Thus far, the case is one of suspicion only. Waiting until the end of the
trial before we decide on whom that suspicion ought to rest, let us now
hear the evidence by which the Duparcs and their adherents proceeded to
justify their conspiracy against the liberty and the life of a friendless
girl.
Having secured Marie in solitary confinement, and having thus left the
house and all that it contained for a whole night at the free disposal
of the Duparcs, the Procurator Revel bethought himself, the morning after
the arrest of his prisoner, of the necessity of proceeding with something
like official regularity. He accordingly issued his requisition to the
Lieutenant-Criminel to accompany him to the house of Monsieur Duparc,
attended by the medical officers and the clerk, to inquire into the
circumstances under which the suspected death by poisoning of Monsieur de
Beaulieu had taken place. Marie had been imprisoned on the evening of the
seventh of August, and this requisition is dated on the morning of the
eighth. The document betrays one remarkable informality. It mentions the
death of Monsieur de Beaulieu; but is absolutely silent on the subject
of the alleged poisoning of seven persons at dinner the next day. And
yet, it was this latter circumstance only which first directed suspicion
against Marie, and which induced Friley to lodge the information against
her on which the Procurator was now acting. Probably Monsieur Revel's
legal acumen convinced him, at the outset, that the story of the poisoned
dinner was too weak to be relied on.
The officers of the law, accompanied by the doctors, proceeded to the
house of the Duparcs on the eighth of August. After viewing the body
of Monsieur de Beaulieu, the medical men were directed to open and
examine it. They reported the discovery in the stomach of a reddish,
brick-coloured liquid, somewhat resembling the lees of wine. The mucous
membrane was detached in some places, and its internal surface was
corroded. On examining the reddish liquid, they found it to contain a
crystallised sediment, which, on analysation, proved to be arsenic. Upon
this, the doctors delivered it as their opinion that Monsieur de Beaulieu
had been poisoned, and that poison had been the cause of his death.
The event having taken this serious turn, the first duty of the
Lieutenant-Criminel (according to the French law) was to send for the
servant on whom suspicion rested, to question her, and to confront her
with the Duparcs. He did nothing of the kind; he made no inquiry after
the servant (being probably unwilling to expose his colleague, the
Procurator, who had illegally arrested and illegally imprisoned her); he
never examined the kitchen utensils which the Commissary had locked up;
he never opened the servant's cupboard with the key that had been taken
from her when she was searched in prison. All he did was to reduce the
report of the doctors to writing, and to return to his office with his
posse-comitatus at his heels.
It was necessary to summon the witnesses and examine them. But the
Procurator Revel now conveniently remembered the story of the poisoned
dinner, and he sent the Lieutenant-Criminel to examine the Duparcs and
their friends at the private residence of the family, in consideration of
the sickly condition of the eaters of the adulterated meal. It may be as
well to observe, here as elsewhere, that these highly-indulged personages
had none of them been sufficiently inconvenienced even to go to bed, or
in any way to alter their ordinary habits.
On the afternoon of the eighth, the Lieutenant-Criminel betook himself
to the house of Monsieur Duparc, to collect evidence touching the death
by poison of Monsieur de Beaulieu. The first witness called was Monsieur
Duparc.
This gentleman, it will be remembered, was away from home, on Monday, the
sixth, when Monsieur de Beaulieu died, and only returned, at the summons
of his eldest son, at half-past eleven on the forenoon of the seventh. He
had nothing to depose connected with the death of his father-in-law, or
with the events which might have taken place in the house on the night
of the sixth and the morning of the seventh. On the other hand, he had
a great deal to say about the state of his own stomach after the dinner
of the seventh--a species of information not calculated to throw much
light on the subject of inquiry, which was the poisoning of Monsieur de
Beaulieu.
The old lady, Madame de Beaulieu, was next examined. She could give
no evidence of the slightest importance touching the matter in hand;
but, like Monsieur Duparc, she had something to say on the topic of the
poisoned dinner.
Madame Duparc followed on the list of witnesses. The report of her
examination--so thoroughly had she recovered from the effects of the
dinner of the seventh--ran to a prodigious length. Five-sixths of it
related entirely to her own sensations and suspicions, and the sensations
and suspicions of her relatives and friends, after they had risen from
table. As to the point at issue, the point which affected the liberty,
and perhaps the life, of her unfortunate servant, she had so little to
say that her testimony may be repeated here in her own words:
"The witness (Madame Duparc) deposed, that after Marie had helped Monsieur
de Beaulieu to get up, she (Marie) hastened out for the milk, and, on
her return with it, prepared the hasty-pudding, took it herself off the
fire, and herself poured it out into the plate--then left the kitchen to
accompany Madame de Beaulieu to mass. Four or five minutes after Monsieur
de Beaulieu had eaten the hasty-pudding, he was seized with violent
illness."
Short as it is, this statement contains several distinct suppressions of
the truth.
First, Madame Duparc is wrong in stating that Marie fetched the milk,
for it was the milkwoman who brought it to the house. Secondly, Madame
Duparc conceals the fact that she handed the flour to the servant to
make the hasty-pudding. Thirdly, Madame Duparc does not mention that she
held the plate for the pudding to be poured into, and took it to her
father. Fourthly, and most important of all, Madame Duparc altogether
omits to state, that she sprinkled salt, with her own hands, over the
hasty-pudding--although she had expressly informed her servant, a day or
two before, that salt was never to be mixed with it. At a subsequent stage
of the proceedings, she was charged with having salted the hasty-pudding
herself, and she could not, and did not, deny it.
The examination of Madame Duparc ended the business on the day of the
eighth. The next morning, the Lieutenant-Criminel, as politely attentive
as before, returned to resume his inquiry at the private residence of
Monsieur Duparc.
The first witness examined on the second day was Mademoiselle Duparc. She
carefully followed her mother's lead--saying as little as possible about
the preparation of the hasty-pudding on the morning of Monday, and as
much as possible about the pain suffered by everybody after the dinner
of Tuesday. Madame Beauguillot, the next witness, added her testimony,
as to the state of her own digestive organs, after partaking of the same
meal--speaking at such prodigious length that the poison would appear, in
her case, to have produced its principal effect (and that of a stimulating
kind) on her tongue. Her son, Monsieur de Beauguillot, was next examined,
quite uselessly in relation to the death by poison which was the object
of inquiry. The last witness was Madame Duparc's younger son--the same who
had complained of feeling a gritty substance between his teeth at dinner.
In one important respect, his evidence flatly contradicted his mother's.
Madame Duparc had adroitly connected Monsieur de Beaulieu's illness with
the hasty-pudding, by describing the old man as having been taken ill four
or five minutes after eating it. Young Duparc, on the contrary, declared
that his grandfather first felt ill at nine o'clock--exactly two hours
after he had partaken of his morning meal.
With the evidence of this last witness, the examinations at the private
residence of Monsieur Duparc ended. Thus far, out of the seven persons,
all related to each other, who had been called as witnesses, three
(Monsieur Duparc himself, Madame Beauguillot, and her son) had not been
in the house on the day when Monsieur de Beaulieu died. Of the other
four, who had been present (Madame de Beaulieu, Madame Duparc, her son
and her daughter), not one deposed to a single fact tending to fix on
Marie any reasonable suspicion of having administered poison to Monsieur
de Beaulieu.
The remaining witnesses, called before the Lieutenant-Criminel, were
twenty-nine in number. Not one of them had been in the house on the Monday
which was the day of the old man's death. Twenty-six of them had nothing
to offer but hearsay evidence on the subject of the events which had taken
place at, and after, the dinner of Tuesday. The testimony of the remaining
three, namely, of Friley, who had lodged the information against Marie;
of Surgeon Hébert, who had searched her pockets in the house; and of
Commissary Bertot, who had searched her for the second time, after taking
her to prison,--was the testimony on which the girl's enemies mainly
relied for substantiating their charges by positively associating her with
the possession of arsenic.
Let us see what amount of credit can be attached to the evidence of these
three witnesses.
Friley was the first to be examined. After stating what share he had taken
in bringing Marie to justice (it will be remembered that he lodged his
information against her at the instance of Madame Duparc, without allowing
her to say a word in her own defence), he proceeded to depose that he
hunted about the bed on which the girl had lain down to recover herself,
and that he discovered on the mattress seven or eight scattered grains of
some substance, which resembled the powder reported to have been found
on the crumbs in her pockets. He added further, that on the next day,
about two hours before the body of Monsieur de Beaulieu was examined, he
returned to the house; searched under the bed, with Monsieur Duparc and
a soldier named Cauvin; and found there four or five grains more of the
same substance which he had discovered on the mattress.
Here were two separate portions of poison found, then. What did Friley do
with them? Did he seal them up immediately in the presence of witnesses,
and take them to the legal authorities? Nothing of the sort. On being
asked what he did with the first portion, he replied that he gave it to
young Monsieur Beauguillot. Beauguillot's evidence was thereupon referred
to; and it was found that he had never mentioned receiving the packet of
powder from Friley. He had made himself extremely officious in examining
the kitchen utensils; he had been as anxious as any one to promote the
discovery of arsenic; and when he had the opportunity of producing it, if
Friley were to be believed, he held it back, and said not one word about
the matter. So much for the first portion of the mysterious powder, and
for the credibility of Friley's evidence thus far!
On being questioned as to what he had done with the second portion,
alleged to have been found under the bed, Friley replied that he had
handed it to the doctors who opened the body, and that they had tried to
discover what it was, by burning it between two copper pieces. A witness
who had been present at this proceeding declared, on being questioned,
that the experiment had been made with some remains of hasty-pudding
scraped out of the saucepan. Here again was a contradiction, and here,
once more, Friley's evidence was, to say the least of it, not to be
depended on.
Surgeon Hébert followed. What had he done with the crumbs of bread
scattered over with white powder, which he had found in Marie's pocket? He
had, after showing them to the company in the drawing-room, exhibited them
next to the apothecary, and handed them afterwards to another medical man.
Being finally assured that there was arsenic on the bread, he had sealed
up the crumbs, and given the packet to the legal authorities. When had
he done that? On the day of his examination as a witness--the fourteenth
of August. When did he find the crumbs? On the seventh. Here was the
arsenic, in this case, then, passing about from hand to hand, and not
sealed up, for seven days. Had Surgeon Hébert anything more to say? Yes,
he had another little lot of arsenic to hand in, which a lady-friend of
his had told him she had found on Marie's bed, and which, like the first
lot, had been passed about privately for seven days, from hand to hand,
before it was sealed up. To us, in these later and better days, it seems
hardly credible that the judge should have admitted these two packets in
evidence. It is, nevertheless, the disgraceful fact that he did so receive
them.
Commissary Bertot came next. He and the man named Vassol, who had helped
him to entrap Marie into prison, and to search her before she was placed
in solitary confinement, were examined in succession, and contradicted
each other on oath, in the flattest manner.
Bertot stated that he had discovered the dust at the bottom of her
pockets; had shaken it out on paper; had placed with it the little linen
bag, containing a morsel of the sacramental wafer, which had been sewn
to her petticoat; had sealed the two up in one packet; and had taken the
packet to the proper office. Vassol, on the other hand, swore that _he_
had shaken out the pockets, and had made up the packet; and that Bertot
had done nothing in the matter but lend his seal. Contradicting each other
in these details, both agreed that what they had found on the girl was
inclosed and sealed up in _one_ packet, which they had left at the office,
neglecting to take such a receipt for it as might have established its
identity in writing. At this stage of the proceedings the packet was sent
for. Three packets appeared instead of one! Two were composed of paper,
and contained dust and a little white powder. The third was the linen bag,
presented without any covering at all. Vassol, bewildered by the change,
declared that of these three separate objects, he could only identify
one--the linen bag. In this case, it was as clear as daylight that
somebody must have tampered with the single sealed packet which Bertot and
Vassol swore to having left at the office. No attempt, however, was made
to investigate this circumstance; and the case for the prosecution--so far
as the accusation of poisoning was concerned--closed with the examination
of Bertot and Vassol.
Such was the evidence produced in support of a charge which involved
nothing less than the life or death of a human being.