Poe shadow (54 page)

I thought about the plain apartments of his hotel room upstairs and rehearsed in my mind what Duponte’s life would have been like in the months since the Baron’s murder, hiding here in plain view. He had books—in fact, the place was littered with books, as though a library had collapsed and disbursed itself at will. All of the titles seemed to relate to sediment, minerals, and general characteristics of rocks. In the darkness and gloom of these weeks, he had turned to the workings of geology. This struck me as horribly base and useless, that tomb of books and stones, and I was irritable that he was now implying a demand for my sympathies.

“Do you know the pinch my life has been in, Monsieur Duponte, since beginning our adventure?” I demanded. “I was presumed guilty of killing the Baron Dupin until the police came to their senses. Now I must fight or lose my entire estate, Glen Eliza itself, all that I possess.”

I explained, through a last course of watermelon, what had happened in prison and upon my escape and my discovery of Bonjour and the rogues. After we finished our large meal, we walked upstairs to return to his rooms.

“I must relate the full story of Poe’s death in court,” I said to him, “in one last bid to show that in all this I acted with reason and not imbecile dreams.”

Duponte looked at me with interest. “What will you say, monsieur?”

“You never intended to resolve Poe’s death, did you?” I asked sadly. “You used it as a distraction, knowing it would soon enough look to the world as though you had been killed here. You were inspired when you read the Baron’s newspaper announcement in Paris that he would set the trap for himself that would free you from the expectations of others. That was why you thrilled at the idea of that Von Dantker being sent to Glen Eliza by the Baron—so his imitation of you could be perfected. You only went out of the house at night to ensure the Baron’s charade would succeed. You simply wanted to kill the notion, once and for all, that you were the real ‘Dupin.’”

Duponte nodded at this last statement, but would not look directly at me. “When I met you, Monsieur Clark, I was angry at your insistence to see me in that light, as ‘Dupin.’ I then realized that only through studying Poe’s tales and studying
you
would I understand what it was you and so many others perennially looked for in such a character. There is no real Dupin anymore, and never will be.” He had a strange mix of relief and horror in his tone. Relief that he no longer carried the burden of being the master ratiocinator, of being the real Dupin. Horror at having to be someone else.

I would tell him the hard truth. “You are not Dupin!” I would say. “You never were. There was no such man ever alive; Dupin was an invention.” After all, perhaps that was why I had searched so lustily to find him again. To make him feel with me the sting of what had been lost. To take away something and thus leave him more alone.

But I did not say it.

I thought about what Benson had said to me about the dangers to the susceptible imagination of reading Poe. To believe you were in Poe’s writings. Perhaps, along the same lines, Duponte had once believed himself in a mental world created by Poe, had thought he was in the tales of Dupin. Yet he
was
more present in a world like the one Poe had imagined than most of us, and who was to say that did not make him the
real
embodiment of the character whom I had met first on a page in
Graham’s
magazine? Did it matter whether he was the cause or the effect?

“Where?” I asked Duponte. “Where will you go?”

Instead of answering, he said musingly: “There is much admirable in you, monsieur.”

I do not know why, but this statement astonished me, lifting my spirits, and I asked him to elaborate.

“Some people, you understand, cannot get out of their positions. They cannot be among the missing, even if desired. I could not, here or in Paris, until now, and Monsieur Poe could not even until death. You could have left all along and you did not.” He paused. “What will you say in court?”

“I will tell them the answers. I will give them the Baron Dupin’s story of Poe’s death. People will believe it.”

“Yes, they will. You will win the case if you do this?” Duponte asked.

“I will win. It will be as true to them as anything else. It is the only way.”

“And as for Poe?”

“Perhaps,” I said quietly, “it is as good as any other ending.”

“How very like an attorney you are, after all,” said Duponte, with a faraway smile.

At length the porter came to secure the balance of the Duke’s belongings. Duponte gave him various instructions. I retrieved my hat and bid him good evening. My steps lingered a bit as I entered the hall, but though wanting a last sight by which to remember Duponte, I only saw him struggling to arrange some unwieldy geological instruments to be transported. I wished he would turn and remind me I was not seeing any ordinary man. Call out an insult—“Dolt!” perhaps. Or “numskull!”

“I thought much of you, Duke,” I muttered to myself, and bowed.

THE DAY SOON
came for me to sit upon the witness stand and tell the full “truth” of Poe’s death. To provide convincing evidence that the actions alleged as delusional and fantastical were in fact fruitful, rational, and conspicuously normal on my part. Peter had worked assiduously in my aid throughout the trial, particularly as to these points, and we had at least come to be held even with our legal adversaries in the prevailing judgment of the populace. The opposing lawyer had a lion-like voice that roared the jury into submission. Peter said that my presentation of Poe’s death would be needed to obtain our victory.

Hattie, her aunt, and additional Blum family members arrived each day to court. They were perplexed by Peter’s insistence on laboring over my defense (“and that after young Clark’s
behavior
!”), but came dutifully to support the man they expected to marry their Hattie. I believe they also came to watch my disgrace and financial collapse. Hattie and I were able to have private words at intervals but never for long. Each time, the eye of her aunt found us, and each time she innovated new techniques to prevent any further intercourse.

This morning’s testimony was widely anticipated among our society. The courtroom audience swelled from its usual numbers. I was, in particular, to prove that all of this was indeed an attempt to seek answers to a mystery about Poe’s death by showing the reality of this claim: by answering the mysteries themselves. On some nights, I’d had dreams about it. In them, I thought I could see the literary figure C. Auguste Dupin—who resembled quite precisely, though not uniformly, Auguste Duponte—and could hear him dictate each particular. Yet when I woke I could describe no conclusions, could re-create no ratiocination, could find only conflicting fragments of ideas and sentences, and felt helpless and frustrated. That is when the Baron would reappear to my mind, and I would be grateful that I had his firm answers, his reliable and dramatic answers, answers that would satisfy any public demand.

Mere words that would save all I possessed.

There were stares from the onlookers, the same species of stares that had greeted the Baron on the lyceum stage. Stares of greed, the signs of a bargain between speaker and hearers to reach into the lowest part of the souls of both. Many Poe spectators who had once longed to hear the Baron were here. I would reveal how Poe died, it was said throughout the city. I could see Neilson Poe and John Benson coming into the room, men who, in very different ways, had needed those answers, any answers. I saw Hattie—for whom I would be saving a life we could have together, keeping for us a home in Glen Eliza, just by licking my lips with the Baron’s honey of persuasion. Just by telling a story.

The judge called my name, and I looked down at the lines I’d written. I took a breath.

“I present to you, Your Honor and Gentlemen of the Jury, the truth about this man’s death and my life. The narrative has not been told before. Whatever has been taken away from me, one last possession remains: this story.”

Could I insist, as the Baron had, that what seemed true must be true? Yes, yes, why not? Wasn’t I a lawyer? Wasn’t it my job, my role?

“There are those of our city today who tried to stop it. There are those sitting here among you who still believe me a criminal, a liar, an outcast, a clever, vile murderer. Me, Your Honor: Quentin Hobson Clark, citizen of Baltimore, member of the Bar, a fond reader.

“This story is not about me….” Here I looked down at my notes, and skipped ahead, reading almost to myself. “It was about something greater than I am, greater than all this, about a man by whom time will remember us though you had forgotten him before the earth settled. Somebody had to do it. We could not just keep still. I could not keep still….”

I opened my mouth to say more, but I could not. There was another choice here, I realized. I could tell the story of what had
failed.
Of finding Duponte, of bringing him here, of the Bonapartes’ men hunting him and mistakenly murdering the Baron. My words on this subject would reach the press, the Bonapartes would be in a scandal, Duponte would be stalked again wherever he had fled in the world, perhaps really extinguished from existence this time. I could completely finish what I had begun and banish it all to history.

I gripped my Malacca cane at both ends and almost felt it begin to come apart again. Then a shot rang out.

It seemed close enough to be inside the courtroom, and commotion instantly ensued. There were immediate suggestions and rumors that the courthouse was under siege by a madman. The judge directed his clerk to investigate, and then ordered all persons present to leave the courtroom until a state of calm could be returned. He said that all of us should return in forty minutes. At length there was a universal hubbub and a pair of officers began to herd everyone out of the room.

After a few moments, I was the only one remaining in the room—or I thought I was. Then I noticed my great-aunt. She wrapped her dark bonnet over her hair and straightened its peak. This was the first time since the start of the trial we were alone together.

“Great-Aunt,” I pleaded, “perhaps you love me still, for you know I am the child of my father. Please, reconsider this. Do not contest the will, or my capabilities.”

Her face looked cramped, withered with distaste. “You have lost your Hattie Blum—have lost Glen Eliza—lost all, Quentin, for a notion that you were a poet of some type instead of a lawyer. It is the old story, you know. You will think you have done something courageous because it was foolish. Poor Quentin. You can tell your complaint every day to the Sisters of Charity at their asylum after this, and you will not be able to afflict others anymore with excitement and worry.”

I didn’t reply, so she went on.

“You may think I act out of spite, but I tell you I do not. I act out of sorrow for you and for the memory of your parents. All of Baltimore will see that at my late age this is the last act of compassion I can provide, to stop you from being that most dangerous of monsters: the bustling do-nothing. May the folly of the past make you contrite for the future.”

I remained at the witness stand, and was somewhat relieved and saddened when the courtroom had become absolutely silent. However, it gave me a peculiar feeling, for a courtroom was one of those places, like a banquet hall, that never felt empty even when it was. I slumped into the chair.

Even when I heard the door opening again, and heard my great-aunt murmur, “Pardon,” with some offense, as she left, passing someone on their way inside, I found myself too lost in a staring spell of contemplation to turn around. If the madman who’d fired gun shots outside had come in, I suppose he could have me. Only when I heard the door closed from the inside did I start.

Auguste Duponte, dressed in one of his more elegant dark cloaks, took a few steps inside the court.

“Monsieur Duponte!” I exclaimed. “But did you not hear there is a madman in the courthouse?”

“Why, it was me, monsieur,” said Duponte. He gestured outside. “I would rather the crowd not be here, in all events. I paid a vagrant to fire a few harmless shots into the air with the pistol you’d brought me so the people would have something to look at.”

“You did? You used an accomplice, an assistant?” I marveled.

“Yes.”

“But why did you not leave Baltimore the other day when you had planned? You can’t remain here while they still may be looking for you. They may wish you harm.”

“You were right, Monsieur Clark. About something you said at my hotel. I traveled to America never intending to resolve your mystery, which seemed as likely to not have a solution as to have one. I came here, as a point of fact, to end the conviction that I could do such things; the conviction that kept me for so long from living in any ordinary fashion. The conviction that frightened people, even the president of a republic, about what I might know that they wished to keep unknown. Yet people believed in the idea of it all, people wanted and feared it, even if I never appeared outside my chambers again. I suppose I could not remember if I believed in it before they did, or someone else was first.”