Entombed

by Linda Fairstein

The fancy dinner was a nice end to a day that had taken such an odd twist. We walked out of the restaurant, the guys agreed to pick me up at eight-thirty as Mercer got in his car, and Mike drove me up Third Avenue to drop me in front of my door shortly before ten o'clock.

  I hadn't been asleep long when the telephone rang.

  "I know you wouldn't be happy if you heard this on the morning news," Mercer said.

  I cocked an eye and looked at the dial on the clock radio. One thirty-fiveA.M.

  "I guess you're not calling to tell me you didn't enjoy dinner."

  "I'm back in your 'hood. Our Silk Stocking Rapist tried again. East Eighty-first Street, just off York. The girl Maced him, though, and he ran off."

  "Good for her. She's okay?"

  "Hanging tough. I'm doing the interview now. When he reached up to cover his eyes, he dropped the knife. She picked it up and tried to slash at him."

  "Well, so much for fingerprints."

  "Everything's a trade-off. She slit open his jacket pocket and a few things fell out."

  "Driver's license?" I asked, shifting beneath the warm blanket.

  "You wouldn't like it if it came that easy. Nope, no ID. Just a MetroCard."

  I smiled, thinking of the interview I did yesterday with the witness whose card had broken her story. "That's a fine place to start, Mr. Wallace. We know what part of the silk stocking district he frequents. Let's see where else he likes to travel."

  27

  Zeldin's fifth-story office window in the magnificent Beaux Arts building known as the Mertz Library looked out over a snowcovered expanse that stretched as far as I could see.

  "Would you imagine it, Miss Cooper? Two-hundred-fifty spectacular acres of gardens and greenery in the middle of New York City. It's extraordinary, isn't it, and so magical in the middle of winter with this lovely dusting of snow?"

  "I'm ashamed to say I'd forgotten quite how beautiful it is, and how grand."

  "It was the vision of an American couple named Britton, you know. They were philanthropists who had a great interest in botany. She was just overwhelmed by a visit to the Royal Gardens at Kew, back in the 1880s and returned home insisting that her husband try to replicate it in America. Re-creating Eden, that's what these gardens are all about."

  "The Garden of Eden-set the backstory for the first homicide, too, if I remember correctly," Mike said. "How we doing on that list of Raven Society members I asked about?"

  "You shall have them, of course," Zeldin said, surprising me as well as Mike. He gestured around the room, packed full of botanical prints and books on plants and trees. "I have someone picking us up in an hour to take us over to the building where I keep the society records. I've never mixed my hobby with the garden's business."

  "How long did you work here in the library?" I asked.

  "Nearly thirty-five years."

  "And which came first, your interest in plants or in Poe?"

  "It's sort of a chicken-and-egg thing, if you know what I mean. I've always loved both," he said, wheeling himself to a shelf near his desk and handing me a book from it. "My first published work, and it's still a classic in the field."

  I examined the well-worn volume and opened it to its title page. "'Flora and Fauna in the Poetry and Prose of Edgar Allan Poe-An Illustrated Guide.'"

  "So, if I say 'buttercup,' you can tell me if Poe used it in his work?" Mike asked.

  "Precisely, Detective. Buttercup, better known by its Latin name Ranunculus, is used only once, in the story 'Eleonora'-'so besprinkled through with the yellow buttercup.'"

  "Must be a huge audience for this stuff I just don't know about."

  "Or shall we try something like 'jackass,' Mr. Chapman? Both in 'Marginalia' and in 'Politian.' You'd be surprised at how many scholars rely on this kind of thing. The book is in its twelfth printing."

  Like every other author I'd ever met, Zeldin neglected to mention the size of each printing. I didn't expect they were large.

  "As much as I've admired Poe's work," I said, "I certainly know very little about his life. Perhaps it would be useful if you would spend some time telling us about him."

  "It's Edgar Allan Poe who brought me here, to this very place," Zeldin said, spinning his chair around to face the three of us.

  "To New York?" Mercer asked.

  "To the Bronx. To these Botanical Gardens."

  "We knew he lived in Manhattan," I said. Recently acquired knowledge, for me, but the skeleton had made an indelible impression.

  "But his last home, Miss Cooper-in fact, the longest residence of his adult life-was here in the Bronx."

  I looked to Mike, my outer-borough expert, for confirmation. He shook his head.

  "Poe Cottage. You don't know it? You'll enjoy seeing it," he said, explaining to Mike that it still stood on Kingsbridge Road, in a small park dedicated to the poet. "It was not only his last real residence, poor soul, but the only one still standing. They'd best not tear that one down or every writer in America will be up in arms."

  "And these gardens?" I asked.

  "Well, they hadn't been created as a formal botanical sanctuary then. In fact, this whole area wasn't even considered to be the Bronx in those days. It was a very rural village, part of Westchester County, known as Fordham. The building in which the skeleton was found in Greenwich Village? Poe had to leave that house because his wife was suffering from tuberculosis. The doctors insisted that she could only survive with the help of fresh country air."

  "So they moved out here?"

  "Yes, ma'am. To the little farmhouse on Kingsbridge Road, near One Hundred Ninety-second Street and the Grand Concourse. He loved to walk, Poe did. He spent long days traversing the farmlands in this Fordham area, much of it here in these very woods that make up part of our Botanical Gardens property. Even to the gorge at the river, where that accident occurred this week. The waterfalls fascinated him."

  "You sure he walked right here?" Mike asked.

  "Would you like to read his letters, Mr. Chapman? He describes the area in exquisite detail, from the cottage to this forest to the High Bridge that carried water from the Croton Aqueduct over the Harlem River to Manhattan."

  "His story called 'Landor's Cottage'?" I asked tentatively.

  "Now you're onto it, Miss Cooper. That describes the little house he rented for his family, the one that still stands in Poe Park. One hundred dollars a year. He used to find great tranquillity in walking the heights, looking out over Long Island Sound. You could see it then from his doorstep, before all the high-rise buildings went up and got in the way of the view. There was a group of Jesuits at something called St. John's, not too far away-"

  Mike interrupted. "Yeah. They're the ones who founded Fordham College."

  "Well, there you go, Mr. Chapman. He used to love to walk over to have discourse with the Jesuit scholars and use the books in their library. We'll get you into this, too."

  "I'm about as deep in as I want to get, thanks. But now I understand why he named a character Montresor," Mike said.

  Zeldin expected another wisecrack.

  "That name doesn't mean anything to you?" Mike asked. "You know Randall's Island?"

  We all did. It sat in the East River, between Manhattan and the Bronx.

  "John Montresor was a British captain during the Revolutionary War. He bought that island and moved his family there, spying for the Brits and advising them where to base invasions in New York Harbor. He's the guy who witnessed Nathan Hale's execution, the reason we know Hale's last words."

  "'I only regret,'" Zeldin said, "'that I have but one life to give for my country.' I'm impressed, Mr. Chapman. I guess Poe didn't have to look much further than his backyard to dig up some names for his tales."

  "You talked about the tragic circumstances of Poe's life yesterday," I said. "Would you mind telling us what they were?"

  I had a notepad ready. I was hoping the salient facts would be things I could later compare against the life of a vengeful killer who may have been ide
ntifying too closely with the great writer.

  "Poe's grandfather was a Revolutionary War hero. Somewhat celebrated in Maryland, where the family had settled. His father, David, was the typical black sheep, even back then."

  "In what way?"

  "Defied the general's wishes by dropping the study of law to become an actor. And a drunk. And married beneath his class, to a woman of no pedigree. An all-round ne'er-do-well," Zeldin said.

  "Whom did he marry?" I asked.

  "An itinerant actress named Eliza. A young woman who toured with small companies playing comic juvenile roles and ingénues. Edgar was their second child, born while Eliza was performing in Boston in 1809."

  I had to remind myself, now that the events of Poe's life seemed to be responsible in some way for the recent deaths, that Poe himself had lived two hundred years ago.

  "A daughter came along two years later, and by the time of her birth, David Poe had disappeared. He was only twenty-five years old."

  "What do you mean, disappeared?"

  "Exactly that. He was never heard from again. I can't tell you what became of him, where he lived thereafter or when he died. He simply vanished from their lives. Estranged from his parents in Baltimore, already deeply in debt with three babies to support, lousy reviews for his stagecraft, and a serious alcohol problem, he simply abandoned Eliza and the children."

  "So Poe never knew his father?" I asked. "Eliza raised the children alone?"

  Zeldin shook his head. "She didn't have the chance. The local newspapers wrote of her 'private misfortunes.' The baby girl was rumored not to be David Poe's child, and within months Eliza had moved her little family to Richmond to try to make a new life for them. She had a catastrophic health failure and become a bedridden charity case shortly after she arrived. Before Edgar was three, his beloved mother had died."

  A broken home, illegitimacy, alcohol abuse, and now three orphaned children-it all sounded like an overwhelmingly dismal start to the boy's life.

  "Who raised them?"

  "Another emotional blow to the young trio. They were separated from each other. David Poe, senior-the parental grandfather who lived in Baltimore-agreed to take in the oldest child, whose name was William Henry. And a local family named Mackenzie took in the infant girl, Rosalie. It was Edgar who was the hardest to place."

  "At the age of three?"

  "Yes, Miss Cooper. As it happened, a well-to-do merchant in Richmond was convinced by his wife-they were childless-to raise young Edgar. He became a ward of John and Frances Allan-"

  "So that's where the name Allan comes from," Mike said. "I just assumed it was his given middle name. I didn't know he'd been adopted."

  "Adoption might have been an easier path for him, Mr. Chapman. John Allan was a tough taskmaster. He refused to adopt the boy. Allan was entirely self-made and used his own childhood deprivation to try and instill in young Edgar that kind of school-of-hard-knocks experience. Sort of 'Why should I hand you anything that I had to work hard for?' So the only promise he made the Poe family was that he would provide the boy with a liberal education."

  "I take it the Allans held up that part of the bargain," Mercer said.

  "Yes, they actually moved to England for a time, where Edgar's first serious schooling began. They sent him from there to Scotland to board for a year when he was only seven, where he was quite lonely. Five years later, when John Allan's business failed, the family returned to Richmond. You know about his stay at university?"

  "A bit," I said. "In Charlottesville."

  "Mr. Jefferson's great university had just been in existence for one year. Edgar was only seventeen when he entered, living in a room on the Lawn that you can still see today."

  "Yes, I know. The unlucky number thirteen."

  "Superstitious, Miss Cooper? Well, maybe his stay there would have been cursed anyway. Poe loved language. He studied French and Italian and Latin. He was a debater and a great swimmer. He wrote verse and sketched charcoals. That was the good side of student life at Virginia. But there was a dark side as well."

  "In what sense?"

  "Virginia was the most expensive college in the country at that time, but in addition to the usual costs he ran up, Edgar Poe developed a serious gambling habit, falling several thousand dollars in debt. And alcohol was already becoming a problem for him, as it had been for his father. He gambled and drank, drank and desperately gambled at cards."

  "Did he finish college?" I asked.

  "It was a two-year course at the time. He left after the first year, and that marked his major rift with John Allan, who refused to pay the boy's debts and wouldn't let him return to school. They quarreled more vociferously than ever before, and as Poe frequently wrote in his letters, he was keenly aware that this surrogate father who had raised him had absolutely no affection for him."

  "How painful for a young man who had no family to speak of. It's so odd then, that Poe used his name."

  "You're wrong, Miss Cooper. We use his name-Edgar rarely did."

  "I don't understand."

  "So far as we know, the first time Poe signed his name using Allan as part of the signature was years later, after John Allan's death. He often used the initial A when he published works, but he rarely used the name Allan, the way we do today. I truly think he hated that man."

  I thought of the signature that was so familiar from reproductions of books and manuscripts. Zeldin was right, of course. It was Edgar A. Poe-the name Allan was never spelled out in the writer's own hand. "So Poe left Richmond?"

  "At the age of eighteen he was alone in the world again, and restless. He struck out for Boston-probably because his mother had written of loving the city so much. That's where a forty-page volume of poetry called Tamerlane first appeared in 1827, wrapped in plain brown paper and distributed around town by an anonymous author."

  "Poe's first publication?"

  "Indeed, Miss Cooper. He never signed any of the copies, nor did he even keep one for himself. Only a handful exist at this point in time. It's no secret that one of our members bought one at auction last year for six hundred thousand dollars. But that's today. As you know, poetry has never been the means to support many young men or women. So Poe took another route-he lied about his age and enlisted in the army. Claimed to be twenty-two years old and said his name was Edgar Perry."

  Mike hadn't known about the military piece. "Didn't that commit him to five years? Wasn't that pretty standard back then?"

  "You're right, Detective. But life as a private wasn't all he had imagined, and he wanted out after two. He actually created an entirely false pedigree-you people would call it perjury-just so he could gain admission to West Point and become an officer."

  "Poe actually entered the Academy?" Mike asked.

  "He was a cadet for a year and a half. Until he was court-martialed for gross neglect of duties and failure to obey orders. He left in disgrace, and again in debt."

  "What then?" I asked.

  "He was like a lost soul. He wandered a bit writing poetry, and finally wound up in Baltimore, where his father's family lived."

  "Was his older brother still in residence there?"

  "That was a brief reunion. Shortly after Edgar reached Baltimore, his brother died-of intemperance, it was called at the time."

  "Intemperance?" I asked.

  "Alcohol, Miss Cooper. William Henry Poe drank himself to death by the age of twenty-four."

  "What a ghastly series of events. Did Edgar reconnect with any other family members?" Mercer asked.

  "Some might call the word 'reconnection' an understatement, Mr. Wallace," Zeldin said. "Edgar's father, David, had a widowed sister named Maria Poe Clemm living there in Baltimore with her two children-her son, Henry, and a nine-year-old daughter named Virginia. So Edgar moved in with his poor widowed aunt Maria and his little first cousins-the only real family he had known in a lifetime."

  "Seems like finally it might have provided some stability," I said. "Was it a productive period
for him?"

  "In a literary sense, it was quite so. He was writing stories and getting them published in the Southern Literary Messenger. Gothic tales of premature burial, physical decay and putrescence, addiction to alcohol, questions about the finality of death. You can only imagine how the tragic events of his youth had fueled his imagination," Zeldin said, pausing for a moment. "On the personal side, he had fallen in love."

  "Against that cheerful background? Who's the lucky woman?" Mike asked.

  "Girl, actually. Hard to call her anything else. His first cousin, Detective. Little Virginia Clemm."

  Mike slapped his knee. "The friggin' nine-year-old?"

  "He waited, Mr. Chapman," Zeldin said, wagging a finger and smiling wryly. "He didn't marry her until she was older-until she turned thirteen."

  "And Poe himself?"

  "Twenty-seven years of age."

  "Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!" Mike said, blushing. "People used to think Jerry Lee Lewis was a pervert. Roman Polanski had to become a fugitive for the rest of his adult life 'cause he'd had sex with a teenager. Listen to this shit, will you? Poe was a pedophile. An incestuous pedophile. Coop would have probably thrown his ass in jail for statutory rape as well as incest."

  "You're speaking of the poet's muse, Mr. Chapman. My cohorts in the Raven Society believe in giving great latitude to someone of such unusual creativity. We don't dwell on his peccadillos," Zeldin said, amused by Mike's reaction to Virginia's age.

  "I'm speaking of something that would shock just about anybody I can think of. And was he a drunken pedophile, too?"

  "Yes, Detective, there are letters from his publisher at the very time despairing of the fact that he was already an alcoholic. And suggestions of a worse addiction."

  "What's that?" I asked, reminded of the involvement of substance abuse in the lives of Aurora Tait, Emily Upshaw, Gino Guidi, and some of the other names that had surfaced in our case. I wondered if there was any relevance to the connection.

  "Our members divide on this issue," Zeldin said. "Some don't like to attribute more faults to the master than are well documented. But most of us are convinced that Poe was addicted to opium as well as alcohol. There are even letters from the period that suggest he used laudanum."