On returning to the kitchen to go on with her work, the exhaustion against
which Marie had hitherto fought successfully, overpowered her the moment
she sat down; her heavy head drooped, her eyes closed in spite of her, and
she fell into a broken, uneasy slumber. Madame Duparc and her daughter,
seeing the condition she was in, undertook the preparation of the day's
dinner themselves. Among the dishes which they got ready, and which
they salted from the cellars on the dresser, were two different kinds of
soup--one kind for themselves, made from fresh "stock"--the other, for
Marie and the nurse, made from old "stock." They were engaged over their
cookery, when Monsieur Duparc arrived from the country; and Marie was
awakened to take the horse he had ridden to the stables, to unsaddle the
animal, and to give him his feed of corn.
While she was thus engaged, Madame Duparc and her daughter remained alone
in the kitchen. When she left the stable it was time for her to lay the
cloth. She was told to put plates for seven persons. Only six, however,
sat down to dinner. Those six were, Madame de Beaulieu, Monsieur and
Madame Duparc, the youngest of their two sons, Madame Beauguillot (sister
of Madame Duparc), and Monsieur Beauguillot (her son). Mademoiselle Duparc
remained in the kitchen to help Marie in serving up the dinner, and only
took her place at table after the soup had been put on. Her elder brother,
after summoning his father home, had not returned to the house.
After the soup had been taken away, and while Marie was waiting at table
during the eating of the second course, young Duparc complained that he
felt something gritty between his teeth. His mother made precisely the
same remark. Nobody else, however, agreed with them, and the subject
was allowed to drop. When the second course was done with, the dessert
followed, consisting of a plate of cherries. With the dessert there
arrived a visitor, Monsieur Fergant, a relation of Madame Duparc's. This
gentleman placed himself at table with the rest of the company.
Meanwhile, the nurse and Marie were making their dinner in the kitchen
off the soup which had been specially provided for them--Marie having
previously placed the dirty plates and the empty soup-tureen from the
dining-room, in the scullery, as usual, to be washed at the proper time.
While she and her companion were still engaged over their soup, young
Duparc and his mother suddenly burst into the kitchen, followed by the
other persons who had partaken of dinner.
"We are all poisoned!" cried Madame Duparc, in the greatest terror. "Good
heavens! I smell burnt arsenic in the kitchen!"
Monsieur Fergant, the visitor, hearing these last words, politely stepped
forward to echo them.
"Burnt arsenic, beyond a doubt," said Monsieur Fergant. When this
gentleman was subsequently questioned on the subject, it may not be amiss
to mention, that he was quite unable to say what burnt arsenic smelt
like. Neither is it altogether out of place to inquire how Madame Duparc
happened to be so amazingly apt at discovering the smell of burnt arsenic?
The answer to the question does not seem easy to discover.
Having settled that they were all poisoned, and having even found out
(thanks to those two intelligent amateur chemists, Madame Duparc and
Monsieur Fergant) the very nature of the deadly drug that had been used
to destroy them, the next thing the company naturally thought of was the
necessity of summoning medical help. Young Monsieur Beauguillot obligingly
ran off (it was apparently a very mild case of poisoning, so far as he
was concerned) to the apothecary's shop, and fetched, not the apprentice
this time, but the master. The master, Monsieur Thierry, arrived in great
haste, and found the dinner-eaters all complaining of nausea and pains in
the stomach. He naturally asked what they had eaten. The reply was, that
they had eaten nothing but soup.
This was, to say the least of it, rather an unaccountable answer. The
company had had for dinner, besides soup, a second course of boiled meat
and ragout of beef, and a dessert of cherries. Why was this plain fact
concealed? Why was the apothecary's attention to be fixed exclusively on
the soup? Was it because the tureen was empty, and because the alleged
smell of burnt arsenic might be accounted for on the theory that the
remains of the soup brought from the dining-room had been thrown on the
kitchen fire? But no remains of soup came down--it had been all consumed
by the guests. And what is still more remarkable, the only person in the
kitchen (excepting Marie and the nurse) who could not discover the smell
of burnt arsenic, was the person of all others who was professionally
qualified to find it out first--the apothecary himself.
After examining the tureen and the plates, and stirring up the wood ashes
on the fire, and making no sort of discovery, Monsieur Thierry turned
to Marie, and asked if she could account for what had happened. She
simply replied, that she knew nothing at all about it; and, thereupon,
her mistress and the rest of the persons present all overwhelmed her
together with a perfect torrent of questions. The poor girl, terrified
by the hubbub, worn out by a sleepless night and by the hard work and
agitation of the day preceding it, burst into an hysterical fit of tears,
and was ordered out of the kitchen to lie down and recover herself. The
only person who showed her the least pity and offered her the slightest
attention, was a servant-girl like herself, who lived next door, and who
stole up to the room in which she was weeping alone, with a cup of warm
milk and water to comfort her.
Meanwhile, the report had spread in the town that the old man, Monsieur
de Beaulieu, and the whole Duparc family, had been poisoned by their
servant. Madame Duparc did her best to give the rumour the widest possible
circulation. Entirely forgetting, as it would seem, that she was on her
own showing a poisoned woman, she roamed excitably all over the house
with an audience of agitated female friends at her heels; telling the
burnt-arsenic story over and over again to every fresh detachment of
visitors that arrived to hear it; and finally leading the whole troop of
women into the room where Marie was trying to recover herself. The poor
girl was surrounded in a moment; angry faces and shrill voices met her on
every side; the most insolent questions, the most extravagant accusations,
assailed her; and not one word that she could say in her own defence was
listened to for an instant. She had sprung up in the bed, on her knees,
and was frantically entreating for permission to speak in her own defence,
when a new personage appeared on the scene, and stilled the clamour by his
presence. This individual was a surgeon named Hébert, a friend of Madame
Duparc's, who announced that he had arrived to give the family the benefit
of his assistance, and who proposed to commence operations, by searching
the servant's pockets without farther delay.
The instant Marie heard him make this proposal, she untied her pockets,
and gave them to Surgeon Hébert with her own hands. He examined them on
the spot. In one, he found some copper money and a thimble. In the other
(to use his own words, given in evidence) he discovered "various fragments
of bread, sprinkled over with some minute substance which was white and
shining. He kept the fragments of bread, and left the room immediately
without saying a word." By this course of proceeding, he gave Marie no
chance of stating at the outset whether she knew of the fragments of
bread being in her pocket, or whether she was totally ignorant how they
came there. Setting aside, for the present, the question, whether there
was really any arsenic on the crumbs at all, it would clearly have been
showing the unfortunate maid-of-all-work no more than common justice to
have allowed her the opportunity of speaking before the bread was carried
away.
It was now seven o'clock in the evening. The next event was the arrival
of another officious visitor. The new friend in need belonged to the
legal profession--he was an advocate named Friley. Monsieur Friley's legal
instincts led him straightway to a conclusion which seriously advanced the
progress of events. Having heard the statement of Madame Duparc and her
daughter, he decided that it was his duty to lodge an information against
Marie before the Procurator of the King, at Caen.
The Procurator of the King is, by this time, no stranger to the reader.
He was the same Monsieur Revel who had taken such an amazingly strong
interest in Marie's fortunes, and who had strongly advised her to try
her luck at Caen. Here then, surely, was a friend found at last for the
forlorn maid-of-all-work. We shall see how Monsieur Revel acted, after
Friley's information had been duly lodged.
The French law of the period, and, it may be added, the commonest
principles of justice also, required the Procurator to perform certain
plain duties as soon as the accusation against Marie had reached his ears.
He was, in the first place, bound to proceed immediately, accompanied by
his official colleague, to the spot where the alleged crime of poisoning
was supposed to have taken place. Arrived there, it was his business to
ascertain for himself the condition of the persons attacked with illness;
to hear their statements; to examine the rooms, the kitchen utensils,
and the family medicine-chest, if there happened to be one in the house;
to receive any statement the accused person might wish to make; to take
down her answers to his questions; and, lastly, to keep anything found on
the servant (the breadcrumbs, for instance, of which Surgeon Hébert had
coolly taken possession), or anything found about the house which it might
be necessary to produce in evidence, in a position of absolute security,
under the hand and seal of justice.
These were the plain duties which Monsieur Revel, the Procurator, was
officially bound to fulfil. In the case of Marie, he not only neglected to
perform any one of them, but actually sanctioned a scheme for entrapping
her into prison, by sending a commissary of police to the house, in plain
clothes, with an order to place her in solitary confinement. To what
motive could this scandalous violation of his duties and of justice be
attributed? The last we saw of Monsieur Revel, he was so benevolently
disposed towards Marie that he condescended to advise her about her
prospects in life, and even went the length of recommending her to seek
for a situation in the very town in which he lived himself. And now,
we find him so suddenly and bitterly hostile towards the former object
of his patronage, that he actually lends the assistance of his high
official position to sanction an accusation against her, into the truth
or falsehood of which he had not made a single inquiry! Can it be that
Monsieur Revel's interest in Marie was, after all, not of the purest
possible kind, and that the unfortunate girl proved too stubbornly
virtuous to be taught what the real end was towards which the attentions
of her over-benevolent adviser privately pointed? There is no evidence
attaching to the case (as how should there be?) to prove this. But is
there any other explanation of Monsieur Revel's conduct, which at all
tends to account for the extraordinary inconsistency of it?
Having received his secret instructions, the commissary of police--a
man named Bertot--proceeded to the house of Monsieur and Madame Duparc,
disguised in plain clothes. His first proceeding was to order Marie to
produce the various plates, dishes, and kitchen utensils which had been
used at the dinner of Tuesday, the seventh of August (that being the day
on which the poisoning of the company was alleged to have taken place).
Marie produced a saucepan, an earthen vessel, a stewpan, and several
plates piled on each other, in one of which there were the remains of some
soup. These articles Bertot locked up in the kitchen cupboard, and took
away the key with him. He ought to have taken the additional precaution
of placing a seal on the cupboard, so as to prevent any tampering with the
lock, or any treachery with a duplicate key. But this he neglected to do.
His next proceeding was to tell Marie that the Procurator Revel wished
to speak to her, and to propose that she should accompany him to the
presence of that gentleman forthwith. Not having the slightest suspicion
of any treachery, she willingly consented, and left the house with the
commissary. A friend of the Duparcs, named Vassol, accompanied them.
Once out of the house, Bertot led his unsuspecting prisoner straight
to the gaol. As soon as she was inside the gates, he informed her that
she was arrested, and proceeded to search her person in the presence of
Vassol, of the gaoler of the prison, and of a woman named Dujardin. The
first thing found on her was a little linen bag, sewn to her petticoat,
and containing a species of religious charm, in the shape of a morsel
of the sacramental wafer. Her pockets came next under review (the
pockets which Surgeon Hébert had previously searched). A little dust was
discovered at the bottom of them, which was shaken out on paper, wrapped
up along with the linen bag, sealed in one packet, and taken to the
Procurator's office. Finally, the woman Dujardin found in Marie's bosom a
little key, which she readily admitted to be the key of her own cupboard.
The search over, one last act of cruelty and injustice was all that
remained to be committed for that day. The unfortunate girl was placed at
once in solitary confinement.