In the spring/summer of 18--, the narrator lives in Paris with Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin, a young gentleman of illustrious family who has fallen on hard times. The narrator met him at a library where they were both searching for the same book. They live a quiet secluded existence, avoiding the light of day, going out by night.
Dupin loves to observe and analyse, and is wont to show off to the narrator how easy it is for him to read men's minds. When he does so, he becomes "frigid and abstract; his eyes vacant in expression." He startles the narrator by reading his thoughts while they are out for a walk one evening.
The story begins . . .
They read in the newspaper of the murder of a mother and daughter living in the Rue Morgue. Madame L'Espanaye was found thrown from her 4th floor flat, with her neck cut by a razor; her daughter Camille was strangled, before being pushed up the chimney. There was 4000 francs left in their room, and there were no clues as to motive and how the killer got in and out. Witnesses heard screams and two voices: one was speaking French, but there was no agreement as to what language the other voice was speaking in. Everyone thought it was a foreign language, but there was no consensus as to which one.
They read in a later edition of the paper that a bank clerk Adolphe Le Bon who had helped carry the 4000 francs to their home 3 days before the murders has been arrested. Dupin is stirred to investigate further, as he once received a service rendered from the unfortunate Le Bon. He gets permission from the Prefect of Police to visit the scene of the murder with the narrator in tow.
Afterwards they return home in the evening and Dupin mulls things over till noon the following day. Dupin tells the narrator he is expecting a visitor at any moment, and in the meantime explains his line of reasoning (analysis) in solving the mystery that has flummoxed the police. He shows the narrator a tuft of hair he found in Madame L'Espanaye's fingers. He also shows him the imprint left on Camille's neck. The narrator begins to realise that the killer was not human. Dupin shows him a description of an Orang-Otang, and then a small ad he had inserted into that day's paper, asking for the owner of an escaped Orang-Otang to come and collect his animal. Dupin is confident the man, most probably a sailor, will soon be paying them a vist. Lo and behold, there are steps heard coming up the staircase! Dupin and the narrator have pistols ready just in case.
The sailor comes in, thanks Dupin for finding his ape for him and asks what reward he can offer him in gratitude. Dupin replies, "My reward shall be this. You shall give me all the information in your power about these murders in the Rue Morgue." Finding the game is up, and an innocent man is in prison, the visitor explains how it happened.
The ape was brought to France and kept at the sailor's flat, to be sold once a wound in his foot had healed. One night the sailor came back to find the ape lathered up and with a razor in his hand. The sailor tried to subdue him with a whip, but the ape escaped into the streets. Seeing a light on, the ape climbed up a lighting conductor, swung over on a shutter into the room where the mother and daughter were going through some papers. Seeing the animal with the razor, the mother screamed. The ape went ape-shit, and once it saw blood, things went from bad to worse. The sailor had meanwhile run after the ape, and followed it up the lighting rod. He couldn't get into the room but watched helplessly as the ape killed the women. Once the ape saw his master looking in the window, it feared it would get another whipping, so tried to hide the bodies (up the chimney and out the window). The sailor ran home, and the ape escaped out the window shortly before people rushed up the staircase alerted by the women's screams.
The sailor later recaptured and sold the ape to a zoo. Le Bon was released once Dupin told the police what had really happened. The Prefect is disappointed that the crime is solved by Dupin, who is "satisfied with having defeated him in his castle."
On the dust jacket it says that TMITRM is "generally considered the first detective story". The BBC announcer introducing the R4 dramatization of the story mentions the features later writers were to imitate: the eccentric sleuth working outside of the police force, with a loyal sidekick who acts as a foil to show off his brilliance in solving a mysterious crime that has totally baffled the police (who are grudgingly forced to accept the amateur sleuth's expertise).
Dupin, a French Sherlock Holmes, and his friend, the nameless narrator (a French Dr Watson), sit smoking pipes one evning, deep in thought and silence. Monsieur G, the Prefect of the Parisian police (A French Lestrade), visits them to ask Dupin for advice.
A minister (a French Moriarty?) has purloined (i.e. stolen) a letter from the queen's boudoir, right from under her nose. She could not stop him as she wishes to keep the letter's contents secret from her husband (who was present in the room when the letter was taken). The queen has offered Monsieur G a large reward if he can get the letter back. Dupin tells him to search the minister's home. A thorough search is undertaken, but the police do not find the letter.
A month later Monsieur G visits them again. He says he'll give anyone the reward just as long as he gets the letter. It transpires that Dupin has already got the letter back, so he pockets the reward. Monsieur G leaves at once without asking how Dupin managed to find it. Dupin explains to his friend how he found it: he guessed the minister would realise the police would come looking for the letter and would search his flat from top to bottom, looking in every corner. Dupin surmised the minister would therefore leave the letter somewhere obvious, so obvious the police would miss it. Dupin visited the minister and immediately saw it. He went home, made a copy of it, then went back to the minister's flat. While the minister was distracted by a commotion at the window (a diversion created on purpose by Dupin), Dupin switched the dummy letter for the real letter.
Interesting point: the contents of the letter around which the story pivots are never revealed. The reader is left to guess what the letter might contain. Lacan, the French psychoanalytical thinker, has written about this story.
His love of animals led him and his wife to keep many pets. Pluto, their black cat, was his favourite.
However he became a drunkard. He took out his drunken anger on his pets, cutting out one of Pluto's eyes with his knife, then hanging him from a tree. The following day his house is destroyed by fire; the mark of a hanged cat is clearly visible on one of the few remaining walls.
Months later, he finds another black cat in a pub, and takes it home. It has only one eye and looks just like Pluto, except for a white patch of hair on its chest.
The man grows to hate the cat, which follows him everywhere, tripping him up. One day as he is going down into the cellar, the cat gets in his way. His wife stops him from striking the cat, so instead he buries his axe in her head. He puts her corpse behind a wall in the cellar to hide it.
The police search his house but the man is confident they will not find his wife's body. On the fourth day of the police search, the man taps on the wall (behind which his wife's body is hidden). A terrible wailing is heard. The police tear down the wall and find the one-eyed cat sitting on the head of the dead wife.
Roderick Usher hasn't left his dark, dingy home for years as he suffers "from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light."
He is shut away like des Esseintes, but is the polar opposite to him in his tastes. The Frenchman lived like a recluse, cut off from the outside world, but savouring its smells in his cabin-like room with its amazing cabinet of perfumes and scents.