"How was he able to write?" I asked. "How was he able to leave us this brilliant body of work?"
"Poe suffered all the demons, Miss Cooper. Every one of them. Start with his fractured, loveless childhood. Then, for almost all of his adult life, he was impoverished-even though his work was known and acclaimed both in America and Europe. Add to poverty his constant despair over his wife's chronic, debilitating illness, his lifelong battle with alcohol and opiates, and what he himself described as his insanity after Virginia's death."
The three of us were quiet.
"He died alone?" Mercer asked.
"His final weeks are somewhat of a mystery, Mr. Wallace. He left the Bronx for Philadelphia, then on to Richmond, then back to Baltimore. He was found at a rum shop, greatly intoxicated and incoherent, the story goes. Friends took him to a hospital where he spent the night, with terrible tremors and sweats, addressing and having conversation with spectral images on the walls of his room. Within days, young Edgar Poe-forty years of age-was dead. 'Lord help my poor soul' were the last words he spoke."
"And in between all these aspects of profound dysfunction," I said, "he wrote some of the most remarkable poetry-and prose- in the English language. It's quite extraordinary."
"Pure genius. Tortured, tormented genius, Miss Cooper," Zeldin said. "If he hadn't been a successful poet, Edgar Allan Poe had all the makings of a serial killer."
28
"Our head groundskeeper, Mr. Phelps, tells me you made his acquaintance at the gorge the other evening, is that right?" Zeldin asked.
At the prearranged time, Sinclair Phelps had knocked on the door of Zeldin's office to take him down to a minivan that had been specially fitted with a ramp for his wheelchair.
"Yes, we've met," I said, greeting the groundskeeper and introducing him to Mercer.
"Tell them, Sinclair. They don't seem to believe I hadn't heard of the doctor's unfortunate drowning by the time I left my office on Tuesday."
"If there's any question of that, Mr. Chapman, I'm the one who made the notifications," Phelps said. "The only call I made, other than to nine-one-one, was to the director of the gardens. He cautioned me himself not to tell any of the staff until the police investigators left the park."
Phelps was wheeling Zeldin to a large elevator, which delivered us all to the ground floor. "You're welcome to leave your car here and drive with us in the van."
"Where are we going?" Mike asked.
"To the snuff mill, Detective," Zeldin said, laughing. "It's the unofficial headquarters of the Raven Society, for the time being."
The wheelchair locked in place in the rear of the van. Mike sat in the front passenger seat with Mercer and me behind him. "Snuff what?"
"If you go back to the seventeen-forties, Detective, six hundred acres of this prime country real estate was owned by the Lorillard family. Pierre Lorillard was a French Huguenot who settled in this part of Westchester and began his tobacco industry in Lower Manhattan. But he moved it here, to this very site, to take advantage of the swift flow of the river just below the gorge.
"Yes, this was all Lorillard land when Poe came here on his peregrinations, isn't that right, Phelps?"
"Yes, sir."
"Sinclair's been here about as long as I have. It's thanks to his conspiratorial nature that I've been able to give a home to the society's papers."
"You like Poe, too?" Mike asked.
"No, sir. Not particularly. I like Zeldin, though. And the mill is too handsome not to put to some use." Phelps didn't smile. I figured that was a good thing because the cracks in his weathered skin looked as though they would split open like an eggshell if they moved at all.
"Tobacco was actually milled here?" I asked.
"Yes," Phelps said. "The waterfalls you saw the other night, they're what powered the tobacco mill in the eighteenth century. That's the only reason the Lorillards' business could thrive here. There are no other falls in New York City. The first botanical plantings in this area were rose gardens. That was purposely so the rose petals could be used to add scent to the snuff."
"And to think the Bronx always gets such a bum rap," Mike said. "What's over there?"
The road curved and on our right was an enormous Victorian structure, crisp white paint outlining its form against the powder blue sky, countless glass windowpanes reflecting the rare February sun.
"That's our conservatory," Zeldin said. "It's the largest crystal palace in America. You must come back and allow us to guide you through it. It's full of the world's most exotic plants, set out like an ecotour in its eleven galleries."
"Pretty spectacular greenhouse," Mike said.
"The first one was built in London-Palm House, at Kew, Detective-for Queen Victoria and her royal gardens. The idea was to construct these enormous, shimmering structures, allowing all sorts of tropical and rare gardens to be under one roof, exposed to the sunlight. Remarkable sight, isn't it?"
"I remember coming here as a child, but I thought it had been closed," I said.
"Just reopened a few years back, with twenty-five million dollars worth of improvements. This treasure was built in 1901. In fact, a few of them were erected-I guess the most famous was at the Chicago World's Fair. But as large as they seem, they're extremely fragile."
The gleaming cupola of the rotunda was the centerpiece of the structure, with long transparent arms stretching out on both sides.
"That's one entire acre beneath that roof," Zeldin said. "Seventeen thousand panes of glass hold it together, each one specially made to fit in the curves of the old iron frame."
The van wound around the vast grounds of the gardens, stripped now of all the colorful flowers and plants that would blossom again in another couple of months. Within minutes, we had left all the buildings behind and appeared to be driving through a rambling countryside that more closely resembled the foothills of the Berkshires than an urban park. Ahead for as far as I could see were thick stands of trees, which looked as chillingly foreboding as they had when we drove in a couple nights back to visit the scene of Ichiko's death.
"Into the woods?" Mike asked.
"This is the only remaining native forest in New York City," Phelps said.
"I didn't even know there was one."
"Fifty acres' worth. It's a first-growth, mixed-hardwood forest. This is what most of the Bronx looked like when the Europeans arrived," he said.
"What are the trees?"
"Hiawatha and his hemlocks," Zeldin said. "Don't you remember your Longfellow poems, Miss Cooper? The most common tree throughout these low hills of the Bronx is hemlock, and we've got all that's left of them."
"Did Poe use…?" Mercer began.
Zeldin interrupted before he could finish. He delighted in showing off his unique mastery of Poe and the local flora. "Hemlock appears in only one story. It's called 'Morella.' But in his letters, as I told you, he wrote often about walking in this very forest."
We crossed over a bridge and stopped before a handsome stone building, two stories high and covered with ivy, which appeared to be a meticulously restored structure from the early nineteenth century.
I stepped out of the car and the only thing I heard to break the silence in the snow-carpeted forest was the running water of the river directly below us.
Phelps opened the rear of the van and lowered Zeldin's wheelchair down the ramp. We followed them to a dark green wooden door of the old mill at the back of the building, fronting the river. This was a third floor, below ground level, which wasn't visible from the approach on the roadway. Phelps unlocked the combination that hung on the hinge and turned on the lights as we entered.
"The administration hasn't really figured out how to use this building," Zeldin said. "Frankly, after the Palace, I think it's the structural gem of the whole institution. So for the meantime, the upstairs is almost like storage space for the garden's library, but Phelps has helped me outfit this area for the Raven Society."
One-half of the basement was a large
open space. It was furnished with several oversized sofas and armchairs that looked as though they had come from the Salvation Army. The other side was a series of small rooms set up like a small office suite. The entire wall was ringed with bookshelves. An assortment of ravens in all shapes and sizes-stuffed birds, porcelain ones, and carved ebony figures-were mounted on every flat surface.
"Is this where you meet?" I asked.
"Rarely. But this is the repository for all our documents and research. Some members just enjoy coming here for the ambiance. Sitting in a comfortable chair, gazing out at the forest, and reading a good book."
"And the members just come and go as they like? They all have the combination to this lock?" Mercer asked.
"We're fortunate that Phelps lives here."
"Here, in the snuff mill?" Mike asked.
"No, no," the groundskeeper said. "Did you see the carriage houses we passed before we reached this building? I live in one of those."
I had noticed three buildings, smaller than the mill but in the same old style with wooden gables over the door and windows.
"Obviously, people can only come here to the mill on the days the gardens are open," Zeldin said, "because the entire perimeter of the park is gated, of course. But that's most of the year, except for major holidays. And yes, members are free to come and go from these rooms as they please."
He rolled into the first alcove and beckoned us to follow. Once inside the office, Zeldin steadied himself on the edge of the desk and hoisted his body out of the wheelchair. For the several minutes it took him to open a file cabinet and remove the papers we had asked for, he balanced against the desktop.
I watched Mercer and Mike staring at him, knowing they were trying to determine the strength of his legs and the extent of his movement to figure whether he was capable of playing a role in any of the recent crimes. But Zeldin lowered himself back into the chair before any of us could gauge his mobility.
"Here's what you've asked for, Detective. The list of our members," he said. "You may have that copy, and I trust you'll treat them kindly."
Mike put the papers on the desk and I leaned in next to him to read with him. The pages were divided by cities, and I quickly scanned the out-of-towners for familiar surnames, finding none. Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, Richmond-most of them lived in places where Poe had also spent time. The rest of the members lived in New York City. Other than Zeldin, I was disappointed to see that there was not a name I recognized.
Mike turned to the last paper, which was headed with the initials PNG. We both stared at one of the names that jumped out at us. "Help me here," Mike said to Zeldin. "Who are these guys?"
" PNG? Personae non grata, Mr. Chapman. Not everyone in the group knows the institutional history as well as I do, Detective. There are some people who might try to reapply to the society after old-timers like myself are no longer alive. This is to make sure certain people never enter our fold."
Mike pulled out the desk chair and sat down. "I'd like to start right here, if you don't mind. Why is Noah Tormey on this list?"
29
"I suppose I first met Noah Tormey about twenty-five years ago," Zeldin said. "Maybe longer. Quite an intelligent young man, fancied himself a scholar although I'm not sure I'd be that generous. He had just graduated from New York University and was an instructor in the English department. He came to me to borrow some books-they were out-of-print volumes-to do some research for a dissertation."
"Came to you here, at the Botanical Gardens?"
"Heavens, no. I was just a lowly librarian then. Well-known in literary circles for my collection of Poe-his works, as well as biography and criticism. He came to my home, where you were yesterday."
Not bad digs for a "lowly librarian," as Zeldin described himself, is what I was thinking. Perhaps he sensed that and decided to explain.
"My mother had owned that apartment, Ms. Cooper. I inherited it upon her death. She had been collecting rare books most of her life, including Poe. It's thanks to her family fortune-sewing thread, simple cotton sewing thread that my great-grandfather manufactured-that I've been able to indulge myself in my two passions, horticulture and literature."
"So you and Tormey struck up a friendship?" Mike asked.
"He was an interesting fellow. I wouldn't say we became close, but he'd call when he needed something and if it was a volume I owned, I was happy to loan it to him."
"Did the two of you talk? Socially, I mean."
"Our conversation was always about the nineteenth century, Detective. Not women, not current events, not our personal lives, if that's what you mean."
"And the Raven Society?"
"I suppose that came up. In fact I'm sure it did. Tormey eventually got around to asking me about joining, I'm quite sure of it."
"Were you already a member?" Mike asked.
"Yes, I was admitted rather early. I had come along at the moment the group was trying to expand a bit, and my scholarship in the field was well documented. I think I was in my mid-twenties when I was accepted."
"Secret handshake? Flap your elbows like a bird? Swear you'll never watch The Maltese Falcon or read Rex Stout again?"
Zeldin wasn't amused. "I submitted some of the papers I had written and demonstrated, at meetings with some of the members, that I was intimate with the body of work. I'm sure my collection of first editions made me an attractive candidate."
"So what happened to Noah Tormey? Why'd he get black-balled?"
"There was no question that he knew Poe's writings as well as most of us. But then he published a paper in one of the literary reviews. It was brilliantly researched and quite well written," Zeldin said.
I thought immediately of Emily Upshaw, who had done some of Tormey's writing for him.
"The problem was," he went on, "the piece dredged up all the petty old claims, with impressive documentation."
"The personal foibles you just described to us?" I asked, wondering why they would matter to scholars.
"No, no, Miss Cooper. Poe's plagiarism."
"His what?" Mike asked. "What did he plagiarize?"
Zeldin sighed. Then he called out the groundskeeper's name. "Phelps?"
Sinclair Phelps came back into the little office from the other room. "Yes?"
"Against that wall, third drawer down, would you mind fetching me a folder labeled 'Tormey'?"
Phelps retrieved the document and left the room. "We're talking about a young man hoping to establish himself in academia," Zeldin said, opening the file and passing an issue of the review to Mike. "Naturally, the immature Poe he wrote about was struggling to find his voice. You'll see some examples in this study."
We took a few minutes and read the first several pages. There were lines that appeared to be lightly lifted from obscure poets I'd never read. Here was Poe's "Song":
I saw thee on the bridal day-
When a burning blush came o'er thee…
And below it a poem by John Lofland, published a year earlier:
I saw her on the bridal day
In blushing beauty blest…
I had just heard Tormey yesterday, teaching his class Biographia Literaria. Now here in the paper Zeldin gave me to look at, he was quoting Coleridge and his classic description of poetry as a kind of composition "which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth."
Next to Coleridge he interposed the words of Poe, who wrote that "a poem, in my opinion, is opposed to a work of science by having, for its immediate object, pleasure, not truth."
Least welcome to Zeldin and his cohorts must have been the lines referred to in the masterwork, "The Raven." Here was Elizabeth Barrett Browning first, hardly an obscure poet if one was to be borrowing phrases: "With a murmurous stir uncertain in the air the purple curtain…" And then Poe's famous line: "And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain…"
I handed Tormey's essay back to Zeldin.
"Mr. Tormey took Poe a
part, as the two of you can see. Most of my colleagues didn't treat that lightly. He was even anxious to show off his own skill at researching, noting how Edgar had taken commentary for many of his treatises practically verbatim from secondary sources, sometimes right out of the encyclopedia-like a schoolchild might do."
"Had Poe ever been exposed to this kind of claim in his lifetime?" I asked.
"Attacked for his lack of literary morals? Indeed he was," Zeldin said. "It was another source of his great despair. When Poe's critics accused him of plagiarism, he was barred from some of New York's most important literary salons."
"No wonder his characters so often resort to revenge in his stories," I said. "Poor Mr. Poe must have dreamed about it often."
"You've got that right. Of course, he took it out on other writers, Miss Cooper. He viewed everything as a personal wound. Have you ever read his volumes of literary criticism?"
"No, I haven't."
"He published quite a lot of it, and went after many of his contemporaries-quite mercilessly."
"Which ones?" I asked.
"He had absolute contempt for Longfellow. Hated him as much for the heiress he married and all the private volumes of work that her wealth enabled him to get published as for his derivative and mediocre poetry. Then there was William Cullen Bryant and Washington Irving. I could go on and on."
I thought of the Hall of Fame. Poe might have used the surrounding busts as a shooting gallery himself-taking potshots at his rivals-had it existed in his day.
"So what's the big deal to the Raven Society?" Mike asked. "People had heard this criticism before."
"Our members come to praise Caesar, not to bury him, if you will. We gather to celebrate the genius and originality of Poe, which is far outweighed by a few youthful indiscretions. We're very collegial and quite admiring of the master. We didn't need Mr. Tormey to put a spotlight on these things again. I don't know that anyone was ready to kill the young professor for that sort-"
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