And the money that followed him wherever he went! I could not fathom the number of Baltimoreans who willingly forked over hard money into the hands of this storyteller; Baltimoreans, I sadly say, who exhibited no signs of doing the same for a book of Poe's poetry. Yet a veritable fortune was lent to the notion that the Baron Dupin would unveil the events of the same poet's last and darkest hours on this earth. Culture was enjoyed as long as it came with conflict. I recalled the time two actors simultaneously played Hamlet on nearby stages in Baltimore and everyone argued with passion about his own favorite Hamlet, not for the play itself but for the competition of it.
The lyceum lecture would be held at the Assembly Rooms of the Maryland Institute. The Baron began sending wires to repeat the same announcements of lectures to be subsequently held in New York, Philadelphia, Boston… His plans were expanding, and ours seemed to fall more and more in his shadow.
The Baron, along the way, had further pried open Pandora's box of rumors in the newspapers.
Some samples: Poe was found robbed in a gutter by a watchman; or the dying Poe was lying across some barrels in the Lexington Market covered entirely with flies; no, said another, Poe met with former cadets from West Point, where the poet had learned musket and munitions, dealing now in some private governmental operation that introduced Poe to a dangerous intrigue and probably related to his reported roles in his wild youth fighting for the Polish army and with the Russians; not so: Poe's vain end had been a debauch at an acquaintance's lively and intemperate birthday party; or he had been guilty of suicide. One female acquaintance claimed that as a ghost Poe had sent her poems from the spiritual world about being fatally pummeled in an attempted theft of some letters! Meanwhile, a local paper had received a wire from a temperance newspaper in New York that claimed to have met a witness to Poe's raging debauchery in the day before he was discovered at Ryan's, proving for the recorder at Judgment Day that all was Poe's own fault.
While I sat surveying these articles in the reading room, that reliable, ancient clerk came over to me.
"Oh, Mr. Clark! I am still thinking of who had given me those articles on your Mr. Poe. Indeed, I have remembered distinctly how he asked me to give the articles to you."
Suddenly, I lost all attention to the papers before me. "What, sir?" It had never occurred to me that those cuttings had been given to the clerk with specific instructions that they be delivered to me. I asked if I understood him correctly.
"Right."
"This is startling!" I cried, thinking of how that single extract alluding to the "real" Dupin had completely changed the course of events.
"How so?"
"Because someone-" I did not finish the statement. "It is a matter of moment that you tell me more of this person, whoever he is. I am much occupied these days, but will call on you again. Try-please do try-to remember."
My imagination was fired by this new revelation. Meanwhile, I found a less speculative distraction in determining to settle matters with Hattie. I wrote her a long letter, acknowledging that Auntie Blum's cruel though well-meaning tactic had encouraged me, and proposing that upon my receiving word from her we should commence again the plans for our union.
16
TRACING THE ACTIVITY of the Baron Dupin, through covert observation and interviews, I learned that nearly a week earlier, Bonjour had insinuated herself as the chambermaid at the home of Dr. Joseph Snodgrass, the man whom Dr. Moran remembered had ordered the carriage that brought Edgar Poe to the hospital from Ryan's on that gloomy October day. The Baron Dupin had paid a visit to Snodgrass earlier to find out the details of that stormy October afternoon. Snodgrass adamantly declined an interview. He insisted he would not contribute to the industry of gossiping about the worthy poet's death.
Soon after, Bonjour had secured the position among the help in Snodgrass's house. Remarkably, she did this with no position open. She had appeared in neat, unostentatious dress, on the doorstep of the fashionable brick house at 103 North High Street. An Irish servant girl opened the street door for her.
Bonjour said that she had been told the house was looking for a new upstairs girl (assuming, rightly, that this was the downstairs girl-and imagining it likely she had a rivalry with the current upstairs girl).
Was that so? replied the servant. She had not heard about this. Bonjour apologized, explaining that the upstairs girl had told a friend about her plans to leave without proper notice to her employers, and Bonjour was eager to present her desire for the post.
Soon after this, the downstairs girl, who had a straggly figure and a jealous tendency toward comelier females, reported the dialogue to the Snodgrasses, who felt obliged to dismiss the protesting upstairs girl. Bonjour was the heroine of the household drama for uncovering the imminent loss to their domestic operations and, appearing again at the opportune time, was the natural choice as replacement. Though Bonjour was far more handsome than the jealous downstairs girl, the fact that she was too thin for the popular taste and had an unseemly scar down her lip made her more acceptable.
All this was easily discovered later from the former upstairs girl, who after her departure was eager to speak of her unfair treatment. But once Bonjour was installed behind the walls of the house, there was little chance at gaining any further intelligence about her enterprise.
"Leave her to the Snodgrass family then, and confine your observations on the Baron," Duponte suggested.
"She would not remain this long unless there was information to gain. It has been better than two weeks, monsieur!" I said. "In all events, the Baron is mostly occupied selling subscriptions to his lecture on Poe's death."
"Perhaps the information mademoiselle gains is not so large," Duponte mused, "but simply slow."
"I could inform Dr. Snodgrass that Bonjour is no chambermaid."
"Why do so, Monsieur Clark?"
"Why?" I replied incredulously. It seemed obvious. "To stop her from gaining intelligence for the Baron!"
"What they find, we shall inevitably learn," he replied, though I did not see the track of this reasoning.
Duponte, during my reports, regularly asked me to describe Bonjour's demeanor and mood toward the job and the other servants.
Bonjour would leave the Snodgrass home every day to meet with the Baron. On one of these evenings, as she made her way to one of these rendezvous, I followed her into the harbor area. Not infrequently, a man would be expelled out the door of a public house, and one would have to take a high step over his body or trip into a pile with him. The streets there were filled with bar-rooms and billiards-rooms and stale, human smells. Bonjour was dressed accordingly: hair disheveled, bonnet crooked, and dress in comfortable disorder. She changed costume often-depending on whether an errand for the Baron Dupin required the appearance of one class or another-but there was no demonic transformation as with the Baron's disguises.
I watched as she neared a group of low men, who were laughing and yelping riotously. One pointed at the passing figure of Bonjour.
"Look there," he said gruffly, "a star-gazer! What a pretty bat!" "Star-gazer" and "bat" were equally vulgar terms; heard among the lowest classes, they connoted a prostitute who came out only at night.
She ignored them. He stretched out his arm as a barrier. He was almost twice Bonjour's size. She stopped and looked down at his bloated forearm, on which the sleeve was rolled up indecently.
"What's this, gal?" He yanked a piece of paper out of her hand. "A love letter, I'd guess. What's this now? ‘There is a gentleman, rather the worse for wear…'"