“This morning ?” she asked.
“Indeed,” I answered, grabbing the book of Poe from the table to take with me (apologies to the British Library).
“What’s in Paris?” she asked.
The most unusual archive in the world, I thought. A reservoir of secrets as explosive as anything found in the great British library, including the specially catalogued materials. However, that’s not what I said. “The finest patisseries. I could do with a good croissant.”
She looked at me skeptically. “You’re not going to tell me,” she observed.
“I’ll do better, Mrs. Watson. I’ll show you.”
In that morning’s newspapers, which I bought before we boarded the train at Victoria Station, I discovered further indication of our opponent’s formidability. All the papers ran the same inaccurate account of the shooting outside the offices of the Society for Psychic Research. My having called an ambulance, which doubtless arrived with bell clanging, waking every resident of the street to wander out as witnesses, made complete denial of the incident impossible. However, the quoted constabulary attributed the non-fatal shooting to a common robbery; additionally, the illustration of the victim’s face was not the blond man I had actually shot. The name of the victim and other information was doubtless false too.
As they say in the American pulps, “the fix was in.”
CHAPTER SIX
After disembarking the train in Paris at the Gare Montparnasse, Mrs. Watson and I proceeded by motor cab past the Luxembourg Gardens to the Hotel de la Sorbonne, where we would rest and dine before walking to our ultimate destination, a small, used bookshop in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district of Paris. On the trip from London, which had taken the entire day, I had, at first, resisted Mrs. Watson’s queries about my investigative breakthrough, my “Eureka” moment earlier that morning in the Reading Room, promising her somewhat cryptically, perhaps habitually, that soon all would be made clear; however, in the middle of the Channel her persistence wore me down and, when I discovered she had read only a selection of poems and short stories of E. A. Poe and none of his essays, I recognized that she would benefit from a modest briefing to help her make sense of the next leg of our investigation. I ordinarily saved such disclosures for moments of high, often climactic, drama. Consider the canon of Dr. John H. Watson and the nature of nearly every major revelation contained therein. To share such good material in a mere conversation aboard a cross-channel steamer seemed a waste.
Nonetheless, shipboard, I shared such a hint of my hypothesis with her.
(Was I more inclined to expose my thought processes to Mrs. Watson than I’d have been to John, whose request for “background” I’d have denied under similar circumstances, because she was a woman and therefore more intellectually needful? I reject the suggestion. My regard for the intelligence and formidability of females is far greater than that for which I am popularly given credit. For example, in John’s account, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” my reference to Irene Adler as the woman was not a sign of romantic attachment, as the theatricals now prefer to portray, but an acknowledgement of Irene’s intellect and cunning, which matched my own, an estimation I associate now with only one other living being, my wretched, octogenarian brother Mycroft. Or, following in that vein, did I share my thinking with Mrs. Watson because she had charmed me in a romantic way? She is indeed a most charming woman. But I can say with pride that during my decades as a consulting detective I have never allowed my actions to be swayed by such passions. Of course, my pride in this fact must be tempered by acknowledgement that when it comes to personal attraction my tastes have always been ephemeral and quite narrow. Narrow almost to the point of nonexistence. [Further discourse on the topic of my personal attractions is beyond the scope of this endeavor.] So, finally, did I offer Mrs. Watson an explanation mid-Channel because she was not my chronicler, and, therefore, I had no dramatic narrative arc to construct simultaneous to solving the mystery at hand, as I had constructed on so many occasions with John? I recall making no such conscious decision. Nonetheless, this may best explain my openness with her.)
Doubtless, Dr. Watson would remark now: Get back to the story, Holmes. And no more parentheses within parentheses. Ever! Indeed, no more parentheses for you at all.
Good advice.
However, while I may be the greatest consulting detective the world has ever known, I am but an amateur when it comes to writing, and so I find myself in need of a space break, whether or not such a literary device is justified by this chapter’s initial structure, which, I realize, refers to a used book shop in Paris where, it now appears, we will not arrive for at least a few more pages.
Back to that morning’s Channel crossing :
Sunlight glimmered on the water as our steamer sliced through gentle swells. It was a good day to be at sea. An hour and a half out of Dover, the white cliffs remained visible, tiny, in the direction of the stern, and the coastline of France was a vague silhouette ahead.
Mrs. Watson and I occupied deck chairs.
To avoid being recognized back in the crowded port, I had donned a weathered pea coat, a sailor’s knit cap, sunglasses, and a false beard, looking every bit the retired sea dog. I remained in the disguise aboard ship as well.
“So, Edgar Allan Poe is a part of this?” Mrs. Watson asked, sliding her chair beside mine until their wooden armrests touched.
“Indirectly, I suspect.” I withdrew from my hastily packed overnight satchel the volume of Poe that Mrs. Watson had set spine up on the library table before resting her head on her arms and falling asleep beside the book. “You see, aside from the poetry and gothic fiction for which he is best known, Poe was a critic and essayist. Unfortunately, none of this productivity resulted in financial security during his lifetime, and so he began lecturing on a modest circuit. In time, this career maneuver might have led to wider exposure, popular acceptance, and greater resources, except that in 1849 he died under mysterious circumstances at the age of forty.”
“Poor man,” Mrs. Watson commented. “Not all authors are as fortunate as our John when it comes to readership.”
Our John. “True,” I said.
“But what has this to do with our case?”
“Poe’s last major work was a long essay called, ‘Eureka,’ which is little read now, though he considered it his masterpiece.”
“Eureka . . . Like the Eureka Society,” she ventured.
“Yes, I should have made the connection immediately,” I acknowledged.
She shook her head, smiling tenderly. “Oh, Sherlock, you mustn’t be hard on yourself. In our dizzy age, the mind works a tad more slowly than before.”
I sat up straighter in my deck chair and turned to face her, removing my sunglasses for emphasis. “I’ve not found that to be the case, Mrs. Watson. My mental capacities have undergone no diminishment.”
“Oh, my apologies.”
She looked more chastened than I’d intended. So I softened my remark with a minor fabrication. “Well, perhaps from time to time I have had to reach for a concept that, in the past, was always just there.”
She smiled in acknowledgement.
I settled back in my deck chair, replacing my sunglasses with my reading glasses and continued with my discourse, opening the book of Poe. “‘Eureka’ is subtitled ‘An Essay on the Material and Spiritual Universe,’ which offers a sense of Poe’s enormous ambitions. It is uneven in its qualities, though not without interest. Indeed, fascination. Particularly in light of recent events.” I rifled the pages. “Poe suggests here that ‘space and duration’ share the same essence, anticipating Einstein by many decades. And he makes numerous other cosmological assertions of varying validity.” I found the passage I sought. “Of interest to our case, Mrs. Watson, is the following assertion. It reads as follows: ‘Let me declare that there does exist a limitless succession of Universes, more or less similar to that of which we have cognizance.’”
I closed the book.
“‘Limitless succession
of universes’?” Mrs. Watson queried. “What does that mean? Universes occurring one after the other?”
I shook my head. “Rather, all occurring at once.”
“Was he mad?”
I shrugged. “He was possessed of certain characteristics and habits that medical experts too often carelessly label as ‘mad,’ but that does not mean his ideas were less cogent than those of any other genius.”
She looked puzzled. “So, what does he mean by ‘limitless Universes’?”
I spent the next few minutes outlining Poe’s counterintuitive notion of innumerable, autonomous worlds existing simultaneous and parallel to our own. No mere metaphors. Universes as real as ours, if unknowable. Further, I explained that while most of these worlds must be wildly divergent from ours, the mathematics of incalculably vast numbers necessitates that many would be like our own, populated by variations of ourselves and others that we know. Or so Poe’s notion dictated.
She looked at me as if I were mad. “That’s the stuff of fiction, Sherlock. Not fact.”
I had to admit it sounded far more like the fantasies of H. G. Wells than the reasoned workings of Newton.
“Poe argues this case convincingly?” she asked.
“Poe’s logical inferences are not without flaw. Nonetheless, he was possessed of an inquisitive and often insightful imagination.”
“And he conceived this out of whole cloth?” she asked.
“There were precursors,” I said. “I can think of a few. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake by the Church in 1600 for his ‘heretical’ book, On the Infinite Universe and Worlds. Anaxagoras of Clazomenae modeled a universe in which all possible worlds exist, openly questioning why there should be only one universe. And you’ll find further similar conjecture in the works of Epicurus, Lucretius, the Stoics, Nicholas of Cusa, and others.”
“But Poe is of the modern era,” Mrs. Watson observed.
“Relatively speaking.”
“How does this relate to our case?”
“Consider,” I suggested. “‘Limitless universes more or less similar to that of which we have cognizance.”
She narrowed her eyes, perplexed.
“Mrs. Watson, allow me to set aside all ordinary good sense, in addition to discarding the scientific method, and ask a question in the interest of . . . well, let’s call it intellectual exercise.”
“Go ahead.”
“Mightn’t ‘limitless universes’ account for the existence of more than one Stanley Baldwin?”
She worked through it aloud. “You mean one Baldwin who was crippled at twenty-nine, and another who avoided such a fate and is now our prime minister?” She didn’t wait for an answer but shook her head. “It’s impossible. You, of all people, can’t believe such a thing.”
“Oh, I don’t believe anything,” I answered. “Faith is a virtue I abjure. However, in this instance, belief may occupy a central role. Not my beliefs, which are nil. Rather, what interests me is what others may believe and the actions that such belief may inspire.”
“Actions, such as shooting poor Conan Doyle?” she asked.
I nodded.
“And who are these others?” she pressed.
I opened my palms to indicate that I didn’t yet know.
She looked confused.
I didn’t blame her, as I was on uncertain ground myself.
I watched her gather thoughts before she asked, “How would such a visitation from an alternative world even occur?”
“I can offer no answer.”
“Then at least tell me this. Why are we going to Paris? And please don’t say haute cuisine.”
“We’re going to Paris because of mysterious circumstances surrounding Poe’s death seventy-nine years ago.”
“What circumstances?”
“Well, that’s just it. Beyond being ‘mysterious’ I don’t know.”
“You don’t know ?”
I did not rise to the bait. “Poe’s case has never before intersected with a relevant investigation of my own. But now that it may . . . well, answers await.”
“And these ‘circumstances’ may relate to Poe’s theory of limitless universes and, thereby, to our case?”
“Perhaps.”
“Poe died in Paris?”
“No,” I answered. “In America. Baltimore.”
“Then why . . . ,” she started.
I held up one hand, settled back in my deck chair, and closed my eyes. It had been a long time since I’d slept. And, as I noted before, I’d already provided her with far more explanation than was my habit. “Let’s leave some of what’s to come as a surprise,” I suggested. “What do you say to that, Mrs. Watson?”
I didn’t hear her answer.
Perhaps she said nothing. Or perhaps sleep overtook me just then.
Hours later, Mrs. Watson and I checked into rooms in the modest and inconspicuous Hotel de la Sorbonne, where we changed out of our traveling clothes and I donned my ordinary apparel, sans disguise. I’ve discovered these past years that when I’m on the continent my advanced age makes me virtually unrecognizable, even to the fans of true crime who’d likely recognize me in England, their expectations unconsciously informed by geographical context. This near-assurance of anonymity is even more pronounced in Paris than in other European capitals, as the rare Parisian who does recognize me invariably turns away without acknowledgement, his national pride threatened by the mere sight of an English consulting detective who, these days, is more renowned than their own great sleuth from the last century, Le Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin.
More about Dupin shortly.
By the time Mrs. Watson and I left the hotel, the cafés were crowded with hungry diners, apéritifs long finished, vin ordinaire being poured; Mrs. Watson and I had eaten lightly at our hotel, so we made our way without culinary interruption through the small, winding streets that led out of the Latin Quarter; we dodged motor cars as we emerged onto the Boulevard Saint-Michel near where it crosses the Boulevard Saint-Germain, which we followed all the way to Rue des Saints-Péres.
“Lovely city, especially at night,” Mrs. Watson observed.
“Yes, if you like that sort of thing,” I answered, pushing forward along the pavement.
“What’s not to like about loveliness?” she asked, working to keep up with me even as she attempted to take in the architecture, the horse chestnut trees, the chic fashions in shopfront windows, the sonorous fragments of bal-musette music, sometimes carefree, sometimes bittersweet, that emanated from bustling cafés, the young, passing faces of varied nationalities, many of whom bore expressions either of wonder, akin to Mrs. Watson’s, or its opposite, the ennui associated with the city’s sophisticates.
“Frankly, I prefer London, Mrs. Watson.”
“Why?”
“The grime,” I answered.
When we reached Rue des Saints-Péres we turned toward the river and proceeded for several minutes; here, it was shadowy and quiet, every business shuttered for the night. “We’ve arrived,” I said, stopping before the one shopfront that was not shuttered, a darkened, used bookshop that bore on its door a hanging sign that read Fermé.
“Closed,” Mrs. Watson muttered. “Looks like we’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
I shook my head no. The shopfront window bore the shop’s name in faded paint:
Le Rossignol
Livres D’Occasion
Beside the words on the glass was an equally neglected painting of the shop’s namesake, a nightingale perched on the long stem of an ornately decorated, old-fashioned key.
“Before we discuss the name of this august institution, please observe the books displayed in the window,” I instructed Mrs. Watson, who moved beside me and put her head almost to the glass.
A nearby streetlight cast just enough light.
She turned first to the left and then stepped slightly to the right, taking in the entire, display. Then she looked up at me. “Nothing very special as far as I can see. Of course,
I am no bibliophile. Am I missing something ?”
“Not at all,” I assured her. “Indeed, you’ve captured the essential characteristic of the display. It includes not a single first edition. Nor, if I may be allowed an Americanism, are there any former ‘bestsellers.’ Nor is there even one copy of a cheap school edition of a classic. And look at the biographies. Have you heard of any of those books’ subjects?”
Again, she squinted through the glass, silently mouthing the names of the biography subjects. She shook her head.
“Nor I,” I admitted.
She turned to me surprised. “You’ve never heard of any of them?”
“Please, Mrs. Watson, I acknowledge my ignorance of the subjects of these biographies not as a show of humility but as evidence of the relative insignificance and subsequent disinterest the lives of these men bear even for those invested in a wide a variety of subjects, such as myself. In short, there is nothing in this window display that would be deemed worthy even of the bouquinistes, the book stalls along the Seine, where, incidentally, a collector can occasionally find valuable editions.”
“So how does the display attract customers?” she asked, reasonably.
“It doesn’t.”
After a moment of confusion, an expression crossed her face as of sudden and delighted comprehension. “Ah, I think I have it! Do the books formulate some kind of message or code?”
I shook my head. “The display is nothing more than a selection of books that will never appeal to any reader.”
“So how does the shop do business, Sherlock?”
“The purpose of the shop is not business.”
“Then what is it? How does the shop stay open?”
“The shop is never open, though I suppose you could say it’s never actually closed either, despite the sign hanging on the door.”
She stepped past me to the door and attempted to turn the handle. It was locked. She turned back to me with an expression that was both curious and vaguely impatient. “Well, Sherlock, it’s closed now.”
I nodded in acknowledgement of her experimental method. Then I pointed to the shopfront window and the name and illustration thereupon. “The Nightingale,” I said.
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