The Poe Shadow

by Matthew Pearl

  The Baron repeated his words slowly, turning around in a circle, his nostrils flaring like a warhorse’s. “Edgar Poe shall be vindicated.”

  18

  “POE HAD NOTHING to drink, the Baron said, and drinking did not cause his death, as the press reported.”

  I was sitting opposite Duponte in my library now, perched at my chair’s edge.

  Naturally, I did not wish to appear overly pleased about the Baron’s conversation with Snodgrass. I did not intend to praise the Baron too highly. He, after all, was our chief rival and obstacle.

  “Oh, the look across Dr. Snodgrass’s face!” I accidentally continued. “Dupin might have punched him hard in the jaw.” I laughed. “Snodgrass—that false friend—deserved it, if someone were to ask me.”

  An extraneous thought came into my mind, or a question really. Had there been suggestions, in the text of Poe’s tales, I asked myself, that C. Auguste Dupin had been a lawyer? I could not help it. The question chimed in my head without offering me a choice to reject it.

  “And anything further?”

  “What?” I stirred, realizing there had been an awkward interval of silence.

  “Did you observe anything further today, monsieur?” asked Duponte, rolling his chair halfway back to the desk of newspapers.

  I explained the other points of interest, particularly the sudden and inexplicable presence of Henry Herring at Ryan’s before Snodgrass had a chance to call for him, and the detailed descriptions of Poe’s disheveled dress. I was careful not even to say the name of Baron Dupin again, as much for my benefit as for Duponte’s.

  “Neilson Poe, Herring! Now Snodgrass!” I exclaimed in distaste.

  “What do you mean, monsieur?” Duponte asked.

  “They were all at Poe’s funeral—men charged with honoring him. Instead, Snodgrass delivers a vision of Poe as a drunken sot. Neilson Poe takes no action to defend his cousin’s name. Henry Herring arrives quickly at Ryan’s, before he is even called for by Snodgrass, only to push his relative off alone into a hack to the hospital.”

  Duponte passed a hand thoughtfully over his chin, sucked at his tongue, and then turned his chair so his back was toward me.

  Around this time, the idea had begun to forcefully develop in my mind that, in encouraging my role as spy, Duponte had chiefly wished to keep me occupied. After the disquieting conference recorded above, I hardly spoke to him but to report the particulars of my latest findings, which he usually received with easy indifference; some evenings, if he had already retired by the time I returned to Glen Eliza, I would leave a concise letter detailing all I had observed on that day. I could not forget, moreover, that his somber inaction after discovering Bonjour’s prank had led to the great embarrassment between myself and Hattie in front of Glen Eliza. I suppose Duponte took notice of my cooler demeanor, but he never commented about it.

  Over breakfast one day I said, “I’m thinking of composing a letter. To that temperance newspaper in New York that claimed knowledge of Poe having a debauch. It has been much on my mind. Someone should demand that they produce the name and account of this so-called witness.”

  At first Duponte did not reply. Finally he looked up in a cloud of distraction.

  “What do you think of the temperance periodical’s article, Monsieur Duponte?”

  “That it is a temperance periodical,” he said. “Their stated desire is the universal elimination of the use of spirits, yet they have a different, in fact most contradictory need, monsieur: a reliable supply of well-regarded people ruined from drink to prove to their readers why their temperance periodical should remain in existence. Poe has become one of these.”

  “So you do not think the magazine’s witness is real?”

  “Doubtful.”

  This raised my hopes and, for an instant, fully restored my fellowship with my companion. “And you have acquired the evidence, monsieur, which we might use to refute them. Can we prove yet that Poe did not drink when he was here?”

  “I have never said that I believe he did not.”

  I could not reply, so fixed was I in momentary shock. His implication was not absolutely certain, but I feared I understood it too well as the exact opposite of the Baron’s declaration at Ryan’s. My thoughts turned to changing the topic.…I did not want to hear him….

  “In fact”—Duponte talked over me, preparing to confirm my dread—“he almost certainly did.”

  Had I heard this correctly? Had Duponte come all this way only to affix Poe’s condemnation?

  “Now, do tell me more about the subscriptions the Baron has been raising….” he said.

  In my turmoil, I welcomed any other subject. Baron Dupin had continued to amass his fortune in subscription moneys around Baltimore. In one oyster tavern alone, he had gleefully received payment from twelve eager fellows. The proprietor, bothered by the Frenchman’s interruptions, had related to me the substance of his visits. “In two weeks, folks,” the Baron would say, “you shall hear the first true account of Poe’s death!” To Bonjour, he once added, “when they hear of my success in Paris, then, then…” His comment trailed off there; to the Baron Dupin’s hungry imagination, there was every possibility opening from this success….

  A few days later, the Baron Dupin showed himself a bit distressed in the anteroom of his hotel. Afterward, I bribed a nearby porter and asked what had transpired. He said the Baron Dupin had called for his colored boy and found that he was gone. After much shouting and fussing, it was discovered through the civil authorities that Newman had been manumitted. The Baron knew he had been humbugged, and by whom. He laughed.

  “Why do you laugh?”

  “Because, my dear,” he said to Bonjour, “I should be smarter than that. Of course he has been freed.”

  “You mean that Duponte has done this? But how?”

  “You do not know Duponte. You shall yet know him better.”

  I smiled at the Baron’s reported frustration.

  On Duponte’s instructions, I had a day earlier found the name of Newman’s owner. He was a debtor who required quick funds, and thus had made the arrangement with the Baron to hire out Newman for an indefinite period of time. He had not known of the Baron’s promise to Newman to purchase his freedom. He was also appalled to hear that Newman had not gone to work for “a small family,” as had been advertised. Newman’s owner became angry when I told him of the deception. Not angry enough, though, to refuse my own check to him to secure the slave’s freedom. In my law practice I’d had extensive experience dealing with persons in great debt in a manner that neither offended their self-esteem nor overlooked their pressing needs.

  I even escorted the young man to the train depot myself to send him on his way to Boston. When manumitting a slave, it was dictated that the former slave be quickly removed from the state so he would not negatively influence blacks who remained slaves. Newman was overjoyed as we walked, but seemed filled with worry, as though the ground might collapse beneath our feet before he was safely outside the state. He was not far off. We had only a few yards before reaching the depot when an enormous rumble came from behind and cleared the street of all who were on foot, including us.

  Approaching were three omnibuses filled with black men, women, and children. Behind these conveyances were several men on horseback. I recognized one man, tall and silver-haired, as Hope Slatter, the most powerful of the city’s slave-dealers, or nigger-traders. The practice of the larger slave-traders in Baltimore was to house the slaves they purchased from sellers in their private prisons, usually a wing of their homes, until a ship could be sufficiently filled to merit the expenses of delivering a shipment to New Orleans, the hub of the southern trade. Slatter and his assistants were now driving to the harbor with approximately a dozen slaves in each bus.

  Along the sides of the omnibuses waited other blacks, perpetually stopping to put their arms up to the windows of the omnibuses, and then running to keep up with them, to touch or speak with the occupants one final time
. It could not be determined whether a greater amount of weeping occurred inside or out. From within, a voice shouted hysterically, loud enough for anyone who would listen. She tried to make clear that she had been sold to Slatter by her owner with the express provision that she not be separated from her family, as he was now doing.

  I steered Newman away from this whole scene, but he was dangerously transfixed by the sight, perhaps the last of its kind he would see before leaving for the North.

  The slave-trader and his assistants held up their whips and warned those surrounding the vehicles not to delay their pace. One man had climbed up to a window of the omnibus and was clinging to it, calling for his wife, whom he could not see. She pushed her way through other slaves in the bus to the window.

  Slatter, spying this, pressed his horse around from the other side. “Do not continue!” he warned the man.

  The climber ignored this, reaching inside to embrace his wife.

  Out came Slatter’s cane, its strap wrapped closely around his wrist. He knocked the man in the back and then the stomach and left him writhing on the ground. “Away, little dog, before I call for your arrest! You do not wish what would follow that!”

  As Slatter steered his horse to step around from the fallen man, his eyes drifted to my position—or, rather, to the young black standing with me.

  “Who is this?” he asked gravely from his high saddle as he approached us. He pointed his cane down at Newman.

  Newman’s lips trembled terribly; he tried to speak but failed. I hoped the man would simply continue on with his other horrid task, but that was not to be.

  He pointed his cane at Newman’s mouth, and then across his body as though he were lecturing at the medical college. “A likely Negro, aren’t you. Fine mouth, generally good teeth, no broken bones to be seen. Good coachman, I’d bet, or a waiter, if he can be careful and honest.” Addressing me, he said, “I could sell him for at least six hundred dollars, with a commission to me, my friend.”

  “I am not his owner,” I replied. “Nor is he for sale.”

  “Then perhaps he is your bastard child?” he said sarcastically.

  “I am Quentin Clark, an attorney of this city. This young man you see is manumitted.”

  “I’m a free man, boss,” Newman finally said in a tiny whisper.

  “Oh?” Slatter asked musingly, reversing his horse and peering down again at Newman. “Let us see your certificates then.”

  At this Newman, who had received all the necessary papers that morning, merely trembled and stammered.

  “Come on now.” Slatter prodded Newman in the shoulder with his cane.

  “Leave him,” I cried out. “He is freed by my own hand. A man with more freedom than you, Mr. Slatter, for he knows what it is not to have it.”

  Slatter was about to hit Newman in the shoulder harder when I raised my cane and blocked his instrument with it. “Tell me, Mr. Slatter,” I said. “I wonder, if you are so interested in papers, if you should like to have the authorities inspect your slaves on the bus and ensure that all are being sold in accordance with their particular deeds.”

  Slatter grinned darkly at me. He withdrew his cane with an air of courtesy and, without saying another word to us, dug his heels into his horse’s sides to catch up with the train of vehicles heading down into the harbor. Newman was breathing rapidly.

  “Why not show him your papers?” I asked insistently. “You do have them on you?”

  He pointed to his head, where he wore a ragged hat—he had sewn the papers into the brim. Newman then told of the many traders like Slatter who asked to inspect their certificates of freedom and, once they had them in hand, destroyed the documents. They’d then conceal the rightfully free men and women in their pens until they were sold as legal slaves to another state, far away from any evidence to the contrary.

  19

  “MONSIEUR DUPONTE, I must ask something at once.”

  I said this after one of our many recent silent suppers in the large rectangular dining room of Glen Eliza.

  Duponte nodded.

  I continued. “When the Baron holds his lecture on Poe’s death, it may irrevocably pollute the truth. Perhaps, when he delivers his speech, I should cause some distraction to him outside the hall, and you could claim the stage and reveal the truth to the people!”

  “No, monsieur,” said Duponte, shaking his head. “We shall do nothing of the kind. There is more here than you realize.”

  I nodded sadly, and did not touch another morsel of food. That had been my experiment. Duponte had failed. He went on with his undisturbed silence.

  I was entirely absorbed in distraction. To my visible displeasure, the dronish fellows who were overseeing some of my father’s investments came to the door and I sent them away at once. I could not think about numbers and annual accounts.

  “The Purloined Letter”: the second sequel to “The Murders in the

  Rue Morgue.” That’s what I was thinking about with such a wistful air. C. Auguste Dupin has discovered the secret location of the letter stolen by Minister D———, hidden most ingeniously by being placed right in front of everyone’s eyes. It was the ordinary aspect of the spot that eluded all but one man. The analyst uses an unnamed collaborator to fire a gun in the street and raise a commotion. The collaborator’s distraction allows C. Auguste Dupin to retrieve the letter, and put a false one in its place.

  I relate this to bring out a point. C. Auguste Dupin trusts his collaborator there; and, besides, puts increasingly great trust in the work of his faithful assistant in all of Poe’s Dupin trilogy.

  Yet Auguste Duponte, my own companion, hardly gave credence to my role as collaborator and quietly dismissed my numerous ideas and suggestions, whether it was questioning Henry Reynolds, for which he made a mockery of me, or my latest design regarding the disruption of the Baron’s lecture. On the other hand, Baron Dupin in all he endeavored constantly favored employing accomplices!

  Then there was the interesting fact to consider of Baron Dupin’s gift for disguises and alterations. A similarity might be noted, that the literary Dupin uses his green spectacles as another way to dupe his brilliant opponent, Minister D———, in “The Purloined Letter.”

  And how about Baron Dupin’s profession as a lawyer? I had begun in the last few days to underline certain lines in the trilogy. “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” implies to the careful reader, in certain key passages, that C. Auguste Dupin was deeply acquainted with the law, perhaps hinting for us at his past practice as a lawyer. Like Baron Dupin.

  Then there is that initial, so uninteresting to the uninformed eye: C. Auguste Dupin. C. Dupin. Could it not remind the reader of one Claude Dupin? And is not Poe’s character of the genius analyst known by the time of the second tale by the dignified title of “Chevalier”? Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin. Baron C. Dupin.

  “But what of the Baron Dupin’s cold penchant for money?” I asked myself. Alas, recall that C. Auguste Dupin profits monetarily, and most deliberately, from the employment of his skills in each of the three tales!

  Above all, here was the Baron Claude Dupin confronting Snodgrass, boldly denying the notion of Poe expiring through a disgraceful debauch. While on that same day in Glen Eliza Auguste Duponte was allowing for the merits of that shameful position. His nonchalant comment about Poe’s drinking resounded in my mind again and again until bitterness and regret reigned over me. “I had never said he had not.”

  I acknowledged the seeds of my idea and allowed it to germinate: what if the Baron Dupin, all this time, were the real Dupin. And would not Poe have enjoyed this jolly, philosophical, hoaxing rogue, who had so thrilled and plagued me? Poe had written in a letter to me that the Dupin tales were ingenious not just for their method but their “air of method.” Didn’t the Baron understand the importance of appearance in gaining the awe of those around him, whereas Duponte ignored and alienated to no end? What a great, strange relief these thoughts suddenly provided me. I had miscalculated all along
.

  Though it was late at night when these ideas culminated in me, I descended the stairs soundlessly and stole out of Glen Eliza. I reached the Baron Dupin’s hotel room a half hour late and stood at the door. I was breathing deeply, too deeply, my breathing an echo of my frantic thoughts. I knocked, too exhilarated and fearful to be articulate. There was a rustle from the other side of the door.

  “I’ve possibly been mistaken,” I said softly. “Some words, please, just a few moments.” I looked behind me to make sure I had not been followed.

  The room door nudged opened, and I put my foot in front of it.

  I knew I would have only a brief hearing to state my position. “Baron Dupin, please! I believe we must speak at once. I believe—I know you are the one.”

  20

  “BARON! IS THERE a real baron staying in this hotel?”

  A thickly bearded man in nightclothes and slippers stood at the door, holding up his candle.

  “This is not the room of Baron Dupin?”

  “We have not seen him!” replied the man with disappointment, looking over his shoulder as though perhaps there was a baron in his bed-quilt he had neglected to notice. “But we’ve only arrived this afternoon from Philadelphia.”

  I mumbled my apologies and returned hurriedly through the hall and to the street. The Baron had changed hotels again and, in my distraction,

  I had missed it. My thoughts ran quick and conflicting as I emerged from the hotel. Immediately I felt eyes upon the back of my neck and slowed my walk. It was not merely the intensity of my mood. There was the handsome black whom I had seen before, hands deep in his coat pockets, standing under the streetlamp. Or was it? He remained within the scope of the light only momentarily; then I could find him no more.

  Turning to the other side, I thought I saw one of the two men in the old-fashioned dress I had seen following the Baron. My heart thumped violently at the vague feeling of being surrounded. I marched away as quickly as possible, jumping nearly headlong into a hackney coach, which I directed back to Glen Eliza.