In Providence, Rhode Island, in the late 1840s, a boy and his sister have been abandoned by their aunt and are going hungry after a few day without food. The have come from London in search of their mother, who disappeared after coming to America. The boy, Edmund Brimmer, leaves his sister locked in their rooms while fetching some food. When he returns, the door is still locked, but his sister, Sis, is gone. He wanders the streets in search of help and bumps into an odd man who calls himself Auguste Dupin, who says he will solve the mysteries of the missing sister, aunt, and mother. Dupin is brilliant, quick to draw conclusions from small clues, but there are disturbing parallels between what he says of his own family and the family of Edmund—parallels all ending in death.