Chapter M: BIDARD. Helene, with her usual cleverness, is making the most of (1)

a fact. She had already appeared when she was given the funnel. Her presence disturbed me. And to get rid of her I said, "Here, Helene, take this away and wash it."

The accused persisted in denying M. Bidard's version of the incident.

V

M. Malagutti, professor of chemistry to the faculty of sciences in Rennes, who, with M. Sarzeau, had been asked to make a chemical analysis of the reserved portions of the bodies of Rosalie, Perrotte Mace, and Rose Tessier, gave the results of his and his colleague's investigations. In the case of Rosalie they had also examined the vomitings. The final test on the portions of Rosalie's body carried out with hydrochloronitric acid--as best for the small quantities likely to result in poisoning by small doses--gave a residue which was submitted to the Marsh test. The tube showed a definite arsenic ring. Tests on the vomit gave the same result.

The poisoning of Perrotte Mace had also been accomplished by small doses. Arsenic was found after the strictest tests, which obviated all possibility that the substance could have come from the ground in which the body was interred.

In the case of Rose Tessier the tests yielded a huge amount of arsenic. Rose had died after an illness of only four days. The large amount of arsenic indicated a brutal and violent poisoning, in which the substance could not be excreted in the usual way.

The President then addressed the accused on this evidence. She alone had watched near all three of the victims, and against all three she had motives of hate. Poisoning was established beyond all doubt. Who was the poisoner if not she, Helene Jegado?

Helene: "Frankly, I have nothing to reproach myself with. I gave them only what came from the pharmacies on the orders of the doctors."

After evidence of Helene's physical condition, by a doctor who had seen her in prison (she had a scirrhous tumour on her left breast), the speech for the defence was made.

M. Dorange was very eloquent, but he had a hopeless case. The defence he put up was that Helene was irresponsible, but the major part of the advocate's speech was taken up with a denouncement of capital punishment. It was a barbarous anachronism, a survival which disgraced civilization.

The President summed up and addressed the jury:

"Cast a final scrutiny, gentlemen of the jury," he said, "at the matter brought out by these debates. Consult yourselves in the calm and stillness of your souls. If it is not proved to you that Helene Jegado is responsible for her actions you will acquit her. If you think that, without being devoid of free will and moral sense, she is not, according to the evidence, as well gifted as the average in humanity, you will give her the benefit of extenuating circumstance.

"But if you consider her culpable, if you cannot see in her either debility of spirit or an absence or feebleness of moral sense, you will do your duty with firmness. You will remember that for justice to be done chastisement will not alone suffice, but that punishment must be in proportion to the offence."

The President then read over his questions for the jury, and that body retired. After deliberations which occupied an hour and a half the jury came back with a verdict of guilty on all points. The Procureur asked for the penalty of death.

THE PRESIDENT. Helene Jegado, have you anything to say upon the application of the penalty?

HELENE. No, Monsieur le President, I am innocent. I am resigned to everything. I would rather die innocent than live in guilt. You have judged me, but God will judge you all. He will see then ... Monsieur Bidard. All those false witnesses who have come here to destroy me... they will see....

In a voice charged with emotion the President pronounced the sentence condemning Helene Jegado to death.

An appeal was put forward on her behalf, but was rejected.

On the scaffold, a few moments before she passed into eternity, having no witness but the recorder and the executioner, faithful to the habits of her life, Helene Jegado accused a woman not named in any of the processes of having urged her to her first crimes and of being her accomplice. The two officials took no notice of this indirect confession of her own guilt, and the sentence was carried out. The Procureur of Rennes, hearing of this confession, took the trouble to search out the woman named in it. She turned out to be a very old woman of such a pious and kindly nature that the people about her talked of her as the "saint."

It were superfluous to embark on analysis of the character of Helene Jegado. Earlier on, in comparing her with Van der Linden and the Zwanziger woman, I have lessened her caliginosity as compared with that of the Leyden poisoner, giving her credit for one less death than her Dutch sister in crime. Having investigated Helene's activities rather more closely, however, I find I have made mention of no less than twenty-eight deaths attributed to Helene, which puts her one up on the Dutchwoman. The only possible point at which I may have gone astray in my calculations is in respect of the deaths at Guern. The accounts I have of Helene's bag there insist on seven, but enumerate only six--namely, her sister Anna, the cure, his father and mother, and two more (unnamed) after these. The accounts, nevertheless, insist more than once that between 1833 and 1841 Helene put away twenty-three persons. If she managed only six at Guern, that total should be twenty-two. From 1849 she accounted for Albert Rabot, the infant Ozanne, Perrotte Mace, Rose Tessier, and Rosalie Sarrazin--five. We need no chartered accountant to certify our figures if we make the total twenty-eight. Give her the benefit of the doubt in the case of Albert Rabot, who was ill anyhow when Helene joined the household, and she still ties with Van der Linden with twenty-seven deaths.

There is much concerning Helene Jegado, recorded incidents, that I might have introduced into my account of her activities, and that might have emphasized the outstanding feature of her dingy make-up--that is, her hypocrisy. When Rosalie Sarrazin was fighting for her life, bewailing the fact that she was dying at the age of nineteen, Helene Jegado took a crucifix and made the girl kiss it, saying to her, "Here is the Saviour Who died for you! Commend your soul to Him!" This, with the canting piety of the various answers which she gave in court (and which, let me say, I have transcribed with some reluctance), puts Helene Jegado almost on a level with the sanctimonious Dr Pritchard--perhaps quite on a level with that nauseating villain.

With her twenty-three murders all done without motive, and the five others done for spite--with her twenty-eight murders, only five of which were calculated to bring advantage, and that of the smallest value--it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Helene Jegado was mad. In spite, however, of evidence called in her defence--as, for example, that of Dr Pitois, of Rennes, who was Helene's own doctor, and who said that "the woman had a bizarre character, frequently complaining of stomach pains and formications in the head"--in spite of this doctor's hints of monomania in the accused, the jury, with every chance allowed them to find her irresponsible, still saw nothing in her extenuation. And very properly, since the law held the extreme penalty for such as she, Helene went to the scaffold. Her judges might have taken the sentimental view that she was abnormal, though not mad in the common acceptation of the word. Appalled by the secret menace to human life that she had been scared to think of the ease and the safety in which she had been allowed over twenty odd years to carry agonizing death to so many of her kind, and convinced from the inhuman nature of her practices that she was a lusus naturae, her judges, following sentimental Anglo-Saxon example, might have given her asylum and let her live for years at public expense. But possibly they saw no social or Civic advantage in preserving her, so anti-social as she was. They are a frugal nation, the French.

VI

Having made you sup on horror a la Bretonne, or Continental fashion, I am now to give you a savoury from England. This lest you imagine that France, or the Continent, has a monopoly in wholesale poison. Let me introduce you, as promised earlier, to Mary Ann Cotton aged forty-one, found guilty of and sentenced to death for the murder of a child, Charles Edward Cotton, by giving him arsenic.

Rainton, in Durham, was the place where, in 1832 Mary Ann found mortal existence. At the age of fifteen or sixteen she began to earn her own living as a nursemaid, an occupation which may appear to have given her a distaste for infantile society. At the age of nineteen and at Newcastle she married William Mowbray, a collier, and went with him to live in Cornwall. Here the couple remained for some years.

It was a fruitful marriage. Mary bore William five children in Cornwall, but, unfortunately, four of the children died--suddenly. With the remaining child the pair moved to Mary's native county. They had hardly settled down in their new home when the fifth child also died. It died, curiously enough, of the ailment which had supposedly carried off the other four children--gastric fever.

Not long after the death of this daughter the Mowbrays removed to Hendon, Sunderland, and here a sixth child was born. It proved to be of as vulnerable a constitution as its brothers and sisters, for it lasted merely a year. Four months later, while suffering from an injured foot, which kept him at home, William Mowbray fell ill, and died with a suddenness comparable to that which had characterized the deaths of his progeny. His widow found a job at the local infirmary, and there she met George Ward. She married Mr Ward, but not for long. In a few months after the nuptials George Ward followed his predecessor, Mowbray, from an illness that in symptoms and speed of fatality closely resembled William's.

We next hear of Mary as housekeeper to a widower named Robinson, whose wife she soon became. Robinson had five children by his former wife. They all died in the year that followed his marriage with Mary Ann, and all of 'gastric fever.'

The second Mrs Robinson had two children by this third husband. Both of these perished within a few weeks of their birth.

Mary Ann's mother fell ill, though not seriously. Mary Ann volunteered to nurse the old lady. It must now be evident that Mary Ann was a 'carrier' of an obscure sort of intestinal fever, because soon after her appearance in her mother's place the old lady died of that complaint.

On her return to her own home, or soon after it, Mary was accused by her husband of robbing him. She thought it wise to disappear out of Robinson's life, a deprivation which probably served to prolong it.

Under her old name of Mowbray, and by means of testimonials which on later investigation proved spurious, Mary Ann got herself a housekeeping job with a doctor in practice at Spennymore. Falling into error regarding what was the doctor's and what was her own, and her errors being too patent, she was dismissed.

Wallbottle is the scene of Mary Ann's next activities. Here she made the acquaintance of a married man with a sick wife. His name was Frederick Cotton. Soon after he had met Mary Ann his wife died. She died of consumption, with no more trace of gastric fever than is usual in her disease. But two of Cotton's children died of intestinal inflammation not long after their mother, and their aunt, Cotton's sister, who kept house for him, was not long in her turn to sicken and die in a like manner.

The marriage which Mary Ann brought off with Frederick Cotton at Newcastle anticipated the birth of a son by a mere three months. With two of Cotton's children by his former marriage, and with the infant son, the pair went to live at West Auckland. Here Cotton died--and the three children--and a lodger by the curious name of Natrass.

Altogether Mary Ann, in the twenty years during which she had been moving in Cornwall and about the northeastern counties, had, as it ultimately transpired, done away with twenty-four persons. Nine of these were the fruit of her own loins. One of them was the mother who gave her birth. Retribution fell upon her through her twenty-fourth victim, Charles Edward Cotton, her infant child. His death created suspicion. The child, it was shown, was an obstacle to the marriage which she was already contemplating--her fifth marriage, and, most likely, bigamous at that. The doctor who had attended the child refused a death certificate. In post-mortem examination arsenic was found in the child's body. Cotton was arrested.

She was brought to trial in the early part of 1873 at Durham Assizes. As said already, she was found guilty and sentenced to death, the sentence being executed upon her in Durham Gaol in March of that year. Before she died she made the following remarkable statement: "I have been a poisoner, but not intentionally."

It is believed that she secured the poison from a vermicide in which arsenic was mixed with soft soap. One finds it hard to believe that she extracted the arsenic from the preparation (as she must have done before administering it, or otherwise it must have been its own emetic) unintentionally.

What advantage Mary Ann Cotton derived from her poisonings can have been but small, almost as small as that gained by Helene Jegado. Was it for social advancement that she murdered husbands and children? Was she a 'climber' in that sphere of society in which she moved? One hesitates to think that passion swayed her in being rid of the infant obstacle to the fifth marriage of her contemplation. With her "all o'er-teeming loins," this woman, Hecuba in no other particular, must have been a very sow were this her motive.

But I have come almost by accident on the word I need to compare Mary Ann Cotton with Jegado. The Bretonne, creeping about her native province leaving death in her track, with her piety, her hypocrisy, her enjoyment of her own cruelty, is sinister and repellent. But Mary Ann, moving from mate to mate and farrowing from each, then savaging both them and the litter, has a musty sowishness that the Bretonne misses. Both foul, yes. But we needn't, we islanders, do any Jingo business in setting Mary Ann against Helene.

VII: -- THE MERRY WIDOWS

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.