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.