Poe shadow (37 page)

“Il est là!”
came a voice.

Without waiting for a glimpse of them, I turned and dashed up the stairs. My only advantage was that I had known the vast interior of the monument from the time I was young. The Frenchmen may have been stronger and quicker, but they were strangers here. Indeed, I imagine they’d compare this narrow flight to the wider compass of their Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Both places had the same reward for the sturdy climber—an unrivaled view of each city at the summit—but honored opposite achievements. The Parisian arch, Napoleon’s empire. The marble column, Washington resigning his commission as commander of the army, refusing to use his position to seek the permanent power of a despot.

I suppose none of this occurred to these men, who seemed to prefer thinking of throwing me off the top of the monument. They ran faster even than the group of young boys, who, chasing each other upward, had wearied by the middle of the ascent. The two men finally reached the observation gallery at the top, and walked around the circular platform, pushing past the visitors who stood looking across the Patapsco River to the Chesapeake in the distance. Though the two men inspected the face under the brim of each man’s hat, and peered around widely flounced dresses, they did not see their subject anywhere.

But I could see them. I’d already hidden 120 feet below: near where a narrow, unmarked door in the lower portion of the stairs opened onto a lower ledge used by those whose task it was to keep every crevice of the monument clean. It was a passage used also by persons who needed a bit of air on their journey upward. I waited on that ledge to ensure that both men appeared on that gallery platform far above, thus confirming that neither was lying in wait for me below.

Realizing they had been deceived, they now leaned upon the railing and found me standing below them. I smiled and saluted them before rushing back to the door.

My celebration was short. The door back to the stairs would not budge.

“For God’s sake!” I kicked at it.

The latch on the inside of the door had somehow fixed itself after I had closed it. I pounded at the heavy door for someone to open it from inside.

Observing my situation from their all-seeing view, one of the men started back to the stairwell, while the other waited and watched me from that omniscient perch. If the first made it down the stairs and to my door, I would certainly be trapped. I craned my neck and watched with faint hope that the band of older ladies emerging above from the stairs would delay his descent long enough for me to arrive at some miraculous plan for my deliverance.

The second man stood guard by leaning over the rail and keeping his eyes fixed on me. After another fruitless attempt to attract attention from the other side of the door, I returned to the railing and looked down below to assess my chances of jumping into the trees. Then I was met with a familiar face from below!

“Bonjour!” I exclaimed.

She looked up at me, then looked to the sky where that blackguard was peering down at me. “Back up toward the door,” she said.

“It is bolted from the other side. You must open it for me, mademoiselle!”

“Back up! More…more, monsieur…”

I did as instructed, moving away from the railing. The man above leaned farther over the railing so he could still watch me.

Bonjour took a breath and then shrieked, “He’s going to jump!” She pointed with hysterical gestures to the Frenchman, who was now nearly hanging from the railing 180 feet above the ground. The Frenchman’s face went pale as screams erupted from the gallery. The gallery-goers, in an effort to aid him, swarmed the man on the rail so forcefully as to almost push him off. Meanwhile, those sightseers rushing up from below to witness the human tragedy now herded the second Frenchman, who had just managed to enter the stairwell for his descent, back onto the gallery platform.

“Mademoiselle, ingenious! Now, if you can open this door!”

Bonjour entered the stairwell, and soon enough I could hear the door to the base unlatch. I gleefully swung the door open to thank my savior, perhaps the one woman left who cared about me.

She stepped through the doorway, the end of a small revolver pointed at me. “Time to come with me, monsieur.”

Bonjour did not say another word on the way to the hotel. She untied my hands and legs—which she had bound—upon our arrival at Barnum’s Hotel and rushed me through the anteroom without attracting notice. Upon reaching their rooms, where the Baron awaited, she spoke. “He was with them, very hand and glove together,” she said to the Baron. “I separated them, but they may have been signaling each other.”

“Who?” I asked confusedly. “Those two blackguards? I would never have anything to do with men like that.”

“Very cozy, going into that monument together.”

“They were accosting me, mademoiselle! You rescued me!”

“I had no such intention, monsieur!” she assured me. “Perhaps Duponte leads
them
by a leash, too.”

The Baron had an agitated manner. “Make yourself scarce, my dear.”

Bonjour gave me a pitying glare before leaving us alone.

The Baron held up a glass of sherry cobbler. “The proportion of sherry is decidedly smaller at this hotel than the proportion of water. Still, at least the beds have curtains, a rare enough luxury in America. Do not mind mademoiselle. She believes she depends on me because I saved her, when in fact it is just the opposite. If she were ever to give me the bag, or to be harmed, I would go to pieces. Do not underestimate her arts.”

I had noticed on the writing-desk stacks of paper with widely scribbled notes on them.

“There,” said the Baron with a proud, mischievous grin, seeing my interest. “There lie all the answers you have been looking for, Brother Quentin, put down in black and white. Of course, I have not perfected my presentation yet, but I will, be sure. But I am afraid”—here he leaned close—“that in the meantime I have the burden of ensuring that nobody troubles me before it is brought into the light of day. Now, who are they, the men Bonjour saw you with? Why are they working with you and Duponte?”

“Baron Dupin,” I said with exasperation, “I do not know them, do not wish to, and certainly am not leagued with them in any way.”

“You have seen them though, as I have,” he said loftily. “They have been watching me. There is death upon their eyes. It is dangerous. You have noticed them, surely, while you yourself have acted the spy on me?”

I opened my mouth to speak but was caught off guard.

“I know,” he said, taking my silence as an admission. “Since I heard Bonjour happened upon you at the wharves, watching her quite closely. I hardly think that would be your usual place of leisure, among the drunkards and the slave-traders. Or perhaps”—he broke into laughter—“you will surprise me yet, Quentin Clark.”

“Then why not stop me, if you knew?”

He swirled his drink. “Isn’t it quite obvious to you? Haven’t you learned from your master? It was a desperate measure—Duponte knew he was losing, so he sent you out. The very fact made it clear that I need not defend myself against him. Besides, seeing what you were trying to spy on permitted me to know what Duponte was most interested in—to be a spy is always to be
spied upon,
monsieur.”

“If you are all-knowing, Baron, I would guess you have already discovered who those two Frenchman are and who sent them.”

He paused, his agitation stirred. “They are French, then?”

“From their accents, their words, yes. You could coax them to your purposes perhaps, as you did with Dr. Snodgrass.” I wanted to regain some balance in the interview, and make it clear I was not without my own sources of knowledge.

“If they serve certain powerful factions against me for my pecuniary interests back in Paris, I am afraid it is not so simple.”

He spoke in that open tone of his, as though you were firmly on his side of affairs, which made you temporarily forget you were anything but. He had to push aside strands of his hair from his eyes; his hair now looked thin and soapy.

“You see, Brother Quentin, how a man can be pushed to live behind masks. Never able to freely be myself. And I am quite good as myself, yes, monsieur. Thundering good! In the courtroom, all eyes, even those of the lawyers opposing me, would look to me for the truth. I am happy there. I am not ready to hang up my fiddle, not yet.”

“Yet you carry on your cheap charade to bully us,” I protested. “You mimic Auguste Duponte.”

I noticed a painting of Duponte leaning in the corner of the room. I had seen Von Dantker’s work at various stages of progress, and recognized this canvas as his. I could not help remarking on how complete the finished portrait seemed—as though it had completed Duponte himself. It captured his exact likeness but also
more
than his likeness.

The Baron laughed good-naturedly. “Has Duponte appreciated the humor of it, Brother Quentin? My small jest among serious business, that is all. Duponte does not know about wearing masks. He believes that if he does not, he will be attached to reality. In fact, without any masks, he is—we are—nothing.”

I thought about that singular pointed grin that Duponte had innovated for his sittings with Von Dantker, which could be seen creeping onto his face in the portrait. A smile that was not really his…Perhaps Duponte did know about wearing masks, after all? I grabbed hold of the portrait and placed it under my arm.

“I shall take this, Baron; it is not your property.”

He shrugged.

I continued, perhaps hoping to induce a bigger reaction, “You know—you must know—that Duponte shall resolve this. He
is
the real basis for Dupin.”

“Do you believe that is important to him?”

I cocked my head with interest. It was not the reply I’d expected.

“Has Duponte told you how he and I came to know each other?” The Baron looked at me with a serious air. “Of course the answer is no,” the Baron went on, shaking his head knowingly. “No, he too much lives inside himself. Duponte needs to feel people are interested in him, but finds the act of speaking of himself too tiring. We were both in Paris. There was a lady named Catherine Gautier accused of murder, a woman most important to your friend.”

I called to mind the policeman at the café in Paris who said changes had come over Duponte when the woman he loved was hanged for murder and he could not stop it. “Duponte loved her, didn’t he?”

“That is nothing! I loved her too. Oh, do not look at me so, like we are in some light novel; I do not mean what you think. No, Duponte and I were not rivals for her affection. But she was attractive enough, and brilliant enough, for any man who knew her to love her. You ask, how could we live in a world where such a woman could be accused of bludgeoning her own sister to death? The idea is absurd.”

Catherine Gautier, the Baron said, was of the poorer class, but virtuous and known as very intelligent. She was Duponte’s closest and (some said) only companion. One day, this woman’s sister was found murdered in a vile fashion, and Duponte’s lover was suspected at once. Because the police were Duponte’s enemies after he had embarrassed them by solving crimes they could not, many believed that the accusation represented their reprisal against Duponte by turning against Catherine.

“She was innocent then?”

“Innocent enough” came the Baron’s peculiar answer after a pause.

“So you were acquainted with her?”

“Dear friend, has he really never said anything about it? Your companion for so many long months now. Yes, I knew her.” He laughed. “I was her lawyer, dear man! I defended her against that terrific charge of murder.”

“You?” I asked. “But she was executed. You
never
lost a case.”

“Yes, that is true. I suppose that record was somewhat knotted up by Mademoiselle Gautier.”

I looked down, thinking of Duponte’s failure. “Duponte failed to free her. He will return to his
glory,
though,” I asserted, using the Baron’s favorite term, “now, with Poe.”

“Failed to free her!” the Baron laughed.
“Failed to free her?”

His taunting angered me. I knew Duponte had tried examining the affair himself when Mademoiselle Gautier was arrested, but had given up in despair. I repeated this history to the Baron.

“He tried to examine, is that what you have been told? Why, monsieur, Brother Duponte
did
examine the matter. He never gave up. He was as successful as always.”

“Successful? How? Do you mean she was not executed after all?”

“I remember vividly,” the Baron began, “my first visit to the apartments of Auguste Duponte in Paris.”

The Baron Dupin found a place for his hat and stick himself, since Duponte did not offer. The Baron wished for better light. The lawyer found brightness an advantage when demonstrating through the eager motions of the hands and large expressions of the face why cooperation should be offered to him. He did not relish relying on any ordinary routine of persuasion with Auguste Duponte, of course—but circumstances were dire. His career was at a treacherous crossroad. Also, a woman’s life was at stake.