Edgar Allan Poe and the London Monster by Karen Lee Street Page B

altered as well, harsher characters predominating over more orderly folk. The effects of the light brought individual faces into focus if only for a moment and in that instant I felt that I grasped the history of each character caught in the shimmering glare, that I had assumed Dupin’s uncanny ability to read a person’s most private secrets.
    â€œPoe?”
    â€œYou have studied the letters. Would you so easily admit that those who supposedly wrote them were the parents of your beloved mother?”
    Dupin appraised me coolly. “You are right to say ‘supposedly’. We have only just begun our investigation and still have not ascertained whether the letters were truly written by the Arnolds. But we will make no progress if we deceive each other. Truth must prevail between us or there is no reason to pursue this case together. You forget, my friend, how well I know you.”
    He was right, of course, but I could not bring myself to say so and simply nodded.
    â€œWe may then agree the following facts: Elizabeth and Henry Arnold genuinely existed and are not figments of a hoaxer’s imagination, although their letters might be; they were your maternal grandparents; and they were married twice in 1784.”
    â€œTwice?”
    â€œYes. First they eloped on the seventeenth of April and then they were married at the Parish church of St. George, Hanover Square. I took the liberty of copying the announcement from The Morning Post . The marriage occurred on the eighteenth of May 1784.”
    I gave the paper a perfunctory glance for I had no doubt that Dupin had copied the notice precisely. “But why?” I muttered.
    â€œYou are missing the obvious hidden in plain sight. Elizabeth Smith and Henry Arnold eloped to Gretna Green. This caused a scandal. Mr. Smith was a man of substantial means and good social standing. It was less damaging to his status if the runaway couple were married in a church after the elopement. The marriage would appear sanctioned and the scandal quelled. Of course this would not prevent Mr. Smith from disowning his daughter.”
    Dupin’s explanation was plausible. “And so, cut off from her father’s support, my grandmother began her precarious life as an actress on the stage, a life repeated by my mother in America. I am doubly cursed with the affliction of penury if my grandmother was also denied a comfortable life that I might have inherited.”
    Dupin shrugged. “It would seem that your grandmother chose love over money. Whether an honorable or foolish choice is not yet clear, but you might perhaps take comfort in her idealism.”
    â€œBut you believe my grandfather was less idealistic?” I said as the thought came to me.
    Dupin shrugged again. “Certainly his handwriting gives no indication of idealism, and he had far more to gain financially from their marriage than she did. Indeed, he seemed to think Elizabeth’s father would forgive her idealism and welcome her husband into the family fold, despite his lower social standing.”
    â€œAre you saying he duped her?”
    â€œDuped? No. But her social position may have made her more attractive to him, which is not so different to her father hoping she would find the wealthy banker who was twenty years her senior attractive enough to marry. But the important issue is this: Elizabeth and Henry Arnold existed. Did they pen the letters in your possession and commit the crimes outlined within them? Perhaps.”
    â€œAnd perhaps not,” I added quickly. “They were actors after all. Let us imagine they did write the letters. The contents might be an elaborate fantasy.”
    â€œIt is possible,” Dupin admitted. “We must ascertain the truth. And we must also discover who is sending Elizabeth and Henry Arnold’s letters to you, and how they came to possess those letters.”
    I knew Dupin was trying to help, but his dispassionate words distressed me.