Murders in cold blood by Poe and Browning

In almost exactly the same year, the novelist and the poet publish spine-chillingly horrifying works imagining characters who kill for pleasure

Dec 06, 2024

The story so far…

The narrator becomes obsessed with a man who has one ‘pale blue eye, with a film over it’ and stalks him for seven nights in the hopes of destroying it.

Now read on:

Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch’s minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers—of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back—but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers), and so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.

1923 illustration by Harry Clarke (Wikipedia)

I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out—“Who’s there?”

I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening;—just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.

Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief—oh, no!—it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself—“It is nothing but the wind in the chimney—it is only a mouse crossing the floor,” or “It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp.” Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain; because Death in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel—although he neither saw nor heard—to feel the presence of my head within the room.

When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little—a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it—you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily—until, at length a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye.

It was open—wide, wide open—and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness—all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man’s face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot.

And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense?—now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.

But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eye. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man’s terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment!—do you mark me well? I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me—the sound would be heard by a neighbour! The old man’s hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once—once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.

If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body.

What we love about this excerpt….

Poe puts the deranged mind of the assailant at the centre of this story, recounting the story of the crime in the first-person narrative of the murderer. He writes in a creepily meticulous voice and seems to expect sympathy on the part of his readers. But, the irony of the story is that we are likely most sympathetic to the victim: the one who upon hearing a strange noise reassures himself that it is just a mouse or a cricket.

We love the way Poe drops in a little reference here and there to a famous work of literature—for instance, ‘upon the damned spot’ echoing Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In this light-touch way, Poe deftly links the blood-spattered Lady Macbeth’s exclamation of ‘out, damned spot!’ to his psychopathic murderer, accentuating the pure evil of the crime and also how chillingly literate he is—able to drop in such references even as he’s preparing to kill.

About the author

Despite his relatively short and turbulent life, Edgar Allan Poe (1808-1849) was a major figure in American and European literature. He wrote in a number of genres, and his best-known works include the narrative poem "The Raven" (1845); gothic stories such as "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843) and "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846); as well as tales featuring the detective—and the first of the genre—C Auguste Dupin: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" (1842) and "The Purloined Letter" (1844).

To read alongside...

The grandiosity of this deranged killer’s voice brings to mind Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ (1842) whose murderous narrator shows the same relish and self-justification of his crime, and the same fixation on the ‘blue eyes’ of his victim:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Be sure I looked up at her eyes
       Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshipped me; surprise
       Made my heart swell, and still it grew
       While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
       Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
       In one long yellow string I wound
       Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
       I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
       I warily oped her lids: again
       Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untightened next the tress
       About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
       I propped her head up as before,
       Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
       The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
       That all it scorned at once is fled,
       And I, its love, am gained instead!

You might also enjoy an earlier newsletter of ours featuring Poe’s fiction:

Why tracking down one of the first detective stories takes you to Paris 🔍

Daniel Abdalla

June 10, 2022

Why tracking down one of the first detective stories takes you to Paris 🔍

Edgar Allan Poe, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"

Read full story

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