Читать книгу Journey to the Core of Creation - Brian Stableford - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

DUPIN SURPRISED

By 1847 I had already seen Auguste Dupin confronted with some exceedingly strange things—things far stranger than I had once been able to imagine—without flinching, or even condescending to seem surprised. I had never, in all the years of our acquaintance, seen him look “thunderstruck” or “flabbergasted”—but those were the two words than came into my mind when I saw his eyes settle upon Julie Guérande as he opened the door of my sitting room that evening.

Perhaps I am exaggerating, and my own anticipation had added more than its fair measure to what I saw—briefly, it had to be admitted—but I remain convinced of the impression. Dupin was more disconcerted by seeing that old acquaintance of his student days than he had been when he had looked through a window between the dimensions and had seen the Crawling Chaos on the threshold of invading our sector of the Universe.

As I said, the effect was brief. It only took a few seconds for his gaze to register the sight, take account of the shock and repress the overt reaction of astonishment. Then he glanced in another direction—toward the sleeping girl—for a slightly longer interval, collecting himself all the while.

Finally, he bowed politely, and said: “I see that we have visitors. Forgive my startlement, Madame Guérande—I’m a little tired, having spent the last three hours racking my brains over a strange puzzle.”

“How is Lucien?” the lady inquired. “I haven’t seen him since the day when I last saw you, at the Messageries—although news of his good fortune has reached us, even in the Ardèche. Prefect of the Parisian Police!” Her tone was slightly unsteady now, and she was obviously nervous, although she had been quite self-composed a few moments earlier.

I poured the dregs from the wine-bottle into a spare glass and handed it to Dupin. Madame Bihan appeared, as if by magic, carrying another bottle, already uncorked, and set it down. She it was, I think, who indicated to Dupin with her eyes that he would be welcome to slice some cheese from any of the fragments she had brought. I had assumed that he would not want any, and was mildly surprised to see him pick up the cheese-knife. I suppose that he wanted some task with which to be busy, other than drinking wine—and perhaps some reason for prevarication, in order to get his thoughts in order, even before answering a question as innocuous as the one she had asked.

I hastened to get up and move my chair in order to make room around the hearth for a fourth. Madame Bihan stirred up the fire and used the tongs to place two more small logs on it—but Dupin did not sit down immediately. He began murmuring as he cut himself a slice of cheese and picked it up, but suddenly seemed to realize that he was speaking too softly, and raised his voice lightly, in order to make himself heard without running overmuch risk of waking the child.

“Monsieur Groix is very well, considering,” he said, before taking a bite of the cheese—a Saint-Paulin, I think. Then he stopped in order to chew.

Neither I nor Madame Guérande had to ask “considering what?” Revolution was in the air, and the political division of the various police forces of which Lucian Groix was in nominal control—a division with which Dupin remained scrupulously uninvolved—was extremely busy detecting plots against the regime and filling the prisons with dissidents.

When Dupin has finally swallowed, he did not have to hurry in order to add: “Is this your daughter, Madame?”

“It is,” the lady confirmed. “Her name is Sophie. She’s twelve years old. I’d introduce you properly, but the journey has tired her out, as you can see.”

“My friend has introduced himself, I suppose?”

“Oh yes—Mr. Reynolds and I are the best of friends already.”

A slight shadow seemed to pass over Dupin’s face as she said that, but I could not believe that it was jealousy. It was more likely to be anxiety, caused by not knowing what Julie Guérande might have told me while we were waiting for him to return.

“And how is Monsieur Guérande?”

“Claude is not so well, I fear,” the lady countered. She seemed to have tired of the forced conventional manner of conversation, and wasted no further time. “That, as you will undoubtedly have deduced, is why I am here. I’m sorry that I did not write to warn you that I was coming, but I had left it too late. I kept hoping that the winter would cool the fever that overwork brought upon Claude last year, but instead, his impatience has become corrosive. I hoped too, that spring might bring an amelioration, but it has not. Now, on top of everything, vague threats are being made of legal action against him—entirely unnecessarily—and that seems to have brought his anxiety to boiling point. He needs a calming influence, Auguste, and I cannot provide it.”

Dupin feigned puzzlement. “I’m not a lawyer, Madame Guérande,” he said. “If and when I lend assistance to the Prefecture, it is in the capacity of a logician.”

The lady had barely restrained herself from cutting him off in mid-sentence. “The legal issues are a mere irritant,” she said. “The last straw, so to speak. What is crucially at stake, in Claude’s eyes, is the research that he has been carrying out in the caves close to the house he inherited from his father—with or without proper legal authority. It is in that respect, I believe, that he needs an understanding ear and some wise advice. I wish that he would trust me sufficiently to discuss the matter with me—but he does not consider that I was a true member of my father’s salon, and the older members of the clique are all dead. Lucien is not the only one to have put such matters behind him, but even if there were veterans of the salon still in the heart of the Sorbonne...you will understand well enough, Auguste, why I thought of you....”

“You want me to renew my friendship with your husband,” Dupin stated, in a tone so neutral as to seem quite dead.

“More than that, I fear,” the lady replied. “The matter is urgent. Now that the spring has come, the caves will become accessible again—and they will return in a matter of days....”

This time, her hesitation was very obviously planned for effect. She was being deliberately tantalizing. She might not have seen him for twenty years and more, but she knew her man. She knew how to manipulate Auguste Dupin, even—perhaps especially—when he was in an atypically refractory mood.

“They?” Dupin queried.

“The Thierachians,” she supplied, ready to follow up once he had taken the bait—but only so far.

Dupin condescended to arch an eyebrow. Then he moved around the armchair that I had positioned for him, between my own and the lady’s, and sat down.

He put his wine-glass down on the occasional table, and then looked up at me, as if to remind me that I was still standing. I sat down too. I understood the symbolism of the gesture; he was accepting his part in the drama that the lady had scripted, agreeing to take an interest in her problem—not because he had once been a close friend of her husband’s, and perhaps an admirer of hers, but because she had mentioned something odd, something intriguing, something strange.

“Given that you spoke of their returning,” Dupin said, “I take it that you mean Thierachian in the specialized sense, rather than the people resident in the vicinity of the city of Guise. You’re referring to the nomads who are sometimes known by that name?”

“Yes,” said Madame Guérande. “Bohemians, the locals also call them, or even Romani—but all the labels are incorrect, in a deeper sense than the one that merely attributes them a false geographical origin.”

Dupin nodded, approving of the pedantry—which had, indeed, caused her to sound, just for a moment, exactly like him. “And how has Monsieur Guérande contrived to irritate the so-called Thierachians?” he asked, mildly. “They normally keep very much to themselves, even more so than the Romani.”

“I can’t explain that here and now,” the lady replied, still deliberately tantalizing. “It would take too long, and it’s very late. As you can see, poor Sophie needs to be put to bed, and I’m very tired myself. I need a clear head in order to give you a full explanation. Will you come to my hotel tomorrow...alone?”

I did not take offence at the final word. I could think of any number of reasons why the lady might want to talk to Dupin without a third party being present—even one that she had already identified as a friend

Dupin glanced at the little girl as mention was made of her, but then his gaze was suddenly caught by the book on the lady’s lap, which a movement of her left arm—deliberate or accidental—had only just revealed. “I shall very pleased to make your daughter’s acquaintance when she wakes up,” he murmured, with deliberate irrelevance, before his tone sharpened. “That, if I’m not mistaken, is the copy of Telliamed you once gave me. You must have keen eyes, to have seen it on my friend’s shelves in this weak light. Has he explained to you how it comes to be there?”

“Your friend has explained that you count it among your less precious books, which you keep here because your apartment has become overcrowded with others dearer to your heart.”

I wanted to protest but did not dare.

Dupin did not even glance at me. “I can assure you that any diminution of the importance I once attributed to it is due entirely to its censorious editing,” he said, evenly. “I have since acquired copies of the remainder of the text, which was omitted even from the third posthumous edition, and of the marginalia attached to the manuscript 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 habit of walking and reading the Gardens on sunny days—and it was one of the few places in Paris where women from all levels of society came and went freely, sometimes without chaperons. The Gardens played a key role in almost all student love-affairs.

“Of course I’ll come,” Dupin answered, thus making a firmer promise by far than the one he had made to me when he had promised to return in two hours, at the most. “Madame Lacuzon would never forgive me if I did not, and I dare not risk upsetting her, now that she is so vital to my peaceful existence.”

The joke, if it was one, fell flat. Madame Guérande rose to her feet and leaned over to shake her daughter awake.

“I’ll send Bihan to get you a cab,” I said. “You must not step outdoors until it’s as close to the door as it can get. The weather seems mild enough, but that’s when the danger of catching chills is at its maximum. I shall lend you an umbrella—you should not be abroad in Paris at this time of year without one”

“Thank you, Mr. Reynolds,” she said.

It took Bihan a full fifteen minutes to find a fiacre and bring it to the front door of the house, but Madame Guérande had said all she had to say for the time being. She thanked me effusively for my hospitality, and apologized almost as effusively for having disturbed me. She instructed Sophie to thank me too, which the little girl did, mechanically. When she left, the lady shook my hand, as the French always seem to feel obliged to do when they bid farewell to an American, but she only nodded her head to Dupin—who replied to the gesture with a formal bow.