Entombed (27 page)

"Good for her. She's
okay?"

"Hanging tough. I'm
doing the interview now. When he reached up to cover his eyes, he
dropped the knife. She picked it up and tried to slash at him."

"Well, so much for
fingerprints."

"Everything's a
trade-off. She slit open his jacket pocket and a few things fell out."

"Driver's license?" I
asked, shifting beneath the warm blanket.

"You wouldn't like it
if it came that easy. Nope, no ID. Just a MetroCard."

I smiled, thinking of
the interview I did yesterday with the witness whose card had broken
her story. "That's a fine place to start, Mr. Wallace. We know what
part of the silk stocking district he frequents. Let's see where else
he likes to travel."

27

Zeldin's fifth-story
office window in the magnificent Beaux Arts building known as the Mertz
Library looked out over a snowcovered expanse that stretched as far as
I could see.

"Would you imagine it,
Miss Cooper? Two-hundred-fifty spectacular acres of gardens and
greenery in the middle of New York City. It's extraordinary, isn't it,
and so magical in the middle of winter with this lovely dusting of
snow?"

"I'm ashamed to say
I'd forgotten quite how beautiful it is, and how grand."

"It was the vision of
an American couple named Britton, you know. They were philanthropists
who had a great interest in botany. She was just overwhelmed by a visit
to the Royal Gardens at Kew, back in the 1880s and returned home
insisting that her husband try to replicate it in America. Re-creating
Eden, that's what these gardens are all about."

"The Garden of
Eden-set the backstory for the first homicide, too, if I remember
correctly," Mike said. "How we doing on that list of Raven Society
members I asked about?"

"You shall have them,
of course," Zeldin said, surprising me as well as Mike. He gestured
around the room, packed full of botanical prints and books on plants
and trees. "I have someone picking us up in an hour to take us over to
the building where I keep the society records. I've never mixed my
hobby with the garden's business."

"How long did you work
here in the library?" I asked.

"Nearly thirty-five
years."

"And which came first,
your interest in plants or in Poe?"

"It's sort of a
chicken-and-egg thing, if you know what I mean. I've always loved
both," he said, wheeling himself to a shelf near his desk and handing
me a book from it. "My first published work, and it's still a classic
in the field."

I examined the
well-worn volume and opened it to its title page. "'Flora and Fauna in
the Poetry and Prose of Edgar Allan Poe-An Illustrated Guide.'"

"So, if I say
'buttercup,' you can tell me if Poe used it in his work?" Mike asked.

"Precisely, Detective.
Buttercup, better known by its Latin name
Ranunculus,
is used
only once, in
the story 'Eleonora'-'so besprinkled through with the yellow
buttercup.'"

"Must be a huge
audience for this stuff I just don't know about."

"Or shall we try
something like 'jackass,' Mr. Chapman? Both in 'Marginalia' and in
'Politian.' You'd be surprised at how many scholars rely on this kind
of thing. The book is in its twelfth printing."

Like every other
author I'd ever met, Zeldin neglected to mention the size of each
printing. I didn't expect they were large.

"As much as I've
admired Poe's work," I said, "I certainly know very little about his
life. Perhaps it would be useful if you would spend some time telling
us about him."

"It's Edgar Allan Poe
who brought me here, to this very place," Zeldin said, spinning his
chair around to face the three of us.

"To New York?" Mercer
asked.

"To the Bronx. To
these Botanical Gardens."

"We knew he lived in
Manhattan," I said. Recently acquired knowledge, for me, but the
skeleton had made an indelible impression.

"But his last home,
Miss Cooper-in fact, the longest residence of his adult life-was here
in the Bronx."

I looked to Mike, my
outer-borough expert, for confirmation. He shook his head.

"Poe Cottage. You
don't know it? You'll enjoy seeing it," he said, explaining to Mike
that it still stood on Kingsbridge Road, in a small park dedicated to
the poet. "It was not only his last real residence, poor soul, but the
only one still standing. They'd best not tear that one down or every
writer in America will be up in arms."

"And these gardens?" I
asked.

"Well, they hadn't
been created as a formal botanical sanctuary then. In fact, this whole
area wasn't even considered to be the Bronx in those days. It was a
very rural village, part of Westchester County, known as Fordham. The
building in which the skeleton was found in Greenwich Village? Poe had
to leave that house because his wife was suffering from tuberculosis.
The doctors insisted that she could only survive with the help of fresh
country air."

"So they moved out
here?"

"Yes, ma'am. To the
little farmhouse on Kingsbridge Road, near One Hundred Ninety-second
Street and the Grand Concourse. He loved to walk, Poe did. He spent
long days traversing the farmlands in this Fordham area, much of it
here in these very woods that make up part of our Botanical Gardens
property. Even to the gorge at the river, where that accident occurred
this week. The waterfalls fascinated him."

"You sure he walked
right here?" Mike asked.

"Would you like to
read his letters, Mr. Chapman? He describes the area in exquisite
detail, from the cottage to this forest to the High Bridge that carried
water from the Croton Aqueduct over the Harlem River to Manhattan."

"His story called
'Landor's Cottage'?" I asked tentatively.

"Now you're onto it,
Miss Cooper. That describes the little house he rented for his family,
the one that still stands in Poe Park. One hundred dollars a year. He
used to find great tranquillity in walking the heights, looking out
over Long Island Sound. You could see it then from his doorstep, before
all the high-rise buildings went up and got in the way of the view.
There was a group of Jesuits at something called St. John's, not too
far away-"

Mike interrupted.
"Yeah. They're the ones who founded Fordham College."

"Well, there you go,
Mr. Chapman. He used to love to walk over to have discourse with the
Jesuit scholars and use the books in their library. We'll get you into
this, too."

"I'm about as deep in
as I want to get, thanks. But now I understand why he named a character
Montresor," Mike said.

Zeldin expected
another wisecrack.

"That name doesn't
mean anything to you?" Mike asked. "You know Randall's Island?"

We all did. It sat in
the East River, between Manhattan and the Bronx.

"John Montresor was a
British captain during the Revolutionary War. He bought that island and
moved his family there, spying for the Brits and advising them where to
base invasions in New York Harbor. He's the guy who witnessed Nathan
Hale's execution, the reason we know Hale's last words."

"'I only regret,'"
Zeldin said, "'that I have but one life to give for my country.' I'm
impressed, Mr. Chapman. I guess Poe didn't have to look much further
than his backyard to dig up some names for his tales."

"You talked about the
tragic circumstances of Poe's life yesterday," I said. "Would you mind
telling us what they were?"

I had a notepad ready.
I was hoping the salient facts would be things I could later compare
against the life of a vengeful killer who may have been identifying too
closely with the great writer.

"Poe's grandfather was
a Revolutionary War hero. Somewhat celebrated in Maryland, where the
family had settled. His father, David, was the typical black sheep,
even back then."

"In what way?"

"Defied the general's
wishes by dropping the study of law to become an actor. And a drunk.
And married beneath his class, to a woman of no pedigree. An all-round
ne'er-do-well," Zeldin said.

"Whom did he marry?" I
asked.

"An itinerant actress
named Eliza. A young woman who toured with small companies playing
comic juvenile roles and ingénues. Edgar was their second child,
born while Eliza was performing in Boston in 1809."

I had to remind
myself, now that the events of Poe's life seemed to be responsible in
some way for the recent deaths, that Poe himself had lived two hundred
years ago.

"A daughter came along
two years later, and by the time of her birth, David Poe had
disappeared. He was only twenty-five years old."

"What do you mean,
disappeared?"

"Exactly that. He was
never heard from again. I can't tell you what became of him, where he
lived thereafter or when he died. He simply vanished from their lives.
Estranged from his parents in Baltimore, already deeply in debt with
three babies to support, lousy reviews for his stagecraft, and a
serious alcohol problem, he simply abandoned Eliza and the children."

"So Poe never knew his
father?" I asked. "Eliza raised the children alone?"

Zeldin shook his head.
"She didn't have the chance. The local newspapers wrote of her 'private
misfortunes.' The baby girl was rumored not to be David Poe's child,
and within months Eliza had moved her little family to Richmond to try
to make a new life for them. She had a catastrophic health failure and
become a bedridden charity case shortly after she arrived. Before Edgar
was three, his beloved mother had died."

A broken home,
illegitimacy, alcohol abuse, and now three orphaned children-it all
sounded like an overwhelmingly dismal start to the boy's life.

"Who raised them?"

"Another emotional
blow to the young trio. They were separated from each other. David Poe,
senior-the parental grandfather who lived in Baltimore-agreed to take
in the oldest child, whose name was William Henry. And a local family
named Mackenzie took in the infant girl, Rosalie. It was Edgar who was
the hardest to place."

"At the age of three?"

"Yes, Miss Cooper. As
it happened, a well-to-do merchant in Richmond was convinced by his
wife-they were childless-to raise young Edgar. He became a ward of John
and Frances Allan-"

"So that's where the
name Allan comes from," Mike said. "I just assumed it was his given
middle name. I didn't know he'd been adopted."

"Adoption might have
been an easier path for him, Mr. Chapman. John Allan was a tough
taskmaster. He refused to adopt the boy. Allan was entirely self-made
and used his own childhood deprivation to try and instill in young
Edgar that kind of school-of-hard-knocks experience. Sort of 'Why
should I hand you anything that I had to work hard for?' So the only
promise he made the Poe family was that he would provide the boy with a
liberal education."

"I take it the Allans
held up that part of the bargain," Mercer said.

"Yes, they actually
moved to England for a time, where Edgar's first serious schooling
began. They sent him from there to Scotland to board for a year when he
was only seven, where he was quite lonely. Five years later, when John
Allan's business failed, the family returned to Richmond. You know
about his stay at university?"

"A bit," I said. "In
Charlottesville."

"Mr. Jefferson's great
university had just been in existence for one year. Edgar was only
seventeen when he entered, living in a room on the Lawn that you can
still see today."

"Yes, I know. The
unlucky number thirteen."

"Superstitious, Miss
Cooper? Well, maybe his stay there would have been cursed anyway. Poe
loved language. He studied French and Italian and Latin. He was a
debater and a great swimmer. He wrote verse and sketched charcoals.
That was the good side of student life at Virginia. But there was a
dark side as well."

"In what sense?"

"Virginia was the most
expensive college in the country at that time, but in addition to the
usual costs he ran up, Edgar Poe developed a serious gambling habit,
falling several thousand dollars in debt. And alcohol was already
becoming a problem for him, as it had been for his father. He gambled
and drank, drank and desperately gambled at cards."

"Did he finish
college?" I asked.

"It was a two-year
course at the time. He left after the first year, and that marked his
major rift with John Allan, who refused to pay the boy's debts and
wouldn't let him return to school. They quarreled more vociferously
than ever before, and as Poe frequently wrote in his letters, he was
keenly aware that this surrogate father who had raised him had
absolutely no affection for him."

"How painful for a
young man who had no family to speak of. It's so odd then, that Poe
used his name."

"You're wrong, Miss
Cooper.
We
use his name-Edgar
rarely did."

"I don't understand."

"So far as we know,
the first time Poe signed his name using Allan as part of the signature
was years later, after John Allan's death. He often used the initial
A
when he published
works, but he rarely used the name
Allan,
the way we do today.
I truly think he hated that man."

I thought of the
signature that was so familiar from reproductions of books and
manuscripts. Zeldin was right, of course. It was Edgar A. Poe-the name
Allan was never spelled out in the writer's own hand. "So Poe left
Richmond?"

"At the age of
eighteen he was alone in the world again, and restless. He struck out
for Boston-probably because his mother had written of loving the city
so much. That's where a forty-page volume of poetry called
Tamerlane
first appeared in
1827, wrapped in plain brown paper and distributed around town by an
anonymous author."