GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #1

C. AUGUSTE DUPIN

Auguste Dupin was the first fictional detective of importance and the model for virtually every cerebral crime solver who followed.  Dupin was created by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) in 1841 before the term "detective" was even used.  The Chevalier Dupin was presented without physical description so he seemed less human than his successors.  Poe wanted to stress the supreme importance of the intellect, unencumbered with emotional considerations.  Dupin bears the title Chevalier meaning that he is a knight in the Legion d'honneur.  Dupin detested daylight and preferred to stay behind closed shutters in a room lit only by "a couple of tapers which, strongly perfumed, threw out only the ghostliest and feeblest of rays".  He frequently remained in his room, a small library at the rear of an old manor at No. 33 Rue Dunot in the Faubourg Saint-Germain district of Paris, for a month or more without allowing a visitor.  From this sanctuary he sometimes came out at night to walk the dark, gas-lit streets and enjoy "the infinity of mental excitement" afforded through observation.

Dupin is poor, but he considers this condition unimportant as long as he has enough for necessities and his one luxury - books.  He is "of an excellent - indeed of an illustrious - family".  They were once a wealthy family but "a variety of untoward events" had reduced the Dupins to more humble circumstances.  Poe provides his character with an ancestry equal to his intellect and creativity.  Dupin is young, scholarly, eccentric, romantic, aristocratic, arrogant, and apparently omniscient.  Dupin has only one companion - the anonymous friend who chronicles his adventures.  The two met by accident while both were searching for "the same rare and very remarkable volume" in an obscure library.  This devoted assistant resides with Dupin and is intellectually inferior to Dupin.  His slow wit serves as an excellent foil for the hero's cerebral processes, providing a useful technical tool by which to explain Dupin's feats of mental gymnastics to readers.

Dupin, a voracious reader, once admitted to writing "certain doggeral" reminiscent of the limerick form.  He smokes heavily, and enjoys a quiet meerschaum with his friend.  His green spectacles improve his near-sighted vision and also enable him to observe people intently and surreptitiously.  Although he likes Monsieur "G", the prefect of the Paris police, he holds the official police and their methods in open contempt.  Many tropes that would later become commonplace in detective fiction first appeared in Poe's Dupin stories - the eccentric but brilliant detective, the bumbling constabulary, and the first-person narration by a close, personal friend.

Dupin only appeared in three stories written by Poe, all of which were collected in the volume "Tales" (1845).  Often cited as the first detective story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) is certainly the most important of the three and introduced Dupin to the public.  In this now-familiar tale, the first "impossible" crime, two women are found brutally murdered in a sealed room (this would become a genre of mystery stories - the locked room mystery - in which a crime, generally murder, is perpetrated in an apparently sealed room).  When a man who once helped Dupin is arrested for the crime, the detective decides to investigate.  He reads the newspaper accounts, visits the crime scene, examines the bodies, and deduces the identity of the true killer.

"The Mystery of Marie Roget" (1842) is an example, and the first in literature, of the pure "armchair detective" approach to the solution of a crime.  Newspaper accounts of a murder are reprinted and Dupin's running commentary to his friend is reported.  This story was based on the actual case of Mary Cecilia Rogers, a saleswoman at a cigar store in Manhattan whose body was found floating in the Hudson River in 1841.  Poe's story was published in three installments of Snowden's Ladies' Companion while the actual criminal investigation into the true crime was being conducted.  Since the crime was never solved (in spite of Poe's declaration that he had deduced the actual events, an assertion often accepted today), there is no definite ending, merely Dupin's theory of the line of inquiry that the police would find most beneficial.  New evidence appeared as Poe wrote his fictional account and he had to make several changes in the final installment to authenticate his original speculations.

Dupin's final exploit in "The Purloined Letter" first appeared in The Gift: 1845 an annual publication that was actually published in October 1844.  The best of the Dupin tales, it combines the action-thrillerstyle of the first with the purely analytical and deductive exercise of the second.  In this prototype of the modern spy story, a potentially embarrassing document is stolen from "the royal apartments" by a Minister too powerful to be arrested without proof.  The police thoroughly search his rooms every night for months without success until, in frustration, they ask Dupin for help.  He visits the Minister's residence and spots the letter at once - it is in such an obvious spot that everyone overlooked it.  After receiving an enormous reward, Dupin hands the elusive letter to the stunned Monsieur "G" without explanation.

FILMS

"Murders in the Rue Morgue" Universal, 1932.  Starring Bela Lugosi, Leon Waycoff (later changed his name to Leon Ames), Sidney Fox.  Directed by Robert Florey.  Medical student Pierre Dupin (Waycoff/Ames) is certain that Dr. Mirakle (Lugosi), the owner of a large ape named Eric, which he exhibits in carnivals and with which he converses, has been murdering streetwalkers and other women to further his experiments in mingling the blood of animals and humans.  The mother of Dupin's sweetheart (Fox) is one of the gorilla's victims and the girl herself is carried off.

"Mystery of Marie Roget" Universal, 1942.  Starring Maria Montez, Patric Knowles, John Litel, Lloyd Corrigan, Maria Ouspenskaya.  Directed by Phil Rosen.  The disappearance and murder of a celebrated French actress (Montez) is investigated by Inspector Gobelin (Corrigan) and his friend Dr. Paul Dupin (Knowles), chief medical officer of Paris.

"Phantom of the Rue Morgue" WB, 1954.  Starring Karl Malden, Claude Dauphin, Patricia Medina, Steve Forrest.  Directed by Roy Del Ruth.  The deranged head of the Paris zoo (Malden) trains a giant ape to kill women in the streets of gas-lit Paris to avenge the death of his wife (actually he had driven her to suicide).  Young Paul Dupin (Forrest) a medical student with an interest in psychology, reasons that the killer was an animal who responded to the tinkling  of bracelet bells that all the victims wore.

There was a 1971 film "Murders in the Rue Morgue" that used plot lines from other Poe stories but omitted Dupin and all traces of the original story, so it cannot be seriously considered.  There was a made-for-TV movie in December 1986 of the "Murders in the Rue Morgue" starring George C. Scott as Dupin (a bit long in the tooth to portray the young detective), along with Rebecca DeMornay, Ian McShane, and Val Kilmer.  In May 2004 Dupin appeared on stage in "Murder by Poe" an off-Broadway production dramatizing a series of Poe stories including "Murders in the Rue Morgue".  

Regarded by many as the greatest American writer of the 19th Century, Edgar Allan Poe's finest works were tales of terror and the supernatural.  But his most important contribution to literature was his creation of the first fictional detective and the invention of the detective story.  Poe was never fully understood or appreciated by his contemporaries, receiving neither the acclaim he knew he deserved nor the financial rewards he desperately needed.  His periods of employment were brief, possibly because of his alcoholism, but certainly because of his strong views and arrogance that often enraged his employers.  After a drinking spree he was found lying in a Baltimore gutter.  Taken to a hospital he died in delirium a few days later at the age of 40.  In the early hours of January 19, Poe's birthday, for over 70 years a shadowy figure dressed in black with a wide-brimmed hat and white scarf would visit the original grave of Poe in Baltimore (Poe's body was reburied years after his death) pour himself a glass of cognac and raise a toast to Poe's memory, then vanish into the night after leaving three roses in a distinctive arrangement and the unfinished bottle of cognac.  These annual visitations began in the 1930s and ended in 2009.

Detective fiction had no real precedent and the word detective had not yet been coined when Poe introduced Dupin.  Dupin was the prototype of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Hercule Poirot by Agatha Christie.  Conan Doyle once stated "Each (of Poe's detective stories) is a root from which a whole literature has developed...Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?"  The Mystery Writers of America present an annual award known as The Edgar, a small bust of Poe, for distinguished work in the mystery genre.