Edgar Poe is drunk when he answers the door, and this fact, along with the late hour, leads to a predictable outcome: Mr. Poe slams the door in Walt’s face. Walt knocks again. Nothing. And again. Nothing. And again. Mr. Poe is properly pissed off this time and engages in a one-sided shouting match until Walt shoehorns this in: “We met at the committee meeting tonight! You told me about the conspiracy! I need your help!”
The anger slips away now, and his voice softens. “Why didn’t you say so?” He opens the door and steps aside so Whitman can pass.
The room is fastidiously arranged and sparsely decorated—a rug in the center of it, colored deep red and gold, a sofa and chair atop it that have been arranged perfectly, and between the sofa and chair, a table and a lamp. A fire flickers in a stone fireplace. Above the hearth is a portrait of Virginia: her long black hair and eyes, and her pale skin. A writing desk sits in the corner near the fireplace. Each neat stack of books and the papers thereon suggest purpose, a trademark very much unlike his prose, Walt reflects.
Whitman sits on the red sofa, Mr. Poe in the indigo chair. He strikes Walt as a sickly sort, clearly intoxicated, and yet full of wit and intellect. His dark hair is wild, and his breathing is short and labored as if the man is out of breath.
“Nobody believed me,” Mr. Poe says. “Nobody until you.”
A voice calls out from the other room. “Edgar? Can you bring me my toddy?”
“But of course, dear—be right there!” Mr. Poe smiles at Walt. “I’ll return shortly.”
Whitman notices the spring in his step as Mr. Poe excuses himself. While he is gone, Walt stands and has a look around. He stops at Poe’s desk, where he notices that among the papers and books lays a copy of Franklin Evans. He picks up the novel—his novel—and shakes his head. Henry was right. It is not good. He thought it was good—indeed, it was the best he could manage at the time, but he knows now he was simply trying too hard to write something that a lot of people would buy. As he holds the book, he feels ashamed of his efforts. And now the manuscript of his follow-up, The Madman, has burned up in the fire. Perhaps for the best.
He thumbs through the latest edition of Snowden’s Ladies’ Companion to Poe’s third installment of “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.” In the story, C. Auguste Dupin, the main character from “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” never actually solves the murder; he only tells the reader how the murderer might be found, something Walt finds strange. He turns to the last page of the story and discovers handwritten notes on Abraham Stowe’s innocence and a list of names including Mayor Morris and Isaiah Rynders. Walt sets down the magazine when Mr. Poe returns with a bottle of whiskey.
“She’s comfortable now,” he says, “the poor thing.”
“I hope she regains her health soon.”
Mr. Poe nods slowly. “You’ve read my ‘Marie Rogêt.’ You know what I believe.” Mr. Poe appears more at ease now and sits down again in the indigo chair. “What is it that I can help you with?”
“You set out to solve the Mary Rogers murder with your story.” Walt takes his place on the couch again.
“Yes.”
“And yet the story offers no solution.”
“I began that story thinking I knew enough to ratiocinate the solution, but the more I studied the murder, the more dead ends I encountered. I know Abraham Stowe did not kill Mary Rogers. Her body was staged at the murder scene to appear bludgeoned, but she died long before the bludgeoning. I consulted with a number of doctors who all confirmed my suspicions. We exhumed the body, and they reexamined it, and they all agree that the cause of death was likely a botched abortion. But the questions remain: Who ordered it, who performed it, and why is it so important to cover it up?”
“And that’s why the story offers no solution?”
“I couldn’t pretend,” Poe says. “The story is my greatest failure. I promised the reader something I could not deliver. That’s why I’ve followed the Lena Stowe story so carefully. That’s why I had to be there tonight. You’re clearly encountering the same obstacles.”
“Isaiah Rynders told me the committee will not work. He said Miss Blackwell will hang despite her innocence, and he said I will die too if I don’t leave this alone.”
Mr. Poe pulls a small notebook and pencil from his coat pocket, scribbles a few notes. “And why won’t the committee work?”
Walt runs his finger along the sofa fabric.
Mr. Poe senses his hesitation. “I only want to know who it is we are up against, Mr. Whitman. If I’m going to risk my reputation, such as it is, I need to know.”
“Rynders told me that the committee was just for show, that it has already been shut down.”
“Ah.” Mr. Poe nods. “So he told you this after the meeting?”
Whitman nods.
“Well, then—tell me everything you know.”
Walt relates how he witnessed the sheriff’s murder, how James Warren is being tried in Samuel Clement’s place. He talks about Kenneth Barclay and Eli Quigley. He includes Henry Saunders’s disappearance and murder, Frankie Clement’s visit, and Walt’s own encounter with Samuel Clement. Whitman spares nothing, hoping that Mr. Poe will indeed help him. He concludes with his meeting with James Bennett and the committee of safety. “And now I’m here with you. That’s everything.”
“You poor dear.” Mr. Poe emerges from the chair, paces back and forth in front of the fire. He does this for what seems like several minutes before he turns to face Walt. “So you believe Mrs. Stowe did not kill her husband?”
“That’s correct.”
“Of course I agree with you,” he says. “But let me play devil’s advocate. They found the same arsenic on her person that killed Mr. Stowe, did they not?”
Whitman nods.
“Even if Mr. Stowe did not kill Mary Rogers, which I am most certain he did not, he had a history of being unfaithful to his wife, did he not?”
“So it seems, but—”
“Why, pray tell, do you think she is innocent?”
Walt considers his words carefully. “As I said at the meeting, his body was gutted like a deer and not dissected as suggested in the many accounts.”
“Including the coroner’s?”
“Yes.”
“Was this reported by anyone but you? Because your voice, I hate to say it, has been discredited. But Mr. Saunders’s dissection—that is interesting. As you know, I am no doctor, but I have been in dissection labs, and to gut a corpse like a deer, as you’ve put it, is not proper nor is it typical procedure. While that fact alone does not stand up in court as evidence for Miss Blackwell’s innocence, it certainly casts reasonable doubt.” He pauses. “Your friend Dr. Stowe, was his body found in a similar way?”
Walt nods.
“Suggesting—”
Whitman stands. “That the same person committed both murders, I know. It’s obvious—but how do we prove it when it seems every important city official prefers to look the other way? What good is the truth if no one will act on it?” Walt is shaking now. He goes to the desk, points to the whiskey. “May I?”
Mr. Poe nods.
Walt pours himself a half a whiskey and drinks it down. “I feel I’ve proved innocence—starting with Abraham, then with Lena—over and over, but no one listens. I saw Samuel Clement murder Jack Harris.”
“We have to force the mayor, the sheriff, and even Isaiah Rynders to act on the truth,” Mr. Poe says. “If we demonstrate that the bodies were cut in the same manner, that the first autopsy was fraudulent, and then make those results public, city officials will have to do something. The citizens will demand it.”
“It’s the only play we have left,” Whitman says.
Mr. Poe’s posture is wobbly and unsure, a stark contrast to his words, which are resolute and clear: “I wrote a story about a man who disinters his—”
“You mean ‘Berenice.’”
“Oh?” Mr. Poe raises his eyebrow. “You’ve read it? Well, then you know what I’m about to suggest.”
“I’m afraid I do,” Walt says, “because I came here tonight to suggest the same thing.”