Matthew Pearl - The Poe Shadow

I had lost my concentration on Bonjour. My gaze had landed nearby, where a woman was striding along the sidewalk. She was woman of around forty, attractive enough. My eyes followed her path down the street.

"Are you in love, monsieur?" Bonjour repeated gently, following the object of my gaze.

"That woman…I saw her with Neilson Poe, a cousin of Edgar's, you see, and she looks remarkably like-"

I had not meant to blurt this out.

"Yes?" Bonjour said. Her softer tone compelled me to finish the sentence.

"Remarkably like a portrait I've seen of Virginia Poe, Edgar's deceased wife." The fact was, even seeing this woman seemed to bring me closer to the life of Edgar Poe.

My view of her was soon blocked by the rest of the crowd. I then realized that Bonjour was no longer standing by my side. Looking around, I saw that she was approaching the woman-that Virginia Poe copy!-and I felt angry at myself for having revealed what I had.

"Miss!" Bonjour called. "Miss!"

The woman turned and faced Bonjour. I stood aside, not believing that the woman had seen me at the police station house, but wishing to be safe.

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Bonjour, in a convincing southern accent that she must have imitated from some of the belles she had heard around the city. She continued, "You looked so much like a lady I used to know-but I was mistaken. Perhaps it was only that lovely bonnet…"

The woman gave a kind smile and started to turn her back to Bonjour.

"But she looked so much like Virginia!" Bonjour now said as though to herself.

The woman turned back. "Virginia?" she asked with curiosity.

I could see a look of enjoyment spread across Bonjour's face, knowing that she had achieved her object. "Virginia Poe," Bonjour said, adopting a somber aspect.

"I see," the other woman said quietly.

"I met her only once, but Lethean waters will never erase it from my memory," gushed Bonjour. "You are as beautiful as she was!"

The woman lowered her eyes at the compliment.

"I am Mrs. Neilson Poe," the other woman said. "Josephine. I am afraid no one shall ever be as beautiful as my darling sister was when she was still alive."

"Your sister, ma'am?"

"Sissy. Virginia Poe, I mean. She was my half-sister. She was all courage and confidence even at her weakest. Whenever I see her portrait…!" She stopped, unable to continue the thought.

So that was it! Neilson was married to the sister of Edgar Poe's late wife. After a few words of condolence, they walked together and Josephine Poe quietly answered Bonjour's questions about Sissy. I followed behind to listen.

"One evening while Edgar and Sissy were residing happily in Philadelphia on Coates Street, darling Sissy was singing at her beloved piano when a blood vessel ruptured. She collapsed in the middle of her song. There was an almost hourly anticipation of her being lost. Especially by Edgar. The winter of her death, they were so poverty-stricken that the only thing that could keep Sissy warm in their badly heated rooms was to be wrapped in his great-coat with a tortoise-shell cat lying on her bosom."

"What happened to her husband since?"

"Edgar? The oscillation between hope and despair for so many years had driven him insane, I believe. He needed womanly devotion. He said he would not live another year without true and tender love. People say he ran about the country looking to find a wife several times since Sissy's death, but I believe his heart still bled for Sissy. He was engaged to be married again only a few weeks before his death."

The women exchanged a few more words before Josephine departed with a graceful farewell. Bonjour turned back to me with a girlish giggle. "It is too bad for you, that you must be against the Baron in one of his plots, Monsieur Clark. You see, we do not hide in the shadows, lingering over small details."

"Mademoiselle, please! Here, in Baltimore, in America, you do not have to retain your association with the Baron and his schemes! I would flee him at once. There are no bonds here!"

Her eyes widened with interest. "Is there not slavery?"

She was clever.

"Just so!" I said. "There are no bonds for a free Frenchwoman. You do not owe any duty to the Baron."

"I do not have duty to my husband?" she said. "This is useful to remember."

"The Baron. Your husband?"

"We have full swing over this, and beginning now there will be no letup. If I were you, Monsieur Clark, I would try not to get in our way."

Wherever you travel in the world, you are sure to find the same limited number of species of lawyers, as surely as a naturalist finds his grass and weeds in every land. The first sort of lawyer views the intricacies of the rules of the law as profound and unshakable idols of worship. There is a different species of attorney, a carnivorous one to whom the first is prey, who instead treats rules as the principal barriers to success.

The Baron Claude Dupin was such a good specimen of the latter category that his skeleton might be hung in the Tuileries Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy. The legal codes were the weaponry he utilized to wage battle; they were his pistols and knives, nothing more hallowed. When he required a delay to his advantage, the Baron was known to have ended an appointment or even a trial by sneaking out an anteroom window. When such sinister methods were not sufficient, the Baron Dupin employed actual pistols and knives through his networks of rogues to secure the information or confession needed. The Baron was a lawyer, yes, but only secondarily; he was a heartfelt impresario, first, who worked as a lawyer. A showman on his box, a huckster of the law.

Duponte had told me one day, during our transatlantic journey, the story of Bonjour, though he had neglected to mention her marriage. In France, Duponte explained, there is a type of criminal known as the bonjourier, whose method entails the following: in fashionable clothing, the lady or gentleman thief will enter a house, moving past the servants as though present for an important appointment, take whatever objects they can quickly seize, and then walk right out the street door. But if a servant or other member of the household notices them between entrance and exit, they bow, say "Bonjour!" and ask for the resident of the house next door, having researched that name. They are, of course, assumed to merely have come in at the wrong door, and are directed away without suspicion and with as many stolen valuables as they'd managed to collect. The young woman who had stood before me in the fortifications was the best bonjourier in Paris and so had eventually become known to all simply as Bonjour.

Bonjour was said to have been raised in a rural village of France. Her mother, a Swiss woman, died a few months before the child had reached one year. Her French father, a hardworking baker, cared for his daughter. He spent most nights wailing, however, and the young girl soon had little patience for her father's endless grief. This, in combination with the lack of a maternal instructor, forged a young girl who was as fiercely independent as any Frenchman. Soon, the father was arrested and taken away before her eyes in the chaos of one of the country's smaller revolutions. She made her way to Paris to live on her own and survived through cleverness and physical strength. There were many assaults against her as a young thief, and one of these resulted in the prominent scar on her face.

"But how is it such a beautiful woman persists as a common thief?" I had asked Duponte one evening as we sat at the long dining table of the steamer.

Duponte raised an eyebrow at my question and seemed to consider leaving it unanswered. "She has not remained a thief, in fact, and has not been common. She has for many years been an assassin of the most efficient character. It is said that, because of her former practice, in her role as assassin it is her habit to call out ‘bonjour' before sending a knife through a man's throat. However, this is mere speculation, for nobody living can confirm it."