nine o’clock in the morning of
Sunday
Why is it folly to suppose that the murder was committed _ within five minutes _ after the girl 's quitting her mother 's house ? Why is it folly to suppose that the murder was committed at any given period of the day ? There have been assassinations at all hours . But , had the murder taken place at any moment between nine o'clock in the morning of Sunday , and a quarter before midnight , there would still have been time enough ` to throw the body into the river before midnight . ' This assumption , then , amounts precisely to this -- that the murder was not committed on Sunday at all -- and , if we allow L'Etoile to assume this , we may permit it any liberties whatever . The paragraph beginning ` It is folly to suppose that the murder , etc. , ' however it appears as printed in L'Etoile , may be imagined to have existed actually thus in the brain of its inditer -- ` It is folly to suppose that the murder , if murder was committed on the body , could have been committed soon enough to have enabled her murderers to throw the body into the river before midnight ; it is folly , we say , to suppose all this , and to suppose at the same time , -LRB- as we are resolved to suppose , -RRB- that the body was not thrown in until after midnight ' -- a sentence sufficiently inconsequential in itself , but not so utterly preposterous as the one printed . `` Were it my purpose , '' continued Dupin , `` merely to _ make out a case _ against this passage of L'Etoile 's argument , I might safely leave it where it is .