Free The Blackest Bird by Joel Rose Page A

her he had been with a writer friend from Philadelphia, although he did not mention Poe’s name specifically.
    Colt confessed he dared not tell Miss Henshaw what had transpired earlier in the day, and pretended instead to be inspired from his meeting with the unnamed poet. He retired to his desk to write, although he said he was not able to compose a word. Eventually she became quiet and slept, her breath regulating, and only then did he follow suit, slipping into bed and, after a long period staring sight-lessly into the dark, eventually falling asleep as well.
    The next morning, having thought better of his predicament, he hired a burly man to carry the crate containing the body of Adams downstairs from the printing office. Refusing Colt’s assistance, therough, powerful man hefted the makeshift coffin onto his back, muscling it down the stairs and into the street. Colt said he then paid the brute some twelve cents for his efforts and went off to Broadway, where he located a cartman, who would in fact be his undoing. When reward was offered for any knowledge of the whereabouts of Adams, this was the lout who came forward to tell the authorities how he had taken a suspicious oblong box from Colt’s granite building to a packet bound for New Orleans lying in the East River at the foot of Maiden Lane.
    The boat had yet to sail, so the wooden crate was dug out from the hold, and sure enough, opening it, the captain and his mate found the printer, stinking, dead, stiff with rigor mortis, and in the most uncomfortable-appearing position.

12
Death of the Corkcutter
Daniel Payne
    T he killing of Samuel Adams by John Colt succeeded, finally, in driving the murder of Mary Rogers off the front page.
       
BODY FOUND IN BOX
    There was no question of Colt’s guilt. Here was his confession in full, printed word for word in the Herald .
    The rest of the penny papers were left to scramble, taking up mere points of law, exemplified by cogitation in that weekend’s Tattler:
PREMEDITATED MURDER OR SELF DEFENSE?
    The answer presumably to this curious legal conundrum would dictate whether “Homicide Colt,” as the headline writers had come to call him, would live or die.
    And so with this debate ongoing, public opinion found itself thusly consumed, until three weeks later, the sixth day of October, when all reverted once more to Mary Rogers.
    On that afternoon Mary’s betrothed, the forlorn corkcutter DanielPayne, haggard and worn, appeared at Mrs. Loss’s roadside inn, the Nick Moore House.
    As reported by Bennett on the front page of the New York Herald:
    Mr. Payne stood in the establishment and inquired of Mrs. Loss the exact location of the spot where Miss Rogers had met her death.
    The unhappy man then sat down and commenced to drink a number of brandies before stumbling out.
    Two days later Payne was discovered, an apparent suicide, on what was believed to be the exact spot of Mary Rogers’ murder, in the same small clearing where Mrs. Loss’s two sons, Oscar and Ossian, had found the scattered articles of her person, leading many to speculate, even conclude, that the corkcutter was guilty of his intended’s murder.
    Others besides Mrs. Loss had seen Mr. Payne drinking and wandering about the general area.
    Mr. Samuel Whitney, a patron of the Phoenix Hotel, told how Mr. Payne had appeared at the hotel bar late the night following Mrs. Loss’s encounter with him at the Nick Moore House.
    “He looked red and a little intoxicated,” Mr. Whitney said. “And he seemed weak and could hardly stand up.”
    During the course of the evening, Mr. Whitney further reported, Mr. Payne spoke to him in the following manner:
    “Suppose you know me? Well, I’m the man who was to have been mar ried to Mary Rogers.”
    Mr. Whitney said Mr. Payne then mumbled, “I’m a man of a good deal of trouble.”
    An empty and shattered bottle of laudanum from the Deluc Chemist on Nassau Street, only steps from the Rogerses’ home, was found near