Read Online The Blackest Bird by Joel Rose - Free Book Online

the pleasure of seeing his latest typeset, Colt had made financial arrangement with Mr. Adams in order for him to print the thin volume. And, indeed, the purpose of Mr. Adams’ visit that morning of the crime pertained to that very agreement, and certain accounts still outstanding for Adams’ printing and publishing services rendered.
    Of only slightly less consideration to the money owed apparently was the quality and craft of Mr. Colt’s work. Evidently, in printer Adams’ estimation, the author’s poetical dabbling contained no meritable quality, and no craft. In no uncertain terms, Adams questioned the mettle of the poet, the honesty, integrity, and frankly, when a poem showed promise, the very authorship. Word had reached Adams that the best poems signed “Colt” were actually penned by the critic and poet Edgar Poe, commissioned for pennies from the rightful author owing to that man’s purported financial difficulties. Adams had apparently lent ear to rumors of scandal. He had heard Poe might even now be revoking his arrangement, decrying Colt for plagiarizing his work, and planning an exposé in the public prints.
    Colt rose daily at midday. His coffee and an Anderson aromaticsegar in light green wrapper were brought to him in bed each noon along with that morning’s newspapers and a single red rose in a glass vase.
    Adams’ note, sealed in an envelope smudged with black, inky fingerprints, was tucked under the linen napkin. Looking at it, Colt first took a sip of coffee before slitting the envelope.
    He read the note and jumped up, spilling both coffee and vase.
    Crying for Dillback, the manservant, he demanded his horse and carriage be readied immediately. He dressed and ran from his home into the street even as his mistress, Caroline Henshaw, tried to calm him.
    His carriage pulled up, but apparently Colt now had second thoughts.
    “Mayhem may very well have been at play on my mind,” he admitted in writing, “because I now declined to enter the vehicle. Instead, I dismissed coach and driver and headed east on foot from my home, skirting Washington Square before cutting south on the Broadway, with every intention of confronting Mr. Adams at his printing house offices on Nassau Street. Halfway downtown, however, I thought better of it, and again altered my plans.”
    Colt maintained a second-floor office and studio at the corner of Chambers Street and Broadway. He now repaired there, and was sitting at his desk when, some hours later, Adams burst in, very much flushed with excitement and the exertion of running up the stairs. The irksome printer rushed across the room and waved his bill for services directly in Colt’s face.
    Colt said he pushed him away, demanding, “What is the meaning of this?”
    Adams shouted he wanted his money. He then plunged into what Colt called a spew of “gossipy gibberish,” slanders he had apparently heard from certain well-oiled lips, such as that Edgar Poe was the rightful author of more than a few of the poems included in Colt’s prospective book, and not he, Colt. A lawsuit had been threatened, and Adams shouted he wanted no part of it.
    Colt admitted in writing the charge made him somewhat nervous, knowing the temperament of Poe. Yet he claimed all the verses were his, that if anything, Poe was an admirer, and that all charges were ridiculous, the result of petty jealousies.
    “Pay me or I’ll expose you!” Adams threatened. He drew out an example of work considered suspect, slammed it hard on the desk, and shoved it across to Colt. Colt lowered his eyes in order to read. The bit of doggerel had appeared unsigned in an 1841 volume of the Police Gazette , but Colt claimed authorship.
    In this Christian age,
    ’Tis strange, you’ll engage
    When everyone’s doing high crimes to assuage,
    That the direst offenses continue to rage;
       
    That fibbing and fobbing
    And thieving and robbing,
    The foulest maltreating,
    And forging and lifting,
    And wickedly