Edgar Allan Poe and the London Monster

by Karen Lee Street

  I could feel my face warm with a rush of blood. “Are you quite certain this is genuine?”

  “Most certain,” Dupin said calmly. “I have no reason to deceive you.”

  “I was not suggesting that.”

  Dupin raised his eyebrows; it was clear he had discerned the hint of mistrust upon my face.

  “I am sorry if I seem ill at ease, Dupin, but my nerves are dreadfully agitated. I was attacked when walking through Russell Square this afternoon, and harridans made off with the purse I was about to give them in charity.”

  “It grieves me to hear that. It is unfortunate that mendicants are often not content to beg for charity.”

  “There was more to it than that. Something rather peculiar.” I hesitated to mention the boutonniere, but Dupin stared at me expectantly. “It seems the thieves placed a boutonnière of artificial violets in my frock coat buttonhole. I must say it disturbed me rather more than the theft.”

  Dupin frowned. “May I see this boutonnière? It is singularly odd to leave such a token and certainly significant.”

  “I am afraid I threw the thing from me—I felt most repelled by it.”

  “Foolish, very foolish. It was evidence that might lead us to a larger crime,” Dupin snapped, his face tense with an anger deeper than the situation merited. “Violets,” he muttered as if to himself before turning his gaze back to me. “Do violets have any significance to you? Some meaning I should be aware of?”

  “Perhaps. After the attack I remembered an incident from my childhood, an incident so disturbing I was forbidden to speak of it at home. I had all but put it from my mind until this morning.”

  “Go on.”

  As I recounted the details of the artificial-flower seller’s attempt to kidnap me all those years ago, Dupin’s frown deepened. “Extraordinary,” he said when I had finished my tale. “I am surprised you did not immediately inform me of your attack,” he added stiffly.

  “There is more,” I confessed, anxious to reveal everything at once. “When I returned to Brown’s, these letters were at the desk. I have read these three,” I said, handing him the smaller bundle, “which seem to have a bearing on what you have just told me.”

  His look of suppressed anger was replaced by intense concentration as he unfolded the first letter of the collection and quickly read it. “1784. How interesting.”

  “Interesting? Uncanny may be the better word.”

  Dupin tilted his head. “Made to seem so, perhaps.”

  “I am sorry, Dupin, but I am not following you.”

  He waved his hand dismissively as he scanned the next two letters. “And the others?” He nodded at the second bundle in my hand.

  “I glanced at the first few, which are reminiscent of those delivered in the box. I am not certain that I wish to read the remainder.” I placed the second bundle on the table before him.

  “But you must.”

  I shook my head. “I would rather you read them first. I am confused by today’s revelation and will not come to any sensible conclusion.”

  Dupin nodded, making it all too clear that he agreed with me. “I presume there was no note from Mrs. Allan with these letters.”

  I shook my head.

  “Then of course we must deduce that she did not write the original note.”

  “Must we? It is possible she hired someone to leave the letters for me.”

  “Why would she do so? Why not simply deliver all the letters to you at once—the mahogany box is certainly capacious enough to hold all of them.”

  “To torment me.”

  Dupin frowned again. “Certainly someone wishes to torment you, but I do not believe it is Mrs. Allan. From your description of her, it is unlikely she has the strategic skills to engineer such a complex plan. As Mrs. Allan has secured all your adoptive father’s property for herself, why go to the trouble of torturing you with letters?”

  “To make me think I come from bad blood. To persuade me she was right to coerce my Pa into disowning me.”

  Dupin leaned back and relit his cigar. I realized from the expressions of the clerks assembled around us that I had been shouting.

  “And may we now directly state that you know Elizabeth and Henry Arnold to be your maternal grandparents?” he said, exhaling a plume of smoke.

  I could feel the flame of guilt ignite my face.

  “You knew all along,” he said, his eyes never leaving mine, “but you chose not to make the facts plain to me. I must wonder why.”

  I turned my gaze to the window. Evening had faded away, and lamplight illuminated the street with a garish luster. The crowd had altered as well, harsher characters predominating over more orderly folk. The effects of the light brought individual faces into focus if only for a moment and in that instant I felt that I grasped the history of each character caught in the shimmering glare, that I had assumed Dupin’s uncanny ability to read a person’s most private secrets.

  “Poe?”

  “You have studied the letters. Would you so easily admit that those who supposedly wrote them were the parents of your beloved mother?”

  Dupin appraised me coolly. “You are right to say ‘supposedly’. We have only just begun our investigation and still have not ascertained whether the letters were truly written by the Arnolds. But we will make no progress if we deceive each other. Truth must prevail between us or there is no reason to pursue this case together. You forget, my friend, how well I know you.”

  He was right, of course, but I could not bring myself to say so and simply nodded.

  “We may then agree the following facts: Elizabeth and Henry Arnold genuinely existed and are not figments of a hoaxer’s imagination, although their letters might be; they were your maternal grandparents; and they were married twice in 1784.”

  “Twice?”

  “Yes. First they eloped on the seventeenth of April and then they were married at the Parish church of St. George, Hanover Square. I took the liberty of copying the announcement from The Morning Post. The marriage occurred on the eighteenth of May 1784.”

  I gave the paper a perfunctory glance for I had no doubt that Dupin had copied the notice precisely. “But why?” I muttered.

  “You are missing the obvious hidden in plain sight. Elizabeth Smith and Henry Arnold eloped to Gretna Green. This caused a scandal. Mr. Smith was a man of substantial means and good social standing. It was less damaging to his status if the runaway couple were married in a church after the elopement. The marriage would appear sanctioned and the scandal quelled. Of course this would not prevent Mr. Smith from disowning his daughter.”

  Dupin’s explanation was plausible. “And so, cut off from her father’s support, my grandmother began her precarious life as an actress on the stage, a life repeated by my mother in America. I am doubly cursed with the affliction of penury if my grandmother was also denied a comfortable life that I might have inherited.”

  Dupin shrugged. “It would seem that your grandmother chose love over money. Whether an honorable or foolish choice is not yet clear, but you might perhaps take comfort in her idealism.”

  “But you believe my grandfather was less idealistic?” I said as the thought came to me.

  Dupin shrugged again. “Certainly his handwriting gives no indication of idealism, and he had far more to gain financially from their marriage than she did. Indeed, he seemed to think Elizabeth’s father would forgive her idealism and welcome her husband into the family fold, despite his lower social standing.”

  “Are you saying he duped her?”

  “Duped? No. But her social position may have made her more attractive to him, which is not so different to her father hoping she would find the wealthy banker who was twenty years her senior attractive enough to marry. But the important issue is this: Elizabeth and Henry Arnold existed. Did they pen the letters in your possession and commit the crimes outlined within them? Perhaps.”

  “And perhaps not,” I added quickly. “They were actors after all. Let us imagin
e they did write the letters. The contents might be an elaborate fantasy.”

  “It is possible,” Dupin admitted. “We must ascertain the truth. And we must also discover who is sending Elizabeth and Henry Arnold’s letters to you, and how they came to possess those letters.”

  I knew Dupin was trying to help, but his dispassionate words distressed me. The surety of my life in Philadelphia was a distant dream and nothing in my past was as certain as I had once thought. Were my grandparents common criminals? It pained me greatly to think it might be so. My attention drifted back to the window and the faces illuminated by pools of light, a dream-scape and yet somehow more truthful than reality. Suddenly, the face of an old man appeared in the window. He was perhaps seventy-five years of age, frail and disheveled. There was a curious blankness to his expression and yet he simultaneously exuded a mixture of detachment, malice and power.

  “It is him!” I said the words before I understood their meaning. The old man was frozen in front of me, his face splashed with light and framed by the windowpane. The countenance, the shabby posture, the lurching walk—everything was familiar and yet I could not place the circumstance. And then he was gone. I seized my hat and cane, and ran from the coffee house to the street.

  He was nowhere in sight and for a moment I felt the deepest despair. Then, I spied a shadow moving with uneven steps down a narrow lane and recklessly followed. The lane was very dark, and I moved forward slowly, not wishing to attract notice to myself. The fine mist that danced in the air transformed into steady rain. The cobbles were slick underfoot, the air thick with the scent of moldering vegetation. The alleyway turned sharply and opened up into a busier thoroughfare. I had lost all sense of direction, but was determined not to lose sight of my quarry and no longer cared if the old man understood that I was pursuing him. We approached a theater as its audience exited with much jollity, and then we arrived at a tavern crowded with unsavory characters. The old man seemed immune to either atmosphere. A maze of crooked lanes took us through a shabby area where only the most destitute lived. The old man’s pace increased again—I chased him down a passageway and found that I was at the end of Dover Street, staring at the lights of Brown’s Genteel Inn.

  Incomprehensible rage filled me. How had he known my eventual destination? Was this a diabolical trick? Before the old man could commence his endless walking again, I placed myself in front of him, blocking his path. At last, we were face to face.

  “Who are you, sir?” I demanded.

  The old man quivered but said nothing. His eyes were closed, his lips trembled with gibberish.

  “Tell me!” I grabbed the greasy folds of his coat and shook him. There was no weight to him and he flew up off the ground until the backs of his heels rattled against the brick wall. I squeezed his arms tighter and repeated my command, but the old man simply folded in on himself, eyes closed, twitching like a starved bird.

  “Tell me!”

  At last, he opened his eyes. They were of the palest blue, clouded with white—a vulture’s eye. The old man looked into me and then right through me.

  “I am nobody,” he said in a voice frail as dead leaves skittering through air. “I am nobody at all.”

  14 February 1789

  FOR MY VALENTINE

  My heart, Valentine, and a key with this box,

  Open it to find where our secrets are locked.

  Night’s curtain rises—what a bold masquerade!

  Swashbuckling rogue armed with Cupid’s blade

  Tatters proud wenches (more thrilled than afraid).

  Each cutting performance on London’s stage,

  Remembered with pleasure upon the page.

  22 Jermyn Street, London

  18 May 1789

  My darling Husband,

  Who would imagine that abandoning our vagabond life to return to London would bring me such sorrow? How unlike Lady Teazle I am in that! Of course you must pursue the opportunity for us in Bristol, but understand that no wife is content to spend the fifth anniversary of her church wedding apart from her husband. I have been so miserable with loneliness and idleness that I took up your challenge to continue our private School for Scandal—with great success! As I cannot whisper every delicious detail into your ear tonight, I will put pen to paper for your delectation.

  All of London will soon be lively with the tale of a most curious incident that occurred on Leicester Street. The lead player in the drama was Mrs. Sarah Godfrey—you may recall her as a frequent theatregoer, despite her limited comprehension of the Art. She is the female (I hesitate to say lady) who was overheard making ill-considered comments about your interpretation of Sir Benjamin Backbite three nights ago. Her own performance unfolded in the following manner.

  Mrs. Godfrey was walking unaccompanied along Bond Street. She was intrepidly attired in an indigo silk dress, its skirt boldly striped with white, its bodice decorated with lace ruffles that frothed over-merrily around her decolletage. The declamatory dress and her gaudy manner captured the attention of a young rogue who was dallying in the area. As she drew closer, he noted her identity and was infused with the desire to tutor the self-described lady of fashion in the art of etiquette. Mrs. Godfrey’s would-be instructor followed her from Bond Street into Leicester Square and then into Piccadilly. He was a handsome, middlesized man dressed in black and wearing a splendid cocked hat. Sometimes he walked before her, sometimes behind her, and occasionally he kept pace by her side. She pretended ignorance of his existence, but a smile revealed decided pleasure in the young man’s attentions.

  When Mrs. Godfrey reached her destination, her pursuer was overcome with delight. An upholsterer’s shop! This made perfect sense of her costume. The lady had disguised herself as a piece of furniture! While the fabric of her skirts was unsuitable for a fashionable dress, it would look quite fine on a whimsical ottoman or an overwrought armchair.

  Mrs. Godfrey took that moment to present the gallant with a half-curtsy. “Thank you, sir,” she simpered, waiting for the young gentleman to open the shop door for her. As he complied, the rascal took the opportunity to bow deeply and declare, “You are indeed a fine sofa, madam.”

  The lady did not know what to make of the compliment and scurried into the shop. But the rogue was not finished with her. He waited until she re-emerged from the house of fabrics and shadowed her all the way back to Charlotte Street. She seemed to sense he was there, glancing over her shoulder from time to time, but did not call out. Before she could escape into her residence, the scoundrel attacked.

  “Ho!” A dagger sliced through the air and the brash silk upholstery melted away like butter under a hot knife. “There, you!” The blade flashed again and he pinned the plump cushion of her upper thigh. Never has a piece of furniture shrieked so loudly. The poor little sofa overturned herself onto the ground, legs thrown in the air, her tatty undersides quite exposed. When she came back to herself, the monstrous fellow had disappeared into the darkness.

  And so must end my intrepid tale. Alas, the written play is never as exciting as its enactment. When you are here again by my side, my darling, I promise a thrilling encore.

  Send word soonest,

  Elizabeth

  The Theatre Royal, Bristol

  21 May 1789

  My Darling,

  Rehearsals have at last finished and my fingers are worn to the bone from playing each song repeatedly as the silly girl cannot retain the lyric, despite the emptiness of her head. If only it were you in her place—how much happier we all would be! Of course I miss you and Eliza acutely, but it is work, though not acting, and I am made less miserable by the wages.

  But your letter! I read it not once, but three times as soon as I opened it, as the account of your lively performance brought me such cheer. How admirably you met my challenge! And how like the conceited Mrs. Godfrey to presume a young man to be an admirer rather than an assailant—I pictured the scene completely and could not contain my mirth. My amusement was compounded when I read i
n The World of Mrs. Godfrey’s complaint to the Bow Street magistrate. According to your aggrieved victim, the ruffian who approached her outside the upholstery shop made “a very indecent proposal” and “grossly insulted her”. Again, how I laughed when I thought back to your letter. “You are indeed a fine sofa, madam”—such an unusual compliment! One would hesitate to call it insulting or indecent, but then I must wonder how the line was performed—that devilish rogue must have murmured it with exquisite lustiness. I am eager for the encore, to hear those indecent words fall from your lips, to see for myself how Mrs. Godfrey tumbled onto her back like a plump little sofa.

  I shall be home tomorrow night, all being well, and will bring your letter so you might read it as a bedtime story for both of us.

  With more than affection,

  Your admiring Husband

  LONDON, FRIDAY, 3 JULY 1840

  I had not been in the mood for conversation after my peculiar turn at the tavern, and Dupin did not press matters; we simply agreed to meet in the foyer at eleven for a perambulation the next day. Dupin seemed to have a plan, but chose not to illuminate me. Sleep eluded me for what seemed like hours, my mind plagued by phantom thoughts and a terrible unease, but I did not wake until nine o’clock when my breakfast was delivered. The debilitating weeks at sea had taken their toll.

  Just before the appointed hour, I made my way to the foyer. No one was in the reception area but the desk clerk. “Any messages for me?” The words came from my lips in half a whisper as I was filled with dread that more disturbing letters might await me.