POE MUST DIE (12 page)

“Yes, Mr. Bootham?”

“I have no wish to pry into your business, but please regard me as a friend. I deem it an honor to assist you in any way possible and not merely because Mr. Dickens has asked me to do so.”

“Much appreciated, Mr.—” Figg stopped talking.

“Mr. Figg, what’s wrong?”

Figg waited until a wagon piled high with boxes had passed in front of the museum. When he spoke, his voice was ice. “Those two men there, the ones talking to that lady who just stepped from the black carriage.”

Titus Bootham squinted behind steel-rimmed spectacles. “Yes, yes, I see them.”

“Them is two who I come here to see.”

Titus Bootham felt the menace in Figg’s voice and suddenly he was glad that Figg hadn’t come to see
him
in such fashion. He said, “The woman, yes I know her. Yes.”

“Who is she?”

“Mrs. Coltman. Mrs. Rachel Coltman.”

Figg looked at Bootham. “Husband named Justin?”

“He’s dead now, God rest his soul. Died of cancer a few weeks ago. Shortly after returning from England, I believe. Quite a wealthy man. We gave him a rather large obituary. She is—”

“Your carriage.” Figg took Bootham by the elbow, pushing him forward.

“Where? Where? I thought you wanted to—”

Figg, hand still tightly gripping Bootham’s elbow, reached the journalist’s carriage tied up at a nearby hitching rail, now crowded with single horses. At the hitching rack, two young boys pulled feathers from a pair of geese and threw the feathers at pigs nosing about in the mud and snow.

Figg’s soft voice was steely. “Mrs. Coltman has finished her little chat and she’s leavin’ and I would like to see where she is about to take herself.”
Find Justin Coltman and you find Jonathan.

“Your friends at the museum—”

“Ain’t my friends. Besides, I know where to get my hands on that lot. It is the lady what interests me now.”
Jonathan has to be near her, he has to be. Her husband was about to find the Throne of Solomon.

Titus Bootham slowly maneuvered his horse-drawn carriage through the growing tangle of wagons, horses, people.

An impatient Figg said, “Do not lose sight of her.”

“I suspect she might be returning home.”

“And where might that be?”

“Fifth Avenue. It is the correct place for the wealthy to reside these days. Ironic, since not too long ago that area was a swamp fit only for poor Irish and herds of wild pigs. Do you know Mrs. Coltman?”

“We have things to touch upon.”

Figg looked at the traffic hemming them in left, right, back and front. The noise attacked his ears and he didn’t see how a man could live with it without going balmy. He felt the thrill of the hunt, the excitement of a satisfaction soon to be his. Rachel Coltman would lead him to Jonathan and Figg would kill him, then leave this bedlam of a city, with its mud, foul smells and children who had to collect dead animals in order to get a crust of bread.

Let little Mr. Poe keep New York. The city was as mad as he was.

Figg snatched the whip from Titus Bootham’s hand, stood up in the carriage and began to flay the horse.
Jonathan.

“Mr. Figg, Mr. Figg, please I beg of you don’t—”

Figg stopped.

Bootham had tears in his eyes. “She is not a young horse, sir and she has served me well. I beg you.”

Burning with shame, Figg sat down, unable to look Titus Bootham in the face and tell him that he hadn’t been whipping the horse; he’d been whipping the man who’d killed his wife and son.

The two men followed Rachel Coltman’s carriage in silence.

TEN

“B
ELIEVE,” SAID
P
ARACELSUS
.

“I do.”

“Believe!”
The word was a command.

“I do believe, sir. Oh I do, with all my heart.”

“Then I can bring your wife to you once again, but only for an instant. It is not easy to control the spirits of those who have gone on ahead. They are now free, you must understand this. Free from all worlds, all restraints—”

Lorenzo Ballou leaped from his chair, voice breaking with pain. “Dear God, anything! I will do anything you ask, pay any amount. Only bring her to me once more, I beg you!”

Paracelsus gently lifted a white-gloved hand from the table, pointed it at Ballou then lowered the hand to the table once more. As if by magic, Ballou sat down.

“Mr. Ballou, I do not seek your money. I require only that you place your faith in me without reservation, for without your complete commitment there is little I can achieve.”

Ballou, 250 pounds and 5’4”, wiped his perspiring forehead with one of his dead wife’s lace handkerchiefs. He was jowly, with pink flesh from his face and neck dripping over an expensive collar and silk cravat. His puffy and gray mutton chop whiskers smelled of his wife’s perfume, which he watered in order not to run out of it. Ballou, fifty-five, was rich from crooked real estate dealings; two months ago his nineteen-year-old wife had died in a fall from a new horse he’d purchased for her.

“Dr. Paracelsus, you have given me more than any man ever has. Twice you have united my dearest Martha and me and I cannot convey how much this has meant to me.”

“I understand.”

“You tell me things about Martha and I, things no mortal man could possibly know and oh, how reassuring it is to hear them once more.”

Paracelsus nodded. Lorenzo Ballou was a toy, something to mold into a believer who would open his wallet willingly. Paracelsus, a large man with shoulder-length white hair that appeared to glow in the dark candlelit room, touched a white beard that reached his chest and knew that today, Mr. Ballou would be most generous. The spiritualist, himself a ghostly looking figure in a floor-length white robe, could sense when a survivor’s gratitude was about to overflow. Mr. Ballou’s certainly would, especially after the little tableau Paracelsus was about to unfold for the widower’s private viewing. This would be a most successful and lucrative seance.

The two men were alone in a totally dark room lit only by five black candles on a table of black marble. Paracelsus had made Martha Ballou
appear
on two occasions. And now once again it was time for the grieving Mr. Ballou to view the dearly departed.

“Extend your hands, Mr. Ballou. Both hands. Yes. Keep them flat on the table and extend your fingers until they touch mine. Yes, yes.”

The fat man did as ordered, his eyes on Paracelsus’ face. The spiritualist had a majestic nose, large but far from comical. It belonged on a king, thought Ballou, on a man used to ruling others. And his eyes. A burning green. You that was it. A burning green, eyes of green fire. And behind those eyes was a power to bring dear Martha back to this world again. Ballou’s heart was about to burst with joy, fear, anticipation.

And then he felt something brush his face. The fat man looked up at the ceiling to see rose petals falling down on him.

“Her favorite flower!” Ballou’s shout filled the small room. “How did you know?”

Paracelsus, eyes closed, placed his hands on top of Ballou’s and pressed down hard. “You must not move. You must not disturb the spirits or they will retreat.”

“Yes, yes. Oh please don’t let her go away. I—”

Ballou listened.

Then—“That song. It’s one she used to sing on the stage.” He turned around in his chair and saw a trumpet floating in the air. The trumpet glowed in the dark, a shade of green almost as bright as Paracelsus’ eyes.

“Who is there? Who is playing—” Ballou tried to leave his chair, but the spiritualist, using surprising strength, pressed down harder on his hands, keeping the fat man in place.

When Ballou turned to face Paracelsus again, he looked down at the table and suddenly inhaled. Jerking both hands free, he picked up the pearl necklace. “But, but this is at home in my safe! It belonged to Martha and no one has the combination to the safe but me. Where—”

“Lorenzo. Lorenzo.”

The fat man snapped his head towards the woman’s voice and when he saw her, his eyes widened and he whimpered like a puppy, exactly like a puppy, thought Paracelsus.

“Martha, oh Martha dearest!” Ballou wept, his corpulent body shaking, his jowls shiny with his tears.
He is mine, thought Paracelsus. I have him now.

The ghost was in a doorway behind a curtain of yellow gauze. A slim woman, dark haired and pretty in a pale blue robe with a hood that hid half of her face. She stood with her right profile to Lorenzo Ballou and had both hands folded in prayer.

“I come to you, dear Lorenzo, for only a moment. Only a moment.”

He stood up. “M-Martha.”

Paracelsus spoke swiftly. “If you go towards her, she will disappear. Obey me or she—”

He didn’t have to finish. Ballou sat down, his tear-stained face still on the ghost behind the yellow gauze curtain. A wet whale, thought Paracelsus, but a rich one and that is what concerns me.

“M-Martha. M-M-Martha.” All Ballou could do was sit and weep. They had so little time together before her death. Three months married, then—

“Lorenzo, dearest, you should not have killed Zachary and Beau. You should not have done that.”

The color left the fat man’s face and his breathing stopped. Zachary was the name of the horse Ballou had given her and Beau was the Negro groom who had saddled it for her. The day after his wife’s death, Lorenzo Ballou had taken both horse and groom deep into a wood and killed them both. The fat man, crazed with grief,
had been alone
when he’d done the killings.

“Martha, I—”

Her voice was gentle. “It was not the fault of the horse nor of dear, faithful Beau. They did not deserve to die, Lorenzo, but I forgive you. That is why I have come, to tell you not to have further nightmares about what you have done.” The ghost maintained the prayerful pose.

A stunned Ballou looked at Paracelsus. “I did not, I, I—”

Paracelsus lifted his white-gloved hands shoulder high, as if in a blessing. “I am not your judge. So long as you believe in me, no harm can come to you.”

“Yes, yes.” Ballou licked his fat lips and wiped more perspiration from his face. A nigger and a horse. Both were his property, to do with as he wished and neither had been missed. Ballou’s story was that the horse had been stolen and the nigger had run away, probably
ridden
away on the back of the stolen horse, who had been named Zachary after General Zachary Taylor, victorious general in the recent American war against Mexico.

“Martha?” Ballou looked at her. “Are you happy? Is all well with you?”

“I am supremely happy, Lorenzo.” The trumpet floated across the room, still playing the tune Martha had been singing when Ballou had first seen her, the tune she frequently sang around their lovely home. The tune, the ghost, the necklace and the dark room and Paracelsus’ green eyes. Lorenzo Ballou now had no will of his own, no mind but the mind that Paracelsus wanted him to have. The fat man
wanted
to believe, wanted to hear the voice of his wife and his own mind was as much Paracelsus’ ally as any deception the spiritualist could devise.

“I miss you, Lorenzo, dearest. I think of you and hope you think of me.”

“Oh I do, I do. Every day of my life, my love.” The tears would not stop flowing.

“Perhaps I can come to you again. The power lies with Dr. Paracelsus, If he can continue his work, if he can—”

More rose petals fell and the smell of Martha Ballou’s perfume was now stronger than ever in the room. A mother-of-pearl comb fell from the ceiling.
Hers.
It clattered on the black marble table and Ballou recoiled from it as though the comb were a snake. Again he looked up at the ceiling, at falling rose petals and the flying green trumpet which continued to play
that song
and when he again turned towards the ghost, she’d vanished.

He screamed her name, leaping from his chair and waddling across the room with all the speed in his fat, squat body. Reaching the doorway, he jerked the yellow gauze curtain left, right, all the while still whimpering like a puppy abandoned by its mother.

When he looked at Paracelsus, Lorenzo Ballou was a broken man.

“You must bring her back, you must!”

“My work is not my own. I am controlled by forces beyond my knowledge. Soon I must go, I must leave this place.”

“G-go? I do not understand.”

“I only serve.” Paracelsus bowed his head. “I follow my calling wherever it leads—”

“S-stay.” Lorenzo Ballou was on his knees, clutching the hem of Paracelsus’ white robe, then touching it to his lips. “I will give you any amount of money if you will only stay.”

“I cannot.”

“I beg you stay.” Ballou touched his forehead to the floor, his fat body shaking as he sobbed. “Ask-ask anything of m-me, anything and I shall do it. Only do-do not go. S-stay and b-bring Martha back to m-me.”

After Lorenzo Ballou left, Paracelsus locked the front door of his home, leaned back against it and sighed, nodded his head several times in complete satisfaction with all that he had achieved concerning the fat man, then returned upstairs to the seance room.