The Icehouse is both a secluded location at West Point and the ground where Leroy Fry’s heart was removed. In Augustus Landor’s investigation, its significance lies in a change of method: after searching around the building without finding what he needed, he returns with Edgar Allan Poe and looks for the marks that a hurriedly dismantled ceremony might have left behind.

Setting and Access

On November 1–2, the routine at West Point briefly emptied the surrounding grounds. At four o’clock, cadets left the day’s activities to meet young women on Flirtation Walk; Landor notes that the custom left him alone by the Icehouse’s northern entrance, facing The Plain. A note had brought Edgar Allan Poe to the meeting. The quiet was therefore not a permanent feature of the place but a temporary opening created by the Academy’s social schedule.

The crime scene lay just north and slightly northeast of the Icehouse door. From there, officers’ quarters were to the northwest, cadet barracks to the west, the Academies to the south, and the guard post at Fort Clinton to the east. Landor judges the location a sensible choice for someone wishing to work unseen: the Icehouse stood within reach of several occupied areas, yet this particular spot offered concealment.

The Investigation at the Site

Landor identifies the area as the place where Leroy Fry’s heart was removed, distinguishing it as the second crime. He had already searched all around the Icehouse, even crawling on his hands and knees, but those searches had not led him to the clue he sought. The breakthrough begins when he recognizes that the ground must be approached from a different vantage point.

Landor reasons that if the removal of Fry’s heart formed part of a religious rite, its objects—such as stones or candles—could have been taken away to avoid leaving evidence. Their impressions in the ground, however, would have been harder to erase, especially with a search party approaching and the heart still requiring attention. He therefore treats the empty marks, rather than the missing ritual objects, as the remaining record of what happened.

Among pale grass and white stones, Landor uses a pencil and notebook to measure distances, moving in a wave pattern and marking the results as a lattice of dots. Edgar Allan Poe watches from within the Icehouse and asks what Landor has found. The account shows Landor handing him the page, but does not disclose the pattern’s interpretation in this passage; the investigation’s method is clear even where its immediate result is withheld.

Narrative Significance

The Icehouse scene turns absence into something legible. The removed objects and the cleared ground do not end the inquiry: Landor looks instead for the impressions they left and for a position from which their arrangement might become visible. The contrast between his earlier, close-up search and the later measured survey makes the location more than a hiding place; it becomes a record that must be read indirectly.

Its concealment is also practical rather than absolute. The Icehouse is near barracks, officers’ quarters, the Academies, and a guard post, while the four o’clock custom supplies the brief solitude Landor needs to examine the site with Edgar Allan Poe. Place, timing, and method converge, making the Icehouse the point where the investigation shifts from searching for an absent object to reconstructing an act from its traces.