The Poe Shadow

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The mystery related to the strange death of Edgar Allan Poe in 1849 has been uncovered through the following pages.

I PRESENT TO YOU, Your Honor and Gentlemen of the Jury, the truth about this man's death and my life. The narrative has not been told before. Whatever has been taken away from me, one last possession remains: this story. There are those of our city today who tried to stop it. There are those sitting here among you who still believe me a criminal, a liar, an outcast, a clever, vile murderer. Me, Your Honor: Quentin Hobson Clark, citizen of Baltimore, member of the bar, a fond reader.

But this story is not about me. Please think of this, if you think of nothing else! It never was about me; ambition had never been my chosen stimulus. This was not motivated by my own fortunes among my fellow class or reputation in the eyes of higher judges. It was about something greater than I am, greater than all this, about a man by whom time will remember us though you had forgotten him before the earth settled. Somebody had to do it. We could not just keep still. I could not keep still.

All that follows will be the plain truth. And I must tell you it because I am the one nearest the truth. Or, rather, the only one still living.

It is one of life's peculiar facts that it is usually those no longer alive whose stories preserve the truth…

These statements above I scribbled in the pages of my memorandum book (the last sentence is crossed out, I notice, with "philosophical!" written in my hand beside it as critique). Before walking into that courthouse, I scribbled these words in desperate preparation to face my defamers, those who thought ruining me rescued themselves. Because I am an attorney, you may think the prospect of all this-I mean standing before a courtroom of onlookers and former friends, and two women who might love me-you might think the prospect of doing that would be fairly effortless to the experienced Baltimore attorney. Not so. To be an attorney, you must be interested above all else in the interests of others. It does not prepare a man to decide what must be saved. It does not prepare a man to save himself.