SERIES I: THE MURDER OF ROSE ACTON

PART IV OF IV
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This section immediately follows Series I, Part III of the Secret Chapters.
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	The Morgue of Paris is a low, Doric building constructed of massive stones like 
those used in prisons to prevent escapes. It struck me as unsuitable that this warehouse of 
the dead was directly adjacent to the vegetable booth of the March้ Neuf, but the 
customers searching through the farmers' selections made no apparent objection. 
	This is where Duponte brought me after we departed from his chambers. Entering 
the imposing Morgue, we found ourselves in a small room with a large number of people. 
There was a clean glass partition through which we had a perfect view of the display on 
the other side. The other people around me stared ahead eagerly as though they were at 
the animal exhibitions in the menagerie at the Jardin des Plantes.
	On the other side of the glass were bodies displayed on inclined slabs. The bodies 
were entirely naked, except for thin oilcloths to demonstrate some small amount of 
decency. Next to the bodies were the clothes they were wearing when found. Above each 
of the bodies a stream of water fell down onto them, over their face, neck, throat and legs, 
to keep the bodies fresh. The effect was startling, for it made the bodies twitch and move.
The bodies displayed here, Duponte explained to me, were of unknown identities 
– today, there were two middle aged men as well as a beautiful young woman who had 
drowned.
	This reminded me of the story of one of Poe's tales, "The Mystery of Marie 
Roget," which was my favorite. It showed the character of Dupin undertaking an 
investigation in Paris with his assistant, though it was in fact an analysis of an actual 
occurrence in New York, the scandalous murder of the beautiful shopgirl Mary Rogers, 
who was found in the Hudson River. I mentioned that this tale of Dupin had obtained the 
least popularity of the trilogy. Duponte was curious to know how it differed from the 
others.
	"Because it takes its terror from historic truth, I suppose," I replied.
	"Perhaps precisely explaining why the public opinion prefers the others – for the 
ordinary mind should like to think there is no reality in fiction, which is not subject to the 
same natural questions we must every day ask ourselves." 
	Duponte explained that here at the Morgue, the bodies were each displayed for 
three days, giving the public an opportunity to claim a body of family member or friend 
before they would be buried as paupers. The clothes, hanging near the bodies, were 
meant to further enable recognition.
	I half expected to see Kalfon the chiffonier before me. Instead, the face I 
recognized was that of Lazar, the police officer whom I had met first at the outdoor caf้ 
and then at the boarding house in Montmartre using the magnets at the room formerly 
belonging to Rose Acton. On his neck, the scratches where his nasty habit had 
perpetually removed the skin, were plainly visible. His was the only body without clothes 
hanging to the side.
	"Monsieur Duponte!" I exclaimed. "I know that man!"
	"Then you know Rose Acton's murderer, too," Duponte replied. I had a thousand 
questions, but he signaled that I should remain silent until we were sufficiently far from 
this scene. 

*

	We found chairs for rent in the nearest gardens.
	"I do not understand, Monsieur Duponte. How could you have known, from the 
same information I possessed, that it was Officer Lazar?"
	"I did not know, in particular, that it was Lazar. However, I did feel confident (if 
not absolutely so) that we would face the murderer – whoever it was – by a simple visit to 
La Morgue. Recall the accounts of Rose Acton's murder and the discovery of her body. It 
was stated that the first policeman present required an hour to force open Rose's door. 
Inside, Rose's body had been stabbed on her bed. Rose's window was fastened and the 
chimney far too narrow for human passage. Thus the mysterious circumstances became 
apparent to all – that there was no ingress or egress possible from the crime. In short, the 
crime was impossible. Here was the first fault."
	"What do you mean? What was the fault?"
	"No crime that is committed, Monsieur, is impossible. There are two answers in 
such a scenario. First, that the analysts of the event have simply missed a possibility. But 
here, any child can see what the police have seen – with the door and window fastened 
from the inside, there can be no other way into the room. The second answer is that the 
facts have been misstated. If this is true in this instance, then the murderer is instantly 
apparent."
	"I do not follow your chain of reasoning, Monsieur!"
	"Listen more closely. We must not confuse narrative with truth. The impossible 
crime, the barricaded room in which no corporeal being could enter or leave, is made 
possible only through words. Let us start again to consider the actors in the discovery of 
Rose Acton.
	"First, there is the landlady. She has made it a point in the press that she would 
never open the door to the private chambers of a boarder while that boarder was inside. 
We may read the true meaning of this language clearly enough. This landlady encourages 
young ladies to board who, shall we say, require privacy on a nightly basis. It is not for 
the ladies boarding but for their visitors, that she is strictly obliged not to open doors, or 
the said male visitors will never return. However, after many hours in the morning that 
Rose does not reply, the landlady sends for the nearest policeman. Or, rather, the 
policeman who has made certain he is closest to the house. It is this policeman who will 
then report that the door required an hour to open."
	"You mean Lazar had been with Rose the night before!"
	"Yes, although at this point in our analysis we have not yet arrived at Lazar's 
identity. Whichever police officer was the first to come was also the one who had stayed 
with Rose and had killed her with his sword. There is no mystery beyond this. The 
mystery is invented by that policeman."
	"But the landlady's deposition stated that she is the lightest sleeper in Paris, and 
heard nobody come in or out of the poor girl's room!"
	"As I say, there would be various gentlemen in and out of the boarding house 
throughout most nights. Moreover, as a general rule in life it is the case that any person 
who maintains she is a light sleeper, who claims that the drop of a feather will stir them 
awake, could not be awoken by a herd of elephants overrunning them."
	"What of the strange behavior of the chiffonier, Kalfon?"
	"Ah, very simple, Monsieur Clark. The chiffonier is entirely under the thumb of 
the police. The police, you see, can strip them of their hard-earned brass plate, and could 
in an instant destroy their livelihoods. A chiffonier who earns his living by collecting 
rubbish, is frightened of nobody in Paris – frightened of nobody, that is, except for the 
police. Therefore, if Kalfon saw somebody around the boarding house, and that sight has 
left him terrified, we can be certain the person he saw was a member of the police 
department."
	"And my encounter in the catacombs?"
	"Think of it. You spent much of that day around the boarding house where Rose 
Acton was killed, asking for the chiffonier. You had been questioning the chiffonier in 
public about the murder. Did you not think you could be heard and observed by the killer, 
or some man or woman close to him? You were followed down into the catacombs. The 
criminals of our city, as you may know, often resort to using the catacombs as a hiding 
spot. No criminal in Paris would fire a gun in the catacombs – for they know well how 
unsafe it may be, and that in the process they may risk being engulfed themselves in one 
of those horrid pits by damaging its flimsy supports. It is, therefore, far more likely to be 
a policeman than a thief who would make such an error of judgment."
	"I understand all that you have said, Monsieur Duponte. But how does all of this 
conclude with Officer Lazar hanging in the morgue as though he is an unknown 
straggler?"
	"You noticed how anxious the Prefect of Police seemed in our meeting with him, 
and no doubt the next time you saw him as well. The prefect is under great pressure from 
President Louis Napoleon to prove himself. The news of this murder has saturated the 
Paris press, and has even spread to the columns of other countries. Louis Napoleon is not 
kind to those who cannot bring him results. Certainly Prefect Delacourt, though not an 
original thinker, given direct observation of far more facts than we could know, would 
have pieced together the same story as we have. When he found that the newspapers 
would not cease their attention, he saw he had no choice. He ordered the guilty party – 
the first police officer to find Rose Acton – to be eliminated. 
	"I do not know if I had ever heard of this Lazar. However, I surmised that 
whichever officer had been the guilty one would be hanged in the Morgue, as though an 
anonymous beggar found on the street, stripped of his identifying uniform, as a warning 
to all of those who attempt to undermine his department, within the police or outside of 
it."
	"Could the prefect, such a jovial being, be this ruthless, as to murder a man he 
himself hired, Monsieur Duponte, and leave him to dangle naked in the morgue?" I 
asked.
	"Ah," Duponte replied. "You may do well, Monsieur, starting now, to consider 
the Latin proverb, malum consilium quod mutari non potest!"