Edgar Allen Poe the Purloined Letter Summary

The stories begins on a windy night in Paris, the narrator and C. Auguste Dupin are smoking pipes when G (head of the police) enters. A few months in advance the royal lady received a letter. Her husband entered the room as she was sitting on her bed reading the letter. She didn’t want him to see the letter (likely because it contained incriminating information) so she slipped it onto the desk next to her. While she was talking to her husband, D switched the letter on the desk out with a different letter right in front of her. She was unable to stop him because she didn’t want to bring her husband’s attention to the letter. D used the letter to blackmail the queen, and threatened to reveal it’s contents unless she obeyed.

The queen sent G to retrieve the letter, for which he searched at length, “in every nook and cranny”. The author went into great detail describing how closely he search, and how he even checked inside of pillows using a needle, and inside of a chair leg. D knew that G had been searching his house, but he didn’t mind because he knew that G would never find the letter, no matter how closely. The secret had been it was hidden in plain sight, simply disguised as an ordinary tattered letter. Dupin, who revealed this secret, had known the whole time. He was just clever in waiting for the police to become desperate, and in turn, increasing the prize. He then offered G the letter for 50,000 francs.

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