Page:Mystery Tales of Edgar Allan Poe.pdf/73

 in the river that of Marie Rogêt, 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 in to the water immediately after death by violence, require from six to ten days for sufficcient 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 Rogêt? He ripped up the gown-sleeve, and says he found marks which satisfied him of the identiy. The public generally supposed those marks to have consisted of some description of scars. He rubbed the arm and found upon it—something as indefinite, we think, as can readily be imagined—as little conclusive as finding an arm in the sleeve. M. Beauvais did not return that night, but send word to Madame Rogêt at seven o'clock on Wednesday evening that an investigation was still in progress respecting her daughter. If we allow that Madame Rogêt from her age and grief could not go over (which is allowing a great deal), there certainly must have been some one who would have thorught it worth while to go over and attend the investigation if they thought the body was that of Marie. Nobody went over. There was nothign said or heard about the matter in the Rue Pavée Ste. Andrée that reached even the occupants of the same building. M. St. Eustache, the lover and intended husband of Marie, who boarded in her mother's house, deposes that he did