Matthew Pearl - The Poe Shadow

She lifted her hands upward and I could now observe more closely a gown that hung behind her. It was the wedding dress she had worn in 1803, in the ceremony in Baltimore that had ignited the world into consternation, that had sent emissaries from America scuttling across an ocean to try to appease the fury of the French leader. I had read about this dress recently when educating myself on the history of these episodes. It was India muslin and lace, and had caused something of a scandal as there was only one garment underneath it. "All the clothes worn by the bride might be put in my pocket," a Frenchman reported in a letter to Paris.

It hung on the wall in perfectly fossilized condition, seeming, if one were not close enough to see signs of age in the fabric, as though it was quite new, and might be rushed to a church at any moment.

Suddenly there were the sounds of a baby, a rough, brittle cry that grew increasingly loud. Startled, I looked around for its source, as though it were some supernal happening, and found that the young servant girl rocking and swaying in the corner was in fact holding a baby, no more than eight months old. This, it was explained to me, was Charles Joseph Napoleon, the youngest child of Bo and his wife, Susan. Madame Bonaparte was caring for her new grandchild while Bo and his American wife traveled to Paris to beseech the emperor for the long-awaited rights of the Baltimore members of the family.

The woman took the baby from the nurse and curled her fingers around him tightly. "Here is one of the hopes of our race. And have you ever seen my other grandson? He attended Harvard and now studies at West Point. He is everything that my husband was not. Tall, distinguished, soon to be a soldier of the most capable order." Madame Bonaparte cooed at the little creature then said, "He would make a very presentable emperor of the French."

"Only if Louis-Napoleon agrees to return your offspring to the line of succession, madame," I pointed out.

"The new emperor, Louis-Napoleon, is a rather dull man, on the order of George Washington. He shall need to secure a far stronger ingenuity for the empire to survive."

"From your family, you mean?" The baby had now begun howling, and Madame Bonaparte returned him to the nurse.

"I am too old to coquette, as was once my only stimuli. I have been tired of killing time, Mr. Clark. To doze away existence. Once I had everything but money. Here, I have nothing but money. I shall not let men of my blood be mere American colonists like my son has mistaken himself for."

" You did this, then. You agreed to eliminate a man, a genius, because Louis-Napoleon worried he could foresee his plot to overthrow the Republic."

She shrugged slightly. "We have given money and comfort to travelers from France, under my direction-yes-if that is what you mean. Their orders came from other parties, not from me."

"And did they accomplish what they were directed to do?"

She waved the nurse out of the room and frowned. "Dolts," she said. "They mistook one man for another. I understand they were told by the Paris police to expect your presence around this Duponte they were after, yet they saw you waiting around the hotels of this other-this false Baron, this false Duponte. No matter, for what was needed was achieved: no one interfered with Louis-Napoleon's plans, and now he has ascended." She examined me closely again and I could feel the acute judgment of her eyes growing.

"Tell me," she said. "From what we have understood, you brought along these two men of genius in some attempt to find a poet that you fancy. I have heard about this Poe. His talent has mostly been dismissed by America."

"Not for long," I said.

She laughed. "You do have faith. Perhaps you will be interested that I have heard that young poets and writers in Paris are now reading him in great numbers, your Poe. It seems he was like their own Monsieur Balzac-brilliant but luckless, doomed to be a puppet of fate. He will be brought into the European spirit, as all the better American minds are. Yet this is not enough for your Poe-worship, is it, Mr. Clark? My son is not dissimilar from how you must be; he believes books are written primarily for his personal readership."

"Madame Bonaparte, my motives are not important. This is not about me."

"But, stay! Think of it, dear Mr. Clark. You have helped by giving us an important task to perform, which has allowed us to prove our loyalty to France. We have ensured a new emperor from this, and he will create an empire in which my family can survive forever! I have spent a lifetime to see to it that my children have their proper inheritance, and would give my life for it now. What about you? You were but a chrysalis and you made the mistake of giving up what your family made you into. Tell me, what did you find?"

I rose from my chair without answering. "I have only one other question, Madame Bonaparte. If they came to know they assassinated the wrong man at the lyceum that night, did they then locate the right one? Has Duponte been killed, too?"

"I have told you," the woman said slowly, "I only provide comfort. I provide a place to start, you might say, a birthplace for noble plans. Others must decide the rest for themselves."

I had written and discarded a whole notebook of letters to Auguste Duponte. I detailed for him not only the hard reality-that Poe, apparently, had not modeled his character C. Auguste Dupin from any real person, but rather and remarkably only from imagination. I included not just this, but also the steps of thinking that had led me to reach this conclusion, knowing he would have an interest in the line of reasoning. However, if Duponte was still alive and escaped, I did not know where to address any letters. Not to Paris, not to his former residence, I felt certain. He would not be in this Paris, not in Louis-Napoleon's Third Empire, where his genius was seen as an enemy to the emperor's unending ambitions.

It was seeing the anxiety in Madame Bonaparte's face at the close of our interview, when I asked whether Rollin and his rogues had found Duponte, that made me decide Duponte was probably closer than I'd considered. He had been patiently waiting-not for me, exactly, but it would be me he would have to see.

Passing the bustle of porters and guests at the massive Barnum's Hotel one day, these various thoughts dissolved into an idea. Returning to Glen Eliza, I considered that my time to act might be short. I started on my way back to Barnum's. I did not leave, though, without remembering to reach into the closet for the old pistol that the police had returned along with my other possessions. This time I checked-before slipping it into my pocket-that its age and disuse had not left the hammer entirely immobile.

"Sir?"

An ashen clerk with tight whiskers glared at me suspiciously and waited for me to say something.

"Monsieur," I said abruptly and, as I'd hoped, he raised an eyebrow of interest at the French word. "There is a member of the French sovereign class currently residing in your hotel."

He nodded with all the depth of his responsibility. "Indeed, sir. He has been staying in the room once occupied by the Baron who visited Baltimore earlier this year. This is his brother. The Duke. " He leaned in to whisper this last word confidentially. "The noble lineage is most evident in both of them."

"The Duke." I smiled. "Yes. But when did our imperial Duke begin his stay?"

"Oh, as soon as his brother, I mean the noble Baron, left. His current presence is most covert-with all that is happening in France, you know."

I nodded, amused at the ease with which he'd yielded his secret. As though having the same thought, he now declaimed that he was not able to supply the location of the royal guest's room.