It was in Paris that I met August Dupin. He was an unusually
interesting young man with a busy,forceful mind. This mind could, it
seemed, look right through a man’sbody into his deepest soul.One hot summer morning weread in the newspapers about aterrible killing. The dead persons
were an old woman and her unmarrieddaughter, who lived alone on
the fourth floor of an old house onthe street called the Rue Morgue.
Someone had taken thedaughter’s neck in hispowerful fingers andpressed with fearful strength until her life was gone. Her mother’sbody was found outside, behind the house, with the head nearly cutoff. The knife with which she was killed was found, however, in theroom, on the floor.Several neighbors ran to the house when they heard the women’s
cries of fear. As they ran up to the fourth floor they heard two other
voices. But when they reached the room and broke down the doorthey found no living person in the room. Like the door, the two48 E d g a r A l l a n P o e
windows were firmly closed, locked on the inside. There was no other
way that the killer could have got in or out of the room.The Paris police did not know where to begin to look for theanswer. I told Dupin that it seemed to me that it was not possible tolearn the answer to the mystery of these killings. No, no, said Dupin.
“No; I think you are wrong. A mystery it is, yes. But there mustbe an answer. We must not judge what is possible just by what we haveread in the newspapers. The Paris police work hard and often get goodresults; but there is no real method in what they do. When somethingmore than simple hard work is needed, when a little real method is
needed, the police fail. Sometimes they stand too near the problem.
Often, if a person looks at something very closely he can see a fewthings more clearly, but the shape of the whole thing escapes him.“There must be an answer! There must! Let us go to the houseand see what we can see. I know the head of the police, and he will
allow us to do so. And this will be interesting and give us some pleasure.”
I thought it strange that Dupin should believe we would get pleasure
out of this. But I said nothing.It was late in the afternoon when we reached the house on theRue Morgue. It was easily found for there were still many persons — in
fact, a crowd, standing there looking at it. Before going in we walkedall around it, and Dupin carefully looked at the neighboringhouses aswell as this one. I could not understand the reason for such great care.We came again to the front of the house and went in. We wentup the stairs into the room where the daughter’s body had been
found. Both bodies were there. The police had left the room as they
had found it. I saw nothing beyond what the newspaper had told us.
Dupin looked with great care at everything,at the bodies, the walls,
the fireplace, the windows. Then we went home.Dupin said nothing. I could see the cold look in his eyes whichtold me that his mind was working, working busily, quickly. I askednoquestions.Dupin said nothing until the next morning, when he came into
my room and asked me suddenly if I had not noticed
something especiallystrange about what we saw at the house on the Rue Morgue. I
replied: “Nothing more than we both read in the newspaper.
“Tell me, my friend. How shall we explain the horrible force, the
unusual strength used in these murders? And whose were the voices
that were heard? No one was found except the dead women; yet there
was no way for anyone to escape. And the wild condition of the room;
the body which was found head down above the fireplace; the terrible
broken appearance of the body of the old lady, with its head cut off;
these are all so far from what might be expected that the police are
standing still; they don’t know where to begin.