by the author, which flesh out his thoughts considerably. By comparison with the watered-down version that his so-called friends published, after Maillet’s death, in fearful anticipation of difficulties with the Church, the whole dialogue is very interesting. It’s a great pity that the Chevalier de Lamarck was never able to see the full text. Monsieur Guérande might have been interested, too. But then, the forbidden parts of forbidden books always are interesting, when they touch upon matters of our own interest. I’m flattered that you should come all this way to seek my help, Madame, but don’t you think that you might have done better to seek out a physician, with regard to your husband’s health? As for legal difficulties, the Dordogne is a long way from Lucien’s present jurisdiction, of course, but if the Prefect of the department is reluctant to involve himself, Monsieur Groix is certainly in a position to provide a sharp spur—and I’m sure that he remembers you just as fondly as I do.”
Dupin was playing games, I knew. He had been tantalized, and was now tantalizing in his turn, after his own fashion—but I saw the ghost of a genuine smile on Madame Guérande’s lips, and knew that she knew it too. She was satisfied. His willingness to play the game of pretence told her that he was well and truly hooked.
“Perhaps he does,” she countered, a trifle coquettishly. “But when he is confronted by a vexatious puzzle, it seems, he comes to you. My instinct led me in the same direction—and Amélie told me where to find you.”
That was a powerful point, I knew—and Dupin knew it too. “Amélie always made an exception for you,” he murmured.
“Yes,” she repeated. “And it’s not from the Dordogne that I’ve come, as you know perfectly well, Auguste, but the Ardèche. Obviously, you have not had news of us for a long time, but you know perfectly well where we are. You mustn’t try to tease me—I’m no longer seventeen, and you’re no longer...how old were you when we met, exactly? Twenty-two? Twenty-three?”
“I often get the southern départements mixed up,” Dupin said, mendaciously—and blatantly ignoring her question regarding his age. “They’re so far away from Paris, and seemingly still resentful of the Cathar crusade. I never visit them.”
“You should,” she countered, not in the least deceived. It was in a hardly-audible voice that she added: “You must.”
“Madame Guérande wondered whether I might be Edgar Poe when she first arrived,” I put in, not because I wasn’t enjoying the cut and thrust of the dialogue, but because I felt a little jealous, and didn’t want to be left entirely on its sidelines. “I think she has read ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’—in English, obviously. She has never heard of me, of course.”
“Of course,” Dupin echoed, more brutally than dutifully. He never took his eyes off the lady. “You do understand, Madame Guérande, that the story in question is a work of fiction, which only employs my name mischievously? The incident on which it is based was much more trivial than my friend’s American correspondent made it out to be. My friend has melodramatic tendencies—he was probably infected by the contagion when he knew Mr. Poe in their student days. Fortunately, his own fever has slackened, while his correspondent’s seems to have worsened considerably. You might imagine that Paris is far more conducive to such miasmas than New York, where Mr. Poe seems to spend a deal of time nowadays, but apparently not.”
“I’m sure that your sane presence has helped to calm Mr. Reynolds’ metaphorical fevers considerably,” the lady suggested. “I hope you might be able to do the same for another who was once your closest friend.” Her tone now was bantering, with a comfort suggestive of something long dormant but easily reborn. Was this, I wondered, how they had “flirted” twenty-five years ago?
Dupin was less comfortable with the sudden timeslip than our guest. He did not reply to the prompt.
“It’s true that Dupin has had a salutary effect on me,” I said, this time genuinely trying to be helpful. “While I keep close company with him, my infection of melodrama is somehow held within bounds, in spite of everything.”
Dupin gave the impression that he would rather I had not included the last phrase—and, indeed, that I had kept my mouth shut. The great logician had finished his wine, and poured himself another glass. He offered Madame Guérande another, which she declined. I accepted when my turn came.
“You’re right, Madame,” he said, as if making a great concession. “Claude was my closest friend. If he wants my help, I owe it to him.”
A slight shadow crossed Madame Guérande’s face. “Claude needs your help,” she said, stressing the verb slightly, and making it clear that she was the one who was asking, even though she had been careful to obtain her husband’s permission for the invitation.
“I have no influence with Thierachians,” Dupin said. “If I were a diplomat expert in soothing disputes, Lucien Groix would surely retain me here, to unpick all the old quarrels that are seething under the multilayered surface of Parisian society. Nor am I a physician with any expertise in calming fevers, in spite of what my friend says.” He was not refusing his help, but merely warning her that he was not optimistic as to the probability of success. She understood that.
“But you are an antiquarian of great distinction, Auguste,” Madame Guérande countered. “You have not lost your interest in ancient artifacts—antediluvian artifacts, some would say, although you and I...you and Claude...know better than into use such terminology. The hunt for explanation of the puzzles they embody must intrigue you still. Do you remember the discussions you and Claude used to have in my father’s drawing-room, about the kinship of species, the possible origins of life and humankind, and the various rival schools of monogeny and polygeny? I was not allowed to be party to such discussions, of course—my father had too narrow a view of a woman’s place—but I was allowed to be present, by way of decoration, and I listened, Oh, how eagerly I listened...if only because it was so casually assumed that I would not understand.”
“I remember,” Dupin said, perhaps with a hint of uncustomary nostalgia—a nostalgia to which our visitor was now making manifest appeal.
“You were quite the heretic then,” she went on, still probing with her eyes as well as her delicately-judged words. I had no doubt at all that I would soon be packing my trunk for an expedition to the Ardèche, perhaps as early as the impending morning—which was almost upon us, now that the clock’s hands were marching toward their midnight rendezvous.
“Having no beliefs,” Dupin said, rather dully—as if he felt obliged to live up to his reputation for pedantry, although, for once, the zest was not there, “I was incapable of heresy. I still am. I question all firm-set convictions, as everyone should. How else can we ever determine our mistakes?”
There were potential double meanings in that remark, which I would have been very interested to see unraveled, but Madame Guérande was still very conscious of the hour.
“It’s late,” she said, decisively. “I really must get Sophie to bed. We need to return to our hotel. You will you come to see me there tomorrow morning, won’t you, Auguste? I would like to give you a fuller explanation of why Claude and I need your help, but that will take time, and I would prefer to do it in private. Even if you and Mr. Reynolds are nowadays inseparable, there are things that I can only say...you will come, won’t you? It’s the Hôtel Marco Polo—on the nearer end of the Rue Vaugirard, close to the junction where the Luxembourg Gardens are.”
I couldn’t help making a note to the effect that she had referred to the Gardens rather than the old Palace. Sorbonnards accustomed to walking there always did that. No one in the Latin Quarter ever felt truly qualified as an intellectual until he had acquired the
