The Ghost and the Dead Man's Library

special.”

“Yeah, so they’re old. So what?” Linda shrugged. “You can get the Poe stuff anywhere. It’s not like it’s out of print.”

“Allow me.” Brainert moved to the podium, a file folder full of papers in his hand. I returned to my seat next to Sadie.

“Eugene Phelps knew there was not much market for his Poes when he published them,” Brainert explained in his professorial tone. “Phelps also knew there would be limited interest in his dubious scholarship, his rambling introductions. That’s why he buried a secret code inside these books—three of them, in fact.”

“Codes?” Fiona sounded almost breathless. “Like in The Da Vinci Code?”

Brainert appeared to have sucked on a lemon. “Kind of like that, Fiona. Only without the secret societies and that nonsense about Mary Magdalene.”

“No loose women!?” Seymour cracked. “Sheesh, that’s the best part.”

Bud slammed his hammer. “I want to hear about those codes.”

“I’m sure you do,” Brainert said. “According to solicitation letters Eugene Phelps sent out to subscribers in the 1920s, there are three codes buried inside these editions. The solution to all three riddles was to reveal the existence and location of a literary and artistic treasure, or so Eugene Arthur Phelps claimed.”

Bud Napp snorted. “Don’t you think that the premium for that particular prize might have expired after all these years?”

“Or maybe someone already claimed this marvelous treasure,” Mr. Koh said.

“Anyway it just sounds nuts,” grumbled the skeptical Bud.

Brainert nodded. “Maybe. But there is at least one code, which was solved by a scholar named Dr. Robert Conte. Penelope, you may recall that my colleague Nelson Spinner mentioned him? Well, I looked up his research, and I have the Conte paper right here.”

Seymour crossed his arms above his thick waist and stared at Brainert. “This had better be good.”

“Dr. Conte did a thorough textual analysis of the Phelps books as compared to the now-standard Poe text accepted as correct by the Ford Foundation and the Library of America—”

Bud brought the hammer down. “In English, if you please, Professor. And cut to the chase.”

Brainert sighed. “Dr. Conte determined that there are errant letters in the first story of each volume of the Phelps Poe books. They look like typographical errors, but if you put them all together and reverse their order, it spells out an actual sentence—” He glanced at the papers on the podium in front of him. “Mystic Library east wall sunset reveals all.”

I heard Jack Shepard groan in my head. This is starting to sound like decoder ring hooey.

“Is this riddle meant to reveal a hidden secret about the library in Mystic, Connecticut?” Sadie asked.

“That’s what Dr. Conte believed, but he was dead wrong. According to my own research”—Brainert grinned and straightened his bow tie—“when Eugene Arthur Phelps was editing his Poes, he lived in a large mansion at the cross streets of Plum and Armstrong in Newport. In the 1940s, the house was converted into apartments and renamed The Arms, but the mansion’s name when Phelps lived there was Mystic House.

“Ahhh!” said the Quibblers.

“Inside this Mystic House there was a large, well stocked library, much of it dedicated to the study of Edgar Allan Poe.”

Seymour arched his eyebrow. “Was?” he said.

Brainert nodded. “The place was destroyed by a fire in 1956.”

Bud threw up his hands. “Then I was right. The treasure is lost.”

“Frankly, I don’t think this treasure ever existed.” Linda Cooper-Logan waved her hand, her silver and jade bracelets janging. “Except as a figment of Eugene Phelps’s imagination. But I guess anyone who becomes obsessed with Edgar Poe is a little crazy, right?”

Brainert sighed. “Eugene Phelps was a tragic figure. An eccentric, and something of a romantic, too. But I doubt he was crazy, Linda. In fact, it was easy to find parallels between Edgar Allan Poe’s and Eugene Arthur Phelps’s life that may have fueled the latter’s obsession with the former.”

“Beside the fact that both men have the same initials, what else have you got,” Seymour asked. “And by the way, I have the same initials as Sharon Tate. Using your logic, I should be murdered by a crazy, Manson family–type cult.”

“We should be so lucky,” Fiona muttered.

“Watch it, bird lady! Mail can get lost, you know.”

Brainert ignored the bickering and pressed on. “As you know, Poe was the son of a beautiful stage actress who died when he was just a child. Phelps’s mother was a trained opera singer who died of tuberculosis when he was four. After his mother’s demise, Poe was adopted by a wealthy family named the Allans. Frances Allan loved Poe like a son; Mr. John Allan was cold and indifferent. Mrs. Allan died when Poe was nineteen and in military service. Her death left him once again bereft and motherless, with a stepfather who neither appreciated nor wanted him. Eugene Phelps had an indifferent father as well. After the death of his wife, Eugene’s father remarried, and the couple spent the next fifteen years traveling the world. Eugene remained in New England, raised by a string of nannies and servants—”

“Life in a Newport mansion,” Seymour cut in. “Poor him. I could think of worse things—like the life of a mailman.”

“Loneliness haunts rich and poor alike. Nobody is immune.” Sadie’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“No, Seymour is right,” said Brainert. “At least Eugene Phelps inherited his family’s money. But like Poe, he married late in life to a very young bride. Unfortunately for Phelps, she died of tuberculosis five years later and he never remarried.”

“And Poe?” Linda asked.

“The pattern for Poe’s life began early and never changed. He became defined by loneliness and alienation, and a hopeless quest for love and acceptance. But Poe was doomed to forever be an outcast. His poetry and prose were sometimes controversial, and in his literary criticism, Poe attacked the leading lights of his day, which didn’t make him popular. In a way, Poe was his own worst enemy.” Brainert shook his head. “But saddest of all, the women in Poe’s life always died, leaving him alone and loveless. After losing his stepmother, Poe married a teenaged cousin when he was twenty-seven. But Virginia Clemm was weak and sickly and hovered near death for many years. Eventually she died of consumption, just like Poe’s mother.”

“How tragic.” Linda sighed.

“Yes,” Brainert said. “Though loss and mourning ultimately fueled Poe’s art and led to the composition of his greatest works, eventually tragedy—and alcohol—took their toll.”

During Brainert’s recounting of Poe’s difficult life, I saw Sadie become more and more emotional.

“How did it end?” Linda asked.

“In his final few years, Poe became a pathetic figure,” Brainert continued. “Though his writings made him famous, there was little joy and less financial gain in this recognition. Poe wandered the country from Baltimore to Philadelphia and through the Antebellum South, desperately courting a number of women, simply because he could not cope with life alone.”

Sadie jumped to her feet. Tears she’d been trying to hold back spilled onto her cheeks. She fled the room without a word.

For a moment, everyone sat in an uncomfortable silence. “My aunt is still getting over the loss of her friend Peter,” I explained. “I’d better go see if she’s okay—”

“Let me, Pen.”

Before I could even rise, Bud Napp was on his feet and heading for the doorway. I wasn’t surprised. Ever since he’d lost his wife to cancer, Bud had been a good customer of Buy the Book. “Turns out, good reading’s good company in the lonely hours,” he’d once told us.

He got started by working through his wife’s old pile of Agatha Christies. Soon, Sadie was suggesting some newer authors (although Miss Marple still remains his all-time favorite), and the two seniors had struck up a friendship. Lately, they’d been seeing each other outside the bookstore, for the occasional dinner or drive to Providence.

“So where do we go from here?” Seymour asked after Bud left. “If there was a treasure, it’s gone up in