On Night's Shore

by Randall Silvis

  “When we were informed of Mary’s subterfuge, that she had given Van Rensselaer some kind of damning information that might do Hobbs in, or at least wrench control of the water project from his hands—”

  “What kind of information?”

  “He would not say. But something he had revealed to her in private. He sometimes met with her alone and not with the other girl. They enjoyed, I think, a special kind of intimacy.”

  “This information,” Poe said. “Might it bear upon the disappearance earlier of the councilman?”

  “That was my suspicion, yes. Councilman Fordyce was an outspoken opponent of Hobbs’s leadership of the water project.”

  “A mouthpiece for Van Rensselaer.”

  “No doubt.” He paused to withdraw a handkerchief from his pocket and wipe his forehead. He then refolded the cloth and returned it to his pocket.

  “In any case, Hobbs immediately began looking for an opportunity to silence Mary. My assumption, and this is what he promised me, was that he would purchase her fidelity as he did everyone else’s. Yet, when he looked in on her in that room at the roadhouse, after the abortion… He came downstairs and whispered to me that something had gone wrong. That she had died from the procedure. He left me there to…”

  He could not finish the sentence. He swallowed hard. Then started again. “I went to her. Alone. There was no one else in the room; the woman and her son were downstairs as well. I went to Mary and…”

  “Hobbs’s explanation did not ring true.”

  “I was puzzled by the absence of evidence to suggest that she had hemorrhaged to death.”

  “There was no blood?”

  “Almost none. She was fully clothed, and there was no blood apparent on her clothing. But there was something else.”

  “The mark of fingers about her neck.”

  Andrews flinched. “What he does not know is how regularly I counseled Mary to end the relationship. To find more fitting company, if not with Mr. Payne, then another man.”

  “Would that she had heeded your counsel. In any case,” Poe said, “you need no longer concern yourself with the prospect of prison.”

  “A different kind of prison perhaps.” He was silent for a moment, then turned at the waist to look at the ground behind his feet, as if there it might be somehow greener, fresher, a different landscape, a different life.

  Poe said, “This was not Mary’s first abortion, was it? Her disappearance from home two years previous. It was for the same reason, was it not?”

  “It was,” the lieutenant said.

  “And that time as well as the last—you were obliged by him to accompany her?”

  “This last time, however, he joined us there.”

  “Permit me, if you will, one last question,” Poe said. “You are a man who understands currents and tides. Why would you place her body, unweighted, in a river that flows past the shores of your very home?”

  “Can you think I would not have given her a decent place to rest? She was as much a friend to me, a sister, as any I have had.”

  “You left her, then, to be disposed of by the Lehnorts.”

  The lieutenant’s answer was a prolonged grimace of anguish.

  “You tied the straps of her bonnet around her chin. You bade her farewell. And you left her to be disposed of by a dolt.”

  “My instructions to him were explicit. He was to convey her by wagon to a place deep inside the trees where she would never be disturbed. There she was to be interred with all the dignity he could muster. He swore to me that he would comply with all this, and for his word and labor he was well rewarded.”

  “But he was not true to his word, was he?”

  Lieutenant Andrews put out a hand to the wall of the boardinghouse and steadied himself.

  Poe moved even closer to him. “And now, sir, what might in fact be the worst of it.”

  The lieutenant barely had the strength to look up at him, his eyes, heavy with a desire to sleep, clouded with torture.

  “Have you ever heard Mr. Hobbs refer to his daughter as Leecie?”

  “Many times. It is his pet name for her. The man’s single redeeming trait is that he adores his daughter.”

  “It is what he called Mary Rogers and Miss Blaine as well. During their most intimate moments together.”

  The lieutenant was suddenly breathless. “Do you mean to suggest—?”

  “He gave each of the three an angel brooch.”

  Andrews slouched against the building, his forehead to the wood. “This is too much to believe…”

  “And he was trying his best to have his future son-in-law incarcerated for murder.”

  The lieutenant’s fists slowly drew shut.

  Poe put a hand between Andrews’s shoulders; only the fingertips touched. “If I may offer a suggestion, sir.”

  The lieutenant made no response.

  “You must go to your beloved,” Poe told him. “This very day. This very hour. You must convince her by whatever means avail to leave this sink of pollution behind. To leave it immediately. Return with her to Boston, sir. Or Saratoga. Albany. To any town or city where you can make her comfortable. In any case, you must not be here—she must not be here—when the truth of this matter explodes.”

  “We cannot run far enough to escape it.”

  “No. But you can perhaps avoid the worst of it.”

  Fifteen seconds later, the lieutenant met Poe’s gaze. “Will you allow us until morning?”

  “I will wait until the noon hour.”

  “And then?”

  “Then I shall do what I must.”

  The lieutenant nodded. A few moments later, he held out his hand to Poe. They clasped hands and exchanged a solemn look. Then the lieutenant turned and trudged onto the porch and disappeared back inside the house.

  I admit to a warm swell of pride, even arrogance, as Poe and I then made our retreat as stealthily as we had come. We had done this, he and I. We had brought this thing to pass. And all the long way back to the Bowery, I luxuriated in a haughty and gleeful sense that the mighty were about to tumble at our feet. Poe’s own bearing, though less buoyant than my own, suggested that he felt likewise.

  We could have used Mrs. Clemm’s good company at that moment, her heavy hand of restraint, and her whisper in our ears, Pride goeth before a fall.

  43

  We spent the remainder of the day strolling here and there, sitting in doorways, slouched against buildings, until dusk finally came and we made our way to Rivington Street. There we passed another night in the basement of the Presbyterian church along with another dozen of more or less sober yet indigent itinerants. Poe’s constant refrain, muttered to himself but like a gnat in my ear, annoying because I could do nothing to assuage the buzz, either for myself or the gnat, was, “I wonder how Sissie is faring today. She and Muddy must be consumed with worry for me.” Several times it took all the forensic skill I possessed to keep him from marching us those thirteen miles into Fordham, despite his understanding that his presence there would be more dangerous to his loved ones than salutary.

  His restlessness the night before was as nothing compared to this night’s. Once inside the church, he paced constantly, stepping over sleeping bodies, waking quite a few of them until one man, a very old gentleman in a shabby gray suit, raised himself up on an elbow to whisper wearily, “If you please, sir. A few hours’ sleep is the only peace this world allows me.”

  Poe apologized and offered the man his hand, having detected in the old fellow’s speech some familiar nuance of the South. And soon they were huddled together in a corner, whispering and chuckling, even quoting verse to one another. When I awoke a little after dawn, they were still at it.

  The morning hours, then, after we were turned out of the church, ticked by like sludge dripping from a pipe. Poe was both anxious and reluctan
t to keep the appointment he had set for himself at noon, both fearful and eager. By eleven thirty he had brought us to within sight of Hobbs’s mansion, and there we toured the same row of buildings for the next twenty minutes, Poe muttering to himself and rubbing his cheek all the while, so agitated that to anyone who did not know what was going on inside his head, that cerebral wrestling match, he must have appeared to be a skin full of cockroaches, all twitches and mumbles.

  Shortly before noon he could wait no longer and strode brusquely to the front door and pounded on it with the heel of a fist. The door was opened by Conroy, the butler, who in the face of Poe’s disquiet calmly informed him that at this hour Mr. Hobbs could be found lunching at a businessman’s club on Wall Street. And again we marched.

  In the anteroom of the businessman’s club, Poe sent the maître d’hôtel to Hobbs’s table with a request for a few minutes of the man’s time. We were then shown to a small side room furnished with five leather wing chairs, silver spittoons, and crystal ashtrays on marble pedestals.

  Soon Hobbs joined us there with wine glass in hand. He stepped inside unsmiling and closed the door. I stood in the corner and stared at the floor.

  The pleasantries were brief and pointed, but Poe wasted little time on either courtesy or sarcasm. Instead he offered Hobbs a summary of the facts as he had pieced them together, all of which led to Mary Rogers’s demise on the abortionist’s table. The ultimate cause of her death was left unstated, though there was no mistaking his conclusion.

  Hobbs had not taken a seat upon entering nor did he throughout most of Poe’s soliloquy. He stood facing the room’s only window, his back to Poe, who was seated just inside the door. When Poe finished his remarks, Hobbs remained quiet for a minute or so. Then, strangely, he chuckled softly and spoke as if to his own pale reflection in the glass.

  “I have heard it said that you are mad. And now you yourself bring me proof of it.”

  “If such is my reputation, it is as a result of your own efforts.”

  Hobbs sipped his wine. “Are you claiming that I have driven you to madness?”

  “I refer to your attack upon my person and good name, sir. Which shall not go unrequited.”

  “Is that so?”

  “No one attacks me with impunity.”

  “Interesting motto for a writer whose renown, small though it be, is founded upon his attacks of writers far more successful.”

  “We can perhaps discuss literary criticism at another time. For now I offer you a gift. I offer you the opportunity to do the manly and honorable thing.”

  Hearing this, Hobbs turned to face him. With his back to the window, he stood in his own shadow, face dark, eyes unknowable. He aimed a finger in Poe’s direction. “I have but one question before I call for your ejection from this gentleman’s club. Where is my daughter?”

  At this Poe smiled. “I can only assume that she is where she best needs be. Where dissembling is not the order of the day.”

  “A single word from me and you will find yourself in the Bloomingdale Asylum.”

  “I am a native of the madhouse, sir, remember? And therefore well familiar with its many rooms.”

  “I daresay I know of a room or two in which you will not feel yourself at home.”

  “Perhaps you have not yet recognized the advantage of my situation over yours. When one has nothing to lose, one has nothing to fear.”

  If Hobbs intended to wither him with a look, he was unsuccessful. Finally Hobbs crossed the room to him. He raised one foot to the cushion of the chair nearest Poe, rested an elbow on his knee, and assumed a position of amused insouciance.

  “What I wonder is this,” Hobbs said. “Precisely what do you propose to do with this theory of yours?”

  “It is no theory, sir.”

  Hobbs waved his wine glass through the air as if shooing a mosquito toward the door. “Look closely, Mr. Poe. Where is the evidence of these crimes? Where are the witnesses to corroborate your claim?”

  “I can produce one of them,” Poe said.

  “You cannot.”

  “Her name is Adelia Blaine.”

  “A name like any other to me. A figment of your imagination, Poe?”

  “I failed to inquire what name you knew her by. When next we meet, I shall not be so remiss.”

  “When next you meet. Be careful lest you weave a tale so tangled you find yourself stumbling over it.”

  “She still wears the angel brooch you gave her, sir. Identical to the one you gave Mary Rogers. In addition to the five dollars paid each girl for their liaisons. At which time your endearments for them were murmured to the name of Leecie.”

  Hobbs drew a slow, deep breath through his nostrils. He exhaled just as deliberately, lips puckered. His face, animated only by a repetitious blink, bore the rigidity of a chess master who has returned to the board to find his king exposed, with naught to defend him but a puny pawn four moves away.

  It was not long before Hobbs’s features softened. It was merely a game after all. He seemed almost happy to concede defeat.

  “You say you came here looking for candor,” Hobbs finally said. “Very well, sir. We will speak man to man. As one admirer of feminine youth to another.”

  “I am faithful to my marriage vows, sir.”

  “Yes, yes, of course you are. In any case. As to Mary Rogers. Our relationship, as you have rightly ascertained, was one of mutual consent. And it was she, sir—she, not I—who suggested the addition of a third party. A friend of hers, of whom she was exceedingly fond. I knew her only as Amanda. And that arrangement, Edgar, was not long-lived. The girl intuited, I suppose, that I, at least, was not a devotee of poly-eros and preferred a simpler and more conventional arrangement. And so, she disappeared. Neither Miss Rogers nor I ever saw or heard from her again.”

  “You misunderstand my motives, Mr. Hobbs. I did not call on you here to take your confession. I came to rectify the harm done to the good name of your future son-in-law, a man over whom you exerted undue influence.”

  “Mr. Andrews has been and will be well compensated for his loyalty.”

  “The situation requires a more public assumption of responsibility.”

  “You truly are mad, Edgar.” He laughed for a moment. Then, “And how would you have this assumption made public? There is not a newspaper in the state that would print such a story. Not only because of the indelicacies involved, but because you attach to them the name of Johnston Hobbs. So tell me this: What is it you hope to befall me? And for what crime? A crime of which no one has accused me except for you, a known drunkard, and your alleged confederate, a whore. Can you believe for a single moment that any reasonable person will credit such a claim?”

  “I think you overestimate the readiness of the populace to approve of your behavior.”

  “The populace will approve of whatever is in their best interests. The Croton Water Project is in their best interests, sir, and Johnston Hobbs is the Croton Water Project. A few years hence, this city will be transformed by the flow of Croton water. And from that day forward, every time a fire is extinguished, every time a fountain glitters in the summer sun, every time a mother hands a glass of sweet clear water to her child, it is my name, sir, my name, that will be remembered. Do you think the name of Mary Rogers will be uttered with such reverence? Or the name of a bitter and insignificant writer who cannot afford even a pair of decent shoes?”

  To this Poe had no argument. He had long ago come to the opinion that if indeed man was the highest of the animals, he had risen to that state by virtue of being the lowest and most vile creature.

  Hobbs seized upon the silence. “I see by your expression that my point is well taken.” His voice was calmer now, almost placatory. He swished the remaining drops of wine around the bottom of his glass, then raised the glass to his lips and drained it. He looked at the crystal facets for a moment, turn
ed them in the light until a tiny arc of rainbow colors formed and was cast atop Poe’s hand.

  He nodded toward the rainbow, and Poe looked down and saw it there. When he looked up again, Hobbs was smiling.

  “You say that you have come here to offer me an opportunity, Edgar. And now, I shall return the favor.” He laid the glass on its side in an ashtray.

  “You are a moral man, that much is clear. Unfortunately there is small room for a stringent morality in the economic matters that govern this island. What passes for moral and right behavior in my circles is recognized as a rather arbitrary stricture. Necessary for the control of the general populace, but narrow and confining for those whose kismet requires greater freedom of movement. As does your own. This is not to suggest that I am a wholly one-sided individual. My interests in art and philosophy are kept distinct from my business interests, it’s true, but they are no less real. I am as intrigued by the numinous as you are. And so, a proposition.

  “I propose, sir, to appoint you the guardian of my soul.”

  Poe’s response was the cocking of an eyebrow.

  Hobbs laughed as if they were old chums, and even leaned forward to slap him on the knee. “A magazine of your own!” Hobbs whispered. “Think of it, man. To be the arbiter of literary tastes on an island destined to become the very center of the world! To sculpt with your own fingers, your own words, the artistic and intellectual and moral heart of a nation.”

  Poe held Hobbs’s fevered gaze for a long ten seconds, then averted his eyes to me, then down at last to his own hands. They had been empty for so long. They were empty still. But with a word from Johnston Hobbs, a nod, they could be filled to overflowing, and not with the ephemera of a rainbow shimmer, but with real gold. Gold to put an end once and for all to the myriad hungers that had so long assailed himself and his beloveds.

  To fill his hands he needed to make but one small concession. Agree to forget about Mary Rogers. Agree to erase from his mind the image of her corpse, which, freed by his touch, had finally found its resting place ashore.

  Did I doubt how Poe would respond? I did. In a short time I had come to know him well. I knew his vanity, his susceptibility to flattery, his need for retribution, his tendency to bear a grudge. I knew his craving for acceptance and respect. I knew his hatred of the city. I knew his moral outrage. I knew his greatness and his desperate desire to have it recognized. I knew his meanness and its desperate desire to have its way.