The Poe Shadow

by Matthew Pearl

  I mention here as illustration a rather frothy short tale by Poe called “The Man That Was Used Up.” It features a celebrated army general whose sturdy physical appearance is widely admired. But the general has an unfortunate secret: each night he falls apart physically from his old war wounds and must have his body parts stitched back together by his Negro manservant before breakfast. I believe this was Poe’s shove at those lesser writers, mere blots in the deep shadows of his genius, who thought physical description of features the key to enlivening their characters. Likewise, it was from the untellable soul of C. Auguste Dupin’s character, not his choice of waistcoat, that he had long ago stepped into my consciousness.

  When I had first received the newspaper cutting mentioning the real Dupin from the athenaeum clerk in Baltimore, I’d found fruitless all my attempts to secure the investigator’s name from the New York newspaper where the column had appeared. However, a mere few weeks of research into French periodicals and directories produced a fairly impressive list of possible models for Poe’s character.

  All of their personal histories matched in some manner the two sources: the cutting’s description as well as the traits of Poe’s character. One possibility I turned up was a Parisian mathematical celebrity who wrote textbooks used to solve various scientific problems; and there was the lawyer, called sometimes the Baron, who acquitted persons accused of the most scandalous crimes, who had since gone to London; another, a former thief who acted as a secret agent of the Parisian police before operating a paper factory in Brussels. Each one of these and other possibilities were considered dispassionately and objectively and with the expectation that one would rise above the others as the clear source for Dupin.

  And yet, another year and a half passed from the start of that research. Correspondence across the Atlantic proved slow and inconclusive. Promising candidates accumulated quickly before each one gradually dropped into a well of doubt after further inquires and exchanges.

  Until one clear day in the spring of 1851. That’s when I discovered in the French journal L’———the name Auguste Duponte. The name naturally caught my attention, but it was not the sound of the name only that struck a distinct harmony with Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin. This fellow, Auguste Duponte, had gained prominence in France in the sensational case of Monsieur Lafarge, a gentleman of strong physical constitution and some local importance found mysteriously dead in his home. After some useless maneuvers by the Parisian police, one officer invited in his acquaintance, the young tutor Duponte, to translate the comments of a Spanish visitor who was a witness in the case (though that angle ultimately proved irrelevant).

  Within the space of ten or twelve minutes after hearing the facts from the police officer, it was said Duponte conclusively showed the police that the dead man had been poisoned by Madame Lafarge at the end of a meal. Madame L. was convicted for the murder of her husband. She was later spared from death by sympathetic officials.

  (Asked by the French newspaper La Presse what he thought about the murderess’s sentence having been commuted, Duponte reportedly said, “Nothing at all. Punishment has little relation to the fact of a crime, and the least to do with the analysis of the crime.”)

  The news of Auguste Duponte’s feat spread widely through France. The government officials, police, and citizens in Paris sought his analysis of other incidents. This swift introduction to the public eye—I discovered with immense satisfaction—occurred a few years before the appearance in an 1841 issue of an American journal of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Poe’s description of Dupin’s rise to fame in the second of the tales could be used with equal effect to describe the real history of Auguste Duponte: It thus happened that he found himself the cynosure of the policial eyes; and the cases were not few in which attempt was made to engage his services at the Prefecture.

  My confidence that I had identified the right man was bolstered further when I happened to meet a knowledgeable Frenchman who had been living in America for the last few years, since the overthrow of King Louis-Philippe, as part of a diplomatic corps for the new French republic. This was Henri Montor. I was in Washington City researching Auguste Duponte in its libraries when he noticed with interest that I was struggling through some French newspapers. I explained my purpose and asked if he had known Duponte.

  “Whenever there was a crime of great impact,” Monsieur Montor said animatedly, “the people of Paris had always called for Duponte—and the criminal on the street would curse the year Duponte was born. A treasure of Paris is Duponte, Monsieur Clark.”

  During my subsequent visits, Henri Montor tutored me in French over supper and engaged me in long hours of conversation, comparing the French and American governments and people. He found Washington City rather desolate compared to Paris, the climate positively stifling and injurious to one’s health.

  By this time, when I met Monsieur Montor, I had already written to Duponte himself. I had outlined the events of Poe’s death and described the urgent need to resolve the matter before Poe’s sickly reputation worsened. After another week had passed, I had written Duponte two more letters, both marked “Immediate,” with addendums and more details of the unwritten history of Poe.

  Though our acquaintance was short, Montor invited me to join him at a dress ball that hosted several hundred guests at a lofty mansion near Washington City where I could meet numerous French ladies and gentlemen. Most had one title or another, and some, to my delight, humored my unpolished French, which I sought to perfect as much as possible. Jérôme Bonaparte was there—he was the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, born to an American woman whom Napoleon’s younger brother Jérôme the senior met nearly fifty years before while on excursion in the United States. This regal offspring was now standing before me dressed in a garish Turkish costume, with two curved swords hanging from his belt. After we had been introduced, I complimented his costume.

  “No need for ‘monsieurs,’ anyway, Mr. Clark; we are in America,” Jérôme Bonaparte said, his dark eyes lit with good humor. Henri Montor fidgeted at this a bit. “As for this monstrosity,” Bonaparte continued with a sigh, “it was my wife’s pretty idea. She is in the next room somewhere.”

  “Oh, I believe she and I met. She is dressed as an ostrich?”

  Bonaparte laughed. “There are feathers on her. Your guess of what animal is as good as mine!”

  “Our American friend,” Montor said, putting his arm through mine, “is trying to practice our native language for his private researches. Have you been back to Paris recently, my dear Bonaparte?”

  “Father used to try to sway me to live there, you know. I cannot think for a moment of settling myself out of America, though, Montor, for I am too much attached and accustomed to it to find pleasure in Europe.” He tapped an intricately detailed gold snuffbox and offered some to us.

  A woman paraded toward us from where the host played his violin accompanied by an orchestra. She was calling out to Bonaparte by a nickname, and for a moment I thought it was his ostrich-feathered wife, until I saw that she wore the flowing robes and jewels of a queen. Montor whispered to me: “That is Elizabeth Patterson, Jérôme’s mother.” His whisper was so discreet it was clear I should pay attention.

  “Dear Mother,” said Jérôme formally, “this is Quentin Clark, a Baltimorean of some wit.”

  “How whimsical!” replied this costume-queen who, though not at all tall, seemed to tower over all of us.

  “Mrs. Patterson.” I bowed.

  “Madame Bonaparte,” she corrected me on both points and offered her hand. There was an irreducible beauty about her face and her pristine eyes that was almost tragic. One could not help but be in love with her, it seemed to me. She looked at me with sharp disapproval. “You are uncostumed, young man.”

  Montor, who was dressed fabulously as a Neapolitan fisherman, explained my lack of disguise by way of his last-minute invitation to me. “He is studying French customs, you see.”

  Madame Bonaparte’s eyes flared a
t me. “Study hard.”

  I would realize once I arrived in Paris that this dress-ball queen was right about my grasp of French customs. Moreover, as I looked around at the extraordinary room of masked and obstructed faces, I understood that this was what both Peter and Auntie Blum wanted, in some way. There was something here, something beyond the liveried servants and banks of flowers glowing with lamps inside them, something powerful that had very little to do with money and that Baltimore desired to add to its commercial triumphs.

  By that point in time after the occasion of the burning book, I had returned to our law office to complete certain unfinished work. Peter hardly acknowledged my presence. He would whistle whole staves of music up and down our stairs in frustrated displeasure. Sometimes I wished he would simply yell at me again; then in reply I could at least detail the progress I had made.

  Hattie seemed to follow the example set by Peter, seeking me out less and less, but she did take much trouble to convince her aunt and family to be patient regarding our engagement and to give me time. I tried my best to reassure Hattie. But I had begun to feel wary at saying too much—begun to see even Hattie’s pure devotion as part of their arsenal, another instrument to stifle the aims that commanded me. Even her face began to look to my eyes more like her busybody aunt’s. She was part of a Baltimore that had failed to even notice that the truth behind a great man’s death mattered. Hattie, why didn’t I trust that you could see me, as usual, more clearly than a looking-glass could!

  Weeks after the dress ball, there were still no letters from Duponte in reply to mine. I could not abide the slow exchange of mailable communications. Mail could be stolen, or destroyed by accident or mischief. Here I had found the identity of the Dupin of real life, the one person probably in all the known world able to decipher the blank spot of Poe’s last days! I was still only serving Poe as I had promised him. I had reached this far, and should not cede my position through lack of action. I would not wait for this to be lost. In June 1851, I made my plans and set off for Paris.

  Here I was in a different world. Even the houses seemed to be built from entirely different materials and colors, and to position themselves differently on the wide streets. There was a feeling of secretiveness to Paris, yet everything was open, and existence in Paris was entirely out of doors.

  The latest city directories I found upon arriving had no listings for Duponte, and I realized that those I’d consulted in Washington City were a few years out of date. Nor did recent newspaper columns that had previously spoken breathlessly about him have a word to say.

  In Paris, the post office delivered the mail directly to the houses of residents—a practice newly begun in some American cities by private arrangement; though in Paris, it was said, its convenience for citizens was less important than the surveillance it provided to the government. It was my hope that the postal officers would not have continued to carry Duponte’s mail to an incorrect address. In another peculiarity of the Parisian rules, I was refused (rigidly and politely, as with everything French) any admittance to the administrators of the post office, where I wanted to ask about Duponte’s present address. I would need to write for permission to the appropriate ministry. Guided in composing this letter by Madame Fouché, my hotel’s proprietress, I sent it by post. (This was another rule, even though the ministry was hardly three streets away!) “You will certainly receive a letter of permission within a day or two. It could be quite longer, though,” she added thoughtfully, “if there is an error by some functionary, which is awfully common.”

  As I waited for any sign of progress in my search for Duponte’s address, I wrote to Hattie. Remembering the pain it had caused me whenever I’d seen her sad, I had been experiencing deep regret that the timing of this endeavor had caused her even the slightest grief. In my letters to Baltimore I promised her as little a delay as possible to our plans and entreated her in the meantime to come to Paris, however short a stay and dull a program my present venture might require. Hattie wrote that nothing would please her more than such a voyage, but she was needed to help care for the two new children recently added to her sisters’ households.

  Peter, for his part, wrote a farewell letter explaining that I had ruined my life, and nearly ruined his, by yielding to the decadence and indecency of Europe.

  What he must have been imagining! If only he could see how different the reality here in my chambers!

  The nightly gaieties of the Parisian summer drifted recklessly through my window, the open-air orchestras and gala dances, the theaters that seated happy audiences by the hundreds. I, by contrast, opened and closed my two chests of drawers and stared at the clock on my room’s mantelpiece—waiting.

  One day Madame Fouché came into my room and offered to tie a strip of black crêpe around my arm. Bothered by the interruption to my indolence, I assented.

  “My deep condolences,” she said.

  “Appreciated. How so?” I asked, suddenly alarmed.

  “Hasn’t someone died?” she gasped importantly, as though her pity was in short supply and I had wasted it. “Why have you entered such a melancholy state, if not?”

  I hesitated, frowning at the black cloth now wrapped on my coat.

  “Yes, madame, some have died. But that is not the nearest cause of my agitation. It is the address, this blasted address! Pardon my language, Madame Fouché. I must find Monsieur Auguste Duponte’s residence soon, or leave Paris empty-handed and my actions shall be declared even more fantastic by my friends. That is why I wish to visit the postal office.”

  The next day, Madame Fouché brought me breakfast herself in lieu of the regular waiter. She badly hid a smile and handed me a piece of paper with some writing on it.

  “What is this, madame?”

  “Why, it is the address of Auguste Duponte, of course.”

  “I thank you infinitely, madame! How marvelous!” I was at once up and out the door. I was too excited to even pause to satisfy my curiosity as to how she had come upon it.

  The place, not fifteen minutes away, was a once-bright yellow structure connected to a scarlet-and-blue house around a courtyard, a good example of the fashion of Paris’s gingerbread architecture and colors. The neighborhood was more removed from cafés and shops than the first residence I had visited—a tranquillity conducive to the demands of ratiocination, I supposed. The concierge, a thick man with a hideous double mustache, instructed me to go up to Duponte’s rooms. I paused at the bottom of the stairs and then returned to the concierge’s room.

  “Beg your pardon, monsieur. Would it not be preferable to Monsieur Duponte’s tastes if I were announced first?”

  The concierge took offense—whether because the suggestion questioned his competence or because the notion of announcing a visitor demeaned his role to that of a house servant, I did not know. The concierge’s wife shrugged and said, with a touch of sympathy that she directed with an upturned glance to God, or the floor above, “How many visitors does he have?”

  The odd exchange no doubt contributed to my nervous rambling when I first met the man himself in the doorway to his lodging. The employment of his skills was even more exclusive and rare than I had imagined. Parisians, to judge from the comment of the concierge’s wife, did not think it worthwhile even to attempt to secure his help!

  When Duponte opened the door to his chambers, I poured out an introduction. “I wrote you some letters—three—sent from the United States, as well as a telegraph directed to your previous address. The letters spoke of the American writer Edgar A. Poe. It is crucial that the matter of his death is investigated. This is why I have come, monsieur.”

  “I see,” said Duponte, screwing his face into a grimace and pointing behind me, “that this hall lamp is out. It has been replaced many times, yet the flame is out.”

  “What? The lamp?”

  That is how it went with our conversation. Once inside, I repeated the chronicle narrated in my letters, urged that we strike at once, and expressed my hope that h
e would accompany me back to America at his earliest convenience.

  The rooms were very ordinary and oddly devoid of all but a few unimportant books; it felt uncommonly cold in there, even though it was summer. Duponte leaned back in his armchair. Suddenly, as though only now realizing I was addressing him rather than the blank wall behind, he said, “Why have you told this to me, monsieur?”

  “Monsieur Duponte,” I said, thunderstruck, “you are a celebrated genius of ratiocination. You are the only person known to me, perhaps the only person in the known world, capable of resolving this mystery!”

  “You are very far mistaken,” he said. “You are mad,” he suggested.

  “I? You are Auguste Duponte?” I responded accusingly.

  “You are thinking of many years ago. The police asked me to review their papers from time to time. I’m afraid the journals of Paris were excited with their own notions and, in some cases, assigned me certain attributes to meet the appetites of the public imagination. Such tales were told…” (Wasn’t there a flicker of something like pride in his eyes when he said this?) Without a blink or a breath, he overthrew the topic altogether. “What you should know, might I say, are the many worthwhile outings in Paris in the summer. You will want to see a concert at the Luxembourg Gardens. I might tell you where to see the finest flowers. And have you been to the palace at Versailles? You will be pleased by it—”

  “The palace at Versailles? Versailles, you say? Please, Duponte! This is monstrously important! I am no idle caller. Nearly half the world has passed by my eyes to find you!”

  He nodded sympathetically and said, “You certainly should sleep, then.”