POE MUST DIE

by Marc Olden

  “A miracle,” she whispered. “A miracle. How did you—”

  “Mrs. Coltman, do you believe in me?”

  “Yes, oh yes.”

  “I want you to tell me more about Jonathan.” This is a most enjoyable game, he thought.

  Tears slid down her pale cheeks. Jonathan found her one of the few women who could weep and still remain beautiful. He watched her squeeze the snuff box in a hand covered by a blue velvet glove. She still wanted to believe.

  “A miracle,” she whispered, looking around the room and seeing no one but the magician.

  “There are indeed other worlds, Mrs. Coltman, other planes.” And servants who steal.

  “My deepest gratitude, Dr. Paracelsus.”

  “Do you believe me to be who I say I am?”

  “Yes, yes I do.”

  “Tell me more about this Jonathan.”

  “Eddy and his friend, Mr. Figg, are searching for him. Mr. Figg intends to kill Jonathan, but first the two of them are going to a boarding house on Ann Street to seek a group of travelling actors.”

  Jonathan’s hands slowly clenched and unclenched. Figg. A primitive force capable of destroying him. An ordinary man made extraordinary by the intensity of the revenge he craved. If there was one thing Jonathan understood it was the power of revenge. Figg was definitely dangerous and not one to toy with as was Poe; the boxer stalked Jonathan with the intention of spilling his blood, nothing less. Figg would have to be dealt with immediately.

  But first—

  “The Renaissance Players,” said Rachel Coltman. “Mr. Figg claims two of their members are somehow involved in the death of his wife.”

  She looked across the table. “Joseph Barian and Bernard Leddy. They—”

  Jonathan interrupted. “You are about to say they have acted as go-betweens for you and myself. This is true. But they are no longer associated with me. On the day you spoke to Mr. Barian and Mr. Leddy in front of Barnum’s American Museum, you may tell Mr. Poe and Mr. Figg, I released them from my employ. Barian and Leddy misused my kindness by keeping hidden from me the account of their criminal pastimes which I was just informed is on file at New York Police Headquarters. They sought my aid in contacting departed loved ones and even though both men lacked funds, I gave of myself and my services for my heart does ache at the sight of another’s pain. Instead of money, each man begged me to allow him to serve me as best he could and I agreed. But as you have learned tonight, you can now contact me through Miss Sarah Clannon.”

  Rachel nodded, hanging on his every word. Jonathan controlled her once more and gloried in that knowledge.

  He said, “I could not continue to have around me such men of deceit as Mr. Barian and Mr. Leddy. Their very lives poison the atmosphere, though I would rather suffer from excessive kindness than to deny one human being any peace of soul my efforts can make possible.”

  She believed him. Jonathan sensed it and forced himself not to smile.

  He said, “When do Mr. Poe and Mr. Figg plan to visit this boarding house on Ann Street?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “As soon as possible,” Jonathan said to Sarah Clannon within minutes after Rachel Coltman had left him. “Send Laertes and Charles to me. They shall do the task.”

  Sarah Clannon drew on a thin cigar. “Adieu to Mr. Barian and Mr. Leddy.”

  “Exactly. I want their throats cut to eliminate even the slightest possibility of conversation with passing strangers. Then I want the boarding house to be set afire, with particular attention to the room of Barian and Leddy. With even the smallest of good fortune, their bodies will be consumed by flames and the entire event will be viewed merely as an accidental fire. Laertes and Charles are to execute this matter with utmost speed, for I do not wish Poe and Figg to exchange words with either man.”

  Sarah Clannon licked the tip of her forefinger, touched a small packet of rouge and then the nipple of her bare breast. “Lovely color, this. I take it our Mr. Figg is only aware of Barian and Leddy and not of your connection with others of the Renaissance Players?”

  Jonathan kissed the back of her neck. “Possibly.”

  “When the boarding house catches fire, innocent people may die.”

  “God will know his own. Now dress yourself and find Laertes and Charles. And bring me fresh fruit. I am famished.”

  TWENTY

  “A RAT,” SAID Poe.

  Figg raised one scarred eyebrow. “You take me for a bloody fool? Damn thing was big as me leg.”

  The rat, bright-eyed and a filthy gray, had sped across the muddy street, disappearing into a pile of garbage in front of a nearby church.

  Poe glanced in the rat’s direction, then when their cab started up again, he leaned back against the seat, sinking deeper into his greatcoat. “Now it dines with the blessings of Mother Church and a most economical meal it shall be, too. A present from the citizens of Manhattan.”

  “Bleedin’ rats,” muttered Figg, turning to look back at the pile of garbage. New York was crawling with rats, rats bigger than any he’d seen in English waterfront towns and them that sat by England’s waters were sometimes the size of a man’s boot. To Figg, American rats were big enough to pull carts behind them and they were everywhere, according to little Mr. Poe. Rats in mansions, tenements, churches, department stores and in City Hall.

  New York stank like an aging French whore. Damn city had no sanitation, no sewers and all the waste and trash from a half million people was tossed out into the bleeding street where the pigs and rats gathered to fill their bellies. New York town smelled like the biggest pile of shit God had ever created and Figg’s hooter—his nose—was going to be in a sorry state when this visit to American was over.

  Earlier he and Poe had gone to the Ann Street boarding house only to learn that the Renaissance Players had not returned from their charity performance in the country; it was felt that the delay was due to snow-covered roads. So now it was take a cab to Five Points to see a gent called Johnnie Bill Baker, who Mr. Poe said was a dance hall keeper and member of a gang of thieves called The Daybreak Boys.

  “They strike at that hour when sleep is deepest,” said Poe. “Hence the name. At break of day, as the mind lies in blessed repose, Mr. Baker and cohorts enter the homes of those living in the countryside, prefering to loot those victims existing in isolation. In swift fashion, the thieves remove any and all articles of value then vanish. If a householder exhibits untimely pluck, he is slain but that is in the nature of such a business.”

  Poe’s head was against the seat as he looked up at the back of the cabdriver sitting in front of him. So long as Figg was paying, Poe was willing to ride. “Occasionally a victim is held for ransom and thus does Mr. Baker add to the monies he makes from the Louvre.”

  “Loo? Loo is a place where a man pisses.”

  Poe sneered. Figg the thickheaded. “Louvre, not loo. Louvre is the name of his licentious and lively dance hall, to which we are being carted by this most slow pair of horses. A famed Paris museum has some prior claim to that title, but no matter. Mr. Baker is a lively, Irish—”

  “Thief. All the bloody thieves in this ‘ere city is Irish.”

  “A thesis not worth contesting. Take care you do not mock Mr. Baker.”

  As the wooden cab wheels bounced over a poorly cobbled street, Figg jerked upright in his seat. “Now why would I want a giggle at Mr. Baker’s expense? Ain’t ‘e the one whats goin’ to place us in contact with Mr. Hamlet Sproul?”

  “Mr. Baker is pleasant looking though unfortunately cursed with crossed eyes. He is said to have killed men who find this deformity a laughing matter.”

  Figg turned up his coat collar at the cold night air. “I will remember that. Take care not to laugh at a man whats lookin’ at both sides of ‘is nose at the same time. My gawd, the smell!” Figg held his nose with fingers Poe thought were the size of bananas.

  “Slaughterhouses, stables, buildings where liquors are made and the mountains of garbage.
Like the poor, Mr. Figg, these odors are everywhere.”

  Ahead of them, Figg watched the gaslights that brightened the streets and shop windows on either side of Broadway. Wagons, coaches, sleighs all carried burning lanterns on the back and Figg had never seen so many people clogging a street at night.

  So many lights. Like polished jewels. And people. Weren’t any of them bothered by the smells?

  More bonfires. Almost on every street corner. Figg asked why.

  “Epidemics, Mr. Figg. Cholera and yellow fever strike this filthy city every year and it is the belief of some that a burning fire will clean the air of such plagues. Look at your boots.”

  Figg did, squinting in the darkness. “Stuff on ’em. What—”

  “Coal dust mixed with quicklime. Spread throughout the streets also in the belief that it will prevent disease.”

  Figg frowned, a sight Poe would never regard as reassuring. “’Ere now, I don’t want to be catchin’ no plague, you understand.”

  “I am not the one to speak to about that. Considering your eating habits, you may expire of kitchen excess long before the plague succeeds—”

  Figg growled, “What’s so displeasin’ about me eatin’ habits, squire, if I might make so bold?”

  Poe leaned right as the cab turned sharply, its back wheels sliding on snow-covered cobbles. Figg had eaten three omelettes, four dishes of chocolate ice cream and an entire loaf of bread, washed down with two pots of coffee and all of it swallowed in record time. The man ate like a Hun.

  “Your eating habits,” said Poe, “are Paleolithic.”

  “What’s that ‘spose to mean?”

  “It means you approach food with an enthusiasm unseen since man first learned to walk upright.”

  “I gets the impression you are being sarcastic.”

  Poe turned to him. “Bravo. It gets impressions. Fan that tiny flame of sensitivity and eventually it will grow into a veritable blaze of mediocrity.” Poe sneered.

  Figg’s smile was slow and he kept it in place for a short time before speaking. “Squire, if I didn’t need you, I would give some thought to punchin’ yer big ‘ead down deep twixt yer shoulders.”

  “Am I to assume that this represents your mind functioning at its subtle best?”

  “Squire, assume that you are still livin’ and that you are a most fortunate gent.”

  “’Let there be light! said God, and there was light!’’ Let there be blood! says man, and there’s a sea.'” Poe snorted. “Before you ask, it is a quote from Lord Byron, a poet of some note.”

  Figg removed his top hat, running a thick hand over his shaven skull. “Fancied hisself a boxer, Byron did. Never saw a gent what pulled more ladies. Everytime I meets him, he has three or four ladies—”

  Poe’s voice was barely a whisper. “You met Byron?”

  Figg looked out of his side of the cab at the strolling nighttime crowds. “Tried teachin’ him a wee bit of boxin’, but he had that club foot and he was always eatin’ boiled potatoes drowned in vinegar to give him that pale complexion he thought the ladies all loved, so he didn’t have the strength to—”

  “You met Byron?” The English poet, dead for twenty-four years, had been the most dashing and romantic figure of his time, the most controversial poet to emerge from England in this century and he had been a major influence on Poe.

  “I see you are impressed, squire. Yes, I met him and a right sorry lot he was, too. Him and me was both young men but he was throwin’ away his life chasin’ the ladies or lettin’ them chase him and he owed money and he gets hisself into some kind of scandal concernin’ his half-sister.” Figg shook his head sadly. “Wasted life, if you ask me. Dies in Greece fightin’ somebody else’s war. Damn stupid, I say.”

  “A glorious way to die,” said Poe, eyes on Figg.

  “Squire, we all are goin’ to end up as food for the worms but I think it’s better to die fightin’ for somethin’ that’s your own, get me meanin’?”

  Poe nodded. This ape sitting beside him with the bulldog face had actually met Byron. And Dickens. Thackeray. Carlyle. Tennyson. And damn little of it had rubbed off, it appeared. He was still rude, crude and not one to take to the palace. Change that. He had been to the palace. Poe shook his head.

  “Mr. Figg? Mr. Figg?”

  But Figg had slumped down in his seat, top hat covering his face.

  “Gots to gets me beauty nap when I can squire, when I can. Long night in front. From the Irishman it’s back to them Renaissance travellin’ players. Wake me when we gets where we’re goin’.”

  Poe wanted to talk about Byron and Figg wanted to sleep. The poet sighed. The ape sleeps in ignorance of the greatness around him. He absorbs it not. Surely God is a buffoon to have created so many buffoons in his image.

  Poe, shivering in his greatcoat, licked his lips and thought of the taste of gin. And rum. And wine. He hadn’t had a drink in almost two days. Forty-eight hours. His mouth tasted of ashes yet his head felt clear and he was functioning. But he was writing little and giving no thought to his job at the Evening Mirror, or the fifty cents a page he earned there for scribbling anything that came to mind. He smiled. No money, no liquor which was not unusual. Rachel. The thought of her was enough. He smiled again.

  The cabdriver flicked the whip and both horses strained against their harnesses. Poe breathed in the cool night air and thought of Jonathan, demons and Dearborn Lapham. And the very dead, still immersed in ice somewhere on this stinking island, Justin Coltman.

  TWENTY-ONE

  HAMLET SPROUL SAT on the floor, Ida Sairs’ cold hand pressed against his cheek. He had never known such terrible sorrow in all his life. He wept, moaned, rocked back and forth and he vowed revenge.

  Jonathan. Mr. Poe. Yes, even the Englishman with the ugly bulldog face, who had climbed down the ladder to kill Chopback and Isaac Bard. Him, too. They would all die for what had happened here this night. Hamlet Sproul would have his revenge for the killing of his boys and Ida. Dear little Ida, who had hurt no man and who had been hurt by all men. Ida, who had brought a welcomed sweetness into the hard life of Hamlet Sproul.

  He screamed at the top of his voice, a wordless cry torn deep from his pained soul.

  What kind of beast would carve the heart and liver from small boys and a gentle woman? And burn them.

  Jonathan. With help from that bastard Poe. This was his vengeance for trying to kill him in the stable. To do this to a woman—

  Woman. Poe had a woman. Yes, that was it! Let him feel this same unholy agony that was tearing apart Hamlet Sproul. Let Poe weep and shriek for his dead woman. Oh yes, Poe would die and so would Mr. Ugly Bulldog. And Jonathan. That would not be easy, but anything could be done if a man put his whole self on it and Hamlet Sproul had every reason in the world to put his whole self on killing Jonathan.

  He squeezed Ida Sairs’ cold hand again, kissing it and tasting the salt of his own tears. On her dead head and that of his two sons, he vowed to kill Rachel Coltman as soon as possible. And her death would be most unpleasant.

  TWENTY-TWO

  FIVE POINTS.

  Figg doubted that the devil himself would have the nerve to show his horned head in this bit of hell. The cabdriver, strong on self-preservation, had stopped on the edge of the slum, refusing to go further. So it was step down into mud shoe-top high and with Poe as guide, trek through narrow streets and alleys lacking all gaslight. There was light, if you could call it that. A stub of a candle flickering in a window lacking all glass. A lantern in the hands of passing, hard-faced strangers. A burning end of a cigar in the mouth of a filthy whore calling from a doorway. Small bonfires of trash in the streets where adults and children in rags warmed their hands, their dirty faces blank with despair. The cold night couldn’t hide the stink; nothing but foul air everywhere. Figg walked past rotting tenements worse than anything to be found in London’s Seven Dials slum or even The Holy Land. He and Poe brushed past men, women and children wrapped in dirt-encrusted rags, most
of them drunk and surly, cursing each other and anyone unfortunate enough to be near them. Children fought each other over the last few drops in a whiskey bottle. There was less hope here than in the breast of a man standing on a scaffold with a rope around his neck.

  And Figg knew what a man’s life wasn’t worth a farthing in Five Points. Keep your eyes open and your powder dry. Figg’s hands were in his pockets around the butts of his two pocket flintlocks. Lord bless and keep the gunsmith.

  He and Poe reached the Louvre.

  Inside the smell of oil from lamps attached to wagon wheels hanging from the ceiling was heavy in the air. Figg smelled whiskey and sweat from the crowd of people packed on the dance floor and sitting on long wooden benches against the wall. The dance hall resembled a dark tunnel filled with men and women clutching each other and dancing crude polkas and waltzes, the men bearded and chewing tobacco, the women with pinched, somber faces and bad teeth.

  Harp, drum and trumpet furnished the music. A tiny woman with a sad face gently plucked the harp strings, her eyes closed as though imagining herself to be somewhere else. The trumpet player was a lad who Figg guessed to be no older than fourteen. From the sounds of him, he hadn’t had the instrument to his lips more than a few times in his life. The drummer was old, small, bald and had only one arm. Pounds that bleedin’ drum like he was shoeing a horse, thought Figg, hands still in his pockets.

  He and Poe found a seat on the bench, the wall to their backs which Figg preferred. He turned to Poe. “Ain’t no tables ‘ere.”

  “One comes here to dance rather than converse.”

  “And drink, from the looks of it.”

  “The waiter girls will indulge your every whim, be it alcoholic or more intimate.”

  “Figured more than rum was for sale down ‘ere.” Figg looked at the waiter girls. Young ones, some of them. Babies. Maybe fourteen, fifteen years old and the oldest not much over twenty. Short black dresses, black net stockings and red knee boots with tassels and bells. Waiter girls. Whores for a few coins.