Not Quite Dead

by John MacLachlan Gray

  But there was another logic, however twisted, at work in my mind. By dedicating myself to killing Eddie as my archenemy, I shielded myself from the overwhelming alternative—that I had somehow brought these disasters upon myself. In other words, the enemy was either Poe or Chivers. It was him or me.

  As though to confirm my position, from the moment when I decided that I must kill Eddie I experienced no more thoughts of suicide. With Poe dead I could rest easy, if not happy, and die content, if not at peace. And if I died by dangling from a gallows, when the trap beneath me collapsed and I plummeted through space with a rope around my neck and my head in a sack, my last thought here on earth would be a happy one: Eddie Poe is gone.

  However, if I wanted to murder Eddie, first I was going to have to find him.

  Lying on the carpet in my room in the United States Hotel, I became aware of the letter beside my hand. I rose carefully to my feet, reread the letter (reading was easier with two eyes), then tore it into strips and ate it, washed down with a tumbler of whiskey. Then I entered the bathroom, took the bandage off my eye, and examined myself in mirror. My head looked like something that had been dredged from the bottom of the sea.

  The eye throbbed menacingly, but it could perceive light and shadow and discern vague patterns. On the other hand, it bulged like the eye of a fish, bloodred, with splotches of orange for contrast.

  As well, and not surprisingly, my face appeared deranged. Seen in my present condition I would drive women and children shrieking from my presence. This would not do. If I were to find and kill Eddie Poe, I would have to somehow impersonate a normal man.

  I pulled the bell for service. I fetched my bag, opened it, and applied a dressing to the eye, which I covered with a clean bandage just as the valet appeared, a fleshy, young fellow in his late teens, with an armful of towels and an array of tiny boils on his forehead.

  “I should like my bath drawn at once,” I said.

  “Certainly sir. What did you do to your eye, sir?”

  “Don’t you know better than to pry into a man’s affairs?”

  “Yes, sir. Beg pardon, sir.” The valet eyed me warily, he knew I was a bit off. I was going to have to come up with a better response to inquiries about the eye, for it was bound to come up again.

  From this point forward, I set about impersonating a rational man, by doing what a rational man would do. I bathed. I put on clean linen. I shaved my face and filed my fingernails (ragged fingernails will give you away every time); I trimmed my sideburns and removed the pathetic sprigs of hair from my bald scalp. I applied cologne. I put on my suit, freshly brushed by my valet, and tied my cravat with no assistance and no mirror.

  Grooming: the sign of a sociable, reasonable man, the disguise of a savage. Beware the man who has something against you, and has recently been to his barber.

  I paid my valet a generous gratuity, which relaxed him somewhat, but he remained leery of me. To glimpse madness in a man is a bit like watching him vomit: you can never look at him in quite the same way again.

  Having disguised myself as a civilized gentleman with a bandage on one eye, I made my way down to the reception area—the bandage gave me a rakish air, I thought—and surveyed the company. And took in much, for there is nothing like being out of one’s mind to stimulate the perceptions.

  The lobby buzzed with newspapermen as usual, but there was a strained feeling to everything, the drawn agitation you sense in crowded hospital waiting rooms, and on the faces of rail passengers following the announcement of an indefinite delay.

  “I am Mr. Le Rennet in Room 207, and I wish to make certain inquiries.” I said this to the watchful, uniformed Negro behind the counter.

  “I see you did an injury to you eye, sah?”

  “I have a stye.”

  “A stye, sah. Had un meself. Dandelion poultice go good fo it. Draw out the poison like a worm.”

  “Thank you for the medical advice, sir. I appreciate it.”

  “No mention, sah. And what else do you want knowing?” The smile remained reassuring while the black eyes drilled into me. Does he know? I thought. Does he know I am mad?

  Nothing for it but to go the whole hog.

  “Sir, I wish to ask you a private question concerning my wife, Mrs. Le Rennet. It is of a confidential nature and you may expect a substantial gratuity. Do you recall seeing my wife leave the hotel?”

  “Yessa. She had a small bag—an overnight bag—and she was in the company of an Irishman, sah.”

  “Did she leave with this Irishman willingly?”

  “That is a hard one to judge, sah. Fo’ sure, if I thought otherwise he’d of been shot.” The desk clerk glanced meaningfully downward, which I took to mean a weapon under the counter.

  The Irish. How many times had the Irish come into the discussion for no apparent reason, and with sinister implication? Or did the Irish figure into any sort of unrest in America—just as the Mexicans did a few years earlier, and the Apaches, and the Negroes of course?

  Perhaps every era has its Problem People—underdogs who cause trouble for everyone else. To be sure, the complaint is invariably legitimate, their grievance just; in some other place and time someone has done them inestimable harm. Yet human time passes in a blur, sufficiently fast to elude the fastest draw, the speediest revenge, so that the victim’s wrath falls upon the head of someone who has done him no harm, someone who remains unaware of his own symbolic nature, why he should have been singled out for attack.

  “Pardon, sir,” said the young man at the end of the reception counter. “I wonder if I could take a moment of your time.”

  The police? If so, he was one of a special sort, to judge by his dress and grooming, and by the bulge beneath his coat. “By all means, sir,” I said, calmly and reasonably. “I am at your service.”

  “Did I hear you happen to mention the Irish there, sir? Mind telling me what made you do that?”

  “A personal matter,” I said.

  “Please come with me, sir,” he said, and I obeyed, convinced that he was either a private detective or a gangster—yet new to the field, for the face had an earnest, naive quality I had seen on the faces of recent recruits, convinced that they served their country by losing their limbs.

  I ASSURE YOU, sir, that I am not a constable,” Putnam said, with a small beer in front of him. (For my part, nothing less than four fingers of whiskey would do and the fingers of butchers at that.) “I have the honor of serving as the American assistant to Mr. Charles Dickens.”

  “That is an honor indeed,” I replied, nodding, not believing a word of it, performing a fine impersonation of a reasonable man.

  We occupied a small table in the hotel saloon—a situation reminding me all too keenly of my meeting with Eddie, the one-eyed man, and all that followed. Like the Black Horse, the room was packed with men—but only men, no absurdly dressed servant girls nor ladies of easy virtue, nothing to counter the stablelike atmosphere that attends any all-male public gathering. As in the Black Horse, and the Exchange Restaurant for that matter, the air shimmered with the combined odors of smoke, tobacco spit, stale armpits, and crusted, crumbling feet—not precisely what the architect had in mind when he fashioned the elegant decor. Had he first obtained an insight into the nature of the clientele, a more appropriate choice might have been a tublike, porcelain expanse, with a drain in the center of the floor so that it could be hosed out like a stable, and a removable roof that could be doffed like a cap, ventilating the room.

  “I overheard your mention of the Irish, sir. It interested me considerable for reasons that must remain private.”

  Cleverly, I saw the flaw in his position. “Privacy is the right of every white man. If you make such a claim, surely you do not expect me to do otherwise.”

  Putnam looked startled, as though winged from an unexpected direction. “You have scored a fair hit on that one, sir. I congratulate you.”

  I did not trust this young man, if only because he dressed like someone in t
he theater. I did not approve of the pattern on his waistcoat, and was bothered by an urge to feel the texture.

  Putnam took a tactical sip of his small beer and continued. “I will make a clean breast of it, sir. My information is not known by the Philadelphia police, nor by the press. I count on your discretion.”

  “I have an interest in avoiding both professions,” I replied. “If we are to undertake an exchange of facts, I count on your silence as well.”

  The young man leaned forward. “Sir, the fact is that Mr. Dickens has disappeared and I am afeared that he might come to some harm.”

  “Do you mean from an Irishman? Of course, everyone suspects the Irish of everything.”

  “And with good reason, sir.”

  “Perhaps so.”

  “On the other hand, the situation may be perfectly innocent. Mr. Dickens has been darned twitchy of late. I would not be surprised were he to head out on his own, if only to get away from his admirers. On the other hand, and this is most worrying, he did leave with an Irishman, who was admitted to Mr. Dickens’s rooms in advance.”

  “A highly unusual circumstance.”

  “Exactly my thought, sir. Mr. Dickens knows no Irish in Philadelphia, and it is hardly the normal thing for Irishmen and Negroes to walk in off the street and gain access to private rooms in a respectable hotel. So I made inquiries. The Negro at the desk—the one you spoke to—said that it was Mr. Dickens’s housekeeper who admitted the Irishman. Fact is, I met her myself—a woman from New Germany, and French.”

  “One can never trust the French,” I said. “They are a self-indulgent, bloodthirsty race, like the Irish, the Spanish—and Catholics in general.”

  “I am not of that view, sir, being Catholic myself. But it adds up to a passel of foreigners.”

  “It was an Irishman who conducted my wife from the hotel,” I said.

  “There you are, sir. These two events cannot be entirely separate.”

  “Indeed so,” I replied. However, in my mind it was not the conjunction of two Irishmen but of two authors that suggested something other than coincidence at work.

  Despite our common interest, I was unprepared to reveal all to Mr. Putnam. In particular I chose to omit the part of my tale that featured Eddie Poe and myself. If I was going to kill Eddie I would have to be clever, as I would, for madness does not exclude cleverness. Anyone who has been in a war will tell you that.

  I made a show of cogitating while I concocted a reasonable lie. “I suspicion that my wife has been abducted for money, and I can only sit and wait until a demand is made.”

  “Perhaps so. However, not to be indelicate, sir, but am I to believe the Negro at the desk when he said that your wife left willingly}”

  Having been caught out, Mr. Le Rennet made a show of containing his feelings. “You have an extraordinarily acute sense of hearing, sir. You must be some sort of detective.” And I swear to you that I burst into tears.

  “It would not take a detective to see that you are having a pretty tall time of it, sir.”

  “Are you a detective?” I asked, wiping my eye with my handkerchief.

  “No sir, I am but a public servant. My function is the protection of persons my superiors deem politically sensitive. Mr. Dickens is one of those persons, sir. On the slavery issue, many Americans wish him ill, especially in the South.”

  “To be frank, sir, I have never read Mr. Dickens and don’t give a damn what happens to him. It is my wife I am concerned about,” said Mr. Le Rennet, voice breaking with anguish. “Please excuse me, sir, I wish to retire for I am not well.” Seemingly overcome, I arose to take my leave.

  “It is my understanding that you are a widower, Dr. Chivers. Or have you recently remarried?”

  I stopped in mid-stride while my mind scrambled for purchase. Composing my face into a reasonable expression, I turned. Putnam gazed up at me like an amazed divinity student, shaking his head in wonder at the complexity of the universe.

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” I said, as though he had told me a mildly amusing joke. “My name is Henri Le Rennet.”

  “Sir, I do not believe any man named Le Rennet would make such a general statement about the French. Not to mention that the name itself is a known pseudonym of the author I mentioned earlier, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. The late Edgar Allan Poe. Mrs. Le Rennet—or Mrs. Shelton, depending—would surely know this, having been engaged to him herself.”

  I returned to the table and signaled the barman for another four fingers of whiskey. “What of it?” I said, feigning defiance, for I had been well and truly found out and there was no point in pretending otherwise.

  “I hear they are about to exhume the body,” said Putnam, with an expression of innocence and wonder. “That ought to be real interesting.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  * * *

  Philadelphia

  Having been raised with no father and therefore no countervailing influence over him, Shadduck had spent his youth either following or running from his mother’s advice. Always dress properly, she had said, and continued to do so in his mind. The bad gardener quarrels with his rake. Bad the crow, bad the egg. Those that lie down with dogs, get up with fleas …

  Shadduck’s mother had been dead three years by the time of the Mexican War. Since then, when it came to proper dressing, Shadduck had always felt more comfortable in uniform, and remained careful of the men he associated with. Another product of his mother’s rearing was a tendency to sit back and consider, when the temptation was to plunge into immediate action. Act in haste, repent at leisure.

  A detached human eye sat before him on Grisse’s table, staring at something over Shadduck’s shoulder. There is something unnerving about an unblinking eye—even when it is attached to its owner; surely the man who sent it intended to cause a chill of horror in the recipient, and thus provoke him to rash action.

  Thanks to his mother, Shadduck did not do this. He did not reel back in horror at the sight. He pondered it calmly, as though it were an interesting specimen at a medical school.

  To Wendel Grisse, the inspector’s detachment was horrifying. The councilman had unveiled his grisly secret late in the meeting to achieve a telling effect—that he might glimpse the man beneath Shadduck’s seemingly guileless exterior.

  Disappointingly, Shadduck’s response was not at all telling. In fact, the inspector stared down at the object with an almost bovine lack of intensity. This alarmed Councilman Grisse more than ever: Could one ever trust a man so filled with kreft?

  Both men stared at the eye, which lay there like a shelled raw egg whose membrane had somehow remained intact, primordial and terrifying, like the eye of a Cyclops.

  “Who’s eye is that, do you s’pose?”

  “I am not free to be saying that information.”

  “Suit yourself, sir. But I can’t be no help without the facts.”

  Shadduck’s indifference was genuine. As far as he was concerned he had a full plate before him with the Topham business, and the councilman was welcome to deal with the eye himself.

  For some time the two sat in silence. Shadduck waited for the mind of Councilman Grisse to boil in his own predicament.

  The envelope had arrived by messenger. By the time Grisse became aware of its contents, the deliverer was nowhere to be found. As the named recipient of the horrible thing, Grisse feared that he might be seen as somehow involved—even responsible. This was a treacherous position in itself.

  The worst of it was that the councilman might be expected to oversee the investigation. He was, after all, the law-and-order incumbent; and for political reasons he had rashly proclaimed himself Dickens’s bosom friend, his host in Philadelphia. What a fool he was to lend his name to the Englishman’s visit—for that is surely why Grisse was selected to receive the greislich gift. He had welcomed Mr. Dickens publicly in the newspaper, put his moniker to the visit as though he himself were behind it.

  Now his detractors could claim that, having invited a dignitary
to Philadelphia, Grisse had failed to secure his safety. And an election only a month away!

  While Councilman Grisse squirmed in his private dilemma, Shad-duck put his mind to the Irish gang that had done for Mr. Topham, and the force he might be able to summon for combat. To rely on an outside constabulary was out of the question, for he had no authority with which to command them. And outside the function of riot control he had only Coutts and Smitt to call on. Yet it was certain that the arrest had to be conducted as a military maneuver, if it was to succeed without a passel of bloodshed.

  “Inspector, I repeat that I am showing this eye to you as a matter of the most confidence.”

  “Yessir. But if I am to make something of it, I must put a name to it.”

  “Very well. Inspector, I believe the eye is belonging to Mr. Charles Dickens.”

  “Charles who?”

  “Dickens. He is an English author.”

  “The author staying in the United States Hotel?”

  “Ja, that is so.”

  “Great guns. Is this true for certain?”

  “Sure. There was inside a letter saying so.”

  “What did it say, sir?”

  “For yourself you can read this.” Councilman Grisse extended a folded sheet of paper stained by some sort of fluid, now dry; it made a crinkling sound as Shadduck spread it on the table before him.

  Councilman Grisse, Sir,

  You are looking at Charles Dickens’s left eye. You have one week before you receive the right one too. A week after that we will send you his head.

  To see that the right eye remains where it is you are to set about the raising of fifty thousand dollars and await further notice. Any contact with the police will have disastrous consequences.

  Sincerely,

  A company of desperate men

  Shadduck read the letter twice. The wording felt Irish to him. “Fifty thousand dollars is a passel of money, sir.”