the Bluebeard-like character of this latterday castle of Mr. Holmes. In
1887 a man of the name of Connor entered Holmes' employment. He brought
with him to the castle a handsome, intelligent wife and a little girl of
eight or nine years of age.
After a short time Connor quarrelled with his wife and went away,
leaving Mrs. Connor and the little girl with Holmes. After 1892 Mrs.
Connor and her daughter had disappeared, but in August, 1895, the police
found in the castle some clothes identified as theirs, and the janitor,
Quinlan, admitted having seen the dead body of Mrs. Connor in the
castle. Holmes, questioned in his prison in Philadelphia, said that Mrs.
Connor had died under an operation, but that he did not know what had
become of the little girl.
In the year of Mrs. Connor's disappearance, a typist named Emily
Cigrand, who had been employed in a hospital in which Benjamin Pitezel
had been a patient, was recommended by the latter to Holmes. She entered
his employment, and she and Holmes soon became intimate, passing as
"Mr. and Mrs. Gordon." Emily Cigrand had been in the habit of writing
regularly to her parents in Indiana, but after December 6, 1892, they
had never heard from her again, nor could any further trace of her be
found.
A man who worked for Holmes as a handy man at the castle stated to the
police that in 1892 Holmes had given him a skeleton of a man to mount,
and in January, 1893, showed him in the laboratory another male skeleton
with some flesh still on it, which also he asked him to mount. As there
was a set of surgical instruments in the laboratory and also a tank
filled with a fluid preparation for removing flesh, the handy man
thought that Holmes was engaged in some kind of surgical work.
About a month before his execution, when Holmes' appeals from his
sentence had failed and death appeared imminent, he sold to the
newspapers for 7,500 dollars a confession in which he claimed to have
committed twenty-seven murders in the course of his career. The day
after it appeared he declared the whole confession to be a "fake."
He was tired, he said, of being accused by the newspapers of having
committed every mysterious murder that had occurred during the last
ten years. When it was pointed out to him that the account given in his
confession of the murder of the Pitezel children was clearly untrue,
he replied, "Of course, it is not true, but the newspapers wanted
a sensation and they have got it." The confession was certainly
sensational enough to satisfy the most exacting of penny-a-liners, and a
lasting tribute to Holmes' undoubted power of extravagant romancing.
According to his story, some of his twenty-seven victims had met their
death by poison, some by more violent methods, some had died a lingering
death in the air-tight and sound-proof vault of the castle. Most of
these he mentioned by name, but some of these were proved afterwards to
be alive. Holmes had actually perpetrated, in all probability, about ten
murders. But, given further time and opportunity, there is no reason why
this peripatetic assassin should not have attained to the considerable
figure with which he credited himself in his bogus confession.
Holmes was executed in Philadelphia on May 7, 1896. He seemed to meet
his fate with indifference.
The motive of Holmes in murdering Pitezel and three of his children and
in planning to murder his wife and remaining children, originated in all
probability in a quarrel that occurred between Pitezel and himself in
the July of 1894. Pitezel had tired apparently of Holmes and his doings,
and wanted to break off the connection. But he must have known enough
of Holmes' past to make him a dangerous enemy. It was Pitezel who had
introduced to Holmes, Emily Cigrand, the typist, who had disappeared
so mysteriously in the castle; Pitezel had been his partner in the
fraudulent appropriation of Miss Minnie Williams' property in Texas; it
is more than likely, therefore, that Pitezel knew something of the fate
of Miss Williams and her sister. By reviving, with Pitezel's help, his
old plan for defrauding insurance companies, Holmes saw the opportunity
of making 10,000 dollars, which he needed sorely, and at the same time
removing his inconvenient and now lukewarm associate. Having killed
Pitezel and received the insurance money, Holmes appropriated to his
own use the greater part of the 10,000 dollars, giving Mrs. Pitezel
in return for her share of the plunder a bogus bill for 5,000 dollars.
Having robbed Mrs. Pitezel of both her husband and her money, to
this thoroughgoing criminal there seemed only one satisfactory way of
escaping detection, and that was to exterminate her and the whole of her
family.
Had Holmes not confided his scheme of the insurance fraud to Hedgspeth
in St. Louis prison and then broken faith with him, there is no reason
why the fraud should ever have been discovered. The subsequent murders
had been so cunningly contrived that, had the Insurance Company not put
the Pinkerton detectives on his track, Holmes would in all probability
have ended by successfully disposing of Mrs. Pitezel, Dessie, and the
baby at the house in Burlington, Vermont, and the entire Pitezel family
would have disappeared as completely as his other victims.
Holmes admitted afterwards that his one mistake had been his confiding
to Hedgspeth his plans for defrauding an insurance company--a mistake,
the unfortunate results of which might have been avoided, if he had kept
faith with the train robber and given him the 500 dollars which he had
promised.
The case of Holmes illustrates the practical as well as the purely
ethical value of "honour among thieves," and shows how a comparatively
insignificant misdeed may ruin a great and comprehensive plan of crime.
To dare to attempt the extermination of a family of seven persons, and
to succeed so nearly in effecting it, could be the work of no tyro, no
beginner like J. B. Troppmann. It was the act of one who having
already succeeded in putting out of the way a number of other persons
undetected, might well and justifiably believe that he was born for
greater and more compendious achievements in robbery and murder than
any who had gone before him. One can almost subscribe to America's claim
that Holmes is the "greatest criminal" of a century boasting no mean
record in such persons.
In the remarkable character of his achievements as an assassin we are
apt to lose sight of Holmes' singular skill and daring as a liar and
a bigamist. As an instance of the former may be cited his audacious
explanation to his family, when they heard of his having married a
second time. He said that he had met with a serious accident to his
head, and that when he left the hospital, found that he had entirely
lost his memory; that, while in this state of oblivion, he had married
again and then, when his memory returned, realised to his horror his
unfortunate position. Plausibility would seem to have been one of
Holmes' most useful gifts; men and women alike--particularly the
latter--he seems to have deceived with ease. His appearance was
commonplace, in no way suggesting the conventional criminal, his
manner courteous, ingratiating and seemingly candid, and like so many
scoundrels, he could play consummately the man of sentiment.
The weak spot in Holmes' armour as an enemy of society was a dangerous
tendency to loquacity, the defect no doubt of his qualities of plausible
and insinuating address and ever ready mendacity.
The Widow Gras
Report of the trial of the woman Gras and Gaudry in the Gazette
des Tribunaux. The case is dealt with also by Mace in his "Femmes
Criminelles."
I
THE CHARMER
Jenny Amenaide Brecourt was born in Paris in the year 1837. Her father
was a printer, her mother sold vegetables. The parents neglected the
child, but a lady of title took pity on her, and when she was five years
old adopted her. Even as a little girl she was haughty and imperious. At
the age of eight she refused to play with another child on the ground
of her companion's social inferiority. "The daughter of a Baroness," she
said, "cannot play with the daughter of a wine-merchant." When she was
eleven years old, her parents took her away from her protectress and
sent her into the streets to sell gingerbread--a dangerous experience
for a child of tender years. After six years of street life, Amenaide
sought out her benefactress and begged her to take her back. The
Baroness consented, and found her employment in a silk manufactory. One
day the girl, now eighteen years old, attended the wedding of one of
her companions in the factory. She returned home after the ceremony
thoughtful.
She said that she wanted to get married. The Baroness did not take her
statement seriously, and on the grocer calling one day, said in jest to
Amenaide, "You want a husband, there's one."
But Amenaide was in earnest. She accepted the suggestion and, to the
Baroness' surprise, insisted on taking the grocer as her husband.
Reluctantly the good lady gave her consent, and in 1855 Amenaide
Brecourt became the wife of the grocer Gras.
A union, so hasty and ill-considered, was not likely to be of long
duration. With the help of the worthy Baroness the newly married couple
started a grocery business. But Amenaide was too economical for her
husband and mother-in-law. Quarrels ensued, recriminations. In a spirit
of unamiable prophecy husband and wife foretold each other's future.
"You will die in a hospital," said the wife. "You will land your carcase
in prison," retorted the husband. In both instances they were correct in
their anticipations. One day the husband disappeared. For a short time
Amenaide returned to her long-suffering protectress, and then she too
disappeared.
When she is heard of again, Amenaide Brecourt has become Jeanne de la
Cour. Jeanne de la Cour is a courtesan. She has tried commerce, acting,
literature, journalism, and failed at them all. Henceforth men are
to make her fortune for her. Such charms as she may possess, such
allurements as she can offer, she is ready to employ without heart or
feeling to accomplish her end. Without real passion, she has an almost
abnormal, erotic sensibility, which serves in its stead. She cares
only for one person, her sister. To her Jeanne de la Cour unfolded her
philosophy of life. While pretending to love men, she is going to make
them suffer. They are to be her playthings, she knows how to snare them:
"All is dust and lies. So much the worse for the men who get in my way.
Men are mere stepping-stones to me. As soon as they begin to fail or are
played out, I put them scornfully aside. Society is a vast chess-board,
men the pawns, some white, some black; I move them as I please, and
break them when they bore me."
The early years of Jeanne de la Cour's career as a Phryne were hardly
more successful than her attempts at literature, acting and journalism.
True to her philosophy, she had driven one lover, a German, to suicide,
and brought another to his death by over-doses of cantharides. On
learning of the death of the first, she reflected patriotically,
"One German the less in Paris!" That of the second elicited the
matter-of-fact comment, "It was bound to happen; he had no moderation."
A third admirer, who died in a hospital, was dismissed as "a fool who,
in spite of all, still respects women." But, in ruining her lovers, she
had ruined her own health. In 1865 she was compelled to enter a private
asylum. There she is described as "dark in complexion, with dark
expressive eyes, very pale, and of a nervous temperament, agreeable, and
pretty." She was suffering at the time of her admission from hysterical
seizures, accompanied by insane exaltation, convulsions and loss of
speech. In speaking of her humble parents she said, "I don't know such
people"; her manner was bombastic, and she was fond of posing as a fine
lady.
After a few months Jeanne de la Cour was discharged from the asylum as
cured, and on the advice of her doctors went to Vittel.
There she assumed the rank of Baroness and recommenced her career, but
this time in a more reasonable and businesslike manner. Her comments,
written to her sister, on her fellow guests at the hotel are caustic.
She mocks at some respectable married women who are trying to convert
her to Catholicism. To others who refuse her recognition, she makes
herself so mischievous and objectionable that in self-defence they are
frightened into acknowledging her. Admirers among men she has many,
ex-ministers, prefects. It was at Vittel that occurred the incident
of the wounded pigeon. There had been some pigeon-shooting. One of the
wounded birds flew into the room of the Baroness de la Cour. She took
pity on it, tended it, taught it not to be afraid of her and to stay in
her room. So touching was her conduct considered by some of those who
heard it, that she was nicknamed "the Charmer." But she is well aware,
she writes to her sister, that with the true ingratitude of the male,
the pigeon will leave her as soon as it needs her help no longer.
However, for the moment, "disfigured as it is, beautiful or ugly," she
loves it. "Don't forget," she writes, "that a woman who is practical and
foreseeing, she too enjoys her pigeon shooting, but the birds are her
lovers."
Shortly after she left Vittel an event occurred which afforded Jeanne de
la Cour the prospect of acquiring that settled position in life which,
"practical and foreseeing," she now regarded as indispensable to her
future welfare. Her husband, Gras, died, as she had foretold, in the
Charity Hospital. The widow was free. If she could bring down her bird,
it was now in her power to make it hers for life. Henceforth all her
efforts were directed to that end. She was reaching her fortieth year,
her hair was turning grey, her charms were waning. Poverty, degradation,
a miserable old age, a return to the wretched surroundings of her
childhood, such she knew to be the fate of many of her kind. There was
nothing to be hoped for from the generosity of men. Her lovers were
leaving her. Blackmail, speculation on the Bourse, even the desperate
expedient of a supposititious child, all these she tried as means of
acquiring a competence. But fortune was shy of the widow. There was
need for dispatch. The time was drawing near when it might be man's
unkind privilege to put her scornfully aside as a thing spent and done
with. She must bring down her bird, and that quickly. It was at this
critical point in the widow's career, in the year 1873, that she met at
a public ball for the first time Georges de Saint Pierre.(16)
(16) For obvious reasons I have suppressed the real name of the widow's
lover.
Georges de Saint Pierre was twenty years of age when he made the
acquaintance of the Widow Gras. He had lost his mother at an early age,
and since then lived with relatives in the country. He was a young man
of independent means, idle, of a simple, confiding and affectionate
disposition. Four months after his first meeting with the widow they
met again. The end of the year 1873 saw the commencement of an intimacy,
which to all appearances was characterised by a more lasting and sincere
affection than is usually associated with unions of this kind. There can
be no doubt that during the three years the Widow Gras was the mistress
of Georges de Saint Pierre, she had succeeded in subjugating entirely
the senses and the affection of her young lover. In spite of the twenty
years between them, Georges de Saint Pierre idolised his middle-aged
mistress. She was astute enough to play not only the lover, but the
mother to this motherless youth. After three years of intimacy he writes
to her: "It is enough for me that you love me, because I don't weary
you, and I, I love you with all my heart. I cannot bear to leave you.
We will live happily together. You will always love me truly, and as for
me, my loving care will ever protect you. I don't know what would become
of me if I did not feel that your love watched over me." The confidence
of Georges in the widow was absolute. When, in 1876, he spent six months
in Egypt, he made her free of his rooms in Paris, she was at liberty to
go there when she liked; he trusted her entirely, idolised her. Whatever
her faults, he was blind to them. "Your form," he writes, "is ever
before my eyes; I wish I could enshrine your pure heart in gold and
crystal."
The widow's conquest, to all appearances, was complete. But Georges was
very young. He had a family anxious for his future; they knew of his
liaison; they would be hopeful, no doubt, of one day breaking it off and
of marrying him to some desirable young person. From the widow's point
of view the situation lacked finality. How was that to be secured?
One day, toward the end of the year 1876, after the return of Georges
from Egypt, the widow happened to be at the house of a friend, a ballet
dancer. She saw her friend lead into the room a young man; he was
sightless, and her friend with tender care guided him to a seat on the
sofa. The widow was touched by the spectacle. When they were alone, she
inquired of her friend the reason of her solicitude for the young man.
"I love this victim of nature," she replied, "and look after him with
every care. He is young, rich, without family, and is going to marry
me. Like you, I am just on forty; my hair is turning grey, my youth
vanishing. I shall soon be cast adrift on the sea, a wreck. This boy is
the providential spar to which I am going to cling that I may reach land
in safety." "You mean, then," said the widow, "that you will soon be
beyond the reach of want?" "Yes," answered the friend, "I needn't worry
any more about the future."
"I congratulate you," said the widow, "and what is more, your lover will
never see you grow old."
To be cast adrift on the sea and to have found a providential spar! The
widow was greatly impressed by her friend's rare good fortune. Indeed,
her experience gave the widow furiously to think, as she revolved in her
brain various expedients by which Georges de Saint Pierre might become
the "providential spar" in her own impending wreck. The picture of
the blind young man tenderly cared for, dependent utterly on the
ministrations of his devoted wife, fixed itself in the widow's mind;
there was something inexpressibly pathetic in the picture, whilst its
practical significance had its sinister appeal to one in her situation.
At this point in the story there appears on the scene a character as
remarkable in his way as the widow herself, remarkable at least for
his share in the drama that is to follow. Nathalis Gaudry, of humble
parentage, rude and uncultivated, had been a playmate of the widow when
she was a child in her parents' house.
They had grown up together, but, after Gaudry entered the army, had
lost sight of each other. Gaudry served through the Italian war of 1859,
gaining a medal for valour. In 1864 he had married.
Eleven years later his wife died, leaving him with two children. He came
to Paris and obtained employment in an oil refinery at Saint Denis. His
character was excellent; he was a good workman, honest, hard-working,
his record unblemished. When he returned to Paris, Gaudry renewed his
friendship with the companion of his youth. But Jeanne Brecourt was now
Jeanne de la Cour, living in refinement and some luxury, moving in a
sphere altogether remote from and unapproachable by the humble workman
in an oil refinery. He could do no more than worship from afar
this strange being, to him wonderfully seductive in her charm and
distinction.
On her side the widow was quite friendly toward her homely admirer.
She refused to marry him, as he would have wished, but she did her best
without success to marry him to others of her acquaintance. Neither a
sempstress nor an inferior actress could she persuade, for all her
zeal, to unite themselves with a hand in an oil mill, a widower with two
children. It is typical of the widow's nervous energy that she should
have undertaken so hopeless a task. In the meantime she made use of
her admirer. On Sundays he helped her in her apartment, carried coals,
bottled wine, scrubbed the floors, and made himself generally useful. He
was supposed by those about the house to be her brother. Occasionally,
in the absence of a maid, the widow allowed him to attend on her
personally, even to assist her in her toilette and perform for her such
offices as one woman would perform for another. The man soon came to be
madly in love with the woman; his passion, excited but not gratified,
enslaved and consumed him. To some of his fellow-workmen who saw him
moody and preoccupied, he confessed that he ardently desired to marry a
friend of his childhood, not a working woman but a lady.
Such was the situation and state of mind of Nathalis Gaudry when, in
November, 1876, he received a letter from the widow, in which she wrote,
"Come at once. I want you on a matter of business. Tell your employer
it is a family affair; I will make up your wages." In obedience to this
message Gaudry was absent from the distillery from the 17th to the 23rd
of November.
The "matter of business" about which the widow wished to consult with
Gaudry turned out to be a scheme of revenge. She told him that she had
been basely defrauded by a man to whom she had entrusted money. She
desired to be revenged on him, and could think of no better way than to
strike at his dearest affections by seriously injuring his son. This she
proposed to do with the help of a knuckle-duster, which she produced and
gave to Gaudry. Armed with this formidable weapon, Gaudry was to strike
her enemy's son so forcibly in the pit of the stomach as to disable him
for life. The widow offered to point out to Gaudry the young man whom he
was to attack. She took him outside the young man's club and showed him
his victim. He was Georges de Saint Pierre.
The good fortune of her friend, the ballet-dancer, had proved a
veritable toxin in the intellectual system of the Widow Gras. The poison
of envy, disappointment, suspicion, apprehension had entered into her
soul. Of what use to her was a lover, however generous and faithful,
who was free to take her up and lay her aside at will? But such was her
situation relative to Georges de Saint Pierre. She remembered that the
wounded pigeon, as long as it was dependent on her kind offices, had
been compelled to stay by her side; recovered, it had flown away. Only a
pigeon, maimed beyond hope of recovery, could she be sure of compelling
to be hers for all time, tied to her by its helpless infirmity, too
suffering and disfigured to be lured from its captivity. And so, in
accordance with her philosophy of life, the widow, by a blow in the pit
of the stomach with a knuckle-duster, was to bring down her bird which
henceforth would be tended and cared for by "the Charmer" to her own
satisfaction and the admiration of all beholders.
For some reason, the natural reluctance of Gaudry, or perhaps a feeling
of compunction in the heart of the widow, this plan was not put into
immediate execution. Possibly she hesitated before adopting a plan more
cruel, more efficacious. Her hesitation did not last long.
With the dawn of the year 1877 the vigilant apprehension of the widow
was roused by the tone of M. de Saint Pierre's letters. He wrote from
his home in the country, "I cannot bear leaving you, and I don't
mean to. We will live together." But he adds that he is depressed by
difficulties with his family, "not about money or business but of a kind
he can only communicate to her verbally." To the widow it was clear that
these difficulties must relate to the subject of marriage. The character
of Georges was not a strong one; sooner or later he might yield to the
importunities of his family; her reign would be ended, a modest and
insufficient pension the utmost she could hope for. She had passed the
meridian of her life as a charmer of men, her health was giving way, she
was greedy, ambitious, acquisitive. In January she asked her nephew, who
worked as a gilder, to get her some vitriol for cleaning her copper. He
complied with her request.
During Jeanne de la Cour's brief and unsuccessful appearance as an
actress she had taken part in a play with the rather cumbrous title, Who
Puts out the Eyes must Pay for Them. The widow may have forgotten
this event; its occurrence so many years before may have been merely
a sinister coincidence. But the incident of the ballet-dancer and her
sightless lover was fresh in her mind.