The Poe Shadow

Thy proud young heart and noble brain
Steeped in the demon draught-thy mind
No longer fitted for the strain
Of thought melodious and sublime.

'So much for the death of Edgar Poe,' Snodgrass now remarked sullenly to the Baron. 'I should hope you are satisfied and do not aim to put further light onto Poe's sin. His failings have been mourned enough in public, and I have done everything I can not to say more of it for the time.'

'In that, Doctor, you have nothing to worry about,' said the Baron. 'Poe took nothing to drink.'

'Why, what do you mean? I have no doubt. It was a debauch, sir, that killed Poe. His disease was mania a potu, even as the papers reported. I am a possessor of the facts.'

'I am afraid you witnessed facts,' said the Baron with a grin, 'and may even possess them, but you fail to possess the truth.' The Baron Dupin put up his hand to silence Snodgrass's protest. 'You need not trouble to defend yourself, Dr. Snodgrass. You did your best. But it was not you, sir, nor was it any manner of alcohol that brought Edgar Poe low. There were forces quite more devilish turned against the poet that day. He shall yet be vindicated.' The Baron's speech was now more to himself than to Snodgrass.

But Snodgrass still shook his hand in the air as though he had been meanly insulted. 'Sir, I am expert in this area. I am an officer with standing of the Baltimore temperance committees! I know a…a…drunken sot, don't I, when coming face to face with one? What are you attempting to do? You may as well try to outstorm the sky!'

The Baron repeated his words slowly, turning around in a circle, his nostrils flaring like a warhorse's. 'Edgar Poe shall be vindicated.'

18

'POE HAD NOTHING to drink, the Baron said, and drinking did not cause his death, as the press reported.'

I was sitting opposite Duponte in my library now, perched at my chair's edge.

Naturally, I did not wish to appear overly pleased about the Baron's conversation with Snodgrass. I did not intend to praise the Baron too highly. He, after all, was our chief rival and obstacle.

'Oh, the look across Dr. Snodgrass's face!' I accidentally continued. 'Dupin might have punched him hard in the jaw.' I laughed. 'Snodgrass-that false friend-deserved it, if someone were to ask me.'

An extraneous thought came into my mind, or a question really. Had there been suggestions, in the text of Poe's tales, I asked myself, that C. Auguste Dupin had been a lawyer? I could not help it. The question chimed in my head without offering me a choice to reject it.

'And anything further?'

'What?' I stirred, realizing there had been an awkward interval of silence.

'Did you observe anything further today, monsieur?' asked Duponte, rolling his chair halfway back to the desk of newspapers.

I explained the other points of interest, particularly the sudden and inexplicable presence of Henry Herring at Ryan's before Snodgrass had a chance to call for him, and the detailed descriptions of Poe's disheveled dress. I was careful not even to say the name of Baron Dupin again, as much for my benefit as for Duponte's.

'Neilson Poe, Herring! Now Snodgrass!' I exclaimed in distaste.

'What do you mean, monsieur?' Duponte asked.

'They were all at Poe's funeral-men charged with honoring him. Instead, Snodgrass delivers a vision of Poe as a drunken sot. Neilson Poe takes no action to defend his cousin's name. Henry Herring arrives quickly at Ryan's, before he is even called for by Snodgrass, only to push his relative off alone into a hack to the hospital.'

Duponte passed a hand thoughtfully over his chin, sucked at his tongue, and then turned his chair so his back was toward me.

Around this time, the idea had begun to forcefully develop in my mind that, in encouraging my role as spy, Duponte had chiefly wished to keep me occupied. After the disquieting conference recorded above, I hardly spoke to him but to report the particulars of my latest findings, which he usually received with easy indifference; some evenings, if he had already retired by the time I returned to Glen Eliza, I would leave a concise letter detailing all I had observed on that day. I could not forget, moreover, that his somber inaction after discovering Bonjour's prank had led to the great embarrassment between myself and Hattie in front of Glen Eliza. I suppose Duponte took notice of my cooler demeanor, but he never commented about it.

Over breakfast one day I said, 'I'm thinking of composing a letter. To that temperance newspaper in New York that claimed knowledge of Poe having a debauch. It has been much on my mind. Someone should demand that they produce the name and account of this so-called witness.'

At first Duponte did not reply. Finally he looked up in a cloud of distraction.

'What do you think of the temperance periodical's article, Monsieur Duponte?'

'That it is a temperance periodical,' he said. 'Their stated desire is the universal elimination of the use of spirits, yet they have a different, in fact most contradictory need, monsieur: a reliable supply of well-regarded people ruined from drink to prove to their readers why their temperance periodical should remain in existence. Poe has become one of these.'

'So you do not think the magazine's witness is real?'

'Doubtful.'

This raised my hopes and, for an instant, fully restored my fellowship with my companion. 'And you have acquired the evidence, monsieur, which we might use to refute them. Can we prove yet that Poe did not drink when he was here?'

'I have never said that I believe he did not.'

I could not reply, so fixed was I in momentary shock. His implication was not absolutely certain, but I feared I understood it too well as the exact opposite of the Baron's declaration at Ryan's. My thoughts turned to changing the topic…I did not want to hear him…

'In fact'-Duponte talked over me, preparing to confirm my dread-'he almost certainly did.'

Had I heard this correctly? Had Duponte come all this way only to affix Poe's condemnation?

'Now, do tell me more about the subscriptions the Baron has been raising…' he said.

In my turmoil, I welcomed any other subject. Baron Dupin had continued to amass his fortune in subscription moneys around Baltimore. In one oyster tavern alone, he had gleefully received payment from twelve eager fellows. The proprietor, bothered by the Frenchman's interruptions, had related to me the substance of his visits. 'In two weeks, folks,' the Baron would say, 'you shall hear the first true account of Poe's death!' To Bonjour, he once added, 'when they hear of my success in Paris, then, then…' His comment trailed off there; to the Baron Dupin's hungry imagination, there was every possibility opening from this success…

A few days later, the Baron Dupin showed himself a bit distressed in the anteroom of his hotel. Afterward, I bribed a nearby porter and asked what had transpired. He said the Baron Dupin had called for his colored boy and found that he was gone. After much shouting and fussing, it was discovered through the civil authorities that Newman had been manumitted. The Baron knew he had been humbugged, and by whom. He laughed.

'Why do you laugh?'