Matthew Pearl - The Poe Shadow

"Think of it, Peter. You, a bandit!"

"Quentin, I want to help."

"How do you mean, Peter?"

He regained his usual bluster. "You never were meant to be a single attorney; you're too excitable. And perhaps I was not meant to have another partner other than you-I have been through two men in the last six months, by the bye. In all events, you need help."

"You mean with my great-aunt's case against me?"

"Wrong!" he exclaimed. "We will turn it into your case against Great-Auntie Clark, my friend." He smiled broadly, like a child.

I proudly welcomed Peter in that day, and he devoted as many hours as he could each evening after completing his work at the law offices. His help was of tremendous value, and I began to feel more optimistic about my chances. Moreover, it seemed I had never known anybody so intimately as my friend, and we talked as people only can before the flickering light of a fireplace.

Still, we both refrained from mentioning Hattie. Until one night, in our shirtsleeves, while making our strategies. Peter said, "At this point in the defense, we shall call Miss Hattie to testify, to show your honest bearing and-"

I looked at Peter with an alarmed expression, as though he had just screamed loudly.

"Peter, I cannot. What I mean-well, you see how it is."

He sighed anxiously, and looked down at his drink. He was taking a nightcap of warm toddy. "She loves you."

"Yes," I said, "as does my great-aunt. Either those who love me fail me, or I fail them, as with Hattie."

Peter stood up from his chair. "My engagement with Hattie is dead, Quentin."

"What? How?"

"I ended it."

"Peter, how could you?"

"I could see it every time she would look in my direction, as though she wished to be looking past me over to you. It is not that she doesn't have love for me; in a way she does. But you have something stronger, and I must not be in your way."

I could hardly stammer a response. "Peter, you mustn't…"

"None of your hums and hahs. It's done. And she agreed, after much discussion. I always thought she loved you because you were handsome, and so took a bit of queer joy in having won her after all. But she believed in you when there was nothing to believe in and nobody else to believe." He chuckled morbidly, then clapped his large hand around my shoulder. "That is when I realized she is a great deal like you."

I talked through in a rush what I should do, and whether I should immediately drive to Hattie's… He waved me back into my seat.

"Not that simple, Quentin. There is still her family, which forbids her from communing with you, particularly now that you are under threat of losing all your possessions, even Glen Eliza itself. First, you must prove yourself, and Hattie will be yours again. Until then, it is better that they think Hattie and I are to be married. If even you see her on the street, turn the other way-do not be seen together."

I was ecstatic, and propelled into a new frenzy of industry, more determined than ever to overcome the new obstacles engendered by my great-aunt's lawsuit.

But Peter was soon oppressed with business at the office, which cut severely into his time available to give me assistance. Moreover, once the trial began, the matter became increasingly intricate and grim. Peter's clever strategy of proving Great-Auntie Clark hypocritical and malicious was stricken by the amount of support she had from the population of good society in Baltimore, especially from friends of Hattie's family. In addition, there were simply too many points of the chronology that could not be cleared up sufficiently to the public eye.

"Then there is the entire episode of spying on this baron that her lawyer has mentioned," said Peter one evening during the trial.

"But that can be explained! To find the correct conclusions about Poe's death-"

"Anything can be explained-but can it be understood ? Even Hattie, for all that she loves you, wants to understand this, and is pained that she does not. You talk of seeking the conclusions about Poe's death, but what are they? Here lies the difference between success and insanity. To make out your case, you must adapt your argument to the understanding of the dullest man of the twelve in that box."

At length, as the case against me worsened, it became clear that Peter was correct. I could not win. However hard I labored, I could not save Glen Eliza. I could not win Hattie back. I could not accomplish any of this without a solution to Poe's death-without showing that in all of this I had found the truth that I had sought for so long.

I knew what I must do. I'd use the one persuasive story of Poe's demise that had come out of this ordeal: the Baron Dupin's. It was my last hope. It had been kept in my memory, and now I wrote it out, word for word, in the form of an address I would make to the court…

I present to you, Your Honor and Gentlemen of the Jury, the truth about this man's death and my life. The narrative has not been told before…

I could see immediately that this would do it. Indeed, the more I read what I'd scribbled into my memorandum book, the more the Baron's story seemed possible-then plausible-likely! I knew it could not be trusted, that it had been manipulated and fashioned for the hearing and satisfaction of the public; I knew, too, that it would now be believed. All that follows will be the plain truth. I would speak fictions, out and out fables, probably lies. Yet I would be believed again, respected again, as my father would want. And I must tell you this story because I am the one nearest the truth. (Duponte, if only Duponte were here.) Or, rather, the only one still living.

DECEMBER SAW SOMETHINGnew and familiar in France. Louis-Napoleon, president of the Republic, decided to replace his prefect of police, Monsieur Delacourt, with Charlemagne de Maupas. He would serve as a stronger ally. "I need some men to help me cross this ditch," Louis-Napoleon reportedly told de Maupas. "Will you be one of them?"

That was a sign.

So were the new secret policemen assigned by Louis-Napoleon to monitor both the prefecture and the palace of the government.

President Louis-Napoleon assembled a team to carry out his coup. On the first of the month, he gave each member half a million francs. Early the next morning, de Maupas, the prefect, and his police arrested the eighty legislators who Louis-Napoleon feared could most effectively oppose him. They were held in the prison at Mazas. They would not have been legislators anymore, in any event, for what Louis-Napoleon did next was to dissolve the assembly, meanwhile seizing printing presses and sending his army to kill the leaders of the Red Republicans as soon as they showed themselves in the streets. Other opponents, mostly those of fine old French families, were immediately exiled from the country.

It was all rather quick.

Louis-Napoleon declared France an empire again. It was remembered that Louis-Napoleon as a boy was reported to have pleaded with his uncle, the first emperor of France, not to go off to Waterloo, at which the emperor commented: "He will be a good soul, and perhaps the hope of my race."

On my way to the courthouse each morning I read more news of the political affairs in France. It was said that Jérôme Napoleon Bonaparte of Baltimore (called "Bo"), cousin of the new emperor-the man I had met flanked by two costume swords, the man never acknowledged by his now deceased uncle Napoleon Bonaparte because of his American mother-was to travel to Paris and meet with Emperor Napoleon III to repair the lengthy breach.

Americans were entranced with these stories from Paris, perhaps because the coup seemed so different from any upheaval that could take place here. My interest was slightly more narrow or, rather, more pertinent.