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.
Matter of elopement
Let us admit the first elopement to have resulted in a quarrel between
the lovers, and the return home of the betrayed. We are now prepared to view a
second elopement (if we know that an elopement has again taken place) as
indicating a renewal of the betrayer’s advances, rather than as the result of
new proposals by a second individual—we are prepared to regard it as a ‘making
up’ of the old amour, rather than as the commencement of a new one.
The chances are ten to one,
that he who had once eloped with Marie, would again propose an elopement,
rather than that she to whom proposals of elopement had been made by one
individual, should have them made to her by another. And here let me call your
attention to the fact that the time elapsing between the first ascertained, and
the second supposed elopement, is a few months more than the general period of
the cruises of our men-of-war. Had the lover been interrupted in his first villainy
by the necessity of departure to sea, and had he seized the first moment of his
return to renew the base designs not yet altogether accomplished—or not yet
altogether accomplished by him?
Of all these things we know
nothing.
“You will say, however,
that, in the second instance, there was no elopement as imagined. Certainly
not—but are we prepared to say that there was not the frustrated design? Beyond
St. Eustache, and perhaps Beauvais, we find no recognized, no open, no honorable
suitors of Marie. Of none other is there any thing said. Who, then, is the
secret lover, of whom the relatives (at least most of them) know nothing, but
whom Marie meets upon the morning of Sunday, and who is so deeply in her
confidence, that she hesitates not to remain with him until the shades of the
evening descend, amid the solitary groves of the Barrière du Roule? Who is that
secret lover, I ask, of whom, at least, most of the relatives know nothing? And
what means the singular prophecy of Madame Rogêt on the morning of Marie’s
departure?—‘I fear that I shall never see Marie again.’
“But if we cannot imagine
Madame Rogêt privy to the design of elopement, may we not at least suppose this
design entertained by the girl? Upon quitting home, she gave it to be
understood that she was about to visit her aunt in the Rue des Drâmes and St.
Eustache was requested to call for her at dark. Now, at first glance, this fact
strongly militates against my suggestion;—but let us reflect. That she did meet
some companion, and proceed with him across the river, reaching the Barrière du
Roule at so late an hour as three o’clock in the afternoon, is known. But in
consenting so to accompany this individual, (for whatever purpose—to her mother
known or unknown,) she must have thought of her expressed intention when
leaving home, and of the surprise and suspicion aroused in the bosom of her
affianced suitor, St. Eustache, when, calling for her, at the hour appointed,
in the Rue des Drâmes, he should find that she had not been there, and when,
moreover, upon returning to the pension with this alarming intelligence, he
should become aware of her continued absence from home. She must have thought
of these things, I say. She must have foreseen the chagrin of St. Eustache, the
suspicion of all. She could not have thought of returning to brave this
suspicion; but the suspicion becomes a point of trivial importance to her, if
we suppose her not intending to return.
“We may imagine her
thinking thus—‘I am to meet a certain person for the purpose of elopement, or
for certain other purposes known only to myself. It is necessary that there be
no chance of interruption—there must be sufficient time given us to elude
pursuit—I will give it to be understood that I shall visit and spend the day
with my aunt at the Rue des Drâmes—I well tell St. Eustache not to call for me
until dark—in this way, my absence from home for the longest possible period,
without causing suspicion or anxiety, will be accounted for, and I shall gain
more time than in any other manner.
If I bid St. Eustache call
for me at dark, he will be sure not to call before; but, if I wholly neglect to
bid him call, my time for escape will be diminished, since it will be expected
that I return the earlier, and my absence will the sooner excite anxiety. Now,
if it were my design to return at all—if I had in contemplation merely a stroll
with the individual in question—it would not be my policy to bid St. Eustache
call; for, calling, he will be sure to ascertain that I have played him false—a
fact of which I might keep him for ever in ignorance, by leaving home without
notifying him of my intention, by returning before dark, and by then stating
that I had been to visit my aunt in the Rue des Drâmes.
But, as it is my design
never to return—or not for some weeks—or not until certain concealments are
effected—the gaining of time is the only point about which I need give myself
any concern.’
“You have observed, in your
notes, that the most general opinion in relation to this sad affair is, and was
from the first, that the girl had been the victim of a gang of blackguards.
Now, the popular opinion, under certain conditions, is not to be disregarded.
When arising of itself—when manifesting itself in a strictly spontaneous
manner—we should look upon it as analogous with that intuition which is the
idiosyncrasy of the individual man of genius. In 99 cases from the hundred I
would abide by its decision. But it is important that we find no palpable
traces of suggestion.
The opinion must be
rigorously the public’s own; and the distinction is often exceedingly difficult
to perceive and to maintain. In the present instance, it appears to me that
this ‘public opinion’ in respect to a gang, has been super induced by the
collateral event which is detailed in the third of my extracts.
All Paris is intent on the
discovered corpse of Marie, a girl young, beautiful and notorious. This corpse
is found, bearing marks of violence, and floating in the river. But it is now
made known that, at the very period, or about the very period, in which it is
supposed that the girl was assassinated, an outrage similar in nature to that
endured by the deceased, although less in extent, was perpetuated, by a gang of
young ruffians, upon the person of a second young female. Is it wonderful that
the one known atrocity should influence the popular judgment in regard to the
other unknown? This judgment awaited direction, and the known outrage seemed so
opportunely to afford it!
Marie, too, was found in
the river; and upon this very river was this known outrage committed. The
connexion of the two events had about it so much of the palpable, that the true
wonder would have been a failure of the populace to appreciate and to seize it.
But, in fact, the one atrocity, known to be so committed, is, if any thing,
evidence that the other, committed at a time nearly coincident, was not so
committed. It would have been a miracle indeed, if, while a gang of ruffians
were perpetrating, at a given locality, a most unheard-of wrong, there should
have been another similar gang, in a similar locality, in the same city, under
the same circumstances, with the same means and appliances, engaged in a wrong
of precisely the same aspect, at precisely the same period of time!
Yet in what, if not in this
marvelous train of coincidence, does the accidentally suggested opinion of the
populace call upon us to believe?
Scene of the crime
“Before proceeding farther,
let us consider the supposed scene of the assassination, in the thicket at the
Barrière du Roule. This thicket, although dense, was in the close vicinity of a
public road. Within were three or four large stones, forming a kind of seat
with a back and footstool. On the upper stone was discovered 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 seen on the branches around. The earth was trampled, the bushes were
broken, and there was every evidence of a violent struggle.
“Notwithstanding the
acclamation with which the discovery of this thicket was received by the press,
and the unanimity with which it was supposed to indicate the precise scene of
the outrage, it must be admitted that there was some very good reason for
doubt. That it was the scene, I may or I may not believe—but there was
excellent reason for doubt. Had the true scene been, as Le Commerciel
suggested, in the neighborhood of the Rue Pavée St. Andrée, the perpetrators of
the crime, supposing them still resident in Paris, would naturally have been
stricken with terror at the public attention thus acutely directed into the
proper channel; and, in certain classes of minds, there would have arisen, at
once, a sense of the necessity of some exertion to redivert this attention.
And thus, the thicket of
the Barrière du Roule having been already suspected, the idea of placing the
articles where they were found, might have been naturally entertained. There is
no real evidence, although Le Soleil so supposes, that the articles discovered
had been more than a very few days in the thicket; while there is much
circumstantial proof that they could not have remained there, without
attracting attention, during the 20 days elapsing between the fatal Sunday and
the afternoon upon which they were found by the boys. ‘They were all mildewed
down hard,’ says Le Soleil, adopting the opinions of its predecessors, ‘with
the action of the rain, and stuck together from mildew. The grass had grown
around and over some of them. The silk of 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 being
opened.’ In respect to the grass having ‘grown around and over some of them,’
it is obvious that the fact could only have been ascertained from the words,
and thus from the recollections, of two small boys; for these boys removed the
articles and took them home before they had been seen by a third party. But
grass will grow, especially in warm and damp weather, (such as was that of the
period of the murder,) as much as two or three inches in a single day. A
parasol lying upon a newly turfed ground, might, in a single week, be entirely
concealed from sight by the upspringing grass. And touching that mildew upon
which the editor of Le Soleil so pertinaciously insists, that he employs the
word no less than three times in the brief paragraph just quoted, is he really
unaware of the nature of this mildew? Is he to be told that it is one of the
many classes of fungus, of which the most ordinary feature is its upspringing
and decadence within twenty-four hours?
“Thus we see, at a glance,
that what has been most triumphantly adduced in support of the idea that the
articles had been ‘for at least three or four weeks’ in the thicket, is most
absurdly null as regards any evidence of that fact. On the other hand, it is
exceedingly difficult to believe that these articles could have remained in the
thicket specified, for a longer period than a single week—for a longer period
than from one Sunday to the next. Those who know any thing of the vicinity of
Paris, know the extreme difficulty of finding seclusion unless at a great
distance from its suburbs. Such a thing as an unexplored, or even an infrequently
visited recess, amid its woods or groves, is not for a moment to be imagined.
Let any one who, being at heart a lover of nature, is yet chained by duty to
the dust and heat of this great metropolis—let any such one attempt, even
during the weekdays, to slake his thirst for solitude amid the scenes of
natural loveliness which immediately surround us. At every second step, he will
find the growing charm dispelled by the voice and personal intrusion of some
ruffian or party of carousing blackguards. He will seek privacy amid the
densest foliage, all in vain.
Here are the very nooks
where the unwashed most abound—here are the temples most desecrate. With
sickness of the heart the wanderer will flee back to the polluted Paris as to a
less odious because less incongruous sink of pollution. But if the vicinity of
the city is so beset during the working days of the week, how much more so on
the Sabbath! It is now especially that, released from the claims of labor, or
deprived of the customary opportunities of crime, the town blackguard seeks the
precincts of the town, not through love of the rural, which in his heart he
despises, but by way of escape from the restraints and conventionalities of
society.
He desires less the fresh
air and the green trees, than the utter license of the country. Here, at the
roadside inn, or beneath the foliage of the woods, he indulges, unchecked by
any eye except those of his boon companions, in all the mad excess of a
counterfeit hilarity—the joint offspring of liberty and of rum. I say nothing
more than what must be obvious to every dispassionate observer, when I repeat
that the circumstance of the articles in question having remained undiscovered,
for a longer period—than from one Sunday to another, in any thicket in the
immediate neighborhood of Paris, is to be looked upon as little less than
miraculous.
“But there are not wanting
other grounds for the suspicion that the articles were placed in the thicket
with the view of diverting attention from the real scene of the outrage. And,
first, let me direct your notice to the date of the discovery of the articles.
Collate this with the date of the fifth extract made by myself from the
newspapers. You will find that the discovery followed, almost immediately, the
urgent communications sent to the evening paper. These communications, although
various and apparently from various sources, tended all to the same point—viz.,
the directing of attention to a gang as the perpetrators of the outrage, and to
the neighborhood of the Barrière du Roule as its scene.
Now here, of course, the
suspicion is not that, in consequence of these communications, or of the public
attention by them directed, the articles were found by the boys; but the
suspicion might and may well have been, that the articles were not before found
by the boys, for the reason that the articles had not before been in the
thicket; having been deposited there only at so late a period as at the date,
or shortly prior to the date of the communications by the guilty authors of
these communications themselves.
“This thicket was a
singular—an exceedingly singular one. It was unusually dense. Within its
naturally walled enclosure were three extraordinary stones, forming a seat with
a back and footstool. And this thicket, so full of a natural art, was in the
immediate vicinity, within a few rods, of the dwelling of Madame Deluc, whose
boys were in the habit of closely examining the shrubberies about them in
search of the bark of the sassafras. Would it be a rash wager—a wager of one
thousand to one—that a day never passed over the heads of these boys without
finding at least one of them ensconced in the umbrageous hall, and enthroned
upon its natural throne? Those who would hesitate at such a wager, have either
never been boys themselves, or have forgotten the boyish nature.
I repeat—it is exceedingly
hard to comprehend how the articles could have remained in this thicket
undiscovered, for a longer period than one or two days; and that thus there is
good ground for suspicion, in spite of the dogmatic ignorance of Le Soleil,
that they were, at a comparatively late date, deposited where found.
“But there are still other
and stronger reasons for believing them so deposited, than any which I have as
yet urged.
And, now, let me beg your
notice to the highly artificial arrangement of the articles. On the upper stone
lay a white petticoat; on the second a silk scarf; scattered around, were a
parasol, gloves, and a pocket-handkerchief bearing the name, ‘Marie Rogêt.’
Here is just such an arrangement as would naturally be made by a not over-acute
person wishing to dispose the articles naturally. But it is by no means a
really natural arrangement. I should rather have looked to see the things all
lying on the ground and trampled under foot. In the narrow limits of that
bower, it would have been scarcely possible that the petticoat and scarf should
have retained a position upon the stones, when subjected to the brushing to and
fro of many struggling persons. ‘There was evidence,’ it is said, ‘of a
struggle; and the earth was trampled, the bushes were broken,’—but the
petticoat and the scarf are found deposited as if upon shelves. ‘The pieces of
the 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. They looked
like strips torn off.’
Here, inadvertently, Le
Soleil has employed an exceedingly suspicious phrase. The pieces, as described,
do indeed ‘look like strips torn off;’ but purposely and by hand. It is one of
the rarest of accidents that a piece is ‘torn off,’ from any garment such as is
now in question, by the agency of a thorn. From the very nature of such
fabrics, a thorn or nail becoming entangled in them, tears them
rectangularly—divides them into two longitudinal rents, at right angles with
each other, and meeting at an apex where the thorn enters—but it is scarcely
possible to conceive the piece ‘torn off.’ I never so knew it, nor did you. To
tear a piece off from such fabric, two distinct forces, in different
directions, will be, in almost every case, required. If there be two edges to
the fabric—if, for example, it be a pocket-handkerchief, and it is desired to
tear from it a slip, then, and then only, will the one force serve the purpose.
But in the present case the question is of a dress, presenting but one edge. To
tear a piece from the interior, where no edge is presented, could only be
effected by a miracle through the agency of thorns, and no one thorn could
accomplish it. But, even where an edge is presented, two thorns will be
necessary, operating, the one in two distinct directions, and the other in one.
And this in the supposition
that the edge is unhemmed. If hemmed, the matter is nearly out of the question.
We thus see the numerous and great obstacles in the way of pieces being ‘torn
off’ through the simple agency of ‘thorns;’ yet we are required to believe not only
that one piece but that many have been so torn. ‘And one part,’ too, ‘was the
hem of the frock!’
Another piece was ‘part of
the skirt, not the hem,’—that is to say, was torn completely out through the
agency of thorns, from the uncaged interior of the dress! These, I say, are
things which one may well be pardoned for disbelieving; yet, taken collectedly,
they form, perhaps, less of reasonable ground for suspicion, than the one
startling circumstance of the articles’ having been left in this thicket at all,
by any murderers who had enough precaution to think of removing the corpse. You
will not have apprehended me rightly, however, if you suppose it my design to
deny this thicket as the scene of the outrage.
There might have been a
wrong here, or, more possibly, an accident at Madame Deluc’s. But, in fact,
this is a point of minor importance. We are not engaged in an attempt to
discover the scene, but to produce the perpetrators of the murder. What I have
adduced, notwithstanding the minuteness with which I have adduced it, has been
with the view, first, to show the folly of the positive and headlong assertions
of Le Soleil, but secondly and chiefly, to bring you, by the most natural
route, to a further contemplation of the doubt whether this assassination has,
or has not been, the work of a gang.
“We will resume this
question by mere allusion to the revolting details of the surgeon examined at
the inquest. It is only necessary to say that his published inferences, in
regard to the number of ruffians, have been properly ridiculed as unjust and
totally baseless, by all the reputable anatomists of Paris. Not that the matter
might not have been as inferred, but that there was no ground for the
inference:—was there not much for another?
Tomorrow: Part 7
-->
No comments:
Post a Comment