'The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' by Edgar Allen Poe, Part Three

01The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe Part 3 My housemate in Paris, Auguste Dupin, was an interesting young man with a busy, forceful mind.

02This mind could, it seemed, look right through a man's body into his deepest soul.

03After reading in the newspaper about the terrible murder of a woman and her daughter, Dupin was consumed with the mystery.

04He questioned the ability of the Paris police to solve the crime.

05I told Dupin that it seemed to me that it was not possible to explain the strange details surrounding the killings.

06No, no, I think you are wrong.

07A mystery it is, yes.

08But there must be an answer.

09There must.

10Let us go to the house where it happened and see what we can see.

11I know the head of the police and he will permit our visit.

12It will be interesting and give us some pleasure.

13I thought it strange that Dupin thought the activity would give us pleasure, but I said nothing.

14It was late in the afternoon when we reached the house on the Rue Morgue.

15It was easily found, for there were still many persons, in fact a crowd, standing there looking at it.

16Before going in, we walked all around it, and Dupin carefully looked at the neighboring houses as well.

17I could not understand the reason for such great care.

18Finally, we entered the house.

19We went up the stairs to the room where the daughter's body was found.

20Both bodies were in the room now.

21The police had left the room as they had found it in every other way.

22I saw nothing beyond what the newspaper had told us.

23Dupin looked with great care at everything.

24At the bodies, the walls, the fireplace, the windows.

25Then we went home.

26Dupin said nothing.

27I could see the cold look in his eyes, which told me that his mind was working, working busily, quickly.

28Dupin said nothing about our exploration until the next morning, when he suddenly asked me a question.

29Did you not notice something especially strange about what we saw at the house on the Rue Morgue?

30Nothing more than what we both read in the newspaper, which was unusual indeed.

31How shall we explain the horrible force, the unusual strength used in these murders?

32And whose were the voices that were heard?

33No one was found except the dead women.

34Yet there was no way for anyone to escape.

35And the wild condition of the room, the body which was found head down in the chimney.

36The terrible broken appearance of the body of the old lady, with its head cut off.

37These are all so far from what might be expected, that the police are standing still.

38They don't know where to begin.

39These things are unusual indeed, but they are not deep mysteries.

40We should not ask what has happened, but what has happened that has never happened before.

41In fact, the very things that the police think cannot possibly be explained are the things which will lead me to the answer.

42Indeed, I believe they have already led me to the answer.

43I was so surprised that I could not say a word.

44Dupin looked quickly at the door.

45I am now waiting for a person who will know something about these murders, these wild killings.

46I do not think he did them himself, but I think he will know the killer.

47I hope I am right about this.

48If I am, then I expect to find the whole answer today.

49I expect a man here, in this room, at any moment.

50It is true that he may not come, but he probably will.

51But who is this person?

52How did you find him?

53I'll tell you.

54While we wait for this man we do not know, for I have never met him, while we wait, I will tell you how my thoughts went.

55Dupin began to talk.

56But it did not seem that he was trying to explain to me what he had thought.

57It seemed that he was talking to himself.

58He looked not at me, but at the wall.

59It has been fully proved that the voices heard by the neighbors were not the voices of the women who were killed.

60Someone else was in the room.

61It is therefore certain that the old woman did not first kill her daughter and then kill herself.

62She would not have been strong enough to put her daughter's body where it was found.

63And the manner of the old lady's death shows that she could not have caused it herself.

64A person can kill himself with a knife, yes, but he surely cannot cut his own head almost off, then drop the knife on the floor and jump out the window.

65It was murder then, done by some third person or persons.

66And the voices heard were the voices of these persons.

67Let us now think carefully about the things people said about those voices.

68Did you notice anything especially strange in what was told about them?

69Well, yes.

70Everybody agreed that the low voice was the voice of a Frenchman.

71But they could not agree about the high voice.

72Ah, that was what they said, yes.

73But that was not what was so strange about what they said.

74You say you have noticed nothing that makes their stories very different from what might have been expected.

75Yet there was something.

76All these persons, as you say, agreed about the low voice.

77But not about the high, hard voice.

78The strange thing here is that when an Italian, an Englishman, a Spaniard, and a Frenchman tried to tell what the voice was like, each one said it sounded like the voice of a foreigner.

79How strangely unusual that voice really must have been.

80Here are four men from four big countries, and not one of them could understand what the voice said.

81Each one gave it a different name.

82Now, I know that there are other countries in the world.

83You will say that perhaps it was the voice of someone from one of those other lands.

84Russia, perhaps.

85Here, Dapan turned and looked at me.

86This is what we have learned from the newspaper.

87I don't know what I have led you to think, but I believe that in this much of the story, there are enough facts to lead us in the one and only direction to the right answer.

88What this answer is, I will not say.

89Not yet.

90But I want you to keep in mind that this much was enough to tell me what I must look for when we were in that house on the Rue Morgue.

91And I found it.

92What did I first look for?

93The path of escape, of course.

94I mean, we agree the killers were not ghosts.

95They could not move through walls.

96So, how did they escape?

97At first, I saw no way out.

98It had been necessary for the neighbors to break down the door in order to enter the room.

99There was no other door.

100The opening above the fireplace is too narrow for even a child to go through.

101That leaves only the windows.

102We must make that exit somehow possible.

103Remember, there are two windows in the room.

104Both of them, you will remember, are made of two parts.

105To open the window, one must lift up the bottom half.

106One of these windows is easily seen.

107The lower part of the other is out of sight behind the big bed.

108I looked carefully at the first of these windows.

109It was firmly closed, fastened like the door on the inside.

110To keep the window closed, to fasten it, someone had put a strong iron nail into the wood at the side of the window in such a way that the window could not be raised.

111At least it seemed that the nail held the window closed.

112The nail was easy to see.

113There it was.

114There it was.

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