The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes by Roger Wilkes Page A

evidence of sexual assault. It was as if it was nothing to do with her at all, except that it appeared that she had been singled out in some aberrant way and had not been randomly selected as a victim.
    What you were left with was the nightmarish prospect of a stranger, a man, driven by unknowable instincts to plan and smash his way into a woman’s home. It must have been a terrifying invasion. You could picture Janet Brown, at home in bed, oblivious to what was about to happen. It was better then to picture this other person, sitting at home still, waiting anxiously for the knock at the door. You could guess that there was nothing very special about them, either.

 
THE REAL MARIE ROGET
    (Mary Rogers, 1841)
    Irving Wallace
     
    The murder of an obscure New York shopgirl, Mary Cecilia Rogers, in 1841 would have been long forgotten but for her fleeting acquaintance with one of America’s most brilliant nineteenth-century writers, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49). The reckless and gifted Poe based his Gothic tale The Mystery of Marie Roget on her case. Irving Wallace (1916–90) was a American magazine writer in the 1930s and 1940s, before turning to screenwriting and fiction. Since publishing his first novel in 1959, Wallace has become one of America’s most popular and successful writers. However, his first book was not a novel at all, but a survey of the “lives of extraordinary people who inspired memorable characters in fiction,” published in 1955 as The Fabulous Originals . In it, Wallace related the true stories of the real people who became immortalized in nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, such as Dr Joseph Bell (whose life inspired Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes) and Deacon Brodie (Robert Louis Stevenson’s inspiration for Dr Henry Jekyll and Mr Edward Hyde). Edgar Allan Poe made no secret of the source of his fictional character Marie Roget; he wrote to friends that his creation was inspired by the unsolved murder of Mary Rogers.
    “People begin to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed—a knife—a purse—and a dark lane.”
    Thomas de Quincey
     
    For eighteen months during 1837 and 1838, Edgar Allan Poe, after being fired as editor of a Richmond literary magazine for excessive drinking, was a resident of New York City. He dwelt, with his pale, somewhat retarded child-bride, Virginia, and his matronly, possessive aunt and mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, in a cheap apartment on Sixth Avenue.
    Poe, trying unsuccessfully to freelance for magazines, often restless with despair, became a familiar figure on Broadway. Few persons who saw him forgot him. In his neat, shabby, black swallow-tail coat and mended military cape, striding nervously, briskly along, he had the look of a neurotic peacock. His head, set large on a slender frame, seemed always in the clouds. His hair and scrub moustache were dark brown, his eyes sad and grey, and it was remarked that he had “hands like bird claws”.
    His destination in many of these walks, as a few would remember after his death, was John Anderson’s tobacco shop at 319 Broadway, near Thomas Street. This small store was a popular hangout for famous authors like James Fenimore Cooper, as well as for magazine editors, newspaper reporters, and gamblers employed in the vicinity. And here Poe came for gossip and stimulation, and certainly for contacts.
    When he had money, which was not often, Poe brought cigars or plugs of tobacco from the beautiful salesgirl behind the counter. She was employed, largely because of her vivacity and comeliness, as a full-time clerk, and her name was Mary Cecilia Rogers. It may be assumed that Poe, through the frequency of his visits and small purchases, knew her fairly well. He could not know, however, how soon Miss Rogers would serve him in another capacity.
    By early 1839 the strange, eloquent, self-styled “magazinist” was no longer a regular customer of John