by Jim Musgrave
“Good God! I would think so!” I said. Wallace waved at a passing bar mistress to bring us another round of ale--mine ginger and his demonic.
“But it was Daniel Payne, a cork cutter by trade and alcoholic by weakness, who won Mary's heart. Phoebe disliked Payne enormously, as did Crommelin, of course. In June, 1841, Mary announced her engagement to Payne. Crommelin became despondent and Phoebe enraged. Arguments ensued between mother and daughter for a month. By the middle of July Mary relented, promising Phoebe that she would not marry.”
“Mothers can be persnickety,” I opined.
“Shortly after she promised not to marry Payne, Mary showed up at Crommelin's apartment. He was not at home and she left a note hinting strongly at reconciliation. Crommelin did not respond. A series of letters from Mary arrived, each one more frantic than the previous one. Finally, she asked--nay, pleaded--for a loan for an ‘emergency.’ When Crommelin failed to respond again, Mary turned to Anderson and got the money. Shortly after, on Friday July 23rd, Mary disappeared.”
“I would assume this emergency was of the pregnant variety?” I asked, and Wallace just nodded and continued with his story.
“Payne, concerned over the fact that Mary did not keep an appointment on the weekend, spent much of Saturday and Sunday with his brother looking for her to no avail. Phoebe was uncommonly unconcerned. Perhaps she remembered Mary's strange disappearance four years earlier. Or maybe she knew something else. The only reported sighting of Mary was on a ferry boat to Hoboken, New Jersey. Someone claimed they saw her near the farm of Mrs. Loss. Frederika Loss owned a farm and tavern in the Hoboken and Weehawken area of New Jersey. Some reports by witnesses confirmed that Mary Rogers was seen near the Loss place sometime during the weekend. It was widely known that Mrs. Loss and her three sons were disciples of Madam Restell. Dubbed ‘Madam Killer’ by many, Restell had built a fortune by opening a home for unwed mothers on Greenwich Street in Manhattan. Her philosophy was simple: the only plausible birth control system was abortion. While public sentiment might have been revolted by the practice, the law and large numbers of clients sustained it. Her Greenwich Street mansion catered to the wealthy and influential who further protected her activities. Poorer clients were franchised out to subordinates like Mrs. Loss. Upon questioning Loss denied any knowledge of Mary Rogers, but she did admit hearing screams one night coming from a thicket nearby her farm. Which night, however, was not clear to her. An investigation of the thicket revealed several items of bloody and rain soaked clothing that resembled those worn by Mary.”
“What a ghastly scene!” I said. The bar mistress came with our drinks and sat them down on the table. Wallace lit a cigar and blew two smoke rings before he continued.
“The new stories of cries from the thicket were given indirect verification with numerous other rumors of youth gangs and thugs seen on the ferries from Manhattan to Hoboken. By the 1830s and 1840s the street gangs of New York City were well developed in the Five Points area, the commonly accepted and feared low-life criminal district. They hung out in grocery stores, tobacco shops, taverns and dance halls. The earliest gang seems to have been the Forty Thieves. Others, particularly Irish based ones, quickly followed. They were the Kerryonians, the Bowery Boys, Chichesters, Roach Guards, Dead Rabbits, Shirt Tails and the Plug Uglies. The last one became the most notorious, especially along the river front.”
“As such scoundrels, they give our Irish citizens a bad name,” I said.
“Shortly after the revelations of Mrs. Loss, Mary's body was found. Mary's body seemed to be badly beaten and positive identification at first was difficult due to the time in the water and the hot humid conditions that had caused considerable putrescence. There was a strip of cloth around her neck tied in a slip knot, more commonly done by sailors and young roughs around town, rather than a ‘lady's knot.’ It was not clear if it had killed her or was a make-shift means of conveying her. Rigor mortis was still pronounced when she was found. The face was discolored and bloated; there was an ugly bruise near her eye and a deep scratch on the left cheek that ran down to the shoulder. The body had been allowed to lay exposed after it was taken from the water. In a short time the face darkened making identification impossible except with reference to her tattered clothing. Crommelin made the identification and then broke down. The coroner, making only the most casual examination, declared the body to have peculiar wounds around the vagina area.”
“As if she had been abused there?” I asked. He nodded affirmatively.
“And in a tragic postscript others broke down as well. First, was Mary's rejected betrothed, Daniel Payne. On October 7th, two and one half months after Mary's death, Payne went to Hoboken to die. He got drunk and haunted all the sites supposedly visited by Mary. Then he took a lethal dose of laudanum poison that allowed him to linger long in agony. He went to the thicket, the place where Mrs. Loss had heard screams, and parts of his clothing were found, and he died. He left a suicide note that strongly suggested his complicity in the crime. But most discounted it as a lover's despondency because Payne had an air tight alibi; he had been seen all over town with his brother madly searching for Mary over the weekend she disappeared. His guilt and death were attributed to that of a lover's agony that ended in his losing his grip on reality and then on his life.”
“So, then what occurred?” I asked, and my interest began peaking because we were getting close to the connection with Poe and Anderson.
“Over a year after Payne's death one of her sons accidently shot Frederika Loss. She lingered for two weeks in delirium raving that a ghost was at her bedside. She claimed that this shadowy figure had been sent to haunt her last hours. The sons worried over her delusions and rantings, fearful that she might let out some ‘great secret.’ All of the penny presses, hungry for sensational news comparable to the Rogers’s murder and Payne’s suicide, made much of the ghostly visitors and final hours of Loss. The Tribune came out with a story highlighting the woman's abortion activities. Finally, Mrs. Loss came to an end but the mystery did not.”
“And so, how does Poe fit into this?” I now asked, ready for the grand finale.
“I was at a meeting with Eddy and Mister Anderson, soon after the rich tobacconist had been arrested by the police and detained for questioning. We were sitting in this same tavern when Anderson requested that Poe write what he called a pastiche on the Mary Rogers affair, and that he would pay him handsomely if he did so. Poe, who was quite destitute at the time, heartily agreed, and he even began to describe his plot that would take place in Paris, not in New York, and that he would make certain the character of the perfumery shop owner, where the girl Marie Roget worked, would be shown to be completely off the list of suspects.”
“So, Poe was to be paid for writing a distraction, is this what you’re telling me?”
“It would seem so. I happened to be a bit three sheets to the wind, if you get my drift, and I remarked that Mister Anderson should not belie the publicity of the case. I pointed out that he had made quite a bit off the pretty young thing selling his goods, and why wouldn’t he want her pretty body connected to his business, even if it was in death?”
“Oh, that must have caused a stir!” I said.
“Yes, Eddy, my writer friend old Edgar Poe, jumped from his seat and took up a carving knife, making as if to strike out at me. When Eddy was in his cups, he was not a steady fellow,” said Wallace. “But, he was of such pale demeanor and sickly stature that he simply snatched up some dinner rolls to take back to his cottage and his dying wife, Virginia, and proclaimed, ‘I will expect to hear from you, Mister Anderson, when I’ve completed my story!’ And that was the end of it.”
“I see. And I can surmise from this that Poe wanted to revenge the death of Mary Rogers because he perhaps learned something about the case that we never knew,” I said, raising my eyebrows.
“It would seem so,” said Wallace, drinking another gulp.
“Yes, well, I want to thank you heartily for this i
mportant information, Mister Wallace. I am now going to talk to the only man who can shed some clear light of truth on this case, and if he can, then perhaps I will be able to get the proverbial ‘two birds’ with my one stone of information. Both the deaths of Rogers and of Poe are unsolved, and now I can see they are connected in a devious pattern that any detective would be happy to resolve. I am just a Yankee who is living at the behest of his public benefactors, so I suppose I am as good a candidate for sleuth as I am a candidate for the Medal of Honor they awarded me. Both jobs could get me shot, I should say,” and I laughed, and I got up to leave. Mister Wallace stared up at me in wonder as I walked out of the tavern made for the Sons of Liberty and out into the Manhattan city life.
The interview with Wallace proved quite beneficial to my case. I wanted to interview two other men who were suspiciously linked to the murder of Mary Rogers. First of all, her fiancé, Alfred Crommelin, the attorney, certainly became angry when he discovered she was pregnant. If it were Poe who impregnated her, then Crommelin would certainly want to get even with his rival for Mary’s affections. The second person I wanted to interview was the gang leader of the Plug Uglies. I knew him to be the most informed of the leaders, and if anybody knew anything about the criminal activity taking place in those days, Walter McKenzie would be the person who could help me.
* * *
Crommelin lived alone in a Manhattan brownstone at 128 Washington Street in the Financial District. He greeted me in his smoking jacket and slippers, and he offered me a drink. He was a tall man with willowy red hair with streaks of gray. “No thank you, Sir. I’m here to inquire about the death of Mary Rogers some time back,” I said, sitting down on the plush, velvet-green divan in his parlor.
His mood changed immediately, and pallor overcame his face that would have been a fine addition to one of Edgar’s stories, “The Mask of Read Death,” perhaps? “Can you verify your whereabouts from October third until October seventh, 1849?”
Crommelin became defensive. His wrinkled face turned red, and his eyes riveted upon mine. “Are you from the police? I’ve been over this Mary Rogers case with dozens of police and members of the press over the years.”
“No, I am not a policeman. I am a private detective concerned with the details of the death of a close friend of mine. If you could just answer my question, Sir, I would be most obliged,” I said.
“As you may know, I am a barrister in this city, and I keep excellent records. Let me get my calendar from that year,” he said, and he got up and walked over to a large secretary desk in the corner of the apartment. He brought back receipts from taverns and restaurants covering business meals during the five days in question. His signature was right there on each receipt proving he was in New York during the time Poe was in Baltimore.
“Thank you, Sir. You have been quite helpful. If I may stay in touch with you, however, may I do so? This case is proving to be quite a conundrum, so I may even require your assistance.”
“Of course,” he said, and he bade me farewell.
* * *
Walter McKenzie was drunk when I questioned him. His several assistants searched my person for weapons and led me into his lair in the back room of a dockside tavern in Hoboken. These thugs were keeping the wharf rats entertained by throwing them pieces of steak, laughing at the fighting rodents killing each other over the bloody meat.
McKenzie was a man in his early sixties. He was huge, weighing over 300 pounds, and he wore a silk frock coat, in the style of the Victorian era, with a red cape and a large gold watch chain sprouting from his red vest. He had a black patch over his right eye, and his beard showed scars, from previous fisticuffs, which ran like railroad tracks throughout the pattern of thick white facial hair.
“Oh, the slut, Mary Rogers? Anderson’s wife contacted me twice about her. She wanted to know about how to get rid of the little problem Mary had, don’t you know? Ain’t it sweet? Female togetherness.”
I decided it would not be to my advantage to question this man at length, even if what he was telling me were true. I was not crossing him off my list of informants, but I make it a policy to never interview witnesses or suspects who are inebriated before I begin my questioning. Although what he told me about Mrs. Anderson did sound interesting, I got up to leave.
“Thank you, Mister McKenzie, but I believe I’ll come back when you’ve not been enjoying your afternoon as much,” I said.
“Are you saying I’m drunk? Throw this jackass out on his ear,” he told his henchmen.
However, after I extracted my trusty Colt service revolver from my boot, they did not dare lay a hand on me, and I walked out of the room unscathed. I vowed to question McKenzie for more information at a later date. I did not doubt that he was informed concerning what was going on in 1849, and I wanted him to be sober when I questioned him.
* * *
Mister John Anderson lived alone outside the city limits in Tarrytown, in a section called Sleepy Hollow, made famous by the Washington Irving story about the headless horseman. The land out there is lush with greenery, and I could breathe much better than in the factory smoke congestion of Manhattan Island. Many of the rich and famous had moved their lodgings out here when the banks of the Hudson become cluttered with people and businesses. Sleepy Hollow Park held the large mansion of the tobacco millionaire. It was three stories tall, and in the new Victorian architecture, it cast a wide shadow along the garden way as I rode my horse up to its steel-shuttered windows and doors. I had seen the same protective enclosures when I was visiting the Federal Prison at Elmira in upstate New York. This Mister Anderson was afraid of something, and I was going to find out what it was.
When I knocked on the metal door to his mansion, I had to wait a good fifteen minutes before two armed guards opened it. They wore the uniform of the Italian freedom fighter, Giuseppe Garibaldi, with the ostrich feathers in their helmets, the purple bloomers, and the field muskets in their hands. I suppressed a snicker as I watched them walk ahead of me down the long corridor leading to the drawing room where I met with Anderson. He had little furniture in this mansion. It was like being in an empty museum to some ungodly hero. The only art objects in the mansion besides the Garibaldi memorabilia were stuffed animals standing on tables. These were common animals like dogs, birds, fish and cats.
Mister Anderson was a short man, but his eyes were vibrant, his gray hair was cut short, and his mustache was in the distinguished style of the robber barons like the new Tammany Hall boss, and present Congressman, Fernando Wood. However, Mister Anderson’s actions did not show a gentleman who was in his right frame of executive mindfulness. He skipped up to me, speaking freely to the walls around him, where were hung pictures of his dead son, Willie and this hero of his, Garibaldi. I was afraid to really question him, dreading that my detective abilities had finally met their match against this quite eccentric gentleman.
“Hello, Mister Anderson. My name is O’Malley. Patrick O’Malley. I am living out in Mister Poe’s old cottage on Fordham Road at the behest of the Union Government and the Valentine family. I have come to discuss your knowledge of Edgar Poe and perhaps the affair of Mary Rogers and her murder most foul.”
As Mister Anderson closed the steel door, he suddenly turned around, and a wild, abandoned look stood out from beneath those gray eyebrows. “What? Have you seen them? Mary visits me now, you know. She is quite the shrew. Never lets me be. In point of fact, I believe both Poe and she were out to get me from the start.”
This was quite curious. “Out to get you? I don’t understand, sir. What could they do to affect your life and safety?”
“It was Poe who killed her! That’s the truth. He wanted money for his dying Lenore, his Annabelle Lee. He was a ghoul and an opium addict. His addled mind concocted the plot to sway the police away from his own activities. My Mary was young and available, don’t you know? Longfellow and the others wanted her, but Poe, the blackguard, wanted her for himself. He wanted to replace his dying wife, Virginia
, with this new one, this new phantasm for his wild and romantic imaginings!”
“But, dear sir. How can you say this? What solid proof might you have to accuse Mister Poe of such an egregious act?”
“Why, it’s the best proof of all, don’t you see? She tells me who killed her! How can I argue with her ghost? What more proof does a sane man require?” Anderson began to laugh, and dance around the room, skipping like a schoolboy on holiday.
I realized this old gentlemen was not in his right mind, so I bade him farewell. I would look into his mental health and perhaps I could find out more legitimate facts about his relationship with Poe and Mary Rogers.
* * *
My interview of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the briefest on record. When I told him who I was and why I was there, instead of opening the door to his luxury apartment at 15 Central Park West, he shouted down at me from his outsized window above the street when he found out I was asking about the murder of Mary Rogers. “Schedule an appointment with my agent, you Irish potato head! I don’t talk to riffraff without an appointment!”
Later, inside my booth at the Sons of Liberty, I went over my suspect list. The lawyer, Crommelin, was the only person who had a definite alibi for his whereabouts during the period when Mister Poe was in Baltimore in 1849. However, I needed to ask more questions of the gang leader, McKenzie, and certainly Mister John Anderson. They both needed to be more mentally acute for me to get valid information from them. William Wallace had proved the most beneficial of all at giving me specific information concerning Mary Rogers’ death. I would assume he also was not anywhere near Baltimore in October, but I still needed to verify that fact. As for the poet, Mister Longfellow, I obviously needed to make an appointment with his literary agent. I could see why Edgar never liked the fellow. Mister Poe was many things, including being an alcoholic and a man plagued by death and tragedy, but he was never unapproachable. He would speak to the street urchin as well as the bank president. He made no class distinctions. I believe my case, however, was filled with such class rivalries, and I wanted to prove it.
