Matthew Pearl - The Poe Shadow

"You," I said, standing upright with the revelation. "You poisoned me. It was not the police or the prison guards! It was you. You slipped the poison into my mouth when we kissed."

"After I found a way inside the prison, I saw that the walls of the hospital chambers were already giving way to the floods," she said. "I felt you could get out through the sewer passage, but I needed to find a way for you to be transferred there. You may say I helped you, monsieur."

"No, you did not do it to help me. You wanted to follow me to Duponte so he would find the men who shot the Baron, and whoever ordered it. You thought Duponte could still help and that I'd know where Duponte was."

"I wanted the same thing as you, Monsieur Clark. To find the truth."

"Please," begged the man on the floor. Bonjour kicked him fiercely in his stomach.

I looked on as the man twisted in pain. I took a step closer. "Bonjour, this will help nothing. The police can arrest them now."

"I have no trust in police, Monsieur Clark."

The man swallowed down some further plea and trembled pitifully.

Bonjour crouched on the floor, positioning her blade. "Leave," she said to me, pointing to the door.

"You do not owe the Baron vengeance, mademoiselle," I said. "You have fulfilled your obligations by discovering the man who ordered his killing. Murdering this villain now will only make your life wretched, will only force you to run, as you have had to before. And," I added, "I will be the sole witness to this crime. You will have to kill me, too."

I was surprised when Bonjour, after remaining dead still in the midst of contemplation, turned slowly to me with a tear at the corner of her eye. It seemed a true affection had arisen in her expression. She stepped gingerly toward me like a scared deer. She seemed to be holding her breath when she threw her arms around my shoulders with a low moan. It was less of an embrace, somehow, than when our bodies were brought together at the fortifications in Paris. It was more a need for support, and I stood straight as a pillar. "Bonjour. It will be made right. We have both helped ourselves. Let me help you." She then shoved me away as though I had been the one to pull her to me. I nearly fell against the edge of a sofa. There was something lost from her eyes that made me know that I would not see her again.

Bonjour let her dagger drop and, after a moment of looking over the scene she had created, she began kicking the man brutally across the face several times in a flurry of blows. Then she ran from the room. I breathed in relief that she had not killed him. And yet it was not my monologue that had moved her not to do so. Approaching the place where Rollin lay crumpled like a corpse, I saw what Bonjour had seen: one of the objects that had crashed to the floor during their struggle was a newspaper from that morning. On the first page was announced the death of the mysterious French baron in the hospital.

The slave-trader had not been mistaken, as I had thought, when he'd said I was wanted for murder. Bonjour, for her part, must have felt her obligation to avenge the Baron somehow burn and fade upon his death-perhaps, for the thief in her, the reward, his honor, disappeared past redemption. Perhaps, for the true criminal mind, honor did not continue beyond death; nothing continued beyond death-there was no heaven or hell for persons who sought those same territories here. Or perhaps true sorrow had made all else pale in comparison. Whatever the reason, she had abandoned her revenge.

I leaned down at the side of Rollin and found that he was insensible but only superficially injured. I wrapped his wounds with a piece of fabric I tore from a fringed curtain. Then, before leaving, I found the washbasin to try to expunge his blood from my hands.

My mind circled vigorously around what I had learned. Though I had made great strides in understanding all that had happened, I still had no evidence against the men who'd killed the Baron. I had nothing in my possession to convince the police of what I now had uncovered. Even if I waited for the two villains to return to the Bonapartes', they would not hesitate to eliminate me. Indeed, this would perhaps be Rollin's first order to them if he regained consciousness. Since the police would only want to arrest me, I would have no protection if I sent for them.

And I would remain forever the man who killed the real Dupin. That was what people would think. I was destroyed. I would hang for someone else's sins and, at the moment, I could not even decipher whose-these men, or Duponte's. Worst of all, I had let all this mess forever prevent the resolution of Poe's death.

With these thoughts, I walked up and down the streets of Baltimore, stopping only at intervals to rest. I walked until the early hours of the morning, and then sunrise came and still I walked.

" Clark?"

I turned around. As I did I realized I was not far from one of the district station houses, and so you can imagine that I was not entirely unprepared to see what I did.

"Officer White," I said, and then I greeted his clerk, too.

I looked down half bemused at the blood splattered like stains of guilt across the sleeves and buttons of my ragged coat, as they grabbed me.

ONE WEEK LATER,as I was sitting in the most comfortable armchair of my library, my mind turned to Bonjour, whom I had not seen since I had first left to visit the Bonapartes' address. Although she had been driven by her desire to avenge the Baron's death, and had not had any design of assisting me in my own plight, I harbored no ill will. In fact, I had little doubt I would see her again and believed she truly cared for me. There was no earthly reason to fear for her safety, wherever she was. I suppose if I had been able to fathom something about her through all of this, it was her complete self-sufficiency in surviving, though she believed she had depended on the Baron since he had exonerated her in a Paris court. She was, in the end, purely composed of the criminal character. All means were open to her to meet threat with threat, death with death.

When Officer White discovered me after the incident at the Bonaparte house, I would have fallen at his feet if he and his clerk had not caught me. My body was debilitated. I had not realized how long it had been since I had experienced any true rest. I awoke in one of the upstairs rooms of the Middle District station house. When I stirred and lifted myself, the police clerk appeared and brought in Officer White.

"Mr. Clark, are you still unwell?" the clerk asked solicitously.

"I feel stronger." Though I am not sure this was true, really. Still, I did not want to seem ungrateful for the kindness of placing me in their comfortable apartments. "Have you arrested me again?"

"Sir!" Officer White exclaimed. "We had been searching for you for several hours to ensure your well-being."

I saw that a box of various objects that had been removed from Glen Eliza was sitting on the floor. "I escaped from prison!" I exclaimed.

"And we were quite determined to restore your place there. However, in the meantime witnesses were discovered who had seen the murderers on the night of the Frenchman's lecture. They saw two men, including one badly injured and bandaged, and thus sticking in the memory of the witness. Both had pistols drawn as they stood at the wings of the lyceum. This was quite evidential of your innocence, but we were unable to find the men. Until yesterday." The clerk explained that a horse belonging to a prominent slave-trader had been reported stolen. It was located by a police officer at a house of an absent Baltimorean where there were, remarkably, also two men just returning from some errand who met the exact description of the witnesses to the Baron's murder! Though the men fled, and were suspected of boarding a private frigate with a third man, their behavior strongly demonstrated my innocence in the matter.