Chapter 59

52 MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE have no evidence that Marie Roget was in the land of the living after nine o’clock on Sunday, June the twenty-second, we have proof that up to that hour she was alive. On Wednesday at noon, a female body was discovered afloat on the shore of the Barriere du Roule. This was, even if we presume that Marie Roget was thrown into the river within three hours after she left her mother’s house, only three days from the time she left her home — three days to an hour. But it is folly to suppose that the murder, if murder was committed on her body, could have been consummated soon enough to have enabled her murderers to throw the body into the river before midnight. Those who are guilty of such horrid crimes choose darkness rather than light. . . . Thus we see that if the body found in the river-was that of Marie Roget, it could only have been in the water two and a half days, or three at the outside. All experience had shown that drowned bodies, or bodies thrown into the water immediately after death by violence, require from six to ten days for sufficient decomposition to take place to bring them to the top of the water. Even where a cannon is fired over a corpse, and it rises before at least five or six days’ immersion, it sinks again, if let alone. Now, we ask, what was there in this case to cause a departure from the ordinary course of nature? ... If the body had been kept in its mangled state on shore until Tuesday night, some trace would be found on shore of the murderers. It is a doubtful point, also, whether the body would be so soon afloat, even were it thrown in after having been dead two days. And, furthermore, it is exceedingly improbable that any villains who had committed such a murder as is here supposed would have thrown the body in without weight to sink it, when such a precaution could have so easily been taken.” The editor here proceeds to argue that the body must have been in the water “not three days merely, but at least five times three days,” because it was so far decomposed that Beauvais had great difficulty in recognizing it. This latter point, however, was fully disproved. I continue the translation : “What, then, are the facts on which M. Beauvais says that he has no doubt the body was that of Marie Roget? He ripped up the gown-sleeve, and says he found marks which satisfied him of the identity. The public generally supposed those marks to