The Poe Shadow

'You shall not get away!' I yelled.

We fell together into a heap and I turned his body to face me, locking his wrist in my hand and struggling to throw off the hood of his velvet cloak. But this was no man.

'You? How? What have you done with Great-Auntie Clark?' I demanded. Then I realized my own stupidity. 'It was you the whole time, mademoiselle? My aunt hasn't come?'

'If you wrote more frequently, perhaps she would,' Bonjour scolded me. 'I daresay there is reading in your library far more interesting dredged up by your master Duponte than in all your Monsieur Poe's tales.'

'We saw you still at the Snodgrass house upon our departure!' Then I recalled our stop at the athenaeum.

'I was faster. That is your flaw-you hesitate always. Do not be angry, Monsieur Quentin. We are now even. You and your master wished to be in my territory in the Snodgrasses, and now I have entered yours. This is familiar, too.' She writhed a bit under my grip, as I had done at the Paris fortifications in opposite positions. The velvet of her cloak and the silk of her dress rustled against my shirt.

I quickly released my grip. 'You knew I could not send for the police. Why did you run then?'

'I like to see you run. You are not half slow, you know, monsieur, without a proper hat to hinder you.' She passed her hand playfully through my hair.

My heart wild with bewilderment, I jumped up from our entangled position on the ground.

'Heavens!' I cried, looking ahead at the street.

'Is that all?' Bonjour laughed.

There was a small conveyance lurking on the hilly side of the street. Hattie stood calmly in front of it. I did not know when she had arrived, and could not imagine what she thought she saw before her.

'Quentin,' she said, taking a cautious step forward. Her voice was unsteady. 'I asked one of the stablemen to drive me. I have managed to get away from my house a few times but, until now, have not found you at home.'

'I have been away much,' I replied dumbly.

'I thought nightfall would provide us privacy to meet.' She glanced at Bonjour, who lingered on the cold grass before hopping up. 'Quentin? Who is this?'

'This is Bon-' I stopped myself, realizing her name would sound like a queer invention on my part. 'A visitor from Paris.'

'You met this young lady in Paris, and now she has come to call on you?'

'Not to see me in particular, Miss Hattie,' I protested.

'You are in love after all, Monsieur Quentin. She's beautiful!' Bonjour tossed her head. She leaned forward as though peeping at a new litter of kittens. Hattie flinched at the attention of the stranger, wrapping her shawl tighter.

'Tell me, how did he pop the important question?' Bonjour asked Hattie.

'Please, Bonjour!' When I turned my back to Hattie to admonish Bonjour, Hattie climbed into her coach and ordered it away. 'Hattie, wait!' I cried.

'I must go home, Quentin.' I chased the carriage and called out to Hattie before losing too much ground as they passed into the forest. When I turned back to Glen Eliza, Bonjour had vanished as well, and I was alone.

The next morning, I firmly rebuked the chambermaid who had acted as guard to Bonjour's fraud.

'Say, Daphne, that you truly thought that young woman, hardly old enough to be my wife, was my great- aunt!'

'I did not say great-aunt, sir, but aunt only, as she said. She was in her shawl and the finest hat, sir, so I did not judge her age. Nor did the other gentleman question her on the matter when he entered there. And more so, sir, in large families one can have many aunts of all ages. I knew a girl of twenty-two whose aunt was not yet three years old.'

I turned my attention to her most salient point, Duponte. It was possible, perhaps, that in the midst of his usual unbreakable concentration and with the library's stained glass keeping it dim even in the day, he had noticed no more than a feminine silhouette at the library table when he had gone inside for his book. Still, this seemed unlikely. I confronted Duponte on the issue. I could not restrain my anger.

'The Baron shall now possess nearly half, if not more, of the information we have gathered! Monsieur, did you not notice Bonjour right in front of you when you walked into the library yesterday?'

'I am not blind,' he replied. 'And to a very beautiful girl! It is a dim room, but not so dim as that. I saw her plainly.'

'Why didn't you call for me, for God's sake? The situation has been much damaged!'

'The situation?' Duponte repeated, perhaps sensing that my frenzy went beyond her infiltration of our investigation on the case. Indeed, I wondered if I could ever look the same again in Hattie's eyes.

'All the intelligence we had possessed that they had not,' I said more calmly and with decision.

'Ah. Not so, Monsieur Clark. Our hold on the events surrounding the time of Monsieur Poe's death is dependent only in very small part in possessing the details and facts, which are the blood of the newspapers. That's not the heart of our knowledge. Do not mishear me: details are elemental, and at times trying to acquire, but not in themselves enlightenment. One must know how to read them properly to find their properties of truth- and the Baron Dupin's reading of them has nothing to do with ours. If your concern is that we shall give the Baron some advantage over us, worry not, for it is the opposite of what you think. If his reading is incorrect, than the more particulars he must read, the farther we move ahead of him.'

17

Dear Sir,-There is a gentleman, rather the worse for wear, at Ryan's 4th Ward polls, who goes under the cognomen of Edgar A. Poe, and who appears in great distress, amp; he says he is acquainted with you, and I assure you, he is in need of immediate assistance.

***

A LOCAL PRINTER named Walker had signed this note in an urgent scrawl that had almost sent the pencil through the coarse paper. It was dated 3 October 1849 and addressed to Dr. Joseph Snodgrass, who lived close to Ryan's, which on that election day when Poe was found also served as a polling place for the Congressional and state election.

A few days after Duponte and I occupied the study of Dr. Snodgrass, and Hattie stood dazed as I lay entangled with another woman, the Baron Dupin called on Snodgrass again.

I had been watching the Baron when he suddenly idled at a corner of Baltimore Street as though he had forgotten that he had any cares in the world. I was across the street, remaining inconspicuous among the crowds of people heading to hotels and restaurants for supper and the high baskets balanced on the heads of laborers and slaves. After a seemingly unending time waiting for the Baron to do something, I was distracted by the rumble of a carriage that swerved suddenly to the side near me.

From inside the carriage, I heard a voice:

'What are you doing? Driver! Why are you stopping here?'

Confirming that the Baron had not moved from his position, I decided to investigate the identity of the perturbed passenger. When I was nearing the carriage, I came to a standstill. I knew him instantly as a man I'd first seen at the burial ground on Green and Fayette. He'd stood restlessly that day, shifting from foot to foot, at the funeral of Edgar Poe.

'Do you hear me, driver?' continued his complaint. 'Driver?'

Here, by some strange ordering of the universe, the mourner had left that dark dream-land, a place of fog and mud, and had been driven right to me in the clear of day. After my meetings with Neilson Poe and Henry Herring, I was now with the third of the four mourners. Only the fourth remained, Z. Collins Lee-a classmate of Poe's from college who, as I'd recently heard, had been appointed a United States district attorney.