He thought for a moment. “Awhile back—and forgive me, the days are a blur—a while back, it was at breakfast, as I recall … Yes, I rose early, as I usually do, and at Alfred’s invitation I joined him at the table. Mrs. Dalrymple served me a cup of tea that was particularly aromatic. But, seeing that Alfred was having coffee, I asked for that instead. Alfred commented that I was in all likelihood allergic to coffee, hence my nervousness. ‘The tea will soothe you,’ he said. ‘It’s a special herbal blend.’”
“I believe I sampled it once myself. It was made with Indian herbs, he said.”
Poe nodded. “I have had a cup every morning. Even this morning … yes, it was this morning, wasn’t it? I was at my breakfast, sipping my tea, when the hackney driver arrived with the message from Rufus. Or rather,” he said, “from you.”
I kept silent, not wishing to force any thoughts upon him.
“Alfred could not have known,” he said, “how strongly the concoction affected me.”
I said nothing.
He raised his eyebrows. “You surely don’t mean to suggest,” he said, “that he intended to debilitate me?”
“I mean to suggest nothing.”
“He is concerned only about my health and vitality.”
“His concerns strike me as overly keen.”
“In what way?”
“I am drawing no conclusions from this,” I told him, “but allow me to state a few facts. Dr. Brunrichter has, from the very beginning, been envious of our companionship.”
“That is not a fact,” said Poe.
“Consider it. And you will see that it carries the weight of fact.”
He answered with a half shrug, a palm raised weakly, but too weakly to wave the notion away.
“Second, he has allowed and perhaps even encouraged you to drink with him every night. I have seldom seen you two together when you were not sharing a carafe of wine or enjoying a cognac.”
“In moderation, it is good for the blood.”
“It is not good for your blood,” I said. “And he is well aware of your sensitivity to alcohol. You spoke of it your first night there. And I have made it clear to him as well.”
“And when you did,” asked Poe, curious now, “what was the doctor’s reply?”
“That he was your doctor and knew what was best for you.”
“He referred to himself as my doctor?”
“Which brings me to my third point. When did it become your habit to sleep through every morning?”
“I rise before seven, as I have always done.”
“Yet while in the doctor’s house you return to bed soon after breakfast. How do you account for that?”
“You are getting excited,” he said.
“I am getting angry, as I believe you will too. Consider this. Brunrichter has begun to dress like you, has he not? To wear his hair as you wear yours?”
“We share a certain … physiognomy.”
“Which he accentuates at every turn. Consider his initial letter to you—what was the phrase he used? That you and he are closer than brothers? The same man in two bodies? He has orchestrated your every move since you came here, even to your virtual immobilization when he is engaged elsewhere!”
Again Poe’s posture sagged. He rubbed a hand over his eyes, then against his cheek. Several minutes passed before he spoke.
“I find that I can neither agree nor disagree with your observations,” he said. “Perhaps when my head is clearer …”
I went to the table and pulled out a chair. Lowered myself onto it. Drew the oil lamp closer. Then picked up a lucifer. But I did not strike the match. I could feel Poe’s eyes on me still, and for that reason I chose not to interrupt the darkness.
“If in the end you are proven correct,” Poe finally said, “even so … how does this relate to your dilemma?”
“In as much as it points to the doctor’s eagerness to be rid of me,” I said. “He is so eager, in fact, that he was willing to lie when questioned by the police. And by lying, to see me convicted of murder.”
The final word caused him to jerk his head up an inch or so. “Your Susan,” he said. “I had forgotten, I … I am so sorry, Augie. So sorry.”
“You know I had nothing to do with it.”
“I know you well enough to be certain of that. And if the girl’s father himself can put his faith in you … But how do we remedy this injustice?”
“When the hack arrived for you this morning, was Dr. Brunrichter about?”
“No. None in the house but for Mrs. Dalrymple.”
“Not Tevis?”
“I saw no sign of him.”
“And so you told only Mrs. Dalrymple the reason for your departure?”
“It was she who delivered the note to me. So yes, she knows.”
“And has no doubt shared the information with Dr. Brunrichter by now. He will be expecting your return at any time. But if you do not return—”
“Why would I not return?”
Something flopped in my stomach, a heavy twist of sourness.
Poe said, “I will inform him that the medications are no longer necessary. And I will convince him of your innocence. I will insist that he retract his earlier assertions.”
I sat there shaking my head. An anger was welling up in me again; not toward Poe, nor even Brunrichter, but toward the situation itself, the convoluted mess of it, the malevolence that would allow a young man’s love to be subverted by a pustulation of jealousies, deceit, bitterness, and fear.
Poe was the first to speak. “What would you have me do, Augie?”
“Help me,” I said.
“That is precisely what I mean to do.”
“Then you cannot go back. You must not.”
“He will wonder—”
“Miss Jones can send another note. As Rufus. No, you can send a note. In your own hand. Explaining that you have joined Mr. Griswold for a few days, but that you will return thereafter.”
“And what do we gain by this subterfuge?”
“We gain … an opportunity to work together, as we did in New York. Buck and Miss Jones and I will gather the pertinent facts, and to these you will apply the ratiocination. If only for Susan,” I pleaded. “I understand that it might be difficult for you, because you met her only briefly—”
“I know her through you,” he said.
I nodded, but said nothing more. My throat was choked, my eyes too warm.
Finally he said, “Miss Jones mentioned something awhile back about the availability of soup.”
“Potatoes and leeks. It’s very good.”
“You’ve eaten?”
“I have.”
“Perhaps she would allow me to take a bowl to my room.”
“I am certain she would.”
He sat there a few moments longer, then put a hand to the wall and pulled himself to his feet. “Is there more we should discuss this evening?” he asked.
“It can wait,” I told him.
“My head will be clearer in the morning.”
He turned and slowly mounted the steps. Near the top he paused. I could see only the lower half of his body. He came back down a step, but not enough to bring his face into view.
“I wish to apologize,” he said, and spoke haltingly, choosing his words, “if in some way my negligence has brought all this upon you.”
I wanted to tell him that not for a moment did I hold him responsible. I wanted to tell him that his presence and his trust in me were as much amelioration as I ever hoped to receive. I wanted to tell him this but my chest ached and my eyes stung and I could not speak.
He went softly up the stairs and gently closed the door.
I had also wanted to tell him that I blamed myself, not him nor anyone else, for bringing catastrophe upon us. I had done so not through negligence but ardor. It was I who had brought Poe to Pittsburgh and into this imbroglio. It was I who, by loving Susan, had delivered her into the hands of a murderer.
I wanted to tell Poe
my own worst fears, that if an order exists in this world it is of a kind that turns good intentions to disaster and steers all things toward annihilation; and, last, that I, in the blackest and bleakest heart of myself, so longed for annihilation that I would probably drag him in with me.
30
THE EVENING grew long and Buck did not return. I sat and then stood, I paced and then lay down. I played with the deck of cards. I ruined several sheets of Miss Jones’s stationery by trying to sketch a likeness of Susan’s face, only to end by scratching out my feeble lines.
Where in the world was Buck Kemmer?
At perhaps three hours after sunset I crept to the top of the stairs and eased open the door. The kitchen was empty. Into the hallway then, where I followed the lure of light to a nearby room. Miss Jones was seated, prim and rigid even in her solitude, reading by the light of an oil lamp, a pair of spectacles perched near the tip of her nose.
I tapped lightly on the door frame, and she looked up from her book. “Excuse my interruption,” I said.
She waited for more.
“Have you heard from Mr. Kemmer lately?”
“Not a word,” she said, and closed the book, marking the page with her finger. “Are you concerned?”
“I am.”
“As am I.”
“I was thinking I should maybe go looking for him.”
Again she was silent. I imagined she was forming an argument in opposition to my proposal, so I sought to change the subject. “What is it you’re reading?”
“Twice-Told Tales, by Hawthorne. Mr. Poe recommended it to me. I was lucky enough to find a copy this afternoon at the stationer’s.”
“You will enjoy it,” I said.
She pursed her lips before speaking. “So much darkness and brooding.”
“A good book all the same.”
“I was referring to your temperament, Mr. Dubbins. Yours and Mr. Poe’s. How do you manage to live in the midst of so much darkness?”
“It wasn’t of my making,” I told her.
“Are you sure of that?”
I had not gone there to argue, and so said nothing. The truth was clear to me, and that was sufficient. “I won’t be out long,” I told her, and turned away.
“Where do you propose to look?”
“At his home, I suppose. Then, the waterfront. There’s also a public place he goes to on occasion. I’ll look there as well.”
“You must not show yourself in public.”
“I know,” I said.
We did not speak then, yet she held me in place with her gaze. I cannot describe it as stern or critical but it was a hard gaze all the same, penetrating, or at least attempting to penetrate, to peer into me in a way I could not myself.
Finally I asked, “Is there anything else?”
“The church on High Street,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I would look there first, were I you.”
And that was where I found him, a long shadow in gauzy moonlight, motionless on his belly in a corner of the small enclosed space to the side of the church. Susan’s grave had no headstone, only a small cross of white marble, donated by parishioners. Buck lay on the grass between her grave and the next, her mother’s, one arm extended in each direction. At the head of each grave he had placed a few Easter lilies. Their small, drooping flowers looked gray in the moonlight.
I backed away before he could notice me. If he was sleeping, let him sleep. If awake, even more reason not to disturb him.
I walked a long time that evening, glad to be free of the basement for a change, but feeling confined nonetheless. I walked well up the Monongahela waterfront, keeping to unlighted Bluff Street, walked angrily and briskly until I finally had to admit to myself that the walking did no good, it took me nowhere I needed to go. So I went to the river’s edge and stared at the water for a while, a wide black moving thing, undulating like a serpent.
It is believed by some that the serpent is an agent of wisdom, of secret knowledge from underground. When the serpent tempted Eve, for example, he tempted her with wisdom, the knowledge of good and evil. But I already knew all I wished to know of evil. I knew too much.
And so I lifted my eyes to the heavens instead. But nothing moved in the night sky, no sign of life whatsoever, no hiss of promise, not even the slithering sibilance of the river. In the end there were no answers at all, no explanations, no apologies no matter which direction I looked.
I sank to my haunches only inches from the water’s edge. Picked up a water-smoothed stone. Hurled it into the water, close to my feet, accompanied by a muttered curse. Again I did this, and again, heaving each stone so close to where I sat that its impact splashed muddy water back into my face. I wished I could embrace the earth as Buck was doing, and find some peace in that gesture. But I could not. And because I could not reach the sky with either stones or obscenities I pummeled the river instead, and soaked myself with muddy tears.
A HAND on my shoulder, nudging me awake.
Typically in those days I awoke quickly, fully and suddenly alert, but that morning I was a long time coming up and out of the darkness. I was asleep but could feel some external force pushing against my shoulder. Then, still asleep, I recognized it as a hand jostling me. Then, as I worked my consciousness toward that hand, wading toward it as if through deep mud, I recognized that the hand was outside of my sleep and I literally had to will myself toward wakefulness, climbing up through dark layers of an unremembered dream.
I opened my eyes to find Poe on his knees beside my pallet, watching my face. There was some light in the room, enough that I could read his expression, a crooked smile of anticipation. I blinked several times, feeling still disembodied, a part of me struggling to catch up with the rest. All I could think to ask was, “Is it morning?”
“It will be soon,” said Poe.
I rubbed a hand across my face, and finally sat upright. Poe said, “There’s tea upstairs. Come join us.”
He stood and moved away from me then, and a few moments later I heard the stairs creaking with his ascent. I sat there trying to clear the fog from my head. Reached for my boots and put them on. Stood, looked about, remembered where I was and why. Then, by the light of the lamp on the table, its flame turned low, I made my way outside for a quick trip to the privy. The chill air helped to revive me, as did the acrid tang of smoke in the air. The morning was still gray, no blush of sun along the horizon.
By the time I returned inside and up the stairs to the kitchen, my disorientation lingered only as a kind of dullness clumped in the back of my head.
Poe, Buck, and Miss Jones were all seated at the kitchen table, all looking very somber in the lamplight. Spread out across the table were the tiny pieces of seashell Buck had gathered at Brunrichter’s mausoleum. As I pulled out a chair, Poe reached for the teapot and poured a cup and slid it toward me.
I asked, “How long has everyone been awake?”
Poe was the only one to answer. “I have been reminded of the hazard of a clear head. It will not rest.”
I loaded my tea with sugar, then nodded toward the scattering of shell pieces. “What do you make of these?”
“Quite a lot,” Poe said. He then turned to Miss Jones. “Have you a writing instrument I might borrow? And a sheet of your stationery?”
She rose from her chair. “I have some lovely new Thoreau pencils. I’ll put a point on one for you.”
Poe muttered to himself as she left the room. If Buck heard the grumbled curse—“the damn Frogpondian euphuist”—it surely meant nothing to him, yet he made no inquiry. Only I knew how strenuously Poe despised the Transcendentalist and how much it would irk him to employ a pencil manufactured in the Thoreau factory.
Soon Miss Jones returned and laid a sheet of paper beside Poe’s teacup, and atop the paper the long, square-sided pencil of unpainted red cedar. “The hardest and blackest graphite in America,” she said.
Poe, to his credit, only grunted. He rubbed t
humb and forefinger together, then, probably recoiling inwardly at the touch, picked up the pencil and began to write.
“Here is what we know,” he told me, haltingly, as he wrote. “A tiny piece of shell, found in the home of Mr. Kemmer. The shell, judging by the pearly septa you can see here, is the type inhabited by the cephalopod of the genus Argonauta, found only in ocean water.”
I sat back in my chair. Poe, expecting such a reaction, explained, “I once contributed to a book on the subject of shells and their inhabitants. For use in the schools.”
“That’s one I didn’t know about.”
“You and many others,” he said. “Howsoever. When we consider the shell’s nonindigenous relationship with the area, plus that it matches perfectly these numerous other shells taken from Dr. Brunrichter’s estate, we can assume, logically, that the shell found by Mr. Kemmer and the shells from the mausoleum share a common origin.”
“Which doesn’t in itself prove anything,” I said.
“Correct. But consider this as well. Also discovered in Mr. Kemmer’s home was a small black feather—given to you by me, as I recall—which you had placed inside the book I inscribed to Miss Kemmer. The book itself has not been found.
“Again, a fact that alone tells us little. But, when considered in the light of other observations, including yours, Augie, related to me last night, perhaps they speak more clearly”
“You mean the things I said about Brunrichter?”
He nodded. “The past few days are the haziest in my memory, but the events of our initial days in Pittsburgh remain fairly clear. I recall, for example, our picnic. I recall Dr. Brunrichter’s discussion concerning his experiments, the obvious delight he took in explaining that his research was conducted on wild rabbits, which, when snared, will cry out, he said, sounding much like a human baby.”
He paused for a sip of tea. As if by signal, we all drank. And by that I knew that Poe was once again in charge.
“He and I continued the discussion that same night, and other nights as well,” Poe said. “We talked of his theory regarding the reanimation of the brain through electrical stimulation. He seemed to consider Shelley’s morbid tale less a fiction than a primer.
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