The Marvelous Augustine
We were members of that select fraternity, I and my companion, a certain Jean-Baptiste Augustine of whom I had become inordinately fond over the short span of our acquaintance— so fond, in fact, that we had come to inhabit together a house rife with phantasms. They did not bother us, and we did not bother them— we were busily engaged in intellectual pursuits, he and I. It happened one night, as I was scribbling down some transient thought which had settled in my agitated mind, that Augustine stood up, handed me an evening journal, and said, “observe, cher ami, the third column from the right.” Printed there was a story documenting the discovery of the body of Mme. Dupont, found lying in a gutter at two o’ clock that morning. While out on an errand of an unknown nature she had received multiple stab wounds from a similarly unknown blunt weapon and seemed to have been nearly thrown across the street. Seven bones were shattered and there were several puncture wounds in her chest— ah, Paris! Will your thirst for blood ne’er be quenched? Neighbors had reported an unusual and horrible sound, as of a man in pain.
“But that is most strange,” I mentioned to my companion. “Could it be that a man was murdered as well, and the body hidden?”
“A man will be murdered soon enough unless these ignorant gendarmes of ours reexamine their evidence,” he replied. “Their current scenario can’t possibly be correct— M. Dupont, stab his wife in cold blood and then hurl her across the street? The man doesn’t have the strength to throw a cookpot that distance! I suppose,” he said meditatively, “we ought to go set things aright. It’s dark enough— what say you to a journey to the troisiéme?” So saying, my companion donned his sunglasses and off we set.
Upon our arrival a swarthy gendarme attempted to bar us from the scene of the crime, saying we lacked official certification, but a quiet word from my companion and he become suddenly reticent and allowed us to pass unmolested.
“Pray tell, what is this that you whispered in the officer’s ear?” I queried, but Augustine only smiled and said “Save your curiosity for the mystery, mon cher. There are greater things afoot. What’s this?” he said, approaching the victim’s body. “What a curious puncture wound.”
“The instrument must have been curved like a Japanese sword,” I observed.
“It would certainly seem so,” said my companion, bending over the body for a moment. “Very well,” he said, straightening up again. “I’ve seen enough. Let us depart.”
“Is the crime so impenetrable?” I protested. “With your extraordinary ability of deduction, surely you, my dearest friend, can hazard a guess as to the nature of this incident?”
“Any guess I hazard now can be hazarded just as easily at home, where I have my pipe and a comfortable chair to hazard with. Unless you’ve anything else you would like to see, I suggest we depart.
“But you know,” he said as we walked by moonlight, the pavement shining beneath our feet like ethereal silver, “as notions go, I believe I’ve a fairly accurate one. Tomorrow at 10 P.M., we shall see for certain.” And inveigle as I might, he would only smile and say “Tomorrow at ten all shall be made clear.”
And the next night we had a very queer visitor indeed. A rather portly man of British origin came calling. His manner was nervous and his voice overly loud— repeatedly I had to beg him to speak more quietly, for the room was filled with much that was delicate and I and my companion were unaccustomed to loud noises. I led him to the parlor, instructing him to speak very softly around Augustine who was delicately constituted.
“Ah,” Augustine said kindly, “and this would be R. Gables?”
“Sir— why, yes,” said our visitor, rather taken aback. He had not announced himself, and I had seen no need to inquire. “I was led to believe, Monsieur, that is to say…”
“You were led to believe that I and my companion provide a service of shipping exotic animals across France, yes?” Augustine said. “You have an animal of the exotic nature, presumably, which requires said shipping?”
“Yes, Monsieur. I have recently acquired, through no fault of my own, a dwarf wildebeest. I would like it shipped as, well, as discreetly as can be managed, given the unusual circumstances.”
“R. Gables,” Augustine said, “are you aware of the curious circumstances of the death of Mme. Dupont?”
“It doesn’t belong to me,” Gables said nervously.
“I see you are attempting to surreptitiously reach for your weapon. I would not do this,” Augustine said, lifting his hand from the shadowed recesses of the divan, and for a moment I saw the metallic gleam of his revolver. “I am aware that the wildebeest was not originally in your possession. It belonged to an exhibition which is currently travelling through Lyon. The animal’s name, I believe, is Oscar.”
“They’d kill him,” Gables said, “they’d kill him if they knew. That he killed her. He did it. I saw him do it.”
“But you knew, of course, that Mme. Dupont had brought this misfortune upon herself by attempting, very stupidly, to steal the animal.”
“She must have been relocating the animal when I spotted her. Followed her discreetly— wanted to turn them her into the authorities once I knew where she was going. You understand.”
“I do,” Augustine said mildly. “And of course, after seeing Oscar dispose of Mme. Dupont, you very charitably elected to care for him until you could return him to the exhibition where he belonged. Only one thing puzzles me— where have you been keeping the animal?”
“I have a large closet.”
“I see. Well, all is clear to me now. At this address you will find the headquarters of an organization which will be sympathetic to your cause. I have spoken to them already— they will arrange for the transportation of the animal.”
“Thank you, Monsieur,” R. Gables murmured, “God bless you.” I took it upon myself to see him out of our dwelling.
“But mon cher,” I said upon returning, more than slightly puzzled. “Even if the mystery is clear, the solution is not. How did you know the puncture wounds were caused by a wildebeest, of all things?”
“It was simple,” he said. “From the nature of the wounds— you observed yourself that the instrument must have been curved like a Japanese sword— and also from this.” He extricated a piece of brown fluff from his pocket. “In my youth I dabbled in the natural sciences; it was easy enough to determine that this was wildebeest fur, and once I had drawn that logical conclusion I realized it could only have come from Oscar, the missing dwarf wildebeest. It then became my objective to find out who was harboring said wildebeest, and why. I obtained a copy of last week’s paper, in which the disappearance of the wildebeest was noted. R. Gables was thought to be a prime suspect because of his previous close ties to the wildebeest, but his premises were searched and nothing found. I elected to follow the lead anyway— I had some of my associates plant the idea in Gable’s head to come here around ten in the evening on a Tuesday, which is when we supposedly arranged for the shipping of exotic animals. And the rest, as they say, is history.”
“Jean-Baptiste Augustine, you’ve outdone yourself.”
“Always, mon cher. Now pass me my pipe.”
Evaluation
In The Marvelous Augustine, Augustine's ability to solve the crime is heavily dependent on his having read the newspaper, which was a facet of Victorian life, and on his knowledge of natural science, an area which was rapidly expanding. The language is overly flowery
à la Bulwer-Lytton, and I tried to reference The Purloined Letter, in which one never sees the purloined letter, in the way that newspapers in this text hold all the answers and they are never seen. I tried to be relatively faithful to the character of Dupin as well.
I’m excited to see that you riddled your satire w/ the homosexual undertones that the characters of Dupin and Holmes may or may not emit. It worked nicely, particularly given your dramatization of the Paris scene. There was a nice contrast b/w bloodlust and, perhaps, actual lust. The story itself, however, seemed more of a modeled tale than a satire. As your explanation of the piece commented, you employed several elements found in the writings of other authors that we read this semester, and attempted to remain “relatively faithful to the character of Dupin.” All this you did very well. But I think that by having a more fleshed out explanation, you would have realized the story for what it was: a strong homage to Victorian detective writing (rather than a satire of the same).
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