My Memoirs Part 36

I could hear a wild surging in my ears, but I had heard that noise very often of late, when I was ill and worn.... These men were putting me on the rack. What did they want of me? What had I done to be treated in this way?... Had they made up their minds to make me lose my reason completely?...

Then, suddenly, I saw a face through the window of the dining-room....

It was the face of an ugly old woman with wild eyes, and the old woman was shaking her fist at me....

I cried, "Look out! look out! Mariette is there!"...

"All right... never mind," said M. Hutin. "Now, listen to us. You are lost, and not only you but every one in the house unless you confess."

"Bunau-Varilla is rich," said M. de Labruyere. "He'll save you. They are coming to arrest you all, you and Marthe. You understand, your little Marthe, first of all. But we can just save you, if you will be quick....

We are in a hurry."...

Yes, they were in a hurry: their sensational copy had to go to press in time. I had said nothing yet, and they had still to write what I would say, what they felt sure they _would make me say_!

M. de Labruyere went on, in a coaxing, pathetic manner, "All we want is to save you, in spite of yourself! I tell you Bunau-Varilla will do anything. We will smuggle you abroad and you will forget all your troubles."...

He came quite close to me and added: "Think of your poor dead mother.

She called you 'Meg, Meg...' that night.... Well, Meg, Meg, tell us everything."

I faltered. Everything seemed to turn around me.

"What do you want me to say?" I asked.

M. Hutin seized my hands: "Everything: only, you know, don't talk to us about black gowns. n.o.body believes in them; it is of no use insisting any longer upon them. Don't talk about the jewels either, that's played out, too. You had better begin by telling us the truth about that pearl, and also tell us the name of the man who was your 'friend.'..."

I replied: "It was I who put the pearl in Couillard's pocket-book, it was I who put the diamond in the attic; the name of my friend was Bdl."

Mariette was again making signs at the window, and I thought once more of Alexandre Wolff....

The two journalists kept asking me questions. They both spoke at the same time. I had sunk from my chair on to the floor. I would not, I could not, reply.... They grew angry. _I fell on to the floor._ I besought them to go; they seized me by the wrists and shouted: "Confess, confess!..."

Then seeing that I did not speak, M. de Labruyere whispered: "I will tell you the whole truth. I have seen Briand this afternoon. You must speak. But above all, don't say what you have said before. Public Opinion doesn't believe in the story you told. Tell another! Tell us the names of the murderers."

My blood ran cold. I no longer had any capacity for thinking. Those men had killed my mind, my reason. They wanted names, any names.

I spoke, one, two, three names. I said "Salvator" (one of my late husband's models). They were not satisfied! I then said: "It's not Salvator, it's his brother!" That would not do either.... Then I thought of Alexandre Wolff, who had been so much in my mind lately....

"Alexandre Wolff," I cried. "He is the murderer."

This suited them. They began to scribble. They made suggestions as to things that had taken place.... They had evidently (as I realised afterwards) received anonymous letters, like myself.... I replied: "Yes, yes."...

Then, their faces suddenly brightened up. They had won! The most sensational article for many years would appear in a few hours' time under their signature. The greatest day in their career had come!

Then, they felt grateful though in a great hurry, for it was after midnight, and they spoke a few words of encouragement.

"Everything will be all right. We will send you a motor-car. You will go to a hotel, so as to avoid being lynched, you and your daughter. And afterwards you will go abroad, and forget everything." (My daughter heard them speak these words.)

They shook hands with me, in the heartiest manner, and said: "Remember, we are all your friends, your best, your only friends. You can always rely on us. Briand, Bunau-Varilla, will defend you. With such protectors, you are absolutely safe, and your little Marthe too. The law cannot touch you, in these circ.u.mstances."...

They went to the door. Then M. Hutin came back. He had forgotten something of considerable importance:

"Whatever happens, don't change anything of what you have told us....

You and your daughter are lost if you do!"...

They went at last. I had been racked and tortured _for four hours_; I was bruised, and broken, and bleeding; and in the agony of my pain I sank to the floor, and lay there, wishing with all my heart for the relief of death. Then, mercifully, everything went blank....

I could not better compare that "Night of the Confession" than to a terrible nightmare. In a nightmare appear the people one has seen or has been talking about during the preceding hours.... Twice that day, I had been asked about M. Bdl.; twenty times I had been spoken to about Alexandre Wolff. And there were the anonymous letters. I quoted a whole pa.s.sage of one of those letters, to my tormentors, as in a trance, and that made up part of my "confession." "Wolff had come to steal.... He had threatened to declare that I ordered him to murder my husband and my mother, if I denounced him...." This theory of the crime had been time after time suggested to me in letters. And thus, I spoke about M.

Borderel and accused Wolff. And when I saw Mariette at the window making signs to me, I felt sure the letters were right and that Wolff was the murderer....

Perhaps, alas, the poor woman realised that those men were making me say what they pleased, and she trembled for the son she loved.

A nightmare indeed!... But after a nightmare, one comes back to life, peace, and even happiness, and exclaims: "Thank Heaven, it is not true; it was only an awful dream!"... But after my nightmare, I awoke to worse tortures: I awoke to find myself torn away from my child, arrested, and thrown into prison. The ghastly drama was not ended; it had only just begun.

Would to G.o.d that I could forget that nightmare, but, alas! I remember it in every painful detail, as I set it down here. I hardly understood what I was told or what I said; I was clay in the hands of the two men who in their professional zeal stopped at nothing to wrench from me matter for sensational copy--but clay retains impressions. They made me lose my reason for a time, but not my memory, and after three years, the details of that awful night of agony are still so cruelly vivid in my mind that my hand trembles as I write. My whole being shudders, I hear the men's harsh voices, I feel their hands close upon my wrists--and the pen falls from my nerveless fingers....

I will now quote--in all fairness--the narrative of the "night of the confession" as M. Hutin made it to M. Andre--the judge who replaced M.

Leydet--on November 27, 1908 (two days later):

"I wish first of all to state that in this affair I merely acted as a journalist, and that I have never in any way confused such a _role_ with that of the Law."

Then, after a few remarks about my letter addressed to the _Echo de Paris_, and published on October 31, M. Hutin proceeds: "I arrived (at the house in the Impa.s.se Ronsin) at about 9.30 P.M. As soon as M.

Chabrier saw me, he exclaimed: 'Ah! you come as a saviour,' or at least he said, 'You are welcome.' (The bitter irony of it.)

"Mme. Steinheil herself received me with much sympathy. I noticed she was _profoundly depressed_ (affaissee). She received me in the dining-room.... I told her that to my mind the best thing she could do was to free her conscience by telling me the whole truth. I told her that the next day, the Law, by its own methods, would extract the truth from her, and that she had better make a clean breast of everything.

"At about 10 P.M. M. de Labruyere arrived.

"He, too, strongly insisted that Mme. Steinheil should tell the truth.

At one moment, Mme. Steinheil exclaimed: 'What do you want to know from me?'

"We said that she had certainly placed the pearl in Couillard's pocket-book herself, she admitted it, and we asked her why she had done it. She hesitated for a long time... then, finally declared that she had wished to divert the investigations of the Law from another person. It was quite clear that Mme. Steinheil was trying to escape the interview.

Answering our questions she said she detested her husband, that they 'were poor,' that they 'had nothing.' _I started raising false issues to get at the truth_.... Then she declared that the criminal was Salvator (one of M. Steinheil's models). She retracted her words and said: 'No, I am losing my head. It is not Salvator, it is his brother.' Then she stated that she was fond of a man, M. Bdl., and that all she had done of late was in order to prove to him that she was still actively pursuing the affair.

"We asked her again why she had directed suspicion against Remy Couillard. She replied: 'I have always had suspicions of him.' We told her that, in any case, she knew what had taken place on the night of May 30th-31st, that she knew who was the real criminal. And both M. de Labruyere and I declared to her that: 'We will not go until you tell us the name.' She exclaimed: 'I cannot tell you his name, because there is some one whom it would kill.' We asked her: 'Who? His wife? a sister?'

She said: 'No, his mother... his mother would die of grief or would kill herself.'

"We asked her whether she referred to some one in the _entourage_, and finally she said: 'It is Alexandre Wolff, Mariette's son.' Then she begged us to let Wolff know very quickly so that he might get away. We asked her if Mariette knew about all this, and she replied: 'Oh!

Mariette is there, watching us! She must not know anything. Yes, Mariette has known everything since... who knows how long?... Mariette will now probably turn against me.' Then narrating the crime, she told us: 'I did not ask Wolff to come. He came to steal the money.... There were no jewels. He terrorised me. He told me that if I spoke, he could a.s.sert that I had summoned him so that he might rid me of my husband.'

She added that since then and even recently Alexandre Wolff had threatened to kill her and her daughter.

"I asked her if she were very sure that she was not again accusing an innocent person, if she spoke the truth, and she replied: 'Oh! the moment is too tragic for me not to tell the truth.' She added: 'My life is over,' and she talked about killing herself. I gave her the advice not to do such a thing, and to go in the morning and talk to the examining magistrate, and tell him the whole truth.

"At a certain moment, she rose.... She walked like an automaton, and her arms raised....

"M. de Labruyere and I left at about 12.50 A.M. expecting her to tell the whole truth in the morning, and expressing our sympathy with her.