Andrew Taylor - The American Boy

"Do I smell tobacco?" Mr Iversen inquired.

If the finger I had found in the satchel had belonged to the embalmed body of Mr Iversen, Senior, then there was no reason to suppose that the body I had seen at Wellington-terrace had been anyone other than Henry Frant. In that case, only one person truly benefited from the confusion and uncertainty.

As any actor knows, we rarely study the faces of those we encounter. We remember them by their salient features, which are often accretions, not essentials. Thus, for example, we do not have a clear mental image of a person's face: instead – for the sake of illustration – we see a tangled beard, a pair of blue spectacles, a wheeled chair and a robe embroidered with magical symbols. In my mind, I stripped away the accretions and considered what I knew of the essentials.

"I believe, sir," I said in a voice that shook, "that I have the honour of addressing Mr David Poe as well as Mr Iversen, Junior?"

I strained my ears to hear the reply. The seconds passed. Then, at last, I heard the sound of a low chuckle.

The whole truth about David Poe, late of Baltimore, Maryland, and Mr Iversen, Junior, late of Queen-street, Seven Dials, did not emerge on that morning. I do not suppose anyone will ever know it. Nature may have framed Mr Poe to be candid but life had taught him to dissimulate.

"What's in a name, Mr Shield? Time is not on our side at present. Let us not quibble about trifles. I have in my pocketbook a document that-"

"But you are Poe, are you not? You are Edgar's father?"

"I cannot deny either charge. Indeed, having seen the lad, I challenge you to find a prouder parent in Christendom. I do not wish to appear importunate, but-"

"Mr Poe," I interrupted, "even if Mary Ann meets no obstacles on her way, we shall be able to enjoy each other's company for hours. I think we should occupy ourselves with your story. We have nothing else to do."

"There is the matter of the document I mentioned."

"The document can wait. My curiosity about you cannot."

I sat smoking on a chair by the trap-door, and never did a cigar taste so sweet. From below my feet came David Poe's rich, drawling voice – now Irish, now American, now genteel, now Cockney, now whispering, now declaiming. Principally from that conversation, but also from later observations and information provided by others, I believe that at last I built up a tolerably accurate picture of his life, though by no means a comprehensive one. It goes without saying that he was a loose and vicious man who cared not how low he had to stoop in pursuit of his own base ends. But we are none of us made of whole cloth. Like the rest of us, he was a quilt made up of scraps from many materials, some of which sat well beside their neighbours, some of which did not.

Yes, he was cruel and dissolute and often a drunkard. He was also, I believe, a murderer, though in the case of Henry Frant he claimed to have acted in self-defence, a plea which may have some truth in it. The death of Mrs Johnson he attributed to an unlucky accident, and this I found harder to credit.

Nor do I find it likely that David Poe and Mr Carswall intended that Mary Ann and I should remain alive. Poe told me that the coffin had merely been a method to bring me discreetly from Seven Dials to this place where Stephen Carswall might interrogate me without fear of prying eyes. I believe it was to have served a further purpose. It would have been easy enough to slip another coffin or two into the private burial ground attached to the workhouse next door; the Sexton was Poe's creature, and in an establishment of that nature it is never long before there is a need for an open grave where two may lie as comfortably as one.

I have leapt ahead of myself. The point I had begun to make with my talk of quilts and cloth is simply that Mr Poe could be an agreeable companion if he wished. He was a man of parts, who had travelled the world and observed its follies and peculiarities. Of course he had every reason to make himself agreeable to me while I had him imprisoned in the cellar.

His story, in brief, was this. As a young man, his father had put him to study the law, but it had not answered and he had become an actor instead. He had married Miss Arnold, the English actress who became the mother of Edgar and of two other children. Alas, an actor's life is a precarious one, with many temptations. He had been very young, he told me, and he had quarrelled with managers and critics. He had drunk too deeply and too often. He had failed to husband his few resources.

"And I was not, perhaps, as good an actor as I thought myself. My Thespian talents do not shine at their brightest on the boards, sir: they are better suited to the wider stage of life."

The open mouths of his young family added to his cares. At length, the young man could shoulder his burden no more. At that time he and his wife were in New York. A chance-met acquaintance in a tavern offered to procure him a berth on a boat sailing for Cape Town where, he was told, there was such a hunger for dramatic entertainments that no actor worth his salt could fail to make himself a fortune within a very short time indeed. There was not a moment to be lost for the ship was to sail on the outgoing tide. According to his account, Poe had scribbled a note explaining his intended absence to his wife and had entrusted it to a friend.

"Alas! I trusted too well. My letter was never delivered. My poor Elizabeth went to her grave a few months later not knowing whether I was alive or dead, leaving my unfortunate children to depend on the charity of strangers."

David Poe's misfortunes had only just begun. The ship in which he was to work his passage to Cape Town was a merchantman sailing under British colours – at that time, our two countries were not yet at war. But the Union flag proved Mr Poe's undoing for the ship was snapped up by a French privateer out of Le Havre. Mr Poe was reticent about how he had spent the next few months, but by the summer of 1812 he had moved to London.

"I know a man of your sensibility, Mr Shield, will have no difficulty in picturing my distress when I discovered, by a circuitous route, that my beloved Elizabeth had died. My first impulse was to rush to the side of my motherless children and provide what comfort a poor widowed father might bring. But on second thoughts, I realised that I could not afford the luxury – I might say the selfishness – of indulging in my paternal sentiments, not for my own sake but for the sake of my children. To get a passage to the United States at that time would not have been easy, since Congress had declared war on Great Britain in June. I understood, too, that my children were being cared for by the most amiable of benefactors: indeed, even if I could get to the United States, their material circumstances would immediately worsen. I blush to admit it, but there had been a little temporary embarrassment just before I left New York, in the shape of unpaid debts. No, though every generous feeling urged me to rush to the side of my children, prudence restrained me." Here I imagined him on the other side of the trap-door, standing at the foot of the stairs with his hand on his heart. "A father must place his children's welfare above his own selfish desires, Mr Shield, though it break his heart to do so."

Fortunately, the grieving widower was not obliged to grieve in solitude. He had wooed and won the heart of a Miss Iversen, who lived with her father in Queen-street, Seven Dials, and assisted him in his business.

"She was not in the first flush of youth," Mr Poe told me. "But then nor was I. We were both of an age when one woos with the head as much as with the heart. Mr Iversen's health was failing and he was anxious to secure the future of his only child in the event of his death. She was a most amiable lady, with the additional attraction that she brought not only her delightful self to our connubial bower but also a means of earning my living – by honest toil, the sweat of my brow, but I did not mind that. There can be no higher calling than to heal the ills of one's fellow men. I firmly believe we have had more success in that department than the entire College of Physicians. We doctor their souls as well as their bodies."