The Hindu Business Line : Know whodunit first?

As the strong man exults in his physical ability... so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics," wrote Edgar Allan Poe, the inventor of mystery fiction, in The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the first modern detective story.

It's more than a coincidence that Poe's mysterious death in 1849, more than his short yet prolific life of four decades, offers an enigma so baffling and a conundrum so uncomfortable that even a century-and-a-half of speculation and research only tantalise analysts of literary history with more questions than answers.

Found one balmy October day on a Baltimore street, languishing delirious and distressed, Poe was moved unconscious to a local inn and then to a hospital where he breathed his last. Wrapped in a haze of opinion and contradiction, the intrigue of Poe's death is yet again under the spotlight with Matthew Pearl's The Poe Shadow, published recently.

Through this novel of "historical fiction with Poe's death at its core", we witness Pearl's own inquest of Poe's end through the eyes of one Quentin Clark, a young Baltimorean fan of Poe's, who is so inspired by detective C. Auguste Dupin of The Murders... that he embarks upon his own investigation to unravel the dark secrets of his favourite author's eternal rest.

An orphan by the age of six, a rebel to his foster father, a soldier dismissed from the US Army after a brief stint, an early widower forever diseased, and a heavy drinker: Poe's crumbly life had all the trappings of a tragedy. His mastery of the macabre, borne out by his classic poem The Raven, is a reflection of his inner turbulence.

To boot, this creator of nearly 70 short stories, as many poems and a novel was also a critic with scathingly irreverent views and an unworldly person whose professional naiveté dispossessed him of money as well as goodwill. "Edgar Allan Poe is dead," read a New York Tribune obituary the day Poe was buried, "This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it."

Defiant genius

Quite unsurprising for a defiant genius, being wronged fetched him more popular curiosity than his work. Death only stoked it further. In a recent article, Pearl writes, "Poe was not an icon at the time of his death." Which is why his detractors hijacked his death with ease to project him as a depraved, drunk, drug-addled madman. So small was the gathering of mourners at his funeral, just four, that the minister didn't even deliver a sermon. For a good quarter century, Poe's grave brooded in anonymity.

It was much later that the world woke up to his literary impact. "Though his immediate contemporaries appreciated him only grudgingly," says Pearl, "his writing has transformed our consciousness." This man with a once lampooned morbid streak has since made it to school reading rooms. Notably, money for the obelisk that marks the spot where his body was shifted in 1875 from the original place of burial was collected by schoolchildren.

Before his death, Poe is said to have raised money for his magazine in Richmond, Virginia. He intended to travel subsequently to Philadelphia to edit some poems and then to New York to be with his aunt Maria Clemm, who filled the void left by the early demise of his mother. But for reasons unknown, he overstayed his sojourn in Baltimore. His cousin Neilson claimed to know a few things about his death, but never wrote them down.

Hostile biographers?

That Poe was found in a gutter in Baltimore, many maintain, is an erroneous theory manufactured by hostile biographers. To questions on the cause of his condition, an enfeebled Poe, reveal old letters, gave "incoherent and unsatisfactory" answers. Those aware of his increased drinking following his wife's death, attempted to hold that guilty for his decline. A memoir states that Poe drank with a friend while waiting between trains to Philadelphia and boarded a wrong train, following which, the train's conductor brought him back to Baltimore. But the physician who attended to Poe had denied any smell of liquor upon his breath or person. Yet, Pearl has unearthed an 1899 account of a female spiritualist who claimed that Poe's ghost once narrated a poem to her ascribing his death to drunken debauch.

Poe was never in good health. And doctors were only too willing to read in that the choicest of aliments, from brain fever and heart disease to a rare enzyme disorder, tuberculosis, epilepsy, diabetes, and syphilis. Although Poe scoffed at these theories, he often complained to Clemm about spasms that didn't let him hold the pen. Cats are prominent in Poe's stories. So many even conjectured that a rabid pet had accidentally bitten him.

In a letter asking Clemm to write to him in Philadelphia, he wrote: "For fear I should not get the letter, sign no name and address it to EST Grey Esquire". In those days, post offices in the US often placed newspaper advertisements announcing unclaimed mails. Pearl found one such advertisement in the Philadelphia Public Ledger bearing that very pseudonym. Clearly, Poe wasn't in Philadelphia to collect that letter. But what elude explanation are his fear and the suggestion of a pseudonym.

Enduring mystery

Poe was found in Baltimore during elections infamous for corruption and violence. To secure a certain candidate's victory, partisan gangs were known to kidnap innocent bystanders, change their clothes and make them vote repeatedly. By the time he was found, Poe's black-wool suit too had been replaced by a cheap gabardine suit. But Poe was too well known in Baltimore to have been cooped thus. Some attribute the signs of physical abuse on Poe's person to an attack instigated either by a spurned woman or the enraged relative of a woman Poe courted. Some believe Poe had collected a huge amount of subscription money that was not found later, suggesting he may have been robbed.

Poe's affair with mystery hasn't ended with his death. For well over five decades since his centennial death anniversary in 1949, an anonymous visitor has been leaving three red roses and a half-full bottle of Martel Cognac on Poe's grave every year on his birthday. While someone has evidently taken over from the person who started it all, this "Poe Toaster", draped in black with a silver-tipped cane, has never been trailed.

"It may be an odd suggestion from a novelist," avers Pearl, "but the challenge of refreshing our understanding of Poe's death is to resist the temptations of narrative." In his novel, Pearl has tried to do just that.