by Joel Rose
“There are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, my dear Mr. Poe, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half-credence in the supernatural,” Hays replied, pushing the door to the barouche open from the inside. “I, sir, am but a weak and weary wanderer in pursuit of whatever ghosts and ghouls that might abound this ebon night.”
These words had been purloined by Hays directly from “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.” Unlikely as it was in this cold night air to have them regurgitated back at him, the afflicted author’s dark eyes softened with recognition. Hesitating only for an instant, Poe struggled aboard, taking the proffered seat opposite the high constable.
Old Hays turned his attention, barking the straggling Bowery drunkards out of the carriage’s way. Already, as far as Hays could see, the truck of the Forty Little Thieves with their casket load was long across Fourteenth Street and past the Union Park. Hays called to Balboa to lay leather to horseflesh. As they rolled past the inebriates at a lope, the stragglers did not even look up.
With Balboa bent at the reins, the barouche rushed up Fourth Avenue. The Negro driver cut around the park, as had presumably those of whom he was in pursuit. They followed the tracks of the Haarlem Railroad before veering off at Thirtieth Street onto Middle Road, reaching Fifth Avenue and swinging north on this steeped piece of roadway, as the pursued hopefully had, eventually to come to the Forty-second Street, where lay in a most pleasant copse of wood and hill, illuminated by icy moonlight, the new municipal distributing reservoir, tippling with water funneled from Croton.
Here again there was no sign of the grave robbers. Balboa pulled the reins and shouted at the matched horses, “Whoa!” and he and Hays, talking rapidly, weighed their options (High Bridge or Kings Bridge?) before deciding to continue northeast with plan of eventually cutting due east in the nether reaches toward the Haarlem River, to cross above Hell’s Gate, where they hoped they might intercept Tommy Coleman and his gang, surmising their flight up Broadway and the Bloomingdale Road anticipated a dash east to the Bronks (even Connecticut), presumably to rendezvous.
As the barouche continued its way through the night, past the Irish pig farms and German vegetable gardens, through the irregular terrain of swamps, bluffs, and rocky outcroppings that studded mid-island, Hays first launched his questioning what was Poe doing at the graveside of John Colt.
Poe, sitting facing the high constable, stared at him peculiarly. He shook his head slowly as if it were indeed a painful weight. “I was holding vigil at the final resting place of a friend,” he said.
“And when you saw those rough lads digging up his grave only to abscond with the coffin?”
“I felt outrage. I had every intention to follow and redeem the remains of my associate.”
Hays gauged him. “Admirable notion on your part, Mr. Poe, if improbable,” he said.
“It is true my best intentions proved implausible,” Poe responded. “It did not take long to come to the realization the cause I had undertaken was hopeless.”
“So you allowed yourself to become distracted at that bookshop?”
“We all have our weaknesses, High Constable.”
“And might I ask what exactly was displayed there in the window of the bookman that caught you strongly enough to distract you from your initial intention?”
Poe’s eyes watered. “Dickens,” he muttered. “Dickens, Dickens, and more Dickens. Ah, the omnipresence of that blessed individual. His Barnaby Rudge, that cursed crow Grip.”
In Poe’s voice Hays heard the tinge of sad lamentation, if not envy. “Your volumes were not visible?” Hays asked. “Not even the Ladies’ Companion with your ‘Marie Rogêt’ story?”
Poe blinked several times. He laughed mirthlessly. “See, High Constable, already you know me too well.”
AT EIGHTY-FOURTH STREET, near the colored enclave of Seneca Village, the steeples of its three churches ghostly in the night, Balboa swung the barouche onto a muddy lane, following northeast for more than half an hour, the deserted, well-worn cow path on its meandering way to the water’s edge. Here he reined the carriage. Standing still, the snuffling of the horses subsiding, surrounded otherwise by quietude, they listened to the lapping, stared at the choppy current of the East River, and then Balboa again whipped the horses, now due northward, this time all the distance to High Bridge, where they started to make their way over the rock outcroppings and across the tidal strait into the villages of the eastern shore.
Already it was nearing four in the morning. Hard pressed to the Manhattan shore rather than the Bronks, a flatboat passed near against the current. The waters shimmered from the whale-oil lanterns of the barge, towed along the towpath hugging river’s edge by a team of sorry-looking mules.
The only sound Hays heard at this point was the fast flow of the river itself rushing by the broad barge flank, mixed with the soft slap of waves as they smacked the vessel head-on.
Hays sat stolidly, watching the swirl of water below. Poe remained opposite him, perhaps a little more hunkered into himself than before, muttering under his breath as he stared down at the water, the current’s gyre.
“Nevermore,” Poe spoke, Hays knowing not why. “Evermore.” Then again, “Nevermore.”
In this manner he continued until Hays interjected. “Mr. Poe,” having to repeat his name not once but three times before finally gaining the troubled man’s attention. “Mr. Poe? Mr. Poe, please remember. Some short time ago, during his incarceration, John Colt paid me the service of extending a copy of the first installment of your story ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.’ My daughter later went out and procured the second. I must say I read both with fascination, and await the final chapter and your solution to the crime; a crime and solution that vex me to this moment. Mr. Poe, please, sir, you knew the maiden Mary Rogers?”
Hays awaits reply, considering this man, his puzzlement, his apparent trouble. Finally, when no answer comes, he says, “Mr. Poe, I am warning you, when I find myself in need to ascertain how wise or how unwise, how good or how wicked is a suspect, or what might the thoughts of this nemesis be, in accordance with that expression of his, I fashion that individual’s expression on my own face, as close to the real as possible, and then I exercise the patience to wait to see what thoughts or sentiments might arise in my mind, or better still, my heart, as if to match, and sometimes even to correspond with he whom I wish to know.”
Poe looked up at him then through forlorn eyes. His head still hung, and the hurt emanating from those exposed windows did not escape Hays.
“I did,” Poe murmured. “I did know her.”
“And my daughter tells me you have made claim to reveal who murdered Miss Rogers in the third installment of your story.”
Poe now struggled to sit up straight.
“I repeat, Mr. Poe, you and Mary Rogers, you were what to each other?”
Poe stammers. “We … M-Mary …” he struggles. “I …”
It is then and there that the high constable hears gunshots ringing out. At least a dozen, if not more. Distinct, echoing over the countryside. Distant pops and cracks, muffled by miles, reverberating over wooded land and flowing river, carried by the wind on the water, the crispness of the predawn air.
Hays turned his keenest attention in that westerly direction from where he surmised the shots had emanated. There was absolutely no telling, no seeing, nothing.
The night returned to stillness and silence, little more than the lapping of the river.
Hays looked back from where he had been peering into the utter blackness of tree and woods, trying to see that which was unseeable, what was miles away and invisible, as the barge on the river carried listlessly toward Spuyten Duyvil, the name, bastardized, Hays knew, from the first Dutch more than two hundred years before: “in spite of the devil.”
41
Ambush Below the Heights
From inside the barouche, racing alongside the Haarlem River, past the Macombs Dam, through the dark an
d tangled woods of upper Manhattan Island, Hays shouted up his instructions of direction to Balboa, given the dark road and breakneck speed, Hays, who knew every nook and cranny, hell-bent to reach the source of that gunfire, to atone for that which he had been delinquent.
Opposite him, Poe remained, muttering to himself, doubled over into his own lap, his head covered by his arms.
Hays ignored him.
Eventually the high constable shouted for the carriage to cut sharply west until they attained the oft-traveled route, the Kings Bridge Road. Below and to the south he espied the sparse, flickering lights of Haarlem Village.
“South here!” Hays cried to Balboa.
Poe stirred with the sound of the high constable’s bark, but made no further discernible move or action, not rising from his bent and fraught position.
At this juncture, from what seemed far away but may have been closer, Hays thought he could hear the faintest indication of the shouting of men working in concert, their voices raised so as to be carried faintly on the wind.
Balboa slapped the horses with the reins. The carriage continued in its singular direction until the high constable, listening with all his concentration, cried abruptly, “Left here!”
A hundred yards off the main road, they took up an eastern path through the woods toward the Morningside Heights. Ten feet from the precipice edge, Balboa reined the matched geldings and lit from the carriage.
He returned almost instantaneously. “Mr. High, come see quick, suh,” he said, and offered his broad brown hand down to Hays.
Following Balboa, the high constable made his way through the shrubs and low growth to a vantage point at the cliff crest.
Far below Hays could make out Tommy Coleman’s wagon being righted. On the rocky ground John Colt’s empty mahogany coffin lay askew, its lid torn off, battered and splintered.
“Hardly seem real, Mr. High,” Balboa said.
A twisted corpse lay on the ground. A group of boys stood to one side beneath a rogue growth of ailanthus trees, their backs to the cliff, hugging themselves against the wind and cold. From this distance, Hays could not make out who they were for sure. A group of armed men stamped and milled about in front of them, occasionally joking and laughing among themselves, but for all intent ignoring the golgoths.
Even from this elevation and distance, however, Hays was able to recognize at least one of these armed individuals. Hays despaired what Sergeant McArdel, too familiar by his gait and manner, would be doing down there with this array.
A lone voice carried up on the wind. “Shoot the wid a few more times in the mummer.”
Hays knew it McArdel’s order.
Three men stepped forward and aimed their muskets point-blank into the dead man’s obscured face. The loud blasts resounded. The corpse jumped.
Then, as Hays watched, the now-faceless, disfigured body was fitted back into its wooden coat. The lid was replaced, the brass fittings of the coffin twinkling, and the box lifted, then tossed by two oafs back into the righted flatbed.
Hays nudged Balboa. “Let’s go,” he whispered, “I’ve seen enough,” starting back through the undergrowth before turning one last time to catch the armed men grouping, the procession forming presumably for return to the city.
In the carriage, Poe had not moved. His head remained cradled in his arms. “Nevermore … evermore …” He had resumed his incessant chant.
Balboa called softly to the horses and they nudged into motion, the black barouche following the comparatively easy path of the Bloomingdale Road due south toward town.
As they rolled, Poe began to speak, although his voice was garbled and unclear.
“From the first, High Constable,” he mumbled, making no attempt to meet Hays’ eyes, “I have viewed you that rara avis en terra—a kindred soul. I beg you, sir, do not abandon me now.”
“Abandon you?” Hays answered, very nearly astonished. “How so, sir?”
Poe’s long and delicate fingers clutched at his black and matted hair. He did not lift his head. “I loved Mary Rogers,” he said. “I did not abandon her. She abandoned me.”
Poe’s great head bobbed and fell. Hays made attempt to inquire further, but Poe failed to respond.
At Eighty-fourth Street the carriage came upon a farm with several barns in the rear, a small rudimentary shed, a silo, and a number of other outbuildings hedging the back acreage. A phalanx of farm trucks stood, their dray teams tied at several of the yard’s numerous hitch rails. The animals pushed with their muzzles at random bales of hay, thrown for them on the hoary, cold ground.
Even at this early hour there was activity, the farm a livestock and produce depot, the truck farmers and jobbers engaged already with their morning pickups and deliveries.
Hays called to Balboa to pull in.
Dutifully he obliged. He reined the horses, sliding the carriage in skillfully among other vehicles where it might not so easily be singled out by any casual viewer passing on the road.
It was not long before Hays heard the clatter of horses, the iron wagon wheels riding the ruts.
The processional of armed men had ascended the Heights, regained the main thoroughfare of the Bloomingdale Road, and was now rolling by. All in line were grim and silent. Hays had opportunity now to see more than some were militia, others police. No one saw or noticed the high constable’s barouche where it sat hidden under a swamp maple.
Hays had indeed recognized his sergeant from the Night Watch. It was McArdel all right, standing the column lead.
Tommy Coleman and his cohorts were nowhere in evidence, under custody or otherwise, although the wagon carrying the casket was undoubtedly theirs.
Poe stirred from his oblivion. His eyes twitched.
“If you don’t mind, Mr. Hays,” he coughed, struggling to sit up, “I find necessity to bid adieu.”
Hays turned, “Wait!” but before he could restrain him, Poe had pushed the carriage door open and stumbled to the hard ground.
“Mr. High, should we follow, suh?” Balboa called from above, motioning after McArdel and the line of wagon, casket, horses, and men already past.
Hays stared after Poe as he disappeared, stiffly hobbling behind the white farmhouse.
“Yes,” the high constable said, his stomach hollow. “By all means, follow.”
42
The Band Undone
Having, for whatever reason, slept fitfully, wracked by worry, Olga Hays sits at the kitchen table at noon, awaiting her father’s return, nursing her third cup of Javanese of the morning, when she hears the deep tones of voice in the street, directly outside the door.
“Guh’night, Mr. High,” Balboa says. “Or should I say guh’day, suh?”
The kitchen door opens with Balboa’s tired laughter, and Old Hays enters. Olga hurries to help him out of his cloak, off with his boots, but he is in no good mood, and does little talking.
Instead, after sitting for a minute or two, he exhales heavily, kisses her, and takes the stairs, turning at the top of the landing to say, “Olga, the day’s prints, I need them all, and your opinion, when I wake.”
Later, after a solitary midafternoon luncheon of vegetable soup, bread and butter, Olga dutifully dons her Persian fur coat and matching Persian hat, both once her mother’s, and walks through the brisk, cutting air to the corner for the afternoon papers requested by her father.
At the news shed it is not hard to see. In 48-point type the Herald headline proclaims:
COLT UNDONE!
Even before arriving back home on Lispenard Street, Olga is engrossed. She reads fixedly as she walks, only taking time out to manage the doorknob.
The byline is an accustomed one, that of James Gordon Bennett.
Late last night below the Morningside Heights a small caravan was observed proceeding due north at swift rate of speed by local sheriff authorities, including Haarlam Village and Manhattanville office deputies, a contingent of militia soldiers, and representatives from the Night Watch and city p
olice.
The police received anonymous tip that a band of ghouls had robbed a fresh grave in the city and were out to blackmail the grieving family. Little did the authorities suspect that the grave robbed was that of the Homicide, John C. Colt.
Surprised by the confrontation, the gang turned out to be a cutthroat band representing the Forty Little Thieves, a notorious Five Points collective of wild boys and apaches, none more than seventeen years old, known for their wanton viciousness.
Until recently this group had been led by Tommy Coleman, younger brother of the infamous, now deceased, gangster Edward Coleman, who met his maker three years ago on the gallows in the Tombs, perpetrator of the murder of his wife, the well-known, in this metropolis, and much-admired “Pretty Hot Corn Girl.”
This Mr. Coleman, too, had been condemned to death. In his case, for the murder, ironically, of the very sister of the very Pretty Hot Corn Girl his older sibling had seen fit to murder, a young woman, not much more than a girl, who had, much to her credit, according to all credence, spurned her brother-in-law’s first advances.
Mr. Coleman had also been charged and convicted of killing his wife’s alleged lover, one Ruby Pearl, a butcher at the Centre Market, and her small daughter, aged four years.
But before said sentence could be commissioned, Mr. Coleman engineered his escape.
It has been surmised this roué fled the prison the night the cupola dome of the Palace of Justice was set ablaze, the same night Mr. Colt was found dead in his cell, the hilt of a jewel-encrusted dagger protruding from his lifeless chest.
Olga reaches for her tea, having switched after lunch from the dark, thick coffee. Lifting cup and saucer, seated at the kitchen table, she thinks she hears her father stirring now in his bedroom.
For some seconds she listens intently, but hears nothing more. After another sip of Ceylon leaf, realizing him still asleep (due to the clarity of his rather loud snoring, penetrating through the floorboards from above), she resumes reading Bennett’s depiction of the last night’s activities: