My Clockwork Muse (15 page)

The foot traffic had grown considerably since
I had arrived and now I looked in the direction Burton had gone. He
had been wearing a brown fedora and I saw half-a-dozen or more
identical chapeaus bobbing away from me amid the flowing mass of
bodies that clogged the sidewalk. Dodging pedestrians, I ran to the
first and then the second. Neither was Burton. Then I saw him.

"Burton!" I cried, rushing towards him. "I
thought that was you—and now I see that it is!"

I grasped his shoulder and tried to spin him
around so I could get a good look at him, but he jumped out from
under my grasp. He leapt back with a start, raising his walking
stick.

"You, Poe!" he exclaimed when his shock had
subsided. His jowls jiggled to a halt and he lowered his stick. "We
have nothing to say to each other." He turned and began to walk
away.

I followed and grasped him once again by the
shoulder.

"Shall I summon the police, sir?"

"I should like nothing more." He gave me a
puzzled look and I saw in it that he was not totally opposed to
hearing me out. I pulled him into the alleyway, out of the stream
of humanity. I went on, "I need your help, Billy."

"Really, Poe!"

Though we had last parted having nearly come
to blows, I could see him soften. We had worked closely enough in
the past. I was heartened to see that he had not completely turned
against me.

"The police suspect me of murder." I found it
hard to speak the words.

Burton merely laughed. "Murder? Is this
another one of your—"

I grasped him by his lapels and thrust him up
against the wall before he could say more. "You must help me,
Billy. You must help me prove my innocence."

"Okay, Poe, okay! See here now! Are you
telling me that you're a wanted man?"

"Wanted for murder," I said.

A glimmer in his eye told me that he still
did not believe me. His eyes searched my face and I saw that he
wanted to make a joke of it. "And just who are you suspected of
having murdered, Poe? Longfellow?"

"You," I said, watching the mirth fade from
his expression. "The police suspect me of having murdered you."

"Hate to disappoint you, Poe, but I'm not
dead."

"That is why you must help me."

Burton eyed me closely. "I suspect you of
much: bitterness, defensiveness, jealousy, pettiness, envy,
selfishness, dishonesty
—
"

"Your point?" I interjected.

"You are guilty of all of these things, of
course, and more. But not murder," Burton concluded. "And
especially not the murder of me. What can I do to help you?"

"Come with me to the 'Rue Morgue'."

Burton lifted an eyebrow and I explained the
crime scene as shown to me by Gessler. He agreed to accompany me,
understanding that, yes, to find exculpatory evidence was probably
the best way at this point to prove my innocence. I was happy to
have Burton back on my side. Despite his unjust view of 'Pym', I
had never really liked the idea of my estrangement from him. My
time working for
Gentleman's
was the most fruitful of my
career, seeing the publication of what I thought was my finest
work: 'The Fall of the House of Usher' and 'William Wilson', among
others. And, though we had fallings out regarding money and the
direction of the magazine, I had warm feelings for Billy Burton,
despite his many grievous personal shortcomings.

This put me in mind of 'Berenice', which was
still in my pocket. Now that I was severed from Briggs'
Journal
, my story had no home and I showed it to Burton.
Though Briggs had balked at its subject matter, Burton seemed
pleased even when I warned him that it was one of the grimmest
tales I had ever written. He sat back in the coach and scanned the
first pages quickly, nodding his approval. He would indeed print
it, he said
—
at the usual
rate
—
in the next issue of the
Gentleman's
. This filled me with enthusiasm and I began to
describe the plot to him. But no sooner had I begun and he had
folded the pages neatly and put them in his jacket pocket than we
arrived at the house of the 'Rue Morgue' murder.

We got out of the cab. The driver cracked his
long whip and the cab clip-clopped away, leaving us alone on the
curb in front of the house.

"Someone has been committing murders in the
manner of my stories," I found myself repeating the premise of the
crime to Burton as we stood outside the gate. The four-story
Georgian house was set back from the street and seemed to exist in
the perpetual shadow of the larger buildings surrounding it. I knew
the place had stood empty since the murder and its emptiness gave
it an ominous air. When I gazed up at the dark windows, they seemed
to gaze back. As horrifying as I had found the scene, I had taken
my first visit here lightly, supposing my presence to be the result
of nothing more than a mere lark of the inspector's. Now, I knew
better. I felt overcome with fear.

"The room is on the top floor," I said in a
hushed tone. "Which makes the crime doubly perplexing."

I stroked my chin thoughtfully, preparing to
discuss the case at some length. I supposed he would want a
detailed description of the crime scene as I had last seen it and
my analysis of the evidence. But no sooner had I opened my mouth to
expound on these issues than he pushed past me through the front
gate.

"So it's a monkey we're looking for, then?"
he asked breezily. I cringed at his brusqueness, but, collecting
myself, followed close on his heels. By the time I caught up with
him, he had already clapped the knocker and was peering through
cupped hands into the window at the side of the front door.

"Not a monkey," I said, "but a lunatic,
obsessed with my stories. At least, that is the official version.
Now, the way I see it
—
"

"There's nobody here," Burton declared,
cutting me off. He gave the window sash a tug, finding it locked.
Then he moved to the next window, tugging it also. "A lunatic, you
say?"

He moved briskly and I found myself
struggling to keep up with him. "Yes. Now, what I think
is
—
"

"Let's try the back."

I followed him around the side of the house.
Our heels and the tip of his walking stick clacked on the pavement
as we went.

"Not so much a lunatic," I was saying, "as
Gessler himself. That is," I added, as Burton rattled the knob on
the back door, "inasmuch as he may or may not be a lunatic
himself..."

The door was locked, so Burton moved to the
window. Finding that it opened easily, he exclaimed, "Ah! Look
here! In we go, Poe. Me first."

I watched as he hefted himself up to the open
window and spilled headfirst over the sill like an acrobat. I was
struck by the ease of his movements, remembering that in addition
to being a man of letters
—
as
misplaced as his pretensions were, in my opinion
—
and publishing entrepreneur, he was also a
sporting man and had once been a comic actor of the stage, a
vocation which had often called upon him to make elaborate
pratfalls, not unlike the graceful jackknife through the window I
had just witnessed. He had always been an athletic fellow, despite
his girth. I recalled that he had once advised more exercise as a
means to conquer the "foul fiend" of my melancholy
—
advice which, regrettably, I had never taken
seriously.

In the next instant, his head appeared in the
window. "You're next, Poe," he called, extending a hand. With his
help, I clambered up to the sill and he yanked me inside.

I alighted on a carpeted floor at the foot of
a deep cozy chair. A cold lamp on a table nearby would have glowed
amber in happier times, and an abandoned volume lay supine under
it, never to be resumed. It seemed an intimate setting and wrong
for us to have intruded upon it without invitation
—
although, I suspected, it was not entirely
reasonable to have expected an invitation from the dead.

Burton strode to the door and flung it open
and I could see the rest of the empty house beyond. Burton thrust
his head through and looked around.

"So this murder was done according to your
story, then, right? Meaning it would have occurred ... where, now?
Refresh my memory. In the bedroom?"

"Yes. Upstairs," I said.

It struck me that the body of the old woman
would have plummeted past the very window through which we had just
climbed, thrown from the fourth floor above to land, decapitated,
on the pavement below. A truly heinous crime.

I led the way up the stairs, across landings
and up more stairs, past ticking clocks on tables and corridors of
closed doors. None of this had any bearing on the crime, I told
Burton, because the killer had confined himself to the murder room
alone.

"The door was found locked from the inside,"
I said when we had arrived at our destination. "The killer had come
and gone, apparently, through one of the windows."

"Ah! Just as we had," Burton suggested with a
sly smile.

"No, no," I said. "One of
these
windows." I threw open the door and we could see the windows in
question across the disheveled room.

The room itself was just as I had last seen
it. The police had left it as the killer had, in wild disorder. The
bed had been thrown from its frame and the furniture lay broken and
scattered upon the floor. I showed Burton the hearth and he bent
over the cold ashes in the fireplace to have a look up into the
chimney where one of the bodies had been found.

Although I shuddered to think of the crime, I
felt less trepidation than I supposed I would. While there were
still real victims of murder to be mourned and pitied, this time I
knew there was no real murderer. Everywhere I looked, I saw the
evidence of a carefully staged hoax. My feelings were a mixture of
admiration and amusement, with hardly a trace of the horror I had
felt upon my first visit.

On the other hand, I knew that this time it
was me who was suspected of the crime, a fact which lent a certain
gravity to our investigation.

Burton was running his fingers along the
inside of the window frame, looking for some sort of irregularity,
I supposed. I almost wanted to laugh, knowing that there was
nothing to find that was not already known.

"So the victims were chosen completely at
random, then?" Burton asked after a moment.

"Oh, no," I said. "On the contrary. This
crime was no random act."

"But if I remember your story, Poe, it was
the lack of motive that made the crime so truly perplexing, was it
not?"

"Yes
—
in the
story. But these victims were chosen for a very specific
reason."

Burton raised his eyebrows. "What was it,
then? Pray, tell!"

"These people were murdered because they
lived in a house that almost perfectly matches the one in my story.
Hardly random."

"Ah!" Burton exclaimed. "Of course! Foolish
of me not to have considered that."

"Look at these windows, for example."

I moved towards the one and made to open it,
but Burton, still standing at the other window, stopped me with a
word. "Don't bother," he said. "This one has been nailed shut. The
other has also. I can see the nail head from here."

"You mean this?" I tugged at the head of the
nail and it, along with about a quarter-inch of the shank, came out
easily in my fingers.

Burton laughed in astonishment. "How did you
know that was there, Poe?"

"Because that's how it was in my story, my
dear man. The police have already determined that the nail had been
sawn off prior to its insertion in the sash. A simple matter, as I
had informed the oaf Gessler, of working backwards from my
story
—
just as Dupin does."

Burton laughed again, although I knew he did
not understand the full importance of what I had just said.

I held up the nail head between my thumb and
forefinger. I could not keep the regret out of my voice.
"
This
is what should have laid the plot bare to me."

"The nail?"

"I should have seen it. The police suspected
me all along. The
murderer
—
and I use that term loosely
—
was following my story exactly. Or, rather, I should
say, was
staging the scene
to follow my story exactly.
Gessler had no use for me. What good would Dupin do him when anyone
with a copy of 'Rue Morgue' could have uncovered the particulars of
the crime to the letter? Oh, no. It was not Dupin Gessler wanted,
but Poe, and none other."

"Who is Dupin?" Burton asked.

"Bah!" I said, laughing at my foolishness.
"No matter. Look here." I found the hidden spring-loaded mechanism
Burton's fingers had failed to detect and opened the window easily.
"Here is what finally condemned the women who occupied this house.
These shutters." I reached out and pulled one closed so we could
view it more clearly.

Burton moved to inspect it. "What of it?"

"This sort of shutter is very old-fashioned
and very rare. See how the bottom half consists of an open trellis,
this lattice-work here?"

Burton nodded and I stood back, allowing him
to lean out the window to have a closer look.

"I told Gessler that he should investigate
similar houses in and about the city and make inquiries as to any
suspicious person hanging about or making unusually thorough
investigations of the properties. These shutters are exactly the
detail the murderer would have been looking for."

"But what is their significance? Besides the
fact that they are the same type as those that appear in your
story, that is."