the view of the President.
"Why," he asked the woman, "did you commit this horrible murder, decoy
your lover to his death?" "Because I had repented," was the answer; "I
had wronged my husband, and since he had been condemned for fraud,
I loved him the more for being unfortunate. And then I feared for my
children."
President: Is that really the case?
Mme. Fenayrou: Certainly it is.
President: Then your whole existence has been one of lies and hypocrisy.
Whilst you were deceiving your husband and teaching your children to
despise him you were covering him with caresses.
You have played false to both husband and lover--to Aubert in decoying
him to his death, to your husband by denouncing him directly you were
arrested. You have betrayed everybody. The only person you have not
betrayed is yourself. What sort of a woman are you? As you and Aubert
went into the drawing-room on the evening of the murder you said loudly,
"This is the way," so that your husband, hearing your voice outside,
should not strike you by mistake in the darkness. If Lucien had not told
us that you attacked Aubert whilst he was struggling with your husband,
we should never have known it, for you would never have admitted it, and
your husband has all along refused to implicate you.... You have said
that you had ceased to care for your lover: he had ceased to care for
you. He was prosperous, happy, about to marry: you hated him, and you
showed your hate when, during the murder, you flung yourself upon him
and cried, "Wretch!" Is that the behaviour of a woman who represents
herself to have been the timid slave of her husband? No. This crime is
the revenge of a cowardly and pitiless woman, who writes down in her
account book the expenses of the trip to Chatou and, after the murder,
picnics merrily in the green fields. It was you who steeled your husband
to the task.
How far the President was justified in thus inverting the parts played
by the husband and wife in the crime must be a matter of opinion. In his
volume of Souvenirs M. Berard des Glajeux modifies considerably the view
which he perhaps felt it his duty to express in his interrogatory of
Gabrielle Fenayrou. He describes her as soft and flexible by nature, the
repentant slave of her husband, seeking to atone for her wrong to him
by helping him in his revenge. The one feature in the character of
Mme. Fenayrou that seems most clearly demonstrated is its absolute
insensibility under any circumstances whatsoever.
The submissive Lucien had little to say for himself, nor could any
motive for joining in the murder beyond a readiness to oblige his
brother be suggested. In his Souvenirs M. Berard des Glajeux states that
to-day it would seem to be clearly established that Lucien acted blindly
at the bidding of his sister-in-law, "qu'il avait beaucoup aimee et qui
n'avait pas ete cruelle a son egard."
The evidence recapitulated for the most part the facts already set
out. The description of Mme. Fenayrou by the gentleman on the sporting
newspaper who had succeeded Aubert in her affections is, under the
circumstances, interesting: "She was sad, melancholy; I questioned
her, and she told me she was married to a coarse man who neglected her,
failed to understand her, and had never loved her. I became her lover
but, except on a few occasions, our relations were those of good
friends. She was a woman with few material wants, affectionate,
expansive, an idealist, one who had suffered much and sought from
without a happiness her marriage had never brought her. I believe her to
have been the blind tool of her husband."
From motives of delicacy the evidence of this gentleman was read in
his presence; he was not examined orally. His eulogy of his mistress
is loyal. Against it may be set the words of the Procureur de la
Republique, M. Delegorgue: "Never has a more thorough-paced, a more
hideous monster been seated in the dock of an assize court. This woman
is the personification of falsehood, depravity, cowardice and treachery.
She is worthy of the supreme penalty." The jury were not of this
opinion. They preferred to regard Mme. Fenayrou as playing a secondary
part to that of her husband. They accorded in both her case and that
of Lucien extenuating circumstances. The woman was sentenced to penal
servitude for life, Lucien to seven years. Fenayrou, for whose conduct
the jury could find no extenuation, was condemned to death.
It is the custom in certain assize towns for the President, after
pronouncing sentence, to visit a prisoner who had been ordered for
execution. M. Berard des Glajeux describes his visit to Fenayrou at
Versailles. He was already in prison dress, sobbing.
His iron nature, which during five days had never flinched, had
broken down; but it was not for himself he wept, but for his wife, his
children, his brother; of his own fate he took no account. At the same
moment his wife was in the lodge of the courthouse waiting for the cab
that was to take her to her prison. Freed from the anxieties of the
trial, knowing her life to be spared, without so much as a thought for
the husband whom she had never loved, she had tidied herself up, and
now, with all the ease of a woman, whose misfortunes have not destroyed
her self-possession, was doing the honours of the jail. It was she who
received her judge.
But Fenayrou was not to die. The Court of Cassation, to which he had
made the usual appeal after condemnation, decided that the proceedings
at Versailles had been vitiated by the fact that the evidence of
Gabrielle Fenayrou's second lover had not been taken ORALLY, within the
requirements of the criminal code; consequently a new trial was ordered
before the Paris Assize Court. This second trial, which commenced on
October 12, saved Fenayrou's head. The Parisian jury showed themselves
more lenient than their colleagues at Versailles. Not only was Fenayrou
accorded extenuating circumstances, but Lucien was acquitted altogether.
The only person to whom these new proceedings brought no benefit was
Mme. Fenayrou, whose sentence remained unaltered.
Marin Fenayrou was sent to New Caledonia to serve his punishment.
There he was allowed to open a dispensary, but, proving dishonest, he
lost his license and became a ferryman--a very Charon for terrestrial
passengers. He died in New Caledonia of cancer of the liver.
Gabrielle Fenayrou made an exemplary prisoner, so exemplary that, owing
to her good conduct and a certain ascendancy she exercised over her
fellow-prisoners, she was made forewoman of one of the workshops. Whilst
holding this position she had the honour of receiving, among those
entrusted to her charge, another Gabrielle, murderess, Gabrielle
Bompard, the history of whose crime is next to be related.
Eyraud and Bompard
There are accounts of this case in Bataille "Causes Criminelles et
Mondaines," 1890, and in Volume X. of Fouquier "Causes Celebres."
"L'Affaire Gouffe" by Dr. Lacassagne, Lyons, 1891, and Goron "L'Amour
Criminel" may be consulted.
ON July 27, in the year 1889, the Parisian police were informed of the
disappearance of one Gouffe, a bailiff. He had been last seen by two
friends on the Boulevard Montmartre at about ten minutes past seven on
the evening of the 26th, a Friday. Since then nothing had been heard of
him, either at his office in the Rue Montmartre, or at his private
house in the Rue Rougemont. This was surprising in the case of a man of
regular habits even in his irregularities, robust health, and cheerful
spirits.
Gouffe was a widower, forty-two years of age. He had three daughters
who lived happily with him in the Rue Rougemont. He did a good trade as
bailiff and process-server, and at times had considerable sums of money
in his possession. These he would never leave behind him at his office,
but carry home at the end of the day's work, except on Fridays. Friday
nights Gouffe always spent away from home. As the society he sought
on these nights was of a promiscuous character, he was in the habit
of leaving at his office any large sum of money that had come into his
hands during the day.
About nine o'clock on this particular Friday night, July 26, the
hall-porter at Gouffe's office in the Rue Montmartre heard someone, whom
he had taken at first to be the bailiff himself, enter the hall and go
upstairs to the office, where he remained a few minutes. As he descended
the stairs the porter came out of his lodge and, seeing it was a
stranger, accosted him. But the man hurried away without giving the
porter time to see his face.
When the office was examined the next day everything was found in
perfect order, and a sum of 14,000 francs, hidden away behind some
papers, untouched. The safe had not been tampered with; there was, in
short, nothing unusual about the room except ten long matches that were
lying half burnt on the floor.
On hearing of the bailiff's disappearance and the mysterious visitor
to his office, the police, who were convinced that Gouffe had been the
victim of some criminal design, inquired closely into his habits, his
friends, his associates, men and women. But the one man who could have
breathed the name that would have set the police on the track of the
real culprits was, for reasons of his own, silent. The police examined
many persons, but without arriving at any useful result.
However, on August 15, in a thicket at the foot of a slope running down
from the road that passes through the district of Millery, about
ten miles from Lyons, a roadmender, attracted by a peculiar smell,
discovered the remains of what appeared to be a human body. They were
wrapped in a cloth, but so decomposed as to make identification almost
impossible. M. Goron, at that time head of the Parisian detective
police, believed them to be the remains of Gouffe, but a relative of the
missing man, whom he sent to Lyons, failed to identify them. Two days
after the discovery of the corpse, there were found near Millery the
broken fragments of a trunk, the lock of which fitted a key that had
been picked up near the body. A label on the trunk showed that it had
been dispatched from Paris to Lyons on July 27, 188--, but the final
figure of the date was obliterated. Reference to the books of the
railway company showed that on July 27, 1889, the day following the
disappearance of Gouffe, a trunk similar in size and weight to that
found near Millery had been sent from Paris to Lyons.
The judicial authorities at Lyons scouted the idea that either the
corpse or the trunk found at Millery had any connection with the
disappearance of Gouffe. When M. Goron, bent on following up what he
believed to be important clues, went himself to Lyons he found that
the remains, after being photographed, had been interred in the common
burying-ground. The young doctor who had made the autopsy produced
triumphantly some hair taken from the head of the corpse and showed M.
Goron that whilst Gouffe's hair was admittedly auburn and cut short,
this was black, and had evidently been worn long. M. Goron, after
looking carefully at the hair, asked for some distilled water. He put
the lock of hair into it and, after a few minutes' immersion, cleansed
of the blood, grease and dust that had caked them together, the hairs
appeared clearly to be short and auburn. The doctor admitted his error.
Fortified by this success, Goron was able to procure the exhumation of
the body. A fresh autopsy was performed by Dr. Lacassagne, the eminent
medical jurist of the Lyons School of Medicine. He was able to pronounce
with certainty that the remains were those of the bailiff, Gouffe. An
injury to the right ankle, a weakness of the right leg, the absence of
a particular tooth and other admitted peculiarities in Gouffe's physical
conformation, were present in the corpse, placing its identity beyond
question. This second post-mortem revealed furthermore an injury to the
thyroid cartilage of the larynx that had been inflicted beyond any doubt
whatever, declared Dr. Lacassagne, before death.
There was little reason to doubt that Gouffe had been the victim of
murder by strangulation.
But by whom had the crime been committed? It was now the end of
November. Four months had passed since the bailiff's murder, and the
police had no clue to its perpetrators. At one time a friend of Gouffe's
had been suspected and placed under arrest, but he was released for want
of evidence.
One day toward the close of November, in the course of a conversation
with M. Goron, a witness who had known Gouffe surprised him by saying
abruptly, "There's another man who disappeared about the same time as
Gouffe." M. Goron pricked up his ears. The witness explained that he
had not mentioned the fact before, as he had not connected it with his
friend's disappearance; the man's name, he said, was Eyraud, Michel
Eyraud, M. Goron made some inquires as to this Michel Eyraud. He learnt
that he was a married man, forty-six years of age, once a distiller at
Sevres, recently commission-agent to a bankrupt firm, that he had left
France suddenly, about the time of the disappearance of Gouffe, and that
he had a mistress, one Gabrielle Bompard, who had disappeared with him.
Instinctively M. Goron connected this fugitive couple with the fate of
the murdered bailiff.
Confirmation of his suspicions was to come from London. The remains of
the trunk found at Millery had been skilfully put together and exposed
at the Morgue in Paris, whilst the Gouffe family had offered a reward
of 500 francs to anybody who could in any way identify the trunk. Beyond
producing a large crop of anonymous letters, in one of which the crime
was attributed to General Boulanger, then in Jersey, these measures
seemed likely to prove fruitless. But one day in December, from the
keeper of a boarding-house in Gower Street, M. Goron received a letter
informing him that the writer believed that Eyraud and Gabrielle Bompard
had stayed recently at his house, and that on July 14 the woman, whom he
knew only as "Gabrielle," had left for France, crossing by Newhaven and
Dieppe, and taking with her a large and almost empty trunk, which
she had purchased in London. Inquires made by the French detectives
established the correctness of this correspondent's information. An
assistant at a trunk shop in the Euston Road was able to identify the
trunk--brought over from Paris for the purpose--as one purchased in his
shop on July 12 by a Frenchman answering to the description of Michel
Eyraud. The wife of the boarding-house keeper recollected having
expressed to Gabrielle her surprise that she should buy such an enormous
piece of luggage when she had only one dress to put into it. "Oh that's
all right," answered Gabrielle smilingly, "we shall have plenty to fill
it with in Paris!" Gabrielle had gone to Paris with the trunk on July
14, come back to London on the 17th, and on the 20th she and Eyraud
returned together to Paris From these facts it seemed more than probable
that these two were the assassins so eagerly sought for by the police,
and it seemed clear also that the murder had been done in Paris. But
what had become of this couple, in what street, in what house in Paris
had the crime been committed? These were questions the police were
powerless to answer.
The year 1889 came to an end, the murderers were still at large. But
on January 21, 1890, M. Goron found lying on his table a large letter
bearing the New York postmark. He opened it, and to his astonishment
read at the end the signature "Michel Eyraud." It was a curious letter,
but undoubtedly genuine. In it Eyraud protested against the suspicions
directed against himself; they were, he wrote, merely unfortunate
coincidences. Gouffe had been his friend; he had had no share whatever
in his death; his only misfortune had been his association with "that
serpent, Gabrielle Bompard." He had certainly bought a large trunk for
her, but she told him that she had sold it. They had gone to America
together, he to avoid financial difficulties in which he had been
involved by the dishonesty of the Jews. There Gabrielle had deserted him
for another man. He concluded a very long letter by declaring his belief
in Gabrielle's innocence--"the great trouble with her is that she is
such a liar and also has a dozen lovers after her." He promised that, as
soon as he learnt that Gabrielle had returned to Paris, he would, of his
own free will, place himself in the hands of M. Goron.
He was to have an early opportunity of redeeming his pledge, for on
the day following the receipt of his letter a short, well-made woman,
dressed neatly in black, with dyed hair, greyish-blue eyes, good teeth,
a disproportionately large head and a lively and intelligent expression
of face, presented herself at the Prefecture of Police and asked for an
interview with the Prefect.
Requested to give her name, she replied, with a smile, "Gabrielle
Bompard." She was accompanied by a middle-aged gentleman, who appeared
to be devoted to her. Gabrielle Bompard and her friend were taken to the
private room of M. Loze, the Prefect of Police. There, in a half-amused
way, without the least concern, sitting at times on the edge of the
Prefect's writing-table, Gabrielle Bompard told how she had been the
unwilling accomplice of her lover, Eyraud, in the murder of the bailiff,
Gouffe. The crime, she stated, had been committed in No. 3 in the Rue
Tronson-Ducoudray, but she had not been present; she knew nothing of
it but what had been told her by Eyraud. After the murder she had
accompanied him to America; there they had met the middle-aged
gentleman, her companion. Eyraud had proposed that they should murder
and rob him, but she had divulged the plot to the gentleman and asked
him to take her away. It was acting on his advice that she had returned
to France, determined to give her evidence to the judicial authorities
in Paris. The middle-aged gentleman declared himself ready to vouch for
the truth of a great part of this interesting narrative. There they both
imagined apparently that the affair would be ended. They were extremely
surprised when the Prefect, after listening to their statements, sent
for a detective-inspector who showed Gabrielle Bompard a warrant for
her arrest. After an affecting parting, at least on the part of the
middle-aged gentleman, Gabrielle Bompard was taken to prison. There
she soon recovered her spirits, which had at no time been very gravely
depressed by her critical situation.
According to Eyraud's letters, if anyone knew anything about Gouffe's
murder, it was Gabrielle Bompard; according to the woman's statement,
it was Eyraud, and Eyraud alone, who had committed it. As they were both
liars--the woman perhaps the greater liar of the two--their statements
are not to be taken as other than forlorn attempts to shift the blame on
to each other's shoulders.
Before extracting from their various avowals, which grew more complete
as time went on, the story of the crime, let us follow Eyraud in his
flight from justice, which terminated in the May of 1890 by his arrest
in Havana.
Immediately after the arrest of Gabrielle, two French detectives set out
for America to trace and run down if possible her deserted lover. For
more than a month they traversed Canada and the United States in search
of their prey. The track of the fugitive was marked from New York to San
Francisco by acts of thieving and swindling. At the former city he had
made the acquaintance of a wealthy Turk, from whom, under the pretence
of wishing to be photographed in it, he had borrowed a magnificent
oriental robe. The photograph was taken, but Eyraud forgot to return the
costly robe.
At another time he was lodging in the same house as a young American
actor, called in the French accounts of the incident "Sir Stout."
To "Sir Stout" Eyraud would appear to have given a most convincing
performance of the betrayed husband; his wife, he said, had deserted him
for another man; he raved and stormed audibly in his bedroom, deploring
his fate and vowing vengeance. These noisy representations so impressed
"Sir Stout" that, on the outraged husband declaring himself to be a
Mexican for the moment without funds, the benevolent comedian lent him
eighty dollars, which, it is almost needless to add, he never saw
again. In narrating this incident to the French detectives, "Sir Stout"
describes Eyraud's performance as great, surpassing even those of
Coquelin.
Similar stories of theft and debauchery met the detectives at every
turn, but, helped in a great measure by the publicity the American
newspapers gave to the movements of his pursuers, Eyraud was able to
elude them, and in March they returned to France to concert further
plans for his capture.
Eyraud had gone to Mexico. From there he had written a letter to M.
Rochefort's newspaper, L'Intransigeant, in which he declared Gouffe
to have been murdered by Gabrielle and an unknown. But, when official
inquiries were made in Mexico as to his whereabouts, the bird had flown.
At Havana, in Cuba, there lived a French dressmaker and clothes-merchant
named Puchen. In the month of February a stranger, ragged and unkempt,
but evidently a fellow-countryman, visited her shop and offered to sell
her a superb Turkish costume. The contrast between the wretchedness of
the vendor and the magnificence of his wares struck Madame Puchen at the
time. But her surprise was converted into suspicion when she read in
the American newspapers a description of the Turkish garment stolen by
Michel Eyraud, the reputed assassin of the bailiff Gouffe. It was one
morning in the middle of May that Mme. Puchen read the description of
the robe that had been offered her in February by her strange visitor.
To her astonishment, about two o'clock the same afternoon, she saw the
stranger standing before her door. She beckoned to him, and asked him
if he still had his Turkish robe with him; he seemed confused, and said
that he had sold it. The conversation drifted on to ordinary topics;
the stranger described some of his recent adventures in Mexico. "Oh!"
exclaimed the dressmaker, "they say Eyraud, the murderer, is in Mexico!
Did you come across him? Were you in Paris at the time of the murder?"
The stranger answered in the negative, but his face betrayed his
uneasiness. "Do you know you're rather like him?" said the woman, in
a half-joking way. The stranger laughed, and shortly after went out,
saying he would return. He did return on May 15, bringing with him
a number of the Republique Illustree that contained an almost
unrecognisable portrait of Eyraud. He said he had picked it up in a
cafe. "What a blackguard he looks!" he exclaimed as he threw the paper
on the table. But the dressmaker's suspicions were not allayed by the
stranger's uncomplimentary reference to the murderer. As soon as he had
gone, she went to the French Consul and told him her story.
By one of those singular coincidences that are inadmissable in fiction
or drama, but occur at times in real life, there happened to be in
Havana, of all places, a man who had been employed by Eyraud at the time
that he had owned a distillery at Sevres. The Consul, on hearing the
statement of Mme. Puchen, sent for this man and told him that a person
believed to be Eyraud was in Havana. As the man left the Consulate, whom
should he meet in the street but Eyraud himself! The fugitive had been
watching the movements of Mme. Puchen; he had suspected, after the
interview, that the woman would denounce him to the authorities. He now
saw that disguise was useless. He greeted his ex-employe, took him into
a cafe, there admitted his identity and begged him not to betray him.
It was midnight when they left the cafe. Eyraud, repenting of his
confidence, and no doubt anxious to rid himself of a dangerous witness,
took his friend into an ill-lighted and deserted street; but the friend,
conscious of his delicate situation, hailed a passing cab and made off
as quickly as he could.