The Poe Shadow

by Matthew Pearl

  “Then why not stop me, if you knew?”

  He swirled his drink. “Isn’t it quite obvious to you? Haven’t you learned from your master? It was a desperate measure—Duponte knew he was losing, so he sent you out. The very fact made it clear that I need not defend myself against him. Besides, seeing what you were trying to spy on permitted me to know what Duponte was most interested in—to be a spy is always to be spied upon, monsieur.”

  “If you are all-knowing, Baron, I would guess you have already discovered who those two Frenchman are and who sent them.”

  He paused, his agitation stirred. “They are French, then?”

  “From their accents, their words, yes. You could coax them to your purposes perhaps, as you did with Dr. Snodgrass.” I wanted to regain some balance in the interview, and make it clear I was not without my own sources of knowledge.

  “If they serve certain powerful factions against me for my pecuniary interests back in Paris, I am afraid it is not so simple.”

  He spoke in that open tone of his, as though you were firmly on his side of affairs, which made you temporarily forget you were anything but. He had to push aside strands of his hair from his eyes; his hair now looked thin and soapy.

  “You see, Brother Quentin, how a man can be pushed to live behind masks. Never able to freely be myself. And I am quite good as myself, yes, monsieur. Thundering good! In the courtroom, all eyes, even those of the lawyers opposing me, would look to me for the truth. I am happy there. I am not ready to hang up my fiddle, not yet.”

  “Yet you carry on your cheap charade to bully us,” I protested. “You mimic Auguste Duponte.”

  I noticed a painting of Duponte leaning in the corner of the room. I had seen Von Dantker’s work at various stages of progress, and recognized this canvas as his. I could not help remarking on how complete the finished portrait seemed—as though it had completed Duponte himself. It captured his exact likeness but also more than his likeness.

  The Baron laughed good-naturedly. “Has Duponte appreciated the humor of it, Brother Quentin? My small jest among serious business, that is all. Duponte does not know about wearing masks. He believes that if he does not, he will be attached to reality. In fact, without any masks, he is—we are—nothing.”

  I thought about that singular pointed grin that Duponte had innovated for his sittings with Von Dantker, which could be seen creeping onto his face in the portrait. A smile that was not really his…Perhaps Duponte did know about wearing masks, after all? I grabbed hold of the portrait and placed it under my arm.

  “I shall take this, Baron; it is not your property.”

  He shrugged.

  I continued, perhaps hoping to induce a bigger reaction, “You know—you must know—that Duponte shall resolve this. He is the real basis for Dupin.”

  “Do you believe that is important to him?”

  I cocked my head with interest. It was not the reply I’d expected.

  “Has Duponte told you how he and I came to know each other?” The Baron looked at me with a serious air. “Of course the answer is no,” the Baron went on, shaking his head knowingly. “No, he too much lives inside himself. Duponte needs to feel people are interested in him, but finds the act of speaking of himself too tiring. We were both in Paris. There was a lady named Catherine Gautier accused of murder, a woman most important to your friend.”

  I called to mind the policeman at the café in Paris who said changes had come over Duponte when the woman he loved was hanged for murder and he could not stop it. “Duponte loved her, didn’t he?”

  “That is nothing! I loved her too. Oh, do not look at me so, like we are in some light novel; I do not mean what you think. No, Duponte and I were not rivals for her affection. But she was attractive enough, and brilliant enough, for any man who knew her to love her. You ask, how could we live in a world where such a woman could be accused of bludgeoning her own sister to death? The idea is absurd.”

  Catherine Gautier, the Baron said, was of the poorer class, but virtuous and known as very intelligent. She was Duponte’s closest and (some said) only companion. One day, this woman’s sister was found murdered in a vile fashion, and Duponte’s lover was suspected at once. Because the police were Duponte’s enemies after he had embarrassed them by solving crimes they could not, many believed that the accusation represented their reprisal against Duponte by turning against Catherine.

  “She was innocent then?”

  “Innocent enough” came the Baron’s peculiar answer after a pause.

  “So you were acquainted with her?”

  “Dear friend, has he really never said anything about it? Your companion for so many long months now. Yes, I knew her.” He laughed. “I was her lawyer, dear man! I defended her against that terrific charge of murder.”

  “You?” I asked. “But she was executed. You never lost a case.”

  “Yes, that is true. I suppose that record was somewhat knotted up by Mademoiselle Gautier.”

  I looked down, thinking of Duponte’s failure. “Duponte failed to free her. He will return to his glory, though,” I asserted, using the Baron’s favorite term, “now, with Poe.”

  “Failed to free her!” the Baron laughed. “Failed to free her?”

  His taunting angered me. I knew Duponte had tried examining the affair himself when Mademoiselle Gautier was arrested, but had given up in despair. I repeated this history to the Baron.

  “He tried to examine, is that what you have been told? Why, monsieur, Brother Duponte did examine the matter. He never gave up. He was as successful as always.”

  “Successful? How? Do you mean she was not executed after all?”

  “I remember vividly,” the Baron began, “my first visit to the apartments of Auguste Duponte in Paris.”

  The Baron Dupin found a place for his hat and stick himself, since Duponte did not offer. The Baron wished for better light. The lawyer found brightness an advantage when demonstrating through the eager motions of the hands and large expressions of the face why cooperation should be offered to him. He did not relish relying on any ordinary routine of persuasion with Auguste Duponte, of course—but circumstances were dire. His career was at a treacherous crossroad. Also, a woman’s life was at stake.

  The Baron had never been to see Duponte before. He had, like all informed persons in Paris, and like all the criminal-minded, known of Auguste Duponte. The Baron had devised one strict rule as an advocate. He would not accept the case of an accused criminal who had been arrested through the ratiocination of Duponte. The reason for this was not the obvious one: that the Baron presumed a person accused by Duponte automatically guilty. Instead, it was that Duponte’s reputation was too strong in that day—once it was known by a judge that Duponte had brought down the charges, it would be almost impossible to obtain an acquittal.

  Now the Baron saw an opportunity. He could use Duponte’s blind affection for Catherine Gautier to win his most important case. The Baron convinced himself that each case was the most important, but this one was special—it was a case that seemed to every other lawyer quite impossible. That made him all the more determined.

  “We are mounting a steady defense,” the Baron told Duponte. “We aim to give mademoiselle her liberty,” he said in a brave tone. “Your assistance, Monsieur Duponte, would be most valuable—most critical, in fact. You will be the hero in absolving her.” The Baron did not actually believe this, for he knew he would be the hero.

  Duponte was fixed in an armchair by the unlit hearth. “My assistance will confirm that she is doomed,” he answered almost absently.

  “It need not be so, Monsieur Duponte,” the Baron said excitedly. “You are reputed to see what others cannot. If others see only her guilt, you can use your talents, your genius, to see her innocence. The Holy Bible says we are all guilty, monsieur, but does it not follow that we are also all innocent?”

  “I had not heard you were a religious scholar, Monsieur Dupin.”

  “It is ‘Baron,’ if
you please.”

  Duponte stared at him unblinkingly.

  The Baron cleared his throat. “I bring a choice, monsieur, that surely will appeal to your wisdom. You can employ your genius to rescue a person you love, a person who has loved you, from a fate of the blackest die. Or you can sit idly here in your luxurious rooms, and let yourself perish forever in solitude. It is jackassable—I mean, any ass could see what to decide. Which will be your destiny?”

  The Baron was not usually inclined to argue in profound terms, but he was not above it. Mademoiselle Gautier had salvaged her life after being a mistress to a wealthy Parisian student who had tossed her aside. In her circumstance, most girls fell into prostitution, but Catherine Gautier had managed to avoid that. Not so for her sister, however, despite Catherine’s pleas. Her sister’s ruin would be hers as well, for they shared not just a surname but also appearances similar enough to be confused on the street by acquaintances, shopkeepers, and policemen. This was ample motive for Catherine to eliminate this stain on her own identity. Still, the Baron had learned much that suggested the accused was quite unlikely to act in any foul deed, and had found the names of many villains that the sister had consorted with in her new profession who could quite easily be shown culpable with the most minor evidence.

  “If I do examine the affair of her sister’s death,” Duponte began, and the Baron thrilled at those words, “if I do so, I would not wish others to know of my involvement.”

  The Baron promised not to talk to the press about Duponte’s assistance.

  Duponte did investigate the Gautier sister’s death, as promised. He promptly discovered, with no trace of a doubt, the chronicle of events that led to the murder. His conclusions pointed indisputably at his lover, Catherine Gautier, as the perpetrator. He passed on his information to the prefect, producing a witness undetected by the police and ruining all of Baron Dupin’s chances to win by other means. This turn made the Baron more desperate. He was too proud to accept defeat gracefully. He expended many favors, and many thousand francs beyond what was already a deepening debt, to manipulate the case. But it was to no effect. Duponte’s evidence was too strong to be tarnished. The Baron was now ruined in his finances and reputation.

  Meanwhile, Officer Delacourt, ambitious to advance in the prefecture, assured Duponte and Gautier that with the new evidence, which painted the young woman as confused and deluded but by no means demonic, and taking into account her sex, there would be leniency in her sentencing. And yet, a few months later she was executed, with Dupin and Duponte, along with three-quarters of Paris, attending.

  “First of all,” I said, “it was Duponte more than you who suffered in this matter. Not only did it sap him of an ability to pursue the work of his genius, he also lost the one woman he loved—at his own hands! You shall not avenge yourself for your disgrace by plaguing Duponte now. You cannot use Poe’s death for that purpose. I shall not stand by!”

  The Baron retorted, “Recollect that fine legal axiom super subjectum materiam: no man can be held professionally responsible for opinions which have been founded on the facts submitted to him by others.” The Baron stood over my chair. “I didn’t start this, monsieur. You did. You prompted me to look into Poe’s fall. You stand in your own light, do you realize it? Feel your oats, Brother Quentin! You made me see that I could renew myself. My name was crushed by detractors and defamers because the shadow of my genius grew too large and refused to conform to their small lives, so the eyes upon us make every small peccadillo into a mortal sin to stop me—why, it is like our dear Poe.”

  “Will you compare yourself to Poe?” I asked, openly aghast.

  “I do not have to, because Brother Poe has already. Why do you think he chose the character of Dupin as his finest hero? He saw in the genius of the decipherer his own divine abilities to understand what gods and men could never fathom. And with what credit? The prefect of the police, not the hero Dupin, receives the praise of all parties. Even as other writers half as good as Poe found themselves winning gold from the magazines, Poe struggled one last time to overcome adversity, struggled until the end, until finally cut—from existence.”

  “Do you truly believe, monsieur, that you are worthy as the model for Dupin?”

  “You did, before having the misfortune to find Duponte, seduced by talents that he uses only for his own interests. Duponte is an anarchist. Have you ever, since meeting him, had any doubts that…perhaps…” He stretched out the words. “Perhaps you know there was another reason I gave you leave to act the spy on us, my friend. So you might see first-hand, Brother Quentin, that you passed something up in Paris, at the fortifications, when you chose him over me.”

  I wondered if he knew—if the Baron had had someone observing me when I had come to what I thought was his hotel that night. That free black standing under the lamp? “Duponte is the one. You cannot hold a candle to him,” I said. I could not let him have the mental victory of knowing how close I had come to giving up hope in Duponte only a few days earlier. I think my expression might have been transparent, though.

  “Well,” he said, smiling a little, “only Edgar A. Poe could answer who the original Dupin is, and he is gone. How does one solve something when the solution is unreachable? The real Dupin is whoever convinces the world of it; he shall be the remaining one.”

  22

  I FOUND MYSELF fearing Duponte for the first time. Wondering if—indeed—his talents, when released unrestrained and unharnessed, could turn disastrous, as they had against Mademoiselle Gautier. I could not help calling to mind the finale of “The Gold-Bug,” Poe’s rousing tale of a hunt for treasure—it had always seemed to me, rumbling beneath the surface, that in the triumphant ending there was the clue that Legrand, the master thinker, was about to murder his servant and his friend now that their mission was achieved. The last ominous words of that story—“Who shall tell?”—reverberated in my head.

  I called to mind one peculiar evening during my stay in Paris. I was walking behind Auguste Duponte into an area of the city Madame Fouché had warned was not safe at night. Your cries, Madame Fouché had said, would bring no police, who are often in league with the bad people. I remember I was stopped by an object inside a store window that seemed to shift as though on its own power. There was a circle of artificial jaws representing every state of the human mouth: one with bright gums and spotless milky teeth, another with decayed and wilting gums, and so on. Each rotated and opened and shut at different speeds through some unseen mechanical ingenuity. Above the jaws were revolving wax heads showing a toothless, collapsed face and then one boasting a fresh and sturdy mouth with shining teeth, presumably repaired by a dentist with his office behind this window.

  Before I could pull myself away from the mesmerizing sight, I felt a tightness around my ears. Everything went black. My hat had been thrust down over my eyes to blind me, and I could feel hands burrowing into my coat from behind. As I cried out for help, I managed to knock the narrow portion of my hat up from my eyes. I saw an old woman with a threadbare dress of rags and blackened teeth. After having tried to blind me with my hat to rob me, she had stepped back and now only stood staring. I followed her gaze to Duponte, standing a few feet from the attacker. Once she had run off, I turned gratefully to Duponte. What had so frightened her away? If he knew, he never shared it with me.

  I now considered that the wretched being must have recognized Duponte from a former era. A criminal enterprise that Duponte must have spoiled—perhaps she had once been part of some grand assassination plan (for it was said of Duponte that in his time he had uncovered more than one plan to kill the head of France) and, in consequence of his acumen long ago, was in the interim reduced to animal desperation. It was no physical fear of Duponte that had prompted her flight from me. She could have thrust a blade through my heart ten times before Duponte stopped her (if stopping her was his intention). It was not fear of his strength or agility. It was raw, impulsive fear of his pure intellect—a fear of his genius
.

  Who shall tell?

  After leaving the Baron’s hotel, I found Duponte sitting by the large window in the drawing room of Glen Eliza, intently facing the door. I began to tell him all that had occurred at Barnum’s Hotel.

  “Take this,” Duponte interrupted, holding up a leather bag. “Bring it to the address on this paper.” He handed me a slip of paper.

  “Monsieur, have you not listened to the intelligence I bring? Baron Dupin—”

  “You must go out at once, Monsieur Clark,” he said. “It is time.”

  I looked down at the address and did not recognize it. “Very well…. What should I say once I arrive?”

  “You shall know.”

  Such was the extent of my distraction that I did not notice that it was three times as dark as it should have been for that hour. By the time it was starting to rain I was already too far on my walk to return for an umbrella. The water grew deeper along the way until it was lapping at my ankles. I trudged ahead, the brim of my hat sheltering my face as much as possible.

  I took an omnibus part of the way to the address Duponte had written down. Still, I was drenched walking through the downpour. The address was a small office where a man behind a desk dispatched telegraph messages. “Sir?” he turned to me.

  Not knowing what to say, I merely asked whether this was the address I sought.

  “Downstairs,” he said blandly.

  I walked down the steps, to the next sign, which was dripping with streams of water. It was a clothier. Well! This was the urgent mission, perhaps to hand over a coat that needed mending for Duponte—perhaps he had some supper party to attend. I walked in, overcome by my impatience.