Edgar Allan Poe

"The Mystery of Marie Rogêt", often subtitled A Sequel to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe written in 1842. This is the first murder mystery based on the details of a real crime. It first appeared in Snowden's Ladies' Companion in three installments, November and December 1842 and February 1843. Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination". Poe's detective character C. Auguste Dupin and his assistant, the unnamed narrator, undertake the unsolved murder of Marie Rogêt in Paris. The body of Rogêt, a perfume shop employee, is found in the Seine, and the press takes a keen interest in the mystery. Dupin remarks that the newspapers "create a sensation ... [rather] than to further the cause of truth". Even so, he uses the newspaper reports to get into the mind of the murderer.

Dupin rejects the popular theory blaming the murder on a gang of ruffians seen in the area around the time of Rogêt's disappearance. One of such a group, he reasons, would have certainly confessed to the crime due to fear of betrayal rather than a bothered conscience.

Using the known facts in the case, Dupin further determines that a single murderer was involved. This person was probably a sailor, and dragged the victim by the cloth belt around her waist at first, then switched to a cloth around her neck, before dumping the body off a boat into the river. Finding the boat, Dupin suggests, will lead the police to the murderer. An "editor's note" states that it would be inappropriate to relate details of what followed, but that the police did apprehend the true murderer with the help of Dupin's deductions.

Bob Neufeld

philip chenevert

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

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