SERIES 1: THE MURDER OF ROSE ACTON

PART I OF IV
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This section would be inserted in Chapter 7 of The Poe Shadow immediately following 
the section in which Quentin Clark meets a group of policemen at a café. (In the US and 
UK hardcover editions, this is p. 74)
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	A few days later, Duponte and I were walking again, traversing what felt to me 
like all of Paris. We reached a quarter sadly remote from the glories of Champs Élysée. 
Duponte had no apparent destination, but my step became more deliberate as we neared a 
crowded scene across from us. I noticed several police officers at the street door of a 
boarding house whispering to each other, peering in our direction.
	As Duponte and I came closer, the police agents met us. Prefect Delacourt, the 
official I had been forced to meet upon my arrival in Paris, stood in the middle of the 
group. I recognized several of the policemen from our jovial encounter at the café, but 
now their expressions were somber and their eyes evasive. I realized that it could not be 
any common event that would command the presence of the Prefect of Police.
	It then came back to me. I had read in the morning newspaper of a terrible murder 
of a young grisette named Rose in the outlying district of Montmartre, where we now 
were. I thought of this poor girl and thought automatically of Hattie's pretty face. There 
was a touch of horror at finding myself so close to this house. Yet, at the same time I 
experienced an unexpected calmness being there with Duponte – that anything, even 
murder, was almost reversible by the fact of his presence.
	Several police agents looked Duponte up and down in disbelief. Among the 
officers who had been at the café, was the one who had busied himself with scratching 
his neck. The Scratcher, whom I had heard referred to at the café as Lazar, had insisted to 
me that Duponte was a fraud and a swindler who had been killed by a vengeful prisoner. 
This Lazar now stared dumbly at me, and angrily at Duponte for having proved him a 
fool.
	"So it is true Duponte," said Prefect Delacourt, stepping ahead of his men. "You 
are not in Vienna."
	"I am not," agreed Duponte.
	"Why have you come here, Monsieur Clark?" the Prefect turned swiftly to me. "Did I
not advise you to keep clear from any trouble?"
	"Prefect Delacourt, I look for no trouble."
	Officer Lazar leaned in and whispered something to the Prefect, who nodded.
"This is a grisly scene. Think carefully what you do. I would go no closer this 
time, Duponte," said the Prefect.
	"I haven't the slightest intention," said Duponte. "Indeed, you see my walking 
companion and I are pointed in a direction by which it would be inconvenient to enter 
that boarding house."

*

	I had not liked the lingering gaze the prefect had given me as we departed from 
the street. I was concerned that the police might think to bring me to the prefecture and 
question me again, interrupting any progress I had made with Duponte. After leaving 
Duponte, I decided to return to the house in Montmartre to reassure the prefect that our 
presence had been entirely innocent. 
	At the top of the steps to the boarding house was another police agent.
	"No admittance, Monsieur," a mustachioed officer said. 
	"I wish to have a brief conference with the Prefect," I said.
	"Who are you?"
	"See here," Delacourt said from inside. "I know that man. Let him through."
	I already knew something of the crime and its bizarre aspects from the newspaper 
reports. I shall paraphrase them for the reader. The landlady in charge of this modest 
lodging brought coffee to her boarders each morning. On one particular morning, Rose 
Acton, a young lady boarding here, did not respond to the landlady's knocking. When the 
circumstance continued into the afternoon, the landlady, who made it a point of pride and 
business advertisement that she would never open a private room where her boarder was 
present, instead sent for the police. The police forced open the door and found the young 
Acton girl lying face up on her bed. Her body was lifeless, stabbed through the heart. The 
knife, or some thought it could have been a sword, had entered her chest and penetrated 
three or four inches deep into the mattress.
	Some suggested suicide. Doctors countered that not even a robust man, much less 
a frail young woman, could manage to injure themselves in that way. 
	Stranger still, there was no apparent ingress or egress possible from the crime. 
The circumstances left the police quite disheartened. The door had been locked and 
bolted from the inside. Even the first policeman, once called, required almost an hour to 
force it open. Rose's window was fastened from the inside, too, with a drop of nearly 
forty-five feet to the ground outside. None of the valuables in the room had been 
removed, not even the jewelry out on her table – and the landlady swore that, although 
the girl was not of the most impeccable character, she herself had seen Rose retire to her 
room alone and, a light sleeper, the landlady would have heard immediately if anyone 
tried to enter the house afterward. The chimney represented a last possible passage, but it 
was too narrow – and, furthermore, there were no signs of soot. Everything was quite 
clean and orderly around Rose's body.
	The discovery of this horrid scene had occurred more than a day earlier.
	"Monsieur Clark, I am surprised at you!" said the prefect. "That you should come 
here once again to put your foot where it does not belong."
	"It is exactly the opposite," I exclaimed. "I have come to apologize for our 
meeting earlier this afternoon. I wish to assure you that neither Monsieur Duponte nor 
myself had any intention of interfering in your…"
	"Yes, yes," the prefect mumbled, interrupting. He smiled humorlessly and wiped 
his face with a handkerchief. "This whole business. We will resolve it, Monsieur. I 
promise you that!"
	"I have every confidence," I answered, somewhat confused by his manner. 
	"Monsieur Prefect, may I ask what they are doing?"
Several police officers, including Officer Lazar, were clustered around the door to 
the girl's room. They were experimenting with magnets. The prefect proudly explained 
that they were attempting to determine whether some such instrument might have been 
used to turn the key of the door and move the bolt from outside Rose's door.
I took a step closer. In spite of myself, I was fascinated to be in close proximity to 
where the poor girl had been killed.
	"You had to drag Duponte out from the garbage, didn't you."
	I turned and saw this comment came from Lazar, watching me with his usual 
scowl.
	"You see he is alive after all, Officer Lazar," I said.
	"We will resolve this, as the prefect says," Lazar replied. "I, for one, do not need 
the help of a swindler like Auguste Duponte."
	"Officer Lazar, if we may?" said the prefect. Lazar understood, leaving us to our 
conversation. The prefect continued. "Monsieur Clark, tell me something. Did Duponte 
say anything to you? I mean, about this case?"
	This line of questioning worried me. "Please, Monsieur Prefect, I must insist that 
you listen. Duponte and I were walking through the city. We had no intentions regarding 
this case."
	"Perhaps he noticed something on the footpath? Or some detail in the newspaper
that led to him to an odd remark or two?" Seeing the surprise on my face, the prefect 
quickly laughed again. "Lazar is correct, I should think. We will have this done with 
soon. And you can tell that to your Monsieur Duponte! Yes yes."
	It was then that I first understood how much Prefect Delacourt – and all of Paris –
believed in Auguste Duponte's power. Indeed, believed as strongly as I did.