She Stands Accused Part 15

The President then read over his questions for the jury, and that body retired. After deliberations which occupied an hour and a half the jury came back with a verdict of guilty on all points. The Procureur asked for the penalty of death.

THE PRESIDENT. Helene Jegado, have you anything to say upon the application of the penalty?

HELENE. No, Monsieur le President, I am innocent. I am resigned to everything. I would rather die innocent than live in guilt. You have judged me, but G.o.d will judge you all. He will see then ... Monsieur Bidard. All those false witnesses who have come here to destroy me...

they will see....

In a voice charged with emotion the President p.r.o.nounced the sentence condemning Helene Jegado to death.

An appeal was put forward on her behalf, but was rejected.

On the scaffold, a few moments before she pa.s.sed into eternity, having no witness but the recorder and the executioner, faithful to the habits of her life, Helene Jegado accused a woman not named in any of the processes of having urged her to her first crimes and of being her accomplice. The two officials took no notice of this indirect confession of her own guilt, and the sentence was carried out. The Procureur of Rennes, hearing of this confession, took the trouble to search out the woman named in it. She turned out to be a very old woman of such a pious and kindly nature that the people about her talked of her as the "saint."

It were superfluous to embark on a.n.a.lysis of the character of Helene Jegado. Earlier on, in comparing her with Van der Linden and the Zwanziger woman, I have lessened her caliginosity as compared with that of the Leyden poisoner, giving her credit for one less death than her Dutch sister in crime. Having investigated Helene's activities rather more closely, however, I find I have made mention of no less than twenty-eight deaths attributed to Helene, which puts her one up on the Dutchwoman. The only possible point at which I may have gone astray in my calculations is in respect of the deaths at Guern. The accounts I have of Helene's bag there insist on seven, but enumerate only six--namely, her sister Anna, the cure, his father and mother, and two more (unnamed) after these. The accounts, nevertheless, insist more than once that between 1833 and 1841 Helene put away twenty-three persons.

If she managed only six at Guern, that total should be twenty-two. From 1849 she accounted for Albert Rabot, the infant Ozanne, Perrotte Mace, Rose Tessier, and Rosalie Sarrazin--five. We need no chartered accountant to certify our figures if we make the total twenty-eight.

Give her the benefit of the doubt in the case of Albert Rabot, who was ill anyhow when Helene joined the household, and she still ties with Van der Linden with twenty-seven deaths.

There is much concerning Helene Jegado, recorded incidents, that I might have introduced into my account of her activities, and that might have emphasized the outstanding feature of her dingy make-up--that is, her hypocrisy. When Rosalie Sarrazin was fighting for her life, bewailing the fact that she was dying at the age of nineteen, Helene Jegado took a crucifix and made the girl kiss it, saying to her, "Here is the Saviour Who died for you! Commend your soul to Him!" This, with the canting piety of the various answers which she gave in court (and which, let me say, I have transcribed with some reluctance), puts Helene Jegado almost on a level with the sanctimonious Dr Pritchard--perhaps quite on a level with that nauseating villain.

With her twenty-three murders all done without motive, and the five others done for spite--with her twenty-eight murders, only five of which were calculated to bring advantage, and that of the smallest value--it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Helene Jegado was mad. In spite, however, of evidence called in her defence--as, for example, that of Dr Pitois, of Rennes, who was Helene's own doctor, and who said that "the woman had a bizarre character, frequently complaining of stomach pains and formications in the head"--in spite of this doctor's hints of monomania in the accused, the jury, with every chance allowed them to find her irresponsible, still saw nothing in her extenuation. And very properly, since the law held the extreme penalty for such as she, Helene went to the scaffold. Her judges might have taken the sentimental view that she was abnormal, though not mad in the common acceptation of the word. Appalled by the secret menace to human life that she had been scared to think of the ease and the safety in which she had been allowed over twenty odd years to carry agonizing death to so many of her kind, and convinced from the inhuman nature of her practices that she was a lusus naturae, her judges, following sentimental Anglo-Saxon example, might have given her asylum and let her live for years at public expense. But possibly they saw no social or Civic advantage in preserving her, so anti-social as she was. They are a frugal nation, the French.

VI

Having made you sup on horror a la Bretonne, or Continental fashion, I am now to give you a savoury from England. This lest you imagine that France, or the Continent, has a monopoly in wholesale poison. Let me introduce you, as promised earlier, to Mary Ann Cotton aged forty-one, found guilty of and sentenced to death for the murder of a child, Charles Edward Cotton, by giving him a.r.s.enic.

Rainton, in Durham, was the place where, in 1832 Mary Ann found mortal existence. At the age of fifteen or sixteen she began to earn her own living as a nursemaid, an occupation which may appear to have given her a distaste for infantile society. At the age of nineteen and at Newcastle she married William Mowbray, a collier, and went with him to live in Cornwall. Here the couple remained for some years.

It was a fruitful marriage. Mary bore William five children in Cornwall, but, unfortunately, four of the children died--suddenly. With the remaining child the pair moved to Mary's native county. They had hardly settled down in their new home when the fifth child also died. It died, curiously enough, of the ailment which had supposedly carried off the other four children--gastric fever.

Not long after the death of this daughter the Mowbrays removed to Hendon, Sunderland, and here a sixth child was born. It proved to be of as vulnerable a const.i.tution as its brothers and sisters, for it lasted merely a year. Four months later, while suffering from an injured foot, which kept him at home, William Mowbray fell ill, and died with a suddenness comparable to that which had characterized the deaths of his progeny. His widow found a job at the local infirmary, and there she met George Ward. She married Mr Ward, but not for long. In a few months after the nuptials George Ward followed his predecessor, Mowbray, from an illness that in symptoms and speed of fatality closely resembled William's.

We next hear of Mary as housekeeper to a widower named Robinson, whose wife she soon became. Robinson had five children by his former wife.

They all died in the year that followed his marriage with Mary Ann, and all of 'gastric fever.'

The second Mrs Robinson had two children by this third husband. Both of these perished within a few weeks of their birth.

Mary Ann's mother fell ill, though not seriously. Mary Ann volunteered to nurse the old lady. It must now be evident that Mary Ann was a 'carrier' of an obscure sort of intestinal fever, because soon after her appearance in her mother's place the old lady died of that complaint.

On her return to her own home, or soon after it, Mary was accused by her husband of robbing him. She thought it wise to disappear out of Robinson's life, a deprivation which probably served to prolong it.

Under her old name of Mowbray, and by means of testimonials which on later investigation proved spurious, Mary Ann got herself a housekeeping job with a doctor in practice at Spennymore. Falling into error regarding what was the doctor's and what was her own, and her errors being too patent, she was dismissed.

Wallbottle is the scene of Mary Ann's next activities. Here she made the acquaintance of a married man with a sick wife. His name was Frederick Cotton. Soon after he had met Mary Ann his wife died. She died of consumption, with no more trace of gastric fever than is usual in her disease. But two of Cotton's children died of intestinal inflammation not long after their mother, and their aunt, Cotton's sister, who kept house for him, was not long in her turn to sicken and die in a like manner.

The marriage which Mary Ann brought off with Frederick Cotton at Newcastle antic.i.p.ated the birth of a son by a mere three months. With two of Cotton's children by his former marriage, and with the infant son, the pair went to live at West Auckland. Here Cotton died--and the three children--and a lodger by the curious name of Natra.s.s.

Altogether Mary Ann, in the twenty years during which she had been moving in Cornwall and about the northeastern counties, had, as it ultimately transpired, done away with twenty-four persons. Nine of these were the fruit of her own loins. One of them was the mother who gave her birth. Retribution fell upon her through her twenty-fourth victim, Charles Edward Cotton, her infant child. His death created suspicion.

The child, it was shown, was an obstacle to the marriage which she was already contemplating--her fifth marriage, and, most likely, bigamous at that. The doctor who had attended the child refused a death certificate.

In post-mortem examination a.r.s.enic was found in the child's body. Cotton was arrested.

She was brought to trial in the early part of 1873 at Durham a.s.sizes. As said already, she was found guilty and sentenced to death, the sentence being executed upon her in Durham Gaol in March of that year. Before she died she made the following remarkable statement: "I have been a poisoner, but not intentionally."

It is believed that she secured the poison from a vermicide in which a.r.s.enic was mixed with soft soap. One finds it hard to believe that she extracted the a.r.s.enic from the preparation (as she must have done before administering it, or otherwise it must have been its own emetic) unintentionally.

What advantage Mary Ann Cotton derived from her poisonings can have been but small, almost as small as that gained by Helene Jegado. Was it for social advancement that she murdered husbands and children? Was she a 'climber' in that sphere of society in which she moved? One hesitates to think that pa.s.sion swayed her in being rid of the infant obstacle to the fifth marriage of her contemplation. With her "all o'er-teeming loins,"

this woman, Hecuba in no other particular, must have been a very sow were this her motive.

But I have come almost by accident on the word I need to compare Mary Ann Cotton with Jegado. The Bretonne, creeping about her native province leaving death in her track, with her piety, her hypocrisy, her enjoyment of her own cruelty, is sinister and repellent. But Mary Ann, moving from mate to mate and farrowing from each, then savaging both them and the litter, has a musty sowishness that the Bretonne misses. Both foul, yes.

But we needn't, we islanders, do any Jingo business in setting Mary Ann against Helene.

VII: -- THE MERRY WIDOWS

Twenty years separate the cases of these two women, the length of France lies between the scenes in which they are placed: Mme Boursier, Paris, 1823; Mme Lacoste, Riguepeu, a small town in Gascony, 1844. I tie their cases together for reasons which cannot be apparent until both their stories are told--and which may not be so apparent even then. That is not to say I claim those reasons to be profound, recondite, or settled in the deeps of psychology. The matter is, I would not have you believe that I join their cases because of similarities that are superficial.

My hope is that you will find, as I do, a linking which, while neither profound nor superficial, is curious at least. As I cannot see that the one case transcends the other in drama or interest, I take them chronologically, and begin with the Veuve Boursier:

At the corner of Rue de la Paix and Rue Neuve Saint-Augustine in 1823 there stood a boutique d'epiceries. It was a flourishing establishment, typical of the Paris of that time, and its proprietors were people of decent standing among their neighbours. More than the prosperous condition of their business, which was said to yield a profit of over 11,000 francs per annum, it was the happy and cheerful relationship existing between les epoux Boursier that made them of such good consideration in the district. The pair had been married for thirteen years, and their union had been blessed by five children.

Boursier, a middle-aged man of average height, but very stout of build and asthmatically short of neck, was recognized as a keen trader. He did most of his trading away from the house in the Rue de la Paix, and paid frequent visits, sometimes entire months in duration, to Le Havre and Bordeaux. It is nowhere suggested that those visits were made on any occasion other than that of business. M. Boursier spent his days away from the house, and his evenings with friends.

It does not anywhere appear that Mme Boursier objected to her husband's absenteeism. She was a capable woman, rather younger than her husband, and of somewhat better birth and education. She seems to have been content with, if she did not exclusively enjoy, having full charge of the business in the shop. Dark, white of tooth, not particularly pretty, this woman of thirty-six was, for her size, almost as stout as her husband. It is said that her manner was a trifle imperious, but that no doubt resulted from knowledge of her own capability, proved by the successful way in which she handled her business and family responsibilities.

The household, apart from Mme and M. Boursier, and counting those employed in the epicerie, consisted of the five children, Mme Boursier's aunt (the Veuve Flamand), two porters (Delonges and Beranger), Mlle Reine (the clerk), Halbout (the book-keeper), and the cook (Josephine Blin).

On the morning of the 28th of June, which would be a Sunday, Boursier was called by the cook to take his usual dejeuner, consisting of chicken broth with rice. He did not like the taste of it, but ate it. Within a little time he was violently sick, and became so ill that he had to go to bed. The doctor, who was called almost immediately, saw no cause for alarm, but prescribed mild remedies. As the day went on, however, the sickness increased in violence. Dr Bordot became anxious when he saw the patient again in the evening. He applied leeches and mustard poultices.

Those ministrations failing to alleviate the sufferings ofthe invalid, Dr Bordot brought a colleague into consultation, but neither the new-comer, Dr Partra, nor himself could be positive in diagnosis.

Something gastric, it was evident. They did what they could, though working, as it were, in the dark.

The patient was no better next day. As night came on he was worse than ever. A medical student named Toupie was enlisted as nurse and watcher, and sat with the sufferer through the night--but to no purpose. At four o'clock in the morning of the Tuesday, the 30th, there came a crisis in the illness of Boursier, and he died.

The grief exhibited by Mme Boursier, so suddenly widowed, was just what might have been expected in the circ.u.mstances from a woman of her station. She had lost a good-humoured companion, the father of her five children, and the man whose genius in trading had done so much to support her own activities for their mutual profit. The Veuve Boursier grieved in adequate fashion for the loss of her husband, but, being a capable woman and responsible for the direction of affairs, did not allow her grief to overwhelm her. The dead epicier was buried without much delay--the weather was hot, and he had been of gross habit--and the business at the corner of Rue de la Paix went on as near to usual as the loss of the 'outside' partner would allow.

Rumour, meantime, had got to work. There were circ.u.mstances about the sudden death of Boursier which the busybodies of the environs felt they might regard as suspicious. For some time before the death of the epicier there had been hanging about the establishment a Greek called Kostolo. He was a manservant out of employ, and not, even on the surface, quite the sort of fellow that a respectable couple like the Boursiers might be expected to accept as a family friend. But such, no less, had been the Greek's position with the household. So much so that, although Kostolo had no money and apparently no prospects, Boursier himself had asked him to be G.o.dfather to a niece. The epicier found the Greek amusing, and, on falling so suddenly ill, made no objection when Kostolo took it on himself to act as nurse, and to help in the preparing of drinks and medicines that were prescribed.

It is perhaps to the rather loud-mouthed habits of this Kostolo that the birth of suspicion among the neighbours may be attributed. On the death of Boursier he had remarked that the nails of the corpse were blue a colour, he said, which was almost a certain indication of poisoning.

Now, the two doctors who had attended Boursier, having failed to account for his illness, were inclined to suspect poisoning as the cause of his death. For this reason they had suggested an autopsy, a suggestion rejected by the widow. Her rejection of the idea aroused no immediate suspicion of her in the minds of the doctors.

Kostolo, in addition to repeating outside the house his opinion regarding the blueness of the dead Boursier's nails, began, several days after the funeral, to brag to neighbours and friends of the warm relationship existing between himself and the widow. He dropped hints of a projected marriage. Upon this the neighbours took to remembering how quickly Kostolo's friendship with the Boursier family had sprung up, and how frequently he had visited the establishment. His nursing activities were remembered also. And it was noticed that his visits to the Boursier house still went on; it was whispered that he visited the Veuve Boursier in her bedroom.

The circ.u.mstances in which Boursier had fallen ill were well known.

n.o.body, least of all Mme Boursier or Kostolo, had taken any trouble to conceal them. Anybody who liked to ask either Mme Boursier or the Greek about the soup could have a detailed story at once. All the neighbourhood knew it. And since the Veuve Boursier's story is substantially the same as other versions it may as well be dealt with here and now.

M. Boursier, said his widow, tasted his soup that Sunday morning. "What a taste!" he said to the cook, Josephine. "This rice is poisoned."