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| The Paris morgue in 1855, where bodies found floating in the Seine were put on display so they could be identified. Through a row of windows guests could see the "salle d'exposition" where cadavers were laid out on iron tables, their clothes hung from thick iron hooks over their heads. The use of these hooks is a reminder of the building's previous incarnation as a butcher's shop. |
A SEQUEL TO “THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE.”
By Edgar Allen Poe
Editor’s note: Readers of this Poe
short story might compare it with the structure and style of the Sherlock
Holmes series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle albeit Poe wrote this half a century
before Sherlock’s remarkable debut. Poe’s lengthy introduction comes off as an
obvious precursor to Doyle’s character John Watson.
For the convenience of modern readers, this blog has
divided the work into seven daily installments.
A call from the Prefect.
A day or two before the Prefect called upon us, however, some important
information reached the police, which seemed to overthrow, at least, the chief
portion of Le Commerciel’s argument.
Two small boys, sons of a Madame Deluc, while roaming among the woods near the
Barrière du Roule, chanced to penetrate a close thicket, within which were
three or four large stones, forming a kind of seat, with a back and footstool.
On the upper stone lay a
white petticoat; on the second a silk scarf. A parasol, gloves, and a
pocket-handkerchief were also here found. The handkerchief bore the name “Marie
Rogêt.” Fragments of dress were discovered on the brambles around. The earth
was trampled, the bushes were broken, and there was every evidence of a
struggle. Between the thicket and the river, the fences were found taken down,
and the ground bore evidence of some heavy burthen having been dragged along
it.
A weekly paper, Le Soleil, had the following comments
upon this discovery—comments which merely echoed the sentiment of the whole
Parisian press:
“The things had all evidently been there at least
three or four weeks; they were all mildewed down hard with the action of the
rain and stuck together from mildew. The grass had grown around and over some
of them. The silk on the parasol was strong, but the threads of it were run
together within. The upper part, where it had been doubled and folded, was all
mildewed and rotten, and tore on its being opened..... The pieces of her frock
torn out by the bushes were about three inches wide and six inches long. One
part was the hem of the frock, and it had been mended; the other piece was part
of the skirt, not the hem. They looked like strips torn off, and were on the
thorn bush, about a foot from the ground..... There can be no doubt, therefore,
that the spot of this appalling outrage has been discovered.”
Consequent upon this
discovery, new evidence appeared. Madame Deluc testified that she keeps a
roadside inn not far from the bank of the river, opposite the Barrière du
Roule. The neighborhood is secluded—particularly so. It is the usual Sunday
resort of blackguards from the city, who cross the river in boats. About three
o’clock, in the afternoon of the Sunday in question, a young girl arrived at
the inn, accompanied by a young man of dark complexion. The two remained here
for some time. On their departure, they took the road to some thick woods in
the vicinity. Madame Deluc’s attention was called to the dress worn by the girl,
on account of its resemblance to one worn by a deceased relative. A scarf was
particularly noticed. Soon after the departure of the couple, a gang of
miscreants made their appearance, behaved boisterously, ate and drank without
making payment, followed in the route of the young man and girl, returned to
the inn about dusk, and re-crossed the river as if in great haste.
It was soon after dark,
upon this same evening, that Madame Deluc, as well as her eldest son, heard the
screams of a female in the vicinity of the inn. The screams were violent but
brief. Madame D. recognized not only the scarf which was found in the thicket,
but the dress which was discovered upon the corpse. An omnibus driver, Valence,
now also testified that he saw Marie Rogêt cross a ferry on the Seine, on the
Sunday in question, in company with a young man of dark complexion.
He, Valence, knew Marie,
and could not be mistaken in her identity. The articles found in the thicket
were fully identified by the relatives of Marie.
The items of evidence and
information thus collected by myself, from the newspapers, at the suggestion of
Dupin, embraced only one more point—but this was a point of seemingly vast
consequence. It appears that, immediately after the discovery of the clothes as
above described, the lifeless, or nearly lifeless body of St. Eustache, Marie’s
betrothed, was found in the vicinity of what all now supposed the scene of the
outrage.
A phial labeled “laudanum,”
and emptied, was found near him. His breath gave evidence of the poison. He
died without speaking. Upon his person was found a letter, briefly stating his
love for Marie, with his design of self-destruction.
Dupin’s analysis.
“I need scarcely tell you,” said Dupin, as he finished
the perusal of my notes, “that this is a far more intricate case than that of
the Rue Morgue; from which it differs in one important respect. This is an
ordinary, although an atrocious instance of crime.
There is nothing peculiarly
outré about it. You will observe that, for this reason, the mystery has been
considered easy, when, for this reason, it should have been considered
difficult, of solution. Thus; at first, it was thought unnecessary to offer a
reward. The myrmidons of G—— were able at once to comprehend how and why such
an atrocity might have been committed. They could picture to their imaginations
a mode—many modes—and a motive—many motives; and because it was not impossible
that either of these numerous modes and motives could have been the actual one,
they have taken it for granted that one of them must.
But the case with which
these variable fancies were entertained, and the very plausibility which each
assumed, should have been understood as indicative rather of the difficulties
than of the facilities which must attend elucidation. I have before observed
that it is by prominences above the plane of the ordinary, that reason feels
her way, if at all, in her search for the true, and that the proper question in
cases such as this, is not so much ‘what has occurred?’ as ‘what has occurred
that has never occurred before?’ In the investigations at the house of Madame
L’Espanaye, the agents of G—— were discouraged and confounded by that very
unusualness which, to a properly regulated intellect, would have afforded the
surest omen of success; while this same intellect might have been plunged in
despair at the ordinary character of all that met the eye in the case of the
perfumery-girl, and yet told of nothing but easy triumph to the functionaries
of the Prefecture.
“In the case of Madame L’Espanaye
and her daughter there was, even at the beginning of our investigation, no
doubt that murder had been committed. The idea of suicide was excluded at once.
Here, too, we are freed, at the commencement, from all supposition of
self-murder. The body found at the Barrière du Roule, was found under such
circumstances as to leave us no room for embarrassment upon this important
point.
But it has been suggested
that the corpse discovered, is not that of the Marie Rogêt for the conviction
of whose assassin, or assassins, the reward is offered, and respecting whom,
solely, our agreement has been arranged with the Prefect. We both know this
gentleman well. It will not do to trust him too far. If, dating our inquiries
from the body found, and thence tracing a murderer, we yet discover this body
to be that of some other individual than Marie; or, if starting from the living
Marie, we find her, yet find her unassassinated—in either case we lose our
labor; since it is Monsieur G—— with whom we have to deal. For our own purpose,
therefore, if not for the purpose of justice, it is indispensable that our
first step should be the determination of the identity of the corpse with the
Marie Rogêt who is missing.
“With the public the
arguments of L’Etoile have had weight; and that the journal itself is convinced
of their importance would appear from the manner in which it commences one of
its essays upon the subject—‘Several of the morning papers of the day,’ it
says, ‘speak of the conclusive article in Monday’s Etoile.’ To me, this article
appears conclusive of little beyond the zeal of its inditer. We should bear in
mind that, in general, it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a
sensation—to make a point—than to further the cause of truth. The latter end is
only pursued when it seems coincident with the former. The print which merely
falls in with ordinary opinion (however well founded this opinion may be) earns
for itself no credit with the mob. The mass of the people regard as profound
only him who suggests pungent contradictions of the general idea. In
ratiocination, not less than in literature, it is the epigram which is the most
immediately and the most universally appreciated. In both, it is of the lowest
order of merit.
“What I mean to say is,
that it is the mingled epigram and melodrame of the idea, that Marie Rogêt
still lives, rather than any true plausibility in this idea, which have
suggested it to L’Etoile, and secured it a favorable reception with the public.
Let us examine the heads of this journal’s argument; endeavoring to avoid the
incoherence with which it is originally set forth.
“The first aim of the
writer is to show, from the brevity of the interval between Marie’s
disappearance and the finding of the floating corpse, that this corpse cannot
be that of Marie. The reduction of this interval to its smallest possible
dimension, becomes thus, at once, an object with the reasoner. In the rash
pursuit of this object, he rushes into mere assumption at the outset. ‘It is
folly to suppose,’ he says, ‘that the murder, if murder was committed on her
body, could have been consummated soon enough to have enabled her murderers to
throw the body into the river before midnight.’ We demand at once, and very
naturally, why? Why is it folly to suppose that the murder was committed within
five minutes after the girl’s quitting her mother’s house? Why is it folly to
suppose that the murder was committed at any given period of the day? There
have been assassinations at all hours. But, had the murder taken place at any
moment between nine o’clock in the morning of Sunday, and a quarter before
midnight, there would still have been time enough ‘to throw the body into the
river before midnight.’
This assumption, then,
amounts precisely to this—that the murder was not committed on Sunday at
all—and, if we allow L’Etoile to assume this, we may permit it any liberties
whatever. The paragraph beginning ‘It is folly to suppose that the murder,
etc.,’ however it appears as printed in L’Etoile, may be imagined to have existed
actually thus in the brain of its inditer—‘It is folly to suppose that the
murder, if murder was committed on the body, could have been committed soon
enough to have enabled her murderers to throw the body into the river before
midnight; it is folly, we say, to suppose all this, and to suppose at the same
time, (as we are resolved to suppose,) that the body was not thrown in until
after midnight’—a sentence sufficiently inconsequential in itself, but not so
utterly preposterous as the one printed.
“Were it my purpose,”
continued Dupin, “merely to make out a case against this passage of L’Etoile’s
argument, I might safely leave it where it is. It is not, however, with
L’Etoile that we have to do, but with the truth. The sentence in question has
but one meaning, as it stands; and this meaning I have fairly stated: but it is
material that we go behind the mere words, for an idea which these words have
obviously intended, and failed to convey. It was the design of the journalist
to say that, at whatever period of the day or night of Sunday this murder was
committed, it was improbable that the assassins would have ventured to bear the
corpse to the river before midnight. And herein lies, really, the assumption of
which I complain.
It is assumed that the murder
was committed at such a position, and under such circumstances, that the
bearing it to the river became necessary. Now, the assassination might have
taken place upon the river’s brink, or on the river itself; and, thus, the
throwing the corpse in the water might have been resorted to, at any period of
the day or night, as the most obvious and most immediate mode of disposal.
You will understand that I
suggest nothing here as probable, or as cöincident with my own opinion. My
design, so far, has no reference to the facts of the case. I wish merely to
caution you against the whole tone of L’Etoile’s suggestion, by calling your
attention to its ex parte character at the outset.
Tomorrow: Part 4
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