The Poe Shadow Page 15

  AB (newly alarmed): You do know you are in America, sir!

  AD: I have noticed that people put heels on chairs and carpets, pour eggs into glasses, and spit tobacco-juice upon windows. I know I am in America, madame.

  AB: Now just—Who are you?

  AD: The answer of my name has not seemed helpful to you before. Though I am quite occupied and have little desire to render myself at your service, madame, I shall attempt this in Monsieur Clark’s stead. Perhaps, rather than asking who I am, it would be more enlightening for you to ask who is Mr. Clark.

  AB: Mr. Clark! But I know Mr. Clark quite well, sir! Have known him practically from his infancy! Indeed, I have just heard of his return from Europe and wish to see him.

  AD: Ah.

  AB: Very well. I shall play along at this game, though you are a stranger, and insolent. Who is Mr. Clark, sir?

  AD: Mr. Clark is my associate in this present matter.

  AB: You are an attorney then?

  AD: Heavens!

  AB: Then what matter do you speak of?

  AD: You do mean the present matter occupying me quite well, until you came in?

  AB: Yes—Yes, but—Are you going to light that cigar, sir, indoors? While I am standing here before you just so?

  AD: I suppose. Unless I cannot find a matchbook; then I shall not think of it.

  AB: Mr. Clark shall hear of this treatment! Mr. Clark shall—

  AD: Here! Here is a match after all, madame.

  I left word for Peter, spurred in part by the awful account of Auntie Blum’s visit, and after several times missing each other we had a meeting arranged in his chambers. He was quite brotherly. He looked around his office once we were seated, with a sudden pang.

  “Perhaps this is the wrong place to discuss—well, but, Quentin, I suppose we must talk openly.” He blew a windy sigh. “In the first place, if I have ever grown warm with you, it was in the hopes that I have been helping you, and doing as your father would have wanted.”

  “Impudent!”

  “What, Quentin?” Peter was utterly startled.

  I realized Duponte’s odd habits of speech had infected me. “I mean,” I said quickly, “that I understand the matter perfectly, Peter.”

  “Well, just so. Because you were away from Baltimore, and things change, by the bye. Quentin…”

  I leaned forward with interest.

  “I must tell you, though it is not comfortable…”

  “Peter?”

  “I have begun speaking with another fellow from Washington about taking your place here,” he managed to blurt out. “He is a good lawyer. He reminds me of you. Understand, Quentin, that I am simply overwhelmed with all the work.”

  I sat in silence and surprise—not surprise that Peter would be engaging another attorney, but surprise that, after all my yearnings to leave these chambers, this would stir something sad in me.

  “This is good news, Peter,” I said after a moment.

  “The practice is in peril—there have been some financial hitches, and we are hard pushed. It is all knocked into a cocked hat and could crumble in the next year if something isn’t done. The firm your father built for us.”

  “I know you will manage,” I said with a slight waver in my voice that seemed to invite Peter to plead his case.

  “You must realize, Quentin, that you can have your position back. Today, any hour, if you wish! We are all quite glad to hear of your return. Hattie especially—you must address that situation immediately, you know. Her aunt has practically built a fortress around her to prevent you from seeing her.”

  “Of course, she is merely trying to guard her welfare. Now that you mention the topic, there is a matter of Auntie Blum calling at my house.…I am certain I can sway her away from any bitterness, though.”

  Peter glared in a manner that suggested he did not agree.

  Indeed, I knew that while I was so immersed in my undertaking, any attempt to reconcile with Hattie’s family, even if successful, would only reverse its course once the demands for attention to the various questions of the future could not be met. I would have to wait a bit longer before repairing those relations. I adjourned my interview with Peter, promising to explain more later.

  Meanwhile, I was now frequenting the athenaeum reading rooms, where the very same loquacious gentleman whom I had encountered before, the mysterious Poe enthusiast, continued his regular appearances, reading the newspapers and gushing over the inept articles appearing in print on Edgar Poe.

  One morning, I took a seat on the stone steps of the athenaeum before it opened and waited for the doors to be unlatched. Once inside, I chose a chair across from the place where I knew the gentleman preferred, so I could watch him more closely. When he arrived, though, he, seemingly oblivious to my motives, found a different table. I did not want it to seem like I was following him, so I kept a distance. The next day, I loitered near the clerk’s desk, to see where the other gentleman would situate himself. I claimed a nearby place. I could now observe his every movement.

  He was most galling in the joyfulness he exhibited at reading about the circumstances of Poe’s death.

  “Ah, did you see this one now?” He turned to a woman at the neighboring table, holding up a newspaper. “They’re wondering what happened to all the money he scraped together from lecturing in Richmond. If it had been on Poe’s person, where is it now? That’s a question. The editors of the press are shrewd.” There he laughed as if at an infinitely witty jest.

  Shrewd, he says! “Sir, how is it you laugh in such a manner?” I asked, knowing I should instead keep to myself. “Do you not think this a subject of the most serious gravity, deserving higher decorum?”

  “It is most serious,” he said, his unruly eyebrows straightening on command. “Serious as a judge. Yet most critical, too, that we shall be told in full what happened to him.”

  “And do you not take these reports with a considerable modicum of salt? Do you think every item you read proclaims the truth, as some prophet of a Gospel?”

  He gave the idea of his credulity strenuous thought. “Why else would they waste fine ink on it, dear man, if it weren’t true? I should not think like the Hebrews, and not believe that newer testaments are also smarter, instead chasing all false Messiahs with ‘lo here, lo there!’”

  In my agitation, I left the athenaeum for the remainder of the day. I suspected that the pest’s desire to gawk would expire quickly, and was relieved when there came days he failed to appear; but then he would be resurrected the following day. Sometimes, given some reminder to a certain poem by Poe, he would rise and spontaneously recite verses to the room. For instance, one afternoon a church bell tolled outside for a funeral. He jumped up with Poe’s words on his lips:

  Oh, the bells, bells, bells!

  What a tale their terror tells

  Of Despair!

  He would usually sit among the papers, interrupting himself only to blow his nose ferociously into his handkerchief, or one he borrowed from an unlucky patron. I became excessively friendly with strangers I happened to meet at the reading room, based only on their virtue of not being that sneezing, supercilious man.

  I complained to the clerk, pacing in front of his table. “Why should he be so concerned with articles about Poe?” I asked.

  “Who, Mr. Clark?”

  I blinked at the kind old clerk. “Who? Why that man who comes in nearly every day—”

  “Ah, I thought you were speaking of the man who had given me those articles about Edgar Poe some time ago,” he replied, “which I ordered delivered to you.”

  I brought my pacing to a stop as I thought of the package of cuttings the clerk had sent me before I left for Paris—a selection that included the first mention I had seen of a real Dupin. “I had naturally assumed you had collected those yourself.”

  “No, Mr. Clark.”

  “But who was it that gave them to you?”

  “It must have been some two years ago now,” he meditated.
“Which pigeon-hole of my brain did that go into?” he laughed.

  “Please try to recall. I should be most interested.” The clerk agreed that he would tell me if he was able to remember. Someone, I presumed, who cared about Poe before the morbid sensation and vulgar curiosity that had been caused by the Baron’s manipulation. Before men like this enthusiast who was now forever stationed across the room from me.

  Duponte advised me to ignore the man. Now that I had met Bonjour at the bookseller’s, he said, the Baron Dupin would have many eyes looking for me—just as he had in Paris—to determine the nature of our activity. I must pretend he was not even there, as though he did not exist.

  “Oh, look here. We shall hear more soon.” That was the shaggy-haired man’s commentary one morning at the athenaeum.

  I tried exceedingly hard to keep away before finding myself replying from the next table over. “Sir? How do you mean we shall hear soon?”

  He squinted as though never having seen me before. “Ah, right here, dear man,” he said, finding his spot on the page. “There. They say there are whispers in the very first circles of society that the ‘real Dupin’ has come to Baltimore and will sort out what it was happened to Poe. Do you see?”

  I looked over the paper and found the notice.

  “The editor heard of it first-hand. C. Auguste Dupin was…” the man went on, then paused to blow his nose. “C. A. Dupin was a most winning genius in some of Poe’s tales, don’t you know? He solves some rather knotty puzzles. He’s the real china, and no mistake.”

  I wanted to report all this to Duponte, primarily to give voice to my vexation, but did not find him in his accustomed place in my library that evening. The newspapers were scattered over the desk and table as usual, indicating that he had been at his labors earlier.

  “Monsieur Duponte?” My voice traveled upon Glen Eliza’s long halls and up the stairwells in an aimless echo. I questioned my domestics, but none had seen him since earlier that day. An ominous fear seized me. I shouted loudly enough to be heard by neighboring houses. Duponte probably had come to feel confined by his reading for so long. He might still be near my house.

  But I found no traces of the analyst on the property or in the valley below the house. Soon I walked to the street and hired a carriage.

  “I am looking for a friend, driver—let us ride around, with all steam on.” Given that Duponte had not left the grounds of Glen Eliza since our arrival, I’d begun to suspect he’d happened on something exciting to investigate.

  We passed by the avenues around the Washington Monument, through the Lexington Market, through the crowded wharf-side streets watched over by the clipper ships. The affable coachman tried several times to start a conversation, once along the stretch of road as we drove past the Washington College Hospital.

  “Do y’know, your honor,” he shouted back to me, “that is where Edgar Poe died?”

  “Stop the carriage!” I cried.

  He did, happy to win my attention. I stepped up to the driver’s box.

  “What is it you said before about that place, driver?”

  “I was just pointing out the sights to you. Ain’t you a stranger here? Can whip you up to a nice culinary establishment in no time, if you wish, rather than riding in circles, your honor.”

  “Who told you about Poe? You read it in the newspapers?”

  “It was a fellow who rode in my coach who was telling me about it.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That Poe was the greatest damned poet in America. Yet he heard tell Poe been left to die on the dirty floor of a rum-hole by some rough circumstance. He said he read of it all in the newspapers. A sociable man, he was—I mean he who rode in my carriage.”

  The driver could not call to mind what this man looked like, although he was clearly nostalgic for what an easy conversationalist he had been, compared to his present passenger.

  “Not three days ago I had him in my coach. Do y’know, he did sneeze something awful.”

  “Sneeze?” I asked.

  “Yes, borrowed my handkerchief and used it up something awful.”

  I watched the afternoon sink into twilight, knowing that with sunset I would lose any hope of spotting Duponte. Baltimore’s street lighting was among the poorest of any city, and sometimes walking home after dark was difficult even for the native citizen. I had concluded that the wisest course would be to return and wait for him at Glen Eliza.

  Swine now filled the street. Though there had been increasing calls for public carts to be established to remove garbage and refuse from the streets, these ravenous creatures were still the primary method, and at this hour they filled the air with contented squeals as they devoured whatever offal they could find.

  Soon after I had instructed the driver to bring me back home, I saw through the carriage window a glimpse of Duponte walking at his customarily measured pace. I paid my coachman and bolted out, as though the Frenchman might dissolve into the air.

  “Monsieur Duponte, where are you going?”

  “I am observing the spirit of the city, Monsieur Clark,” Duponte told me, as though the fact were obvious.

  “But monsieur, I cannot understand why you left Glen Eliza on your own—surely I could be your best guide to the city.” I began, by way of demonstration, to describe the new gasworks that could be seen in the distance, but he raised his hand to silence me.

  “Regarding certain facts,” he said, “I shall readily welcome your trained knowledge. But do consider, Monsieur Clark, that you know Baltimore as a native. Edgar Poe lived here for a time, but many years ago—fifteen, if I am not very far mistaken. Poe, in his last days, would have come here as a visitor, seeing the city and its people as a visitor and stranger does. I have already stopped into some stores of special interest and a wide variety of markets, knowing only what strangers would from signs and the behaviors of the native people.”

  I supposed he had a reasonable argument. As we walked for the next hour, progressing far eastward, I explained what I had found in the newspaper at the reading rooms, and what I had heard from the coachman. “Monsieur,” I asked, “should we not do something? Baron Dupin has placed notices offering money for informants to provide information regarding Poe’s death. Surely we must counter him before it is too late.”

  Before my companion could respond, both of our attentions were caught by a figure stepping down onto the sidewalk across from us. I narrowed my eyes—a lamp furnished a glare so dim that it almost made it harder to see than if there were no lights at all.

  “Monsieur,” I whispered, “why, I should not believe it aright, but that is him; that is the fellow who has been planted in a chair at the reading room nearly every day! Across the way from us!”

  Duponte followed my gaze.

  “That is the man whom I’ve met at the reading room!”

  Just then I could see the dark gaze of Bonjour. Her hands were hidden in her shawl, and she was trailing menacingly behind the unsuspecting man. I thought of the stories of ruthlessness Duponte had enumerated to me about this woman. I thrilled at the sight of her, and trembled for the man walking in front of her.

  The Poe enthusiast had turned suddenly and was approaching our position.

  Duponte nodded at him. “Dupin,” he said, touching his hat.

  The man replied loudly with a blowing of his nose; this time the bulbous front of his nose came off in the handkerchief. Then the Baron Claude Dupin removed his false eyebrows. His charming English-French accent reappeared. “Baron,” he said, correcting my companion. “Baron Dupin, if you please, Monsieur Duponte.”

  “Baron? Ah, yes, so it is. Perhaps a bit formal for Americans though,” said Duponte.

  “Not so.” The Baron showed his brilliant smile. “Everybody loves a baron.”

  Bonjour joined her master in the circle of light. The Baron spoke some orders to her, and she disappeared from view.

  My shock at the true identity of the Poe enthusiast was instantly surpassed by a
second realization. “You and Baron Dupin have met before?” I asked Duponte.

  “Many years past, Monsieur Clark, in Paris,” the Baron said with a quaint smile, as he shook his wig and lifted it off with his hat. “Under much less promising circumstances. I hope your voyage from Paris, gentlemen, was half as pleasant as our own. Nobody bothered you on the seaworthy Humboldt, I hope?”

  “How did you know which…” I stood aghast. “The stowaway! You had us followed by that bald-headed rogue, monsieur? He was in your pay?”

  The Baron shrugged playfully. His long black hair, which was slightly wet and waxy looking, fell into curls. “What rogue? I merely stay informed of the lists of passengers arriving to port. I do read newspapers, as you know especially well, Monsieur Clark.”

  The Baron removed the shaggy, stuffed coat he had worn, which with the now liberated nose, wig, and eyebrows had completed his crude costume. I felt disgusted that I could have been fooled by the disguise.

  Yet, I am not merely defending myself by adding that there was far more to it—there was a sort of metamorphosis difficult to impress upon someone who has never met Claude Dupin. The Baron possessed an uncanny ability to modify his voice and gait and even, it seemed, the shape and appearance of his head to a degree that would have embarrassed the most respected phrenologist; and through complex positioning of the jaw, lips, and neck muscles, he was able to obscure himself better than with a mask. Each face seemed made of steel, with the soul of a hundred human beings waiting beneath. His voice was flexible, too, in unnatural ways; it seemed to change completely depending on what he was saying. As much as Duponte could control what he observed of others, the Baron Dupin seemed capable of controlling others’ observation of him.

  “I wish to know all other deceptions you have enacted in this matter, monsieur!” I demanded, trying to conceal a rush of mortification.

  “When I take up the case of a downtrodden defendant on behalf of the suffering class, I make the world care. That defendant’s bad luck is the world’s bad luck; his fate, its fate. This is why I, the Baron Dupin, have never lost a case. Not one case of the lowliest man or woman. The louder we shout in advocating justice, the more insistent the people will be for it to arrive.