time.”
“He has died as the result of congestion of the brain, brought about by irregular living, exposure, and aberration of the mind,” Dr. Cook responded to questions posed to him by High Constable Hays pertaining to the exact cause of death.
Hearing this, the acting mayor let out an unsettling, self-satisfied yelp, proclaiming to one and all, with the death by his own hand of the corkcutter Daniel Payne, the mystery of the murder of Mary Rogers was solved, the murderer unmasked, the puzzle complete.
“Obviously, the young man had been rebuffed by the segar girl,” Purdy lorded. “My friends, it is the only explanation that need be drawn,” he continued with his pontification. “Mr. Payne, in what can singularly be called a fury of rejection, commenced then to throttle her, and abuse her in a violent, intimate manner. He then proceeded to murder her on the spot of the very clearing where he himself has now died by his own hand. Warranted by every observation, here lies our culprit.”
Hays paid silent attention to this smugly delivered conclusion, fixing first the invidious acting mayor, then Coroner Cook, with his famous steady, cold gaze before declaring:
“Not so, gentlemen. I have made life study of the police science of physiognomy. Daniel Payne was not one to escape my scrutiny. He is not our man.”
OCTOBER 1842
It is a cold and rainy day on the streets of Philadelphia. Overhead, the slate gray of the sky is uniform, one somber shade. He has made plans with hope, as if hope might make a difference. His is the sudden uplift, the abrupt downward spiral. He blames magnetic fields gone haywire, celestial powers askew, the powers that be looking down on him askance, as he is convinced they have always done.
Sissy is dying. His wife is dying. She ruptured a blood vessel while singing. Since then his life has been one of constant despair. God help him, in his mind he has taken leave of her forever, and has undergone all of the agonies of her death.
He shoves his hands deep in the pockets of his greatcoat, the same greatcoat he wore as a cadet during his stint at West Point, but now, twelve years later, the garment so much worse for wear, a miserable reminder, one of so many, of his failure.
Muddie has done yeoman’s work. She has patched the heavy garment a dozen times: where the wool has worn thin, where the moths have lain in wait, where the insects have laid their eggs and watched them hatch. It is these hatchlings, the moths’ loathsome larval offspring, that have had their fill, leaving behind a dozen holes.
No matter, he reassures himself, moth holes are inevitable, even in the best of broadlooms.
But to be truthful, all those patches and darns are telling. Everything is telling on this man. He does not disguise well.
Yet he deems himself genius.
But if he is a genius, why is he not recognized? Why is he so poor, so destitute, he must beg to eat? Why does society reject him?
A man of his vast talents?
His name is Edgar Allan Poe, although he loathes the Allan part, and eschews it. He prefers to be known simply as Edgar Poe. Or Edgar A. Poe. Or E.A. Poe. Or Eddie Poe. Or even E.A.P., as in his first published work.
His darling little wife, his Sissy, his Virginia, calls him “Brother,” or “Buddy.” Sissy’s mother, Muddie, his aunt Maria Clemm (he and Sissy are first cousins), calls him Eddie or “dearest Eddie.” His stepfather, the despised John Allan, the Allan of Edgar Allan Poe, called him Ned.
He has no recollection of what his real father, the disappeared actor David Poe (Muddie’s brother), called him.
To his dead mother, Eliza Poe, née Arnold, “the Little Actress,” “America’s Sweetheart,” famous for her stage role as Little Pickle in The Spoiled Child, he seems to remember he was “darling.”
He tells himself it is his lack of tenacity. His rampant temerity. His passion. His emotion. The unrest in his bosom. The burrowing fear.
Stop!
He disgusts himself. His indulgence with self-pity is reprehensible.
What has he done to deserve this fate? He must stop this. He must. After all, everything could change. A letter has arrived. He has an offer. Some much-needed funds.
He has been invited by the family of John C. Colt, a vague acquaintance, to travel to New York City to write a final portrait of their young penitent, sitting in his jail cell, awaiting death. The letter signed by family patriarch Colonel Samuel Colt himself.
John Colt, “Handsome John,” “Homicide Colt,” “Colt the Homicide,” christened in the public prints “failed poet,” “doomed poet,” “poète maudit,” held in the Tombs, the New York House of Detention, for the murder of his publisher, Samuel Adams.
Poe could not help but smile to himself. He would have liked to do the same: Murder his publishers! Kill Billy Burton. Eviscerate James Harper.
Mr. Poe lives with his family, his women, in Quakerdom, in the City of Brotherly Love, in a small, neat, but only partially completed house on the rural edge of the city sprawl, on a quiet ordinary street named for a tree and a scourge: Locust.
His aunt Muddie, his cousin Sissy, the only ones left who love him.
Sissy, married to him when she had just turned thirteen; he twenty-six, twice her age.
Sissy so sick now, he has very nearly abandoned all hope. Yet with each accession of the disorder that plagues her, he loves her more dearly. He feels all the agonies of her death even as he watches her cling to her life with ever more desperation.
He admits to being constitutionally sensitive, nervous to a very unusual degree.
He rids himself of this thought. Here is opportunity to redeem himself, opportunity afforded by Colonel Colt and his family on behalf of the unfortunate John.
He kisses Muddie and Sissy goodbye. They kiss him back, say, “God’s speed, dearest Eddie.” He leaves the meager house in the middle of the day, a dark and brooding figure beneath a dark and brooding sky. He fingers the few coins remaining in his pants pocket, hopes there are enough for the rail ticket, the ferry across the river Styx.
The good Colonel Colt has forwarded him ten dollars as an advance against the completion of the word portrait of his brother John. He has given the lion’s share of the funds to Muddie for food and medicine for Sissy.
He has discovered an
