Not Quite Dead

by John MacLachlan Gray

  It occurred to him that the crime might actually prove useful if it distracted the press from the riots at the ironworks, which were breaking out with the regularity of a steam clock. For once, here was something for reporters to chew on that had no political significance. To get the ball rolling, Shadduck planned to drop a hint to a reporter with The Inquirer, that the murder may have been a product of jealousy, revenge, cannibalism—anything to keep the Irish and the Negroes out of it.

  But where to begin?

  Shadduck turned to face his two coppers, former Leatherheads and as thick as gobs of mud, gazing moon-eyed at the carnage. “Do we have an, an inclusion, rather an inventory, of body parts?” he asked, as though it were a munitions tally.

  “Not really, sir,” answered Smit, for the thought of counting something had not occurred to him.

  “Do so. Coutts, you are to secure a notebook. Take down everything

  I say.”

  “I’m naw secretary, sir,” said the copper, who was from Herefordshire. “I can naw do shorthand. I can naw write at aw.”

  “What of you, Smit? Can you put a pencil to paper and make words?”

  “Somewhat so,” replied the punctilious Smit, who was Norwegian and almost willfully unimaginative.

  “In future, everything is to be writ down. In order. For later use.”

  “Wery good. And who will pay for my notebook and pencil? Already it is out fifteen cents, I am.”

  Shadduck resisted an urge to stamp on the copper’s foot. “Requisition writing supplies from riot patrol, they are always making lists.”

  Remain logical, that is the ticket, thought the inspector as he shuffled about the room, somewhat more stooped than usual, hands clenched in the small of his back.

  “Fellers, take a gander at the mutilation of the victim. The body bears every sign of having been torn apart in a rage. A wolverine might have done it. Yet the murderers made sure we wasted no time in identification.”

  His two assistants said nothing, because they understood none of it.

  With a gesture of his cigar, Shadduck indicated a set of hanging shelves in a corner on which rested the severed head of Henry Topham, of Topham & Lea, the most prominent publisher in the city, like an objet d’art.

  “See how the eyes are missing,” he said. “But not in the way of a raven. A raven will pluck out the eyes of a cow as preparation for dinner. Here they were taken neatly from their sockets. See also that the teeth have been pulled …”

  Coutts excused himself. Shadduck paused while the copper went outside for a drink of water.

  Uppermost in the inspector’s mind was the thought that the victim was in publishing. The book business! If Henry Topham were mixed into any other racket in Philadelphia, Shadduck might have devised a theory by which a colleague or a rival might do for him in such a way— But a publisher?

  “What do you reckon?” he asked Smit, without in the least expecting an answer. “Who might murder a publisher in such fashion? A failed writer in a pucker over the rejection of his life’s work? A dispute over a payment of royalty?” By the expression on Smit’s cubic face, even to him it made a weak incentive for such an act.

  “Or consider,” continued Shadduck, “that the murder might have dirt to do with business. That the answer rests in Mr. Topham’s private affairs.”

  Coutts, looking wan, returned from the street to resume his tally of flesh and bone.

  “Observe the decor of the room, Smit,” said the inspector. “What do you make of it?”

  “It is expensive,” offered Smit.

  “Note—what would you call it—a quality to the furnishings. What word would you put to it?”

  “Like a whorehouse,” said Smit.

  “My word exactly. Mr. Topham was a bachelor. Did he lead a private life that, by, er, some, some … well, that is to say, some sequence of events …” Shadduck worried when he had trouble finding words.

  “Sequence of events?” replied Smit, not eager to explore the subject.

  Shadduck stood opposite the lantern-jawed Norwegian; the eyes had the comprehension of a cart hoss. “Smit, I want you to find out where the victim has been. What he has been up to. Consult our informants in the free-and-easies along the river, and ask among the Irish. And write it all down. I want a full report.”

  “Sure, and what am I to ask them for?” asked Smit.

  Shadduck sighed deeply. A cart hoss, with blinkers on. No wonder the Norse were known for their toleration—they see so little in the first place.

  Interrupted Coutts: “If ye’d care to see, Inspector, I noted something just at this here moment, sir.”

  “What is it, Mr. Coutts? Something about the color red?”

  “No sir, it is the man’s shins.”

  “The shins?”

  “There’s naw any. They been hacked off and taken.”

  “How the heck have you come to that conclusion?”

  “Me uncle were a butcher, would take me on in busy season. Ye learn to see the animal as the sum o’ the parts, so to speak—see? There be the upper leg and knee, there be the feet—but there be naw shin between ‘em, don’t you know? Yet the arm bones is intact. It beggars understanding what might possess a man to cut a man’s legs off and take them away. What might he do with them?”

  “He might sell them,” replied the inspector.

  The Editors

  The New York Tribune

  Philadelphia

  Gentlemen,

  Allow me to commend your writer Mr. “Lionel” on his obituary of the late Edgar Allan Poe, for it outdoes in malignancy and injustice all that its author dared to inflict upon Mr Poe during his lifetime.

  By “Lionel,” I refer of course to the Reverend Rufus Griswold, who seems to believe that by hiding beneath a pseudonym he can bear false witness against his neighbor without penalty to his immortal soul.

  It is common currency among literary circles that Mr. Griswold’s hatred for Mr. Poe arises from the latter’s refusal of a bribe offered to puff Mr. Griswold’s anthology.

  Out of charity, this writer prefers to excuse Mr. Griswold on the same grounds that Mr. Griswold explains the work of Mr. Poe: that these are the symptoms of a sick man, for which he cannot be wholly blamed.

  I refer to the generally known fact that Mr. Griswold is a consumptive, a disease he contracted years ago in France, resulting in bleeding at the lungs, weakened eyesight, and a weakened mind—symptoms Mr. Poe would well recognize, having lost his beloved wife to the same disease.

  For years Mr. Griswold has attempted to foist his bitter future upon the living. Now it seems that his malice and envy extends even beyond the grave.

  Truly yours,

  R. A. Perry, Esq.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  * * *

  Baltimore

  Iread the rebuttal, which had been reprinted in the Baltimore Sun, and another penny dropped. It was now obvious that Eddies staged death had less to do with newspaper clippings and teeth, and more to do with the desire on the part of an artist to revenge himself upon his critics. It seemed sickeningly clear that Eddie would continue to do so until he was discovered and I was ruined.

  In the meantime, how did he expect to earn a living, when he had scarcely been able to do so as one of the most famous authors in America? Then I remembered his mention of a “commitment”—a job of work he found distasteful but remunerative. Clearly he had something in reserve—another, less high-flown means of making a living as a writer.

  One thing seemed clear: It was most urgent that I find Eddie and stop him from pursuing his present course. By wringing his neck, if necessary.

  Mrs. Elmira Shelton (nee Royster)

  Exchange Hotel

  City of Baltimore

  Dear Mrs. Shelton,

  I trust that I am not out of order in introducing myself, absent of a living intermediary. I am Dr. William Chivers, formerly of Norfolk, where I believe we occupied the same classroom as schoolmates of the late Edgar All
an Poe.

  I was very surprised to see you at the interment of our mutual friend yesterday afternoon. I would be grateful if you were able to take tea as my guest, tomorrow afternoon.

  Yours in remembrance,

  Dr. William Chivers

  Washington College Hospital

  City of Baltimore

  Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

  —Ambrose Bierce

  I DO NOT know if Elmira Royster was a woman that other men would find attractive. Though she had skin of a pleasing color and consistency, her nose was far from classically straight. Her lips, though delicate, were not entirely symmetrical, but set in what appeared to be a faint, lopsided half-smile. As for her form, there was no telling what lay beneath all those layers of silk and linen. Nonetheless, from the moment we met across the linen tablecloth at the Exchange Hotel, I viewed Elmira Royster through a haze of imagined copulation.

  I had not experienced such an intense sensation in my life—though, as you know, I was a married man. The sad fact was that, in Southern American society, the few circumstances in which a man might meet a woman who was neither servant nor relative—church functions, family gatherings, afternoon teas contrived for the purpose—were purposely arranged to keep ardent feelings to a minimum.

  Under such a constriction of opportunity, courtship becomes a process of elimination more than attraction. No wonder that so many men, like Eddie, married their cousins. As for womankind, no doubt this explains the popularity of romance novels, in which a couple’s passion for one another is paramount—delicious, because it so rarely happens in life.

  I chose a woman who possessed every quality one could possibly wish for in a spouse, with one exception. She was taller than me. A good deal taller. The resulting awkwardness became self-perpetuating; it spread into other areas, and gave our private life a tentative wariness neither of us knew how to acknowledge, let alone cure.

  I readily admit to a smallness of spirit throughout my marriage. I am mortified that I was not able to overcome my own squeamishness at this superficial difference. Yet I believe I am not the only man susceptible to arbitrary physical tastes and aversions when it comes to the opposite sex.

  In my mind, sexual congress with my wife was like fighting my way through a jungle of arms and legs. This struggle—and it was a struggle—combined with the normally embarrassing aspects of physical intimacy, which resulted in a relatively chaste marriage. (But not quite chaste enough, unfortunately for her.)

  Likewise I suspect that there was something about my form or behavior that my late wife could never quite get over, something seemingly trivial that would have embarrassed her beyond measure were it brought into the open. I wonder if it was my smell—for there does exist a doctor’s smell, and it cannot be entirely pleasant. Or it could have been something as simple as the sight of my hands, an inability to entirely banish the thought of where they had been. Or perhaps my baldness put her off. Once you begin to make a list, there is really no end to it.

  In any event, seated in the Exchange Hotel, I had no precedent for the quickening heartbeat, the roaring in the ears, the rush of blood causing the cheeks to redden, the involuntary and unwelcome tumescence of the loins, the signals of genuine desire—over tea.

  What could account for it? I wondered, while liquid sloshed over the rim of my trembling cup. Certainly not her accent—though I found it familiar enough. Nor was I stimulated by her conversation, which seemed strangely elliptical, as though even a comment on the weather contained a second, unspecified meaning.

  It might have been her eyes. She possessed floating irises, in which the whites are visible beneath the iris. Common practice has it that such a gaze indicates a spiritually turbulent nature. To the object of her gaze, she somehow gave the impression that she could see my thoughts—a most unsettling idea, in this instance.

  My unanticipated passion for Elmira Royster rendered it doubly difficult for me to approach the issue at hand—to wit, that the cadaver in the coffin was not Edgar Allan Poe. It was inconceivable that she did not know this, having wandered the graveyard with him only days before. Yet she had gazed into the coffin with complete equanimity, commenting on Eddie’s fine appearance, while looking directly at me.

  Perhaps it was not the man in the coffin she meant to describe as looking so well, but the man who had escaped it. Perhaps it was not his appearance, but his disappearance that had pleased her.

  All of which assumed that I was in my right mind at the time. Having had little sleep, I was now open to the possibility that it was indeed Eddie Poe we buried—that the substitution had itself been a dream.

  “It is unseasonably cold for the time of year,” I said, putting a toe into conversational water, however inane.

  “It is evah so much colder than in Richmond,” she replied, elongating her James River vowels. “I worried that I might not have sufficient clothing.”

  “Always wise to avoid a chill,” I agreed, unnerved by the notion of insufficient clothing.

  “Chill rhymes with kill, and a grave to fill,” she replied. “That might make a handy rule in instructing children.”

  “Instructing them about what, ma’am?”

  “About life and death, suh.”

  I nodded thoughtfully and sipped my tea. What the devil was that supposed to mean? Her accent had begun to unnerve me; I had no wish to revisit longings that had tormented me as a young man.

  “Rhymes,” she continued, “are evah so much more pleasant than spelling things out, don’t you think?”

  My heart sank. Another poetic sensibility.

  “Miz. Royster, I mean Shelton, may I say that I was very surprised to see you at the burial of our mutual friend Eddie Poe.”

  “Yes, you might say that—in fact, you said the same thing in your note. You are repeating yourself, suh,” she said, toying with the silver spoon in her fingers.

  “May I ask how you came to be at the ceremony?”

  “No, you mayn’t, suh.”

  “Then might I ask why you refuse to tell me?” I asked, cursing her elusiveness, throbbing with desire.

  “Dr. Chivahs, do you believe it possible for information to travel between two souls, without the use of the five senses?”

  “Certainly, ma’am, if the information has already been agreed upon, as at seances and carnival acts.”

  “Then there is scarcely a point in my telling you.”

  “Are you suggesting that you arrived at the cemetery by occult means?”

  “Do you mean did I ride astride a broomstick?”

  “No, ma’am, that is not at all what I meant.” I could feel my teeth grinding together. Despite my passion I was beginning to find Elmira Royster a most irritating woman.

  “I went because Eddie asked me to. That is rightly all I can tell you.” She sipped her tea, smiling to herself as though a third person had said something amusing.

  The conversation continued in this maddeningly oblique fashion until the teapot was empty and my mind had nearly snapped under the strain. It would not be the first time such damage inflicted itself upon me in the presence of Elmira Royster.

  “Miz Royster, I mean Shelton, I am going to be utterly frank with you, at the risk of my reputation, my occupation, my freedom— everything I possess. I beg you to answer one question in a straightforward manner. My life depends upon it.”

  “Tell me, suh, why do you persist in calling me by my maiden name?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. I suppose it is a trick of memory, and feeling.”

  “Dr. Chivahs, I am right shocked by the, the passion in your face. It is well-nigh indecent.”

  “Forgive me, ma’am, but for heaven’s sake tell me—when you opened the casket, what did you see?”

  She thought about this, or appeared to. “Dr. Chivahs, as a professional man, do you believe in life after death?”

  “Certainly, if you mean the life of maggots and worms.”

  “And what is your opinio
n of the spirit?”

  “I know nothing about the spirit, but believe it is a much-abused word.”

  “Then you cannot possibly understand when I tell you. Yet I shall. When I opened the casket, I saw Eddie Poe.”

  “But it was not! You know it was not Edgar Allan Poe in that coffin! You know this!”

  “Dr. Chivahs, I must ask you to kindly lower your voice.”

  Indeed, she was correct. Other patrons had turned their heads in our direction, birdlike and in unison.

  I leaned forward and repeated my request in an urgent whisper. “Miz Shelton, I am in possession of a pocket pistol, and I swear to you that I will shoot myself here at this table if you do not answer one question with a simple, direct answer.”

  “You have a pistol, suh? Let me see it.”

  “I will not,” I replied, feebly, for of course I had none. It was the first time since I was a child that a woman had bested me in a discussion.

  “Dr. Chivahs, please understand that I do not like threats, especially empty ones. What is your question?”

  “What is your relation with Edgar Allan Poe?”

  “He is my fiancé. We are engaged.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  * * *

  Philadelphia

  Never having entered the offices of a publisher before, Shad-duck was surprised how friendly and homey it all seemed, like an expensively appointed den, where deep thoughts were shared and everybody understood Greek. It had a pleasant messiness, a what-the-hell quality, papers strewn everywhere, as though an editor had become overstimulated and had run amok.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” he said to the tanned, tidy gentleman behind the desk. “I am Inspector Shadduck. I reckon you know what it is about. You are Mr. Topham’s secretary?”