Disquiet Heart

by Randall Silvis

I banged a fist on the table. “What damn good is it to be out of jail if I can’t even move?”

  “Patience,” Poe said.

  “For what?”

  He continued to speak calmly. “We know that whenever Alfred is at the mansion, Tevis is as well. We know, too, that every morning after Alfred departs for the hospital, Tevis also disappears. Not to the hospital, or so we must assume. And tomorrow is Friday. Alfred will attend to his patients as usual. We can surmise that Tevis will be absent from the house for roughly the same hours. I propose that, come tomorrow morning, we attempt to follow Mr. Tevis to wherever it is he passes his days.”

  Finally, I thought, a plan of action. But it would not come soon enough for me. “And until then? What am I to do until then? Sit here and play cribbage with myself?”

  “You and I, in a while, will avail ourselves of a deliciously long walk. Do you remember all the miles we enjoyed together in New York?”

  “Every one of them,” I said.

  “We shall soon do so again.”

  “When?”

  “The moment our friend arrives.”

  “Buck?” I asked.

  “No, our other friend. The one we both have loved even before we knew one another.”

  He smiled when he saw my forehead furrowing. “Darkness,” he said. “Our most reliant and dependable friend.”

  BY MIDAFTERNOON Buck had returned, unable to keep his mind off Susan any longer. Of all of us there at Miss Jones’s house, Buck was having the worst time of it.

  “The work don’t seem to help no more,” he told us. “There just ain’t no reason to do it.” The strain was evident in his once-robust face, the now baleful gaze. His hands sometimes trembled.

  “After Susan’s mama died, it was all I had for a while, the work. But I was working for Susan then, you see. The work had a reason to it.”

  “And now you must work for yourself,” said Miss Jones.

  Buck shook his head. “I was never the one that mattered. Never going to amount to more’n what I am. It was only because of Susan that the work meant anything at all.”

  Poe, who knew as much of grief and loss as any of us, stood behind Buck’s chair and laid both hands upon the big man’s shoulders.

  “Used to be,” Buck said, “a fella would bark at me down on the docks and I’d just laugh it off. Now a man can’t even look my way without me wanting to smash a fist in his face. I came close to doing just that three times today. It’s why I finally had to walk away. I show up tomorrow, don’t know if I’ll be allowed to work or not.”

  “Tomorrow there is other work to do,” Poe said.

  Buck answered, “There’s only one kind of work I care about now.”

  “Precisely what I had in mind,” said Poe.

  I then told Buck and Miss Jones of our plan to follow Mr. Tevis next morning. We would need three men to keep watch over each of the mansion’s exits.

  “He better hope he don’t come my way,” Buck said.

  “You mustn’t interfere with him,” said Poe.

  “I can’t promise I won’t.”

  “You must promise. Or else you do Susan no good.”

  He bristled at first, his neck stiffening, but Poe’s hands rubbed back and forth across Buck’s shoulders, and in time Buck began to relax. He was eager for violence, that much was clear, especially to me, who understood the desire well. What both of us needed was to contain our violence until it could do the most good.

  Miss Jones cleared her throat. “If you gentlemen will be going out later, you’ll need your supper earlier tonight.”

  “Who’s going out?” Buck asked.

  Poe answered, “Augie and I are in need of some movement. We’ll be taking a stroll after nightfall.”

  “Do you have room for another? It’s not easy for me to sit still nowadays.”

  “Your company is always welcome,” Poe told him.

  I had thought that what Poe had in mind was an aimless perambulation, that we would walk until we wearied of walking, then turn back for a few hours of sleep in our beds. But it soon became obvious, not long after we set out that night, that he had a clear destination in mind. In fact, he had plotted our course with the help of Miss Jones, who, he admitted, had advised him on the least conspicuous route.

  The moon was little more than a gauzy wafer in the black sky as Poe led the way up Pike Street and past the Merchant Street Bridge. The city of Allegheny glittered across the river in a sprinkling of lamp and yellow candlelight. Glowing embers sometimes swirled up out of chimney stacks, only to blink out a few moments later.

  “Miss Jones was inclined to think we would encounter no watchmen in this part of town,” said Poe.

  Buck said, “If there’s any here, they’ll be few and far between.”

  We walked on for several minutes. I was thinking how lovely it would have been to be taking this stroll with Susan, her hand in mine.

  “We should’ve brought some dinner pails to carry,” Buck said. “We’d of looked like three tired gobs coming home from the iron works.”

  “The best invisibility,” said Poe, “is conspicuity.”

  Buck gave me an elbow then, and, when I turned, a quizzical look. I told him, “If we act like we’re not trying to be sneaky, nobody will suspect that we are.”

  On Martin Street, at the rear end of the railroad depot, Poe had us turn away from the river and toward the center of the peninsula. It then became clearer where we were headed. I asked, “We have some business with the doctor tonight?”

  Poe chuckled. “Not precisely, no. We shall be visiting his ancestors instead.”

  Another elbow jab from Buck. “The mausoleum,” I explained.

  Poe wanted only to look at the small building again, hoping to nudge his mind toward some more solid recognition. As if by agreement we stood to the side of the crypt, with the building between us and Brunrichter’s mansion a quarter mile away.

  “I was paying small attention when we walked here on the day of the picnic,” Poe said.

  And I told Buck, “That was the day I first met Susan.”

  Poe moved closer to the building then, onto the seashell border and then onto the narrow porch. He tried the door. It was locked.

  “What is it you’re hoping to find here?” I asked.

  “In truth,” he said, “I do not know.”

  He stood looking toward the house for a while. Two windows on the first floor were aglow with lamplight, and one window on the second floor.

  “Maybe we should have a peek over that way,” I suggested.

  Poe shook his head. “Tomorrow will be soon enough.”

  “Not soon enough for me,” Buck said.

  In the end, no insights were forthcoming. We stood there shivering in the dark. Finally Poe said, “I should have liked to have met the young songwriter, Mr. Foster, were he in town. Sissie used to sing one of his melodies for me. Would you know which one it might have been, Augie? I can’t recall the title.”

  I did not want to tell him that he was remembering incorrectly, that it was a Pittsburgh girl who had sung the song to him, and only days ago. Better to let the sweeter memory, though false, remain. I told him, “I believe it is called ‘Open Thy Lattice, Love.’”

  He nodded. And I was struck then by the fatalistic air of his earlier statement, and now heard in it Poe’s certainty that he would never have the chance to call on Stephen Foster. In other words, he believed that tomorrow would bring an end to every trace of hospitality the city had heretofore accorded him.

  32

  A MORNING as gray as three-month old grief, as damp and chilled as fear. Poe wanted us in position outside Brunrichter’s mansion before the sun rose, and so we had hiked briskly up through the fog, three silent men with hands shoved deep in their pockets, necks tucked and heads lowered. We passed a dozen or so workingmen on their way downhill to the docks and small factories along the shore, sullen men off to another day of backbreaking labor. Buck made sure to stay at the rear of Po
e and me as we walked abreast, his head close to our backs, his hat pulled low over his forehead lest he be recognized.

  On the edge of somebody’s yard a pig glowered at us. I thought it the same sow that had chased me once before, but there were three of us now, and she merely snorted. Somewhere down the hill a rooster crowed.

  We thought it likely that Mr. Tevis would exit the estate through the front gate, so Poe positioned me there because I was the quickest. I hid twelve feet off the ground, stretched out in the branches of a sprawling black pin oak. Before sending me up into the tree Poe had said, “Alfred will come out in his phaeton a few minutes before seven. We should expect Mr. Tevis not long afterward. What we do not know is whether he will be afoot or astride a horse or in a carriage. So you must be prepared to move very quickly to ascertain his direction. But not at the expense of allowing yourself to be seen.”

  The night before, we had agreed upon a signal to each other, a whistle in imitation of the common wood pewee, two short whistles followed by a longer one upward lilting. We had practiced the signal in Miss Jones’s basement until able to distinguish the individual calls. Buck’s was deeper and more forceful than either mine or Poe’s. Poe’s was nothing if not melancholy.

  And now, with me safely concealed in the tree, Poe crept away to take up his position in view of the side entrance. Buck went to the rear of the mansion where he could watch the stable and carriage house.

  Perhaps twenty minutes passed, though it felt like twice as many. The sun shone pale and diaphanous through the rising fog. And then, the clap of a horse’s hooves. Coming around the side of the building, a small, light carriage pulled by a single horse, the horse led by the stable boy.

  The boy stopped the carriage in front of the porch and stood there waiting another two minutes until Brunrichter emerged and climbed onto the driver’s seat. I noticed as the carriage passed beneath me that the doctor was not wearing his hair in the same style as Poe, that is, parted on the side and combed forward so that it lay across his forehead, but brushed severely back, as on the day we had first met him. And I wondered if he adopted Poe’s hairstyle only in the evenings, if he became Poe’s doppelganger only when at his leisure.

  I suppressed an urge to drop a gob of spit on the man, and willed myself to remain motionless.

  He passed out the gate and down the street. I waited. And ten minutes later, coming out the front door, striding briskly, still pulling on a pair of calfskin gloves, came Tevis. He was whistling as he passed beneath the tree, whistling in such a sprightly fashion and moving so jauntily, so utterly at ease with himself and the world, that although he wore the same face and the same physiognomy as before, I scarcely recognized him. That is, I knew it was Tevis but how startled I was to see him strolling by with such insouciance, all trace of a manservant’s rigidity and formality gone.

  Because he was afoot I could not risk shinnying down from the tree until he was a good twenty yards away. And even with my feet on solid ground I did not dare whistle yet, not until I had stolen inside the gate where Tevis could not see me were he to turn and look. Nor did I wish to be spotted from inside the house by Mrs. Dalrymple. So I crouched behind a slender arborvitae, and only then let sail my whistle.

  I signaled twice, me-oh-whee! me-oh-whee!, waited for fifteen seconds or so, then whistled twice again. Soon I saw first Poe and then Buck scurrying toward the front gate, both bent low as they ran. I hurried ahead of them to the street outside the gate and had another peek in Tevis’s direction.

  Poe came up and seized me by the sleeve. “Go on ahead,” he told me, “and don’t lose sight of him. Neither allow us to lose sight of you!” With that he shoved me forward.

  I admit to the exercise of no great skill in my pursuit of Tevis. Nor if so, was any necessary. Not once did he glance over his shoulder. Nor did he seem in any great hurry to get where he was going, and in fact stopped twice along the way, first at a bakery, where he made a purchase that was wrapped in white paper, and then at a general store, from which he emerged with a larger sack in hand.

  By the time Tevis came out of the second store, Poe and Buck had caught up with me as I waited on a corner. We had come to a spot nearly midway between the two rivers, with a commanding view of the courthouse on Grant’s Hill. From there we followed Mr. Tevis no more than three full blocks to a dwelling on Crawford Street. Here, directly in front of a small stone house, Tevis opened the gate and crossed into the yard, went onto the covered porch, unlocked the front door, and stepped inside. The door fell shut behind him.

  Poe, Buck, and I turned to look at one another. Buck asked, “What can he be up to in there? Meeting somebody?”

  Poe said, “He carries a key to the door. Perhaps he lives there.”

  “I thought he lives at the doctor’s place.”

  Poe scratched his chin. “Let us go off in different directions again. There is nothing more to be seen from the front. Augie, go to the right, and Buck, the left. I will come at the house from the rear. In ten minutes, more or less, we will meet back here to discuss what we have observed.” He did not wait for acquiescence but set off smartly for the street corner.

  There was nothing for me to see on the right side of the house. Even standing at the neighbor’s gate, in full view of the populace, I could detect no movement within the stone house. I did not dare remain so conspicuous long, however, and soon returned to my former spot behind a tree, where I nervously waited for the minutes to pass.

  Buck was the first to return. “Anything?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I couldn’t get close enough to see into the windows.”

  Anxiously we waited for Poe. Ten minutes elapsed not once but twice. Finally Buck said, “Down there,” and directed my attention some fifty yards down the street, which Poe was now crossing at a leisurely pace, making certain by his slowness that Buck and I had seen him. Then, instead of returning to us, he set off toward the Allegheny, but not without a glance or two back so as to assure himself that we were following.

  Buck said, “He’s headed back to Miss Jones’s, I think.”

  WE CONVENED in the small parlor at the rear of the schoolhouse. When Buck and I arrived, Poe and Miss Jones were already seated. I strode into the center of the room and said to Poe, “Well?”

  Before answering, he looked past me to Buck, who had remained just off the threshold, hat in hand. Miss Jones told him, “Come in, Mr. Kemmer, please. You needn’t always wait to be invited.”

  He came two steps forward.

  “Please be seated,” she told him, smiling. Then she looked at me, and her smile shrank. “Gentlemen should always take a seat before engaging in a conversation.”

  I reminded myself that this was Miss Jones’s house, and I held my tongue. I took a seat.

  Poe then spoke. “I observed the rear of the house for several minutes. After which, Mr. Tevis emerged.”

  “Where did he go?” I blurted.

  “Not far. In the rear yard there is a small wrought-iron table with two chairs. Atop this table Mr. Tevis placed a plate holding two small cakes.”

  “From the bakery where he stopped.”

  “No doubt. He also set down the larger sack he had been carrying, and from it he pulled three smaller bags.” Poe paused now, unable, even in a situation like this, to avoid taking advantage of the dramatic effect.

  “Seeds,” he finally said.

  “Seeds?” I repeated.

  “He had laid out a garden plot in the rear yard. And a very nicely worked plot it is. He has put a great deal of time into it. Each of the smaller bags contained seeds, though of what type I cannot say.”

  “Probably carrots,” said Buck. “Radishes, lettuce, spring vegetables. Them that don’t mind a late chill.”

  Poe nodded. “He soon fetched a cup of tea for himself from inside the house. Then, while I watched, he appeared to take a great deal of pleasure from not only his tea and cakes but from planting his seeds.”

  “It sounds as if maybe
he does live there,” I said.

  Poe said, “I confirmed this in a conversation with one of his neighbors. Discreetly, of course. In a manner to arouse no suspicions.”

  “Does he have a wife?” Buck asked. “A family?”

  “He lives alone.”

  “It makes no sense,” said Buck. “For a man to have himself two homes.”

  “And consider the house you saw,” said Poe. “It was not a mansion, but neither was it a shack. Would a man of Tevis’s position be able to afford such a home?”

  Buck screwed up his brow in contemplation, no doubt figuring up all the fourteen-hour days of backbreaking labor he had invested in a home not half as attractive as Tevis’s.

  Miss Jones answered Poe’s question. “I think not,” she said.

  “Not,” said Poe, “unless he was being compensated at a rate somewhat above the norm?”

  “Far above,” she said.

  Poe leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. He tucked his chin toward his chest and frowned.

  “We’re getting nowhere,” I said.

  Poe made no reply, though he raised his eyes to me.

  “I’m getting into the house,” I said.

  “You mustn’t!” said Miss Jones.

  But Buck asked, “Which house are you talking about?”

  “Brunrichter’s,” I answered.

  “We could do it tomorrow,” said Buck. “Won’t be nobody around but the two of them.”

  “Better to wait until Sunday, I think. Easter Sunday. That means he’ll be at church for a couple of hours. Protestant, that’s what he told us—you remember?”

  Still Poe said nothing.

  Buck said, “On second thought, maybe we’d better go tonight. According to Miss Jones here, Friday night’s when he does his dirty business. We go tonight, we maybe stop him from doing it again.”

  “He’s expecting Poe to return on Saturday. He won’t do anything tonight. No, I think Sunday morning is best. Mrs. Dalrymple will go to church as well, I know she will. As for Tevis, if he doesn’t go to church and doesn’t go back to his own house, well, I’ll just have to deal with him, I suppose.”