In Poe’s first serialized version of “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” his fictional tale of the real-life Mary Rogers murder, a female body was discovered in the Seine River about three days after she left her home. Poe’s literary Investigator Dupin rules out several suspicious accounts reported in the newspaper, including a theory that gangs had killed Rogers. Urban gangs were widespread and were a great public concern in France, (where Poe’s tale is based) in the 1830s. Articles of Mary Rogers’s clothing near the suspected murder scene seemed to confirm that she had been assaulted by thugs (Stashower 28). Dupin notes that the Paris newspaper, Le Commercial, was skeptical of the view that, “Marie had been the victim of a gang of desperadoes (734). He argues that it would be impossible to consider that the beautiful and famous Mary Rogers, being pursued and assaulted by gang members, would have been able to walk three blocks on the New York streets, in the daytime, and still be unnoticed by eye-witnesses. Dupin concludes, therefore, that the newspapers reported two unconnected facts.
Switching to His fictional version of the story, Dupin questions the police officials’ hastily derived assumptions about the time of death, which were based upon reports that were printed in the Paris newspapers. The police account stated that “All experience has shown that drowned bodies, or bodies thrown in the water immediately after death by violence, require from six to ten days for sufficient decomposition, to bring them to the top of the water” (732). The implication of the police report was that the body recovered from the river after three days was not Roget’s. Dupin disputes the police’s conclusions and supports his claims with detailed scientific discussions. He explains that the water displacement of a deceased body equalizes with the pressure of water in about three days. Thus, a dead body would have about the same weight as water in three days, or about the time that the police found Roget’s body (740). Dupin’s ability to introduce a scientific basis for his theory adds to the verisimilitude of his narrative. His application of forensic evidence settles a central disputed fact in both his fictional tale, “The Mystery of Marie Roget” and the actual case.
Dupin suggests that the police’s easy and initial assumptions in the case limited them and caused them to discard important collateral events. He notices that the police case reports did not account for the discovery of a rowboat near where Roget’s body was recovered. The boat, Dupin conjectures, may have been used by the murderer to dump her in the river. Near the end of the actual and fictional case, the New York Police Department and Dupin plan to name the prime suspect. The accused is a sailor and former lover of Rogers, who went off to sea near the time that she was last seen.
Stashower suggests the actual case resolution was unfortunate for Poe and his story. “The solution of the Mary Rogers case was reported in the New York Tribune before Poe planned to publish the final installment of his fictional version of the same story. Poe’s headline read, “Mary Rogers Mystery Explained” (208). However, the reported details of her murder were substantially different from the story that he was planning to publish. Suddenly, Poe had to plot a new version (223). In the Mary Rogers case, it was the police, and not Dupin, who discovered the solution: Stashower speculates that most accounts of the story have concluded that she died from the failed efforts of an “abortionist,” who “sought to destroy his failure by disposing of her body in the Hudson River.” Unfortunately, for Poe and his reputation, the third and final installment of his story had to go to press before he had sufficient time to re-write it and match it more consistently with the real-life Mary Rogers case (251).
In the account that Poe did publish, he employed the voice of the editor, noting that the newspaper is not planning to publish the manuscript or the details of the Mary Rogers case. Poe attempted to avoid all personal responsibility for explaining the discrepancies between the actual Mary Rogers case and the “Marie Roget” story. Writing as an editor rather than as Dupin he offered: “It should be considered that the most trifling variation in the facts of the two cases might give rise to the most important miscalculations” (Tales and Sketches 773). Using an analogy from dice and from his theory of “The Calculus of Probabilities,” he explained how the case got off track. “The fact that ‘sixes’ have been thrown in succession is generally a sufficient outcome which will cause most gamblers to wager against the odds that they will be thrown on the third attempt.” As he argued, “What has been thrown in dice or life in the past has no influence on what may occur in the future.” He writes: “The error in the solution,” was caused by “one of the infinite series of mistakes which arise in the path of Reason through her propensity for speaking truth in detail” (773-74).
Poe provided an implausible solution in his quest to detect the truth. In suggesting that he could solve an actual unsolved murder case, he crossed the line from imagining truth to explaining the truth. Perhaps, he had also developed faith that he had the same abilities as the almost superhuman detective that he created. Another reading of this story suggests that Poe tried to use his failure to demonstrate that those who believed that men could be perfect and control the outcome of human events were doomed to failure. Even the most casually observant reader, however, would likely conclude that Poe, in “Roget,” was using an editor’s voice to justify his mistakes. A correct solution, reported before the police unlocked the mystery, would have undoubtedly generated a great deal of additional recognition to Poe as a prophetic writer and scientific thinker. In “Marie Roget,” he had rolled the dice again, but this time his gamble failed. This story demonstrated that it was much easier for him to design fiction than it was to cross from fiction into the boundaries of real-life, where events could not be predicted or controlled. Stashower calls the “Marie Roget” story a “misstep” for Poe. He argues that the story “ruined his scheme to raise the money to start his own magazine” (251). Perhaps though, after this setback, Poe did not want to leave Dupin with an unsolved case as his last one. In the next Litchatte blog, I shall discuss Poe’s Final Dupin Detective Tale, “The Purloined Letter,” which many scholars consider as Poe’s most brilliant one.
Selected Sources
Poe, Edgar A. Tales and Sketches, 1831-1849. Ed. Thomas O. Mabbott. Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1978.
Stashower, Daniel. The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder. New York: Dutton, 2006.
*Blog Image from Eric Shashower’s Book on www.Goodreads.com
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