Poe shadow by Matthew Pearl Read Free Book Online Page A

to pick up from the ground. A man from the hospital offered a better black suit to bury him in.”
    “But how did Poe come to be wearing ill-fitting clothes?”
    “I cannot say.”
    “Do you not think it utterly strange?”
    “I suppose I have not thought of it much since then, Mr. Clark.”
    Those clothes were not meant to be worn by Poe.
Poe’s death had not been meant for him,
I thought, an irrational and abrupt notion. I thanked the sexton for his time and began rapidly to ascend the long stairs that rose from the vaults, as though once I’d secured the top there would be some immediate action to take. Suddenly seized by a momentary foreboding, I stopped in the middle of the stairs, tightening my grip on the handrail. The wind had grown worse outside, and as I reached the top I could barely direct myself to cross back into the upper world.
    When I emerged, my eyes drifted to the spot of Poe’s unmarked grave for one last look. I nearly jumped at what I saw. I blinked to make certain it was real.
    It was a flower, a fragrant, blossoming flower lying incongruously atop the grass and dirt of Edgar Poe’s plot. A flower that had not been there just a few minutes before.
    I gasped for Mr. Spence, as though there was something to be done, or as though he could have seen something I hadn’t while we were both sitting together below the earth in that tomb. Down in the vault the sexton could not hear me calling. Dropping to my knees, I inspected the flower, thinking perhaps it had blown from another grave. But no. Not only did the flower sit there,
there,
but also its stem broke firmly through the dirt on top.
    Suddenly there was the noise of horses stepping and wheels clicking slowly to life. I peered around and could see a medium-sized carriage cloaked by the mist. I ran toward the gates to try and see who was there, but I was instantly blocked. A dog bounded into view. The dog barked voraciously at my ankles. I tried to steer around her, but the canine pounced to the side, growling and snarling from behind the gravestones.
    The dog had clearly been trained to prevent Baltimore’s “resurrection men” from attempted thefts of our corpses, and perceiving me run had identified me as one of those miscreants. Finding some ginger-nuts in my coat, I offered them up, and the mongrel soon befriended me. But by the time I could safely reach the street, the carriage had vanished into the distance.

 
     
     

    I WAS STIRRED awake the next morning only by the muffled sounds from the servants below. I washed and dressed rapidly. But at this hour, no carriages were found for hire near my house. Luckily, I found a public omnibus that happened to be boarding.
    Having not traveled by public conveyance as of late, I was struck by how many strangers to Baltimore were aboard. This I thought from their dress and speech, and their watchfulness of the people around them. It led me to wonder…. I happened to be carrying among my papers a portrait of Poe from a biographical article published a few years before. At the next stopping-place I turned to the rear of the bus. When the conductor finished collecting tickets from the newcomers, I asked him whether the man pictured in the magazine had been his passenger in the last weeks of September. That was the time—I had estimated from the more reliable newspaper accounts—that Poe would have arrived to Baltimore. The conductor murmured “Don’t recall ’m,” or something in the same fashion.
    A slight comment, I know! Hardly worth any excitement? Yet I felt the flash of accomplishment. In a single moment, though rebuffed, I had acquired knowledge that Poe had not been in this particular omnibus during this conductor’s watch! I had solicited a small share of the truth behind Poe’s final passage through Baltimore, and that contented me.
    Since I had to move about the city anyway, it could not hurt to ride the omnibus more frequently and, when I did, ask such questions.
    You have no