“Hey, what are you, my captain or something?”
“Is that a play on words, or are you just being pissy?” Joe asked him.
“Of course we’re checking on boat rentals,” Raif said. “Shit.”
“You might want to check to see if anyone rented a Poe outfit anywhere,” Joe said, wincing slightly.
“What?”
“And check around with the neighbors about it.”
“You mean, Bigelow’s neighbors? Or Lori’s? Doesn’t matter. We’ve talked to the neighbors.”
“But you haven’t asked them if they saw anyone dressed up like Poe walking around—” he said.
“They would have said so, don’t you think? I mean, that would have been pretty weird.”
“It’s New York, Raif. Think about it. How much weird stuff do you walk by every day of your life?”
“All right,” Raif said. “Why the hell not?”
They hung up, and Joe saw that Nikki and Genevieve were both looking back at him gravely.
“What?” he said.
Genevieve shook her head.
“We’re just glad that you mentioned the Poe costume idea, that’s all,” Nikki said.
He turned away without replying. He wasn’t admitting that ghosts were out there talking to people. He was simply…grabbing at any straw.
But he knew.
When they reached Baltimore, they went straight to the Poe house on Amity Street. Poe had gone to live there after one of his arguments with his foster father, and it was probably a place where he had found happiness. He had live there with his aunt, Maria Clemm, and his future wife, his cousin Virginia. He had done a lot of writing in the house, and though the house itself was the real attraction, it also held Poe’s lap desk, which he used when traveling, his sextant, and a full-size color reproduction of the only known portrait of Virginia.
The house itself consisted of a living room and kitchen on the first floor, with two bedrooms above and an attic. It had been saved from demolition by the city’s Poe society in nineteen-forty-one, and was reverently maintained.
They moved on to Church Hospital, where Poe had died.
It was originally called Washington College Hospital. Poe had arrived there in a carriage on October third, eighteen-forty-nine. He was attended by Dr. John J. Moran, who, later in life, made his living by telling the tale of Poe’s death, which meant he had expanded on it so much that the truth was hard to discern from the fiction. But the facts seemed to be that Poe had arrived, after a disappearance of several days, in a state that appeared to be drunkenness. He was taken to a tower room, where alcoholics were usually kept to keep them from disturbing the other patients. Poe’s cousin, Neilson Poe, tried to visit him on the sixth but was told that Poe was too excitable, so he left. Neither he nor any member of the family would ever see Edgar Allan Poe again, at least not alive.
His cause of death was listed as “congestion of the brain.”
Because it was still a working hospital, they simply stood outside and looked at the building.
Genevieve realized that Joe was watching her, and she looked at him and smiled. “It was so sad, the way he died. His whole life was so sad.”
“The grave site?” Adam suggested, and they moved on.
Even in death, poverty had followed Poe. He had originally been buried with no headstone. Later, Maria Clemm had written to the same cousin who had tried to visit Poe as he lay dying, and Neilson had commissioned a monument.
It would have been a nice one, Joe thought. Neilson had asked that the Latin for “Here, at last, he is happy” be inscribed on one side, while the other side would have read, “Spare these remains.” But the monument had been built near the train tracks, and a train wreck had destroyed it, and Neilson hadn’t had the money to pay for another.
Poe’s stone did not go up until eighteen-seventy-five. By then, Poe had at last received tribute from his fellow writers. Letters from Longfellow and Tennyson, among others, were read at the ceremony. Eventually Maria Clemm was buried beside him, and the remains of his beloved Virginia were brought from New York to rest with him, as well. Somehow, his birthday was mistakenly written as January twentieth instead of January nineteenth, an error that remained.
There was a crowd of tourists around the grave, listening to a guide, and Joe couldn’t help wondering if ghosts would appear to his friends when there were so many people in the area. Then he wondered if they would give any indication of what they saw even if they did see something.
What the hell was the point of all this, anyway? It was fine to acknowledge the sad life of a great writer, but he didn’t see how that would be helpful in solving a series of modern murders.
When the guide, a lean man of about twenty-five who was dressed as the poet, was finished, Joe stepped forward and asked him if he knew anything about Bradley Hicks.
“Poor Bradley.”
“You knew him?”
“Yes. And what a terrible way to die, frightened to death in his own family vault.”