The Poe Shadow

'Perhaps that is the problem, my friend.'

'Yes.' He hesitated and cleared his throat. He was now hacking at fish without looking down at his hands or at the heads shooting off them. 'Any event-poor soul, must have been, that Poe. Died over at that creaky ol' Washington College Hospital some weeks back, I heard. My sister's husband knows a nurse there, who says, according to another nurse who spoke to a doctor-demonish busybodies, these women-who said Poe wasn't right in his upper story, that as he lay there he called out a name over and over before he…well, that is,' he shifted to a whisper of great sensitivity, 'before he croaked. God have mercy on the weak.'

'You said he called a name, Mr. Wilson?'

The fishmonger sloshed around his words to remember. He sat at his stool and began picking out unsold oysters from a barrel, carefully prying each one open and checking them for pearls before discarding them with philosophical regret. The oyster was the consummate Baltimore native, not only because it was enterprising and could be traded but because it possessed the always-present possibility of an even more valuable treasure inside. Suddenly the fish dealer clucked exultantly.

'‘Reynolds,' it was! Right, that's it, ‘Reynolds'! I know because she kept saying it when she told me over supper, and on our plates were the last good soft-shell crabs of the season.'

I asked him to think hard and be certain.

'‘Reynolds, Reynolds, Reynolds!'' he said with some offense at my doubt. 'That's how he was calling it out, all through the night. She said she couldn't pluck it out of her brain after she heard of it. Creaky ol' hospital-should be burnt down, I say. I knew a Reynolds in my youth who threw stones at infantrymen- he was a demonish character, no mistake, Squire Clark.'

'But did Poe ever mention a Reynolds before?' I asked myself out loud. 'A family member, or…'

The fish dealer's enjoyment of the scene lessened, and he stared at me. 'This Mr. Poe was a friend of yours?'

'A friend,' I said, 'and a friend of all who read him.'

I bid my client a hasty good evening with much gratitude for the remarkable service he had provided me. I had been permitted to hear Poe's very last utterance to this earth (or nearly the last, anyhow), and in it some retort, some revelation, some remedy to the slashing and the cutting of the press might be recovered. That single word meant there was something to be found, some life left of Poe's for me to discover.

***

Reynolds!

I spent countless hours searching through Poe's letters to me and through all of his tales and verse to detect any sign of Reynolds. Tickets to exhibitions and concerts went unused; if Jenny Lind, the 'Swedish Nightingale,' were singing in town, I would have been among my books all the same. I could almost hear my father direct me to put all this away and return to my law books. He would say (so I imagined), 'Young men like yourself should observe that Industry and Enterprise can slowly do anything Genius does with impatience-and many things Genius cannot. Genius needs Industry as much as Industry needs Genius.' I felt suddenly, each time I opened another Poe document, as though I was in an argument with Father, that he was trying to tear the very books out of my hands. It was not a wholly unwelcome feeling to encounter: in fact, I think it actually pushed me forward. Besides, in my capacity as a man of business I had promised Poe, a prospective client, that I would defend him. Perhaps Father would have commended me.

Hattie Blum, meanwhile, called at Glen Eliza with her aunt frequently. Whatever disapproval on their part had developed from my recent transgression had passed, or at least been suspended. Hattie was as thoughtful and generous in our conversations as ever. Her aunt, perhaps, was more watchful than usual, and seemed to have developed the dark eyes of a secret agent. Of course, my intense preoccupations, along with my general tendency to grow quiet when others talked, meant the women in my drawing room addressed each other more than me.

'I do not know how you bear it,' said Hattie, looking up at the high domed ceiling. 'I could not suffer a house as enormous as Glen Eliza alone, Quentin. It takes bravery to have too much space for yourself. Don't you think, Auntie?'

Auntie Blum snorted out a laugh. 'Dear Hattie becomes terribly lonesome when I leave her for an hour with only the help for company. They can be dreadful.'

One of my domestics came from the hall and refreshed the ladies' tea.

'Not so, Auntie! But with my sisters gone,' Hattie began, then paused, with a slight and uncharacteristic blush.

'Because they've all married,' her aunt said quietly.

'Of course,' I agreed after a long pause from both Blum ladies suggested a comment on my part.

'With my three sisters out of the house, well, it can seem awfully desolate at times, like I must fend for myself but I do not even know against what. Haven't you ever had a feeling like that?'

'On the other hand,' I said, 'dear Miss Hattie, there is a certain peace to it, separated from the bustle of the streets and the concerns of other people.'

'Oh, Auntie!' She turned jovially to the other woman. 'Perhaps I crave the bustle too much. Do you think our family blood runs too warm for Baltimore after all, Auntie?'

A word about the woman being addressed, the one sitting in front of the hearth on an armchair as if it were a throne, the stately dame with a shawl wrapped around her as though it were a monarch's robe, Auntie Blum-yes, a word more about her since her influence will not diminish as our story's complications set in. She was one of that stalwart species of lady who seemed lost in her choicest bonnets and social habits but in fact possessed an ability to jostle her listener to his core, in the same trifling tone with which she critiqued the table of a rival hostess. For instance, during the same visit to my parlor she found occasion to comment offhandedly, 'Quentin, isn't it fortunate, Peter Stuart finding you for his partner?'

'Ma'am?'

'Such a mind for business he possesses! He is a man of flat-footed sense, depend upon it. You are the younger brother of the pair, allegorically I mean, and soon shall be able to boast you are like him in all respects.'

I returned her smile.

'Why, it is like our Hattie and her sisters. One day she shall be as successful in society as them-I mean if she becomes a wife in time, of course,' Auntie Blum said, taking a long taste of the scalding hot tea.

I saw that Hattie looked away from both of us. Her aunt was the one person in the world who could remove Hattie's wonderful self-assurance. This angered me.

I placed my hand on Hattie's chair, near her hand. 'When that time comes, her sisters will learn how to be true wives and mothers from this woman, I assure you, Mrs. Blum. More tea?'

I did not want to mention anything related to Edgar Poe in their hearing on the chance that Auntie Blum would find some excuse to inform Peter, or write a concerned epistle on the state of my life to my great-aunt, with whom she had been very hand and glove over the years. I found myself relieved, indeed, when each interview with that woman closed without my having said a word about my investigations. However, the restriction would make me anxious to resume my recent searches as soon as the Blums had departed.

On this occasion, when I boarded an omnibus I was addressed by the conductor as though I had just spit tobacco juice on the floor. 'You!'

I had forgotten to hand over my ticket. An inauspicious start. After correcting this, the bus conductor painstakingly studied the portrait I held up for him before deciding the face was unfamiliar.

This portrait of Poe, published after his death, was not of the highest quality. But I believed it captured the essentials. His dark mustache, straighter and neater than his curling hair. The eyes, clear and almond shaped-eyes with restlessness almost magnetic. Forehead, broad and prominent above the temples, so that from certain angles he must look to have no hair-a man who could be all forehead.

As the doors closed and I was bumped into a seat by the line of oncoming passengers, a short and wide fellow tugged at my arm with the end of his umbrella.