Matthew Pearl - The Poe Shadow

"Do you know the pinch my life has been in, Monsieur Duponte, since beginning our adventure?" I demanded. "I was presumed guilty of killing the Baron Dupin until the police came to their senses. Now I must fight or lose my entire estate, Glen Eliza itself, all that I possess."

I explained, through a last course of watermelon, what had happened in prison and upon my escape and my discovery of Bonjour and the rogues. After we finished our large meal, we walked upstairs to return to his rooms.

"I must relate the full story of Poe's death in court," I said to him, "in one last bid to show that in all this I acted with reason and not imbecile dreams."

Duponte looked at me with interest. "What will you say, monsieur?"

"You never intended to resolve Poe's death, did you?" I asked sadly. "You used it as a distraction, knowing it would soon enough look to the world as though you had been killed here. You were inspired when you read the Baron's newspaper announcement in Paris that he would set the trap for himself that would free you from the expectations of others. That was why you thrilled at the idea of that Von Dantker being sent to Glen Eliza by the Baron-so his imitation of you could be perfected. You only went out of the house at night to ensure the Baron's charade would succeed. You simply wanted to kill the notion, once and for all, that you were the real ‘Dupin.'"

Duponte nodded at this last statement, but would not look directly at me. "When I met you, Monsieur Clark, I was angry at your insistence to see me in that light, as ‘Dupin.' I then realized that only through studying Poe's tales and studying you would I understand what it was you and so many others perennially looked for in such a character. There is no real Dupin anymore, and never will be." He had a strange mix of relief and horror in his tone. Relief that he no longer carried the burden of being the master ratiocinator, of being the real Dupin. Horror at having to be someone else.

I would tell him the hard truth. "You are not Dupin!" I would say. "You never were. There was no such man ever alive; Dupin was an invention." After all, perhaps that was why I had searched so lustily to find him again. To make him feel with me the sting of what had been lost. To take away something and thus leave him more alone.

But I did not say it.

I thought about what Benson had said to me about the dangers to the susceptible imagination of reading Poe. To believe you were in Poe's writings. Perhaps, along the same lines, Duponte had once believed himself in a mental world created by Poe, had thought he was in the tales of Dupin. Yet he was more present in a world like the one Poe had imagined than most of us, and who was to say that did not make him the real embodiment of the character whom I had met first on a page in Graham's magazine? Did it matter whether he was the cause or the effect?

"Where?" I asked Duponte. "Where will you go?"

Instead of answering, he said musingly: "There is much admirable in you, monsieur."

I do not know why, but this statement astonished me, lifting my spirits, and I asked him to elaborate.

"Some people, you understand, cannot get out of their positions. They cannot be among the missing, even if desired. I could not, here or in Paris, until now, and Monsieur Poe could not even until death. You could have left all along and you did not." He paused. "What will you say in court?"

"I will tell them the answers. I will give them the Baron Dupin's story of Poe's death. People will believe it."

"Yes, they will. You will win the case if you do this?" Duponte asked.

"I will win. It will be as true to them as anything else. It is the only way."

"And as for Poe?"

"Perhaps," I said quietly, "it is as good as any other ending."

"How very like an attorney you are, after all," said Duponte, with a faraway smile.

At length the porter came to secure the balance of the Duke's belongings. Duponte gave him various instructions. I retrieved my hat and bid him good evening. My steps lingered a bit as I entered the hall, but though wanting a last sight by which to remember Duponte, I only saw him struggling to arrange some unwieldy geological instruments to be transported. I wished he would turn and remind me I was not seeing any ordinary man. Call out an insult-"Dolt!" perhaps. Or "numskull!"

"I thought much of you, Duke," I muttered to myself, and bowed.

THE DAY SOONcame for me to sit upon the witness stand and tell the full "truth" of Poe's death. To provide convincing evidence that the actions alleged as delusional and fantastical were in fact fruitful, rational, and conspicuously normal on my part. Peter had worked assiduously in my aid throughout the trial, particularly as to these points, and we had at least come to be held even with our legal adversaries in the prevailing judgment of the populace. The opposing lawyer had a lion-like voice that roared the jury into submission. Peter said that my presentation of Poe's death would be needed to obtain our victory.

Hattie, her aunt, and additional Blum family members arrived each day to court. They were perplexed by Peter's insistence on laboring over my defense ("and that after young Clark 's behavior !"), but came dutifully to support the man they expected to marry their Hattie. I believe they also came to watch my disgrace and financial collapse. Hattie and I were able to have private words at intervals but never for long. Each time, the eye of her aunt found us, and each time she innovated new techniques to prevent any further intercourse.

This morning's testimony was widely anticipated among our society. The courtroom audience swelled from its usual numbers. I was, in particular, to prove that all of this was indeed an attempt to seek answers to a mystery about Poe's death by showing the reality of this claim: by answering the mysteries themselves. On some nights, I'd had dreams about it. In them, I thought I could see the literary figure C. Auguste Dupin-who resembled quite precisely, though not uniformly, Auguste Duponte-and could hear him dictate each particular. Yet when I woke I could describe no conclusions, could re-create no ratiocination, could find only conflicting fragments of ideas and sentences, and felt helpless and frustrated. That is when the Baron would reappear to my mind, and I would be grateful that I had his firm answers, his reliable and dramatic answers, answers that would satisfy any public demand.

Mere words that would save all I possessed.

There were stares from the onlookers, the same species of stares that had greeted the Baron on the lyceum stage. Stares of greed, the signs of a bargain between speaker and hearers to reach into the lowest part of the souls of both. Many Poe spectators who had once longed to hear the Baron were here. I would reveal how Poe died, it was said throughout the city. I could see Neilson Poe and John Benson coming into the room, men who, in very different ways, had needed those answers, any answers. I saw Hattie-for whom I would be saving a life we could have together, keeping for us a home in Glen Eliza, just by licking my lips with the Baron's honey of persuasion. Just by telling a story.

The judge called my name, and I looked down at the lines I'd written. I took a breath.

"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. Whatever has been taken away from me, one last possession remains: this story."

Could I insist, as the Baron had, that what seemed true must be true? Yes, yes, why not? Wasn't I a lawyer? Wasn't it my job, my role?

"There are those of our city today who tried to stop it. There are those sitting here among you who still believe me a criminal, a liar, an outcast, a clever, vile murderer. Me, Your Honor: Quentin Hobson Clark, citizen of Baltimore, member of the Bar, a fond reader.