Twenty years separate the cases of these two women, the length of France lies between the scenes in which they are placed: Mme Boursier, Paris, 1823; Mme Lacoste, Riguepeu, a small town in Gascony, 1844. I tie their cases together for reasons which cannot be apparent until both their stories are told—and which may not be so apparent even then. That is not to say I claim those reasons to be profound, recondite, or settled in the deeps of psychology. The matter is, I would not have you believe that I join their cases because of similarities that are superficial. My hope is that you will find, as I do, a linking which, while neither profound nor superficial, is curious at least. As I cannot see that the one case transcends the other in drama or interest, I take them chronologically, and begin with the Veuve Boursier:
At the corner of Rue de la Paix and Rue Neuve Saint-Augustine in 1823 there stood a boutique d'epiceries. It was a flourishing establishment, typical of the Paris of that time, and its proprietors were people of decent standing among their neighbours. More than the prosperous condition of their business, which was said to yield a profit of over 11,000 francs per annum, it was the happy and cheerful relationship existing between les epoux Boursier that made them of such good consideration in the district. The pair had been married for thirteen years, and their union had been blessed by five children.
Boursier, a middle-aged man of average height, but very stout of build and asthmatically short of neck, was recognized as a keen trader. He did most of his trading away from the house in the Rue de la Paix, and paid frequent visits, sometimes entire months in duration, to Le Havre and Bordeaux. It is nowhere suggested that those visits were made on any occasion other than that of business. M. Boursier spent his days away from the house, and his evenings with friends.
It does not anywhere appear that Mme Boursier objected to her husband's absenteeism. She was a capable woman, rather younger than her husband, and of somewhat better birth and education. She seems to have been content with, if she did not exclusively enjoy, having full charge of the business in the shop. Dark, white of tooth, not particularly pretty, this woman of thirty-six was, for her size, almost as stout as her husband. It is said that her manner was a trifle imperious, but that no doubt resulted from knowledge of her own capability, proved by the successful way in which she handled her business and family responsibilities.
The household, apart from Mme and M. Boursier, and counting those employed in the epicerie, consisted of the five children, Mme Boursier's aunt (the Veuve Flamand), two porters (Delonges and Beranger), Mlle Reine (the clerk), Halbout (the book-keeper), and the cook (Josephine Blin).
On the morning of the 28th of June, which would be a Sunday, Boursier was called by the cook to take his usual dejeuner, consisting of chicken broth with rice. He did not like the taste of it, but ate it. Within a little time he was violently sick, and became so ill that he had to go to bed. The doctor, who was called almost immediately, saw no cause for alarm, but prescribed mild remedies. As the day went on, however, the sickness increased in violence. Dr Bordot became anxious when he saw the patient again in the evening. He applied leeches and mustard poultices. Those ministrations failing to alleviate the sufferings ofthe invalid, Dr Bordot brought a colleague into consultation, but neither the new-comer, Dr Partra, nor himself could be positive in diagnosis. Something gastric, it was evident. They did what they could, though working, as it were, in the dark.
The patient was no better next day. As night came on he was worse than ever. A medical student named Toupie was enlisted as nurse and watcher, and sat with the sufferer through the night—but to no purpose. At four o'clock in the morning of the Tuesday, the 30th, there came a crisis in the illness of Boursier, and he died.
The grief exhibited by Mme Boursier, so suddenly widowed, was just what might have been expected in the circumstances from a woman of her station. She had lost a good-humoured companion, the father of her five children, and the man whose genius in trading had done so much to support her own activities for their mutual profit. The Veuve Boursier grieved in adequate fashion for the loss of her husband, but, being a capable woman and responsible for the direction of affairs, did not allow her grief to overwhelm her. The dead epicier was buried without much delay—the weather was hot, and he had been of gross habit—and the business at the corner of Rue de la Paix went on as near to usual as the loss of the 'outside' partner would allow.
Rumour, meantime, had got to work. There were circumstances about the sudden death of Boursier which the busybodies of the environs felt they might regard as suspicious. For some time before the death of the epicier there had been hanging about the establishment a Greek called Kostolo. He was a manservant out of employ, and not, even on the surface, quite the sort of fellow that a respectable couple like the Boursiers might be expected to accept as a family friend. But such, no less, had been the Greek's position with the household. So much so that, although Kostolo had no money and apparently no prospects, Boursier himself had asked him to be godfather to a niece. The epicier found the Greek amusing, and, on falling so suddenly ill, made no objection when Kostolo took it on himself to act as nurse, and to help in the preparing of drinks and medicines that were prescribed.
It is perhaps to the rather loud-mouthed habits of this Kostolo that the birth of suspicion among the neighbours may be attributed. On the death of Boursier he had remarked that the nails of the corpse were blue a colour, he said, which was almost a certain indication of poisoning. Now, the two doctors who had attended Boursier, having failed to account for his illness, were inclined to suspect poisoning as the cause of his death. For this reason they had suggested an autopsy, a suggestion rejected by the widow. Her rejection of the idea aroused no immediate suspicion of her in the minds of the doctors.
Kostolo, in addition to repeating outside the house his opinion regarding the blueness of the dead Boursier's nails, began, several days after the funeral, to brag to neighbours and friends of the warm relationship existing between himself and the widow. He dropped hints of a projected marriage. Upon this the neighbours took to remembering how quickly Kostolo's friendship with the Boursier family had sprung up, and how frequently he had visited the establishment. His nursing activities were remembered also. And it was noticed that his visits to the Boursier house still went on; it was whispered that he visited the Veuve Boursier in her bedroom.
The circumstances in which Boursier had fallen ill were well known. Nobody, least of all Mme Boursier or Kostolo, had taken any trouble to conceal them. Anybody who liked to ask either Mme Boursier or the Greek about the soup could have a detailed story at once. All the neighbourhood knew it. And since the Veuve Boursier's story is substantially the same as other versions it may as well be dealt with here and now.
M. Boursier, said his widow, tasted his soup that Sunday morning. "What a taste!" he said to the cook, Josephine. "This rice is poisoned."
"But, monsieur," Josephine protested, "that's amazing! The potage ought to be better than usual this morning, because I made a liaison for it with three egg-yolks!"
M. Boursier called his wife, and told her he couldn't eat his potage au riz. It was poisoned. Mme Boursier took a spoonful of it herself, she said, and saw nothing the matter with it. Whereupon her husband, saying that if it was all right he ought to eat it, took several spoonfuls more.
"The poor man," said his widow, "always had a bad taste in his mouth, and he could not face his soup." Then, she explained, he became very sick, and brought up what little of the soup he had taken, together with flots de bile.
All this chatter of poison, particularly by Kostolo and the widow, together with the persistent rumours of an adulterous association between the pair, gave colour to suspicions of a criminal complicity, and these in process of time came to the ears of the officers of justice. The two doctors were summoned by the Procureur-General, who questioned them closely regarding Boursier's illness. To the mind of the official everything pointed to suspicion of the widow. Word of the growing suspicion against her reached Mme Boursier, and she now hastened to ask the magistrates for an exhumation and a post-mortem examination. This did not avert proceedings by the Procureur. It was already known that she had refused the autopsy suggested by the two doctors, and it was stated that she had hurried on the burial.
Kostolo and the Widow Boursier were called before the Juge d'instruction.
II
There is about the Greek Kostolo so much gaudy impudence and barefaced roguery that, in spite of the fact that the main concern of these pages is with women, I am constrained to add his portrait to the sketches I have made in illustration. He is of the gallery in which are Jingle and Montague Tigg, with this difference—that he is rather more sordid than either.
Brought before the Procureur du Roi, he impudently confessed that he had been, and still was, Mme Boursier's lover. He told the judge that in the lifetime of her husband Mme Boursier had visited him in his rooms several times, and that she had given him money unknown to her husband.
Mme Boursier at first denied the adulterous intimacy with Kostolo, but the evidence in the hands of the Procureur was too much for her. She had partially to confess the truth of Kostolo's statement in this regard. She emphatically denied, however, that she had ever even thought of, let alone agreed to, marriage with the Greek. She swore that she had been intimate with Kostolo only once, and that, as far as giving him money was concerned, she had advanced him but one small sum on his IOU.
These confessions, together with the information which had come to him from other investigations, served to increase the feeling of the Procureur that Boursier's death called for probing. He issued an exhumation order, and on the 31st of July an autopsy on the body of Boursier was carried out by MM. Orfila and Gardy, doctors and professors of the Paris faculty of medicine. Their finding was that no trace existed of any disorders to which the death of Boursier might be attributed—such, for example, as cerebral congestion, rupture of the heart or of a larger vessel—but that, on the other hand, they had come upon a sufficiency of arsenic in the intestines to have caused death.
On the 2nd of August the same two professors, aided by a third, M. Barruel, carried out a further examination of the body. Their testimony is highly technical. It is also rather revolting. I am conscious that, dealing, as I have had to, with so much arsenical poisoning (the favourite weapon of the woman murderer), a gastric odour has been unavoidable in many of my pages—perhaps too many. For that reason I shall refrain from quoting either in the original French or in translation more than a small part of the professors' report. I shall, however, make a lay shot on the evidence it supplies. Boursier's interior generally was in foul condition, which is not to be explained by any ingestion of arsenic, but which suggests chronic and morbid pituitousness. The marvel is that the man's digestion functioned at all. This insanitary condition, however, was taken by the professors, as it were, in their stride. They concentrated on some slight traces of intestinal inflammation.
"One observed," their report went on, about the end of the ileum some grains of a whitish appearance and rather stubbornly attached. These grains, being removed, showed all the characteristics of white arsenic oxide. Put upon glowing charcoal they volatilized, giving off white smoke and a garlic odour. Treated with water, they dissolved, and the solution, when brought into contact with liquid hydrosulphuric acid, precipitated yellow sulphur of arsenic, particularly when one heated it and added a few drops of hydrochloric acid.
These facts (including, I suppose, the conditions I have hinted at) allowed them to conclude (a) that the stomach showed traces of inflammation, and (b) that the intestinal canal yielded a quantity of arsenic oxide sufficient to have produced that inflammation and to have caused death.
The question now was forward as to where the arsenic found in the body had come from. Inquiry established the fact that on the 15th of May, 1823—that is to say, several weeks before his death—Boursier had bought half a pound of arsenic for the purpose of destroying the rats in his shop cellars. In addition, he had bought prepared rat-poison. Only a part of those substances had been used. The remaining portions could not be found about the shop, nor could Mme Boursier make any suggestions for helping the search. She declared she had never seen any arsenic about the house at all.
There was, however, sufficient gravity in the evidences on hand to justify a definite indictment of Mme Boursier and Nicolas Kostolo, the first of having poisoned her husband, and the second of being accessory to the deed.
The pair were brought to trial on the 27th of November, 1823, before the Seine Assize Court, M. Hardouin presiding. The prosecution was conducted by the Avocat-General, M. de Broe. Maitre Couture defended Mme Boursier. Maitre Theo. Perrin appeared for Kostolo.
The case created great excitement, not only in Paris, but throughout the country. Another poisoning case had not long before this occupied the minds of the public very greatly—that of the hypocritical Castaing for the murder of Auguste Ballet. Indeed, there had been a lot of poisoning going on in French society about this period. Political and religious controversy, moreover, was rife. The populace were in a mood either to praise extravagantly or just as extravagantly to condemn. It happened that rumour convinced them of the guilt of the Veuve Boursier and Kostolo, and the couple were condemned in advance. Such was the popular spite against Mme Boursier and Kostolo that, it is said, Maitre Couture at first refused the brief for the widow's defence. He had already made a success of his defence of a Mme Lavaillaut, accused of poisoning, and was much in demand in cases where women sought judicial separation from their husbands. People were calling him "Providence for women." He did not want to be nicknamed "Providence for poisoners." But Mme Boursier's case being more clearly presented to him he took up the brief.
The accused were brought into court.
Kostolo was about thirty years of age. He was tall, distinctly good-looking in an exotic sort of way, with his dark hair, complexion, and flashing eyes. He carried himself grandly, and was elegantly clad in a frac noir. Not quite, as Army men were supposed once to say, "the clean potato," it was easy enough to see that women of a kind would be his ready victims. It was plain, in the court, that Master Nicolas thought himself the hero of the occasion.
There was none of this flamboyance about the Widow Boursier. She was dressed in complete mourning, and covered her face with a handkerchief. It was manifest that, in the phrase of the crime reporters, "she felt her position keenly." The usual questions as to her name and condition she answered almost inaudibly, her voice choked with sobs.
Kostolo, on the contrary, replied in organ tones. He said that he was born in Constantinople, and that he had no estate.
The acte d'accusation was read. It set forth the facts of the adulterous association of the two accused, of the money lent by Mme Boursier to Kostolo, of their meetings, and all the suspicious circumstances previous to the death of the epicier.
The cook-girl, Josephine Blin, had prepared the potage au riz in the kitchen, using the small iron pan that it was her wont to employ. Having made the soup, she conveyed it in its terrine to a small secretaire in the dining-room. This secretaire stood within the stretch of an arm from the door of the comptoir in which Mme Boursier usually worked. According to custom, Josephine had divided the potage in two portions—one for Boursier and the other for the youngest child. The youngster and she had eaten the second portion between them, and neither had experienced any ill-effects.
Josephine told her master that the soup was ready. He came at her call, but did not eat the soup at once, being otherwise occupied. The soup stood on the secretaire for about fifteen minutes before Boursier started to eat it.
According to the accused, the accusation went on, after Boursier's death the two doctors asked that they might be allowed to perform an autopsy, since they were at a loss to explain the sudden illness. This Mme Boursier refused, in spite of the insistence of the doctors. She refused, she said, in the interest of her children. She insisted, indeed, on a quick burial, maintaining that, as her husband had been tres replet, the body would rapidly putrefy, owing to the prevailing heat, and that thus harm would be done to the delicate contents of the epicerie.
Led by rumours of the bluish stains—almost certain indications of a violent death—the authorities, said the accusation, ordered an exhumation and autopsy. Arsenic was found in the body. It was clear that Boursier, ignorant, as he was, of his wife's bad conduct, had not killed himself. This was a point that the widow had vainly attempted, during the process of instruction, to maintain. She declared that one Clap, a friend of her late husband, had come to her one day to say that a certain Charles, a manservant, had remarked to him, "Boursier poisoned himself because he was tired of living." Called before the Juge d'instruction, Henri Clap and Charles had concurred in denying this.
The accusation maintained that the whole attitude of Mme Boursier proved her a poisoner. As soon as her husband became sick she had taken the dish containing the remains of the rice soup, emptied it into a dirty vessel, and passed water through the dish. Then she had ordered Blin to clean it, which the latter did, scrubbing it out with sand and ashes.
Questioned about arsenic in the house, Mme Boursier said, to begin with, that Boursier had never spoken to her about arsenic, but later admitted that her husband had mentioned both arsenic and mort aux rats to her.
Asked regarding the people who frequented the house she had mentioned all the friends of Boursier, but neglected to speak of Kostolo. Later she had said she never had been intimate with the Greek. But Kostolo, "barefaced enough for anything," had openly declared the nature of his relations with her. Then Mme Boursier, after maintaining that she had been no more than interested in Kostolo, finding pleasure in his company, had been constrained to confess that she had misconducted herself with the Greek in the dead man's room. She had given Kostolo the run of her purse, the accusation declared, though she denied the fact, insisting that what she had given him had been against his note. There was only one conclusion, however. Mme Boursier, knowing the poverty of her paramour, had paid him as her cicisbeo, squandering upon him her children's patrimony.
The accusation then dealt with the supposed project of marriage, and declared that in it there was sufficient motive for the crime. Kostolo was Mme Boursier's accomplice beyond any doubt. He had acted as nurse to the invalid, administering drinks and medicines to him. He had had full opportunity for poisoning the grocer. Penniless, out of work, it would be a good thing for him if Boursier was eliminated. He had been blatant in his visits to Mme Boursier after the death of the husband.
Then followed the first questioning of the accused.
Mme Boursier said she had kept tryst with Kostolo in the Champs-Elysees. She admitted having been to his lodgings once. On the mention of the name of Mlle Riene, a mistress of Kostolo's, she said that the woman was partly in their confidence. She had gone with Mlle Riene twice to Kostolo's rooms. Once, she admitted, she had paid a visit to Versailles with Kostolo unknown to her husband.
Asked if her husband had had any enemies, Mme Boursier said she knew of none.
The questioning of Kostolo drew from him the admission that he had had a number of mistresses all at one time. He made no bones about his relations with them, nor about his relations with Mme Boursier. He was quite blatant about it, and seemed to enjoy the show he was putting up. Having airily answered a question in a way that left him without any reputation, he would sweep the court with his eyes, preening himself like a peacock.
He was asked about a journey Boursier had proposed making. At what time had Boursier intended making the trip?
"Before his death," Kostolo replied.
The answer was unintentionally funny, but the Greek took credit for the amusement it created in court. He conceived himself a humorist, and the fact coloured all his subsequent answers.
Kostolo said that he had called to see Boursier on the first day of his illness at three in the afternoon. He himself had insisted on helping to nurse the invalid. Mme Boursier had brought water, and he had given it to the sick man.
After Boursier's death he had remarked on the blueness of the fingernails. It was a condition he had seen before in his own country, on the body of a prince who had died of poison, and the symptoms of whose illness had been very like those in Boursier's. He had then suspected that Boursier had died of poisoning.
The loud murmurs that arose in court upon his blunt confession of having misconducted himself with Mme Boursier fifteen days after her husband's death seemed to evoke nothing but surprise in Kostolo. He was then asked if he had proposed marriage to Mme Boursier after Boursier's death.
"What!" he exclaimed, with a grin. "Ask a woman with five children to marry me—a woman I don't love?"
Upon this answer Kostolo was taken to task by the President of the court. M. Hardouin pointed out that Kostolo lived with a woman who kept and fed him, giving him money, but that at the same time he was taking money from Mme Boursier as her lover, protesting the while that he loved her. What could the Greek say in justification of such conduct?
"Excuse me, please, everybody," Kostolo replied, unabashed. "I don't know quite how to express myself, but surely what I have done is quite the common thing? I had no means of living but from what Mme Boursier gave me."
The murmurs evoked by the reply Kostolo treated with lofty disdain. He seemed to find his audience somewhat prudish.
To further questioning he answered that he had never proposed marriage to the Veuve Boursier. Possibly something might have been said in fun. He knew, of course, that the late Boursier had made a lot of money.
The cook, Josephine Blin, was called. At one time she had been suspect. Her version of the potage incidents, though generally in agreement with that of the accused widow, differed from it in two essential points. When she took Boursier's soup into the dining-room, she said, Mme Boursier was in the comptoir, three or four paces away from the desk on which she put the terrine. This Mme Boursier denied. She said she had been in the same comptoir as her husband. Josephine declared that Mme Boursier had ordered her to clean the soup-dish out with sand, but her mistress maintained she had bade the girl do no more than clean it. For the rest, Josephine thought about fifteen minutes elapsed before Boursier came to take the soup. During that time she had seen Mme Boursier writing and making up accounts.
Toupie, the medical student, said he had nursed Boursier during the previous year. Boursier was then suffering much in the same way as he had appeared to suffer during his fatal illness. He had heard Mme Boursier consulting with friends about an autopsy, and her refusal had been on their advice.
The doctors called were far from agreeing on the value of the experiments they had made. Orfila, afterwards to intervene in the much more universally notorious case of Mme Lafarge, stuck to his opinion of death by arsenic. If his evidence in the Lafarge case is read it will be seen that in the twenty years that had passed from the Boursier trial his notions regarding the proper routine of analysis for arsenic in a supposedly poisoned body had undergone quite a change. But by then the Marsh technique had been evolved. Here, however, he based his opinion on experiments properly described as "very equivocal;" and stuck to it. He was supported by a colleague named Lesieur.
M. Gardy said he had observed that the greater part of the grains about the ileum, noted on the 1st of August, had disappeared next day. The analysis had been made with quantities too small. He now doubted greatly if the substance taken to be arsenic oxide would account for death.
M. Barruel declared that from the glareous matter removed from the body only a grain of the supposed arsenic had been extracted, and that with difficulty. He had put the substance on glowing charcoal, but, in his opinion, the experiment was VERY EQUIVOCAL. It was at first believed that there was a big amount of arsenic, but he felt impelled to say that the substance noted was nothing other than small clusters of fat. The witness now refused to conclude, as he had concluded on the 1st of August, that enough poison had been in the body to cause death.
It would almost seem that the medical evidence should have been enough to destroy the case for the prosecution, but other witnesses were called.
Bailli, at one time a clerk to Boursier, said he had helped his patron to distribute arsenic and rat-poison in the shop cellars. He was well aware that the whole of the poison had not been used, but in the course of his interrogation he had failed to remember where the residue of the poisons had been put. He now recollected. The unused portion of the arsenic had been put in a niche of a bottle-rack.
In view of evidence given by a subsequent witness Bailli's rather sudden recovery of memory might have been thought odd if a friend of his had not been able to corroborate his statement. The friend was one Rousselot, another grocer. He testified that he and Bailli had searched together. Bailli had then cudgelled that dull ass, his brain, to some effect, for they had ultimately come upon the residue of the arsenic bought by Boursier lying with the remainder of the mort aux rats. Both the poisons had been placed at the bottom of a bottle-rack, and a plank had been nailed over them.
Rousselot, asked why he had not mentioned this fact before, answered stupidly, "I thought you knew it!"
The subsequent witness above referred to was an employee in the Ministere du Roi, a man named Donzelle. In a stammering and rather confused fashion he attempted to explain that the vacillations of the witness Bailli had aroused his suspicions. He said that Bailli, who at first had been vociferous in his condemnation of the Widow Boursier, had later been rather more vociferous in her defence. The witness (Donzelle) had it from a third party that Mme Boursier's sister-in-law had corrupted other witnesses with gifts of money. Bailli, for example, could have been seen carrying bags of ecus under his arm, coming out of the house of the advocate briefed to defend Mme Boursier.
Bailli, recalled, offered to prove that if he had been to Maitre Couture's house he had come out of it in the same fashion as he had gone in—that was, with a bag of bay salt under each arm.
Maitre Couture, highly indignant, rose to protest against the insinuation of the witness Donzelle, but the President of the court and the Avocat-General hastened to say that the eminent and honourable advocate was at no need to justify himself. The President sternly reprimanded Donzelle and sent him back to his seat.
III
The Avocat-General, M. de Broe, stated the case for the prosecution. He made, as probably was his duty, as much as he could of the arsenic said to have been found in the body (that precipitated as yellow sulphur of arsenic), and of the adultery of Mme Boursier with Kostolo. He dwelt on the cleaning of the soup-dish, and pointed out that while the soup stood on the desk Mme Boursier had been here and there near it, never out of arm's reach. In regard to Kostolo, the Greek was a low scallywag, but not culpable.
The prosecution, you observe, rested on the poison's being administered in the soup.
In his speech for the defence the eloquent Maitre Couture began by condemning the gossip and the popular rumour on which the case had been begun. He denounced the action of the magistrates in instituting proceedings as deplorably unconsidered and hasty.
Mme Boursier, he pointed out, had everything to lose through the loss of her husband. Why should she murder a fine merchant like Boursier for a doubtful quantity like Kostolo? He spoke of the happy relationship that had existed between husband and wife, and, in proof of their kindness for each other, told of a comedy interlude which had taken place on the Sunday morning.
Boursier, he said, had to get up before his wife that morning, rising at six o'clock. His rising did not wake his wife, and, perhaps humorously resenting her lazy torpor, he found a piece of charcoal and decorated her countenance with a black moustache. It was true that Mme Boursier showed some petulance over her husband's prank when she got down at eight o'clock, but her ill-humour did not last long. Her husband caressed and petted her, and before long the wife joined her merry-minded husband in laughing over the joke against her. That, said Maitre Couture, that mutual laughter and kindness, seemed a strange preliminary to the supposed poisoning episode of two hours or so later.
The truth of the matter was that Boursier carried the germ of death in his own body. What enemy had he made? What vengeance had he incurred? Maitre Couture reminded the jury of Boursier's poor physical condition, of his stoutness, of the shortness of his neck. He brought forward Toupie's evidence of Boursier's illness of the previous year, alike in symptoms and in the sufferings of the invalid to that which proved fatal on Tuesday the 30th of June. Then Maitre Couture proceeded to tear the medical evidence to pieces, and returned to the point that Mme Boursier had been sleeping so profoundly, so serenely, on the morning of her supposed contemplated murder that the prank played on her by her intended victim had not disturbed her.
The President's address then followed. The jury retired, and returned with a verdict of "Not guilty."
On this M. Hardouin discharged the accused, improving the occasion with a homily which, considering the ordeal that Mme Boursier had had to endure through so many months, and that might have been considered punishment enough, may be quoted merely as a fine specimen of salting the wound:
"Veuve Boursier," said he, "you are about to recover that liberty which suspicions of the gravest nature have caused you to lose. The jury declares you not guilty of the crime imputed to you. It is to be hoped that you will find a like absolution in the court of your own conscience. But do not ever forget that the cause of your unhappiness and of the dishonour which, it may be, covers your name was the disorder of your ways and the violation of the most sacred obligations. It is to be hoped that your conduct to come may efface the shame of your conduct in the past, and that repentance may restore the honour you have lost."
IV
Now we come, as the gentleman with the crimson handkerchief coyly showing between dress waistcoat and shirt might have said, waving his pointer as the canvas of the diorama rumbled on its rollers, to Riguepeu!
Some twenty years have elapsed since the Veuve Boursier stumbled from the stand of the accused in the Assize Court of the Seine, acquitted of the poisoning of her grocer husband, but convicted of a moral flaw which may (or may not) have rather diminished thereafter the turnover of the epicerie in the Rue de la Paix. One hopes that her punishment finished with her acquittal, and that the mood of the mob, as apt as a flying straw to veer for a zephyr as for a whirlwind, swung to her favour from mere revulsion on her escape from the scaffold. The one thing is as likely as the other. Didn't the heavy man of the fit-up show, eighteen months after his conviction for rape (the lapse of time being occupied in paying the penalty), return as an actor to the scene of his delinquency to find himself, not, as he expected, pelted with dead cats and decaying vegetables, but cheered to the echo? So may it have been with the Veuve Boursier.
Though in 1844, the year in which the poison trial at Auch was opened, four years had passed since the conviction of Mme Lafarge at Tulle, controversy on the latter case still was rife throughout France. The two cases were linked, not only in the minds of the lay public, but through close analogy in the idea of lawyers and experts in medical jurisprudence. From her prison cell Marie Lafarge watched the progress of the trial in Gascony. And when its result was published one may be sure she shed a tear or two.
But to Riguepeu...
You will not find it on anything but the biggest-scale maps. It is an inconsiderable town a few miles from Vic-Fezensac, a town not much bigger than itself and some twenty kilometres from Auch, which is the capital of the department of Gers. You may take it that Riguepeu lies in the heart of the Armagnac district.
Some little distance from Riguepeu itself, on the top of a rise, stood the Chateau Philibert, a one-floored house with red tiles and green shutters. Not much of a chateau, it was also called locally La Maison de Madame. It belonged in 1843 to Henri Lacoste, together with considerable land about it. It was reckoned that Lacoste, with the land and other belongings, was worth anything between 600,000 and 700,000 francs.
Henri had become rich late in life. The house and the domain had been left him by his brother Philibert, and another brother's death had also been of some benefit to him. Becoming rich, Henri Lacoste thought it his duty to marry, and in 1839, though already sixty-six years of age, picked on a girl young enough to have been his granddaughter.
Euphemie Verges was, in fact, his grand-niece. She lived with her parents at Mazeyrolles, a small village in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Compared with Lacoste, the Verges were said to be poor. Lacoste took it on himself to look after the girl's education, having her sent at his charges to a convent at Tarbes. In 1841, on the 2nd of May, the marriage took place.
If this marriage of youth with crabbed age resulted in any unhappiness the neighbours saw little of it. Though it was rumoured that for her old and rich husband Euphemie had given up a young man of her fancy in Tarbes, her conduct during the two years she lived with Lacoste seemed to be irreproachable. Lacoste was rather a nasty old fellow from all accounts. He was niggardly, coarse, and a womanizer. Euphemie's position in the house was little better than that of head domestic servant, but in this her lot was the common one for wives of her station in this part of France. She appeared to be contented enough with it.
About two years after the marriage, on the 16th of May, 1843, to be exact, after a trip with his wife to the fair at Riguepeu, old Lacoste was taken suddenly ill, ultimately becoming violently sick. Eight days later he died.
By a will which Henri had made two months after his marriage his wife was his sole beneficiary, and this will was no sooner proved than the widow betook herself to Tarbes, where she speedily began to make full use of her fortune. Milliners and dressmakers were called into service, and the widow blossomed forth as a lady of fashion. She next set up her own carriage. If these proceedings had not been enough to excite envy among her female neighbours the frequent visits paid to her in her genteel apartments by a young man did the trick. The young man came on the scene less than two months after the death of the old man. It was said that his visits to the widow were prolonged until midnight. Scandal resulted, and out of the scandal rumour regarding the death of Henri Lacoste. It began to be said that the old man had died of poison.
It was in December, six months after the death of Lacoste, that the rumours came to the ears of the magistrates. Nor was there lack of anonymous letters. It was the Widow Lacoste herself, however, who demanded an exhumation and autopsy on the body of her late husband—this as a preliminary to suing her traducers. Note, in passing, how her action matches that of Veuve Boursier.
On the orders of the Juge d'instruction an autopsy was begun on the 18th of December. The body of Lacoste was exhumed, the internal organs were extracted, and these, with portions of the muscular tissue, were submitted to analysis by a doctor of Auch, M. Bouton, and two chemists of the same city, MM. Lidange and Pons, who at the same time examined samples of the soil in which the body had been interred. The finding was that the body of Lacoste contained some arsenical preparation.
The matter now appearing to be grave, additional scientific assurance was sought. Three of the most distinguished chemists in Paris were called into service for a further analysis. They were MM. Devergie, Pelouze, and Flandin. Their report ran in part:
The portion of the liver on which we have experimented proved to contain a notable quantity of arsenic, amounting to more than five milligrammes; the portions of the intestines and tissue examined also contained appreciable traces which, though in smaller proportion than contained by the liver, accord with the known features of arsenical poisoning. There is no appearance of the toxic element in the earth taken from the grave or in the material of the coffin.
As soon as Mme Lacoste was apprised of the findings of the autopsy she got into her carriage and was driven to Auch, where she visited a friend of her late husband and of herself. To him she announced her intention of surrendering herself to the Procureur du Roi. The friend strongly advised her against doing any such thing, advice which Mme Lacoste accepted with reluctance.
On the 5th of January a summons to appear was issued for Mme Lacoste. She was seen that day in Auch, walking the streets on the arm of a friend. She even went to the post-office, but the police agents failed to find her. She stopped the night in the town. Next day she was at Riguepeu. She was getting out of her carriage when a servant pointed out gendarmes coming up the hill with the Mayor. When those officials arrived Euphemie was well away. Search was made through the house and outbuildings, but without result. "Don't bother yourself looking any further, Monsieur le Maire," said one of the servants. "The mistress isn't far away, but she's in a place where I could hide a couple of oxen without you finding them."
From then on Mme Lacoste was hunted for everywhere. The roads to Tarbes, Toulouse, and Vic-Fezensac were patrolled by brigades of gendarmes day and night, but there was no sign of the fugitive. It was rumoured that she had got away to Spain, that she was cached in a barrel at Riguepeu, that she was in the fields disguised as a shepherd, that she had taken the veil.
In the meantime the process against her went forward. Evidence was to hand which seemed to inculpate with Mme Lacoste a poor and old schoolmaster of Riguepeu named Joseph Meilhan. The latter, arrested, stoutly denied not only his own part in the supposed crime, but also the guilt of Mme Lacoste. "Why doesn't she come forward?" he asked. "She knows perfectly well she has nothing to fear—no more than I have."
From the 'information' laid by the court of first instance at Auch a warrant was issued for the appearance of Mme Lacoste and Meilhan before the Assize of Gers. Mme Lacoste was apparently well instructed by her friends. She did not come into the open until the last possible moment. She gave herself up at the Auch prison on the 4th of July.
Her health seemed to have suffered little from the vicissitudes of her flight. It was noticed that her hair was short, a fact which seemed to point to her having disguised herself. But, it is said, she exhibited a serenity of mind which consorted ill with the idea of guilt. She faced an interrogation lasting three hours without faltering.
On the 10th of July she appeared before the Gers Assize Court, held at Auch. The President was M. Donnoderie. Counsel for the prosecution, as it were, was the Procureur du Roi, M. Cassagnol. Mme Lacoste was defended by Maitre Alem-Rousseau, leader of the bar of Auch.
The case aroused the liveliest interest, people flocking to the town from as far away as Paris itself—so much so that at 6.30 in the morning the one-time palace of the Archbishops of Auch, in the hall of which the court was held, was packed.
The accused were called. First to appear was Joseph Meilhan. He was a stout little old boy of sixty-six, rosy and bright-eyed, with short white hair and heavy black eyebrows. He was calm and smiling, completely master of himself.
Mme Lacoste then appeared on the arm of her advocate. She was dressed in full widow's weeds. A little creature, slender but not rounded of figure, she is described as more agreeable-looking than actually pretty.
After the accused had answered with their names and descriptions the acte d'accusation was read. It was a long document. It recalled the circumstances of the Lacoste marriage and of the death of the old man, with the autopsy and the finding of traces of arsenic. It spoke of the lowly household tasks that Mme Lacoste had performed with such goodwill from the beginning, and of the reward for her diligence which came to her by the making of a holograph will in which her husband made her his sole heir.
But the understanding between husband and wife did not last long, the acte went on. Lacoste ardently desired a son and heir, and his wife appeared to be barren. He confided his grief to an old friend, one Lespere. Lespere pointed out that Euphemie was not only Lacoste's wife, but his kinswoman as well. To this Lacoste replied that the fact did not content him. "I tell you on the quiet," he said to his friend, "I've made my arrangements. If SHE knew—she's capable of poisoning me to get herself a younger man." Lespere told him not to talk rubbish, in effect, but Lacoste was stubborn on his notion.
This was but a year after the marriage. It seemed that Lacoste had a melancholy presentiment of the fate which was to be his.
It was made out that Euphemie suffered from the avarice and jealousy of her old husband. She was given no money, was hardly allowed out of the house, and was not permitted even to go to Vespers alone. And then, said the accusation, she discovered that her husband wanted an heir. She had reason to fear that he would go about getting one by an illicit association.
In the middle of 1842 she overheard her husband bargaining with one of the domestics. The girl was asking for 100 pistoles (say, L85), while her husband did not want to give more than 600 francs (say, L24). "Euphemie Verges had no doubt," ran the accusation, "that this was the price of an adulterous contract, and she insisted on Marie Dupuys' being sent from the house. This was the cause of disagreement between the married pair, which did not conclude with the departure of the servant."
Later another servant, named Jacquette Larrieux, told Mme Lacoste in confidence that the master was trying to seduce her by the offer of a pension of 2000 francs or a lump sum of 20,000.
Euphemie Verges, said the accusation, thus thought herself exposed daily, by the infidelity of her husband, to the loss of all her hopes. Also, talking to a Mme Bordes about the two servants some days after Lacoste's death, she said, "I had a bad time with those two girls! If my husband had lived longer I might have had nothing, because he wanted a child that he could leave everything to."
The acte d'accusation enlarged on the situation, then went on to bring in Joseph Meilhan as Euphemie's accomplice. It made him out to be a bad old man indeed. He had seduced, it was said, a young girl named Lescure, who became enceinte, afterwards dying from an abortion which Meilhan was accused of having procured. It might be thought that the society of such a bad old man would have disgusted a young woman, but Euphemie Verges admitted him to intimacy. He was, it was said, the confidant for her domestic troubles, and it was further rumoured that he acted as intermediary in a secret correspondence that she kept up with a young man of Tarbes who had been courting her before her marriage. The counsels of such a man were not calculated to help Mme Lacoste in her quarrels with her unfaithful and unlovable husband.
Meanwhile M. Lacoste was letting new complaints be heard regarding his wife. Again Lespere was his confidant. His wife was bad and sulky. He was very inclined to undo what he had done for her. This was in March of 1843.
Towards the end of April he made a like complaint to another old friend, one Dupouy, who accused him of neglecting old friends through uxoriousness. Lacoste said he found little pleasure in his young wife. He was, on the contrary, a martyr. He was on the point of disinheriting her.
And so, with the usual amount of on dit and disait-on, the acte d'accusation came to the point of Lacoste at the Riguepeu fair. He set out in his usual health, but, several hours later, said to one Laffon, "I have the shivers, cramps in the stomach. After being made to drink by that —— Meilhan I felt ill."
Departing from the fair alone, he met up with Jean Durieux, to whom he said, "That —— of a Meilhan asked me to have a drink, and afterwards I had colic, and wanted to vomit."
Arrived home, Lacoste said to Pierre Cournet that he had been seized by a colic which made him ill all over, plaguing him, giving him a desire to vomit which he could not satisfy. Cournet noticed that Lacoste was as white as a sheet. He advised going to bed and taking hot water. Lacoste took the advice. During the night he was copiously sick. The old man was in bed in an alcove near the kitchen, but next night he was put into a room out of the way of noise.
Euphemie looked after her husband alone, preparing his drinks and admitting nobody to see him. She let three days pass without calling a doctor. Lacoste, it was true, had said he did not want a doctor, but, said the accusation, "there is no proof that he persisted in that wish."
On the fourth day she sent a summary of the illness to Dr Boubee, asking for written advice. On the fifth day a surgeon was called, M. Lasmolles, who was told that Lacoste had eaten a meal of onions, garlic stems, and beans. But the story of this meal was a lie, a premeditated lie. On the eve of the fair Mme Lacoste was already speaking of such a meal, saying that that sort of thing always made her husband ill.
According to the accusation, the considerable amount of poison found in the body established that the arsenic had been administered on several occasions, on the first by Meilhan and on the others by Mme Lacoste.
When Henri Lacoste had drawn his last breath his wife shed a few tears. But presently her grief gave place to other preoccupations. She herself looked out the sheet for wrapping the corpse, and thereafter she began to search in the desk for the will which made her her husband's sole heir.
Next day Meilhan, who had not once looked in on Lacoste during his illness, hastened to visit the widow. The widow invited him to dinner. The day after that he dined with her again, and they were seen walking together. Their intimacy seemed to grow daily. But the friendship of Mme Lacoste for Meilhan did not end there. Not very many days after the death of Lacoste Meilhan met the Mayor of Riguepeu, M. Sabazan, and conducted him in a mysterious manner into his schoolroom. Telling the Mayor that he knew him to be a man of discretion, he confided in him that the Veuve Lacoste intended giving him (Meilhan) a bill on one Castera. Did the Mayor know Castera to be all right? The Mayor replied that a bill on Castera was as good as gold itself. Meilhan said that Mme Lacoste had assured him this was but the beginning of what she meant to do for him.
Meilhan wrote to Castera, who called on him. The schoolmaster told Castera that in return for 2000 francs which she had borrowed from him Mme Lacoste had given him a note for 1772 francs, which was due from Castera to Henri Lacoste as part inheritance from a brother. Meilhan showed Castera the original note, which was to be renewed in Meilhan's favour. The accusation dwelt on the different versions regarding his possession of the note given by Meilhan to the Mayor and to Castera. Meilhan was demonstrably lying to conceal Mme Lacoste's liberality.
Some little time after this Meilhan invited the Mayor a second time into the schoolroom, and told him that Mme Lacoste meant to assure him of a life annuity of 400 francs, and had asked him to prepare the necessary document for her to sign. But there was another proposition. If Meilhan would return the note for 1772 francs owing by Castera she would make the annuity up to 500. What, asked Meilhan, would M. le Maire do in his place? The Mayor replied that in Meilhan's place he would keep the Castera note and be content with the 400 annuity. Then Meilhan asked the Mayor to draw up for him a specimen of the document necessary for creating the annuity. This M. Sabazan did at once, and gave the draft to Meilhan.
Some days later still Meilhan told M. Sabazan that Mme Lacoste did not wish to use the form of document suggested by the Mayor, but had written one herself. Meilhan showed the Mayor the widow's document, and begged him to read it to see if it was in proper form. Sabazan read the document. It created an annuity of 400 francs, payable yearly in the month of August. The Mayor did not know actually if the deed was in the writing of Mme Lacoste. He did not know her fist. But he could be certain that it was not in Meilhan's hand.
This deed was later shown by Meilhan to the cure of Riguepeu, who saw at least that the deed was not in Meilhan's writing. He noticed that it showed some mistakes, and that the signature of the Widow Lacoste began with the word "Euphemie."
In the month of August Meilhan was met coming out of Mme Lacoste's by the Mayor. Jingling money in his pocket, the schoolmaster told the Mayor he had just drawn the first payment of his annuity. Later Meilhan bragged to the cure of Basais that he was made for life. He took a handful of louis from his pocket, and told the priest that this was his daily allowance.
"Whence," demanded the acte d'accusation, "came all those riches, if they were not the price of his share in the crime?"
But the good offices of Mme Lacoste towards Meilhan did not end with the giving of money. In the month of August Meilhan was chased from his lodgings by his landlord, Lescure, on suspicion of having had intimate relations with the landlord's wife. The intervention of the Mayor was ineffective in bringing about a reconciliation between Meilhan and Lescure. Meilhan begged Mme Lacoste to intercede, and where the Mayor had failed she succeeded.
While Mme Lacoste was thus smothering Meilhan with kindnesses she was longing herself to make the most of the fortune which had come to her. From the first days of her widowhood she was constantly writing letters which Mme Lescure carried for her. Euphemie had already begun to talk of remarriage. Her choice was already made. "If I marry again," she said, a few days after the death of Lacoste, "I won't take anybody but M. Henri Berens, of Tarbes. He was my first love."
The accusation told of Euphemie's departure for Tarbes, where almost her first caller was this M. Henri Berens. The next day she gave up the lodgings rented by her late husband, to establish herself in rich apartments owned by one Fourcade, which she furnished sumptuously. The accusation dwelt on her purchase of horses and a carriage and on her luxurious way of living. It also brought forward some small incidents illustrative of her distaste for the memory of her late husband. It dealt with information supplied by her landlord which indicated that her conscience was troubled. Twice M. Fourcade found her trembling, as with fear. On his asking her what was the matter she replied, "I was thinking of my husband—if he saw me in a place furnished like this!"
(It need hardly be pointed out, considering the sour and avaricious ways of her late husband, that Euphemie need not have been conscience-stricken with his murder to have trembled over her lavish expenditure of his fortune. But the point is typical of the trivialities with which the acte d'accusation was padded out.)
The accusation claimed that a young man had several times been seen leaving Euphemie's apartments at midnight, and spoke of protests made by Mme Fourcade. Euphemie declared herself indifferent to public opinion.
Public opinion, however, beginning to rise against her, Euphemie had need to resort to lying in order to explain her husband's death. To some she repeated the story of the onion-garlic-and-beans meal, adding that, in spite of his indigestion, he had eaten gluttonously later in the day. To others she attributed his illness to two indigestible repasts made at the fair. To others again she said Lacoste had died of a hernia, forced out by his efforts to vomit. She was even accused of saying that the doctor had attributed the death to this cause. This, said the indictment, was a lie. Dr Lasmolles declared that he had questioned Lacoste about the supposed hernia, and that the old man denied having any such thing.
What had brought about Lacoste's fatal illness was the wine Meilhan had made him drink at Rigeupeu fair.
With the rise of suspicion against her and her accomplice, Mme Lacoste put up a brave front. She wrote to the Procureur du Roi, demanding an exhumation, with the belief, no doubt, that time would have effaced the poison. At the same time she sent the bailiff Labadie to Riguepeu, to find out the names of those who were traducing her, and to say that she intended to prosecute her calumniators with the utmost rigour of the law. This, said the accusation, was nothing but a move to frighten the witnesses against her into silence. Instead of making good her threats the Widow Lacoste disappeared.
On the arrest of Meilhan search of his lodgings resulted in the finding of the note on Castera for 1772 francs, and of a sum of 800 francs in gold and silver. But of the deed creating the annuity of 400 francs there was no trace.
Meilhan denied everything. In respect of the wine he was said to have given Lacoste he said he had passed the whole of the 16th of May in the company of a friend called Mothe, and that Mothe could therefore prove Meilhan had never had a drink with Lacoste. Mothe, however, declared he had left Meilhan that day at three o'clock in the afternoon, and it was just at this time that Meilhan had taken Lacoste into the auberge where he lived to give him the poisoned drink. It was between three and four that Lacoste first showed signs of being ill.
Asked to explain the note for 1772 francs, Meilhan said that, about two months after Lacoste's death, the widow complained of not having any ready money. She had the Castera note, and he offered to discount it for her. This was a palpable lie, said the accusation. It was only a few days after Lacoste's death that Meilhan spoke to the Mayor about the Castera note. Meilhan's statement was full of discrepancies. He told Castera that he held the note against 2000 francs previously lent to the widow. He now said that he had discounted the note on sight. But the fact was that since Meilhan had come to live in Riguepeu he had been without resources. He had stripped himself in order to establish his son in a pharmacy at Vic-Fezensac. His profession of schoolmaster scarcely brought him in enough for living expenses. How, then, could he possibly be in a position to lend Mme Lacoste 2000 francs? And how had he managed to collect the 800 odd francs that were found in his lodgings? The real explanation lay in the story he had twice given to the Mayor, M. Sabazan: he was in possession of the Castera note through the generosity of his accomplice.
Meilhan was in still greater difficulty to explain the document which had settled on him an annuity of 400 francs, and which had been seen in his hands. Denial was useless, since he had asked the Mayor to make a draft for him, and since he had shown that functionary the deed signed by Mme Lacoste. Here, word for word, is the explanation given by the rubicund Joseph:
"My son," he said, "kept asking me to contribute to the upkeep of one of his boys who is in the seminary of Vic-Fezensac. I consistently refused to do so, because I wanted to save what little I might against the time when I should be unable to work any longer. Six months ago my son wrote to the cure, begging him to speak to me. The cure, not wishing to do so, sent on the letter to the Mayor, who communicated with me. I replied that I did not wish to do anything, adding that I intended investing my savings in a life annuity. At the same time I begged M. Sabazan to make me a draft in the name of Mme Lacoste. She knew nothing about it. M. Sabazan sent me on the draft. It seemed to me well drawn up. I rewrote it, and showed it to M. Sabazan. At the foot of the deed I put the words 'Veuve Lacoste,' but I had been at pains to disguise my handwriting. I did all this with the intention of making my son believe, when my infirmities obliged me to retire to his household, that my income came from a life annuity some one had given me; and to hide from him where I had put my capital I wanted to persuade M. Sabazan that the deed actually existed, so that he could bear witness to the fact to my son." Here, said the accusation, Meilhan was trying to make out that it was on the occasion of a letter from his son that he had spoken to the Mayor of the annuity.
The cure of Riguepeu, however, while admitting that he had received such a letter from Meilhan's son, declared that this was long before the death of Henri Lacoste. The Mayor also said that he had spoken to Meilhan of his son's letter well before the time when the accused mentioned the annuity to him and asked for a draft of the assignment.
The accusation ridiculed Meilhan's explanation, dubbing it just another of the schoolmaster's lies. It brought forward a contradictory explanation given by Meilhan to one Thener, a surgeon, whom he knew to be in frequent contact with the son whom the document was intended to deceive. Meilhan informed Thener that he had fabricated the deed, and had shown it round, in order to inspire such confidence in him as would secure him refuge when he had to give up schoolmastering.
These contradictory and unbelievable explanations were the fruit of Meilhan's efforts to cover the fact that the annuity was the price paid him by the Widow Lacoste for his part in the murder of her husband. It was to be remembered that M. Sabazan, whose testimony was impeccable, had seen Meilhan come from the house of Mme Lacoste, and that Meilhan had jingled money, saying he had just drawn the first payment of his annuity.
The accusation, in sum, concentrated on the suspicious relationship between Meilhan and the Widow Lacoste. It was a long document, but something lacking in weight of proof—proof of the actual murder, that is, if not of circumstance.
V
The process in a French criminal court was—and still is—somewhat long-winded. The Procureur du Roi had to go over the accusation in detail, making the most of Mme Lacoste's intimacy with the ill-reputed old fellow. That parishioner, far from being made indignant by the animadversions of M. Cassagnol, listened to the recital of his misdeeds with a faint smile. He was perhaps a little astonished at some of the points made against him, but, it is said, contented himself with a gesture of denial to the jury, and listened generally as if with pleasure at hearing himself so well spoken of.
He was the first of the accused to be questioned.
It was brought out that he had been a soldier under the Republic, and then for a time had studied pharmacy. He had been a corn-merchant in a small way, and then had started schoolmaster.
Endeavour was made to get him to admit guilty knowledge of the death of the Lescure girl. He had never even heard of an abortion. The girl had a stomach-ache. This line failing, he was interrogated on the matter of being chased from his lodgings by the landlord-father, it would seem, of the aforementioned girl. (It may be noted that Meilhan lived on in the auberge after her death.) Meilhan had an innocent explanation of the incident. It was all a mistake on the part of Lescure. And he hadn't been chased out of the auberge. He had simply gone out with his coat slung about his shoulders. Mme Lacoste went with him to patch the matter up.
He had not given Lacoste a drink, hadn't even spoken with him, at the Riguepeu fair, but had passed the day with M. Mothe. Cournet had told him of Lacoste's having a headache, but had said nothing of vomitings. He had not seen Lacoste during the latter's illness, because Lacoste was seeing nobody.
This business of the annuity had got rather entangled, but he would explain. He had lodged 1772 francs with Mme Lacoste, and she had given him a bill on Castera. Whether he had given the money before or after getting the bill he could not be sure. He thought afterwards. He had forgotten the circumstances while in prison.
Meilhan stuck pretty firmly to his story that it was to deceive his son that he had fabricated the deed of annuity. He couldn't help it if the story sounded thin. It was the fact.
How had he contrived to save, as he said, 3000 francs? His yearly income during his six years at Riguepeu had been only 500 francs. The court had reason to be surprised.
"Ah! You're surprised!" exclaimed Meilhan, rather put out. But at Breuzeville, where he was before Riguepeu, he had bed and board free. In Riguepeu he had nothing off the spit for days on end. He spent only 130 francs a year, he said, giving details. And then he did a little trade in corn.
He had destroyed the annuity deed only because it was worthless. As for what he had said to the Mayor about drawing his first payment of the pension, he had done it because he was a bit conscience-stricken over fabricating the deed. He had been bragging—that was all.
The President, having already chidden Meilhan for being prolix in his answers, now scolded him for anticipating the questions. But the fact was that Meilhan was not to be pinned down.
The first questions put to Mme Lacoste were with regard to her marriage and her relations with her husband. She admitted, incidentally, having begun to receive a young man some six weeks after her husband's death, but she had not known him before marriage. Meilhan had carried no letters between them. She had married Lacoste of her own free will. Lacoste had not asked any attentions from her that were not ordinarily sought by a husband, and her care of him had been spontaneous. It was true he was jealous, but he had not formally forbidden her pleasures. She had renounced them, knowing he was easily upset. It was true that she had seldom gone out, but she had never wanted to. Lacoste was no more avaricious than most, and it was untrue that he had denied her any necessaries.
Taken to the events of the fair day, Tuesday, the 16th of May, Mme Lacoste maintained that her husband, on his return, complained only of a headache. He had gone to bed early, but he usually did. That night he slept in the same alcove as herself, but next night they separated. In spite of the contrary evidence of witnesses, of which the President reminded her, Mme Lacoste firmly maintained that it was not until the Wednesday-Thursday night that Lacoste started to vomit. It was not until that night that she began to attend to him. She had given him lemonade, washed him, and so on.
The President was saying that nobody had been allowed near him, and that a doctor was not called, when the accused broke in with a lively denial. Anybody who wanted to could see him, and a doctor was called. This was towards the last, the President pointed out. Mme Lacoste's advocate intervened here, saying that it was the husband who did not wish a doctor called, for reasons of his own. The President begged to be allowed to hear the accused's own answers. He pointed out that the ministrations of the accused had effected no betterment, but that the illness had rapidly got worse. The delay in calling a doctor seemed to lend a strange significance to the events.
Mme Lacoste answered in lively fashion, accenting her phrases with the use of her hands: "But, monsieur, you do not take into account that it was not until the night of Wednesday and the Thursday that my husband began to vomit, and that it was two days after that he—he succumbed."
The President said a way remained of fixing the dates and clearing up the point. He had a letter written by M. Lacoste to the doctor in which he himself explained the state of his illness. It was pointed out to him that the letter had been written by Mme Lacoste at her husband's dictation.
The letter was dated the 19th (Friday). It was directed to M. Boubee, doctor of medicine, in Vic-Fezensac. Perhaps it would be better to give it in the original language. It is something frank in detail:
Depuis quelque temps j'avais perdu l'appetit et m'endormais de suite quand j'etais assis. Mercredi il me vint un secours de nature par un vomissement extraordinaire. Ces vomissements m'ont dure pendant un jour et une nuit; je ne rendais que de la bile. La nuit passee, je n'en ai pas rendu; dans ce moment, j'en rends encore. Vous sentez combien ces efforts reiteres m'ont fatigue; ces grands efforts m'ont fait partir de la bile par en bas; je vous demanderai, monsieur, si vous ne trouveriez pas a propos que je prisse une medecine d'huile de ricin ou autre, celle que vous jugerez a propos. Je vous demanderai aussi si je pourrais prendre quelques bains. [signe]
LACOSTE PHILIBERT
Je rends beaucoup de vents par en bas. Pour la boisson, je ne bois que de l'eau chaude et de l'eau sucree. (Il n'y a pas eu de fievre encore.)
The Procureur du Roi maintained that this letter showed the invalid had already been taken with vomiting before it was considered necessary to call in a doctor. But Mme Lacoste's advocate pointed out that the letter was written by her, when she had overcome Lacoste's distaste for doctors.
The President made much of the fact that Mme Lacoste had undertaken even the lowliest of the attentions necessary in a sick-room, when other, more mercenary, hands could have been engaged in them. The accusation from this was that she did these things from a desire to destroy incriminating evidences. Mme Lacoste replied that she had done everything out of affection for her husband.
Asked by the court why she had not thought to give Dr Boubee any explanations of the illness, she replied that she knew her husband was always ill, but that he hid his maladies and was ashamed of them. He had, it appeared, hernias, tetters, and other maladies besides. It was easy for her to gather as much, in spite of the mystery Lacoste made of them; she had seen him rubbing his limbs at times with medicaments, and at others she had seen him taking medicines internally. He was always vexed when she found him at it. She did not know what doctor prescribed the medicaments, nor the pharmacist who supplied them. Her husband thought he knew more than the doctors, and usually dealt with quacks.
Mme Lacoste was questioned regarding her husband's will, and on his longing to have an heir of his own blood. She knew of the will, but did not hear any word of his desire to alter it until after his death. With regard to Lacoste's attempts to seduce the servants, she declared this was a vague affair, and she had found the first girl in question a place elsewhere.
Her letter to the Procureur du Roi demanding an exhumation and justice against her slanderers was read. Then a second one, in which she excused her absence, saying that she would give herself up for judgment at the right time, and begged him to add her letter to the papers of the process.
The President then returned to the question of her husband's attempts to seduce the servants. She denied that this was the cause of quarrels. There had been no quarrels. She did not know that her husband was complaining outside about her.
She denied all knowledge of the arsenic found in Lacoste's body, but suggested that it might have come from one or other of the medicines he took.
Questioned with regard to her intimacy with Meilhan, she declared that she knew nothing of his morals. She had intervened in the Lescure affair at the request of Mme Lescure, who came to deny the accusation made by Lescure. This woman had never acted as intermediary between herself and Meilhan. Meilhan had not been her confidant. She looked after her late husband's affairs herself. She had handed over the Castera note to Meilhan against his loan of 2000 francs, but she had never given him money as a present. Nor had she ever spoken to Meilhan of an annuity. But Meilhan, it was objected, had been showing a deed signed "Euphemie Lacoste." The accused quickly replied that she never signed herself "Euphemie," but as "Veuve Lacoste." Upon this the President called for several letters written by the accused. It was found that they were all signed "Veuve Lacoste."
The evidence of the Fourcades regarding her conduct in their house at Tarbes was biased, she said. She had refused to take up some people recommended by her landlady. The young man who had visited her never remained longer than after ten o'clock or half-past, and she saw nothing singular in that.
The examination-in-chief of Mme Lacoste ended with her firm declaration that she knew nothing of the poisoning of her husband, and that she had spoken the truth through all her interrogations. Some supplementary questions were answered by her to the effect that she knew, during her marriage, that her husband had at one time suffered from venereal disease; and that latterly there had been recrudescences of the affection, together with the hernia already mentioned, for which her husband took numerous medicaments.
Throughout this long examination Mme Lacoste showed complete self-possession, save that at times she exhibited a Gascon impatience in answering what she conceived to be stupid questions.
VI
The experts responsible for the analysis of Lacoste's remains were now called. All three of those gentlemen from Paris, MM. Pelouze, Devergie, and Flandin, agreed in their findings. Two vessels were exhibited, on which there glittered blobs of some metallic substance. This substance, the experts deposed, was arsenic obtained by the Marsh technique from the entrails and the muscular tissue from Lacoste's body. They could be sure that the substances used as reagents in the experiments were pure, and that the earth about the body was free from arsenic.
M. Devergie said that science did not admit the presence of arsenic as a normal thing in the human body. What was not made clear by the expert was whether the amount of arsenic found in the body of Lacoste was consistent with the drug's having been taken in small doses, or whether it had been given in one dose. Devergie's confrere Flandin later declared his conviction that the death of Lacoste was due to one dose of the poison, but, from a verbatim report, it appears that he did not give any reason for the opinion.
At this point Mme Lacoste was recalled, and repeated her statement that she had seen her husband rubbing himself with an ointment and drinking some white liquid on the return of a syphilitic affection.
Dr Lasmolles testified that Lacoste, though very close-mouthed, had told him of a skin affection that troubled him greatly. The deceased dosed himself, and did not obey the doctors' orders. It was only from a farmer that he understood Lacoste to have a hernia, and Lacoste himself did not admit it. The doctor did not believe the man poisoned. He had been impressed by the way Mme Lacoste looked after her husband, and the latter did not complain about anyone. M. Lasmolles had heard no mention from Lacoste of the glass of wine given him by Meilhan.
After M. Devergie had said that he had heard of arsenical remedies used externally for skin diseases, but never of any taken internally, M. Plandin expressed his opinion as before quoted.
The next witness was one Dupouy, of whom some mention has already been made. Five days before his death Lacoste told him that, annoyed with his wife, he definitely intended to disinherit her. Dupouy admitted, however, that shortly before this the deceased had spoken of taking a pleasure trip with Mme Lacoste.
Lespere then repeated his story of the complaints made to him by Lacoste of his wife's conduct, of his intention of altering his will, and of his belief that Euphemie was capable of poisoning him in order to get a younger man. It was plain that this witness, a friend of Lacoste's for forty-six years, was not ready to make any admissions in her favour. He swore that Lacoste had told him his wife did not know she was his sole heir. He was allowed to say that on the death of Lacoste he had immediately assumed that the poisoning feared by Lacoste had been brought about. He had heard nothing from Lacoste of secret maladies or secret remedies, but had been so deep in Lacoste's confidence that he felt sure his old friend would have mentioned them. He had heard of such things only at the beginning of the case.
The Procureur du Roi remarked here that reliance on the secret remedies was the 'system' of the defence.
That seemed to be the case. The 'system' of the prosecution, on the other hand, was to snatch at anything likely to appear as evidence against the two accused. The points mainly at issue were as follows:
(1) Did Meilhan have a chance of giving Lacoste a drink at the fair?
(2) Did Lacoste become violently sick immediately on his return from the fair?
(3) Did Lacoste suffer from the ailments attributed to him by his wife, and was he in the habit of dosing himself?
(4) Did Meilhan receive money from Mme Lacoste, and, particularly, did she propose to allow him the supposed annuity?
With regard to (1), several witnesses declared that Lacoste had complained to them of feeling ill after drinking with Meilhan, but none could speak of seeing the two men together. M. Mothe, the friend cited by Meilhan, less positive in his evidence in court than the acte d'accusation made him out to be, could not remember if it was on the 16th of May that he had spent the whole afternoon with Meilhan. It was so much his habit to be with Meilhan during the days of the fair that he had no distinct recollection of any of them. Another witness, having business with Lacoste, declared that on the day in question it was impossible for Meilhan to have been alone with Lacoste during the time that the latter was supposed to have taken the poisoned drink. Lescure, in whose auberge Lacoste was supposed to have had the drink, failed to remember such an incident. The evidence that Meilhan had given Lacoste the drink was all second-hand; that to the contrary was definite.
For the most part the evidence with regard to (2), that Lacoste became very ill immediately on his return from the fair, was hearsay. The servants belonging to the Lacoste household all maintained that the vomiting did not seize the old man until the night of Wednesday-Thursday. Indeed, two witnesses testified that the old man, in spite of his supposed headache, essayed to show them how well he could dance. This was on his return from the fair where he was supposed to have been given a poisoned drink at three o'clock. The evidence regarding the seclusion of Lacoste by his wife was contradictory, but the most direct of it maintained that it was the old man himself, if anyone, who wanted to be left alone. On this point arises the question of the delay in calling the doctor. Witness after witness testified to Lacoste's hatred of the medical faculty and to his preference for dosing himself. He declared his faith in a local vet.
On (3), the bulk of the evidence against Lacoste's having the suggested afflictions came simply from witnesses who had not heard of them. There was, on the contrary, quite a number of witnesses to declare that Lacoste did suffer from a skin disease, and that he was in the habit of using quack remedies, the stronger the better. It was also testified that Lacoste was in the habit of prescribing his remedies for other people. A witness declared that a woman to whom Lacoste had given medicine for an indisposition had become crippled, and still was crippled.
With regard to (4), the Mayor merely repeated the evidence given in his first statement, but the cure', who also saw the deed assigning an annuity to Meilhan, said that it was not in Mme Lacoste's writing, and that it was signed with the unusual "Euphemie." This last witness added that Mme Lacoste's reputation was irreproachable, and that her relations with her husband were happy.
Evidence from a business-man in Tarbes showed that Mme Lacoste's handling of her fortune was careful to a degree, her expenditure being well within her income. This witness also proved that the Fourcades' evidence of Euphemie's misbehaviour could have been dictated from spite. Fourcade had been found out in what looked like a swindle over money which he owed to the Lacoste estate.
The court then went more deeply into the medico-legal evidence. It were tedious to follow the course of this long argument. After a lengthy dissertation on the progress of an acute indigestion and the effects of a strangulated hernia M. Devergie said that, as the poison existed in the body, from the symptoms shown in the illness it could be assumed that death had resulted from arsenic. The duration of the illness was in accord with the amount of arsenic found.
M. Flandin agreed with this, but M. Pelouze abstained from expressing an opinion. He, however, rather gave the show away, by saying that if he was a doctor he would take care to forbid any arsenical preparations. "These preparations," he said moodily, "can introduce a melancholy obscurity into the investigations of criminal justice."
Some sense was brought into the discussion by Dr Molas, of Auch. He put forward the then accepted idea of the accumulation of arsenic taken in small doses, and the power of this accumulation, on the least accident, of determining death.
This was rather like chucking a monkey-wrench into the cerebration machinery of the Paris experts. They admitted that the absorption and elimination of arsenic varied with the individual, and generally handed the case over to the defence. M. Devergie was the only one who stuck out, but only partially even then. "I persist in believing," he said, "that M. Lacoste succumbed to poisoning by arsenic; but I use the word 'poisoning' only from the point of view of science: arsenic killed him."
VII
The speech of the Procureur du Roi was another resume of the acte d'accusation, with consideration of that part of the evidence which suited him best.
This was followed by the speech of Maitre Canteloup in defence of Meilhan. The speech was a good effort which demonstrated that, whatever rumour might accuse the schoolmaster of, there were plenty of people of standing who had found him upright and free from stain through a long life. It reproached the accusation with jugglery over dates and so forth in support of its case, and confidently predicted the acquittal of Meilhan.
Then followed the speech of Maitre Alem-Rousseau on behalf of the Veuve Lacoste. Among other things the advocate brought forward the fact that Euphemie was not so poorly born as the prosecution had made out, but that she had every chance of inheriting some 20,000 francs from her parents. It was notorious that when Henri Lacoste first broached the subject of marriage with Euphemie he was not so rich as he afterwards became, but, in fact, believed he had lost the inheritance from his brother Philibert, this last having made a will in favour of a young man of whom popular rumour made him the father. This was in 1839. The marriage was celebrated in May of 1841. Henri Lacoste, it is true, had hidden his intentions, but when news of the marriage reached the ears of brother Philibert that brother was so delighted that he destroyed the will which disinherited Henri. It was thus right to say that Euphemie became the benefactor of her husband. Where was the speculative marriage on the part of Euphemie that the prosecution talked about?
Maitre Alem-Rousseau made short work of the medico-legal evidence (he had little bother with the facts of the illness). Poison was found in the body. The question was, how had it got there? Was it quite certain that arsenic could not get into the human body save by ingestion, that it could not exist in the human body normally? The science of the day said no, he knew, but the science of yesterday had said yes. Who knew what the science of to-morrow would say?
The advocate made use of the evidence of a witness whose testimony I have failed to find in the accounts of the trial. This witness spoke of Lacoste's having asked, in Bordeaux, for a certain liquor of "Saint-Louis," a liquor which Mme Lacoste took to be an anisette. "No," said Lacoste, "women don't take it." Maitre Alem-Rousseau had tried to discover what this liquor of Saint-Louis was. During the trial he had come upon the fact that the arsenical preparation known as Fowler's solution had been administered for the first time in the hospital of Saint-Louis, in Paris. He showed an issue of the Hospital Gazette in which the advertisement could be read: "Solution de Fowler telle qu'on l'administre a SAINT-LOUIS!" The jury could make what they liked of that fact.
The advocate now produced documents to prove that the marriage of Euphemie with her grand-uncle had not been so much to her advantage, but had been—it must have been—a marriage of affection. At the time when the marriage was arranged, he proved, Lacoste had no more than 35,000 francs to his name. Euphemie had 15,000 francs on her marriage and the hope of 20,000 francs more. The pretence of the prosecution, that her contentment with the abject duties which she had to perform in the house was dictated by interest, fell to the ground with the preliminary assumption that she had married for her husband's money.
Maitre Alem, defending the widow's gayish conduct after her husband's death, declared it to be natural enough. It had been shown to be innocent. He trounced the Press for helping to exaggerate the rumours which envy of Mme Lacoste's good fortune had created. He asked the jury to acquit Mme Lacoste.
The Procureur du Roi had another say. It was again an attempt to destroy the 'system' of the defence, but by making a mystery of the fact that the Lacoste-Verges marriage had not taken place in a church he gave the wily Maitre Alem an opportunity for following him.
The summing-up of the President on the third day of the trial was, it is said, a model of clarity and impartiality. The jury returned on all the points put to them a verdict of "Not guilty" for both the accused.
VIII
Another verdict may now seem to have been hardly possible. The accusation was built up on the jealousy of neighbours, on chance circumstances, on testimonies founded on petty spite. But, combined with the medico-legal evidence, the weight of circumstance might easily have hoisted the accused in the balance.
It will be seen, then, how much on foot the case of the Veuve Lacoste was with that of the Veuve Boursier, twenty years before.
It is on the experience of cases such as these two that the technique of investigation into arsenical poison has been evolved. In the case of Veuve Boursier you find M. Orfila discovering oxide of arsenic where M. Barruel saw only grains of fat. Four years previous to the case of the Veuve Lacoste that same Orfila came into the trial of Mme Lafarge with the first use in medical jurisprudence of the Marsh test, and based on the experiment a cocksure opinion which had much to do with the condemnation of that unfortunate woman. In the Lacoste trial you find the Parisian experts giving an opinion of no greater value than that of Orfila's in the Lafarge case, but find also an element of doubt introduced by the country practitioner, with his common sense on the then moot question of the accumulation, the absorption, and elimination of the drug.
Nowadays we are quite certain that our experts in medical jurisprudence know all there is to know about arsenical poisoning. What are the chances, however, in spite of our apparently well-founded faith, that some bristle-headed local chemist with a fighting chin will not spring up at an arsenic-poisoning trial and, with new facts about the substance, blow to pieces the cocksure evidence of the leading expert in pathology? It may seem impossible that such a thing can ever happen again—a mistake regarding the action of arsenic on the human body. But when we discover it becoming a commonplace of science that one human may be poisoned by an everyday substance which thousands of his fellows eat with enjoyment as well as impunity—a substance, for instance, as everyday as porridge—who will dare say even now that the last word has been said and written of arsenic?
But that, as the late George Moore so doted on saying, is quelconque. M. Orfila, sure about the grocer of the Rue de la Paix, was defeated by M. Barruel. M. Orfila, sure about the death of Charles Lafarge, is declared by to-day's experts in criminal jurisprudence and pathology to have been talking through his hat. According to the present experts, says "Philip Curtin," Lafarge was not poisoned at all, but died a natural death. Because of M. Devergie it was for the Veuve Lacoste as much 'touch and go' as it was for the Veuve Boursier twenty years before. Well might Marie-Fortunee Lafarge, hearing in prison of the verdict in the Lacoste trial, say, "Ma condamnation a sauve Madame Lacoste!"
In all this there's a moral lesson somewhere, but I'm blessed if I can put my finger on it.
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