Matthew Pearl - The Poe Shadow

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.