Not Quite Dead (7 page)

T
“HE TROUBLE BEGAN
shortly after the publication of my
Collected Tales
. Wiley and Putnam had agreed to the venture on two conditions—that I invest in the enterprise myself (I am still in debt over it), and that Rufus Griswold serve as editor.

“I had no objection to Griswold, for we had always been on cordial terms, and he was well known, having edited a well-received— though woefully shallow—anthology of American poetry

“It wasn’t until I received the galley proofs containing Griswold’s vile introduction that I realized what had been done to me.

“Griswold treated my tales as you describe—as a literary abomination and an object for clinical study, part of an unsavory niche occupied by the writings of the degenerate de Sade, the criminal Baudelaire, and the whoremaster Rimbaud. His introduction even concluded with a warning that only the most levelheaded reader should partake of its contents; that children, ladies, and people with a history of derangement should be prevented from reading my tales and poems,
by law if necessary
.

“My
Collected Tales
had been murdered—and I had paid for the deed with my own money!

“Soon after publication I received the first newspaper clipping. With it was a piece of paper on which had been written the title of one of my tales, ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.’ Here it is—do you want to see? Read for yourself.”

WOMAN DROWNED
Dreadful Discovery in the Erie Canal
by J. H. Travis
The Republican Compiler

ROCHESTER
——Canalmen received a woeful surprise in the early morning Tuesday upon the discovery of a cadaver floating near Genesis Falls, female, and in a shameful condition …

Though I would not have admitted it for anything, I had read
The Mystery of Marie Rogêt
—a mutilated shopgirl floating down the Seine, based on a dreadful crime that took place in New York. As I mentioned, Eddie had never been to France—yet he had spent time in New York. Why would a man abandon what he knew for what he did not know? Figure that one out if you can.

“I take it, Eddie, that you think the combining of the report with the title of your tale was meant to suggest that the one had indirectly caused the other.”

“You are not stupid, Willie. Obviously, that is what I am trying to tell you. It insinuates that some weak or twisted mind had read my tale and had been inspired to imitate the deed.”

I chose not to reiterate that I quite agreed with Mr. Griswold. There can surely be no doubt that violent or sensual writing, sufficiently vivid, can inspire a diseased imagination to depraved action. However, as a doctor I proceeded to calm the patient through reassurance and flattery.

“On the other hand, Eddie, the clipping might have been sent by an admirer. Someone who read about the crime, and noted a curious coincidence that might interest his favorite author. You must admit that the sender’s true motive is a complete mystery.”

“Quite right, Willie. A mystery. Remember that the nameless terror is always the worst. Death is not a skeleton but an empty cloak.”

“Please continue,” I said, noting that his pupils had dilated and his mind had gone off on its own.

“The letter joined with the poor reception for my
Collected Tales
— and, it goes without saying, the loss of my dear little wife …” And there it stopped. Slowly his face crumpled as though the bones themselves withdrew. With his broad forehead and delicate mouth he resembled an aged toddler, helpless and inconsolable in the face of overwhelming hurt. As I watched his display of mourning I admit that I was touched—though we must always remember that he came from a family of actors.

Gradually he regained control with the assistance of more medicated tea. “Forgive me. I do not want your pity. I know that you too are a widower. All I meant to say was that I fell into a decline—abetted, I admit, by the use of alcohol. By the time I recovered my senses sufficiently to look after myself, I was nearly penniless. Worse, I had
stretched the physical and spiritual resources of my poor little family beyond anything previous—and we had suffered through some difficult times. Purely to fend off starvation, I accepted an assignment from the publishers Topham & Lea—whom I would never have entrusted with the
Tales
, though they could hardly have done worse. Yet this assignment was so far beneath my standard as to be almost criminal.”

“Would this be what you would call
back work?”

“Not the first time, I regret to say. A few years ago I wrote a textbook on conchology for Topham—under a pseudonym, of course. This new assignment was worse. I was engaged to write the final CHAPTERs of a novel by a well-known British author.”

“Why?”

“Because the author hadn’t written it yet, I suppose. Topham wanted an edge over the competition.”

“I regret that I know nothing about the publishing industry”

“You have nothing to regret I assure you. In the meanwhile, other newspaper clippings arrived. You may read this one for yourself:

THE BODY IN THE CHIMNEY
A Thief Meets His Maker
by John R. Basswood
The Brooklyn Eagle

FLATBUSH
——Firemen, upon investigating a report of excessive smoke issuing from a home on Church Avenue, discovered a cadaver wedged in the flue. The owners being out of town for some days, it is thought that a burglar died of thirst…

“Eddie, to my mind, this evidence is even more tenuous than the first. Am I to suppose that a body stuck in a chimney is a feature of another of your
Collected Tales?”

“Correct. Again, with the obvious implication that the two are linked.”

“But surely, unlike the female in the canal, your writing can hardly be blamed because a man is stuck in a chimney—especially since, according to the tale, it was the work of an orangutan.”

“I believe the sender wished to imply that I am poisoning the
general atmosphere. There were many other letters and clippings, as you can see.”

“I think that you give your persecutor too much credit,” I replied. “It seems more likely that he spent his time scouring newspapers for an appropriate item, and this was the best he could do.”

“Well done, Willie. I admire your deductive, scientific mind.”

“The same might apply to the unfortunate woman in our morgue.”

“But in this case, the package containing the article from the
Christian Times
was accompanied by the pulled teeth.”

“And what meaning do you draw from it?”

“I can only suppose that, unlike the others, she was expressly murdered for the purpose.”

“What purpose?”

“To drive me to suicide, or insanity, or to stop writing—which amounts to the same thing.”

To this I had no rebuttal. Just because a man suffers from persecution mania is no guarantee that he is not being persecuted.

“I think you had better have a little of this,” I said, noting his pallor, and produced a bottle from my bag.

“What is it you are giving me?”

“Morphine. Perfectly harmless I assure you.”

“Oh, I know about morphine,” he said ruefully, and took the entire dose in a single draft.

“Please continue,” I said. Though I would not have admitted it, I was thoroughly drawn in.

“I wonder whether you have noticed this, Willie: that upon reaching a certain depth of despair or dismay, one can break through to a state of serene detachment.”

“That is what morphine is for, Eddie.”

“Finally, I determined to travel to Baltimore and see the evidence for myself. If the woman in the morgue appeared as described in the article, my hope was to enlist the support of my oldest friend.”

“Yet rather than making an appointment and stating your case to me man to man, you chose to make a theatrical display of yourself, lying in the gutter and raving like a lunatic.”

“It was essential to the course of action we must undertake.”

“And what is that?” I noted with alarm his use of the first person plural.

“I need you to sign my death certificate, and to substitute another cadaver for mine. I believe there is an acceptable candidate in your morgue.”

I nearly spilled my tea. I scarcely knew how to reply. To say that such a measure was out of the question seemed laughably inadequate. But before I found words to express my dismay, he silenced me with a look of such intensity in those black eyes, that in retrospect I wonder if I was being subjected to mesmerism.

At least it was now clear to me why Eddie had staged his collapse in the street. It would hardly have been the thing for him to meet with me in a healthy condition and somehow die immediately thereafter.

Eddie leaned forward and spoke sotto voce, either because he feared we might be overheard or because it enhanced the mesmeric effect.

“I know that there have been hard feelings between us, Willie, regarding my sentiment for Mrs. Chivers. And I know how bitter memories can turn esteem into disdain. Yet I urge you to take care. Consider that your disdain for me cannot help but extend to yourself. You chose to behave as though a mother’s love was finite, as though the affection she felt for another boy could diminish her feeling for her own offspring. I suggest that you, and not I, initiated the heart-sickness that brought about her decline.”

“Please stop, I beg you …” Now it was I who fell into disarray. I was about to take a draft of morphine, then resisted, not to impair my judgment.

“There—do you see, Willie? We are two of a kind. We both know what it is to lose one’s mother. We both know what it was to lose
your
mother. You will never have as close a friend as I.”

He reached across the table and grasped my hand. “We are brothers. And neither is to blame for what happened. Despite her disposition to melancholy, were it not for your father’s inept physician, Dr. Emory, she would be alive today.”

“Dr. Emory?
By God!”
I swear that I had not thought of the man in twenty years.

“Ah, so you remember. Dr. Morris Emory was his name. He had extremely thick eyebrows and strangler’s thumbs.”

“Absolutely right! Astonishing!” I followed only intermittently the discourse to follow, for my mind had traveled elsewhere: I cannot say for certain that Poe knew the circumstance of my wife’s death, yet he
had unearthed an uncanny parallel between her fate and that of my mother—the two Mrs. Chivers.

In the same way that Father handed Mother over to Dr. Emory, I had subjected my Lucy to the ministrations of Dr. Prebble—no midwife for me, thank you, only the most modern protocols. And as the journals assured me,
there is nothing better than a set of curved forceps
to
assure safer and shorter accouchement and parturition
.

As head surgeon at Washington College Hospital, Prebble had first call on maternity cases, and I never thought to question his ability to carry out this delicate procedure. Only vaguely did it enter my mind that, at the time of Prebble’s arrival and subsequent promotion, President Jackson, in a fit of misplaced egalitarianism, had abolished license requirements for physicians and surgeons—
a professional aristocracy
, he called it. Thanks to deregulation, a doctor need never have opened a medical text to set up shop, claiming French training and specialized expertise, with no proof required. In an era of unprecedented quackery, I might have demonstrated a more skeptical spirit when it came to the welfare of my own wife and child—especially given his reputation for stumbling or hesitating over commonplace medical terms and phrases.

Yet I agreed. Why? Because not to do so would betray a lack of confidence in my superior.

Fool!

Prebble was most regretful over the hemorrhage, though by no means critical of his own performance. “An unusual case,” he called it. “No one could have predicted a womb of blood with a malignancy of the heart, an unprecedented combination of events to be sure …”

Now, years later, I find myself in his debt. Following my term of military service, it was thanks to Prebble that I was permitted to return to residence, since few medical institutions would overlook my history of mental instability and recent breakdown, however well earned.

For the fact that I am able to practice medicine, I have to thank the man who killed my wife.

I became aware of Eddie watching me closely, as though he knew the journey my mind had taken to the rage within. For the first time since we poached pheasant together on the James River, I felt an exhilarating impulse to do wrong, to rebel. To defy the little life I had been compressed into, the tight, dry little man I had become.

With even the most expert mesmerist, the subject must retain an inner desire to do as the practitioner suggests.

What seems remarkable is not only the readiness with which I collaborated with Poe on a project that could ruin me, but the almost mystical collusion of the institution in enabling us to accomplish it.

Grave
,
n
. A place in which the dead are laid, to await the coming of the medical student.

—Ambrose Bierce

T
HE MORGUE AT
Washington College Hospital was known to suffer a chronic deficit of cadavers, though the hospital wasted no time or effort in producing them. The school paid well for specimens and showed little curiosity about their place of origin. Therefore, it was hardly surprising that, in the public imagination, the institution had acquired a ghoulish reputation.

Because of our location in proximity to Baltimore’s main cemetery, it was generally thought that the deceased slept in their graves there for hardly twenty-four hours before they lay stretched out on a dissecting table at Washington College. Vile speculations grew from there, including the rumor that citizens had been kidnapped live for dissection, and other atrocities as well.