of Pluto’s brutal, ugly murder has disappeared as mysteriously as it had first appeared. As readers of Poe’s story discover, the protagonist, relating his story from death row the day before his execution, had unknowingly entombed the live cat behind the same wall that contained the remains of his wife. Before the discovery of the cat, however, the protagonist, who narrates his story, takes the reader through the days between the murder and its discovery by the police.

Poe’s narrator is nervous, having murdered his wife with an axe. As the first few days after the event pass, however, he becomes more relaxed, believing that he has gotten away with his crime. The answer to the question—how long did it take the police to find the body—is provided following reference to several summary investigations into the wife’s whereabouts:

The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. Some few inquiries had been made, but these had been readily answered. Even a search had been instituted—but of course nothing was to be discovered. I looked upon my future felicity as secured.

It is now when the narrator writes that, “[u]pon the fourth day of the assassination, a party of the police came, very unexpectedly, into the house, and proceeded again to make rigorous investigation of the premises.” This search, of course, leads to discovery of the murder victim’s remains, but only after the now-confident narrator has facilitated his own demise by rapping “heavily with a cane ... upon that very portion of the brickwork behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.” The rapping on the wall alarms the cat sealed behind the wall, which emits a terrifying screech heard by the investigating law enforcement officers who proceed to tear down the wall and find the body with the cat resting uneasily upon the corpse’s head.