Edgar Allan Poe and the London Monster (42 page)

Make sure you leave your mark, Mr. Poe. Time will not wait for you.

I remain respectfully yours,

George Rhynwick Williams

Williams! How could it be? It was not possible, but the note was most assuredly in Williams's handwriting. In my mind's eye, I could clearly see the man sprawled across the chapel floor, blood pooling around him. It was he—Williams—the desk clerk from Brown's Genteel Inn, the man who had smiled to my face when delivering my messages, but had spied upon me and plotted my murder. But how? He had been
dead
, no heart beat, no breath, Dupin's rapier had cut through him as if he were a wax effigy, but this time his victim truly had been flesh.

And then, suddenly, it came to me.
Autography suggests that Courvoisier's lament was penned by a left-handed person
,
as was the case with the handbill for Brown's Genteel Inn
. Dupin's words, the science of autography. And yet we both had forgotten that crucial clue. I recalled when the desk clerk—the taciturn, darkhaired, dark-eyed man—had drawn me an impromptu map to Southampton Way and how his left hand had curved in such an awkward fashion so it would not smear the ink as he wrote. That desk clerk normally worked at night, and we saw him less frequently, but I was certain he was of a similar height and build as the scrivener, the professor, Dr. Wallis—all in disguise,
all one and the same. My nemesis. The dead man was his colleague, who worked during the mornings. Whether he had been paid to help Williams in his plan or had been duped into assisting him, he had died for his complicity. I thought back to the morning of my departure from London, when the night desk clerk had bade me a kind farewell.
Our family is all that matters
. I shivered to think how a seemingly innocent platitude might truly be a threat.

I did not sleep well that night. Every creak, every rustle sent me bolt upright in bed. And it was the same the next night and the next after that. I tried to put Williams's threatening letter from my mind, but it haunted me. And the more I tried to hide my unease from Sissy, the more afflicted I was. Daily my mood grew blacker.
Nemo me impune lacessit
—the threat tormented me. And yet I went back to those accursed letters day after day until I knew I had to rid myself of them. But could I burn them? Throw them into the Schuylkill? Bury them in the forest? I could not.

So I left the letters interred in their casket and put the violet eye in with them. I took up three planks from the flooring of our bed chamber and deposited all between the scantlings, then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that my accursed inheritance would remain safe from prying eyes and safe from me.

* * *

As I have said before, I am lucid, I am calm. There is a certain over-acuteness of my senses that makes everything too sharp—the glistering of sunlight, the bang and clatter of teacups in saucers, of spoons and knives and forks upon the plate, but truly there is no madness within me. Every night I take great care to protect us from the inevitable. I make certain the shutters are fastened against the thick darkness of night itself and
as I lay in bed, I watch for skulking shadows across the walls and listen intently for any sound of evil worming its way into our good, little house.

And when morning comes I mutter “I am safe” and try to forget that which haunts me. There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told, and I have sworn to the ghosts of those who precede me that what is written down in these pages will go to my tomb with me. And I am more than certain that this is the wisest decision I have ever made.

FURTHER RESOURCES AND READING

I thoroughly enjoyed the research required to write this novel, and especially appreciated the enthusiastic expertise of staff at the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site in Philadelphia; the catacombs of All Souls Cemetery, Kensal Green; and the Philadelphia Free Library, which holds the Colonel Richard A. Gimbel collection of Edgar Allan Poe materials, including Dickens's pet raven, Grip.

Some non-fiction works and resources on Poe and the Monster that might be of further interest to readers are:

Peter Ackroyd,
Poe: A Life Cut Short
(London: Chatto & Windus, 2008)

John Ashton,
Old Times: A Picture of Social Life at the End of the Eighteenth Century
(London: J. C. Nimmo, 1885)

Jan Bondeson,
The London Monster: A Sanguinary Tale
(London: Free Association Books, 2000)

The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore,
The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe: A Comprehensive Collection of E-texts
. (www.eapoe.org)

Jeffrey Meyers,
Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy
(London: John Murray, 1992)

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London's Central Criminal Court, 1674 to 1913
(www.oldbaileyonline.org) [See: Old Bailey Proceedings, 8 July 1790 and 13 December 1790.]

E
DGAR
A
LLAN
P
OE AND THE
L
ONDON
M
ONSTER

Pegasus Books Ltd
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Copyright 2016 © by Karen Lee Street

First Pegasus Books hardcover edition October 2016

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