Na
The Murders in the Rue Morgue is dit het tweede verhaal waarin Poe Auguste Dupin opvoert als speurder. Dupin blijkt een aanhanger te zijn van de school waartoe ook Hercule Poirot beweert te behoren: alleen denkwerk, geen voetenwerk. Het verhaal bestaat uit een aantal krantenfragmenten waarin de mysterieuze verdwijning van Marie Roget wordt beschreven en de vondst van een dood meisje in de rivier dat Marie zou kunnen zijn -- of niet. Dupin weerlegt de verschillende argumenten en komt uiteindelijk tot zijn eigen conclusie.
'And what,' I here demanded, 'do you think of the opinions of Le Commerciel?'
'That, in spirit, they are far more worthy of attention than any which have been promulgated upon the subject. The deductions from the premises are philosophical and acute; but the premises, in two instances at least, are founded in imperfect observation. Le Commerciel wishes to intimate that Marie was seized by some gang of low ruffians not far from her mother's door. "It is impossible," it urges, "that a person so well known to thousands as this young woman was, should have passed three blocks without someone having seen her." This is the idea of a man long resident in Paris -- a public man -- and one whose walks to and fro in the city have been mostly limited to the vicinity of the public offices. He is aware that he seldom passes so far as a dozen blocks from his own bureau, without being recognized and accosted. And, knowing the extent of his personal acquaintance with others, and of other with him, he compares his notoriety with that of the perfumery girld, finds no great difference between them, and reaches at once the conclusion that she, in her walks, would be equally liable to recognition with himself in his. This could only be the case were her walks of the same unvarying, methodical character, and within the same species of limited region as are his own.
detective
