"It seemed to me that the only thing left of Leroy Fry was a question. A single question, posed by the rictus in his limbs, by the flush of green in his pale, hairless skin."
This novel is a murder mystery as well as a work of historical fiction featuring Edgar Allan Poe as a main character. Gus Landor is a former constable called back into service to investigate a gruesome crime. A young cadet attending West Point has been not just brutally murdered but violated. His neck is bruised, his mouth twisted, and his chest is opened. It this latter detail which is the driving point of Lander’s urge to investigate because it wasn’t enough for the killer to merely snuff out a man’s life, he was driven to carve open his chest and take his heart.
"Pausing one last time to reconnoiter the grounds, I stepped into the stairwell. The door closed behind me with a great rush. The ebon air surged round, benighting the very Night, and it seemed to me that I could hear—yes! once more!—the low, dull, quick sound, the throbbing pulsation so akin to, and yet so at variance with, the palpitations of a human heart. Was it my own heart? I wondered. Or had my still-audible panting touched off a corresponding rhythm in the tensile air, much as the drummer’s stick finds answering reverberations in the tautened hide of his tympan?"
Poe—another cadet at West Point—has been enlisted by Landor to assist in the investigation of the murder of Leroy Fry. He has specifically been assigned the task of penetrating into the very heart of the prime suspect, Artemus Marquis, by establishing a close relationship within the family manor. The written reports of his endeavor to fulfill this role in the investigation read like works of fiction rather than police reports and include allusions to actual literary works that Poe will come to write in the future. This particular extract is from a report sent to Landor is notable for replicating the mood of paranoia, the staccato rhythm, and the content of his famous short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
"Horrid Affair.—A cow and a sheep belonging to Mr. Elias Humphreys, of Haverstraw, were discovered Friday in a terrible condition. The animals had been dispatched by means of a slash across the throat. Mr. Humphreys also reports that the animals had been most cruelly carved open, and from each, the heart removed."
Another human victim turns up—this time castrated—and then reports of livestock being similarly abused make the papers. The natural question among police, of course, is whether it is possible that the ritualistic killings of the humans and the livestock could possibly be related. Some on the police force suspect a Satanic cult. It turns out that there actually is a connection to be made between the murders, the cows and sheep, and Satanism. It just may not necessarily be the connection that is expected.
