Читать книгу The Lady and the Arsenic - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 4

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THIS is a biography in the form of a novelette, such a tale as our grandparents might have read in the pages of The Family Herald. The material refused to take any other form.

In this there is perhaps little to arouse the emotions, to stir compassion or sympathy, but there is much to provoke an intense curiosity and that kind of excitement we feel when gazing at something most extraordinary. For, after all, this is not a novelette, but a truthful chronicle. No detail has been set down that is not taken from the contemporary records of the ténébreuse affaire Lafarge. And what ample records they are! What countless pages of memoirs, letters, what endless newspaper articles, what sheaves of verses, morceaux, reports, dossiers, shorthand accounts of cross-examinations, protestations and recriminations were evoked by this puzzle, this enigma, this strange, fantastic romance.

Yet when all this vast amount of material is selected, sifted, arranged so as to form a coherent story, it shapes itself, fact as it all is, into a feuilleton of the most lurid and tawdry description. There is hardly a character in this case about whom it could not reasonably be argued—"such a person never existed"—hardly an event of which it could not be reasonably said—"such a thing could never have happened."

Yet seldom have characters or events been better authenticated, better documented, for this was a case that excited the whole of France for years, and every scrap of evidence concerning it was carefully treasured. You may not believe in these people, but you are forced to admit that once they existed; you may refuse to credit these events, but you must acknowledge that once they took place. There it all is in black and white, in judicial files, in the reports of journalists, in the letters that these men and women wrote to one another, never suspecting that other persons would ever look at their passionate correspondence.

France has richly contributed to the annals of crime; not only are French misdeeds in themselves highly exciting, uncommon and grotesque, but the French methods of investigation, trial, report and punishment of crime are highly satisfactory—at least to the curious in these matters.

These long, patient, exhaustive examinations, conducted not only in open court but between the suspect and the examining magistrate in private, so carefully reported and arranged in these vast dossiers, allow almost exact reconstructions of French crimes and mysteries. There is also something extremely piquant in observing the cold, logical, keen and merciless mind of the French magistrate or lawyer pitted against the dramatic emotionalism, usually varied by cynic hauteur, of the prisoner; conflicting aspects of the national character usually provoke a common fury that involves judge, jury, lawyers, accused and witnesses in clouds of angry rhetoric. The drama, exotic to us, of these trials is considerably heightened if the accused be a woman and her alleged offence murder. French female criminals are most remarkable; not all of them are interesting save in the briefest outline.

Marie Boyer, daughter of a respectable merchant, educated in a convent, wishes to become a nun, weeps bitterly when, at her father's death, her mother fetches her home. She is described as "small, dark, very pretty and dainty." Her mother has a lover, a young scoundrel named Vitalis; he wins the affection of Marie, who is fifteen years of age. After two years, they plan to murder Mme. Boyer; she is a bore with her jealousy and they want her money. Vitalis commits the crime with his hands and a knife in the presence and with the assistance of the dainty Marie. They dismember the body between them and take it in parcels to a ditch outside the town. Clumsy inattention to detail causes their arrest; Marie, escaping with life imprisonment, becomes a model penitent, even saintly, "cannot think how she came to be so misled"; her conduct is so exemplary that she is released after twelve years, still young, still elegant and modest.

This Léon Vitalis, then, possessed Satanic beauty, fascination, great gifts of mind and body? Not at all. The reporters at the trial noted that he was mean-looking, stooped, was physically weak and had a livid, bilious complexion.

Gabrielle Ferrayrou, a good-looking, middle-class woman "of a superior education," devoted to her two children, married to a coarse, brutal chemist, twenty years her senior, takes Louis Aubert, his assistant, aged twenty-one, as a lover. Upon her husband's discovering the intrigue, Gabrielle agrees—"for fear of losing her children"—to help him murder the lover. After elaborate precautions the wretched youth is lured by the woman to a lonely house, where she assists the husband to murder him. Afterwards the pair take the body in a goat-chaise to the river and lower it from the bridge with a rope; they are assisted by Ferrayrou's brother Lucien. Then they go to the station cafe for drinks. Madame Gabrielle feels, she afterwards declared, très émotionnée.

When the crime was discovered this woman turned informer against her husband, giving the police sufficient evidence to convict him and his brother of murder. She received a life sentence and became, through good conduct, head of one of the prison workshops; she was described as "affectionate, docile, with few material wants, an idealist who only required to be loved and understood."

Gabrielle Bompard, seductive little swallow of the Paris pavements—"with a dozen lovers after her"—agrees with a chance admirer, Michel Eyraud, that a little more money would be pleasant, and arranges with him to decoy and murder the first likely-looking stranger. One Gouffé is the victim, and Gabrielle, the girl of twenty-two, spends the night alone in the flat with the body in a trunk while her accomplice is arranging their flight. "It was not very pleasant being left alone with a corpse," she pouted afterwards.

She travelled with her lover and the body to Lyons, where the remains of Gouffé were thrown over a cliff, and the couple departed gaily for England and America with the spoils. When arrested she gave evidence "in a half amused way" and suggested that she might have been hypnotised.

Such are the silhouettes of three French women-criminals; they arouse no desire for further investigation, they are freaks, grotesques, monsters, and there is no interest to be hoped for in tracing their dismal careers. Nor do they possess any mystery; they were convicted of crimes that they confessed to committing, they excited no sympathy in the intellectuals of their day, they had no champions and aroused no controversy; their dreary dramas were played out in a prosaic, matter-of-fact period, the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Go back fifty years from this date; we are in a very different atmosphere, in full romanticism, in the early years of the Orléans King of the French, Louis-Philippe.

It is a century ago, the Monarchy of July has endured six years, the son of Citizen Prince, Philippe-Egalité, contrives to rule over the people who beheaded his father. He only does so, however, by employing all the arts of corruption; the country is still shaken by the shocks of the revolution of 1789, that bold essay in democracy which proved so costly a failure, and by the excitements of the unequalled military successes of the first Empire. Louis-Philippe represents a compromise; he is a Bourbon, but not of the elder branch. The legitimate King, Charles X, shivers amid the rigours of Holyrood and has an heir. Louis-Philippe has erased the lilies from his shield, is bon bourgeois, a family man with an umbrella and a roll of newspapers under his arm; he has been educated by his father's mistress, Madame de Sillery, in the Spartan principles of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. For all that, he is a Bourbon-Orleans, full of tricks and ambitions, unscrupulous, untrustworthy, incompetent in the nobler arts of government. To his own distress and even misfortune, his reign, which has been described as "eighteen years—nothing," is remarkable for an extraordinary number of sensational crimes.

In the year of the revolution that puts the Duke of Orléans on the stripped throne of France, the old Prince de Condé, first Prince of the Blood after the royal family and one of the richest men in Europe, is found hanging to his own window-frame in his sumptuous château of Saint-Leu. Suicide! cry the Royalists. But sinister rumours begin to circulate. M. de Condé was under the dominion of his mistress, the English Sophie Dawes, and she is high in the friendship of the new King and Queen—her carriage often waits for her outside the Palais-Royal—moreover, the old man's huge fortune has gone to the King's son, M. de Nemours, with a fine slice for Sophie Dawes, Madame la baronne de Feuchères.

It is known that M. de Condé wished to leave his money to the heir of the exiled Charles X, that he planned to escape from his mistress and from France. The reign begins badly with this huge scandal; an action is brought by the old Prince's heirs-at-law, Sophie Dawes is suspected of murder. But she is highly protected, the case is hushed up, the King, with great loss of reputation and prestige, has secured the Condé millions.

While this affair is still amusing and agitating the public mind, another scandal rends France into two factions and sets the fashionable world agog.

General the Baron de Morell, a hero of the Napoleonic wars, of noble birth, connected with some of the most famous names of France, holding a high position in the military school at Saumur, brings an action for the attempted rape and the attempted murder of his daughter against Lieutenant de la Roncière, son of another glorious veteran of the late wars, equally patrician, well-placed, respected, honoured.

Great ladies, artists, poets, all the beau monde fight for places at this Parisian trial, even tearing the clothes off one another's backs in their eagerness to hear and to see this drama. The Press, rejoicing in new-found powers, "write-up" the case, Daumier draws sketches of all the characters, the foremost lawyers of the day are employed, the great and noble Berryer, Odilon Barrot, Chaix de l'Est-Ange—no accessories of melodrama are lacking.

The Morell family have been persecuted by abusive, threatening, anonymous letters—eighteen in all; then Marie de Morell's main has been entered at night by a man who has beaten, wounded and abused her and escaped through the window. The letters are signed with the initials of Emile de la Roncière, and Marie declares that he was her "nocturnal visitor." All this the prisoner vehemently denies—two great families are in violent opposition and Paris is divided, the majority being partisans of "the angelic victim."

Marie, after her distressing experience, has developed a painful illness; she lies in a trance all day and regains semi-consciousness only from twelve at night until four in the morning. In this state her evidence is taken; at midnight, into a court respectfully silent, the girl of seventeen is tenderly led; she sinks into an easy chair, her eyes are closed, her beautiful features barely visible behind the veils and ribbons of her fashionable bonnet; she answers in a drowsy voice the questions of the judge and the lawyers. Death is the penalty for rape or attempted rape, the prisoner is young, handsome, elegant, with a Byronic reputation—could any affaire be more exciting, more delicious?

Everyone agrees that there is an "atmosphere of Satan" about the case. The anonymous letters are frequently described as "Satanic." One of them begins: "I am neither man nor woman, neither demon nor angel..." When it is read aloud a delightful shudder goes through the densely packed spectators; one expects hopefully "des horreurs."

It is agreed that no theatre has ever offered a moment of more poignant drama than that when Marie de Morell throws back her veil, gazes across the court at the graceful figure of the prisoner (the reporters note his "sensual mouth," his "petites moustaches") and says in low yet steady accents: "C'est lui!"

The feminine portion of the audience clasp one another's hands convulsively—what could be more emotional, more romantic! It is pure Byron, pure Walter Scott, it is a novel by Lamartine, by George Sand—it is completely à la mode.

It is also something else, though few see what, and those few dare not speak frankly; even the defence does not venture to do more than respectfully hint at a possibility that no one can really be expected to credit. In this atmosphere of acute emotionalism the voice of reason is stifled.

There is, however, the evidence of the experts; four of them declare "the Satanic letters" to be not in the handwriting of Emile de la Roncière, but in that of Marie de Morell clumsily disguised. The paper on which they are written is similar to that of her lesson books—an uncommon make. No one has seen these letters delivered; the last was sent after La Roncière was in prison; while driving in a carriage with her mother the girl suddenly produced it, saying it had been thrust into her hand, which was hanging outside the window. Experts say that it would have taken three men to put a ladder against the girl's window in order to enter her room; no one saw or heard the intruder, no one but a young English governess knew of the outrage until the next morning when the parents were told. The alleged wounds were so slight that the girl was dancing at a ball in high spirits three days later.

The girl had before been discovered writing anonymous letters and telling romantic lies, her mother had had to reprove her for secret novel-reading; she was periodically subject to hallucinations, trances and crises de nerfs. She had said she found one of the letters pinned on a wall—it was impossible, the wall was of stone.

La Roncière has an alibi for "the fatal night"—three respectable people testify to his being in his lodging; the front door of this house is locked all night. Marie declares that her assailant wore a red military cap—no such cap is known at Saumur, all the military headgear is blue; challenged on this point, the girl says "she may have been mistaken." The glass of her broken window is outside, on the sloping roof. She is not examined medically until three months after the alleged outrage; the doctors then find her in perfect health—no sign of wounds or of the maternity the letters threatened, nor of any "outrage."

Of what use is this clear evidence?

It is indignantly rejected by the vast majority—the Morells are furious. What, suspect this pure young virgin of sixteen years of age of these vile "Satanic" letters, of these low coarse words, of such thoughts, of such a plot?

So innocent and ignorant is this maiden who is convent-bred, who has never read anything but the Bible (and a few smuggled novels), that her mother has never dared to ask her what really happened on that terrible night. "I have respected her sixteen years," says the noble matron dramatically in the witness-box to a murmur of sympathy.

Miss Allen, the governess, who found the girl on the floor bound "lightly with a handkerchief and a cord" and heard her first version of the story, is overcome by "English prudery" when giving evidence, so one hardly knows what the young man is accused of: "...he tore off my chemise, scratched me, jumped on me and said—'that will do for her,'" declares the entranced Marie, and almost everyone believes her, despite the experts, despite common sense.

It is argued that her strange illness has been brought on by the shock of her terrible experiences—the doctors declare that in the intervals between her attacks of trance and convulsions she is entirely reliable, clear-headed and intelligent.

No one sees that "the noble and innocent victim" suffers from acute hysteria, that she is a pathological liar, in modern jargon "a schyzophrene" (dweller in fantasy), that she has abnormal erotic sensibility, that the letters, far from being "Satanic," are merely silly, that they concern only sex and that there is nothing in them that a cunning schoolgirl could not have made herself acquainted with—even to the "bad words" easily overheard in a garrison town—that their style is that of a clumsy copy of Lamartine, George Sand or Scott.

No one inquires into the character and history of Miss Allen, "who always has a Bible in her hand," who is "very pretty" and twenty-three years of age. These two girls have been much alone, the charming, popular mother is often occupied with her social duties. No one asks what these girls talked of, what books they contrived to procure, if they discussed the young officers by whom they were surrounded. There can be no cross-examination on such subjects; these are well-bred jeunes filles, they know nothing, see nothing, hear nothing—they are pure to the point of negation. No, Paris prefers to believe in the fiendish young man who is half a demon, who belongs to a dreadful secret society, "The Bare Arms," who has vowed to work evil for evil's sake.

Marvellous romances of his former life are concocted—what numerous mistresses he has had, what bloody duels, what desperate gamblings, what sinister appearances and disappearances he has indulged in! How sardonic his black eyes, his full lips, his pallor! Is it possible that he is the Comte Saint-Germain, Cagliostro, or even the Wandering Jew? In reality Emile de la Roncière is a poor devil of a lieutenant who has behaved like all his comrades, who has quarrelled with his father about outrunning his allowance, who has the usual little sweetheart, who is very clever with his hands and likes to draw, to embroider and to make bedroom slippers. He swears, "with tears," that he has hardly noticed Marie de Morell, and that the letters seem to him "those of a lunatic."

All useless; he is found guilty, with extenuating circumstances. This last absurdity means that the jury are not quite sure of themselves—there might have been some truth in what those experts said, after all!

Lieutenant de la Roncière gets ten years for attracting the immature passion of an hysterical girl, and Marie de Morell's problems are solved by a husband and a large family. She is, however, all her life under treatment for hysteria.

Then an English lawyer, Lord Abinger (Sir James Scarlett), a German doctor, Mathieu, come forward; the distracted father works frantically for his son, public opinion hesitates, veers, one learns a little more about the complications of hysteria. The case is "reconsidered," and after several years of prison the unhappy La Roncière is released, restored to his military rank, given a high colonial post, decorated.

The two old fathers, heart-broken, retire and die in seclusion, each bitterly struck in his pride, his honour, his affection, his dignity.

Protected by money, rank, sentiment, influential relatives and friends, in particular by Maréchal Soult, Marie de Morell escapes even censure; no one ventures to suggest that, if this dangerous woman is responsible for her actions, she should be tried for perjury, that if irresponsible, she should be kept under medical care.

She has done her utmost to send an innocent man to the guillotine, and if there is anything "Satanic" in the case it is her cold cruelty, so often the accompaniment of abnormal erotic sensibility.