Andrew Taylor - The American Boy

"You tell fortunes?" I inquired. "You give them coloured water and pills made of flour and sugar? You interpret their dreams, sell them spells and help women miscarry?"

"Who is to say that is wrong, sir?" Mr Poe replied. "You would not believe the cures I have effected. You would not credit the number of sorrows I have soothed. I give them hope, sir, which is better than all the money in the world. In my way I am a philanthropist. Tell me, which is worse? To live as I do, an honest tradesman, a broker of dreams. Or to prey upon widows and hard-working men, and prise away their little fortunes and give them nothing in return. A splendid establishment and a carriage with a crest on the door are no guarantee of moral probity. I need refer you only to Mr Henry Frant and Mr Stephen Carswall as evidence of that."

I believed him – or rather, I believed some part of him meant what he said: no man is a monster to himself, not entirely. And he spoke no more than the truth: the distance between Seven Dials on the one hand, and Margaret-street and Russell-square on the other, is shorter than the world realises.

When old Mr Iversen died in 1813, his daughter had been plunged into a melancholy so profound that her doting husband had feared she would never emerge. She could not bear to be parted from her papa. In the end Mr Poe had suggested that his body be embalmed.

"It is done in the best families now. And the old man, despite his trade, was an out-and-out Rationalist. Why should he wish for the grave or the attentions of worms? And of course the solution was also eminently practicable. My patrons are, by and large, a superstitious crew. They do not care to play foolish tricks on a man whose father-in-law keeps guard for all eternity in a room above the shop. Better than a pair of mastiffs, eh? Those dogs at Monkshill were no use as guards when they were dead, but with my late wife's father being dead was in fact an advantage."

Mr Poe had taken over not only the business of the old man but also something of his identity. "Only an American, sir, can truly appreciate the value of tradition." He called himself Mr Iversen. He wore his father-in-law's professional garb – that is to say, the gown with its strange symbols and the skull cap; he even pretended to be crippled, as Mr Iversen, Senior, had been.

"There is much to be said for distinguishing one's professional activities from one's private life," Mr Poe said. "If I slip on a beard and a pair of blue spectacles I become another man altogether. People come and go in Seven Dials. In a year or two, most of them had forgotten there had ever been another Iversen, especially after my poor Polly followed her pa to the grave."

He was understandably reticent about the precise extent and nature of the business he had inherited from his father-in-law and then built up himself. I think it probable that there was a great deal more to it than quack medicines and spells for the credulous. I cannot forget the bully boys in their rusty black clothes, the firm of undertakers who worked so assiduously for him, and the tumbledown farm so close to a workhouse, a lunatic asylum and a private burial ground.

In all probability, David Poe would have continued to prosper in Queen-street if he had not learned that Mr and Mrs Allan were in London, with their foster son Edgar. Over the years he had naturally paid attention to the news from America, and in particular to Americans visiting London. According to his own explanation, he had been possessed by an overpowering desire to see his son, whom he had last laid eyes on when the boy was not much beyond two years old and still in petticoats.

I see no reason to doubt at least the partial truth of this. As I said, we are all a patchwork of emotions. Why should David Poe not have felt a sentimental attachment to the children he had seen so little of? Absence and ignorance encourage such tender feelings. But an act may have more than one motive. Knowing Mr Poe, I suspect that he may also have borne in mind the possibility of deriving pecuniary advantage from Mr Allan, for he must have known that Allan was accounted a rich man.

Whatever his purpose, Mr Poe visited Southampton-row, where I unwittingly confirmed his son's identity, and where he learned that Edgar was to be found in Stoke Newington. Later he came to the village, where he accosted the boys and had his altercation with me. He had indeed been more than a little tipsy on this occasion – "if ever a man had need of refreshment, it was I on that day." Another layer of confusion was added by the fact that Mr Poe was short-sighted, and his vision was further hampered by the blue glasses: therefore he found it hard to distinguish between Edgar Allan and Charlie Frant, which brought about the initial assumption that the object of his interest was not Edgar but Charlie. It was this misunderstanding which led, through my good offices, to his acquaintance with Mr Frant.

Frant saw what David Poe wished him to see: an Irish-American with a taste for gin and no visible means of support; no threat to Frant or to anyone else. Frant saw all this, and he also saw that David Poe was approximately the same height, weight, age and build as himself. Leaving aside the superficial dissimilarities, Poe made a perfect substitute for Henry Frant in the role of murder victim. Urged on, no doubt, by Mrs Johnson, he retained Poe's services. In the late afternoon of Wednesday 24th November, Frant lured Poe up to Wellington-terrace with the intention of murdering him.

"He told me we were to meet a gentleman there, and gave me a suit of his clothes, saying I must look the gentleman, too, or the design he had in mind would be doomed. By God, he thought me a prime flat, but in truth it was the other way about. He told me to get to Wellington-terrace early, where he would explain the design. So I walked there from the turnpike road, and he sprang on me, with a hammer in his hand." David Poe coughed. "I had been half expecting it. We had a bit of a set-to, and I happened to get hold of the hammer. I didn't mean to kill him, as God's my witness, but he would have killed me given half the chance. I must have hit him a little harder than I thought. There I was, Mr Shield, in something of a difficulty, as I think you will agree."

"You did not mean to kill him?" I cried. "Mr Poe, you forget I saw the body."

"On my honour, Mr Shield, I had no more intention of killing him than I have of killing you, as you will see when I explain those injuries. When he died, he was almost entirely unmarked, apart from the back of the head, that is. But I knew that no jury in the land would believe that my blows had been struck in self-defence, that I had not wished to kill him. While I considered what to do, I searched him, and I struck lucky with his pockets, at least. Frant planned to run away, you see, after he'd killed me. He was carrying plenty of money, a case of jewellery, and also a letter from his fancy woman down at Monkshill. Shockingly indiscreet, she was, sir, quite shocking."

"So you knew what they planned?"

"Not then. I didn't have time to read the whole, but I saw enough to discover what my part was to be, enough to realise there was plenty of money in this, far more than Mr Frant had in his pockets. I was to stand in for Frant himself – Frant as a dead man, you understand, so that he would not be pursued. Can you credit such evil ingenuity! Of course I needed time to contemplate the pros and cons. Anyway, the long and the short of it is, I decided my best course of action was to follow at least some of the design that Mr Frant had laid out for me. So I knocked his face and hands about so his own mother couldn't have been absolutely sure who he was – I had to do the hands, because of the finger – and then I slipped away. I knew there'd be questions asked, and I'd have to find a way to deal with them. With your assistance, Mr Shield, as it happened."