The Poe Shadow

'Not purposefully. Their genuine memories of those events, and the stories they can tell from them, will irrevocably reshape themselves in the image of the Baron's. They are as much his witnesses now as though he has recruited them into a trial and paid them for testimony. No, we cannot gain very much beyond the most basic facts provided by those witnesses, and I suspect we will gather that information through the natural course of events.'

You'd probably guess that Duponte was a formal sort of person. You are right and wrong. He did not subscribe to rules of manners and meaningless pleasantries. He smoked cigars inside the house, regardless of who was in the room. He was inclined to ignore you if he had nothing to say, and answer with a single word when he felt it was sufficient. He was in a way a fast friend, for he was your companion without any of the usual rituals or demands of friendship. However, he always bowed and sat with absolutely correct posture (though upon standing there was a noticeable slant of the shoulders). And in his labors he was most strict and serious. In fact, it made you quite uneasy to interrupt him when he was at all occupied. It could be the least important task imaginable, it could be stirring oatmeal, but it would seem leagues more critical than anything you might have to say to break his concentration were the house burning down around his ears.

Yet he grew attached to some of the strangest frivolities. When he was out on the city streets, a distinguished gentleman with a fancy cravat fastened in voluminous folds exclaimed aloud that Duponte was the queerest specimen of man he had ever seen. Duponte, taking no offense, invited the man, who was a painter of some renown here in Baltimore, to share a table with us at a nearby restaurant.

'And tell me your story, dear sir,' said the man.

'I would gladly, monsieur,' replied Duponte apologetically, 'but then there is the likely danger that I would have to hear yours.'

'Fascinating!' said the man, unruffled.

The man expressed his eagerness to paint Duponte. It was soon arranged that he would call at Glen Eliza to begin a Duponte portrait. This seemed to me quite absurd considering our other occupations, but I did not object since Duponte was fervent about it.

Rather than coming to find me in the house when he had something to say, Duponte would often send one of the servants to me with a note. Glen Eliza was large and rambling but not so terribly mammoth as to require a messenger through its corridors! I did not know what to think when a servant first handed me the note, whether it was done out of the height of sloth or an excess of concentration.

The times when we ventured out of the house and into public establishments, Duponte refused to be waited on by slaves without paying them some small amount. I had seen instances of this over the years when visitors from Europe came to Baltimore, though during extended stays custom would soon wear down their finer sensibilities and the habit would gradually cease. Duponte's action, however, was not out of any sentimentality, I believe, nor a point of principle, for he had said that more people are slaves than realized it and some far more enslaved than the blacks of our South; rather than sentimental reasons, Duponte did this, he said, because service without payment would never be as valuable to either party. Many of the slaves would be extremely grateful, others timid, and some strangely hostile to Duponte's subsidies.

At Glen Eliza, we had difficulties with the domestics I had hired upon my return from Paris. No doubt, our peculiar practice of sending letters from the parlor to the library made extra work for them, though this was not the only source for discontent. Many of my servants immediately rebelled against Duponte. One colored girl, in particular, a free Negress named Daphne, occasionally refused to wait on him. When I asked Daphne for the reason, she said that she thought the houseguest most cruel. Had he ever abused her? Scolded her for a mistake, perhaps? No. He had hardly addressed her at all, and when he did he was very polite. Something was not right, she said, nonetheless. 'He is cruel. I can see it.'

In between household duties, I called on Hattie's house more than once without success. Peter's pessimistic remarks about rectifying that situation had rendered me quite anxious. Her mother, who had always been of delicate health and in her bed when not away recuperating in the country or at a spring, had been further debilitated over the summer. After a stay by the seaside, she was now largely confined, which meant more duties for Hattie. It also gave Auntie Blum fuller swing over the household. Each time I called, a servant would inform me that neither Miss Hattie nor Auntie Blum was present. Finally, I was able to speak with Hattie one day as she was ascending a carriage outside her house.

'Dear Hattie, have you not received my notes?'

Hattie glanced around and spoke stealthily, leading me away from the gates. 'You must not be here, Quentin. Things are quite different here, now that Mother has been worse. I am needed by my sisters, my aunt.'

'I understand,' I said, fearing that my endeavors had only added to the strain that had fallen on poor Hattie's shoulders. 'Of our plans…I need only a bit more time…'

She shook her head, silencing me. 'Things are different,' she repeated. 'We cannot speak about it now, but we will. I will find you when I can, dear Quentin-I promise. Do not speak to my aunt. Wait for me to find you.'

Noises came from the house. Hattie directed me to return to the street and make a hasty exit. I did so. I could hear Auntie Blum (and could almost hear the wide bird feathers I pictured in her hat ruffling, too) ask in her big tones, 'Who was that, dear girl?' I kept my back to them and quickened my stride, having the distinct feeling that if I turned to look back, the older woman inside the carriage might direct her driver to flatten me.

At Glen Eliza, the portraitist, Von Dantker, sat across from Duponte with his array of canvas and brushes spread on a table. Duponte remained giddy about the prospect of this artistic creation. The hotly temperamental Von Dantker sternly admonished Duponte to remain still, and so only the analyst's mouth moved when we conversed. When I commented that this was not a very polite manner of holding a conversation, Duponte claimed he was all attention and that he wished to see if he could divide his mind into compartments of concentration. At times it was like speaking to a living portrait.

'What would you say truth is for the Baron, Monsieur Clark?' Duponte asked pointedly one evening.

'How do you mean?' I asked.

'You asked him whether he seeks the truth. Surely truth is not the same for everyone, as most people think they have it, or desire to have it, and yet there are still wars, and there are professors who daily overthrow each other's hypotheses. So what is it for him, for our friend the Baron?'

I considered this. 'He is a lawyer. I suppose in law, truth is a practical matter, thus one finds the practice of indiscriminate advocacy on either side in which one is retained.'

'Agreed. If Jesus Christ had kept a lawyer by his side, Pontius Pilate might have been swayed that his judgment could be reversed for defect of form and so settled on a lighter sentence, and the restoration of the human race would have been interrupted. Very well. Then if it is in the language of the law that Baron Dupin speaks, truth is not that which is likely to have happened, but that for which he can present proof as likely having happened. These are not the same. In fact they are hardly related and should never be introduced to one another.'

'How should we know if the Baron is inventing his proof in relation to Poe's death?'

'He might try to manufacture it, indeed, but likely with some small basis in reality. If he intends to publish a popular account of his dealings on the matter of Poe's death, as suggested, and intends to gain by lecturing on the subject, he cannot afford to be so easily discredited by using lies out of whole cloth, Monsieur Clark. After all, we saw from the Parisian newspapers that he wished his creditors to know his plans to return with enough financial resources to free himself from their attention. He is relying on this to protect him from their plots against him. He shall require facts-even if he compels some portion of them into existence.'

Duponte continued to remain on the grounds of Glen Eliza most of the time, often engaged in disagreements with Von Dantker over whether he remained sufficiently still. Duponte displayed for the artist the strangest sort of half smile, with points sharp as knives carved out at the corners of the mouth.

Sometimes I excused myself from the house on an errand; these excursions were most of all sacrificial offerings to my nerves. Earlier that year, the post office had begun delivering the mail, for an extra fee of two cents, and so I had no need to call at its offices. I described the operation of our postal services to Duponte and for a few moments he seemed acutely interested in the topic, before quickly settling back into his air of distraction. I always looked first at the mail for something unexpected: perhaps, even, a last letter written to me by Poe, if it had been misplaced or lost, and now recovered. Duponte did not receive any letters.