jaw, and for an instant his dark eyes flared. Just as quickly, he subdued his surprise and grinned slyly. “We draw our water from the same well,” he whispered.

  “That we do, that we do. You got everything you need then?”

  “More than enough, I would say.”

  They smiled at one another. I had no idea what was going on between them and was getting ready to ask when Poe scratched his chin. “One last item,” he said, his voice again as low as a whisper. “The lieutenant’s pocket watch. He fears he might have left it here.”

  “Left it here?”

  “He hasn’t seen it since that Sunday. Might he have left it behind somewhere?”

  “I ain’t seen it if he did.”

  “Could he have left it inside?” With this last word, Poe inclined his head toward the roadhouse.

  “Would’ve turned up if he did. More likely one of them had it with them when they left.”

  “The girl perhaps.”

  Tarr did not reply for a moment, and his eyes showed fear, as if he suddenly realized that he had said too much. Finally, he answered, looking away. “If it wasn’t him, had to’ve been her.”

  Now Poe paused as well, sensing probably that he had pushed the game as far as it would go. “My friend will be pleased to know,” he said, “that nothing here can incriminate him.”

  Tarr scratched at the back of his head and opened his mouth as if he might speak, then stopped himself before uttering a sound. He cocked his head, thinking, and his gaze fell on me. I saw only confusion in his eyes. Uncertainty.

  Whatever he was thinking, he must have warned himself to say no more, for without another word, he turned away from us and, walking in a kind of zigzag pattern, scratching his head all the way, waddled back toward the roadhouse.

  28

  I cannot say with any authority what Poe should have done at this stage of his investigation. I only know that it should not have been what next he did. Attribute the error to his Imp of the Perverse, or to his obsessive obsequiousness to candor, or to his hope of flushing out the truth, or, perhaps, to his zealous desire to elevate himself by bringing down those more elevated. Whatever his motivation, his tree shaking bore a wormy fruit.

  In short, and to employ a different metaphor, he believed himself in possession of a winning hand, and he showed his hand too soon.

  We returned to the Hobbs mansion shortly before the dinner hour, where Poe announced to Conroy that, his interviews completed, he would now like to relate the results to the master of the house. We were whisked into Hobbs’s library, soon to be joined there by the big bug himself. Hobbs and Poe sat facing one another while I, as usual, was left to stand against the wall and be ignored.

  “Lieutenant Andrews will be down shortly for dinner,” Hobbs said before even seating himself. “Shall I send for him to join us?”

  “I think you should not,” Poe said.

  Hobbs brushed at the knees of his trousers. “You must tender him an apology sooner or later, sir.”

  “The six men whose names you gave me—” Poe began, only to be cut short.

  “Corroborated, did they not, my own high opinion of the lieutenant?”

  “They did,” Poe said.
r />   And now Hobbs launched into an animated recapitulation of the myriad and sundry virtues of Lieutenant Andrews, punctuated with a lot of finger shaking in Poe’s direction, plus several references to the obtuseness of any individual too blind to see the evidence before his very eyes, the fatal flaw of hubris, the sin of obstinacy. It struck me as a bit over the top; his words echoed with a counterfeit tone in that vast room. Throughout it all, Poe sat with hands folded atop one another on his lap, giving him the appearance of a humble parishioner suffering his weekly chastisement. This time he took no notes. He remained altogether motionless but for the iambic clench of his jaw and the subtle tension of his musculature.

  Even after the litany, Poe remained silent. Finally Hobbs placed both hands on his knees and, leaning forward, made ready to stand. “And that, sir, should be sufficient for any reasonable mind.”

  “Indeed,” Poe said, “indeed.” But now he raised a hand to stroke his chin. “Though perhaps I am not reasonable enough to ignore the one small fly that has landed in this soup.”

  “If you have reservations on some particular, make them clear to me.”

  “On the particular of Josiah Tarr.”

  “The name is familiar, but…”

  “The waterman. You sent me to Weehawken to speak with him.”

  “Of course, the waterman. With information concerning the ruffians thereabout.”

  “The very same.” Poe paused. His smile was crooked—and as calculated as Hobbs’s diatribe had been just a minute earlier.

  “Yes? And did he have any useful information?”

  “He surely did. But what I wonder, sir, is this: how did you, here on Fifth Avenue, come to learn that a waterman in Weehawken—a faux waterman, as it turns out—was in possession of such information?”

  “Faux?” said Hobbs. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean that the man revealed himself to be a fraud.”

  Hobbs leaned back in his chair, eyes wide.

  “As you yourself knew him to be,” said Poe.

  At first this roused no reaction in Hobbs other than a furrowing of his brow. I could almost hear him thinking to himself, I should look angry now, and a moment later he assumed a mask of outrage, a squint of his eyes, a scowl, a seeming rage in escalation.

  “Mr. Hobbs,” Poe said and now leaned forward himself and spoke in a tone that bore no accusation, no challenge, only empathy. “I understand completely—I understand with every bone and nerve and atom of my being—your desire to protect the people you love. But, as we now discover, one man does not warrant your protection. Nor does he deserve your loyalty. And that man, Mr. Hobbs, is Lieutenant Andrews.”

  Had Poe not charged me earlier with the task of meticulous observation I might well have missed the subtle signs of Hobbs’s changing expression. I might not have said to myself, when Hobbs’s hard squint relaxed into a melancholy gaze and his scowl softened to a sorrowful frown, I might not then have said to myself, The man is acting even yet.

  “Your one mistake,” Poe told him, “was to send me to Weehawken. Had you not, I would never have known of Josiah Tarr, né Lehnort, nor inferred from his charade that the Red Onion was in fact a place of rendezvous for the lieutenant and Miss Rogers.”

  “Lehnort told you as much?” Hobbs asked. He seemed on the verge of whimpering; I, on the verge of laughing out loud.

  “I employed a subterfuge,” Poe said. “Having tricked the man into revealing his true identity, I then deceived him into thinking that we were confederates in the same sham. That he, you, the lieutenant, and myself were colleagues in the same stratagem. Thusly reassured, he let it be known that the lieutenant and Miss Rogers were in company at the roadhouse. They left the establishment together on Sunday last. And she was not seen alive again.”

  Hobbs closed his eyes and slowly rocked his head back and forth. “The man is a dolt,” he muttered. “I trusted my daughter’s future to a dolt.”

  “I cannot fault your motives, sir.”

  At this Hobbs opened his eyes and once again leaned forward. He sat with hands clasped between his knees, as if he were now the penitent and Poe the judger of sins. “You have to understand that my faith in the lieutenant was still firm. He admitted to the one liaison but only one. After which he delivered her to the home of her aunt. He swore this to me, Mr. Poe, just as he swore repentance. Else I would not have attempted to shield him. In fact even now there is little evidence that he is responsible for the girl’s death.”

  “She was not delivered to the home of her aunt,” Poe said. “And yet the lieutenant returned to his home that very night. The young lady was last seen alive not far from the western shore of the Hudson River. Her body was discovered downstream of the very same river. With the marks of a hand still evident about her neck. And the strings of her bonnet secured with a sailor’s knot.”

  Hobbs propped both elbows on his knees and hid his face in his hands.

  And just to my right, a thud. There in the doorway Felicia Hobbs had been listening, and when she had heard too much to bear, she swooned and fell to her knees. I caught her by the arm just as she was about to tumble forward. A moment later Poe was at her side, rubbing her hands in his while I held her upright. Then Hobbs was there as well, dropping onto his knees to embrace his daughter, holding her as she wept, crowding Poe away to murmur, “Leecie. My Leecie,” as he pressed her tightly to his bosom.

  “It cannot be true,” was all she said, but over and over again. “It cannot be true.”

  For my part, I wanted only to escape from this discomfort, this effusion of emotion. A beautiful woman grievously weeping, her father stroking her hair with one hand, his other hand moving in small circles over her back, his voice murmuring. I wanted to cry myself, though the reason was unclear to me. My chest ached, my eyes stung.

  Poe, I thought, intruded too closely upon this grief. At one point it seemed he was about to jut his own head between father and daughter’s, so near did he lean to them. But he only put a fingertip to her collar, held it there for a moment, stared hawklike at her throat, and then withdrew. It struck me as such an oafish thing for a man to do, too insensitive for even a writer, for it seemed to me that in that moment he was more interested in studying her grief than in assuaging it.

  In any case, I was none too relieved when Poe stood and nodded toward the front door. We slipped away quietly, without another word. We were but two yards outside the door when it heaved open behind us and Johnston Hobbs came rushing out. He seized Poe by the sleeve. “One thing, sir. One request, between honorable men. I ask only that you do nothing. For now, for the moment. Allow us some time to…adjust to these circumstances.”

  I imagined that Poe was thinking the same thoughts as I, that what Hobbs really wanted was a chance to get Lieutenant Andrews out of the city. Which is why Poe’s response so startled me.

  “Granted,” he said. “On the condition that I be allowed just a moment of your daughter’s time.”

  “Sir?”

  “I am no foreigner to grief, Mr. Hobbs. Perhaps I can find a few words of comfort for her.”

  Hobbs thought it over for fifteen seconds or so, then nodded. “I will leave the decision to her.” He turned and went inside, leaving the heavy door ajar.

  Two minutes later, Felicia Hobbs came out onto the porch. She looked none too steady on her feet. She now despised Poe; that much was clear in the set of her jaw, the heat from her eyes.

  Poe wasted no time in getting to the point. He moved to within a hand span of her and spoke so softly that had I not inched forward myself I would have been unable to hear.

  “Your brooch,” he said. “Might I ask where you obtained it?”

  Her hand went to her collar and fingered what I had earlier failed to notice, a golden angel brooch pinned at the neck. “You called me here to ask about a brooch?” she said.

  “It is not
irrelevant, please. In fact it might yet save your young lieutenant.”

  “A brooch? But how could—”

  “Did Lieutenant Andrews give that brooch to you?”

  “My father gave it to me. He had it made in Bruges for my twentieth birthday.”

  “And how many such brooches did he have made?”

  “Only one, of course.”

  “If I told you,” said Poe, “that I have seen another just like it, another identical to this one…”

  “I suppose it would not be impossible. Someone saw mine, perhaps, admired it, and had another fashioned just like it.”

  “And if I said that the one identical to yours belonged to Mary Rogers?”

  She drew in a sharp breath. “Then I would say that you are mistaken.”

  “I assure you, I am not.”

  “In that case, I would like very much to hear your explanation.”

  Hobbs stood behind the front window, holding the curtain aside.

  “The most logical assumption is that both brooches were given by the same man.”

  “Logical? I think you mean ludicrous, Mr. Poe.”

  “Is it possible, then, that he might have given one to Lieutenant Andrews, to be presented to his mother, or a sister, or—”

  “To a shopgirl? How dare you, Mr. Poe? How dare you!” With that she slapped him so hard that my own ears rang from the sting of it. “I took you for a gentleman. And here you stand on my own father’s doorstep making these vile accusations. You are hardly a gentleman, Mr. Poe. You are the lowest of beasts!”

  “Being a man,” he said, “I cannot disagree.”

  She glared at him a moment longer, then turned away and stomped inside. The door slammed shut. The city shook.

  29

  Some men, I think, are the kind who wish to be alone with misery, are solitary brooders, though when good fortune comes, they gather around them those they cherish and in this manner redistribute the merriment. These are men who spend much of their time on the edge of the abyss, peering so hard into the darkness that they imagine an intimacy with its depths, so that it becomes the source of their most enduring comfort.