My Clockwork Muse

by D. R. Erickson

  "Your wife?"

  I nodded.

  "A tragedy," Gessler said. "My deepest sympathies."

  "I don't have the heart to get rid of the damned thing, though I detest the creature."

  "A feisty feline, this cat of yours."

  "Hers," I said. "And feisty is not the half of it, sir. You saw what he did!"

  "I saw," said Gessler. "What's this about his eyes?"

  "He is a one-eyed cat."

  "Ah, thank you, Mr. Poe," Gessler said when I handed him a steaming cup. He took a dainty sip, not wanting to burn his lip. Most of his tea got sucked up into his mustache. When he brought the cup down again, he said in an amiable tone, "I had a three-legged dog once. A horse kicked him. Snapped his leg right in two. I performed the operation myself." He raised the cup and sipped. "How does your cat come to have but one eye?"

  I sighed. "I'd like to say a horse kicked him, Inspector. Come to think of it, I might yet." I suddenly found myself toying with the idea of telling this lie. Repeated over and over again, perhaps I could someday make myself believe it. Gessler, I supposed by the look in his eye, would be harder to convince.

  "Your cat is, of course, your own affair," the inspector laughed. "Though he seems not to love you overmuch."

  "Oh, if you must know, it was me," I blurted out all at once. I had never admitted my atrocity. It felt good to have it out. In any case, once it started, I could not stop it. "I was in some kind of somnambulistic trance, so I recall the fearful deed only in brief flashes of memory. I remember calling to him. Here, kitty-kitty... I can see him rubbing up against my leg, arching his back."

  "Cats are wonderful pets," Gessler muttered happily.

  "The next thing I knew, I had my penknife in one hand and his bloody, damnable eye in the other." Gessler stared at me and I stared back. "I am not proud of it, sir!" I snapped. "I shudder, I blush, I burn to recount it." I stared at him fiercely for a moment and then sighed. "Needless to say, the cat won't come near me now—except to lunge at me from ambush, as you have witnessed."

  "An eye for an eye, it would seem. What you have there is a cat bent on revenge."

  "And also excepting last night," I added, suddenly remembering the strangeness of it.

  "Last night?"

  "I fell asleep with the thing curled up in my lap, purring like a kitten."

  "Well, there you go, then, Mr. Poe!" Gessler exclaimed brightly. "Perhaps all is forgiven. Time heals all wounds, as they say."

  I rubbed my cheek skeptically. "Perhaps..."

  Gessler set his half-empty cup down on a table and walked over to my desk. He laid his palm on my neatly stacked manuscript. He gave it a pat and smiled before looking up at me. "These somnambulistic trances of yours, as you call them... It puts me in mind of a tract I believe you had once written on the nature of Mesmerism. What the human mind is capable of is endlessly fascinating, don't you think?"

  "Oh, but Inspector, with all due respect, they are hardly the same thing. The one is simple sleep-walking, the other induced by one trained in the art of—New Roman" s 12"

  "Simple sleep-walking, yes. I understand that during times of trial people sometimes succumb to such episodes. What starts as simple sleep-walking...Well, who knows where it can end? Such as in the case of you and your cat."

  "My wife had just died."

  "A time of trial, to be sure."

  I began to regret telling him about Pluto's eye.

  "He was kicked by a horse," I said suddenly, thinking perhaps a jest might be the best way to conceal my growing discomfort.

  Gessler blinked. "I beg your pardon..."

  "Pluto. My cat. He was kicked by a horse. I think I would rather go with that story instead."

  Gessler threw his head back and bellowed a laugh. "Ah, my dear Mr. Poe. Do not read too much into my ramblings. So you gouged out your cat's eye. Who isn't filled with remorse for the commission of some little misdeed or other?"

  "Yes," I laughed. "And only semi-consciously too."

  "Of course. You were not in complete control of your faculties, that much is obvious. But this!" Gessler patted my manuscript again. "You are in top form here, without question. No doubt, this new story of yours will be enthusiastically received."

  "I must finish it first," I said, a little crossly. I didn't believe in curses, but all this fuss over an unfinished story was starting to make me nervous.

  "Still, even the best stories are not immune to criticism. It must be hard to accept negative reviews. Your new story here, for instance. Of such unsurpassed excellence—s 12at least as it begins. Were it to be maligned by some hack reviewer somewhere...Why, that must be galling to you almost beyond endurance."

  I laughed. This had become too much. "Sir, I have not even finished the tale and you praise it and condemn it by turns! I must ask that we speak no further of my unfinished work."

  "Your agitation makes my point exactly, Mr. Poe. It cannot be easy to have one's work the subject of such constant public scrutiny. You must at times wonder how much better it would be to labor in some anonymous enterprise. As it is, harsh words are inevitable. These, for example..." He fished in his coat pocket and produced a folded wad of paper upon which he had scribbled a few words. He spent a moment smoothing the sheet. Then he held it close to his eyes and began to read aloud. I let him go on for a while until I felt my blood begin to boil. "'...I regret to find Mr. Poe's name in connexion with such a mass of...'"

  I could take no more. "'...ignorance and effrontery,'" I finished for him. "Yes, yes, I know the slanderous blather word-for-word. And you're right, Inspector. It is beyond endurance. I must ask you to stop at once."

  "So it is as I thought—the words do sting. I imagine your opinion of the man who wrote them—"

  "The villain Billy Burton!" I snapped.

  "Ah, indeed!" Gessler exclaimed with a note of triumph. "William E. Burton, to be exact. One might call him your inveterate enemy, Mr. Poe, the late Billy Burton..."

  "A scoundrel without equal," I began with some enthusiasm, until the Inspector's words crystallized in my mind. "What do you mean the late Billy Burton?" I asked with sudden trepidation.

  Gessler gazed at me evenly. "William E. Burton was the man we found walled up in the boarding house basement, Mr. Poe. The corpse dressed as a fool, as Fortunato. It was your man Burton."

  Chapter 5

  "What do you mean 'my man Burton'? He is as much yours as mine. Now that you say he is dead, I daresay he is more yours than mine, since murder is your business."

  I had made a mistake telling Gessler about Pluto. I would not make the same mistake with Burton. He thought Burton was dead. So what? If I were to be bothered with every dead man I might have argued with in life, I should be kept busy indeed.

  Anyway, I knew Burton to be alive.

  Didn't I?

  I had Gessler tell me how he had identified the dead man. I myself had known the scoundrel well in life and had mistaken the corpse's moldering face for Burton's, so how was it that Gessler could be so sure? Obviously, Briggs had planted the idea, no doubt informing the inspector of my own erroneous conclusion. But when the inspector told me that they had taken careful measurements of the body and had even brought in Burton's dentist to identify his fillings and crowns, I began to feel a little queasy.

  My impulse was to confess that I had seen the man, quite alive, not twenty-four hours before. But I had begun to doubt my own senses. Briggs, Gessler assured me kindly, was quite concerned for my health. The man's constant needling and my own lack of restful sleep had me wondering as well. If it hadn't been Saturday, I would have rushed back into the city to revisit Burton in his office, regardless of the row it would cause. As it was, my meeting with the man might have occurred in a dream—or perhaps in a somnambulistic trance. I wasn't going to risk declaring with any certainty that Burton lived when Gessler claimed on scientific grounds that he most certainly did not. If what I believed was true, Gessler would find out soon enough on his own.
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br />   On the other hand, I had no doubt that Gessler suspected me of the crime and it was only in my own best interest to prove that Burton lived or, if he did not, to ascertain who, other than me, might have killed him.

  That meant I had to revisit the crime scene. I had no faith that Gessler had pursued any lead once his suspicions had alighted on me. Moreover, I now assumed that he had suspected me all along, that his talk of Dupin had been a simple ruse to get me to the scenes of his murders. There, he had no doubt studied my reactions and weighed my every word, hoping I might incriminate myself. I vowed on the spot to meet his guile with an equal measure of my own. If he thought to trick me into exposing myself by word or deed, the man was sadly mistaken. As he would find to his dismay, my Dupin would meet his Gessler and the game—for that is how it now felt—would not even be close at the end.

  The next train for the city left at 3:15, giving me just enough time to make myself presentable. Thinking to shave, I filled a basin. When I looked in the mirror I saw that I did indeed present a frightful appearance. My hair was unwashed and fell in greasy strands over my expansive forehead. My eyes were ringed darkly and under-girded with heavy, swollen bags. The darkness of the shadow thrown over my eyes by my too-thick brow was exaggerated by the ghastly pallor of my flesh. I am not given to characterizing my appearance as a rule, but when my eye first fell upon my countenance in the mirror, I was shocked to see such a haunted man looking back at me.

  "You're not looking good, Eddy."

  As I ran my razor under my chin, I saw that Tap had perched on my shoulder. He leaned forward and gazed into the mirror as if I had gotten it out solely for the pleasure of admiring his face in it.

  "Ouch!" I jerked back when the razor bit into my neck. "Do you want me to cut my own throat?"

  "If I wanted you to cut your own throat, I'd leave you alone and let you do it."

  "Now there's an idea," I said.

  Ignoring the raven, I worked carefully around Pluto's claw marks. Then I remembered the wound on my neck and pulled down my collar. It was as Gessler had said: a single round hole surrounded by a ring of rather angry swollen flesh. I daubed it with a cloth and a bit of soap. Originally, I had thought the wound to be a product of one of Pluto's claws, but now I had my doubts. Unless he had only a single claw on one of his paws, I didn't see how he could have caused such a singular wound without at least a few attendant scratches or additional punctures of various depths accompanying it. This one was solitary, deep and more than a little sore. I had no idea what it could be.

  Except...

  I remembered seeing something similar on Virginia's throat before she died. At first, I had taken it to be a bug bite of some sort. Perhaps some large mosquito or overzealous horsefly. Then, as I inspected it more closely, I saw that it had an intentional, almost surgical, look to it and concluded that it was probably the work of Dr. Coppelius, being some arcane attempt at cure or comfort. In that context, it did not strike me odd as I had grown accustomed to the doctor's mystifying and often secretive methods. My trust in himR12 f "Times New Roman" s 12and in his daughter Olimpia who usually assisted him—was implicit and unquestioned. As Virginia's condition worsened and my fear of her inevitable passing grew, I quickly forgot about the curious mark and thought no more of it.

  Until now.

  I wracked my memory, hoping to see it again in my mind's eye. But it was no good. Whether our wounds were identical or mere coincidence, it was impossible now to tell. I set the mirror aside and readied myself to leave.

  "You're not going out like that, are you?" Tap asked. He had flapped from my shoulder and alighted on the table where Gessler had set his teacup.

  I ran the damp cloth over my face and head. It was the best I could do in the time I had to catch the train. At least I was shaved. "I've got to get going," I said.

  "Aren't you even going to change your clothes? How long you been wearing that get-up?"

  "No time, Tap." I looked at my watch. "Damn!" I thrust it back into my pocket and rushed for the door.

  "I don't know what you think you're going to find there," Tap complained as I left. Outside on the porch, I could still hear him. "I'll just wait here then..." He was saying, along with other choice tidbits that were thankfully lost to me as I rushed across the overgrown lawn toward the train station to town.

  ~ * * * ~

  The street in front of the boarding house was deserted when I got there. I considered that a stroke of luck and walked rapidly toward the building, hoping to slip inside before anyone saw me. Why I should have considered that important, I did not know. In fact, it was not until I was in the vestibule and pushing the door closed silently behind me that I realized I had no idea what I intended to do.

  But whatever it was, I felt like a thief doing it.

  I turned and saw a man descending the stairs towards me. I realized it might seem suspicious of me to just stand at the door and wait for him to pass. So I made for the stairs myself, ascending with a quick, familiar step as if I had some usual business on the second floor. I gave the man a disinterested nod as we passed and continued on until I heard the door slam shut below me. Then I turned and quickly retraced my steps. At the base of the stairs, I entered the corridor that I knew from my previous visit led to the basement door.

  A thrill passed through me. I was a writer, a magazine editor and literary critic, not a cat-burglar. Even though no one pursued me and I was doing nothing particularly wrong, the idea of sneaking through the house where a heinous crime had been committed filled me with a feeling of excitement. I had fooled the man on the stairs into believing I was a tenant or a frequent visitor. This little triumph made me feel oddly invulnerable and had the effect of increasing my enthusiasm for the day's enterprise. I now felt certain I could find some evidence in the basement that would incriminate Fortunato's murderer. The more I attempted to visualize the scene as I had witnessed it, the more I became convinced that Gessler's men had probably destroyed more evidence than they had uncovered, and that the key to solving the mystery still lay untouched amid the ruins of their careless investigation.

  In short, I found I rather enjoyed playing a real-life Dupin.

  Still, however stealthy my movements and clever my conduct, I could not summon the courage to place my hand on the knob of the basement door. Reflecting my image back at me with fish-eyed distortion, the very stillness of the object seemed bloated with a promise of terror. As I drew back my fingers, I consoled myself that it was not mere cowardice that stayed my hand, but a sudden premonition. Perhaps not every clue was to be found below. I decided to investigate upstairs first.

  The smell of cooking filled my nostrils and I followed it past the basement door to a kitchen that opened at the end of the corridor. A long cloth-covered table surrounded by many well-worn chairs dominated the center of the room. On the stove, a covered pot simmered quietly. It occurred to me that such a well-used place in close proximity to the corridor through which Fortunato and his killer would have had to pass might have harbored witnesses, late-night diners or, more likely, a cook or other staff. Out of curiosity—or perhaps hunger—I made my way to the pot and, lifting the lid, had a look inside. Some kind of savory meat stew stared back at me and my mouth began to water. I looked around for a spoon, thinking to take a little taste (what would it hurt?), when I was startled by the sound of a crashing dish behind me. In my fright, I dropped the lid and it crashed with equal clangor back onto the open mouth of the pot. I turned and saw a fat woman staring at me wide-eyed in terror. In her hands she held a stack of clattering dishes. Another lay in broken shards around her feet.

  "Oh, pardon me, madam! I did not intend to frighten you." I rushed to her, meaning to take the stack from her hands, but she recoiled out of my reach until her back was pressed tightly to the wall. Her fear puzzled me. It was more than shock at finding a strange man tasting her stew. She was afraid of me. I stopped and began picking up the pieces of the shattered plate. "I have just arrived on ... polic
e business," I told her, instantly warming to the lie, "and was attracted by the scent—"

  "Oh, you're with the police!" she cried and her whole body sagged with relief. "Oh, my heavens! For a moment, I thought you were—" She set her plates down on the table, and, breathing hard, began fanning her face. I saw that sweat dripped down her jowls. Once her breathing had returned to normal, she looked up with a stern expression. "But, look here! I have already told the police everything I know. Is it police business now to browbeat honest people who have done nothing wrong?"

  "I have no intention of browbeating anyone, madam." I saw an opportunity here, and I decided to pursue it to my full advantage. "I just need you to repeat your previous statement. There seems to have been a jumble of some sort in our records."

  "Oh, bother!" the fat woman cried. "How am I supposed to remember everything I told you people?"

  "Just the salient points, then, madam. The men in the corridor ... I take it you saw them?"

  "Of course I did. Two men, drunk as skunks it seemed to me. Well, one of them was, anyway. The other man was practically dragging him along. Dead to the world, he was."

  "Well, what made you think him drunk, and not just unconscious for some other reason. Was he singing, or carrying on in some fashion? Perhaps he was the victim of an accident and nothing more."

  The woman looked at me as though I were daft. "Because of the way he was dressed, sir. Obviously fresh from some wild party or other."

  "And how was he dressed?" I had to ask the question, even though I already knew the answer.

  "Like a fool," the woman replied. "He was dressed like a ... like a ... Oh, what do you call it?"

  "A court jester?"

  "Yes! From olden times. In fact, it was the jingling of the bells in his hat that caused me to look down the hall in the first place. We get all kinds here. You learn not to ask too many questions."

  "Of course," I said. Now for the answer I was really looking for. "Did you give a description of the man to the police?"