The Poe Shadow

'John Moran?'

'Yes-Moran.' Benson looked me over, perhaps a bit impressed by my knowledge. 'Dr. Moran admitted that he could not say that Poe had been drinking, but that Poe was in such an agitated and insensible state Moran could not prove that he was not.'

It was the same comment I had heard Moran say, which made me trust Benson's account more. 'When did you make this visit, Mr. Benson?'

'A week after Poe's death, perhaps.'

It began to settle upon me that this man, the devious Phantom of months past, had entered the mystery even before I had.

'The newspapers,' he sighed. 'The way they cut up Poe. Those fictions they were printing! The temperance unions here and in New York were keen on using him up. You have seen the articles, perhaps. As though to defeat a dead man to teach a lesson was a triumph. Well, Mr. Clark, believing that Poe was innocent, and knowing his genius, I felt rather-'

'Enraged,' I completed his thought.

He nodded. 'I am by habit a man of calm and reserve, but yes: I was enraged. I left word in many quarters that I wished to discover the details of Poe's final days as corroboration that he had held his pledge to the Sons of Temperance. It happened, while doing some researches, that I overheard you one afternoon, in the athenaeum, request the reading room clerk to reserve for you all articles about Poe's death. I presumed you were among those taking pleasure in reading these venomous reports of Poe's supposed demoralization and sin. I asked the clerk your name, and I learned from others that you were a local lawyer, gifted with a bright mind but known to be under the thumb of people more assertive than yourself. And that you had represented some local periodicals before. I suspected, at that point, that you were engaged by the Baltimore temperance press, who wished to portray Poe as a drunkard as a moral lesson against drinking. I imagined that perhaps you had been paid by them to counter my own mission and to disrupt the aim of the Richmond Sons of Temperance. And so, when I observed you on a different day coming toward the athenaeum, I proffered to you a caution not to meddle in it.'

'You thought I was part of the ruin of Poe's name?' I asked, astounded.

'It seemed at the time I was the only one who was not, Mr. Clark! Do you know what that feels like? I tried to visit the offices of the editors of some of the city's newspapers. They would not hear of correcting the misleading information they were printing. I compiled a selection of positive extracts and articles on Poe from years past- praising him, praising his writings-and handed these to the editors to try to persuade them that the late Mr. Poe deserved more honor. Some of these articles I left in the care of the athenaeum clerk for you, as well, with the same purpose. I believe this is one of the articles you referred to earlier.'

'Do you mean you selected the articles at random?' I asked.

'I suppose,' he said, unclear at the source of my utter disbelief.

'They were not intended to cause or provoke any particular action?'

'I hoped the praise included about Poe from less bloodthirsty times would cause more consideration of the value of Poe and his literary productions. Soon after that, I returned to Richmond. Having presently come back to stay here with my Baltimore relatives for a while, I had the occasion to come upon the clerk from the athenaeum, and the clerk excitedly requested my calling card so he could pass it along to you, Mr. Clark.'

'When you spoke to me on the street, you said I must not meddle

‘with your lowly lies.''

'Did I?' He blinked thoughtfully, then developed a trace of a smile.

'It comes from Poe's poem of a woman half in death and half in life, Lenore, ‘that now so lowly lies.''

'I suppose it does' was Benson's maddening answer.

'Didn't you mean something by this? Some sort of message or cipher? Do not say, Mr. Benson, that this too was only randomly selected?'

'You are a man with a highly nervous character, I see, Mr. Clark.' He did not seem inclined to answer my questions beyond this observation, yet he continued. 'When you have taken to reading Poe, it is difficult, nay, impossible, to stop his words from affecting you. Indeed, the man or woman who reads Poe too much, I'd suggest, will believe themselves eventually to be in one of his astounding and perplexing creations. When I came to Baltimore, my mind and every thought was engraved with Poe; I could read only words that had passed through his pen. Every sentence I said might be at risk to be his voice, no longer belonging to my own speech or intelligence. I reveled in his dreams and in what I believed was his soul. It is enough to crush a man who is liable to the trap of discovery. The only answer is to cease reading him at all-as at length I have done. I have banished him from memory, though perhaps not entirely successfully.'

'But what of your investigation into Poe's death? You were among the first, perhaps the very first, to make any sort of examination-you were in the best position to learn the truth!'

Benson shook his head.

'You must have learned more!' I cried.

He hesitated, then began as though I had asked something different. 'I am an accountant, Mr. Clark. I had forgotten this for a moment. I had begun to damage my business interests by remaining here, away from my proper work in Richmond. Imagine, a man who has kept perfect account books since age twenty, losing all sense of his finances. Indeed, the decline was to such a degree that I must now depend on working for part of each year in my uncle's business here in Baltimore, as I am doing at present.' It was this uncle of the Benson family who was pictured in the portrait above us showing the strong resemblance to Benson. 'Your city is fine in many respects- though far more coachmen drink spirits while they are meant to be in control of their horses.'

Seeing my lack of interest in the point, the temperance side of the man became more adamant. 'It is an appalling danger to society, Mr. Clark!'

'There is still much more to be done, Benson,' I reasoned with him. 'In relation to Poe, I mean. You can help us-'

'Us? Are there others involved?'

Duponte? The Baron? I was not confident of an answer. 'You can help. We can do this work together, Mr. Benson; we can find the truth you sought following Poe's death.'

'I can do nothing more here. And you, a lawyer, Mr. Clark, do you not have quite enough to keep you occupied?'

'I have taken a leave from my situation,' I said softly.

'I see,' he replied knowingly and with a tone of some satisfaction. 'Mr. Clark, the most dangerous temptation in life is to forget to tend to your own business-you must learn to respect yourself enough to preserve your own interests. If pursuing the causes of others-even in charity-prevents your own happiness, you will be left with nothing.

'The populace wishes to see Poe how they wish to see him, martyr or sinner; nothing you do prevents that,' he went on. 'Perhaps we do not care what happened to Poe. We have imagined Poe dead for our own purposes. In some sense, Poe is still very much living. He will be constantly changed. Even if you were somehow to find the truth, they would only deny it in favor of a newer speculation. We cannot sacrifice ourselves on an altar of Poe's mistakes.'

'Surely you have not come to believe those temperance men who fought you? That Poe caused all this by some petty vice?'

'Not at all,' said Benson with weak defiance. 'But had he been more cautious, had he used his passions to address the claims of the world rather than only those of his high order of intellect, all this might not have had to happen-and the millstone around his neck would never have become ours.'

I felt a type of relief after my interview with Benson-relief that someone else had attempted to find the truth behind Poe's death. Benson's undertaking had proven Peter Stuart and Auntie Blum wrong. I had not embarked on the quest of a madman. Here was another; an accountant.

Relief flooded me from another direction, too, regarding the Baron and Duponte. I had stopped just short of betraying my allegiance to Duponte in favor of a criminal, a false showman. For what, a series of narrow coincidences between the Baron and Poe's tales? I had lost Hattie forever and would never find a person in the