by Marvin Kaye
Since my hands had not been bound, I was able to tear off the sack covering my head. I was now in a filthy alleyway, unhurt except for an aching right knee, which had taken the brunt of my fall. “Show yourselves, you cowards!” I shouted, but they were long gone. I looked around for clues but saw none, except for an object lying on the ground near my feet. It was a Philadelphia Deringer, a firearm whose kind I had seen only once. I assumed that this was the hard object that had been thrown at my chest. But to what end?
Pocketing the tiny pistol, I collected my wits enough to examine whether my pocketbook was still in my possession, and to my surprise, found that it was. Whatever my assailants’ motive had been, it was not robbery.
Some dangerous drama was playing itself out in the city of Baltimore, and I was determined to discover its nature.
* * * *
My knee ached terribly the next morning when I arrived at the office, but I said nothing of my assault from the night before, or my failure to identify my attackers, not wishing to hand Hadley and Curlowe more ammunition for ridicule. With Mr. Bellwether’s tacit acquiescence I managed to get away from my menial assignments long enough to make my way to the Washington College Hospital, where Edgar Allan Poe drew his final breath, in hopes of finding Dr. John J. Moran. I was told that Dr. Moran was not at present in the city; his personal stock had risen so greatly from becoming known as the physician of the late Poe that he had actually taken to the lecture circuit to give talks about the poet’s final hours. Upon further inquiry, I was directed to one Abigail Hewson, who had nursed Poe during his stay at the hospital.
Nurse Hewson was somewhat past middle-years and had a patient, pleasant manner. She well recalled Edgar Allan Poe’s days in the hospital, despite the passage of time. “He was not the sort of man one soon forgets,” she told me. “The poor fellow was delirious toward the end, but I do not believe it was from alcohol.”
“Yet he was in the drink ward,” I said.
“Indeed he was, because his symptoms appeared to be drunkenness. But I have seen many unfortunates who have suffered from severe alcoholic poisoning, and in each case their affliction is betrayed by their eyes. They become lifeless, like the eyes of a badly painted portrait. There was no such absence of focus with Mr. Poe, whose eyes were the most penetrating I have ever seen. He looked on me as though he was imploring me to help him.”
“Were you present when he cried out for someone named Reynolds?”
“I heard him call out, but it was not ‘Reynolds’ that Mr. Poe cried, it was restial. Do you know what restial is?”
I confessed that I did not.
“It is the request to be buried in the churchyard at no charge and to have the bell toll for one’s passing. The poor man knew he was dying. It was obvious from his appearance that he was a pauper, yet he seemed desperate that his body be placed in consecrated ground, like something terrible would happen to his soul otherwise.”
I shook my head. “No wonder his last words were ‘Lord, help my poor soul.’”
“That is what Dr. Moran remembers,” Nurse Hewson said, “but I recall his words differently. Mr. Poe said, Father...‘Father, help my poor soul’...though I suppose it is all one, when referring to the Almighty.”
If, indeed it was the Almighty to which the doomed writer was referring. I now believed he was speaking of his actual, earthly father. I left the hospital with the knowledge that it was imperative that I find the old man again, but how?
Once back at the agency, Old Sam called me into his office. “While you were gallivanting about, a message was delivered for you,” he said, handing over an envelope. Opening it, I found a note from Tom Macgowan. That fellow you’ve been looking for, it read, I believe I have found him. See me when you get this.
“Mr. Bellwether, I know I have only just arrived back,” I said, “but might I go out again?”
Old Sam sighed and threw his hands up in the air in a demonstration of annoyance, but he said: “I suppose emptying the cuspidor can wait. Go on, chase your nonesuch.”
I raced to the offices of the American and Commercial Advisor and found Tom waiting at the front of the building. “You have seen old Poe?” I asked him.
“I have seen someone I believe to be him,” he replied. “I will need you to tell me if I am correct.”
“Where is he, then?”
Tom regarded me with a sober expression and then said: “In the city morgue. Come.”
Upon arriving at the plain brick building that housed the city’s repository of death, Tom showed his press identification to the attendant and we were taken into a foreboding basement room in which several bodies lay on tables, covered by white sheets. We were led to one in particular, whose face was revealed to us. “The body was discovered in an alley,” Tom said. “That is him, isn’t it?”
I said nothing. While it resembled the man I had met in the tavern, the pallor of death had rendered the once-expressive face so still and stone-like that I could not be certain from his face alone. “Let me see his left hand.”
The attendant lifted the sheet at the man’s side to reveal the hand, which contained only two fingers. “It is he.”
“I suspected as much,” Tom said, handing me a battered copy of a booklet titled Tammerlane and Other Poems by A Bostonian. “This was found on his person. Read the inscription.”
Turning to the booklet’s title page I saw an ink scrawl, which I was able to make out as: To Father, with belated affection; Edgar. “So he carried this with him to the very moment he finally drank himself to death,” I said.
“This fellow did not drink himself to death,” the morgue attendant said in a reedy voice. He lowered the sheet down further and revealed a small round bullet hole in the old man’s chest.
“Good lord,” I uttered. So Mr. Poe’s enemies had finally caught up with him.
“The bullet went straight into his heart,” the attendant went on. It is a small caliber, too. It must have come from one of those new pistols that one can conceal in a vest pocket.”
I suddenly grew cold. “You mean a Philadelphia Deringer?” I heard myself asking.
“Yes, that’s what they’re called, Deringers. From the size of the hole, I would say that is precisely what this man was shot with.”
* * * *
That evening in my room, I examined the gun that had been tossed into my possession. While I could not prove that it was the same weapon that had killed David Poe, I suspected that to be the truth, just as I suspected that the man’s body had been left in a public place because the killer wanted it to be discovered. There was a conspiracy of some sort going on, and the decision to saddle me with the pocket pistol was a key part of it. But what in heaven’s name was it?
The first peel of eleven sounded from a nearby church tower, and I prepared for bed, hoping the following day might freshen my mind sufficiently to take on the mystery anew. I had no sooner blown out the candles and crawled between the sheets when I heard a commotion outside in the hallway, followed by a forceful knock and the cry: “Police! Open up!”
My instinct was to conceal the Deringer under the mattress before opening the door, but I quickly realized that, were it to be found, I would appear guilty of concealment, and therefore the object of suspicion. Instead I relit the candle and went to the door to open it before the police broke through. A burly police sergeant burst into the room; behind him were three other officers, two of them wielding truncheons and one carrying a lantern. The sergeant demanded my name, which I gave him. “Please tell me what this is about,” I demanded in return.
“It’s about a dead man in the morgue,” the sergeant said. “Someone you knew, according to the attendant.”
“I met the man, yes. In fact, I identified him.”
One of the officers was now staring at the table and its contents. “Sergeant Broughton, look at this,” he said, pointing to the Philadelphia Deringer.
“Mm-hmmm. Is that what you used to kill him?”
“I did
not kill anyone,” I said. “However, I believe that pistol to be the one that caused his death. It was planted on me to fabricate an illusion of guilt.”
“Really.”
“Yes, sergeant, really. I have been investigating the circumstances of the man whose body lies in the morgue. If you need verification of my actions, speak with Tom Macgowan of the American and Commercial Advisor.”
“Were you with Tom Macgowan earlier this evening?”
“Yes, we were at the morgue.”
“That’s very interesting.”
“I detect a note of disbelief in your voice, sergeant. If you do not believe me, then by all means, go speak with Tom.”
“That will be a bit difficult, since Mr. Macgowan is the reason we are here. It is his body lying in the morgue with a bullet through its middle.”
I was too overcome with shock at the news of Tom’s murder to resist being restrained and transported to the city jail in Biddle Street. The cell in which I was placed was dark and miserably uncomfortable, and my only company was a snoring sot in the adjoining cell. I demanded that the sergeant notify Samuel Bellwether of my predicament, and then spent a night of fitful rest, desperate in the hopes that Old Sam might come to my rescue. I must have slept some, since I experienced awakening in the cell the next morning. After consuming a loathsome breakfast of gruel and bread, I was told I had visitors. Hopeful that Mr. Bellwether would be one of them, I was unable to conceal my distress when Hadley and Curlowe appeared.
“Nice cage, little birdy,” Curlowe sneered. “You know, Jed, I think we’ve underestimated the pup here. He’s come up with a con for the books.”
“What are you talking about?” I said, fighting to stave off a headache.
“You came running into Old Sam’s office pretending that you’d stumbled over a murder case, when you were really the murderer the whole time.”
“That’s a lie.”
“So what’s the story, puppy? You think you can prove you’re a real man by going out and killing someone, like they teach you at West Point Finishing School for Young Ladies?”
Headache or not, I charged the bars of my cel and thrust my hand through, hoping to grasp Curlowe’s miserable neck, but he managed to step aside with surprising agility. Beside him, Hadley grinned. “You struck a nerve there, Pete,” he said. “Junior here needed to prove how tough he was, but he had to find some old, wrecked, one-handed rummy who couldn’t fight back to do it. Then his friend at the newspaper found out and he had to kill him, too.”
“How is it you seem to know so much about this case?” I asked.
“All we know is what our friends upstairs have told us,” Curlowe said. “Or did you even realize that the force here in town and Jed and I are still like that?” He clasped his ham-like hands together in what appeared to be a secret handshake.
“Forget it, Pete,” Hadley said. “We’ve wasted enough time here. All we wanted to do was by and say goodbye, junior. We’ll be sure to come to your hanging.”
The two of them left, and I seated myself on the cell’s filthy cot. Clearly I was not going to be released any time soon, so I set about filling my incarceration time by striving to puzzle out what was happening around me. The deaths of Edgar and David Poe were explainable if one accepted the old man’s theory that people were after him for debts, but why on earth had Tom Macgowan been killed? Moreover, why was I being set up for his murder?
After a half-hour of rumination I had achieved little save for a severe throbbing of the temples. It was then that I heard voices and footsteps coming toward the cell. Sergeant Broughton came into view first, and to my great relief, I saw that he was being accompanied by Samuel Bellwether! “Sir!” I cried, rising. “Thank you for coming!”
“Five minutes,” the sergeant said, and then lumbered back out.
Old Sam sighed and threw up his hands. “You don’t do anything half-way, do you?” he asked.
“You have to believe that I am innocent, Mr. Bellwether.”
“Oh, I’m not doubting that, but you have managed to get yourself into a pretty thick jam. You have any idea what you’re going to do about it?”
“All I can state with any certainty is that I know what I am not going to do, which is be available to fetch your growlers of ale. You will have to send Hadley or Curlowe instead.”
“That’ll be the day,” Old Sam said. “Hadley’s father died of drink so he’d like to see every saloon closed and every sot run out of town. As for Curlowe, he stays out of saloons out of deference to Jed, but if he were to go back inside one, all of Hannibal’s elephants couldn’t drag him back out. If I want an afternoon drink, I’ll have to start going back for it myself. As for your problem, son, I know a lawyer fellow who’s pretty cagey. Had a client once who was charged with murder, and got him off without even though he’d been caught red-handed. Let me contact him for you.”
Sergeant Broughton eventually returned to announce that the five minute consultation was over. I thanked Mr. Bellwether profusely and watched him leave.
I lay back down on the cot in the cell and closed my eyes, hoping it would ease my persistent headache, and actually began to drift off to sleep. Then my eyes flashed open as a realization penetrated my brain. “Great heavens, could it be?” I asked the cell walls. “Could it really be?” Leaping for the bars, I cried: “Sergeant!” After several such cries, Broughton appeared, with an officer in tow.
“What the matter with you now?”
“Sergeant, I believe I know who killed old Mr. Poe.”
“I believe I do, too, and you’d save us a lot of trouble if you’d just confess.”
Ignoring his comment, I explained to him what I now believed to be the truth behind the murders of David Poe, his unfortunate son, and probably Tom Macgowan as well. Clearly Broughton was receiving the theory with skepticism, but I had one important question to ask him. I put it to him and his response chased away any doubt in my mind as to the identity of the killer. Finally he said: “You do understand that the man you are accusing of these killings is someone I’ve known for quite a while, don’t you?”
“Are you duty bound to arrest only strangers?” I asked.
Sergeant Broughton scratched his head. “Well, I suppose I could go talk to him.”
“I have a better idea,” I said, once more explaining myself, and anticipating the policeman’s cry of protest. It took another ten minutes of arguing, but finally Sergeant Broughton agreed to let me test my theory. “I’ll let you out,” he said, unlocking the door, “but I’ll have a man on you. If you even think about fleeing you will regret it.”
“Upon my honor, sergeant, I will not flee.”
I had no reason to flee. But I did need to get word to the Bellwether Detective Agency that I had been released, which Sergeant Broughton agreed to facilitate. He also agreed to see that a letter I was hastily writing was delivered to a particular person; in it I asked the recipient to meet me at seven o’clock at Clancy’s Chop House, an establishment in which I occasionally took my dinner, which was a street down from the Town Crier. Then I went home to wait until the assigned time.
* * * *
Alas, patience has never been my strongest characteristic.
When I grew tired of pacing in my room I decided to go to the restaurant before the appointed time. I took my time walking there so that the policeman I knew was tailing me was never in doubt as to my intentions. Once at Clancy’s I took a corner table and ordered a coffee, and sat back to watch the door, waiting for my quarry.
Seven o’clock came and went, and my invited guest did not appear. Had I been foolish, thinking I could summon a killer into a public place? Or had he simply not received the letter? Or was I completely wrong in my the realization I had made from Samuel Bellwether casual comment?
By eight o’clock, I was forced to accept the truth that my plan had failed. I rose from my table and headed back to my rooming house.
It was nearly dark when I arrived there. I dragged myself up
the stairs and opened the door to my room, not even bothering to light the candle on the table. I knew the room well enough to navigate it in the dark. Removing my jacket and throwing it into a chair, I walked to the bed and stretched out on it, and ruminated about my future as a detective; nay, my future in general.
From somewhere in the darkened room, I heard the click of a pistol hammer. Bolting upright, I now saw a dark shadow standing against the window, barely discernable against the dying light of day. “Who is there?” I called out.
“The man you sent for,” a voice replied. The figure struck a match and touched it to the wick of the candle. In the dim glow I could see the barrel of the pocket pistol that was trained at me. “If you knew the first thing about detective work, you would know that only an idiot would walk into an obvious trap like the one you tried to set for me. I decided to meet you here instead.”
“How did you get in here?”
“A real detective wouldn’t have to ask that, either. Breaking and entering is an occasional aspect of the job.”
“What are you going to do with me?”
“I am going to witness your spoken confession, which will be followed by your anguished self-destruction—a bullet through the brain—which I will be powerless to prevent.”
“Do not think staging my suicide will go easy.”
“Easy or hard, it is only the end result that matters.”
“I’ve already told everything I know to the police.”
“You mean Broughton? My old chum when I was on the force? Once I have convinced him that you set out to incriminate me, to the point of making your desperate suicide look like it was done by my hand, he’ll beg my forgiveness for ever listening to you. But out of curiosity, just what did you tell Broughton?”
“I told him that you are responsible for the deaths of Edgar Allan Poe, David Poe, and Tom Macgowan. Both the old man and Tom you shot through the heart, though in the case of Edgar I have to assume you used some sort of poison which left him raving and delirious. Moreover, I believe that you assaulted me on the street, with the help of another, and planted the murder weapon on me, at least the one used on David Poe. The pistol in your hand I presume to be the one you used to murder Tom.”