THE LAST "INSTRUCTION"
I will now quote almost in full the final _Instruction_, which took
place on March 13th, 1909. I cannot well conceive a more intensely
poignant and dramatic document, and after over two years, when I re-read
it, I can hardly believe that those _Questions_ were put to me, and that
the _Answers_ were those I made, in the room of an Examining Magistrate,
who accused me of having murdered my husband and my mother.
"On March 13th, 1909, before us, André, has been brought the widow
Steinheil."
_Question._ "With the reservations and the restrictions with which we
acquainted you during your previous interrogatory, Dr. Balthazard has
expressed the opinion that the _crime cannot have been committed by one
person alone_. In any case, the evidence, as a whole, seems to establish
the fact of your personal participation in the crime, and we have,
to-day, in an interrogatory which we consider as being the final one, to
recall to your mind, the various presumptions and charges which have
been brought against you."
_Answer._ "I protest to you with all my soul that I am innocent, and
that you have in your dossier the proof of my innocence."
_Question._ "In what can you protest that we have any proof?"
_Answer._ "People do not kill without some compelling reason; now, you
are aware that I adored my mother, and that I have lived on quite good
terms with my husband for eighteen years."
_Question._ "On November 26th, at the time of the proceedings against
Rémy Couillard, you attributed the crime to Alexandre Wolff, whilst on
the same day, when describing the circumstances in which Wolff acted,
you have made different and contradictory statements, then, you have
made a retractation. Besides, the investigations that have been made
about Alexandre Wolff did not justify the suspicions against him."
_Answer._ "As I have explained, I imagined, under the influence of
journalists who had unhinged my mind, all that I said about Wolff. I
repeat once more that Wolff is innocent."
_Question._ "From the outset until November 26th, then constantly ever
since, you have attributed the crime to four individuals--three men and
one red-haired woman--all four dressed in long black gowns, and the men
wearing hats with high crowns and wide brims."
_Answer._ "I change nothing in my statements on this point."
_Question._ "At the beginning of the investigations, two different facts
seemed to corroborate your narrative. On June 2nd, a letter bearing the
signature of a certain 'Arthur Rewer' whose identity it has been
impossible to establish, was sent to the _Sûreté_. It asserted that on
the night of May 30-31st, about 12.45 A.M., four men and a red-haired
woman left the Impasse Ronsin. Also, the discovery in a carriage of the
_Metropolitan_, on the evening of May 31st, of an invitation card to the
recent exhibition of your husband's paintings together with a visiting
card torn in two pieces, which bore a few addresses, took the _Sûreté_
to Guilbert the costumier, and led one to believe that the black gowns
you said were worn by the assassins, might have been stolen from a
basket of costumes supplied by this Guilbert to the Hebrew Theatre
during the afternoon of May 30th.
"But the Rewer letter has lost most of its importance on account of a
second letter, obviously written by the same person and dated January
6th, 1909, in which it is stated that the five persons mentioned in the
letter of June 2nd, might just as well have been coming from a house
close to the Impasse Ronsin. Besides nothing has ever proved that Arthur
Rewer did not merely see some peaceful passers by. Now, as regards the
gowns stolen at the Hebrew Theatre, this is the last stage of the
investigations: the disappearance of the black gowns was discovered with
certainty only on May 31st, for there are contradictions between the
evidence of Finberg on December 28th, and that of Sumart on March 2nd,
concerning the state of the costume basket, and _it has not been proved
at all that the theft took place on Nov. 30th_ (!) Besides, even if the
theft took place on that same day, there were only two black gowns
stolen--according to Riegel's evidence on February 25th, and it is
certain that no hats with wide brims were stolen (!) Finally, the fact
could be _the better considered as a mere coincidence_, _without
connection with the crime_, since disappearances of costumes seem to
have often taken place at the Hebrew Theatre, especially in 1908.
"During our investigations, however, we have--under the influence of the
very grave signs of your personal guilt--wondered whether the theft at
the Hebrew Theatre--admitting its reality from May 31st--and the leaving
in the underground of the documents we have mentioned, had not been
_arranged at your instigation_, or at that of any other accomplice in
the crime _in order to give some likelihood to the description you were
going to make of the crime_." (!)
_Answer._ "I maintain all my statements. I have always drawn--I still
draw--from my conscience, the strength to bear all this mystery. It has
always seemed to me as if, thanks to that card of invitation to the
exhibition of his works, my husband himself were telling me from his
tomb: 'All that you have said is true. Have the courage to discover the
murderers.'"
_Question._ "Your story of the four personages in the black gowns
retains all its _romantic unlikeliness and incredibility_ emphasised by
the _fantastic_ idea of criminals, who, in their inexplicable plan to
mask their clothes and not their faces, decided to entangle themselves,
when carrying out the most delicate criminal operations, in the
pampering folds of gowns, the sleeves of which fell over their hands (!)
We have, none the less, constantly, and to the end, allowed an open
field for your investigations, even as regards the reality and the
identity of the four persons you described. All _your_ efforts in this
line have been no more successful than those which were made during the
first months of the inquiries."
(Which amounted to nothing more or less than telling me: _you_ have been
unable to find _who_ these assassins were, therefore, you are the
assassin.)
_Answer._ "I can only repeat what I said at the very start to M. Hamard,
in all sincerity, about the men and the red-haired woman I saw, and saw
well, around my bed in the circumstances I have described.
"You think it unlikely that the men would have put on hampering gowns in
order to steal. Yet, in the murder of M. Remi, which happened eight days
after the double murder in the Impasse Ronsin, the murderers were stark
naked. That is not more extraordinary than the men in the black gowns.
Yet, had I said the assassins were entirely naked, you no doubt would
have called me a mad and hysterical woman!"
_Question._ "Above all we must examine the following point: Is there any
real cause to believe that the crime was a _banal_, commonplace one,
committed by vulgar burglars. The answer to this question, it appears to
us, should be in the negative, and we will say why. Had the crime been
the work of ordinary malefactors, it could, logically, have had no other
aim than robbery. Now--even admitting the _reality_ of any theft at your
house, on that night--the malefactors would not have left behind
abundant and conspicuous booty in the rooms they visited... (Here M.
André repeated the list of the valuables left in their places by the
murderers.) It is absolutely inadmissible that malefactors who had come
to steal would have left a sum of 130 francs (£5 4s.) and so many
jewels. Besides, it seems that the burglary was merely a sham, as one
may still realise from the photographs in the dossier where one could
see the various objects on the ground, scattered in too good
order--which does not fit in with the great hurry inherent in all
burglaries....
"Further, it was established by the expert ropemaker, M. Chafaroux, on
June 16th, that the cord which was used to strangle your husband was
taken from the ball of cord in the cupboard of your kitchen; and it is
quite evident that the gag of wadding with which your mother was
suffocated, and the one which, according to your statements, was used to
gag you, came from the parcels of cotton-wool which, on January 14th and
16th, you said were in the rooms on the first floor of your house.
"How can one believe that ordinary criminals would have relied on chance
to find (in your house) the instruments for their double homicide and
their attempt on your life! Finally, what reason could they have had to
spare you? To allow you to survive was to allow a dangerous witness to
survive!"
_Answer._ "It is impossible for me to give you explanation of all this.
I can only and simply repeat what I heard and saw. That I was taken for
my daughter is not surprising, although it has made so many people
smile, since I looked young in those days, and was occupying my
daughter's room. Besides, can one say that those murderers really spared
me when one thinks of the way they bound me and of how they struck me on
the head? Innocent, yes, I am innocent. I had no reason whatever to kill
my husband and my mother. I am innocent."
_Question._ "The various reasons which lead one to eliminate the version
of assassins who came to rob constitute as many reasons to believe that
the crime was a 'domestic' one. And _since you have survived the crime
in very peculiar circumstances; since, concerning all the details
connected with the crime, you have accumulated 'unlikelihoods',
contradictions and lies; since you had a personal interest in the crime,
the revelation has gradually been made evident that you took a direct
part in the crime_."
_Answer._ "I have taken no part whatever in the crime. Why, why, should
I have done so?"
_Question._ "Not only did you survive, but you had only the appearance
of a victim. The way you were bound... was quite harmless, quite
_complaisant_. The cords left no trace round your neck, and mere
transient traces on your wrists and ankles.... It is surely not with
such mildness that malefactors capable of committing a double murder
would have bound you to your bed."
_Answer._ "It is impossible for me to explain to you what took place in
the minds of those monsters. Perhaps they thought I was bound tightly
enough. In any case if, as you believe it, I took some part in the crime
and had an accomplice, I should surely have had enough intelligence and
presence of mind to have had myself treated with more severity, since I
am being reproached with the fact that I remained alive!"
(M. André then mentioned the various bruises found on my body and
remarked that they were very slight.)
_Answer._ "I have no need to reply to all this. If I bore no external
marks, I suffered internally to such an extent that I was dangerously
ill for two months, as you may find in your own dossier."...
_Question._ "Beside the very significative absence of real violence, the
persistent effort you made to hide facts accuses you. At the very
beginning of, and throughout the inquiry you declared that you had never
seen the alpenstock and the glove found in the boudoir, but our
investigations have made it appear _quite likely_ that the alpenstock
was one of the accessories in your husband's studio. And it has been
proved that the glove (a man's glove) had been given you."...
_Answer._ "I never saw the alpenstock in the studio or elsewhere in the
house; and granting the glove had belonged to M. Ch. I didn't remember
it. (I sometimes asked my friends for their old gloves which I used when
I had to cut flowers, to paint certain objects or do some rough work.)
Had I remembered that alpenstock and that glove, I should have hastened
to say so; I had no reason not to do so."
_Question._ "You said the violence you had suffered at the hands of the
assassins was one of the causes of your illness. We reminded you how
little convincing were the external signs of that violence. As for the
nervous agitation which was evident in you--the fact is
undeniable--after and since the drama, _the moral shock of your
participation in the crime, the very weight of to heavy a 'penal'
responsibility, anxiety on account of the investigations--would be
quite sufficient to explain it_."...
(M. André evidently forgot that I felt so little those "anxieties on
account of the investigations" that month after month, I urged the
police to renew their efforts, and even sought the assistance of the
Press, when I heard that the solution of the Impasse Ronsin murder
mystery was being given up! After discussing once more the question of
the gag and the stolen money and jewels, I had once more to explain that
the expert had evidently not examined the piece of wadding which had
been in my mouth, and also why I had five of my jewels altered by M.
Souloy. But M. André merely remarked:)
"You have lied always and about everything.... To such an attitude there
is but one explanation: you tried to ward off suspicions, and therefore
you took a direct part in the murder."
_Answer._ "You want to find lies in everything. If I spoke some
untruths, it was solely to conceal certain facts of my private life,
certain 'friendships' I had had."
(The next remark of the examining magistrate was a fantastic one:)
_Question._ "It is interesting to observe, at any rate, as an oddity,
that your story of the crime and the _mise en scène_ appears to bear the
stamp of your own imagination. For the tale of the black gowns sounds
very much like reminiscence of the personages in several of your late
husband's pictures. On the other hand several of the details bear a
striking likeness to the incidents in a famous murder case which took
place at Montbéliard in 1885, when you were sixteen years old, and which
fascinated the population of that district where you were then living."
_Answer._ "I could not have lost my reason to the extent of saying I had
seen men in black gowns if it had not been true. The personages in my
husband's paintings, to which you refer, wear black gowns, which look in
no way like the ecclesiastical gowns, plain, straight, and with
tight-fitting sleeves, which the murderers wore. As for the Montbéliard
murder case you mention, I don't remember it; I have never even heard
of it at all. At home we [the young girls] did not read the newspapers.
Montbéliard is an hour's distance from Beaucourt; I went there for my
piano lessons.... I also learned painting at Montbéliard.... I drove
there or went by rail.... I have never heard of that murder."
(M. André then proceeded to "prove" my guilt by the fact that I had got
rid of "Turk," the borrowed dog, and that I had enticed my mother to
come to my house at the end of May, and had prevented her from going to
Bellevue, to which accusation I replied by stating once more the real
facts, fully corroborated by our doctor.)
"... On Saturday, May 30th, it was at the last moment, when I saw that
my mother could not stand on her legs, that we decided not to go to
Bellevue to sleep."
_Question._ "As regards the problem of finding out _why_ you
premeditated the murder, not only of your husband but also of your
mother, and if you had a direct _rôle_ in those murders: the solution
appears to lie in the 'moral preoccupation' you had at the time...."
(And M. André tried to prove that, being financially embarrassed,
disliking my husband, and having constant quarrels with both him and my
mother, I had thought of becoming the wife of M. Bdl., that a divorce
being out of the question on account of M. Bdl.'s ideas, and also on
account of M. Buisson's, on the matter, the "disappearance" of my
husband and my mother had appeared to me as settling all difficulties
and satisfying all my ambitions....)
_Answer._ "You are fiercely persecuting an unfortunate woman! Neither
with my husband nor my mother have I ever had a quarrel or a
disagreement. My husband and I had not lived together as husband and
wife for the past fifteen years, and I enjoyed by his side a liberty
which a divorce could not have increased. M. Bdl. did not wish to marry
again. Besides, I don't think I would have married him, for he was
terribly jealous. Besides, in his evidence, I believe he has said
himself that at the beginning of May 1908 he had already decided not to
see us [my husband and me] any more.... I had no reason whatever to
kill my husband and my mother.... No one will ever believe that when
they see from the letters which are 'under seal' what I was to my
mother, and what she was to me. You say we were financially embarrassed
in 1908, but that year was precisely the one in which my husband earned
the most.... My husband was quite satisfied with everything I did, and
as for me, I didn't interfere with his life, but left him quite free. We
had been for ten years on intimate terms with the Buissons, and both M.
Buisson and his wife could assert that there never was any kind of
quarrel between my husband and me.... At the time of the drama I was
happy, as I had not been for a long time before my husband's return to
health, because of my daughter's happiness on account of her engagement
to Pierre Buisson, and I because of her father's happiness...."
_Question._ "During the three months after the drama, events twice
foiled your plans. Perturbed by the suspicions which existed against you
in so many minds, M. Bdl. and also the Buisson family moved away, and
kept away from you. In those circumstances, not only Marthe's future as
you conceived it, but also your ambitions in regard to M. Bdl. ran
serious risks of being irretrievably compromised. Hence, unless you were
to allow a large portion of the advantages of the double murder to
escape, the urgent necessity of a justification before public opinion.
Hence, on October 30th, the daring move of your letter to the _Echo de
Paris_, that is your claim, made publicly, for a prolongation of the
inquiries, and of the search for the murderers of your husband and your
mother. And since that prolongation has led to the revelations of your
guilt, _your attitude simply shows that you had the temerity to go as
far as you could in your purpose of winning and enjoying, somehow or
other, and at any cost, the fruits of your double crime_."
_Answer._ "No! On the contrary, you have there a proof of my innocence!
If I had had anything on my conscience, I should not have re-started the
case, bravely, without fear of any one. No! If I had been guilty, I
should not have had such temerity! A man would not have dared because
men are cowards, and a woman would not have dared because women are too
weak."
_Question._ "_The result of the proceedings is that you are accused_:
Firstly: _Of having, in Paris, during the night of May 30th-31st, 1908,
voluntarily dealt death to M. Steinheil_;
_And that with premeditation._
Secondly: _Of having, in the same circumstances, time and place,
voluntarily dealt death to Madame Edouard Japy, your legitimate
mother_."
_Answer._ "It is an abominable and monstrous accusation, I protest
against it with all my soul, and I beg with all my heart those who will
be called upon to examine and judge your Dossier, I beg them in the name
of my child to realise, to see, that I could not have murdered either my
husband or my mother. No, I cannot be accused of such an infamous,
abominable crime. There is nothing in my life which could explain such a
deed on my part."...
"The accused cries and sobs."
(This document has been) "Read--Have signed:
"WIDOW STEINHEIL.
"SIMON.
"ANDRÉ."
(_Dossier_ Cote 3433)
..."She cries, she sobs," says the report of the final _Instruction_.
Just four little words, but what deep grief and suffering they
represent!
In these reports, the words spoken by the prisoner are very seldom
exactly reproduced, for this reason: the Judge has before him a list of
questions which he has carefully prepared beforehand; he asks the
questions one by one, and dots down rapidly the prisoner's answers, or,
at least, what he considers the essential part of those answers.
Afterwards, using his notes, he dictates both his question and the reply
of the prisoner to his _greffier_... with the result that very often the
whole report seems to have been written by the same person, so similar
in style are the questions and the answers. As a rule, at my
_Instruction_, I did not even listen when the Judge dictated to M.
Simon. During those few minutes of peace, which occurred every ten or
fifteen minutes, I rested and collected my thoughts.... At the final and
momentous _Instruction_, however, when all the _Instructions_ were
reviewed, I tried, although it was the most harrowing of them all, and I
was more exhausted than ever, to listen to the words M. André dictated
to M. Simon, and time after time I explained that he was not dictating
the exact words I had used, or that he cut short my replies. I repeated
what I had said, and generously the examining magistrate consented to
alter those "trifling details," as he put it.
In spite of this, however, such a report does not convey the pathos and
the tragic importance of the proceedings.
In spite of all I had said and done, in spite of all facts which proved
my innocence--that innocence which the jury were to realise and proclaim
_eight months later_--M. André, who had thought me guilty from the
first, refused to alter his opinion, and coolly and with a faint smile
of self-satisfaction, declared to me that I was accused of having
murdered my husband and my mother!
M. Simon had tears in his eyes. My counsel stood near me fearing that I
should faint. I made a superhuman effort and rose.
I signed my name at the foot of the last page of that terrible
_Instruction_; I handed the pen to M. Simon, and then M. André signed.
As I passed out before him, on my way back to the _Dépôt_, and thence to
Saint-Lazare, the Judge, against whom I had fought for my life for so
many days, quietly said to me: "Au revoir, Madame." He lighted a
cigarette and jauntily left the room, greatly satisfied with himself.
A judge, he apparently did not know that "good faith is the foundation
of Justice."
He had achieved a great piece of work. Although there existed no proofs
of my guilt whatever, he had succeeded--or so he thought--in building up
out of flimsy fragments of circumstantial evidence, out of vague
assertions and vague assumptions, out of childish contradictions, and
above all, out of his own preconceptions, a solid, impregnable charge
of double murder against an unhappy, defenceless, nerve-wracked and
innocent woman.
Decidedly, he felt, life was a grand thing, the _Instruction_ a sublime
institution and an examining magistrate a saviour of society.... And M.
André was sure of promotion now!
Like so many judges I have known--and my address-book alone, which was
seized at the time of my arrest but has never been returned to me in
spite of many applications for it, could supply the number of all the
magistrates who eagerly attended my receptions and told me anecdotes
about their careers and their work!--M. André suffered from that illness
which Brieux, in "La Robe Rouge" (the Red Robe), has aptly called, "the
fever of promotion, which turns so many honest men into bad Judges."
M. André _was_ promoted.