The Beautiful Cigar Girl Read online

  Praise for

  The Beautiful Cigar Girl:

  Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and

  the Invention of Murder

  A Featured Alternate Selection of

  Book-of-the-Month Club, Mystery Guild,

  The Literary Guild, Doubleday

  and Quality Paperback Book Clubs

  “[An] atmospheric, suspenseful re-creation of a crime, a city, and a writer as doomed as the victim he wrote about…Mr. Stashower, deftly interweaving contemporary press accounts of the murder and the investigation into his narrative, vividly re-creates the atmosphere of the period in a moody, sepia-toned style that recalls The Alienist by Caleb Carr and The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. Cutting back and forth between the Rogers investigation and Poe’s life, he gradually brings his two subjects to the point of convergence, creating a compelling portrait of Poe along the way.…A triple-twist ending to a fascinating tale. Poe would have appreciated the ingenuity.”

  —The New York Times

  “A solidly comprehensive look at the predecessor to today’s all-too-common media crime frenzies.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “[A] compelling narrative…Stashower deftly combines his talents as a novelist, mystery writer, and biographer in The Beautiful Cigar Girl.”

  —The Washington Post

  “Stashower artfully weaves together a portrait of a self-immolating literary genius with the story of the beautiful, melancholy murder victim.…Eminently readable and thick with research, The Beautiful Cigar Girl draws a rich portrait of mid-nineteenth-century Manhattan…fascinating.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Well-crafted and suspenseful…[Stashower] makes murder a beguilingly edifying and entertaining subject.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Stashower weaves fact with such related story lines as the lurid newspaper coverage, inept police work and, most provocatively, Edgar Allan Poe’s fictionalized ‘Marie Rogêt’ exposé of the case.…Intrigue is revived with each new break in the case.”

  —USA Today

  “Stashower’s book conjures a writer in search of inspiration and a girl whose beauty and gruesome death would be immortalized in Poe’s ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.’”

  —New York Daily News

  “Daniel Stashower’s The Beautiful Cigar Girl not only establishes itself as the book on the Mary Rogers case, but offers an enormously important look into how Americans think about murder, as well as a unique portrait of our most undervalued literary genius, Edgar Allan Poe. Books like this are an increasing rarity, and should be snapped up by all audiences.”

  —Caleb Carr, author of The Alienist

  “Writing simultaneously as a novelist, biographer, historian, and sleuth, Daniel Stashower unfolds a suspenseful detective story inside a detective story inside a detective story.”

  —Kenneth Silverman, author of Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance

  “Daniel Stashower masterfully re-creates 1840s New York and the murder that captivated the city. If you loved The Devil in the White City, you’ll love The Beautiful Cigar Girl. It’s an impressive work of history with all the drive and passion of a finely tuned novel.”

  —Harlan Coben, author of Promise Me

  “The Beautiful Cigar Girl is a beautiful melding of literary research, biography, and creativity. Seldom has Poe himself emerged so sympathetically as the tortured, alcoholic, brilliant, and enigmatic man he was. After reading this fascinating book, no one will be able to read ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt’ again without acknowledging the haunting ghosts brought forth by Stashower.”

  —Stuart M. Kaminsky, Mystery Writers of America Grand Master and author of Always Say Goodbye

  “Stashower makes the past so vivid you feel as if you must have been there and walked these streets yourself.”

  —Anne Perry, author of We Shall Not Sleep

  “An informative, swift-moving account…Stashower knows murder, and he knows the craft of biography.…[He] brings to this current, complex task both considerable intelligence and wide-ranging research.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “Readers who enjoyed Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City will like mystery novelist and biographer Stashower’s work here.…Well researched and accessible, here is a gripping story that is hard to put down; literary buffs in particular will enjoy this wonderful back story to the creation of Poe’s sequel to ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue.’”

  —Library Journal

  “Absorbing…Poe’s genius and literary legacy are hauntingly drawn.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Stashower’s well-paced, thoroughly researched blend of historical narrative and detective novel is imaginative and ably captures the boisterous sprawl of nineteenth-century New York, the activities of its numerous cutthroat newssheets and the sad lives of both Rogers and Poe.”

  —BookPage

  “[An] intriguing story, one that sheds considerable light on the snares of a big city for a young woman.”

  —Booklist

  Praise for

  Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle

  “Mystery writer Stashower pieces together clues from his subject’s iconoclastic life to create a gripping, sympathetic bio that proves that Doyle was anything but elementary.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Marked with a nice mixture of affection…and the detachment to be expected from the winner of the Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellowship in Detective and Crime Fiction Writing.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “Stashower’s Teller of Tales is an appealing and much-needed biography of the man who created one of literature’s renowned eccentrics while for most of his life displaying every outward sign of beefy, walrus-mustachioed respectability.”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  “[An] excellent biography of the man who created Sherlock Holmes.”

  —The New York Times

  “This is a fine biography; one needn’t give a fig for Sherlock Holmes to enjoy it.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “[A] wonderful biography.”

  —The San Diego Union-Tribune

  “Stashower has produced the most readable and authoritative work possible on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.”

  —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

  “Well-written and highly entertaining…Stashower relates [Doyle’s life] with a brisk pace and gentle humor.”

  —Detroit Free Press

  ALSO BY DANIEL STASHOWER

  Nonfiction

  Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle

  The Boy Genius and the Mogul: The Untold Story of Television

  Fiction

  The Adventure of the Ectoplasmic Man

  Elephants in the Distance

  The Dime Museum Murders

  The Floating Lady Murder

  The Houdini Specter

  THE

  BEAUTIFUL

  CIGAR GIRL

  MARY ROGERS, EDGAR ALLAN POE,

  AND

  THE INVENTION OF MURDER

  DANIEL STASHOWER

  BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2006 by Daniel Stashower.

  Cover art: Museum of the City of New York, Bridgeman Art Library.

  Cover design by Mary E. O’Boyle.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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  PRINTING HISTORY

  Dutton hardcover edition / October 2006

  Berkley trade paperback edition / December 2007

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the Dutton hardcover edition as follows:

  Stashower, Daniel.

  The beautiful cigar girl : Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Rogers, and the invention of murder / by Daniel Stashower.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-4406-2048-5

  1. Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809–1849. Mystery of Marie Roget—Sources. 2. Detective and mystery stories, American—History and criticism. 3. Rogers, Mary, 1820–1841. 4. Murder—New York (State)—New York—History—19th century. I. Title. PS2618.M83S73 2006

  823’.3—dc22 2006019335

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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  For Miss Corbett.

  We’ll always have Breezewood.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE: Descent into the Maelstrom

  PART ONE: Her Dark Smile

  1. A Gallant Gay Lothario

  2. I Tremble for the Consequence

  3. Left Home on Sunday

  4. Very Clever with His Pen

  PART TWO: The Unpleasantness at Sybil’s Cave

  5. A Person of Chastity

  6. The Dead House

  7. The Sable Divinity of Night

  8. The Committee of Concerned Citizens

  9. A Most Notorious Scoundrel

  10. The Lost Hour

  11. Crackpots and Gossipists

  12. The Murder Thicket

  PART THREE: The Fatal Sabbath

  13. A Somewhat Wasted Heart

  14. A Wave of Crimson

  15. A Series of Coincidences

  16. A Mansion Built on Baby Skulls

  17. The Vanishing Rowboat

  18. At Variance with Truth

  PART FOUR: The Lady Sleeps

  19. It May Not Be Improper to Record

  20. The Imp of the Perverse

  EPILOGUE: One Last Wild Cry

  Acknowledgments

  Selected Bibliography

  Index

  PROLOGUE

  Descent into the Maelstrom

  “Oh, Maria! Would to God you had reflected ere you had taken this step!” The cover of a novel published in 1844, based on the Mary Rogers case.

  Courtesy of the author

  IN JUNE OF 1842, Edgar Allan Poe took up his pen to broach a delicate subject with an old friend. “Have I offended you by any of my evil deeds?” he asked. “If so, how? Time was when you could spare a few minutes occasionally for communion with a friend.”

  Poe’s correspondent, a magazine editor by the name of Joseph Evans Snodgrass, would have known only too well what was coming next. Once again, Poe would launch a tirade against the latest publisher or literary rival to have wronged him. This done, Poe would admit to finding himself in a state of “pecuniary embarrassment,” with no work and few prospects, and would ask his old friend to offer some “very trifling aid” in the form of a loan.

  Poe’s latest letter, Snodgrass noted with relief, marked a departure from the usual pattern. “I have a proposition to make,” he wrote. “You may remember a tale of mine published about a year ago…entitled the ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ Its theme was the exercise of ingenuity in detecting a murderer. I am just now putting the concluding touch to a similar article, which I shall entitle ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt—a Sequel to “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”’ The story is based upon that of the real murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers, which created so vast an excitement, some months ago, in New-York.”

  Snodgrass needed no reminders of that vast excitement. Mary Rogers, who was widely known as “the beautiful cigar girl,” had been a figure of note on the streets of New York City. From her post behind the cigar counter of John Anderson’s Tobacco Emporium on lower Broadway, Mary Rogers had cast her spell over half the men in the city. Her famous “dark smile” was said to be as potent as cupid’s arrow. Admirers from all walks of life, from the Bowery to City Hall, came to bask in her presence. Some offered up poems to her beauty. Others spoke in carrying voices of their business triumphs, sometimes patting their wallets and casting sidelong glances in her direction. All the while the cigar girl stood prettily behind the counter, eyes cast downward, pretending not to hear. Sometimes she would flutter her fingers to her mouth, as if shocked by a coarse phrase, but the eyes were cool and knowing.

  It was feared by some that Anderson’s impressionable young employee would come to grief in such rough company. The New York Morning Herald expressed an earnest desire that “something should be done instantly to remedy the great evil consequent upon very beautiful girls being placed in cigar and confectionery stores. Designing rich rascals drop into these places, buy cigars and sugar plums, gossip with the girl and ultimately affect her ruin.”

  These fears proved tragically prophetic. In July of 1841 Mary Rogers was found brutally murdered, sparking a massive public outcry and setting the stage for one of the most harrowing public dramas of the nineteenth century, driving one man to suicide, another to madness, and a third to public disgrace and humiliation. The death of the cigar girl, wrote one New Yorker, marked the “terrible moment when the city lost its innocence.”

  For good or ill, the crime also became a catalyst for sweeping change. The city’s unregulated and disjointed police force proved unable to mount an effective investigation, prompting an ambitious slate of social and political reforms, even as the prurient details of the murder gave fuel to a furious newspaper circulation war, pushing American journalism into previously unimagined realms of sensationalism. The wily James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald seized on the case as a “grim cautionary tale,” giving himself a pretext to linger over the more lurid aspects of the case, and sparking a ferocious debate over the limits of journalistic propriety. “We cannot have the blood of murdered innocents served up to us at breakfast,” declared one outraged reader. “Have the gentlemen of the press no shame?” The plea for restraint went unheard; the drama of Mary Rogers would be one of the earliest and most significant murder cases to play out in the pages of the American press, laying the groundwork for every “crime of the century” to follow, from Lizzie Borden’s murders in 1892 to the murder of Stanford White in 1906, throu
gh the present day.

  From the first, however, false leads and misconceptions dogged the case. In the days following the discovery of the body, it was widely assumed that Mary Rogers had fallen prey to one of the notorious “gangs of New York,” such as the Plug-Uglies or the Hudson Dusters, who ran riot through the streets, apparently reveling in the complete absence of any effective police authority. “Must we yield our streets to these villains?” railed the New York Tribune. “Can we not call upon our elected officials to bring law upon the lawless?” The newspapers were eager to create a martyr. “In one emphatic word,” declared the Herald, “New York is disgraced and dishonored in the eyes of the civilized world, unless one great, one big, one strong moral movement be made to reform and reinvigorate the administration of criminal justice, and to protect the lives and property of its inhabitants from public violence and public robbery. Who will make the first move in this truly great moral reform?”

  As the public’s indignation grew, Mary Rogers achieved the dubious distinction of becoming a bankable commodity. Within two weeks of the murder, a daguerreotypist had procured an engraving and struck a huge number of copies, said to be a “correct likeness” of the dead woman. “A peddler might sell a great number by taking them to Hoboken,” he declared in an advertisement for his wares, “where so many people are visiting the spot daily.” Pamphleteers also got into the act; a lurid account entitled The Dark Deed sold for six cents and recounted “several attempts of courtship and seduction brought about by her manifold charms.” A potboiler novel called The Beautiful Cigar Girl would soon follow.

  One year later, however, the crime remained unsolved, leaving lives ruined and reputations shattered. As public interest began to wane, Edgar Allan Poe saw a unique opportunity. His plan, as he told his friend Snodgrass, was to take up the case in a manner that had never been attempted, or even imagined. Through the lens of fiction, he would study the facts of the case, expose the weaknesses and false assumptions of the official inquiry, and offer his own conclusions as to what had occurred—even pointing a finger at the likely villain. In short, Poe suggested, he would lay out a solution that could well force the New York police to reopen their investigation.