Matthew Pearl - The Poe Shadow

"Follow?" My heart beat faster than Duponte's words.

Duponte turned stern. "Because you found me, Monsieur Clark."

"What?"

"You ask why I have risked coming today instead of fleeing safely. Because you found me. They were searching for me and you found me. Good fellow, if you will please!"

At this signal a porter wearing the Barnum's uniform now entered, pulling in one of Duponte's steamer trunks with such great effort it could have contained a human body inside. It was the very same trunk from which, in utter bewilderment, I had first picked up the Malacca cane. Duponte placed some coins in the man's hand for his labor and dismissed him, bolting the door to the courtroom after him.

"Now, as to the Baron…shall we follow?"

"Monsieur Duponte, do you mean…You confessed a moment ago that you did not in fact come here to resolve the particulars of Poe's death!"

"Dupe! Intentions are irrelevant to results. I never said we have not resolved it, Monsieur Clark, had I? Ready?"

"Ready."

"The Baron imagines that the ruffians at the harbor hounded Poe until the poet fled to the home of Dr. N. C. Brooks, where the same villains started a fire that all but burned down that home. The Baron's chain of natural errors begins with presuming that Poe's stop in Baltimore, because unplanned, was unintentional, that is, without intended purpose-and so only violent action could explain the extension of his stay. In fact, by the evidence of Poe's first destination, the Brooks home, we can draw an entirely different conclusion."

Duponte had discussed this with me before. "Brooks is a known editor and publisher," I added. "Poe was looking for support for his magazine, The Stylus, which would raise the standards for all periodical publication to follow."

"You are correct, as well as a bit dreamy as to its potential effects. In all events, if Poe were truly in danger at this point, and cognizant enough to flee as the Baron would have us believe, he may have reported it to a member of his family, however detestable they were to him-or even the police. Instead, Poe searches for an influential magazine editor! We may now erase those imagined ruffians from our picture and instead escort Poe to Dr. Brooks's house on his own will. Come."

I took my seat again at the witness table.

"YOU HAVE OBSERVEDthat the Baron was determined to understand the last days of Poe as a result of a sequence of increasingly violent events. Here the Baron was gazing into a looking-glass. It is how the Baron wished people to see his own troubles. He wished to remove from Poe all possibility of indictment for his death by locating the cause of his misfortune with external parties only."

"Then are you saying that the burning of Brooks's house had nothing to do with Poe's search for sanctuary? A coincidence?"

"Not so, although we must reverse the connection in your statement. Poe's failed search for sanctuary has everything to do with Brooks's house burning down. Since we suspect that Poe started immediately for Dr. Brooks's from the harbor, with his trunk, it is most certain that he anticipated finding not only literary assistance but a bed as well."

"Instead, he discovers that the house has burned, or is still burning, depending on the exact day and hour of Poe's arrival, which we do not know."

"Yes, and, either way, if the fire happened the very minute he came or two days before, he is left to wander. Here is the difficulty. The doctor, John J. Moran, who treated Poe days later at the hospital recalls that Poe did not know what he was doing in Baltimore or how he had gotten there. The temperance periodicals, in their search for a persuasive and inculcating lesson, employ this inference to suggest that Poe had begun drinking, had been absorbed entirely in a binge or spree, and this, their logic runs, explains why he lost track of the days."

"You do not believe this?" I asked.

"It is the weakest kind of argument, not just flawed but obesely flawed. It would be similar to you seeing me on the street one day, and then again one week later, at which time I ask you for directions, and you wonder how it is I had been lost for an entire week. You shall remember we have already discussed the fact that an offer had been extended to Poe to travel to Philadelphia and edit a book of poems by Mrs. St. Leon Loud for a fee of one hundred dollars. An offer we know he accepted. Poe wrote to Muddy: ‘Mr. Loud, the husband of Mrs. St. Leon Loud, the poetess of Philadelphia, called on me the other day and offered me one hundred dollars to edit his wife's poems. Of course, I accepted the offer. The whole labor will not occupy me three days.' These are Poe's words from earlier that summer, as we learn from the letters that have since been in print.

"If, as we have already decisively determined, Poe was in the process of collecting more capital for his magazine; and if, as we additionally surmised, Poe had added a stay in Baltimore to his itinerary at a late moment in search of enlarging this capital; and if whatever funds he did have would be diminished not by theft but by the necessity of securing a room at a hotel, then it is quite likely that, with this editing offer still standing from nearby Philadelphia, and his hoped-for conference with Dr. Brooks inhibited by the untimely fire, Poe would soon leave for Philadelphia to complete this easy work for the eager and wealthy poetess. Rather than several days ‘lost,' as the temperance editors would like, no doubt Poe spent at least one night, possibly several, in a hotel here in Baltimore before securing an available train to Philadelphia. In this way, when Poe says to the hospital doctor while on his deathbed that he does not know how he came to be in Baltimore and why he is there, he is referring not to his arrival from Richmond, for which he would plainly know the purpose of his journey, but a second arrival to Baltimore. A journey back, at an indefinite time, but as early as the night before Poe's collapse at Ryan's hotel or as late as a few hours before that collapse, taken in some self-obscurity, resulting from a trip to Philadelphia."

"But you have shown, monsieur," I reminded him, "by examining her book of poetry and the poem about his death, that Poe did not edit Mrs. Loud's poems, and that, calling him a ‘stranger,' she had not seen him in Philadelphia at any time in close proximity to his death. You remarked to me that this was only the first document of two proving this. But now you speak of Poe's trip to Philadelphia. Have you changed your mind?"

Duponte raised one finger. "Careful. I did not say Poe arrived in Philadelphia."

"You are correct that I have in the past alluded to a second demonstration that Poe did not arrive in Philadelphia, if any evidence is needed beyond that culled from Madame St. Leon Loud's lyrical productions. You will now remember that Poe instructed Muddy to write him in Philadelphia as ‘E. S. T. Grey Esquire.' Would you re-peruse from your portfolio these apparently obscure instructions from Monsieur Poe?"

I did so: "‘Write immediately in reply and direct to Philadelphia. For fear I should not get the letter, sign no name and address it to E. S. T. Grey Esqre.'" I paused and put the extract down. "Monsieur, do say you have an answer to such a strange and indecipherable code!"

"Code! Strange! The only cipher here is in the eyes of those who look and do not understand, and so decide they must be solving some puzzle."

Duponte opened the lid of the trunk that had been brought in by the porter. It was filled to the very top with newspapers. "Before coming to find you here, I stopped at Glen Eliza. Your girl, Daphne, a domestic of excellent character and dry wit, very kindly allowed me to remove a considerable portion of our newspaper collection which had sat untouched in your library these last months. Indeed, she insinuated that I should advise you to discard such papers, for they have made housekeeping in that chamber impossible. Now," he said, turning back to me, "describe for me, if you please, where precisely lies the mystery of Poe's instructions to his darling Muddy?"