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court?” I asked collegially from the other side of the prison bars.
    The man in the suit rose from the bench inside the cell. “Who are you, sir?” he asked.
    I offered my hand to the man I had first seen at the funeral on Greene and Fayette. “Mr. Poe? I am Quentin Clark.”
    Neilson Poe was a short, clean-shaven man with an intelligent brow almost as wide as the one shown in portraits of Edgar, but with sharper, ferret-like features and quick, dark eyes. I imagined Edgar Poe’s eyes having more of a flash, and a positively opaque glow at times of creation and excitement. Still, this was a man who, at a casual glance in these dim surroundings, could almost have doubled for the great poet.
    Neilson signaled to his client that he would be stepping outside the cell for a few moments. The prisoner, whose head had been in his hands the moment before, rose to his feet with sudden animation, watching his defender’s exit.
    “If I’m not mistaken,” Neilson said to me as the guard locked the prisoner’s door, “I’d written you in my note that I was pressed with business, Mr. Clark.”
    “It is important, dear Mr. Poe. Regarding your cousin.”
    Neilson set his hands stiffly on some court documents, as though to remind me there was more pressing business at hand.
    “Surely this is a topic of personal interest to you,” I ventured.
    He squinted at me with impatience.
    “The topic of Edgar Poe’s death,” I said to explain it better.
    “My cousin Edgar was wandering about restlessly, looking for a life of true tranquillity, a life as
you or I
are fortunate enough to possess, Mr. Clark,” Neilson said. “He had already squandered that possibility long ago.”
    “What of his plans to establish a first-rate magazine?”
    “Yes…plans.”
    “He would have accomplished it, Mr. Poe. He worried only that his enemies would first—”
    “Enemies!” he cut me short. Neilson then paused as his eyes widened at me. “Sir,” he said with a new air of caution, “tell me, what is your particular interest in this that you would come down into this gloomy cellar to find me?”
    “I am—I was his attorney, sir,” I said. “I was to defend his new magazine from attacks of libel. If he did have enemies, sir, I should like very much to know who they were.”
    A dead man for a client…
I heard Peter in my ear.
    “A new trial, Poe!”
    Neilson appeared to be weighing my words when his client threw himself against the cell door. “Petition for a new trial, Mr. Poe! A fair shake, at least! I’m innocent of all charges, Poe!” he cried. “That wench is an out-and-out liar!”
    After a few moments, Neilson pacified his despondent client and promised him to return later.
    “Someone needs to defend Edgar,” I said.
    “I must attend to other work now, Mr. Clark.” He started walking briskly through the dismal cellar. He paused, then turned back to me, remarking grudgingly, “Come along to my office if you wish to speak further. There is something there you might like to see.”
    We walked together down St. Paul Street. When we entered the modest and crowded chambers of his practice, Neilson commented that when he’d received my letter of introduction he’d been struck by the resemblance between my handwriting and his late cousin’s. “For a moment I thought I was reading a letter from our dear Edgar,” he said lightheartedly. “An intriguing case for an autographer.” It was perhaps the last kind word he had for his cousin. He offered me a chair.
    “Edgar was rash, even as a boy, Mr. Clark,” he began. “He took as his wife our beautiful cousin, Virginia, when she was thirteen, hardly out from the dew of girlhood. Poor Sissy—that’s what we called her—he took her away from Baltimore, where she’d always been safe. Her mother’s house on Amity Street was small, but at least she was surrounded with devoted family. He felt if he waited, he might lose her affections.”
    “Edgar surely cared for her more