midnight
`` 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 . It is not , however , with L'Etoile that we have to do , but with the truth . The sentence in question has but one meaning , as it stands ; and this meaning I have fairly stated : but it is material that we go behind the mere words , for an idea which these words have obviously intended , and failed to convey . It was the design of the journalist to say that , at whatever period of the day or night of Sunday this murder was committed , it was improbable that the assassins would have ventured to bear the corpse to the river before midnight . And herein lies , really , the assumption of which I complain . It is assumed that the murder was committed at such a position , and under such circumstances , that the bearing it to the river became necessary . Now , the assassination might have taken place upon the river 's brink , or on the river itself ; and , thus , the throwing the corpse in the water might have been resorted to , at any period of the day or night , as the most obvious and most immediate mode of disposal .