Matthew Pearl - The Poe Shadow

On a subsequent visit to Duponte's apartment, I found him smoking a cigar in his bed. It seemed he used his bed for smoking and for writing-he detested writing anything, he said, for with obnoxious consistency it stopped him from thinking. For this visit I had been rereading and reflecting on the "liberal proposition" offered to C. Auguste Dupin by the police in Poe's sequel tale, "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt," to penetrate the case of a young shopgirl found dead in the woods. Though agreeable compensation had certainly been implied in my own letters to Duponte, I now assured him expressly, in homage to Poe's own words from the tale, that I would provide him "a liberal fee for your undivided attention to Poe's death, beginning immediately." I removed a check. I suggested an amount of considerable value, and then a few numbers even higher.

With no resulting success. It seemed he was not moved at all by money, despite his less than luxurious circumstances. To this, as to other attempts to direct his attention to my own agenda, he would take my elbow as he pointed out an architectural oddity; or praise the Parisian summers extensively for their loveliness; or remove any need for a reply by letting his eyes linger shut in a ruined blink. Sometimes, Duponte seemed almost an imbecile in his placid stare as we passed shops and the blooming flowers and trees of the garden-"the horse-chestnuts!" he would say suddenly-or maybe it was a stare of sadness.

One evening after leaving another interview with Duponte, I passed a group of police officers sitting at tables outside a crowded café eating ices. They were a formidable blur of single-breasted blue coats, mustaches, and small, pointed beards.

"Monsieur! Monsieur Clark, bonjour!"

It was the squat young policeman who had commandeered my carriage upon my arrival in Paris. I attributed his enthusiasm at seeing me to the congenial spirits of their party.

Each of the officers rose to greet me.

"This is a gentleman and a scholar who has come from America to see Auguste Duponte!" After a moment of interesting silence, the policemen all burst into laughter.

I was confused by this reaction to Duponte's name. I sat down as the first one continued: "There are many stories to hear of Duponte. He was a great genius. Duponte, they say, would know a thief was going to take your jewels before the thief did."

"He was a great genius, you say?" I asked.

"Oh, yes. Long ago."

"My father was in the police when the prefects would engage Monsieur Duponte," said another policeman, who displayed a scowl that may have been permanent. "He said Duponte was a clever young man who merely created difficulties so he could seem to surmount them."

"In what manner?" I asked with alarm.

He scratched his neck viciously with his overgrown fingernails; the side of his neck looked red and inflamed from this habit. "It is what he heard," the Scratcher muttered.

"It is said that Duponte," continued the more amiable officer, "could judge the morals of all men with precision just by their looks. He once offered to walk through the streets on the day of a public fête and point out to the police all the dangerous people who should be removed from society."

"Did he?" asked another.

"No-the police would have had no business to attend to if he had."

"But what happened to him?" I asked. "What of the investigations he performs today?"

One of the officers who looked thoughtful and quieter than the others spoke up. "They say Monsieur Duponte failed-that the woman he loved was hanged for murder, and his powers of analysis could not rescue her. That he could do no more investigations-"

"Investigations!" balked the Scratcher. "Of course there can be no more. Unless he manages to carry them out as a ghost. He was killed by a prisoner who had vowed that he would avenge himself on Duponte for arresting him."

I opened my mouth to correct him, but thought better of it-there was a deep venom in that man's voice that seemed better not to rouse.

"No, no," one of the others disagreed. "Duponte is not dead. Some say he lives in Vienna now. He grew tired of the ingratitude. What stories I could tell you! There is no living soul like that in Paris in this age, in all events."

"Prefect Delacourt would not hear of it," added the squat officer, and the others cackled raucously.

Here was one of the officers' anecdotes.

Years earlier, Duponte one evening had found himself in a cabinet, or private chamber, of a tavern in Paris, sitting across from a convict who had only three days earlier sliced the throat of a prison guard from one side to the other. Every agent of the Paris police had been on watch for him since he'd escaped, including several who sat with me at the café. Duponte, employing his varied skills, had deduced where in the city the rogue would most likely think it safest to conceal himself. So there they sat together in the cabinet.

"I will be safe from capture from the police," the villain confided. "I can outrun any one of them-and could beat any one of them in a pistol fight if I had to. I'm safe, as long as I do not meet with that wretch Duponte. He is the true criminal of Paris."

"I should think you would know him when you see him," Duponte commented.

The scoundrel laughed at Duponte. "Know him…?God bless!" He now emptied his wine bottle at a breath. "You have never dealt with this knave Duponte, have you? He's not to be seen twice in the same dress. In the morning, he appears to be just another person, like yourself. Then, an hour later, so changed that his own mother would never recognize him and, by evening, no man or demon would ever remember having seen him before! He knows where you are, and can auspicate where you go next!"

When this bad fellow had drunk more than he'd intended, Duponte went downstairs for another bottle of wine and then returned to the cabinet with perfect calmness. Duponte reported to the convict that the barmaid had said she'd seen Auguste Duponte there, looking in on the private rooms. The villain was thrown into a wild fury at the news, and Duponte suggested that the fellow hide in the closet so he might come out and kill the investigator when he entered. When the villain stepped into the closet, Duponte locked it and fetched the police.

That had once been Duponte. It was that Duponte I had to bring to America. Nor had my limited communion with him proved totally void of his talents. One afternoon, during one of Duponte's walks, the heat was strong and I convinced him to share a coach with me. After some time driving through Paris in silence, he pointed out the window of our coach to a cemetery. "That," he said, "upon the other side of the wall, is the small burial place of your people, Monsieur Clark."

I saw a sign in French for the Jewish cemetery. "Yes, it is quite small…" I paused, leaving my statement in the air. Thinking of what had just been said to me, I turned in astonishment. "Monsieur Duponte!"

"Yes?"

"What did you say a moment ago? Of that burial place?"

"That in it are the people of your faith, or perhaps partially of your faith."

"But, monsieur, whatever leads you to believe I am Jewish? I have never said so to you."

"You are not?" Duponte asked in surprise.

"Well," I answered breathlessly, "my mother was Jewish. My father, Protestant; he has died too. But however did you think of that?"

Duponte, seeing I would press the question, explained. "When we neared a particular lodging house in Montmartre some days ago, you realized from the newspaper accounts that it was the place where a young girl was brutally murdered." Articles about the gruesome case, indeed, had daily pervaded the Paris newspapers I had been reading to improve my French. Duponte continued: "Feeling it was something of a sacred place, a place of recent death, you reached for your hat. However, rather than taking off your hat-as the Christian does automatically upon entering a church-you secured it tighter on your head-like the Jew in his synagogue. Then you fumbled with it for another moment, showing your uncertain instincts in the matter to remove or tighten it. This made me consider that you had worshipped, at times, in church and in synagogue."