Forevermore by Jim Musgrave

Author:Jim Musgrave
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indie Author Project
Published: 2022-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

I wanted to interview Wallace once more to find out about Poe’s relationship with the Rogers girl. He was, not unusually, at his Sons of Liberty watering hole, the Fraunces, in a back booth. He had paper and pen, and was busily jotting down something as I approached him. He casually looked up. “Aha, O’Malley! Please, sit down. I was just going over this list of editors I must approach to solicit my new batch of writings. Life goes on in the big city, does it not?”

“Listen, Wallace,” I said, sitting down inside the leather confines of the booth, “did you ever know of any intimacies that your friend Poe might have had with Mary Rogers?”

Wallace stopped writing and looked over at me. “Poe and that little wench? Oh, no. We might have speculated as to the shape of her figure beneath that lovely dress, but no more than any of the other young roosters were doing inside the emporium.”

“So, you never once saw him alone with her? Even after his wife died?”

“No! Never. Poe was a lot of things, but one thing he was not was a womanizer. Now Anderson, the owner? He was a man who gazed lecherously after this girl. It is not a wonder that his wife, Amanda, would often watch him prowling about the store, following the crowds of men as they pursued the young clerk.”

Wallace was indignant about this, and I doubted he was lying. “What about Longfellow? Did you see him around the woman?”

“Longfellow? No, he was busy lecturing. He spent little time around the tobacco shop. Now, Fennimore Cooper. He bought the little lady all kinds of trinkets and was often seen whispering to her in the corner of the shop. Although, I never saw him approach her outside of the store,” Wallace said.

“Thank you, William, you’ve been very informative. I must go on now to my day,” I said, and he waved at me before he returned to his listing.

I had not been able to establish the connection between Longfellow and the Rogers girl or that there was any kind of jealous rivalry about the girl between Poe and my prime suspect. It was horrible to think that Poe was murdered because of his relationship with a woman—especially one who was so steeped in controversy as Mary Cecilia Rogers. What could have happened to cause this person who wanted me dead to erupt in such fury? What had I stumbled upon to make me a character in one of Poe’s murder stories? I was waiting for the killer to make the next move, and it was difficult to be in this position. I am a man of action, and I have always been this way. However, there was no solution to this conundrum, and I was at an impasse in my investigation.

I was still interested in Longfellow and his motives, so I wanted to pay him another visit. This time, I was going to probe him about his secret hatred of Poe and dark fiction.

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