My Clockwork Muse Read online

  "But I need your help, Mr. Poe. Tell me what Dupin would say of the perpetrator of such a crime."

  I laughed. "What Dupin would say! You fancy this man—this character of mine—a genius! Ha! Inspector, would you like me to tell you the secret of Dupin's brilliance?"

  "By all means, Mr. Poe! I would be honored."

  Gessler leaned close.

  "He knows who the perpetrator is before the crime has ever been committed," I said gravely.

  Gessler knit his brow. "How is this possible?"

  I gave my temple a tap with a forefinger. "Because it's all my invention, Inspector. I create the crime, I position the victims. I plant the clues to point in only one direction—the perpetrator. Dupin has only to follow. Now, if this were a story, I could simply tell you how it ends."

  "You mock me," Gessler said, standing back again with an embarrassed smile. "Very good, Mr. Poe. A fine jest. But, no matter what you might think, I do not summon you here lightly. I now have two unsolved murders committed in the manner of your stories. I have come to an impasse on the first and I fear that unless I act quickly the same fate awaits me on the second. I must find this fiend before he strikes again. Who but you would better understand the criminal mind behind these vile acts? If I knew what the man was thinking, I might be able to catch him. If I had access to the kind of deductive reasoning exhibited by your man Dupin, I might be able to save someone's life. You, Mr. Poe, can help me."

  I immediately felt ashamed and apologized to the man for my mockery. I bore the inspector no ill will and once he had reminded me of the 'Rue Morgue' killing, I understood the gravity of the matter as well as my place in it. I determined that I would help him however I could, since, as he pointed out, someone's life might be at stake. I decided to approach the issue as if I were constructing a story.

  "First of all, Inspector," I began, "you must determine the identity of the victim. Of course, you have no doubt already thought of this, so please forgive me if—"

  "No, no, think nothing of it. Please continue."

  I noticed the Irishman scribbling again on his pad. "If the murderer is indeed the same man, and if he is indeed following my stories, then he is killing for similar motives, I should think. In 'Amontillado', the motive is revenge for long-standing injuries and insults. In 'Rue Morgue', the victims were chosen by pure chance. Therefore, I would say—Dupin would say—the murderer knows this man, but chose the 'Rue Morgue' victim at random. Hence, there is more to be learned of the murderer here than there."

  "Very good, Mr. Poe. Yes, I see..."

  In a way I began to feel as if I were in a story. Strange to say, but I began to feel Dupin. To Gessler's credit, I actually found myself wondering how Dupin would set about solving this crime. If he could work backward, from murderer to victim, perhaps he could work forward as well. I took Gessler's lamp from him and approached the hole in the wall. The stench struck me hard and I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and held it over my nose while I spoke.

  "The man was walled up alive," I said. "You can see the fingernails on his right hand are turned back. I imagine when you examine his left, you will find the same. In his madness, he had no doubt clawed at the wall."

  "He was also chained," Gessler said. "And who would bother to chain a dead man?"

  "Indeed! But here's another thing. The wall was erected within his reach."

  "Yes..." Gessler said, apparently not noticing that fact before. "Meaning what exactly?"

  "Meaning the victim was unconscious while the murderer erected the wall."

  "Drunk, perhaps?" Gessler asked. "As in the story?"

  "Or under the influence of some kind of calming drug. Perhaps you can find traces of it in the corpse. The killer will be a man the victim had insulted and who had access to such a drug, if one is found"

  "And who is intimately familiar—and, I might say, obsessed—with your work," Gessler added.

  "Yes," I said absently as I lifted my lamp to better regard the corpse's face. In my fright, I had not yet examined its features in anything more than a broad—and utterly horrified—manner. It was ghastly. At first glance, the identity of the corpse seemed hopelessly obscured by patches of loathsome putrescence. But when and I leaned forward into the niche and my light fell upon the face, I felt as if I were subject to a body blow of some magnitude.

  "Good God!" I exclaimed, nearly dropping my lantern inside the cavity.

  "What is it, Mr. Poe?" Gessler asked with a start.

  A wave of nausea overcame me. The reek of the body coupled with the sight of the ghastly visage caused me to double over in involuntary spasms.

  "I must have air!" I cried, retching as Gessler directed his men to assist me. They grabbed my shoulders and I continued to spasm as they ushered me up the stairs.

  I needed air, yes, but I needed even more to be away from the chamber, and to be away at once—for I had recognized the man's face.

  Chapter 2

  When Gessler's men released me, I tumbled to the sidewalk. I fell to my hands and knees and remained for some time gasping for breath. There I was the object of much bemused scrutiny from passersby on the busy street, no doubt thinking me some drunk expelled to the curb.

  I suspected that I must have looked the part, for my clothes and hair were as disheveled as those of a days'-long binger, and my eyes, still blinking in the garish light of day, no doubt reflected the feeling of desperation that overwhelmed me. When I looked up, I saw only indistinct black shapes of men walking and wagons clattering in the street beyond. Though I knew I was probably recognized by many who saw me, I did not care. Giving no thought to my dignity, I scrambled to my feet and hurried back to my office just as quickly as my unsteady legs would carry me.

  There I found a group of young boys gathered outside the door. When they saw me approaching, they began squawking at me, cawing like crows and flapping their arms.

  "Nevermore!" they cried expectantly. "Nevermore! Nevermore!"

  I normally enjoyed their playful solicitations, but I had no time for the Raven-boys today.

  "Yes, yes," I muttered, pushing them aside. The joy left their faces and even after I had collected myself sufficiently to give them a quick "Nevermore!" in reply, they merely backed away in fright.

  My appearance shocked more than just the boys. Inside, one of the girls gasped when she saw me. Briggs came rushing out of his office.

  "Edgar! By God, man, you look like you've seen a ghost!"

  "I have!" I cried as I weaved past desks towards my darkened room.

  I threw the door open and locked it behind me. Fumbling for a match, I lit a lamp. I knew just what I was looking for and went straight to the top drawer of my desk and snatched it open. There was the object I sought, a copy of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, permanently creased open to the offending page.

  I brought it out and laid it on the desk, scanning the text quickly. There were no pictures, and I was about to start thumbing through the pages when I found my eye drawn to the obnoxiousness of the words.

  '...faulty construction and poorness of style...'

  I gritted my teeth. An anonymous review of my story 'A Narrative of A. Gordon Pym'. Anonymous indeed. I knew whose words these were. Had I written such a vile criticism of his work, I would have had an enemy for life. And yet I was supposed to accept it, to shrug it off as legitimate literary criticism, this anonymous hatchet job?

  '...I regret to find Mr. Poe's name in connexion with such a mass of ignorance and effrontery.'

  Forgetting my task for an instant, I slammed the filthy rag onto the desktop. By God, the man was the basest of scoundrels, without even the courage to attach his name to his repugnant review. Clearly, the scoundrel's aim had been to inflict injury, to insult on a personal level before the entire literary world.

  Someone began pounding on my door. In my highly anxious state of mind, I was sure it was Gessler's men again, come to drag me back into that loathsome tomb. I even thought for a moment of escaping thro
ugh one of the shuttered windows when I heard Briggs' voice calling out from the other side of the door.

  "Edgar!" he cried, as my door rattled in its frame under his frantic pounding.

  I quickly flipped to the front of the magazine and found what I was looking for: an engraving of the villain himself. The fleshy countenance of Billy Burton stared back at me from the page. My heart leapt into my mouth. When last I saw him, his face had turned a shade of green and his rotting tongue protruded between teeth exposed by receding dead lips, but there could be no doubt.

  The corpse bricked up in the wall of the boarding house was none other than Billy Burton.

  "Edgar! It's me, Briggs! Open up, I say!"

  I was now eager to see Briggs. I rushed to the door and flung it open.

  "Damn-it-all, Briggs, come in!"

  I jerked him inside and, first glancing around the outer office, closed the door behind him, latching it against the inevitable Gessler.

  "What is the meaning of this?" Briggs blustered, his lean, rugged features contorted by outrage and fear.

  I grasped him by his shoulders and held him a bare arm's length from my face. "What is the latest news of Burton?" I asked. "Has he been found?"

  "Burton? What has this to do with Burton?"

  I shook him to focus his mind. "Has he?" I implored. "Has there been any word?"

  Briggs stammered for a moment, his dark brow knitted in thought. "None that I know of," he said. "It is thought he has traveled to England on some personal errand. The man is an eccentric...Edgar, what is it?"

  "I have just seen him," I blurted out.

  Briggs flashed a smile. "Well, he is back then," he said in a bright tone, "and all is well. Edgar, I tell you, you are overwrought. Did you have words?"

  "I didn't see him, but his body. He is dead." I felt my fingers tighten on his shoulders. "I saw the man dead!"

  I could feel my eyes burning into his. Having confessed to what I had seen, I waited for Briggs to take up my burden, to save me from it. Instead, I felt his muscles relax under my fingers. He closed his eyes and heaved a deep sigh. His lips vanished beneath his heavy whiskers and his jaw muscles flexed under the flesh of his coarse cheeks.

  "Edgar," he began gently. His reaction confused me and I allowed him to lead me to my desk chair and sit me down. I saw his eyes examining my room. When his gaze alighted upon the open magazine on my desk, his face hardened. "Why do you do this to yourself?" he asked.

  "I have done nothing," I asserted. "But what I have seen—" I clutched the arms of my chair and tensed to stand, but suddenly felt that I did not have the strength for it. Instead, I watched Briggs as he brought the magazine to his face. His eyes darted back and forth as he read.

  "It's that blasted 'Pym' review, isn't it?" he asked, throwing the magazine down sharply. He turned on me with anger. "It is the only unfavorable notice your story ever received. The only one. And yet here it is, prominent among all your things. You have no doubt memorized it by now."

  "It is the injustice of Burton's attack that haunts me," I said, clutching anew the arms of my chair.

  "Where are all the positive reviews, Edgar? Why do you not collect them? After all, they are far more numerous." He began throwing open the drawers of my desk, drawer after empty drawer, as if he would find magazines and clippings from newspapers stuffed inside. He left the drawers gaping and stood aside for me to see, their yawning emptiness accusing me.

  "The injustice—"

  "Haunts you, yes. By God, can't you see, Edgar, that it is this...this muse of yours that causes your melancholy, your bouts of delirium?"

  "My delirium?" I asked in astonishment. "You cannot be serious. You would assign Burton's corpse to a vision?"

  Briggs pursed his lips, saying nothing. His eyes were as troubled as I had ever seen them. His silence condemned me.

  "A periodic fever of the brain," I explained after a moment, "and nothing more."

  In fact, it was a bout of melancholy that had driven me to this room when Gessler's men interrupted me. These attacks of despair were debilitating in the extreme, and led inevitably to severe headaches accompanied by fits of delirium. This maddening condition had only grown worse since the death of Virginia earlier in the year.

  But the death of my wife was the cause of true sadness, I reminded myself, an authentic spiritual malaise quite different from the blind interaction of chemicals that was the cause of my usual torment. I often felt as if I could sense a nugget of rot within my dysfunctional brain and supposed that if I could reach inside my cranium and pluck it out, all would be well.

  Alas, apart from being an impossible fancy, such ruminations were themselves more symptom than cure.

  "Whatever the cause, these musings of yours over slights and insults..." Briggs paused, shaking his head. "They are affecting your work, Edgar. You must see that they are affecting your life."

  But what of the murdered Burton? I wanted to shout, but had not the strength. I merely slumped in my chair instead.

  "You make them sound trivial," I began, but lost heart before I could begin to make my case. In truth, I would have been afraid to calculate the number of hours in a day I devoted to the contemplation of my many injuries. Regrettably, I had spent a year working with the villain Billy Burton—until his slanders became intolerable and his magazine an embarrassment to my reputation. I secretly knew he was the author of the anonymous review and I seethed about it still.

  I began to fear Briggs was right, and the budding certainty of it seemed to drain the life out of me.

  "You have produced very little fresh material for the Journal," Briggs continued in a stern, but sympathetic, tone. "We have promised our readers only original work, but have delivered nothing but reprints—dozens of your tales reprinted for the third, fourth and even fifth time."

  I would have reminded him of the reviews and the myriad short articles, book reviews and squibs I had written; of my 16-hour days; and of spending my nights in this very room and not seeing home for days or a week at a time. Who could work up fresh tales under conditions like these, conditions of near-slavery? I would have, but my strength to argue was as feeble as my capacity to produce literature.

  "Burton..." was the only word that could escape my lips.

  "Stop it!" Briggs cried. "This talk of Burton is madness!"

  I bolted from my chair, crying, "Madness?" I told him of Gessler and the corpse in the cellar. I told him of Fortunato and the jingling of his fool's cap. "You call that madness?" I asked when I had finished, my chest heaving.

  Briggs made no reply. He merely stared at me. In the silence, I heard the ticking of a clock, loud as church bells.

  "It is your delirium, Edgar," Briggs said gently at last. I tried to argue, but he quieted me with an upraised hand. "It is your delirium that puts the faces of your enemies on the dead. Do you remember the man run over by the milk wagon?"

  The man who had heckled me during my lecture at the New York University. Did I remember him? He had come by the office the next day to deride me further when he was struck down right outside my very door. "Oh, poetic justice!" I had cried when I saw who it was. And I made some remark of a similar vein to Briggs now. Did I remember him? I considered it a great triumph!

  Again, the ticking of the clock...

  "Edgar, you need rest," Briggs said after a moment. He grasped me by the shoulders, steadying me. "You're tired. You've been working too hard. And now this business with the police! It has you on edge. I beg you, Edgar, go home. Get some sleep, eat well, rest... Perhaps you can write a new tale! Bring it in fresh when it is done..."

  As he went on in this manner, I allowed him to lead me out of my room and through the office toward the front door. Briggs wasn't often right about much, but I would give him this: I was tired.

  "Yes...Yes..." I nodded. "Perhaps you are right..."

  I assured him that I would go home and rest.

  And I would.

  Just not right away.

&nb
sp; ~ * * * ~

  I walked along the sidewalk a few steps before looking back. Briggs was still watching. I gave him a wave, and he waved in return. When next I looked, he was gone. So I immediately turned and dashed into the street. Burton's office was no more than three city blocks from where I stood. I stopped to let a cab pass, dodged another, and then scampered through the throngs that crowded the pavement on the opposite side of the boulevard.

  I could feel peoples' eyes on me and heads turning in my direction as I ran, but I was frantic for news of Burton. We would see whose delirium was producing visions! As I neared the headquarters of his Gentleman's Magazine, I grew certain that I would find the place in mourning, black armbands and veils. Another thought occurred to me, however, almost causing me to abandon the enterprise altogether. Would I alone carry the burden of knowing the man's fate? How could I face his associates when shown his empty chair, desolate artifact of a missing man, when I had just seen him moldering in his tomb? I no longer trusted my senses. Briggs had so planted the seed of doubt in my mind that I dared not confess what I had seen. I would be forced to hold my tongue and did not know if I could.

  But I was determined to learn the truth, so I dashed on without hesitation. I burst through the door without pausing to compose myself. A man at a desk immediately rose to meet me. Seeing the horrified look in his eye, I remembered where I was. I stopped and took a deep breath.

  "I am here to see Mr. Burton," I said with as much dignity as I could muster. I straightened my coat and smoothed my hair. I was still breathing hard from my mad dash and my words came out clipped. Behind a half-wall topped with frosted glass to my left, I could hear the sounds of people working at their desks. "If you would be so kind as to fetch him for me."

  "I'm afraid that is quite impossible, sir," the man said, and I felt my pulse quicken.

  "And why is that?" I inquired, fearing the answer. I waited with trepidation. Because he is dead, I expected to hear. Or No one has seen him for nigh on three weeks now... No one but me, that is. I did not know what I wanted to hear. I seemed to fear every outcome.