This instantly makes the reader think why he is so and the fact that he tries to prove his innocence against being mad makes the reader believe that he or she has done something badly wrong. Next, he states that he has a disease, "the disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them." No one knows anything about what the narrator has done yet he protests against the fact that he is evil. "How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you the whole story." Again he tries to prove that he is not mad by telling the story calmly. The narrator himself knows that he has done something wrong and obviously has a guilty conscious. .
The narrator talks about his obsessive behaviour with the eye of an old man living next door to him. "I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very gradually --I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever." We don't know why the narrator feels this way and what happened. The reader thinks at this point that the narrator did something and this is that the old man was killed. The suspense here is that the reader doesn't know how the story continues.
At the beginning of the narrator telling the story we see that the narrator knows that the audience see him as mad, and we do. He states that madmen know nothing. "You should have seen how wisely I proceeded --with what caution --with what foresight --with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him." .
Throughout the story, Poe talks about time to create further suspense. "I moved it slowly --very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed.