“So you know more about Poe than you’ve admitted?”
He offered her a sheepish grin. “When I was a kid, my folks bought a video of The Raven. The movie had little to do with the poem, but Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre were magnificent. It was pretty silly, really. They turned the poem into a battle between magicians. But I watched it over and over, and then went on a Poe binge.”
She laughed. “Maybe you should be a Raven.”
They were on Nassau Street now. “I think it would have been right about here,” Joe said.
Genevieve frowned. “What would have? I don’t think Poe lived here.”
“No, but not far away,” he said, flashing Genevieve a smile. “No. I’m thinking about ‘The Mystery of Marie Roget.’ It was based on a real murder case that put New York City into a state of upheaval. Journalists had a field day. Politicians were shaken to the core…and Poe wrote his story. The girl who was killed lived on Nassau Street. Her name was Mary Rogers, and she’d worked at a cigar shop where Poe had almost certainly been. She was considered to be beautiful, and she was from a good family whose fortunes were in bad shape. Her mother opened a boarding house on Nassau Street. And it was from Nassau Street that she left…and never returned. The summer of 1841 was stifling. A steamboat ran across the river to New Jersey, and people went to escape the heat and the crowds. It was like going to a park to play. P. T. Barnum staged wild west shows over there, and people flocked to someplace called Sybil’s Cave to drink the waters, which were considered to be restorative. Anyway, three men took the ferry over one day, several days after she disappeared, and as they were walking north along the river, heading for the pavilion at Sybil’s Cave, they spotted something in the water. It was Mary Rogers. Poe turned Mary into Marie and he moved the whole thing to Paris. He had already written ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ and he wanted to use his Parisian detective, C. Auguste Dupin, to solve another mystery.”
Genevieve was staring at him.
He shrugged. “Hey, it’s common knowledge.”
She laughed. “So common I didn’t know it. I did see The Raven, though, and I loved it. And of course, I’ve read the poem. I’ve even been to his grave site in Baltimore,” she admitted.
He turned and walked toward Broadway again. “Poe didn’t live here when Mary Rogers was killed—he had left the city for a job in Philadelphia. But he lived here from eighteen-thirty-seven to thirty-eight, and there was a bookstore near here, owned by a Scot named William Gowans, where Poe spent a lot of time. Gowans was totally eccentric and only catered to those he considered serious readers. The shop where Mary Rogers worked was only a few blocks north, and Gowans roomed at the boarding house Mrs. Rogers kept. So they were all acquaintances, one way or another.”
Genevieve cocked her head, looked at him with a slight grin tugging at her lips. “You’re very serious about your Poe facts—for a man who said that that note was just a smoke screen.”
“And it might be.”
“Then why are we here?”
“Might as well get the feel for what’s going on,” he said.
He started walking faster, though he didn’t realize how fast until he heard the sound of her footsteps as she tried to catch up.
“Joe?”
“Yeah?”
“There was poison in Thorne’s wine. That doesn’t have anything to do with ‘The Mystery of Marie Roget.’”
“I know.”
“Then…?”
“Right now, I’m just trying to get a feel for Poe himself, and his life and times.”
“Ah.”
“New York back then…the Five Points area was like a haven for thugs, drug dealers, murderers and thieves. I think the population of the city back then was about three-hundred thousand.”
“Wow,” Genevieve said dryly.
He laughed. “Okay, nothing by today’s standards, but back then, it was huge. Just like now, people came here from all over to make a living. You know, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere? Well, that’s always been true before. So Poe came to New York with his sights on becoming financially secure and finding real respect for his talents. According to those who knew him, he was a fine literary critic—but a vicious one at times.”
“The best critics are vicious at times, so they say.”
Joe shrugged. He indicated the doorway to an old bar. The Dingle Room. A sign boasted that it had stood on the same street for over two hundred years, acting as a tavern for over one hundred of them.
“Think he might have lifted a beer or two here?” Genevieve asked.
“Maybe. Meanwhile, I’m thirsty. And hungry.”