Matthew Pearl - The Poe Shadow

Hattie visited me on the days she managed to avoid both her aunt and Peter. She brought me food and small gifts. In my anxious and confused state, I could hardly find words to express my gratitude to her.

She recalled many stories from our childhood to calm my nerves. We had frank discussions touching all subjects. She told me how she felt when I was in Paris.

"I could see yours were great dreams, Quentin." She sighed. "I know we do not have a life of mutual happiness ahead of us, Quentin. But I wish only to say that you mustn't think I was angered, or melancholy, for your having gone away, or because you have not told me more. If I have shown melancholy it is because you did not feel, you did not know decidedly, that you could say every detail and would receive in return my unblushing friendship."

"Peter was right. There was selfishness that began all this. Maybe I did all this not for what Poe's writings would mean to the world, but for what they meant to me alone. Perhaps that exists only in my mind!"

"That is why it is important," Hattie replied, taking my hand.

"Why couldn't I see?" I fretted nervously. "It has become all about his death to me, at the expense of his life. Precisely what I worried others would do. At the expense of my life, too."

The rains and flooding soon made it too difficult to travel to the prison from other quarters of the city. Separated from Hattie, there was no company outside the desolate prisoners. I had never felt quite so unaided, trapped, finished.

Once, during a night in which sleep had mercifully overtaken me, I heard light footsteps coming toward my cell. Hattie. She had come again, through the worst floods and rains yet. She came swiftly and elegantly through the corridor, closed off from the filth of the cells in her bright red cloak. Yet, strangely, there was no guard beside her and-I realized when coming to my senses-these were not hours in which visitors were admitted. As she emerged from the shadows of other cells, she reached in and grabbed my wrists so tightly I could not move. It was not Hattie at all.

In the weak light, Bonjour's golden skin now showed a ghastly pale tint. Her eyes widened into a gaze that seemed to look everywhere simultaneously.

"Bonjour! How did you get past the guards?" Though, I supposed, if anyone could arrange free entrance and exit into a prison, it was Bonjour.

"I needed to find you."

Her grip tightened, and I was suddenly consumed with fear. She had come to kill me for the Baron, to personally carry out an execution. Without hesitation, she could slice my neck and, upon finding me headless, nobody would know she had ever been here.

"I know you did not shoot the Baron," she said, correctly reading the frightened look in my eyes. "We must find out who did."

"Don't you know as well as I do? The creditors-those thugs who followed the Baron wherever he went."

"They were not sent by any creditor. The Baron settled with his creditors weeks ago, as soon as he was able after collecting subscriptions for his lecture on Poe. The amounts he raised were beyond what we'd hoped. Those assassins were not looking for his money."

I was shocked to hear this. "Then who were they?"

"I need to find out. I owe the Baron that. You need to for the woman you love."

I looked down at my bare feet. "She no longer loves me."

When I raised my eyes I could see Bonjour's mouth linger open, forming a questioning circle. She let the topic pass. "Where is your friend? He must help us find that answer."

"My friend?" I asked, surprised. "Duponte? How I have waited to ask you that! I have thought the worst for him after you and the Baron kidnapped him!"

I learned that Duponte had not come to any harm-at least not at Bonjour's hands. To my surprise, Bonjour had released Duponte shortly after his capture from Glen Eliza. The Baron Dupin had instructed her to free their rival at the hour the Baron's doomed lecture was to begin. The Baron had not wished to murder Duponte; or, rather, he had wished to murder his spirit. The Baron guessed Duponte would rush to the lyceum and arrive in time to witness his rival's triumph, thus amplifying the Baron's victory with Duponte's demoralization. But Duponte eluded this defeat, for he did not appear-and if he did, nobody had seen him.

"Did Duponte fight you when you kidnapped him? Did he struggle?"

Bonjour paused, not sure whether I would be disappointed at the answer. "No. He was wise not to fight, as the Baron was determined to carry out our plan. Where would Auguste Duponte go now, Monsieur Clark?"

"I have been locked up here, Bonjour. I haven't the remotest idea where he is!"

Her eyes caught mine with uncomfortable intensity. I could not help my thoughts: with Hattie to marry Peter, what hopes of love had I left? For the strength it would give me-what wouldn't I give at the moment for even a token of affection! Perhaps my thoughts were obvious, as she now began to move closer to me. I looked away to break any improper insinuation. But she placed her hand on my shoulder, and as I looked back she pulled my face between the bars to hers, in a long moment that thrilled me even more by its surprise than in the warmth of her mouth. The scar that I had seen on her lips seemed to form an indent in the same place on my own face, and the currents ran through my chilled body. I was remade. When the kiss ended, I felt she was somewhat captured by it, too.

"You must think of how to find Duponte," she said in a low, unwavering command. "He can find the assassin."

And for a few days, I did try hard to puzzle it out. But several nights after Bonjour's midnight visit, the gloom and unrelenting solitude of the prison cell conquered me again.

Once, when I woke from one of my long stretches of unconsciousness, I found a single book lying on my cell's small wooden table. I had no awareness of where it came from or who placed it there. At first sight of it I closed my eyes tightly and turned away, thinking it was part of some dream my brain had constructed to worsen my circumstances even further.

It was one of Griswold's volumes of Poe. It was the third-the latest volume-the one I could hardly suffer to look upon. The first two volumes contained a muddled though decent selection of Poe's prose and poetry, but for this third volume the reckless editor, Mr. Rufus Griswold, had composed a downright defamatory essay.

I had seen the advertisements in the press by Griswold the winter after Poe's death, asking for any correspondents of Poe's to send copies of their letters to Griswold for inclusion in this essay. However, having already been familiar with his obituary of Poe, with its manic lies, I hadn't had a thought of complying. I had written Griswold at once telling him of my possession of four letters personally autographed by Poe, and detailing the reasons I would never share them with him, ever, unless Griswold pledged a different approach to his solemn duty. He had not had the forthrightness to reply to me.

I had hoped, though, that Griswold would have grown to understand his responsibilities as a proper literary executor (not literary executioner!) after the publication of the first volumes. But upon this third volume originally coming into my possession-after opening to the page of Griswold's vicious memoir of his onetime friend-I had put the book down and not looked at it again. In fact, I had vowed to myself to burn it.

Duponte, however, had consulted the letters printed there in his examination. And now the volume had appeared in my cell. The stated reason given to me by a guard was that the officials were concerned for my health and, seeing that in my moral lethargy I would read no newspaper or magazine, and recalling my fondness for the writer Poe, this volume, which had POE printed in large letters on the boards, had been removed from my library and placed here.