Eau de morgue

Description

Eau de morgue by Arthur T. Harris is a science-fantasy crime short story written in the mid-20th century. It concerns a Greenwich Village perfume shop, a domineering duchess, and a chilling disappearance seemingly linked to experimental bath salts, in a sly homage to Poe. Told as a brisk monologue to a detective, the story follows Jan Mystel, an ex–Air Force drifter who takes a part-time job with Madame Outre, a once-celebrated Budapest medium and perfumer now running a secretive backroom lab. Madame’s rich patron, the Duchess of Dunscombe, grows overbearing and demands the shop move uptown; after a bitter clash, Madame mails her a “parting gift” of green bath salts and then vanishes. Soon the Duchess disappears from her hotel bath: the door is locked from within, a scream and a draining gurgle are heard, the tub is empty, and her diamond ring is later found wedged in the open drain. The lone tangible link is the emptied bottle of Madame’s salts that defies analysis. The narrator’s final inference is stark: the salts dissolved the Duchess “all of her,” completing an elegant act of vengeance and leaving only the eerie possibility that the victim went quite literally down the drain. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Subjects

• Science fiction
• Short stories
• Mystery fiction
• Greenwich Village (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction
• PS