December 13

December 13 is the night Augustus Landor and Dr. Marquis arrive at the Icehouse in time to interrupt a rite involving the Marquis family and discover Edgar Allan Poe lying outside its magic circle. The date brings the investigation’s heart-removal mystery into direct contact with the family’s private ritual, while turning the apparent victim into the scene’s most urgent revelation.

The Run to the Icehouse

A fierce west wind drives Landor and Dr. Marquis down The Plain. As they hurry, Dr. Marquis presses Landor to keep the matter within the family and says he believes he can speak to them himself, suggesting that no one else need be involved. The urgency of the journey contrasts with his effort to contain what they are approaching.

Cesar, the mess steward, is the only other person they see outside. He waves to them from a hilltop, but they are too busy running to return the greeting. At the Icehouse, Landor recalls seeing Edgar Allan Poe on those same heights, looking down while Landor wedged small rocks into the turf. The memory acquires a grim new significance: Leroy Fry’s heart lies beneath them.

The Family’s Private Theater

Inside, fire dominates the room: tapers burn in wall sconces, torches encircle the floor, candles mark a triangle, and a fiercely stoked brazier throws flames nearly to the ceiling beside a burning pine tree. The light makes the scene conspicuous but does not make its meaning clear. Three figures move with purposeful calm: a monk in a gray robe, a priest in religious vestments, and an officer wearing Joshua Marquis’s old uniform.

Landor arrives just as the ceremony is beginning. He had expected the savage imagery of the occult book he had seen, but finds instead a carefully staged costume tableau. When the monk turns, torchlight reveals Mrs. Marquis beneath the cowl. The contrast between Landor’s expectation of monstrous rites and the people and costumes before him unsettles his interpretation of what the family is doing.

Poe at the Center of the Scene

The ceremony proceeds in a language Landor cannot understand. As Lea’s voice rises, the three figures turn toward a shrouded object just beyond the circle. At first Landor can make out only what Dr. Marquis sees: a bundle of clothes, with one bare hand protruding. The obscured figure delays recognition even as it draws the participants’ attention.

Artemus kneels and peels away the garments, revealing Edgar Allan Poe lying on the floor. Poe’s coatee has been removed, though the rest of his uniform remains on him. He appears so pale and rigid that Landor nearly gives him up for dead, until a tremor passes through his body. The extreme cold in the Icehouse, Landor realizes, is also sufficient to keep a heart in good condition for many weeks. The date therefore joins the ritual scene to the earlier search for Leroy Fry’s missing heart, while ending this stretch of the action with Poe’s uncertain condition newly exposed.