Who Was the Murderer?

From The German

On a quiet winter night, some thirty years ago, the residents of the Rue Morgue in the quarter of St. Roche, at Paris, were roused from their slumbers by a terrible cry of distress. The whole of the little street was soon astir. It was three o’clock in the morning as the startled neighbors hurried together in front of a narrow four-storied house, from the second floor of which the awful cries were still issuing. With the shriek or yell of apparent agony there were sounds as if from the feet of several persons engaged in a desperate struggle. Two voices could also be now distinguished—one harsh, and yet piercing in its wild screaming tones; the other deeper and heavier, and occasionally ejaculating the words, “Cursed devil!” and “My God!”

The excited neighbors endeavored to force an entrance into the house. The doors and windows were all fast on inside. The whole lower part of the building seemed deserted. No one stirred there; not a gleam of light was visible.

“Who lives here?” inquired a passer, attracted by the disturbance.

“Oh, no one but Madame l’Esparaye and her daughter,” answered the nimble tongue of Pierre Moreau, the tobacconist. “I have known the ladies this long time. They get their snuff from me. The mother is a fortune-teller, and has some fine customers I can tell you. She must have saved a pretty sum by this time. The ladies have no acquaintances at all, as I know of, except business ones; and they live in the house entirely alone. They would rather let their rooms lie empty than have them ruined by tenants. ‘We have had a sad experience with tenants, dear Monsieur Moreau,’ said madame to me only yesterday, as… Read More