“I am now awaiting,” continued he, looking toward the door of our
apartment—“I am now awaiting a person who, although perhaps not
the perpetrator of these butcheries, must have been in some
measure implicated in their perpetration. Of the worst portion of
the crimes committed, it is probable that he is innocent. I hope
that I am right in this supposition; for upon it I build my
expectation of reading the entire riddle. I look for the man
here—in this room—every moment. It is true that he may not
arrive; but the probability is that he will. Should he come, it
will be necessary to detain him. Here are pistols; and we both
know how to use them when occasion demands their use.”
I took the pistols, scarcely knowing what I did, or believing
what I heard, while Dupin went on, very much as if in a
soliloquy. I have already spoken of his abstract manner at such
times. His discourse was addressed to myself; but his voice,
although by no means loud, had that intonation which is commonly
employed in speaking to some one at a great distance. His eyes,
vacant in expression, regarded only the wall.
“That the voices heard in contention,” he said, “by the party
upon the stairs, were not the voices of the women themselves, was
fully proved by the evidence. This relieves us of all doubt upon
the question whether the old lady could have first destroyed the
daughter and afterward have committed suicide. I speak of this
point chiefly for the sake of method; for the strength of Madame
L’Espanaye would have been utterly unequal to the task of
thrusting her daughter’s corpse up the chimney as it was found;
and the nature of the wounds upon her own person entirely
preclude the idea of self-destruction. Murder, then, has been
committed by some third party; and the voices of this third party
were those heard in contention. Let me now advert—not to the
whole testimony respecting these voices—but to what was
_peculiar_ in that testimony. Did you observe any thing peculiar
about it?”
I remarked that, while all the witnesses agreed in supposing the
gruff voice to be that of a Frenchman, there was much
disagreement in regard to the shrill, or, as one individual
termed it, the harsh voice.
“That was the evidence itself,” said Dupin, “but it was not the
peculiarity of the evidence. You have observed nothing
distinctive. Yet there _was_ something to be observed. The
witnesses, as you remark, agreed about the gruff voice; they were
here unanimous. But in regard to the shrill voice, the
peculiarity is—not that they disagreed—but that, while an
Italian, an Englishman, a Spaniard, a Hollander, and a Frenchman
attempted to describe it, each one spoke of it as that _of a
foreigner_. Each is sure that it was not the voice of one of his
own countrymen. Each likens it—not to the voice of an individual
of any nation with whose language he is conversant—but the
converse. The Frenchman supposes it the voice of a Spaniard, and
‘might have distinguished some words _had he been acquainted with
the Spanish._’ The Dutchman maintains it to have been that of a
Frenchman; but we find it stated that ‘_not understanding French
this witness was examined through an interpreter._’ The
Englishman thinks it the voice of a German, and ‘_does not
understand German._’ The Spaniard ‘is sure’ that it was that of
an Englishman, but ‘judges by the intonation’ altogether, ‘_as he
has no knowledge of the English._’ The Italian believes it the
voice of a Russian, but ‘_has never conversed with a native of
Russia._’ A second Frenchman differs, moreover, with the first,
and is positive that the voice was that of an Italian; but, _not
being cognizant of that tongue_, is, like the Spaniard,
‘convinced by the intonation.’ Now, how strangely unusual must
that voice have really been, about which such testimony as this
_could_ have been elicited!—in whose _tones_, even, denizens of
the five great divisions of Europe could recognise nothing
familiar! You will say that it might have been the voice of an
Asiatic—of an African. Neither Asiatics nor Africans abound in
Paris; but, without denying the inference, I will now merely call
your attention to three points. The voice is termed by one
witness ‘harsh rather than shrill.’ It is represented by two
others to have been ‘quick and _unequal._’ No words—no sounds
resembling words—were by any witness mentioned as
distinguishable.
“I know not,” continued Dupin, “what impression I may have made,
so far, upon your own understanding; but I do not hesitate to say
that legitimate deductions even from this portion of the
testimony—the portion respecting the gruff and shrill voices—are
in themselves sufficient to engender a suspicion which should
give direction to all farther progress in the investigation of
the mystery. I said ‘legitimate deductions;’ but my meaning is
not thus fully expressed. I designed to imply that the deductions
are the _sole_ proper ones, and that the suspicion arises
_inevitably_ from them as the single result. What the suspicion
is, however, I will not say just yet. I merely wish you to bear
in mind that, with myself, it was sufficiently forcible to give a
definite form—a certain tendency—to my inquiries in the chamber.
“Let us now transport ourselves, in fancy, to this chamber. What
shall we first seek here? The means of egress employed by the
murderers. It is not too much to say that neither of us believe
in præternatural events. Madame and Mademoiselle L’Espanaye were
not destroyed by spirits. The doers of the deed were material,
and escaped materially. Then how? Fortunately, there is but one
mode of reasoning upon the point, and that mode _must_ lead us to
a definite decision. Let us examine, each by each, the possible
means of egress. It is clear that the assassins were in the room
where Mademoiselle L’Espanaye was found, or at least in the room
adjoining, when the party ascended the stairs. It is then only
from these two apartments that we have to seek issues. The police
have laid bare the floors, the ceilings, and the masonry of the
walls, in every direction. No _secret_ issues could have escaped
their vigilance. But, not trusting to _their_ eyes, I examined
with my own. There were, then, no secret issues. Both doors
leading from the rooms into the passage were securely locked,
with the keys inside. Let us turn to the chimneys. These,
although of ordinary width for some eight or ten feet above the
hearths, will not admit, throughout their extent, the body of a
large cat. The impossibility of egress, by means already stated,
being thus absolute, we are reduced to the windows. Through those
of the front room no one could have escaped without notice from
the crowd in the street. The murderers _must_ have passed, then,
through those of the back room. Now, brought to this conclusion
in so unequivocal a manner as we are, it is not our part, as
reasoners, to reject it on account of apparent impossibilities.
It is only left for us to prove that these apparent
‘impossibilities’ are, in reality, not such.
“There are two windows in the chamber. One of them is
unobstructed by furniture, and is wholly visible. The lower
portion of the other is hidden from view by the head of the
unwieldy bedstead which is thrust close up against it. The former
was found securely fastened from within. It resisted the utmost
force of those who endeavored to raise it. A large gimlet-hole
had been pierced in its frame to the left, and a very stout nail
was found fitted therein, nearly to the head. Upon examining the
other window, a similar nail was seen similarly fitted in it; and
a vigorous attempt to raise this sash, failed also. The police
were now entirely satisfied that egress had not been in these
directions. And, _therefore_, it was thought a matter of
supererogation to withdraw the nails and open the windows.
“My own examination was somewhat more particular, and was so for
the reason I have just given—because here it was, I knew, that
all apparent impossibilities _must_ be proved to be not such in
reality.
“I proceeded to think thus—_a posteriori_. The murderers did
escape from one of these windows. This being so, they could not
have refastened the sashes from the inside, as they were found
fastened;—the consideration which put a stop, through its
obviousness, to the scrutiny of the police in this quarter. Yet
the sashes _were_ fastened. They _must_, then, have the power of
fastening themselves. There was no escape from this conclusion. I
stepped to the unobstructed casement, withdrew the nail with some
difficulty and attempted to raise the sash. It resisted all my
efforts, as I had anticipated. A concealed spring must, I now
know, exist; and this corroboration of my idea convinced me that
my premises at least, were correct, however mysterious still
appeared the circumstances attending the nails. A careful search
soon brought to light the hidden spring. I pressed it, and,
satisfied with the discovery, forbore to upraise the sash.
“I now replaced the nail and regarded it attentively. A person
passing out through this window might have reclosed it, and the
spring would have caught—but the nail could not have been
replaced. The conclusion was plain, and again narrowed in the
field of my investigations. The assassins _must_ have escaped
through the other window. Supposing, then, the springs upon each
sash to be the same, as was probable, there _must_ be found a
difference between the nails, or at least between the modes of
their fixture. Getting upon the sacking of the bedstead, I looked
over the head-board minutely at the second casement. Passing my
hand down behind the board, I readily discovered and pressed the
spring, which was, as I had supposed, identical in character with
its neighbor. I now looked at the nail. It was as stout as the
other, and apparently fitted in the same manner—driven in nearly
up to the head.
“You will say that I was puzzled; but, if you think so, you must
have misunderstood the nature of the inductions. To use a
sporting phrase, I had not been once ‘at fault.’ The scent had
never for an instant been lost. There was no flaw in any link of
the chain. I had traced the secret to its ultimate result,—and
that result was _the nail._ It had, I say, in every respect, the
appearance of its fellow in the other window; but this fact was
an absolute nullity (conclusive as it might seem to be) when
compared with the consideration that here, at this point,
terminated the clew. ‘There _must_ be something wrong,’ I said,
‘about the nail.’ I touched it; and the head, with about a
quarter of an inch of the shank, came off in my fingers. The rest
of the shank was in the gimlet-hole where it had been broken off.
The fracture was an old one (for its edges were incrusted with
rust), and had apparently been accomplished by the blow of a
hammer, which had partially imbedded, in the top of the bottom
sash, the head portion of the nail. I now carefully replaced this
head portion in the indentation whence I had taken it, and the
resemblance to a perfect nail was complete—the fissure was
invisible. Pressing the spring, I gently raised the sash for a
few inches; the head went up with it, remaining firm in its bed.
I closed the window, and the semblance of the whole nail was
again perfect.
“The riddle, so far, was now unriddled. The assassin had escaped
through the window which looked upon the bed. Dropping of its own
accord upon his exit (or perhaps purposely closed), it had become
fastened by the spring; and it was the retention of this spring
which had been mistaken by the police for that of the
nail,—farther inquiry being thus considered unnecessary.
“The next question is that of the mode of descent. Upon this
point I had been satisfied in my walk with you around the
building. About five feet and a half from the casement in
question there runs a lightning-rod. From this rod it would have
been impossible for any one to reach the window itself, to say
nothing of entering it. I observed, however, that the shutters of
the fourth story were of the peculiar kind called by Parisian
carpenters _ferrades_—a kind rarely employed at the present day,
but frequently seen upon very old mansions at Lyons and Bordeaux.
They are in the form of an ordinary door (a single, not a folding
door), except that the lower half is latticed or worked in open
trellis—thus affording an excellent hold for the hands. In the
present instance these shutters are fully three feet and a half
broad. When we saw them from the rear of the house, they were
both about half open—that is to say, they stood off at right
angles from the wall. It is probable that the police, as well as
myself, examined the back of the tenement; but, if so, in looking
at these _ferrades_ in the line of their breadth (as they must
have done), they did not perceive this great breadth itself, or,
at all events, failed to take it into due consideration. In fact,
having once satisfied themselves that no egress could have been
made in this quarter, they would naturally bestow here a very
cursory examination. It was clear to me, however, that the
shutter belonging to the window at the head of the bed, would, if
swung fully back to the wall, reach to within two feet of the
lightning-rod. It was also evident that, by exertion of a very
unusual degree of activity and courage, an entrance into the
window, from the rod, might have been thus effected. By reaching
to the distance of two feet and a half (we now suppose the
shutter open to its whole extent) a robber might have taken a
firm grasp upon the trellis-work. Letting go, then, his hold upon
the rod, placing his feet securely against the wall, and
springing boldly from it, he might have swung the shutter so as
to close it, and, if we imagine the window open at the time,
might even have swung himself into the room.
“I wish you to bear especially in mind that I have spoken of a
_very_ unusual degree of activity as requisite to success in so
hazardous and so difficult a feat. It is my design to show you,
first, that the thing might possibly have been accomplished:—but,
secondly and _chiefly_, I wish to impress upon your understanding
the _very extraordinary_—the almost præternatural character of
that agility which could have accomplished it.
“You will say, no doubt, using the language of the law, that ‘to
make out my case,’ I should rather undervalue, than insist upon a
full estimation of the activity required in this matter. This may
be the practice in law, but it is not the usage of reason. My
ultimate object is only the truth. My immediate purpose is to
lead you to place in juxtaposition, that _very unusual_ activity
of which I have just spoken with that _very peculiar_ shrill (or
harsh) and _unequal_ voice, about whose nationality no two
persons could be found to agree, and in whose utterance no
syllabification could be detected.”
At these words a vague and half-formed conception of the meaning
of Dupin flitted over my mind. I seemed to be upon the verge of
comprehension without power to comprehend—as men, at times, find
themselves upon the brink of remembrance without being able, in
the end, to remember. My friend went on with his discourse.
“You will see,” he said, “that I have shifted the question from
the mode of egress to that of ingress. It was my design to convey
the idea that both were effected in the same manner, at the same
point. Let us now revert to the interior of the room. Let us
survey the appearances here. The drawers of the bureau, it is
said, had been rifled, although many articles of apparel still
remained within them. The conclusion here is absurd. It is a mere
guess—a very silly one—and no more. How are we to know that the
articles found in the drawers were not all these drawers had
originally contained? Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter lived an
exceedingly retired life—saw no company—seldom went out—had
little use for numerous changes of habiliment. Those found were
at least of as good quality as any likely to be possessed by
these ladies. If a thief had taken any, why did he not take the
best—why did he not take all? In a word, why did he abandon four
thousand francs in gold to encumber himself with a bundle of
linen? The gold _was_ abandoned. Nearly the whole sum mentioned
by Monsieur Mignaud, the banker, was discovered, in bags, upon
the floor. I wish you, therefore, to discard from your thoughts
the blundering idea of _motive_, engendered in the brains of the
police by that portion of the evidence which speaks of money
delivered at the door of the house. Coincidences ten times as
remarkable as this (the delivery of the money, and murder
committed within three days upon the party receiving it), happen
to all of us every hour of our lives, without attracting even
momentary notice. Coincidences, in general, are great
stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have
been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities—that
theory to which the most glorious objects of human research are
indebted for the most glorious of illustration. In the present
instance, had the gold been gone, the fact of its delivery three
days before would have formed something more than a coincidence.
It would have been corroborative of this idea of motive. But,
under the real circumstances of the case, if we are to suppose
gold the motive of this outrage, we must also imagine the
perpetrator so vacillating an idiot as to have abandoned his gold
and his motive together.
“Keeping now steadily in mind the points to which I have drawn
your attention—that peculiar voice, that unusual agility, and
that startling absence of motive in a murder so singularly
atrocious as this—let us glance at the butchery itself. Here is a
woman strangled to death by manual strength, and thrust up a
chimney, head downward. Ordinary assassins employ no such modes
of murder as this. Least of all, do they thus dispose of the
murdered. In the manner of thrusting the corpse up the chimney,
you will admit that there was something _excessively
outré_—something altogether irreconcilable with our common
notions of human action, even when we suppose the actors the most
depraved of men. Think, too, how great must have been that
strength which could have thrust the body _up_ such an aperture
so forcibly that the united vigor of several persons was found
barely sufficient to drag it _down!_
“Turn, now, to other indications of the employment of a vigor
most marvellous. On the hearth were thick tresses—very thick
tresses—of grey human hair. These had been torn out by the roots.
You are aware of the great force necessary in tearing thus from
the head even twenty or thirty hairs together. You saw the locks
in question as well as myself. Their roots (a hideous sight!)
were clotted with fragments of the flesh of the scalp—sure token
of the prodigious power which had been exerted in uprooting
perhaps half a million of hairs at a time. The throat of the old
lady was not merely cut, but the head absolutely severed from the
body: the instrument was a mere razor. I wish you also to look at
the _brutal_ ferocity of these deeds. Of the bruises upon the
body of Madame L’Espanaye I do not speak. Monsieur Dumas, and his
worthy coadjutor Monsieur Etienne, have pronounced that they were
inflicted by some obtuse instrument; and so far these gentlemen
are very correct. The obtuse instrument was clearly the stone
pavement in the yard, upon which the victim had fallen from the
window which looked in upon the bed. This idea, however simple it
may now seem, escaped the police for the same reason that the
breadth of the shutters escaped them—because, by the affair of
the nails, their perceptions had been hermetically sealed against
the possibility of the windows having ever been opened at all.
“If now, in addition to all these things, you have properly
reflected upon the odd disorder of the chamber, we have gone so
far as to combine the ideas of an agility astounding, a strength
superhuman, a ferocity brutal, a butchery without motive, a
_grotesquerie_ in horror absolutely alien from humanity, and a
voice foreign in tone to the ears of men of many nations, and
devoid of all distinct or intelligible syllabification. What
result, then, has ensued? What impression have I made upon your
fancy?”
I felt a creeping of the flesh as Dupin asked me the question. “A
madman,” I said, “has done this deed—some raving maniac, escaped
from a neighboring _Maison de Santé._”
“In some respects,” he replied, “your idea is not irrelevant. But
the voices of madmen, even in their wildest paroxysms, are never
found to tally with that peculiar voice heard upon the stairs.
Madmen are of some nation, and their language, however incoherent
in its words, has always the coherence of syllabification.
Besides, the hair of a madman is not such as I now hold in my
hand. I disentangled this little tuft from the rigidly clutched
fingers of Madame L’Espanaye. Tell me what you can make of it.”
“Dupin!” I said, completely unnerved; “this hair is most
unusual—this is no _human_ hair.”
“I have not asserted that it is,” said he; “but, before we decide
this point, I wish you to glance at the little sketch I have here
traced upon this paper. It is a _fac-simile_ drawing of what has
been described in one portion of the testimony as ‘dark bruises,
and deep indentations of finger nails,’ upon the throat of
Mademoiselle L’Espanaye, and in another (by Messrs. Dumas and
Etienne,) as a ‘series of livid spots, evidently the impression
of fingers.’
“You will perceive,” continued my friend, spreading out the paper
upon the table before us, “that this drawing gives the idea of a
firm and fixed hold. There is no _slipping_ apparent. Each finger
has retained—possibly until the death of the victim—the fearful
grasp by which it originally imbedded itself. Attempt, now, to
place all your fingers, at the same time, in the respective
impressions as you see them.”