Free Poe shadow by Matthew Pearl Page B

gesturing with satisfaction at this guest. “He is known to us from the police courts as one of our most highly esteemed citizens and was a cousin to the deceased. You gentlemen are acquainted? Mr. Poe was kind enough to discuss your concerns with me, Mr. Clark,” Officer White continued. I already knew what would come next. “Mr. Poe believes there is no need for any examination. He stands quite content with what is known about his cousin’s premature death.”
    “But, Mr. Poe,” I argued, “you yourself said you were not able to learn what had happened in Edgar Poe’s final days! You see there is some great mystery!”
    Neilson Poe was busy covering himself in his cloak. As I looked upon him, I thought of his demeanor during our meeting and his manner toward his cousin. “I’m afraid there’s nothing more I can tell you about the end,” he had said to me in his office chambers. But, I now considered, did he mean he
knew
nothing else or he
would tell me nothing else
?
    I leaned in close to where Officer White sat, trying to confide in him. “Officer, you cannot—Neilson believes Edgar Poe is better dead than alive!” But Officer White cut me short.
    “And Mr. Herring here agrees with Mr. Poe,” he went on. “Perhaps you know him—the lumber merchant? He is another one of Mr. Poe’s cousins, and he was the first relative to be present at the Fourth Ward polls, which were at Ryan’s hotel, the day Mr. Poe was found delirious there.”
    Henry Herring stood at the door of the station house, waiting for Neilson Poe. At the mention of his early presence upon Edgar Poe’s discovery, Herring dropped his head. He was of a stouter build and shorter stature than Neilson, and wore a dour expression. He took my hand stiffly and without the least interest. I knew him immediately as another one of these four negligent mourners at Poe’s lonely burial.
    “Let the dead rest,” Neilson Poe said to me. “Your interest strikes me as morbid. Perhaps you are like my cousin more than in handwriting alone.” Neilson Poe bid us all a quiet good afternoon and walked briskly out the door.
    “Peace be to his ashes,” said Henry Herring in solemn tones, and then joined Neilson in front of the building.
    “We have enough problems to concern ourselves with in all events, Mr. Clark,” Officer White began once we were left without Poe’s relatives. “There are the vagabonds, the night-strollers, the foreigners, harassing, corrupting, robbing our stores, demoralizing the good children more every day. No time for
small issues.
”
    The officer’s speech went on and, as he spoke, I cast a glance out the window. My eyes followed Neilson Poe and Henry Herring to a carriage. I saw a petite woman waiting inside as the door was opened. Neilson Poe climbed in next to her. It took me a moment to realize how eerily familiar she looked. In another moment, I remembered with a chill through my bones where I had seen her or, rather, a woman just like her. That death portrait in Neilson Poe’s office that had so disturbed him. This woman was almost a double, a twin, for Edgar Poe’s deceased young love, Virginia. She was Virginia—Poe’s darling Sissy!—as far I was concerned.
    Remembering the countenance of Sissy Poe, captured only hours after her death, some lines of Edgar Poe’s inserted themselves in my mind.
     
    For her, the fair and
debonair,
that now so lowly lies,
    The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes
—
    The life still there, upon her hair
—
the death upon her eyes.
     
    But stay! I could not believe it. Poe’s description of the beautiful girl Lenore at her death—“that now so lowly lies”—were the same two words at the end of the Phantom’s warning.
It is unwise to meddle with your lowly lies.
The warning
had
been about Poe after all, just as I had thought! Lowly lies!
    I leaned out the window and watched the carriage disappear safely.
    Officer White sighed. “Realize it, Mr. Clark,” he said.