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+Project Gutenberg Etext of She Stands Accused by Victor MacClure
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+She Stands Accused
+
+by Victor MacClure
+
+April, 1996  [Etext #488]
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of She Stands Accused by Victor MacClure
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+
+SHE STANDS ACCUSED
+BY VICTOR MacCLURE
+
+
+
+
+
+Being a Series of Accounts of the Lives and Deeds of
+Notorious Women, Murderesses, Cheats, Cozeners,
+on whom Justice was Executed, and of others who,
+Accused of Crimes, were Acquitted at least in Law;
+Drawn from Authenticated Sources
+
+
+
+
+
+TO RAFAEL SABATINI
+TO WHOSE VIRTUES AS AN AUTHOR
+AND AS A FRIEND THE WRITER WISHES
+HIS BOOK WERE WORTHIER OF DEDICATION
+
+                                                 
+I:   INTRODUCTORY
+II:  A FAIR NECK FOR THE MAIDEN
+III: THE COUNTESS AND THE COZENER
+IV:  A MODEL FOR MR HOGARTH
+V:   ALMOST A LADY
+VI:  ARSENIC A LA BRETONNE
+VII: THE MERRY WIDOWS
+     INDEX
+
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY: I.
+
+I had a thought to call this book Pale Hands or Fair Hands
+Imbrued--so easy it is to fall into the ghastly error of
+facetiousness.
+
+Apart, however, from the desire to avoid pedant or puerile
+humour, re-examination of my material showed me how near I had
+been to crashing into a pitfall of another sort.  Of the ladies
+with whose encounters with the law I propose to deal several were
+assoiled of the charges against them.  Their hands, then--unless
+the present ruddying of female fingernails is the revival of an
+old fashion--were not pink-tipped, save, perhaps, in the way of
+health; nor imbrued, except in soapsuds.  My proposed
+facetiousness put me in peril of libel.
+
+Interest in the criminous doings of women is so alive and avid
+among criminological writers that it is hard indeed to find
+material which has not been dealt with to the point of
+exhaustion.  Does one pick up in a secondhand bookshop a pamphlet
+giving a verbatim report of a trial in which a woman is the
+central figure, and does one flatter oneself that the find is
+unique, and therefore providing of fresh fields, it is almost
+inevitable that one will discover, or rediscover, that the case
+has already been put to bed by Mr Roughead in his inimitable
+manner.  What a nose the man has!  What noses all these
+rechauffeurs of crime possess!  To use a figure perhaps something
+unmannerly, the pigs of Perigord, which, one hears, are trained
+to hunt truffles, have snouts no keener.
+
+Suppose, again, that one proposes to deal with the peccancy of
+women from the earliest times, it is hard to find a lady, even
+one whose name has hitherto gleamed lurid in history, to whom
+some modern writer has not contrived by chapter and verse to
+apply a coat of whitewash.
+
+Locusta, the poisoner whom Agrippina, wanting to kill the Emperor
+Claudius by slow degrees, called into service, and whose
+technique Nero admired so much that he was fain to put her on his
+pension list, barely escapes the deodorant.  Messalina comes up
+in memory.  And then one finds M. Paul Moinet, in his historical
+essays En Marge de l'histoire, gracefully pleading for the lady
+as Messaline la calomniee--yes, and making out a good case for
+her.  The Empress Theodora under the pen of a psychological
+expert becomes nothing more dire than a clever little whore
+disguised in imperial purple.
+
+On the mention of poison Lucretia Borgia springs to mind.  This
+is the lady of whom Gibbon writes with the following ponderous
+falsity:
+
+
+In the next generation the house of Este was sullied by a
+sanguinary and incestuous race in the nuptials of Alfonso I with
+Lucretia, a bastard of Alexander VI, the Tiberius of Christian
+Rome.  This modern Lucretia might have assumed with more
+propriety the name of Messalina, since the woman who can be
+guilty, who can even be accused, of a criminal intercourse with a
+father and two brothers must be abandoned to all the
+licentiousness of a venal love.
+
+
+That, if the phrase may be pardoned, is swatting a butterfly with
+a sledge-hammer!  Poor little Lucretia, described by the
+excellent M. Moinet as a ``bon petit coeur,'' is enveloped in the
+political ordure slung by venal pamphleteers at the masterful men
+of her race.  My friend Rafael Sabatini, than whom no man living
+has dug deeper into Borgia history, explains the calumniation of
+Lucretia in this fashion:  Adultery and promiscuous intercourse
+were the fashion in Rome at the time of Alexander VI.  Nobody
+thought anything of them.  And to have accused the Borgia girl,
+or her relatives, of such inconsiderable lapses would have been
+to evoke mere shrugging.  But incest, of course, was horrible. 
+The writers paid by the party antagonistic to the Borgia growth
+in power therefore slung the more scurrile accusation.  But there
+is, in truth, just about as much foundation for the charge as
+there is for the other, that Lucretia was a poisoner.  The answer
+to the latter accusation, says my same authority, may take the
+form of a question:  WHOM DID LUCRETIA POISON?  As far as history
+goes, even that written by the Borgia enemies, the reply is,
+NOBODY!
+
+Were one content, like Gibbon, to take one's history like snuff
+there would be to hand a mass of caliginous detail with which to
+cause shuddering in the unsuspecting reader.  But in mere
+honesty, if in nothing else, it behoves the conscientious writer
+to examine the sources of his information.  The sources may
+be--they too frequently are--contaminated by political rancour
+and bias, and calumnious accusation against historical figures
+too often is founded on mere envy.  And then the rechauffeurs,
+especially where rechauffage is made from one language to
+another, have been apt (with a mercenary desire to give their
+readers as strong a brew as possible) to attach the darkest
+meanings to the words they translate.  In this regard, and still
+apropos the Borgias, I draw once again on Rafael Sabatini for an
+example of what I mean.  Touching the festivities celebrating
+Lucretia's wedding in the Vatican, the one eyewitness whose
+writing remains, Gianandrea Boccaccio, Ferrarese ambassador, in a
+letter to his master says that amid singing and dancing, as an
+interlude, a ``worthy'' comedy was performed.  The diarist
+Infessura, who was not there, takes it upon himself to describe
+the comedy as ``lascivious.''  Lascivious the comedies of the
+time commonly were, but later writers, instead of drawing their
+ideas from the eyewitness, prefer the dark hints of Infessura,
+and are persuaded that the comedy, the whole festivity, was
+``obscene.''  Hence arises the notion, so popular, that the
+second Borgia Pope delighted in shows which anticipated those of
+the Folies Bergere, or which surpassed the danse du ventre in
+lust-excitation.
+
+A statue was made by Guglielmo della Porta of Julia Farnese,
+Alexander's beautiful second mistress.  It was placed on the tomb
+of her brother Alessandro (Pope Paul III).  A Pope at a later
+date provided the lady, portrayed in `a state of nature,' with a
+silver robe--because, say the gossips, the statue was indecent. 
+Not at all: it was to prevent recurrence of an incident in which
+the sculptured Julia took a static part with a German student
+afflicted with sex-mania.
+
+I become, however, a trifle excursive, I think.  If I do the
+blame lies on those partisan writers to whom I have alluded. 
+They have a way of leading their incautious latter-day brethren
+up the garden.  They hint at flesh-eating lilies by the pond at
+the path's end, and you find nothing more prone to sarcophagy
+than harmless primulas.  In other words, the beetle-browed
+Lucretia, with the handy poison-ring, whom they promise you turns
+out to be a blue-eyed, fair-haired, rather yielding little
+darling, ultimately an excellent wife and mother, given to piety
+and good works, used in her earlier years as a political
+instrument by father and brother, and these two no worse than
+masterful and ambitious men employing the political technique
+common to their day and age.
+
+
+
+% II
+
+Messalina, Locusta, Lucretia, Theodora, they step aside in this
+particular review of peccant women.  Cleopatra, supposed to have
+poisoned slaves in the spirit of scientific research, or perhaps
+as punishment for having handed her the wrong lipstick, also is
+set aside.  It were supererogatory to attempt dealing with the
+ladies mentioned in the Bible and the Apocrypha, such as Jael,
+who drove the nail into the head of Sisera, or Judith, who cut
+off the head of Holofernes.  Their stories are plainly and
+excellently told in the Scriptural manner, and the adding of
+detail would be mere fictional exercise.  Something, perhaps,
+might be done for them by way of deducing their characters and
+physical shortcomings through examination of their deeds and
+motives--but this may be left to psychiatrists.  There is room
+here merely for a soupcon of psychology--just as much, in fact,
+as may afford the writer an easy turn from one plain narrative to
+another.  You will have no more of it than amounts, say, to the
+pinch of fennel that should go into the sauce for mackerel.
+
+Toffana, who in Italy supplied poison to wives aweary of their
+husbands and to ladies beginning to find their lovers
+inconvenient, and who thus at second hand murdered some six
+hundred persons, has her attractions for the criminological
+writer.  The bother is that so many of them have found it out. 
+The scanty material regarding her has been turned over so often
+that it has become somewhat tattered, and has worn rather thin
+for refashioning.  The same may be said for Hieronyma Spara, a
+direct poisoner and Toffana's contemporary.
+
+The fashion they set passed to the Marquise de Brinvilliers, and
+she, with La Vigoureux and La Voisin, has been written up so
+often that the task of finding something new to say of her and
+her associates looks far too formidable for a man as lethargic as
+myself.
+
+In the abundance of material that criminal history provides about
+women choice becomes difficult.  There is, for example, a
+plethora of women poisoners.  Wherever a woman alone turns to
+murder it is a hundred to one that she will select poison as a
+medium.  This at first sight may seem a curious fact, but there
+is for it a perfectly logical explanation, upon which I hope
+later to touch briefly.  The concern of this book, however, is
+not purely with murder by women, though murder will bulk largely. 
+Swindling will be dealt with, and casual allusion made to other
+crimes.
+
+But take for the moment the women accused or convicted of
+poisoning.  What an array they make!  What monsters of iniquity
+many of them appear!  Perhaps the record, apart from those set up
+by Toffana and the Brinvilliers contingent, is held by the Van
+der Linden woman of Leyden, who between 1869 and 1885 attempted
+to dispose of 102 persons, succeeded with no less than
+twenty-seven, and rendered at least forty-five seriously ill. 
+Then comes Helene Jegado, of France, who, according to one
+account, with two more working years (eighteen instead of
+sixteen), contrived to envenom twenty-six people, and attempted
+the lives of twelve more.  On this calculation she fails by one
+to reach the der Linden record, but, even reckoning the two extra
+years she had to work in, since she made only a third of the
+other's essays, her bowling average may be said to be
+incomparably better.
+
+Our own Mary Ann Cotton, at work between 1852 and 1873, comes in
+third, with twenty-four deaths, at least known, as her bag.  Mary
+Ann operated on a system of her own, and many of her victims were
+her own children.  She is well worth the lengthier consideration
+which will be given her in later pages.
+
+Anna Zwanziger, the earlier `monster' of Bavaria, arrested in
+1809, was an amateur compared with those three.
+
+Mrs Susannah Holroyd, of Ashton-under-Lyne, charged in September
+of 1816 at the Lancashire Assizes with the murder by poison of
+her husband, her own son, and the infant child of Anna Newton, a
+lodger of hers, was nurse to illegitimate children.  She was
+generally suspected of having murdered several of her charges,
+but no evidence, as far as I can learn, was brought forward to
+give weight to the suspicion at her trial.  Then there were
+Mesdames Flanagan and Higgins, found guilty, at Liverpool Assizes
+in February 1884, of poisoning Thomas Higgins, husband of the
+latter of the accused, by the administration of arsenic.  The
+ladies were sisters, living together in Liverpool.  With them in
+the house in Skirvington Street were Flanagan's son John, Thomas
+Higgins and his daughter Mary, Patrick Jennings and his daughter
+Margaret.
+
+John Flanagan died in December 1880.  His mother drew the
+insurance money.  Next year Thomas Higgins married the younger of
+the sisters, and in the year following Mary Higgins, his
+daughter, died.  Her stepmother drew the insurance money.  The
+year after that Margaret Jennings, daughter of the lodger, died. 
+Once again insurance money was drawn, this time by both sisters.
+
+Thomas Higgins passed away that same year in a house to which
+what remained of the menage had removed.  He was on the point of
+being buried, as having died of dysentery due to alcoholism, when
+the suspicions of his brother led the coroner to stop the
+funeral.  The brother had heard word of insurance on the life of
+Thomas.  A post-mortem revealed the fact that Thomas had actually
+died of arsenic poisoning; upon which discovery the bodies of
+John Flanagan, Mary Higgins, and Margaret Jennings were exhumed
+for autopsy, which revealed arsenic poisoning in each case.  The
+prisoners alone had attended the deceased in the last illnesses. 
+Theory went that the poison had been obtained by soaking
+fly-papers.  Mesdames Flanagan and Higgins were executed at
+Kirkdale Gaol in March of 1884.
+
+Now, these are two cases which, if only minor in the wholesale
+poisoning line when compared with the Van der Linden, Jegado, and
+Cotton envenomings, yet have their points of interest.  In both
+cases the guilty were so far able to banish ``all trivial fond
+records'' as to dispose of kindred who might have been dear to
+them:  Mrs Holroyd of husband and son, with lodger's daughter as
+makeweight; the Liverpool pair of nephew, husband, stepdaughter
+(or son, brother-in-law, and stepniece, according to how you look
+at it), with again the unfortunate daughter of a lodger thrown
+in.  If they ``do things better on the Continent''--speaking
+generally and ignoring our own Mary Ann--there is yet temptation
+to examine the lesser native products at length, but space and
+the scheme of this book prevent.  In the matter of the Liverpool
+Locustas there is an engaging speculation.  It was brought to my
+notice by Mr Alan Brock, author of By Misadventure and Further
+Evidence.  Just how far did the use of flypapers by Flanagan and
+Higgins for the obtaining of arsenic serve as an example to Mrs
+Maybrick, convicted of the murder of her husband in the same city
+five years later?
+
+The list of women poisoners in England alone would stretch
+interminably.  If one were to confine oneself merely to those
+employing arsenic the list would still be formidable.  Mary
+Blandy, who callously slew her father with arsenic supplied her
+by her lover at Henley-on-Thames in 1751, has been a subject for
+many criminological essayists.  That she has attracted so much
+attention is probably due to the double fact that she was a girl
+in a very comfortable way of life, heiress to a fortune of
+L10,000, and that contemporary records are full and accessible. 
+But there is nothing essentially interesting about her case to
+make it stand out from others that have attracted less notice in
+a literary way.  Another Mary, of a later date, Edith Mary Carew,
+who in 1892 was found guilty by the Consular Court, Yokohama, of
+the murder of her husband with arsenic and sugar of lead, was an
+Englishwoman who might have given Mary Blandy points in several
+directions.
+
+When we leave the arsenical-minded and seek for cases where other
+poisons were employed there is still no lack of material.  There
+is, for example, the case of Sarah Pearson and the woman Black,
+who were tried at Armagh in June 1905 for the murder of the old
+mother of the latter.  The old woman, Alice Pearson (Sarah was
+her daughter-in-law), was in possession of small savings, some
+forty pounds, which aroused the cupidity of the younger women. 
+Their first attempt at murder was with metallic mercury.  It
+rather failed, and the trick was turned by means of
+three-pennyworth of strychnine, bought by Sarah and mixed with
+the old lady's food.  The murder might not have been discovered
+but for the fact that Sarah, who had gone to Canada, was arrested
+in Montreal for some other offence, and made a confession which
+implicated her husband and Black.  A notable point about the case
+is the amount of metallic mercury found in the old woman's body:
+296 grains--a record.
+
+Having regard to the condition of life in which these Irishwomen
+lived, there is nothing, to my mind, in the fact that they
+murdered for forty pounds to make their crime more sordid than
+that of Mary Blandy.
+
+Take, again, the case of Mary Ansell, the domestic servant, who,
+at Hertford Assizes in June 1899, was found guilty of the murder
+of her sister, Caroline, by the administration of phosphorus
+contained in a cake.  Here the motive for the murder was the
+insurance made by Ansell upon the life of her sister, a young
+woman of weak intellect confined in Leavesden Asylum, Watford. 
+The sum assured was only L22 10s.  If Mary Blandy poisoned her
+father in order to be at liberty to marry her lover, Cranstoun,
+and to secure the fortune Cranstoun wanted with her, wherein does
+she shine above Mary Ansell, a murderess who not only poisoned
+her sister, but nearly murdered several of her sister's
+fellow-inmates of the asylum, and all for twenty odd pounds? 
+Certainly not in being less sordid, certainly not in being more
+`romantic.'
+
+There is, at root, no case of murder proved and accepted as such
+which does not contain its points of interest for the
+criminological writer.  There is, indeed, many a case, not only
+of murder but of lesser crime, that has failed to attract a lot
+of attention, but that yet, in affording matter for the student
+of crime and criminal psychology, surpasses others which, very
+often because there has been nothing of greater public moment at
+the time, were boomed by the Press into the prominence of causes
+celebres.
+
+There is no need then, after all, for any crime writer who wants
+to fry a modest basket of fish to mourn because Mr Roughead, Mr.
+Beaufroy Barry, Mr Guy Logan, Miss Tennyson Jesse, Mr Leonard R.
+Gribble, and others of his estimable fellows seem to have swiped
+all the sole and salmon.  It may be a matter for envy that Mr
+Roughead, with his uncanny skill and his gift in piquant sauces,
+can turn out the haddock and hake with all the delectability of
+sole a la Normande.  The sigh of envy will merge into an
+exhalation of joy over the artistry of it.  And one may turn,
+wholeheartedly and inspired, to see what can be made of one's own
+catch of gudgeon.
+
+
+
+% III
+
+``More deadly than the male.''
+
+Kipling's line about the female of the species has been quoted,
+particularly as a text for dissertation on the female criminal,
+perhaps rather too often.  There is always a temptation to use
+the easy gambit.
+
+It is quite probable that there are moments in a woman's life
+when she does become more deadly than the male. The probability
+is one which no man of age and experience will lack instance for
+making a fact.  Without seeking to become profound in the matter
+I will say this: it is but lightly as compared with a man that
+one need scratch a woman to come on the natural creature.
+
+Now, your natural creature, not inhibited by reason, lives by
+theft, murder, and dissimulation.  It lives, even as regards the
+male, but for one purpose: to continue its species.  Enrage a
+woman, then, or frighten her into the natural creature, and she
+will discard all those petty rules invented by the human male for
+his advantage over, and his safety from, the less disciplined
+members of the species.  All that stuff about `honour,'
+`Queensberry rules,' `playing the game,' and what not will go by
+the board.  And she will fight you with tooth and talon, with
+lies, with blows below the belt--metaphorically, of course.
+
+It may well be that you have done nothing more than hurt her
+pride--the civilized part of her.  But instinctively she will
+fight you as the mother animal, either potentially or in being. 
+It will not occur to her that she is doing so.  Nor will it occur
+to you.  But the fact that she is fighting at all will bring it
+about, for fighting to any female animal means defence of her
+young.  She may not have any young in being.  That does not
+affect the case.  She will fight for the ova she carries, for the
+ova she has yet to develop.  Beyond all reason, deep, instinct
+deep, within her she is the carrier of the race.  This instinct
+is so profound that she will have no recollection in a crisis of
+the myriads of her like, but will think of herself as the race's
+one chance to persist.  Dangerous?  Of course she's dangerous--as
+dangerous as Nature!  Just as dangerous, just as self-centred, as
+in its small way is that vegetative organism the volvox, which,
+when food is scarce and the race is threatened, against possible
+need of insemination, creates separate husband cells to starve in
+clusters, while `she' hogs all the food-supply for the production
+of eggs.
+
+This small flight into biology is made merely for the dim light
+it may cast on the Kipling half-truth.  It is not made to explain
+why women criminals are more deadly, more cruel, more deeply lost
+in turpitude, than their male colleagues.  But it may help to
+explain why so many crime-writers, following Lombroso, THINK the
+female more deadly.
+
+There is something so deeply shocking in the idea of a woman
+being other than kind and good, something so antagonistic to the
+smug conception of Eve as the ``minist'ring angel, thou,'' that
+leaps to extremes in expression are easy.
+
+A drunken woman, however, and for example, is not essentially
+more degraded than a drunken man.  This in spite of popular
+belief.  A nymphomaniac is not essentially more degraded than a
+brothel-haunting male.  It may be true that moral sense decays
+more quickly in a woman than in a man, that the sex-ridden or
+drink-avid woman touches the deeps of degradation more quickly,
+but the reasons for this are patent.  They are economic reasons
+usually, and physical, and not adherent to any inevitably weaker
+moral fibre in the woman.
+
+Women as a rule have less command of money than men.  If they
+earn what they spend they generally have to seek their
+satisfactions cheaply; and, of course, since their powers of
+resistance to the debilitating effects of alcohol are commonly
+less than those of men, they more readily lose physical tone. 
+With loss of health goes loss of earning power, loss of caste. 
+The descent, in general, must be quicker.  It is much the same in
+nymphomania.  Unless the sex-avid woman has a decent income, such
+as will provide her with those means whereby women preserve the
+effect of attractiveness, she must seek assuagement of her
+sex-torment with men less and less fastidious.
+
+But it is useless and canting to say that peccant women are worse
+than men.  If we are kind we say so merely because we are more
+apprehensive for them.  Safe women, with but rare exceptions, are
+notably callous about their sisters astray, and the ``we'' I have
+used must be taken generally to signify men.  We see the danger
+for erring women, danger economic and physical.  Thinking in
+terms of the phrase that ``a woman's place is the home,'' we
+wonder what will become of them.  We wonder anxiously what man,
+braver or less fastidious than ourselves, will accept the burden
+of rescuing them, give them the sanctuary of a home.  We see them
+as helpless, pitiable beings.  We are shocked to see them fall so
+low.
+
+There is something of this rather maudlin mentality, generally
+speaking, in our way of regarding women criminals.  To think, we
+say, that a WOMAN should do such things!
+
+But why should we be more shocked by the commission of a crime by
+a woman than by a man--even the cruellest of crimes?  Take the
+male and female in feral creation, and there is nothing to choose
+between them in the matter of cruelty.  The lion and the lioness
+both live by murder, and until gravidity makes her slow for the
+chase the breeding female is by all accounts the more dangerous. 
+The she-bear will just as readily eat up a colony of grubs or
+despoil the husbandry of the bees as will her mate.  If, then,
+the human animal drops the restraints imposed by law, reverting
+thereby to the theft, murder, and cunning of savagery, why should
+it be shocking that the female should equal the male in
+callousness?  Why should it be shocking should she even surpass
+the male?  It is quite possible that, since for physiological
+reasons she is nearer to instinctive motivation than the male,
+she cannot help being more ruthless once deterrent inhibition has
+been sloughed.  But is she in fact more dangerous, more deadly as
+a criminal, than the male?
+
+Lombroso--vide Mr Philip Beaufroy Barry in his essay on Anna
+Zwanziger--tells us that some of the methods of torture employed
+by criminal women are so horrible that they cannot be described
+without outraging the laws of decency.  Less squeamish than
+Lombroso or Mr Barry, I gather aloud that the tortures have to do
+with the organs of generation.  But male savages in African and
+American Indian tribes have a punishment for adulterous women
+which will match anything in that line women have ever achieved,
+and men in England itself have wreaked perverted vengeance on
+women in ways indescribable too.  Though it may be granted that
+pain inflicted through the genitals is particularly sickening,
+pain is pain all over the body, and must reach what might be
+called saturation-point wherever inflicted.  And as regards the
+invention of sickening punishment we need go no farther afield in
+search for ingenuity than the list of English kings.  Dirty Jamie
+the Sixth of Scotland and First of England, under mask of
+retributive justice, could exercise a vein of cruelty that might
+have turned a Red Indian green with envy.  Moreover, doesn't our
+word expressing cruelty for cruelty's sake derive from the name
+of a man--the Marquis de Sade?
+
+I am persuaded that the reason why so many women murderers have
+made use of poison in their killings is primarily a simple one, a
+matter of physique.  The average murderess, determined on the
+elimination of, for example, a husband, must be aware that in
+physical encounter she would have no chance.  Then, again, there
+is in women an almost inborn aversion to the use of weapons. 
+Once in a way, where the murderess was of Amazonian type,
+physical means have been employed for the slaying.
+
+In this regard Kate Webster, who in 1879 at Richmond murdered and
+dismembered Mrs Julia Thomas, springs to mind.  She was, from all
+accounts, an exceedingly virile young woman, strong as a pony,
+and with a devil of a temper.  Mr Elliot O'Donnell, dealing with
+her in his essay in the ``Notable British Trials'' series, seems
+to be rather at a loss, considering her lack of physical beauty,
+to account for her attractiveness to men and to her own sex.  But
+there is no need to account for it.  Such a thing is no
+phenomenon.  
+
+I myself, sitting in a taberna in a small Spanish port, was once
+pestered by a couple of British seamen to interpret for them in
+their approaches to the daughter of the house.  This woman, who
+had a voice like a raven, seemed able to give quick and snappy
+answers to the chaff by frequenters of the taberna.  Few people
+in the day-time, either men or women, would pass the house if
+'Fina happened to be showing without stopping to have a word with
+her.  She was not at all gentle in manner, but children ran to
+her.  And yet, without being enormously fat, 'Fina must have
+weighed close on fifteen stone.  She had forearms and biceps like
+a coal-heaver's.  She was black-haired, heavy-browed,
+squish-nosed, moled, and swarthy, and she had a beard and
+moustache far beyond the stage of incipiency.  Yet those two
+British seamen, fairly decent men, neither drunk nor brutish,
+could not have been more attracted had 'Fina had the beauty of
+the Mona Lisa herself.  I may add that there were other women
+handy and that the seamen knew of them.
+
+This in parenthesis, I hope not inappropriately.
+
+Where the selected victim, or victims, is, or are, feeble-bodied
+you will frequently find the murderess using physical means to
+her end.  Sarah Malcolm, whose case will form one of the chief
+features of this volume, is an instance in point.  Marguerite
+Diblanc, who strangled Mme Reil in the latter's house in Park
+Lane on a day in April 1871, is another.  Amelia Dyer, the
+baby-farmer, also strangled her charges.  Elizabeth Brownrigg
+(1767) beat the feeble Mary Clifford to death.  I do not know
+that great physical difference existed to the advantage of the
+murderess between her and her older victim, Mrs Phoebe Hogg, who,
+with her baby, was done to death by Mrs Pearcy in October 1890,
+but the fact that Mrs Hogg had been battered about the head, and
+that the head had been almost severed from the body, would seem
+to indicate that the murderess was the stronger of the two women. 
+The case of Belle Gunness (treated by Mr George Dilnot in his
+Rogues March[1]) might be cited.  Fat, gross-featured, far from
+attractive though she was, her victims were all men who had
+married or had wanted to marry her.  Mr Dilnot says these victims
+``almost certainly numbered more than a hundred.''  She murdered
+for money, using chloral to stupefy, and an axe for the actual
+killing.  She herself was slain and burned, with her three
+children, by a male accomplice whom she was planning to dispose
+of, he having arrived at the point of knowing too much.  1907 was
+the date of her death at La Porte, U.S.A.
+
+
+[1] Bles, 1934.
+
+
+
+It occurs when the female killer happens to be dramatical-minded
+that she will use a pistol.  Mme Weissmann-Bessarabo, who, with
+her daughter, shot her husband in Paris (August 1920), is of this
+kind.  She and the daughter, Paule-Jacques, seem to have seen
+themselves as wild, wild women from the Mexico where they had
+sometime lived, and were always flourishing revolvers.
+
+I would say that the use of poison so much by women murderers has
+reason, first, in the lack of physique for violent methods, but I
+would put alongside that reason this other, that women poisoners
+usually have had a handy proximity to their victims.  They have
+had contact with their victims in an attendant capacity.  I have
+a suspicion, moreover, that a good number of women poisoners
+actually chose the medium as THE KINDEST WAY.  Women, and I might
+add not a few men, who would be terribly shocked by sight or news
+of a quick but violent death, can contemplate with relative
+placidity a lingering and painful fatal illness.  Propose to a
+woman the destruction of a mangy stray cat or of an incurably
+diseased dog by means of a clean, well-placed shot, and the
+chances are that she will shudder.  But--no lethal chamber being
+available--suggest poison, albeit unspecified, and the method
+will more readily commend itself.  This among women with no
+murderous instincts whatever.
+
+I have a fancy also that in some cases of murder by poison, not
+only by women, the murderer has been able to dramatize herself or
+himself ahead as a tender, noble, and self-sacrificing attendant
+upon the victim.  No need here, I think, to number the cases
+where the ministrations of murderers to their victims have
+aroused the almost tearful admiration of beholders.
+
+I shall say nothing of the secrecy of the poison method, of the
+chance which still exists, in spite of modern diagnosis, that the
+illness induced by it will pass for one arising from natural
+causes.  This is ground traversed so often that its features are
+as familiar as those of one's own house door.  Nor shall I say
+anything of the ease with which, even in these days, the
+favourite poison of the woman murderer, arsenic, can be obtained
+in one form or another.
+
+One hears and reads, however, a great deal about the sense of
+power which gradually steals upon the poisoner.  It is a
+speculation upon which I am not ready to argue.  There is,
+indeed, chapter and verse for believing that poisoners have
+arrived at a sense of omnipotence.  But if Anna Zwanziger (here I
+quote from Mr Philip Beaufroy Barry's essay on her in his Twenty
+Human Monsters), ``a day or two before the execution, smiled and
+said it was a fortunate thing for many people that she was to
+die, for had she lived she would have continued to poison men and
+women indiscriminately''; if, still according to the same writer,
+``when the arsenic was found on her person after the arrest, she
+seized the packet and gloated over the powder, looking at it, the
+chronicler assures us, as a woman looks at her lover''; and if,
+``when the attendants asked her how she could have brought
+herself calmly to kill people with whom she was living--whose
+meals and amusements she shared--she replied that their faces
+were so stupidly healthy and happy that she desired to see them
+change into faces of pain and despair,'' I will say this in no
+way goes to prove the woman criminal to be more deadly than the
+male.  This ghoulish satisfaction, with the conjectured feeling
+of omnipotence, is not peculiar to the woman poisoner.  Neill
+Cream had it.  Armstrong had it.  Wainewright, with his reason
+for poisoning Helen Abercrombie--``Upon my soul I don't know,
+unless it was that her legs were too thick''--is quite on a par
+with Anna Zwanziger.  The supposed sense of power does not even
+belong exclusively to the poisoner.  Jack the Ripper manifestly
+had something of the same idea about his use of the knife.
+
+As a monster in mass murder against Mary Ann Cotton I will set
+you the Baron Gilles de Rais, with his forty flogged, outraged,
+obscenely mutilated and slain children in one of his castles
+alone--his total of over two hundred children thus foully done to
+death.  I will set you Gilles against anything that can be
+brought forward as a monster in cruelty among women.
+
+Against the hypocrisy of Helene Jegado I will set you the
+sanctimonious Dr Pritchard, with the nauseating entry in his
+diary (quoted by Mr Roughead) recording the death of the wife he
+so cruelly murdered:
+
+
+March 1865, 18, Saturday.  Died here at 1 A.M.  Mary Jane, my own
+beloved wife, aged thirty-eight years.  No torment surrounded her
+bedside [the foul liar!]--but like a calm peaceful lamb of God
+passed Minnie away.  May God and Jesus, Holy Ghost, one in three,
+welcome Minnie!  Prayer on prayer till mine be o'er; everlasting
+love.  Save us, Lord, for Thy dear Son!
+
+
+Against the mean murders of Flanagan and Higgins I will set you
+Mr Seddon and Mr Smith of the ``brides in the bath.''
+
+
+
+% IV
+
+I am conscious that in arguing against the ``more deadly than the
+male'' conception of the woman criminal I am perhaps doing my
+book no great service.  It might work for its greater popularity
+if I argued the other way, making out that the subjects I have
+chosen were monsters of brutality, with arms up to the shoulders
+in blood, that they were prodigies of iniquity and cunning,
+without bowels, steeped in hypocrisy, facinorous to a degree
+never surpassed or even equalled by evil men.  It may seem that,
+being concerned to strip female crime of the lurid preeminence so
+commonly given it, I have contrived beforehand to rob the ensuing
+pages of any richer savour they might have had.  But I don't,
+myself, think so.
+
+If these women, some of them, are not greater monsters than their
+male analogues, monsters they still remain.  If they are not,
+others of them, greater rogues and cheats than males of like
+criminal persuasion, cheats and rogues they are beyond cavil. 
+The truth of the matter is that I loathe the use of superlatives
+in serious works on crime.  I will read, I promise you, anything
+decently written in a fictional way about `master' crooks,
+`master' killers, kings, queens, princes, and a whole peerage of
+crime, knowing very well that never yet has a `master' criminal
+had any cleverness but what a novelist gave him.  But in works on
+crime that pretend to seriousness I would eschew, pace Mr Leonard
+R. Gribble, all `queens' and other honorifics in application to
+the lost men and women with whom such works must treat.  There is
+no romance in crime.  Romance is life gilded, life idealized. 
+Crime is never anything but a sordid business, demonstrably poor
+in reward to its practitioners.
+
+But, sordid or not, crime has its human interest.  Its
+practitioners are still part of life, human beings, different
+from law-abiding humanity by God-alone-knows-what freak of
+heredity or kink in brain convolution.  I will not ask the
+reader, as an excuse for my book, to view the criminal with the
+thought attributed to John Knox:
+
+``There, but for the Grace of God, goes ----''  Because the
+phrase might as well be used in contemplation of John D.
+Rockefeller or Augustus John or Charlie Chaplin or a man with a
+wooden leg.  I do not ask that you should pity these women with
+whom I have to deal, still less that you should contemn them. 
+Something between the two will serve.  I write the book because I
+am interested in crime myself, and in the hope that you'll like
+the reading as much as I like the writing of it.
+
+
+
+
+II. A FAIR NECK FOR THE MAIDEN
+
+In her long history there can have been few mornings upon which
+Edinburgh had more to offer her burghers in the way of gossip and
+rumour than on that of the 1st of July, 1600.  In this `gate' and
+that `gate,' as one may imagine, the douce citizens must have
+clustered and broke and clustered, like eddied foam on a spated
+burn.  By conjecture, as they have always been a people apt to
+take to the streets upon small occasion as on large, it is not
+unlikely that the news which was to drift into the city some
+thirty-five days later--namely, that an attempt on the life of
+his Sacred Majesty, the High and Mighty (and Rachitic) Prince,
+James the Sixth of Scotland, had been made by the brothers
+Ruthven in their castle of Gowrie--it is not unlikely that the
+first buzz of the Gowrie affair caused no more stir, for the time
+being at any rate, than the word which had come to those
+Edinburgh folk that fine morning of the first day in July.  The
+busier of the bodies would trot from knot to knot, anxious to
+learn and retail the latest item of fact and fancy regarding the
+tidings which had set tongues going since the early hours. 
+Murder, no less.
+
+If the contemporary juridical records, even what is left of them,
+be a criterion, homicide in all its oddly named forms must have
+been a commonplace to those couthie lieges of his Slobberiness,
+King Jamie.  It is hard to believe that murder, qua murder, could
+have been of much more interest to them than the fineness of the
+weather.  We have it, however, on reasonable authority, that the
+murder of the Laird of Warriston did set the people of ``Auld
+Reekie'' finely agog.
+
+John Kincaid, of Warriston, was by way of being one of
+Edinburgh's notables.  Even at that time his family was
+considered to be old.  He derived from the Kincaids of Kincaid,
+in Stirlingshire, a family then in possession of large estates in
+that county and here and there about Lothian.  His own property
+of Warriston lay on the outskirts of Edinburgh itself, just above
+a mile from Holyroodhouse.  Notable among his possessions was one
+which he should, from all accounts, dearly have prized, but which
+there are indications he treated with some contumely.  This was
+his wife, Jean Livingstone, a singularly beautiful girl, no more
+than twenty-one years of age at the time when this story opens. 
+Jean, like her husband, was a person of good station indeed.  She
+was a daughter of the Laird of Dunipace, John Livingstone, and
+related through him and her mother to people of high
+consideration in the kingdom.
+
+News of the violent death of John Kincaid, which had taken place
+soon after midnight, came quickly to the capital.  Officers were
+at once dispatched.  Small wonder that the burghers found
+exercise for their clacking tongues from the dawning, for the
+lovely Jean was taken by the officers `red-hand,' as the phrase
+was, for the murder of her husband.  With her to Edinburgh, under
+arrest, were brought her nurse and two other servingwomen.
+
+To Pitcairn, compiler of Criminal Trials in Scotland, from
+indications in whose account of the murder I have been set on the
+hunt for material concerning it, I am indebted for the
+information that Jean and her women were taken red-hand.  But I
+confess being at a loss to understand it.  Warriston, as
+indicated, stood a good mile from Edinburgh.  The informant
+bringing word of the deed to town, even if he or she covered the
+distance on horseback, must have taken some time in getting the
+proper authorities to move.  Then time would elapse in quantity
+before the officers dispatched could be at the house.  They
+themselves could hardly have taken the Lady Warriston red-hand,
+because in the meantime the actual perpetrator of the murder, a
+horse-boy named Robert Weir, in the employ of Jean's father, had
+made good his escape.  As a fact, he was not apprehended until
+some time afterwards, and it would seem, from the records given
+in the Pitcairn Trials, that it was not until four years later
+that he was brought to trial.
+
+A person taken red-hand, it would be imagined, would be one found
+in such circumstances relating to a murder as would leave no
+doubt as to his or her having ``airt and pairt'' in the crime. 
+Since it must have taken the officers some time to reach the
+house, one of two things must have happened.  Either some
+officious person or persons, roused by the killing, which, as we
+shall see, was done with no little noise, must have come upon
+Jean and her women immediately upon the escape of Weir, and have
+detained all four until the arrival of the officers, or else Jean
+and her women must have remained by the dead man in terror, and
+have blurted out the truth of their complicity when the officers
+appeared.
+
+Available records are irritatingly uninformative upon the arrest
+of the Lady Warriston.  Pitcairn himself, in 1830, talks of his
+many ``fruitless searches'' through the Criminal Records of the
+city of Edinburgh, the greater part of which are lost, and
+confesses his failure to come on any trace of the actual
+proceedings in this case, or in the case of Robert Weir.  For
+this reason the same authority is at a loss to know whether the
+prisoners were immediately put to the knowledge of an assize,
+being taken ``red-hand,'' without the formality of being served a
+``dittay'' (as who should say an indictment), as in ordinary
+cases, before the magistrates of Edinburgh, or else sent for
+trial before the baron bailie of the regality of Broughton, in
+whose jurisdiction Warriston was situated.
+
+It would perhaps heighten the drama of the story if it could be
+learned what Jean and her women did between the time of the
+murder and the arrest.  It would seem, however, that the Lady
+Warriston had some intention of taking flight with Weir.  One is
+divided between an idea that the horse-boy did not want to be
+hampered and that he was ready for self-sacrifice.  ``You shall
+tarry still,'' we read that he said; ``and if this matter come
+not to light you shall say, `He died in the gallery,' and I shall
+return to my master's service.  But if it be known I shall fly,
+and take the crime on me, and none dare pursue you!''
+
+It was distinctly a determined affair of murder.  The loveliness
+of Jean Livingstone has been so insisted upon in many Scottish
+ballads,[2] and her conduct before her execution was so saintly,
+that one cannot help wishing, even now, that she could have
+escaped the scaffold.  But there is no doubt that, incited by the
+nurse, Janet Murdo, she set about having her husband killed with
+a rancour which was very grim indeed.
+
+
+[2] A stanza in one ballad runs:
+
+   ``She has twa weel-made feet;
+   Far better is her hand;
+   She's jimp about the middle       
+   As ony willy wand.''
+
+
+
+The reason for Jean's hatred of her husband appears in the dittay
+against Robert Weir.  ``Forasmuch,'' it runs, translated to
+modern terms,
+
+
+as whilom Jean Livingstone, Goodwife of Warriston, having
+conceived a deadly rancour, hatred, and malice against whilom
+John Kincaid, of Warriston, for the alleged biting of her in the
+arm, and striking her divers times, the said Jean, in the month
+of June, One Thousand Six Hundred Years, directed Janet Murdo,
+her nurse, to the said Robert [Weir], to the abbey of
+Holyroodhouse, where he was for the time, desiring him to come
+down to Warriston, and speak with her, anent the cruel and
+unnatural taking away of her said husband's life.
+
+
+And there you have it.  If the allegation against John Kincaid
+was true it does not seem that he valued his lovely wife as he
+ought to have done.  The striking her ``divers times'' may have
+been an exaggeration.  It probably was.  Jean and her women would
+want to show there had been provocation.  (In a ballad he is
+accused of having thrown a plate at dinner in her face.)  But
+there is a naivete, a circumstantial air, about the ``biting of
+her in the arm'' which gives it a sort of genuine ring.  How one
+would like to come upon a contemporary writing which would throw
+light on the character of John Kincaid!  Growing sympathy for
+Jean makes one wish it could be found that Kincaid deserved all
+he got.
+
+Here and there in the material at hand indications are to be
+found that the Lady of Warriston had an idea she might not come
+so badly off on trial.  But even if the King's Majesty had been
+of clement disposition, which he never was, or if her judges had
+been likely to be moved by her youth and beauty, there was
+evidence of such premeditation, such fixity of purpose, as would
+no doubt harden the assize against her.
+
+Robert Weir was in service, as I have said, with Jean
+Livingstone's father, the Laird of Dunipace.  It may have been
+that he knew Jean before her marriage.  He seems, at any rate, to
+have been extremely willing to stand by her.  He was fetched by
+the nurse several times from Holyrood to Warriston, but failed to
+have speech with the lady.  On the 30th of June, however, the
+Lady Warriston having sent the nurse for him once again, he did
+contrive to see Jean in the afternoon, and, according to the
+dittay, ``conferred with her, concerning the cruel, unnatural,
+and abominable murdering of the said whilom John Kincaid.''
+
+The upshot of the conference was that Weir was secretly led to a
+``laigh'' cellar in the house of Warriston, to await the
+appointed time for the execution of the murder.
+
+Weir remained in the cellar until midnight.  Jean came for him at
+that hour and led him up into the hall.  Thence the pair
+proceeded to the room in which John Kincaid was lying asleep.  It
+would appear that they took no great pains to be quiet in their
+progress, for on entering the room they found Kincaid awakened
+``be thair dyn.''
+
+I cannot do better at this point than leave description of the
+murder as it is given in the dittay against Weir.  The editor of
+Pitcairn's Trials remarks in a footnote to the dittay that ``the
+quaintness of the ancient style even aggravates the horror of the
+scene.''  As, however, the ancient style may aggravate the reader
+unacquainted with Scots, I shall English it, and give the
+original rendering in a footnote:
+
+
+And having entered within the said chamber, perceiving the said
+whilom John to be wakened out of his sleep by their din, and to
+pry over his bed-stock, the said Robert came then running to him,
+and most cruelly, with clenched fists, gave him a deadly and
+cruel stroke on the jugular vein, wherewith he cast the said
+whilom John to the ground, from out his bed; and thereafter
+struck him on his belly with his feet; whereupon he gave a great
+cry.  And the said Robert, fearing the cry should have been
+heard, he thereafter, most tyrannously and barbarously, with his
+hand, gripped him by the throat, or weasand, which he held fast a
+long time, while [or until] he strangled him; during the which
+time the said John Kincaid lay struggling and fighting in the
+pains of death under him.  And so the said whilom John was
+cruelly murdered and slain by the said Robert.[3]
+
+
+[3] And haifing enterit within the faid chalmer, perfaving the
+faid vmqle Johnne to be walknit out of his fleip, be thair dyn,
+and to preife ouer his bed ftok, the faid Robert cam than rynnand
+to him, and maift crewallie, with thair faldit neiffis gaif him
+ane deidlie and crewall straik on the vane-organe, quhairwith he
+dang the faid vmqle Johnne to the grund, out-ouer his bed; and
+thaireftir, crewallie ftrak him on bellie with his feit;
+quhairvpoun he gaif ane grit cry:  And the faid Robert, feiring
+the cry fould haif bene hard, he thaireftir, maift tyrannouflie
+and barbarouflie, with his hand, grippit him be the thrott or
+waifen, quhilk he held faft ane lang tyme quhill he wirreit him;
+during the quhilk tyme, the faid Johnne Kincaid lay ftruggilling
+and fechting in the panes of daith vnder him.  And fa, the faid
+vmqle Johnne was crewallie murdreit and flaine be the faid
+Robert.''
+
+
+
+It will be seen that Robert Weir evolved a murder technique
+which, as Pitcairn points out, was to be adopted over two
+centuries later in Edinburgh at the Westport by Messrs Burke and
+Hare.
+
+
+
+% II
+
+Lady Warriston was found guilty, and four days after the murder,
+on the 5th of July, was taken to the Girth Cross of Holyrood, at
+the foot of the Canongate, and there decapitated by that machine
+which rather anticipated the inventiveness of Dr Guillotin--``the
+Maiden.''  At the same time, four o'clock in the morning, Janet
+Murdo, the nurse, and one of the serving-women accused with her
+as accomplices were burned on the Castle Hill of the city.
+
+There is something odd about the early hour at which the
+executions took place.  The usual time for these affairs was much
+later in the day, and it is probable that the sentence against
+Jean ran that she should be executed towards dusk on the 4th of
+the month.  The family of Dunipace, however, having exerted no
+influence towards saving the daughter of the house from her fate,
+did everything they could to have her disposed of as secretly and
+as expeditiously as possible.  In their zeal to have done with
+the hapless girl who, they conceived, had blotted the family
+honour indelibly they were in the prison with the magistrates
+soon after three o'clock, quite indecent in their haste to see
+her on her way to the scaffold.  In the first place they had
+applied to have her executed at nine o'clock on the evening of
+the 3rd, another unusual hour, but the application was turned
+down.  The main idea with them was to have Jean done away with at
+some hour when the populace would not be expecting the execution. 
+Part of the plan for privacy is revealed in the fact of the
+burning of the nurse and the ``hyred woman'' at four o'clock at
+the Castle Hill, nearly a mile away from the Girth Cross, so--as
+the Pitcairn Trials footnote says-``that the populace, who might
+be so early astir, should have their attentions distracted at two
+opposite stations . . .  and thus, in some measure, lessen the
+disgrace of the public execution.''
+
+If Jean had any reason to thank her family it was for securing,
+probably as much on their own behalf as hers, that the usual way
+of execution for women murderers should be altered in her case to
+beheading by ``the Maiden.''  Had she been of lesser rank she
+would certainly have been burned, after being strangled at a
+stake, as were her nurse and the serving-woman.  This was the
+appalling fate reserved for convicted women[4] in such cases, and
+on conviction even of smaller crimes.  The process was even
+crueller in instances where the crime had been particularly
+atrocious.  ``The criminal,'' says the Pitcairn account of such
+punishment, ``was `brunt quick'!''
+
+
+[4] Men convicted of certain crimes were also subject to the same
+form of execution adulterating and uttering base coins (Alan
+Napier, cutler in Glasgow, was strangled and burned at the stake
+in December 1602) sorcery, witchcraft, incantation, poisoning
+(Bailie Paterson suffered a like fate in December 1607).  For
+bestiality John Jack was strangled on the Castle Hill (September
+1605), and the innocent animal participator in his crime burned
+with him.
+
+
+
+Altogether, the Dunipace family do not exactly shine with a good
+light as concerns their treatment of the condemned girl.  Her
+father stood coldly aside.  The quoted footnote remarks:
+
+
+It is recorded that the Laird of Dunipace behaved with much
+apathy towards his daughter, whom he would not so much as see
+previous to her execution; nor yet would he intercede for her,
+through whose delinquency he reckoned his blood to be for ever
+dishonoured.
+
+
+Jean herself was in no mind to be hurried to the scaffold as
+early as her relatives would have had her conveyed.  She wanted
+(poor girl!) to see the sunrise, and to begin with the
+magistrates granted her request.  It would appear, however, that
+Jean's blood-relations opposed the concession so strongly that it
+was almost immediately rescinded.  The culprit had to die in the
+grey dark of the morning, before anyone was likely to be astir.
+
+In certain directions there was not a little heart-burning about
+the untimely hour at which it was manoeuvred the execution should
+be carried out.  The writer of a Memorial, from which this piece
+of information is drawn, refrains very cautiously from mentioning
+the objectors by name.  But it is not difficult, from the colour
+of their objections, to decide that these people belonged to the
+type still known in Scotland as the `unco guid.'  They saw in the
+execution of this fair malefactor a moral lesson and a solemn
+warning which would have a salutary and uplifting effect upon the
+spectators.
+
+``Will you,'' they asked the presiding dignitaries, and the
+blood-relations of the hapless Jean, ``deprive God's people of
+that comfort which they might have in that poor woman's death? 
+And will you obstruct the honour of it by putting her away before
+the people rise out of their beds?  You do wrong in so doing; for
+the more public the death be, the more profitable it shall be to
+many; and the more glorious, in the sight of all who shall see
+it.''
+
+But perhaps one does those worthies an injustice in attributing
+cant motives to their desire that as many people as possible
+should see Jean die.  It had probably reached them that the Lady
+Warriston's repentance had been complete, and that after
+conviction of her sin had come to her her conduct had been sweet
+and seemly.  They were of their day and age, those people,
+accustomed almost daily to beheadings, stranglings, burnings,
+hangings, and dismemberings.  With that dour, bitter, fire-and-
+brimstone religious conception which they had through Knox from
+Calvin, they were probably quite sincere in their belief that the
+public repentance Jean Livingstone was due to make from the
+scaffold would be for the ``comfort of God's people.''  It was
+not so often that justice exacted the extreme penalty from a
+young woman of rank and beauty.  With ``dreadful objects so
+familiar'' in the way of public executions, it was likely enough
+that pity in the commonalty was ``choked with custom of fell
+deeds.''  Something out of the way in the nature of a dreadful
+object-lesson might stir the hearts of the populace and make them
+conscious of the Wrath to Come. 
+
+And Jean Livingstone did die a good death.
+
+The Memorial[5] which I have mentioned is upon Jean's
+`conversion' in prison.  It is written by one ``who was both a
+seer and hearer of what was spoken [by the Lady Warriston].'' 
+The editor of the Pitcairn Trials believes, from internal
+evidence, that it was written by Mr James Balfour, colleague of
+Mr Robert Bruce, that minister of the Kirk who was so
+contumacious about preaching what was practically a plea of the
+King's innocence in the matter of the Gowrie mystery.  It tells
+how Jean, from being completely apathetic and callous with regard
+to religion or to the dreadful situation in which she found
+herself through her crime, under the patient and tender
+ministrations of her spiritual advisers, arrived at complete
+resignation to her fate and genuine repentance for her misdeeds.
+
+
+[5] The Memorial is fully entitled:  A Worthy and Notable
+Memorial of the Great Work of Mercy which God wrought in the
+Conversion of Jean Livingstone Lady Warristoun, who was
+apprehended for the Vile and Horrible Murder of her own Husband,
+John Kincaid, committed on Tuesday, July 1, 1600, for which she
+was execute on Saturday following; Containing an Account of her
+Obstinacy, Earnest Repentance, and her Turning to God; of the Odd
+Speeches she used during her Imprisonment; of her Great and
+Marvellous Constancy; and of her Behaviour and Manner of Death: 
+Observed by One who was both a Seer and Hearer of what was
+spoken.
+
+
+
+Her confession, as filleted from the Memorial by the Pitcairn
+Trials, is as follows:
+
+
+I think I shall hear presently the pitiful and fearful cries
+which he gave when he was strangled!  And that vile sin which I
+committed in murdering my own husband is yet before me.  When
+that horrible and fearful sin was done I desired the unhappy man
+who did it (for my own part, the Lord knoweth I laid never my
+hands upon him to do him evil; but as soon as that man gripped
+him and began his evil turn, so soon as my husband cried so
+fearfully, I leapt out over my bed and went to the Hall, where I
+sat all the time, till that unhappy man came to me and reported
+that mine husband was dead), I desired him, I say, to take me
+away with him; for I feared trial; albeit flesh and blood made me
+think my father's moen [interest] at Court would have saved me!
+
+
+Well, we know what the Laird of Dunipace did about it.
+
+``As to these women who was challenged with me,'' the confession
+goes on,
+
+
+I will also tell my mind concerning them.  God forgive the nurse,
+for she helped me too well in mine evil purpose; for when I told
+her I was minded to do so she consented to the doing of it; and
+upon Tuesday, when the turn was done, when I sent her to seek the
+man who would do it, she said, `` I shall go and seek him; and if
+I get him not I shall seek another!  And if I get none I shall do
+it myself!''
+
+
+Here the writer of the Memorial interpolates the remark, ``This
+the nurse also confessed, being asked of it before her death.'' 
+It is a misfortune, equalling that of the lack of information
+regarding the character of Jean's husband, that there is so
+little about the character of the nurse.  She was, it is to be
+presumed, an older woman than her mistress, probably nurse to
+Jean in her infancy.  One can imagine her (the stupid creature!)
+up in arms against Kincaid for his treatment of her ``bonny
+lamb,'' without the sense to see whither she was urging her young
+mistress; blind to the consequences, but ``nursing her wrath''
+and striding purposefully from Warriston to Holyroodhouse on her
+strong plebeian legs, not once but several times, in search of
+Weir!  What is known in Scotland as a `limmer,' obviously.
+
+``As for the two other women,'' Jean continues,
+
+
+I request that you neither put them to death nor any torture,
+because I testify they are both innocent, and knew nothing of
+this deed before it was done, and the mean time of doing it; and
+that they knew they durst not tell, for fear; for I compelled
+them to dissemble.  As for mine own part, I thank my God a
+thousand times that I am so touched with the sense of that sin
+now: for I confess this also to you, that when that horrible
+murder was committed first, that I might seem to be innocent, I
+laboured to counterfeit weeping; but, do what I could, I could
+not find a tear.
+
+
+Of the whole confession that last is the most revealing touch. 
+It is hardly just to fall into pity for Jean simply because she
+was young and lovely.  Her crime was a bad one, much more
+deliberate than many that, in the same age, took women of lower
+rank in life than Jean to the crueller end of the stake.  In the
+several days during which she was sending for Weir, but failing
+to have speech with him, she had time to review her intention of
+having her husband murdered.  If the nurse was the prime mover in
+the plot Jean was an unrelenting abettor.  It may have been in
+her calculations before, as well as after, the deed itself that
+the interest of her father and family at Court would save her,
+should the deed have come to light as murder.  Even in these
+days, when justice is so much more seasoned with mercy to women
+murderers, a woman in Jean's case, with such strong evidence of
+premeditation against her, would only narrowly escape the
+hangman, if she escaped him at all.  But that confession of
+trying to pretend weeping and being unable to find tears is a
+revelation.  I can think of nothing more indicative of terror and
+misery in a woman than that she should want to cry and be unable
+to.  Your genuinely hypocritical murderer, male as well as
+female, can always work up self-pity easily and induce the
+streaming eye.
+
+It is from internal evidences such as this that one may conclude
+the repentance of Jean Livingstone, as shown in her confession,
+to have been sincere.  There was, we are informed by the
+memorialist, nothing maudlin in her conduct after condemnation. 
+Once she got over her first obduracy, induced, one would imagine,
+by the shock of seeing the realization of what she had planned
+but never pictured, the murder itself, and probably by the
+desertion of her by her father and kindred, her repentance was
+``cheerful'' and ``unfeigned.''  They were tough-minded men,
+those Scots divines who ministered to her at the last, too stern
+in their theology to be misled by any pretence at finding grace. 
+And no pretty ways of Jean's would have deceived them.  The
+constancy of behaviour which is vouched for, not only by the
+memorialist but by other writers, stayed with her until the axe
+fell.
+
+
+
+% III
+
+``She was but a woman and a bairn, being the age of twenty-one
+years,'' says the Memorial.  But, ``in the whole way, as she went
+to the place of execution, she behaved herself so cheerfully as
+if she had been going to her wedding, and not to her death.  When
+she came to the scaffold, and was carried up upon it, she looked
+up to ``the Maiden'' with two longsome looks, for she had never
+seen it before.''
+
+The minister-memorialist, who attended her on the scaffold, says
+that all who saw Jean would bear record with himself that her
+countenance alone would have aroused emotion, even if she had
+never spoken a word.  ``For there appeared such majesty in her
+countenance and visage, and such a heavenly courage in her
+gesture, that many said, `That woman is ravished by a higher
+spirit than a man or woman's!' ''
+
+As for the Declaration and Confession which, according to custom,
+Jean made from the four corners of the scaffold, the memorialist
+does not pretend to give it verbatim.  It was, he says, almost in
+a form of words, and he gives the sum of it thus:
+
+
+The occasion of my coming here is to show that I am, and have
+been, a great sinner, and hath offended the Lord's Majesty;
+especially, of the cruel murdering of mine own husband, which,
+albeit I did not with mine own hands, for I never laid mine hands
+upon him all the time that he was murdering, yet I was the
+deviser of it, and so the committer.  But my God hath been always
+merciful to me, and hath given me repentance for my sins; and I
+hope for mercy and grace at his Majesty's hands, for his dear son
+Jesus Christ's sake.  And the Lord hath brought me hither to be
+an example to you, that you may not fall into the like sin as I
+have done.  And I pray God, for his mercy, to keep all his
+faithful people from falling into the like inconvenient as I have
+done!  And therefore I desire you all to pray to God for me, that
+he would be merciful to me!
+
+
+One wonders just how much of Jean's own words the
+minister-memorialist got into this, his sum of her confession. 
+Her speech would be coloured inevitably by the phrasing she had
+caught from her spiritual advisers, and the sum of it would
+almost unavoidably have something of the memorialist's own
+fashion of thought.  I would give a good deal to know if Jean did
+actually refer to the Almighty as ``the Lord's Majesty,'' and
+hope for ``grace at his Majesty's hands.''  I do not think I am
+being oversubtle when I fancy that, if Jean did use those words,
+I see an element of confusion in her scaffold confession--the
+trembling confusion remaining from a lost hope.  As a Scot, I
+have no recollection of ever hearing the Almighty referred to as
+``the Lord's Majesty'' or as ``his Majesty.''  It does not ring
+naturally to my ear.  Nor, at the long distance from which I
+recollect reading works of early Scottish divines, can I think of
+these forms being used in such a context.  I may be--I very
+probably am--all wrong, but I have a feeling that up to the last
+Jean Livingstone believed royal clemency would be shown to her,
+and that this belief appears in the use of these unwonted
+phrases.
+
+However that may be, Jean's conduct seems to have been heroic and
+unfaltering.  She prayed, and one of her relations or friends
+brought ``a clean cloath'' to tie over her eyes.  Jean herself
+had prepared for this operation, for she took a pin out of her
+mouth and gave it into the friend's hand to help the fastening. 
+The minister-memorialist, having taken farewell of her for the
+last time, could not bear the prospect of what was about to
+happen.  He descended from the scaffold and went away.  ``But
+she,'' he says,
+
+as a constant saint of God, humbled herself on her knees, and
+offered her neck to the axe, laying her neck, sweetly and
+graciously, in the place appointed, moving to and fro, till she
+got a rest for her neck to lay in.  When her head was now made
+fast to ``the Maiden'' the executioner came behind her and pulled
+out her feet, that her neck might be stretched out longer, and so
+made more meet for the stroke of the axe; but she, as it was
+reported to me by him who saw it and held her by the hands at
+this time, drew her legs twice to her again, labouring to sit on
+her knees, till she should give up her spirit to the Lord! 
+During this time, which was long, for the axe was but slowly
+loosed, and fell not down hastily, after laying of her head, her
+tongue was not idle, but she continued crying to the Lord, and
+uttered with a loud voice those her wonted words, ``Lord Jesus,
+receive my spirit!  O Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of
+the world, have mercy upon me!  Into thy hand, Lord, I commend my
+soul!''  When she came to the middle of this last sentence, and
+had said, ``Into thy hand, Lord,'' at the pronouncing of the word
+``Lord'' the axe fell; which was diligently marked by one of her
+friends, who still held her by the hand, and reported this to me.
+
+
+
+% IV
+
+On the 26th of June, 1604, Robert Weir, ``sumtyme servande to the
+Laird of Dynniepace,'' was brought to knowledge of an assize.  He
+was ``Dilaitit of airt and pairt of the crewall Murthour of umqle
+Johnne Kincaid of Wariestoune; committit the first of Julij, 1600
+yeiris.''
+
+
+Verdict.  The Assyse, all in ane voce, be the mouth of the said
+Thomas Galloway, chanceller, chosen be thame, ffand, pronouncet
+and declairit the said Robert Weir to be ffylit, culpable and
+convict of the crymes above specifiet, mentionat in the said
+Dittay; and that in respect of his Confessioun maid thairof, in
+Judgement.
+
+Sentence.  The said Justice-depute, be the mouth of James
+Sterling, dempster of the Court, decernit and ordainit the said
+Robert Weir to be tane to ane skaffold to be fixt beside the
+Croce of Edinburgh, and there to be brokin upoune ane Row,[6]
+quhill he be deid; and to ly thairat, during the space of xxiiij
+houris.  And thaireftir, his body to be tane upon the said Row,
+and set up, in ane publict place, betwix the place of Wariestoune
+and the toun of Leyth; and to remain thairupoune, ay and quhill
+command be gevin for the buriall thairof.  Quhilk was pronouncet
+for dome.
+
+
+[6] A `row' is a wheel.  This is one of the very few instances on
+which the terrible and vicious punishment of `breaking on a
+wheel' was employed in Scotland.  Jean Livingstone's accomplice
+was, according to Birrell's Diary, broken on a cartwheel, with
+the coulter of a plough in the hand of the hangman.  The exotic
+method of execution suggests experiment by King Jamie.
+
+
+
+% V
+
+The Memorial before mentioned is, in the original, a manuscript
+belonging to the Advocates' Library of Edinburgh.  A printed copy
+was made in 1828, under the editorship of J. Sharpe, in the same
+city.  This edition contains, among other more relative matter, a
+reprint of a newspaper account of an execution by strangling and
+burning at the stake.  The woman concerned was not the last
+victim in Britain of this form of execution.  The honour, I
+believe, belongs to one Anne Cruttenden.  The account is full of
+gruesome and graphic detail, but the observer preserves quite an
+air of detachment:
+
+
+IVELCHESTER: 9th May, 1765.  Yesterday Mary Norwood, for
+poisoning her husband, Joseph Norwood, of Axbridge, in this
+county [Somerset], was burnt here pursuant to her sentence.  She
+was brought out of the prison about three o'clock in the
+afternoon, barefoot; she was covered with a tarred cloth, made
+like a shift, and a tarred bonnet over her head; and her legs,
+feet, and arms had likewise tar on them; the heat of the weather
+melting the tar, it ran over her face, so that she made a
+shocking appearance.  She was put on a hurdle, and drawn on a
+sledge to the place of execution, which was very near the
+gallows.  After spending some time in prayer, and singing a hymn,
+the executioner placed her on a tar barrel, about three feet
+high; a rope (which was in a pulley through the stake) was fixed
+about her neck, she placing it properly with her hands; this rope
+being drawn extremely tight with the pulley, the tar barrel was
+then pushed away, and three irons were then fastened around her
+body, to confine it to the stake, that it might not drop when the
+rope should be burnt.  As soon as this was done the fire was
+immediately kindled; but in all probability she was quite dead
+before the fire reached her, as the executioner pulled her body
+several times whilst the irons were fixing, which was about five
+minutes.  There being a good quantity of tar, and the wood in the
+pile being quite dry, the fire burnt with amazing fury;
+notwithstanding which great part of her could be discerned for
+near half an hour.  Nothing could be more affecting than to
+behold, after her bowels fell out, the fire flaming between her
+ribs, issuing out of her ears, mouth, eyeholes, etc.  In short,
+it was so terrible a sight that great numbers turned their backs
+and screamed out, not being able to look at it.
+
+
+
+
+III: THE COUNTESS AND THE COZENER
+
+It is hardly likely when that comely but penniless young Scot
+Robert Carr, of Ferniehurst, fell from his horse and broke his
+leg that any of the spectators of the accident foresaw how
+far-reaching it would be in its consequences.  It was an
+accident, none the less, which in its ultimate results was to put
+several of the necks craned to see it in peril of the hangman's
+noose.
+
+That divinely appointed monarch King James the Sixth of Scotland
+and First of England had an eye for manly beauty.  Though he
+could contrive the direst of cruelties to be committed out of his
+sight, the actual spectacle of physical suffering in the human
+made him squeamish.  Add the two facts of the King's nature
+together and it may be understood how Robert Carr, in falling
+from his horse that September day in the tilt-yard of Whitehall,
+fell straight into his Majesty's favour.  King James himself gave
+orders for the disposition of the sufferer, found lodgings for
+him, sent his own surgeon, and was constant in his visits to the
+convalescent.  Thereafter the rise of Robert Carr was meteoric. 
+Knighted, he became Viscount Rochester, a member of the Privy
+Council, then Earl of Somerset, Knight of the Garter, all in a
+very few years.  It was in 1607 that he fell from his horse,
+under the King's nose.  In 1613 he was at the height of his power
+in England.
+
+Return we for a moment, however, to that day in the Whitehall
+tilt-yard.  It is related that one woman whose life and fate were
+to be bound with Carr's was in the ladies' gallery.  It is very
+probable that a second woman, whose association with the first
+did much to seal Carr's doom, was also a spectator.  If Frances
+Howard, as we read, showed distress over the painful mishap to
+the handsome Scots youth it is almost certain that Anne Turner,
+with the quick eye she had for male comeliness and her less need
+for Court-bred restraint, would exhibit a sympathetic volubility.
+
+Frances Howard was the daughter of that famous Elizabethan seaman
+Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk.  On that day in September she
+would be just over fifteen years of age.  It is said that she was
+singularly lovely.  At that early age she was already a wife,
+victim of a political marriage which, in the exercise of the
+ponderous cunning he called kingcraft, King James had been at
+some pains to arrange.  At the age of thirteen Frances had been
+married to Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex, then but a year
+older than herself.  The young couple had been parted at the
+altar, the groom being sent travelling to complete his growth and
+education, and Frances being returned to her mother and the
+semi-seclusion of the Suffolk mansion at Audley End.
+
+Of the two women, so closely linked in fate, the second is
+perhaps the more interesting study.  Anne Turner was something
+older than the Countess of Essex.  In the various records of the
+strange piece of history which is here to be dealt with there are
+many allusions to a long association between the two.  Almost a
+foster-sister relationship seems to be implied, but actual detail
+is irritatingly absent.  Nor is it clear whether Mrs Turner at
+the time of the tilt-yard incident had embarked on the business
+activities which were to make her a much sought-after person in
+King James's Court.  It is not to be ascertained whether she was
+not already a widow at that time.  We can only judge from
+circumstantial evidence brought forward later.
+
+In 1610, at all events, Mrs Turner was well known about the
+Court, and was quite certainly a widow.  Her husband had been a
+well-known medical man, one George Turner, a graduate of St
+John's College, Cambridge.  He had been a protege of Queen
+Elizabeth.  Dying, this elderly husband of Mistress Turner had
+left her but little in the way of worldly goods, but that little
+the fair young widow had all the wit to turn to good account. 
+There was a house in Paternoster Row and a series of notebooks. 
+Like many another physician of his time, George Turner had been a
+dabbler in more arts than that of medicine, an investigator in
+sciences other than pathology.  His notebooks would appear to
+have contained more than remedial prescriptions for agues,
+fevers, and rheums.  There was, for example, a recipe for a
+yellow starch which, says Rafael Sabatini, in his fine romance
+The Minion,[7] ``she dispensed as her own invention.  This had
+become so widely fashionable for ruffs and pickadills that of
+itself it had rendered her famous.''  One may believe, also, that
+most of the recipes for those ``perfumes, cosmetics, unguents and
+mysterious powders, liniments and lotions asserted to preserve
+beauty where it existed, and even to summon it where it was
+lacking,'' were derived from the same sources.
+
+
+[7] Hutchinson, 1930.
+
+
+
+There is a temptation to write of Mistress Turner as forerunner
+of that notorious Mme Rachel of whom, in his volume Bad
+Companions,[8] Mr Roughead has said the final and pawky word. 
+Mme Rachel, in the middle of the nineteenth century, founded her
+fortunes as a beauty specialist (?) on a prescription for a
+hair-restorer given her by a kindly doctor.  She also `invented'
+many a lotion and unguent for the preservation and creation of
+beauty.  But at about this point analogy stops.  Both Rachel and
+her forerunner, Anne Turner, were scamps, and both got into
+serious trouble--Anne into deeper and deadlier hot water than
+Rachel--but between the two women there is only superficial
+comparison.  Rachel was a botcher and a bungler, a very cobbler,
+beside Anne Turner.
+
+
+[8] Edinburgh, W. Green and Son, Ltd., 1930.
+
+
+
+Anne, there is every cause for assurance, was in herself the best
+advertisement for her wares.  Rachel was a fat old hag.  Anne,
+prettily fair, little-boned, and deliciously fleshed, was neat
+and elegant.  The impression one gets of her from all the
+records, even the most prejudiced against her, is that she was a
+very cuddlesome morsel indeed.  She was, in addition,
+demonstrably clever.  Such a man of talent as Inigo Jones
+supported the decoration of many of the masques he set on the
+stage with costumes of Anne's design and confection.  Rachel
+could neither read nor write.
+
+It is highly probable that Anne Turner made coin out of the notes
+which her late husband, so inquisitive of mind, had left on
+matters much more occult than the manufacture of yellow starch
+and skin lotions.  ``It was also rumoured,'' says Mr Sabatini,
+``that she amassed gold in another and less licit manner: that
+she dabbled in fortune-telling and the arts of divination.''  We
+shall see, as the story develops, that the rumour had some
+foundation.  The inquiring mind of the late Dr Turner had led him
+into strange company, and his legacy to Anne included connexions
+more sombre than those in the extravagantly luxurious Court of
+King James.
+
+In 1610 the elegant little widow was flourishing enough to be
+able to maintain a lover in good style.  This was Sir Arthur
+Mainwaring, member of a Cheshire family of good repute but of no
+great wealth.  By him she had three children.  Mainwaring was
+attached in some fashion to the suite of the Prince of Wales,
+Prince Henry.  And while the Prince's court at St James's Palace
+was something more modest, as it was more refined, than that of
+the King at Whitehall, position in it was not to be retained at
+ease without considerable expenditure.  It may be gauged,
+therefore, at what expense Anne's attachment to Mainwaring would
+keep her, and to what exercise of her talent and ambition her
+pride in it would drive her.  And her pride was absolute.  It
+would, says a contemporary diarist, ``make her fly at any pitch
+rather than fall into the jaws of want.''[9]
+
+
+[9] Antony Weldon, The Court and Character of King James (1651).
+
+
+
+% II
+
+In his romance The Minion, Rafael Sabatini makes the first
+meeting of Anne Turner and the Countess of Essex occur in 1610 or
+1611.  With this date Judge A. E. Parry, in his book The Overbury
+Mystery,[10] seems to agree in part.  There is, however, warrant
+enough for believing that the two women had met long before that
+time.  Anne Turner herself, pleading at her trial for mercy from
+Sir Edward Coke, the Lord Chief Justice, put forward the plea
+that she had been ``ever brought up with the Countess of Essex,
+and had been a long time her servant.''[11]  She also made the
+like extenuative plea on the scaffold.[12]  Judge Parry seems to
+follow some of the contemporary writers in assuming that Anne was
+a spy in the pay of the Lord Privy Seal, the Earl of Northampton. 
+If this was so there is further ground for believing that Anne
+and Lady Essex had earlier contacts, for Northampton was Lady
+Essex's great-uncle.  The longer association would go far in
+explaining the terrible conspiracy into which, from soon after
+that time, the two women so readily fell together--a criminal
+conspiracy, in which the reader may see something of the ``false
+nurse'' in Anne Turner and something of Jean Livingstone in
+Frances Howard, Lady Essex.
+
+
+[10] Fisher Unwin, 1925. 
+[11] State Trials (Cobbett's edition). 
+[12] Antony Weldon.
+
+
+
+It was about this time, 1610-1611, that Lady Essex began to find
+herself interested in the handsome Robert Carr, then Viscount
+Rochester.  Having reached the mature age of eighteen, the lovely
+Frances had been brought by her mother, the Countess of Suffolk,
+to Court.  Highest in the King's favour, and so, with his
+remarkably good looks, his charm, and the elegant taste in attire
+and personal appointment which his new wealth allowed him
+lavishly to indulge, Rochester was by far the most brilliant
+figure there.  Frances fell in love with the King's minion.
+
+Rochester, it would appear, did not immediately respond to the
+lady's advances.  They were probably too shy, too tentative, to
+attract Rochester's attention.  It is probable, also, that there
+were plenty of beautiful women about the Court, more mature, more
+practised in the arts of coquetry than Frances, and very likely
+not at all `blate'--as Carr and his master would put it--in
+showing themselves ready for conquest by the King's handsome
+favourite.
+
+Whether the acquaintance of Lady Essex with Mrs Turner was of
+long standing or not, it was to the versatile Anne that her
+ladyship turned as confidante.  The hint regarding Anne's skill
+in divination will be remembered.  Having regard to the period,
+and to the alchemistic nature of the goods that composed so much
+of Anne's stock-in-trade at the sign of the Golden Distaff, in
+Paternoster Row, it may be conjectured that the love-lorn Frances
+had thoughts of a philtre.
+
+With an expensive lover and children to maintain, to say nothing
+of her own luxurious habits, Anne Turner would see in the
+Countess's appeal a chance to turn more than one penny into the
+family exchequer.  She was too much the opportunist to let any
+consideration of old acquaintance interfere with working such a
+potential gold-mine as now seemed to lie open to her pretty but
+prehensile fingers.  Lady Essex was rich.  She was also ardent in
+her desire.  The game was too big for Anne to play single-handed. 
+A real expert in cozening, a master of guile, was wanted to
+exploit the opportunity to its limit.
+
+It is a curious phenomenon, and one that constantly recurs in the
+history of cozenage, how people who live by spoof fall victims so
+readily to spoofery.  Anne Turner had brains.  There is no doubt
+of it.  Apart from that genuine and honest talent in
+costume-design which made her work acceptable to such an
+outstanding genius as Inigo Jones, she lived by guile.  But I
+have now to invite you to see her at the feet of one of the
+silliest charlatans who ever lived.  There is, of course, the
+possibility that Anne sat at the feet of this silly charlatan for
+what she might learn for the extension of her own technique.  Or,
+again, it may have been that the wizard of Lambeth, whom she
+consulted in the Lady Essex affair, could provide a more
+impressive setting for spoof than she had handy, or that they
+were simply rogues together.  My trouble is to understand why, by
+the time that the Lady Essex came to her with her problem, Anne
+had not exhausted all the gambits in flummery that were at the
+command of the preposterous Dr Forman.
+
+The connexion with Dr Forman was part of the legacy left Anne by
+Dr Turner.  Her husband had been the friend and patron of Forman,
+so that by the time Anne had taken Mainwaring for her lover, and
+had borne him three children, she must have had ample opportunity
+for seeing through the old charlatan.
+
+Antony Weldon, the contemporary writer already quoted, is
+something too scurrilous and too apparently biased to be
+altogether a trustworthy authority.  He seems to have been the
+type of gossip (still to be met in London clubs) who can always
+tell with circumstance how the duchess came to have a black baby,
+and the exact composition of the party at which Midas played at
+`strip poker.'  But he was, like many of his kind, an amusing
+enough companion for the idle moment, and his description of Dr
+Forman is probably fairly close to the truth.
+
+``This Forman,'' he says,
+
+was a silly fellow who dwelt in Lambeth, a very silly fellow, yet
+had wit enough to cheat the ladies and other women, by pretending
+skill in telling their fortunes, as whether they should bury
+their husbands, and what second husbands they should have, and
+whether they should enjoy their loves, or whether maids should
+get husbands, or enjoy their servants to themselves without
+corrivals: but before he would tell them anything they must write
+their names in his alphabetical book with their own handwriting. 
+By this trick he kept them in awe, if they should complain of his
+abusing them, as in truth he did nothing else.  Besides, it was
+believed, some meetings were at his house, wherein the art of the
+bawd was more beneficial to him than that of a conjurer, and that
+he was a better artist in the one than in the other: and that you
+may know his skill, he was himself a cuckold, having a very
+pretty wench to his wife, which would say, she did it to try his
+skill, but it fared with him as with astrologers that cannot
+foresee their own destiny.
+
+
+And here comes an addendum, the point of which finds confirmation
+elsewhere.  It has reference to the trial of Anne Turner, to
+which we shall come later.
+
+``I well remember there was much mirth made in the Court upon the
+showing of the book, for, it was reported, the first leaf my lord
+Cook [Coke, the Lord Chief Justice] lighted on he found his own
+wife's name.''
+
+Whatever Anne's reason for doing so, it was to this scortatory
+old scab that she turned for help in cozening the fair young
+Countess.  The devil knows to what obscene ritual the girl was
+introduced.  There is evidence that the thaumaturgy practised by
+Forman did not want for lewdness--as magic of the sort does not
+to this day--and in this regard Master Weldon cannot be far
+astray when he makes our pretty Anne out to be the veriest
+baggage.
+
+Magic or no magic, philtre or no philtre, it was not long before
+Lady Essex had her wish.  The Viscount Rochester fell as
+desperately in love with her as she was with him.
+
+There was, you may be sure, no small amount of scandalous chatter
+in the Court over the quickly obvious attachment the one to the
+other of this handsome couple.  So much of this scandalous
+chatter has found record by the pens of contemporary and later
+gossip-writers that it is hard indeed to extract the truth.  It
+is certain, however, that had the love between Robert Carr and
+Frances Howard been as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, jealousy
+would still have done its worst in besmirching.  It was not, if
+the Rabelaisian trend in so much of Jacobean writing be any
+indication, a particularly moral age.  Few ages in history are. 
+It was not, with a reputed pervert as the fount of honour, a
+particularly moral Court.  Since the emergence of the lovely
+young Countess from tutelage at Audley End there had been no lack
+of suitors for her favour.  And when Frances so openly exhibited
+her preference for the King's minion there would be some among
+those disappointed suitors who would whisper, greenly, that
+Rochester had been granted that prisage which was the right of
+the absent Essex, a right which they themselves had been quite
+ready to usurp.  It is hardly likely that there would be complete
+abnegation of salty gossip among the ladies of the Court, their
+Apollo being snatched by a mere chit of a girl.
+
+What relative happiness there may have been for the pair in their
+loving--it could not, in the hindrance there was to their free
+mating, have been an absolute happiness --was shattered after
+some time by the return to England of the young husband.  The
+Earl of Essex, now almost come to man's estate, arrived to take
+up the position which his rank entitled him to expect in the
+Court, and to assume the responsibilities and rights which, he
+fancied, belonged to him as a married man.  In respect of the
+latter part of his intention he immediately found himself balked. 
+His wife, perhaps all the deeper in love with Rochester for this
+threat to their happiness, declared that she had no mind to be
+held by the marriage forced on her in infancy, and begged her
+husband to agree to its annulment.
+
+It had been better for young Essex to have agreed at once.  He
+would have spared himself, ultimately, a great deal of
+humiliation through ridicule.  But he tried to enforce his rights
+as a husband, a proceeding than which there is none more absurd
+should the wife prove obdurate.  And prove obdurate his wife did. 
+She was to be moved neither by threat nor by pleading.  It was,
+you will notice, a comedy situation; husband not perhaps amorous
+so much as the thwarted possessor of the unpossessable--wife
+frigid and a maid, as far, at least, as the husband was
+concerned, and her weeping eyes turned yearningly elsewhere.  A
+comedy situation, yes, and at this distance almost farcical--but
+for certain elements in it approaching tragedy.
+
+Badgered, not only by her husband but by her own relatives,
+scared no doubt, certainly unhappy, unable for politic reasons to
+appeal freely to her beloved Robin, to whom might Frances turn
+but the helpful Turner?  And to whom, having turned to pretty
+Anne, was she likely to be led but again to the wizard of
+Lambeth?
+
+Dr Forman had a heart for beauty in distress, but dissipating the
+ardency of an exigent husband was a difficult matter compared
+with attracting that of a negligent lover.  It was also much more
+costly.  A powder there was, indeed, which, administered secretly
+by small regular doses in the husband's food or drink, would soon
+cool his ardour, but the process of manufacture and the
+ingredients were enormously expensive.  Frances got her powder.
+
+The first dose was administered to Lord Essex just before his
+departure from a visit to his wife at Audley End.  On his arrival
+back in London he was taken violently ill, so ill that in the
+weeks he lay in bed his life was despaired of.  Only the
+intervention of the King's own physician, one Sir Theodore
+Mayerne, would appear to have saved him.
+
+Her husband slowly convalescing, Lady Essex was summoned by her
+family back to London.  In London, while Lord Essex mended in
+health, she was much in the company of her ``sweet Turner.''  In
+addition to the house in Paternoster Row the little widow had a
+pretty riverside cottage at Hammersmith, and both were at the
+disposal of Lady Essex and her lover for stolen meetings.  Those
+meetings were put a stop to by the recovery of Lord Essex, and
+with his recovery his lordship exhibited a new mood of
+determination.  Backed by her ladyship's family, he ordered her
+to accompany him to their country place of Chartley.  Her
+ladyship had to obey.
+
+The stages of the journey were marked by the nightly illness of
+his lordship.  By the time they arrived at Chartley itself he was
+in a condition little if at all less dangerous than that from
+which he had been rescued by the King's physician.  His illness
+lasted for weeks, and during this time her ladyship wrote many a
+letter to Anne Turner and to Dr Forman.  She was afraid his
+lordship would live.  She was afraid his lordship would die.  She
+was afraid she would lose the love of Rochester.  She begged Anne
+Turner and Forman to work their best magic for her aid.  She was
+afraid that if his lordship recovered the spells might prove
+useless, that his attempts to assert his rights as a husband
+would begin again, and that there, in the heart of the country
+and so far from any refuge, they might take a form she would be
+unable to resist
+
+His lordship did recover.  His attempts to assert his rights as a
+husband did begin again.  The struggle between them, Frances
+constant in her obduracy, lasted several months.  Her obstinacy
+wore down his.  At long last he let her go.
+
+
+
+% III
+
+If the fate that overtook Frances Howard and Rochester, and with
+them Anne Turner and many another, is to be properly understood,
+a brief word on the political situation in England at this time
+will be needed--or, rather, a word on the political personages,
+with their antagonisms.
+
+Next in closeness to the King's ear after Rochester, and perhaps
+more trusted as a counsellor by that ``wise fool,'' there had
+been Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury, for a long time First
+Secretary of State.  But about the time when Lady Essex finally
+parted with her husband Cecil died, depriving England of her
+keenest brain and the staunchest heart in her causes.  If there
+had been no Rochester the likeliest man in the kingdom to succeed
+to the power and offices of Cecil would have been the Earl of
+Northampton, uncle of Lord Suffolk, who was the father of Lady
+Essex.  Northampton, as stated, held the office of Lord Privy
+Seal.
+
+The Howard family had done the State great service in the past. 
+Its present representatives, Northampton and Suffolk, were
+anxious to do the State great service, as they conceived it, in
+the future.  They were, however, Catholics in all but open
+acknowledgment, and as such were opposed by the Protestants, who
+had at their head Prince Henry.  This was an opposition that they
+might have stomached.  It was one that they might even have got
+over, for the Prince and his father, the King, were not the best
+of friends.  The obstacle to their ambitions, and one they found
+hard to stomach, was the upstart Rochester.  And even Rochester
+would hardly have stood in their way had his power in the Council
+depended on his own ability.  The brain that directed Robert Carr
+belonged to another man.  This was Sir Thomas Overbury.
+
+On the death of Cecil the real contenders for the vacant office
+of First Secretary of State--the highest office in the land--were
+not the wily Northampton and the relatively unintelligent
+Rochester, but the subtle Northampton and the quite as subtle,
+and perhaps more spacious-minded, Thomas Overbury.  There was, it
+will be apprehended, a possible weakness on the Overbury side. 
+The gemel-chain, like that of many links, is merely as strong as
+its weakest member.  Overbury had no approach to the King save
+through the King's favourite.  Rochester could have no real
+weight with the King, at least in affairs of State, except what
+he borrowed from Overbury.  Divided, the two were powerless.  No,
+more than that, there had to be no flaw in their linking.
+
+The wily Northampton, one may be certain, was fully aware of this
+possible weakness in the combination opposed to his advancement. 
+He would be fully aware, that is, that it was there potentially;
+but when he began, as his activities would indicate, to work for
+the creation of that flaw in the relationship between Rochester
+and Overbury it is unlikely that he knew the flaw had already
+begun to develop.  Unknown to him, circumstance already had begun
+to operate in his favour.
+
+Overbury was Rochester's tutor in more than appertained to
+affairs of State.  It is more than likely that in Carr's wooing
+of Lady Essex he had held the role of Cyrano de Bergerac, writing
+those gracefully turned letters and composing those accomplished
+verses which did so much to augment and give constancy to her
+ladyship's love for Rochester.  It is certain, at any rate, that
+Overbury was privy to all the correspondence passing between the
+pair, and that even such events as the supplying by Forman and
+Mrs Turner of that magic powder, and the Countess's use of it
+upon her husband, were well within his knowledge.
+
+While the affair between his alter ego and the Lady Essex might
+be looked upon as mere dalliance, a passionate episode likely to
+wither with a speed equal to that of its growth, Overbury, it is
+probable, found cynical amusement in helping it on.  But when, as
+time went on, the lady and her husband separated permanently, and
+from mere talk of a petition for annulment of the Essex marriage
+that petition was presented in actual form to the King, Overbury
+saw danger.  Northampton was backing the petition.  If it
+succeeded Lady Essex would be free to marry Rochester.  And the
+marriage, since Northampton was not the man to give except in the
+expectation of plenty, would plant the unwary Rochester on the
+hearth of his own and Overbury's enemies.  With Rochester in the
+Howard camp there would be short shrift for Thomas Overbury. 
+There would be, though Rochester in his infatuation seemed blind
+to the fact, as short a shrift as the Howards could contrive for
+the King's minion.
+
+In that march of inevitability which marks all real tragedy the
+road that is followed forks ever and again with an `if.'  And we
+who, across the distance of time, watch with a sort of Jovian
+pity the tragic puppets in their folly miss this fork and that
+fork on their road of destiny select, each according to our
+particular temperaments, a particular `if' over which to shake
+our heads.  For me, in this story of Rochester, Overbury, Frances
+Howard, and the rest, the point of tragedy, the most poignant of
+the issues, is the betrayal by Robert Carr of Overbury's
+friendship.  Though this story is essentially, or should be, that
+of the two women who were linked in fate with Rochester and his
+coadjutor, I am constrained to linger for a moment on that point.
+
+Overbury's counsel had made Carr great.  With nothing but his
+good looks and his personal charm, his only real attributes, Carr
+had been no more than King James's creature.  James, with all the
+pedantry, the laboured cunning, the sleezy weaknesses of
+character that make him so detestable, was yet too shrewd to have
+put power in the hands of the mere minion that Carr would have
+been without the brain of Overbury to guide him.  Of himself Carr
+was the `toom tabard' of earlier parlance in his native country,
+the `stuffed shirt' of a later and more remote generation.  But
+beyond the coalition for mutual help that existed between
+Overbury and Carr, an arrangement which might have thrived on a
+basis merely material, there was a deep and splendid friendship. 
+`Stuffed shirt' or not, Robert Carr was greatly loved by
+Overbury.  Whatever Overbury may have thought of Carr's mental
+attainments, he had the greatest faith in his loyalty as a
+friend.  And here lies the terrible pity in that `if' of my
+choice.  The love between the two men was great enough to have
+saved them both.  It broke on the weakness of Carr.
+
+Overbury was aware that, honestly presented, the petition by Lady
+Essex for the annulment of her marriage had little chance of
+success.  But for the obstinacy of Essex it might have been
+granted readily enough.  He had, however, as we have seen, forced
+her to live with him as his wife, in appearance at least, for
+several months in the country.  There now would be difficulty in
+putting forward the petition on the ground of non-consummation of
+the marriage.
+
+It was, nevertheless, on this ground that the petition was
+brought forward.  But the non-consummation was not attributed, as
+it might have been, to the continued separation that had begun at
+the altar; the reason given was the impotence of the husband. 
+Just what persuasion Northampton and the Howards used on Essex to
+make him accept this humiliating implication it is hard to
+imagine, but by the time the coarse wits of the period had done
+with him Essex was amply punished in ridicule for his primary
+obstinacy.
+
+Sir Thomas Overbury, well informed though he usually was, must
+have been a good deal in the dark regarding the negotiations
+which had brought the nullity suit to this forward state.  He had
+warned Rochester so frankly of the danger into which the scheme
+was likely to lead him that they had quarrelled and parted.  If
+Rochester had been frank with his friend, if, on the ground of
+their friendship, he had appealed to him to set aside his
+prejudice, it might well have been that the tragedy which ensued
+would have been averted.  Enough evidence remains to this day of
+Overbury's kindness for Robert Carr, there is enough proof of the
+man's abounding resource and wit, to give warrant for belief that
+he would have had the will, as he certainly had the ability, to
+help his friend.  Overbury was one of the brightest intelligences
+of his age.  Had Rochester confessed the extent of his commitment
+with Northampton there is little doubt that Overbury could and
+would have found a way whereby Rochester could have attained his
+object (of marriage with Frances Howard), and this without
+jeopardizing their mutual power to the Howard menace.
+
+In denying the man who had made him great the complete confidence
+which their friendship demanded Rochester took the tragically
+wrong path on his road of destiny.  But the truth is that when he
+quarrelled with Overbury he had already betrayed the friendship. 
+He had already embarked on the perilous experiment of straddling
+between two opposed camps.  It was an experiment that he, least
+of all men, had the adroitness to bring off.  He was never in
+such need of Overbury's brain as when he aligned himself in
+secret with Overbury's enemies.
+
+It is entirely probable that in linking up with Northampton
+Rochester had no mind to injure his friend.  The bait was the
+woman he loved.  Without Northampton's aid the nullity suit could
+not be put forward, and without the annulment there could be no
+marriage for him with Frances Howard.  But he had no sooner
+joined with Northampton than the very processes against which
+Overbury had warned him were begun.  Rochester was trapped, and
+with him Overbury.
+
+For the success of the suit, in Northampton's view, Overbury knew
+too much.  It was a view to which Rochester was readily
+persuaded; or it was one which he was easily frightened into
+accepting.  From that to joining in a plot for being rid of
+Overbury was but a step.  Grateful, perhaps, for the undoubted
+services that Overbury had rendered him, Rochester would be eager
+enough to find his quondam friend employment.  If that employment
+happened to take Overbury out of the country so much the better. 
+At one time the King, jealous as a woman of the friendship
+existing between his favourite and Overbury, had tried to shift
+the latter out of the way by an offer of the embassy in Paris. 
+It was an offer Rochester thought, that he might cause to be
+repeated.  The idea was broached to Overbury.  That shrewd
+individual, of course, saw through the suggestion to the
+intention behind it, but he was at a loss for an outlet for his
+talents, having left Rochester's employ, and he believed without
+immodesty that he could do useful work as ambassador in Paris.
+
+Overbury was offered an embassy--but in Muscovy.  He had no mind
+to bury himself in Russia, and he refused the offer on the ground
+of ill-health.  By doing this he walked into the trap prepared
+for him.  Northampton had foreseen the refusal when he promoted
+the offer on its rearranged terms.  The King, already incensed
+against Overbury for some hints at knowledge of facts liable to
+upset the Essex nullity suit, pretended indignation at the
+refusal.  Overbury unwarily repeated it before the Privy Council. 
+That was what Northampton wanted.  The refusal was high contempt
+of the King's majesty.  Sir Thomas Overbury was committed to the
+Tower.  He might have talked in Paris, or have written from
+Muscovy. He might safely do either in the Tower--where gags and
+bonds were so readily at hand.
+
+Did Rochester know of the springe set to catch Overbury?  The
+answer to the question, whether yes or no, hardly matters.  Since
+he was gull enough to discard the man whose brain had lifted him
+from a condition in which he was hardly better than the King's
+lap-dog, he was gull enough to be fooled by Northampton.  Since
+he valued the friendship of that honest man so little as to
+consort in secret with his enemies, he was knave enough to have
+been party to the betrayal.  Knave or fool--what does it matter? 
+He was so much of both that, in dread of what Sir Thomas might
+say or do to thwart the nullity suit, he let his friend rot in
+the Tower for months on end, let him sicken and nearly die
+several times, without a move to free him.  He did this to the
+man who had trusted him implicitly, a man that--to adapt
+Overbury's own words from his last poignant letter to
+Rochester--he had ``more cause to love . . . yea, perish for . .
+. rather than see perish.''
+
+It is not given to every man to have that greater love which will
+make him lay down his life for a friend, but it is the sheer
+poltroon and craven who will watch a friend linger and expire in
+agony without lifting a finger to save him.  Knave or fool--what
+does it matter when either is submerged in the coward?
+
+
+
+% IV
+
+Overbury lay in the Tower five months.  The commission appointed
+to examine into the Essex nullity suit went into session three
+weeks after he was imprisoned.  There happened to be one man in
+the commission who cared more to be honest than to humour the
+King.  This was the Archbishop Abbot.  The King himself had
+prepared the petition.  It was a task that delighted his
+pedantry, and his petition was designed for immediate acceptance. 
+But such was Abbot's opposition that in two or three months the
+commission ended with divided findings.
+
+Meantime Overbury in the Tower had been writing letters.  He had
+been talking to visitors.  As time went on, and Rochester did
+nothing to bring about his enlargement, his writings and sayings
+became more threatening Rochester's attitude was that patience
+was needed.  In time he would bring the King to a more clement
+view of Sir Thomas's offending, and he had no doubt that in the
+end he would be able to secure the prisoner both freedom and
+honourable employment.
+
+Overbury had been consigned to the Tower in April.  In June he
+complained of illness.  Rochester wrote to him in sympathetic
+terms, sending him a powder that he himself had found beneficial,
+and made his own physician visit the prisoner.
+
+But the threats which Overbury, indignant at his betrayal by
+Rochester, made by speech and writing were becoming common
+property in the city and at Court One of Overbury's visitors who
+had made public mention of Overbury's knowledge of facts likely
+to blow upon the Essex suit was arrested on the orders of
+Northampton.  In the absence of the King and Rochester from
+London the old Earl was acting as Chief Secretary of State--thus
+proving Overbury to have been a true prophet.  Northampton issued
+orders to the Tower that Overbury was to be closely confined,
+that his man Davies was to be dismissed, and that he was to be
+denied all visitors.  The then Lieutenant of the Tower, one Sir
+William Wade, was deprived of his position on the thinnest of
+pretexts, and, on the recommendation of Sir Thomas Monson, Master
+of the Armoury, an elderly gentleman from Lincolnshire, Sir
+Gervase Elwes, was put in his place.
+
+From that moment Sir Thomas Overbury was permitted no
+communication with the outer world, save by letter to Lord
+Rochester and for food that was brought him, as we shall
+presently see, at the instance of Mrs Turner.
+
+In place of his own servant Davies Sir Thomas was allowed the
+services of an under-keeper named Weston, appointed at the same
+time as Sir Gervase Elwes.  This man, it is perhaps important to
+note, had at one time been servant to Mrs Turner.
+
+The alteration in the personnel of the Tower was almost
+immediately followed by severe illness on the part of the
+prisoner.  The close confinement to which he was subjected, with
+the lack of exercise, could hardly have been the cause of such a
+violent sickness.  It looked more as if it had been brought about
+by something he had eaten or drunk.  By this time the conviction
+he had tried to resist, that Rochester was meanly sacrificing
+him, became definite.  Overbury is hardly to be blamed if he came
+to a resolution to be revenged on his one-time friend by bringing
+him to utter ruin.  King James had been so busy in the Essex
+nullity suit, had gone to such lengths to carry it through, that
+if it could be wrecked by the production of the true facts he
+would be bound to sacrifice Rochester to save his own face.  Sir
+Thomas had an accurate knowledge of the King's character.  He
+knew the scramble James was capable of making in a difficulty
+that involved his kingly dignity, and what little reck he had of
+the faces he trod on in climbing from a pit of his own digging. 
+By a trick Overbury contrived to smuggle a letter through to the
+honest Archbishop Abbot, in which he declared his possession of
+facts that would non-suit the nullity action, and begged to be
+summoned before the commission.
+
+Overbury was getting better of the sickness which had attacked
+him when suddenly it came upon him again.  This time he made no
+bones about saying that he had been poisoned.
+
+Even at the last Overbury had taken care to give Rochester a
+chance to prove his fidelity.  He contrived that the delivery of
+the letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury should be delayed
+until just before the nullity commission, now augmented by
+members certain to vote according to the King's desire, was due
+to sit again.  The Archbishop carried Overbury's letter to James,
+and insisted that Overbury should be heard.  The King, outward
+stickler that he was for the letter of the law, had to agree.
+
+On the Thursday of the week during which the commission was
+sitting Overbury was due to be called.  He was ill, but not so
+ill as he had been.  On the Tuesday he was visited by the King's
+physician.  On the Wednesday he was dead.
+
+Now, before we come to examine those evidences regarding
+Overbury's death that were to be brought forward in the series of
+trials of later date, that series which was to be known as ``the
+Great Oyer of Poisoning,'' it may be well to consider what effect
+upon the Essex nullity suit Overbury's appearance before the
+commission might have had.  It may be well to consider what
+reason Rochester had for keeping his friend in close confinement
+in the Tower, what reason there was for permitting Northampton to
+impose such cruelly rigorous conditions of imprisonment.
+
+The nullity suit succeeded.  A jury of matrons was impanelled,
+and made an examination of the lady appellant.  Its evidence was
+that she was virgo intacta.  Seven out of the twelve members of
+the packed commission voted in favour of the sentence of nullity.
+
+The kernel of the situation lies in the verdict of the jury of
+matrons.  Her ladyship was declared to be a maid.  If in the
+finding gossips and scandal-mongers found reason for laughter,
+and decent enough people cause for wonderment, they are hardly to
+be blamed.  If Frances Howard was a virgin, what reason was there
+for fearing anything Overbury might have said?  What knowledge
+had he against the suit that put Rochester and the Howards in
+such fear of him that they had to confine him in the Tower under
+such miserable conditions?  In what was he so dangerous that he
+had to be deprived of his faithful Davies, that he had to be put
+in the care of a Tower Lieutenant specially appointed?  The
+evidence given before the commission can still be read in almost
+verbatim report.  It is completely in favour of the plea of Lady
+Essex.  Sir Thomas Overbury's, had he given evidence, would have
+been the sole voice against the suit.  If he had said that in his
+belief the association of her ladyship with Rochester had been
+adulterous there was the physical fact adduced by the jury of
+matrons to confute him.  And being confuted in that, what might
+he have said that would not be attributed to rancour on his part? 
+That her ladyship, with the help of Mrs Turner and the wizard of
+Lambeth, had practised magic upon her husband, giving him powders
+that went near to killing him?  That she had lived in seclusion
+for several months with her husband at Chartley, and that the
+non-consummation of the marriage was due, not to the impotence of
+the husband, but to refusal to him of marital rights on the part
+of the wife because of her guilty love for Rochester?  His
+lordship of Essex was still alive, and there was abundant
+evidence before the court that there had been attempt to
+consummate the marriage.  Whatever Sir Thomas might have said
+would have smashed as evidence on that one fact.  Her ladyship
+was a virgin.
+
+What did Sir Thomas Overbury know that made every one whose
+interest it was to further the nullity suit so scared of
+him--Rochester, her ladyship, Northampton, the Howards, the King
+himself?
+
+Sir Thomas Overbury was much too cool-minded, too intelligent, to
+indulge in threats unless he was certain of the grounds, and
+solid upon them, upon which he made those threats.  He had too
+great a knowledge of affairs not to know that the commission
+would be a packed one, too great an acquaintance with the
+strategy of James to believe that his lonely evidence, unless of
+bombshell nature, would have a chance of carrying weight in a
+court of his Majesty's picking.  And, then, he was of too big a
+mind to put forward evidence which would have no effect but that
+of affording gossip for the scandal-mongers, and the giving of
+which would make him appear to be actuated by petty spite.  He
+had too great a sense of his own dignity to give himself anything
+but an heroic role.  Samson he might play, pulling the pillars of
+the temple together to involve his enemies, with himself, in
+magnificent and dramatic ruin.  But Iachimo--no.
+
+In the welter of evidence conflicting with apparent fact which
+was given before the commission and in the trials of the Great
+Oyer, in the mass of writing both contemporary and of later days
+round the Overbury mystery, it is hard indeed to land upon the
+truth.  Feasible solution is to be come upon only by accepting a
+not too pretty story which is retailed by Antony Weldon.  He says
+that the girl whom the jury of matrons declared to be virgo
+intacta was so heavily veiled as to be unidentifiable through the
+whole proceedings, and that she was not Lady Essex at all, but
+the youthful daughter of Sir Thomas Monson.
+
+Mrs Turner, we do know, was very much a favourite with the ladies
+of Sir Thomas Monson's family.  Gossip Weldon has a funny, if
+lewd, story to tell of high jinks indulged in by the Monson women
+and Mrs Turner in which Symon, Monson's servant, played an odd
+part.  This Symon was also employed by Mrs Turner to carry food
+to Overbury in the Tower.  If the substitution story has any
+truth in it it might well have been a Monson girl who played the
+part of the Countess.  But, of course, a Monson girl may have
+been chosen by the inventors to give verisimilitude to the
+substitution story, simply because the family was friendly with
+Turner, and the tale of the lewd high jinks with Symon added to
+make it seem more likely that old Lady Monson would lend herself
+to such a plot.
+
+If there was such a plot it is not at all unlikely that Overbury
+knew of it.  If there was need of such a scheme to bolster the
+nullity petition it would have had to be evolved while the
+petition was being planned--that is, a month or two before the
+commission went first into session.  At that time Overbury was
+still Rochester's secretary, still Rochester's confidant; and if
+such a scheme had been evolved for getting over an obstacle so
+fatal to the petition's success it was not in Rochester's nature
+to have concealed it from Overbury, the two men still being fast
+friends.  Indeed, it may have been Overbury who pointed out the
+need there would be for the Countess to undergo physical
+examination, and it may have been on the certainty that her
+ladyship could not do so that Overbury rested so securely--as he
+most apparently did, beyond the point of safety--in the idea that
+the suit was bound to fail.  It is legitimate enough to suppose,
+along this hypothesis, that this substitution plot was the very
+matter on which the two men quarrelled.
+
+That Overbury had knowledge of some such essential secret as this
+is manifest in the enmity towards the man which Lady Essex
+exhibited, even when he lay, out of the way of doing harm, in the
+Tower.  It is hard to believe that an innocent girl of twenty,
+conscious of her virgin chastity, in mere fear of scandal which
+she knew would be baseless, could pursue the life of a man with
+the venom that, as we shall presently see, Frances Howard used
+towards Overbury through Mrs Turner.
+
+
+
+% V
+
+As a preliminary to his marriage with Frances Howard, Rochester
+was created Earl of Somerset, and had the barony of Brancepeth
+bestowed on him by the King.  Overbury was three months in his
+grave when the marriage was celebrated in the midst of the most
+extravagant show and entertainment.
+
+The new Earl's power in the kingdom was never so high as at this
+time.  It was, indeed, at its zenith.  Decline was soon to set
+in.  It will not serve here to follow the whole process of decay
+in the King's favour that Somerset was now to experience.  There
+was poetic justice in his downfall.  With hands all about him
+itching to bring him to the ground, he had not the brain for the
+giddy heights.  If behind him there had been the man whose
+guidance had made him sure-footed in the climb he might have
+survived, flourishing.  But the man he had consigned to death had
+been more than half of him, had been, indeed, his substance. 
+Alone, with the power Overbury's talents had brought him,
+Somerset was bound to fail.  The irony of it is that his downfall
+was contrived by a creature of his own raising.
+
+Somerset had appointed Sir Ralph Winwood to the office of First
+Secretary of State.  In that office word came to Winwood from
+Brussels that new light had been thrown on the mysterious death
+of Sir Thomas Overbury.  Winwood investigated in secret.  An
+English lad, one Reeves, an apothecary's assistant, thinking
+himself dying, had confessed at Flushing that Overbury had been
+poisoned by an injection of corrosive sublimate.  Reeves himself
+had given the injection on the orders of his master, Loubel, the
+apothecary who had attended Overbury on the day before his death. 
+Winwood sought out Loubel, and from him went to Sir Gervase
+Elwes.  The story he was able to make from what he had from the
+two men he took to the King.  From this beginning rose up the
+Great Oyer of Poisoning.  The matter was put into the hands of
+the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Edward Coke.
+
+The lad Reeves, whose confession had started the matter, was
+either dead or dying abroad, and was so out of Coke's reach.  But
+the man who had helped the lad to administer the poisoned
+clyster, the under-keeper Weston, was at hand.  Weston was
+arrested, and examined by Coke.  The statement Coke's bullying
+drew from the man made mention of one Franklin, another
+apothecary, as having supplied a phial which Sir Gervase Elwes
+had taken and thrown away.  Weston had also received another
+phial by Franklin's son from Lady Essex.  This also Sir Gervase
+had taken and destroyed.  Then there had been tarts and jellies
+supplied by Mrs Turner.
+
+Coke had Mrs Turner and Franklin arrested, and after that Sir
+Gervase was taken as an accessory, and on his statement that he
+had employed Weston on Sir Thomas Monson's recommendation Sir
+Thomas also was roped in.  He maintained that he had been told to
+recommend Weston by Lady Essex and the Earl of Northampton.
+
+The next person to be examined by Coke was the apothecary Loubel,
+he who had attended Overbury on the day before his death.  Though
+in his confession the lad Reeves said that he had been given
+money and sent abroad by Loubel, this was a matter that Coke did
+not probe.  Loubel told Coke that he had given Overbury nothing
+but the physic prescribed by Sir Theodore Mayerne, the King's
+physician, and that in his opinion Overbury had died of
+consumption.  With this evidence Coke was very strangely
+content--or, at least, content as far as Loubel was concerned,
+for this witness was not summoned again.
+
+Other persons were examined by Coke, notably Overbury's servant
+Davies and his secretary Payton.  Their statements served to
+throw some suspicion on the Earl of Somerset.
+
+But if all the detail of these examinations were gone into we
+should never be done.  Our concern is with the two women
+involved, Anne Turner and the Countess of Somerset, as we must
+now call her.  I am going to quote, however, two paragraphs from
+Rafael Sabatini's romance The Minion that I think may explain why
+it is so difficult to come to the truth of the Overbury mystery. 
+They indicate how it was smothered by the way in which Coke
+rough-handled justice throughout the whole series of trials.
+
+
+On October 19th, at the Guildhall, began the Great Oyer of
+Poisoning, as Coke described it, with the trial of Richard
+Weston.
+
+Thus at the very outset the dishonesty of the proceedings is
+apparent.  Weston was an accessory.  Both on his own evidence and
+that of Sir Gervase Elwes, besides the apothecary's boy in
+Flushing, Sir Thomas Overbury had died following upon an
+injection prepared by Loubel.  Therefore Loubel was the
+principal, and only after Loubel's conviction could the field
+have been extended to include Weston and the others.  But Loubel
+was tried neither then nor subsequently, a circumstance regarded
+by many as the most mysterious part of what is known as the
+Overbury mystery, whereas, in fact, it is the clue to it.  Nor
+was the evidence of the coroner put in, so that there was no real
+preliminary formal proof that Overbury had been poisoned at all.
+
+
+Here Mr Sabatini is concerned to develop one of the underlying
+arguments of his story--namely, that it was King James himself
+who had ultimately engineered the death of Sir Thomas Overbury. 
+It is an argument which I would not attempt to refute.  I do not
+think that Mr Sabatini's acumen has failed him in the least.  But
+the point for me in the paragraphs is the indication they give of
+how much Coke did to suppress all evidence that did not suit his
+purpose.
+
+Weston's trial is curious in that at first he refused to plead. 
+It is the first instance I have met with in history of a prisoner
+standing `mute of malice.'  Coke read him a lecture on the
+subject, pointing out that by his obstinacy he was making himself
+liable to peine forte et dure, which meant that order could be
+given for his exposure in an open place near the prison, extended
+naked, and to have weights laid upon him in increasing amount, he
+being kept alive with the ``coarsest bread obtainable and water
+from the nearest sink or puddle to the place of execution, that
+day he had water having no bread, and that day he had bread
+having no water.''  One may imagine with what grim satisfaction
+Coke ladled this out.  It had its effect on Weston.
+
+He confessed that Mrs Turner had promised to give him a reward if
+he would poison Sir Thomas Overbury.  In May she had sent him a
+phial of ``rosalgar,'' and he had received from her tarts
+poisoned with mercury sublimate.  He was charged with having, at
+Mrs Turner's instance, joined with an apothecary's boy in
+administering an injection of corrosive sublimate to Sir Thomas
+Overbury, from which the latter died.  Coke's conduct of the case
+obscures just how much Weston admitted, but, since it convinced
+the jury of Weston's guilt, the conviction served finely for
+accusation against Mrs Turner.
+
+Two days after conviction Weston was executed at Tyburn.
+
+The trial of Anne Turner began in the first week of November.  It
+would be easy to make a pathetic figure of the comely little
+widow as she stood trembling under Coke's bullying, but she was,
+in actual fact, hardly deserving of pity.  It is far from
+enlivening to read of Coke's handling of the trial, and it is
+certain that Mrs Turner was condemned on an indictment and
+process which to-day would not have a ghost of a chance of
+surviving appeal, but it is perfectly plain that Anne was party
+to one of the most vicious poisoning plots ever engineered.
+
+We have, however, to consider this point in extenuation for her. 
+It is almost certain that in moving to bring about the death of
+Overbury she had sanction, if only tacit, from the Earl of
+Northampton.  By the time that the Great Oyer began Northampton
+was dead.  Two years had elapsed from the death of Overbury.  It
+would be quite clear to Anne that, in the view of the powerful
+Howard faction, the elimination of Overbury was politically
+desirable.  It should be remembered, too, that she lived in a
+period when assassination, secret or by subverted process of
+justice, was a commonplace political weapon.  Public executions
+by methods cruel and even obscene taught the people to hold human
+life at small value, and hardened them to cruelties that made
+poisoning seem a mercy.  It is not at all unlikely that, though
+her main object may have been to help forward the plans of her
+friend the Countess, Anne considered herself a plotter in high
+affairs of State.
+
+The indictment against her was that she had comforted, aided, and
+abetted Weston--that is to say, she was made an accessory.  If,
+however, as was accused, she procured Weston and Reeves to
+administer the poisonous injection she was certainly a principal,
+and as such should have been tried first or at the same time as
+Weston.  But Weston was already hanged, and so could not be
+questioned.  His various statements were used against her
+unchallenged, or, at least, when challenging them was useless.
+
+The indictment made no mention of her practices against the Earl
+of Essex, but from the account given in the State Trials it would
+seem that evidence on this score was used to build the case
+against her.  Her relations with Dr Forman, now safely dead, were
+made much of.  She and the Countess of Essex had visited the
+charlatan and had addressed him as ``Father.''  Their reason for
+visiting, it was said, was that ``by force of magick he should
+procure the then Viscount of Rochester to love the Countess and
+Sir Arthur Mainwaring to love Mrs Turner, by whom she had three
+children.''  Letters from the Countess to Turner were read.  They
+revealed the use on Lord Essex of those powders her ladyship had
+been given by Forman.  The letters had been found by Forman's
+wife in a packet among Forman's possessions after his death. 
+These, with others and with several curious objects exhibited in
+court, had been demanded by Mrs Turner after Forman's demise. 
+Mrs Turner had kept them, and they were found in her house.
+
+As indicating the type of magic practised by Forman these objects
+are of interest.  Among other figures, probably nothing more than
+dolls of French make, there was a leaden model of a man and woman
+in the act of copulation, with the brass mould from which it had
+been cast.  There was a black scarf ornamented with white
+crosses, papers with cabalistic signs, and sundry other exhibits
+which appear to have created superstitious fear in the crowd
+about the court.  It is amusing to note that while those exhibits
+were being examined one of the scaffolds erected for seating gave
+way or cracked ominously, giving the crowd a thorough scare.  It
+was thought that the devil himself, raised by the power of those
+uncanny objects, had got into the Guildhall.  Consternation
+reigned for quite a quarter of an hour.
+
+There was also exhibited Forman's famous book of signatures, in
+which Coke is supposed to have encountered his own wife's name on
+the first page.
+
+Franklin, apothecary, druggist, necromancer, wizard, and born
+liar, had confessed to supplying the poisons intended for use
+upon Overbury.  He declared that Mrs Turner had come to him from
+the Countess and asked him to get the strongest poisons
+procurable.  He ``accordingly bought seven: viz., aqua fortis,
+white arsenic, mercury, powder of diamonds, lapis costitus, great
+spiders, cantharides.''  Franklin's evidence is a palpable tissue
+of lies, full of statements that contradict each other, but it is
+likely enough, judging from facts elicited elsewhere, that his
+list of poisons is accurate.  Enough poison passed from hand to
+hand to have slain an army.
+
+Mention is made by Weldon of the evidence given by Symon, servant
+to Sir Thomas Monson, who had been employed by Mrs Turner to
+carry a jelly and a tart to the Tower.  Symon appears to have
+been a witty fellow.  He was, ``for his pleasant answer,''
+dismissed by Coke.
+
+
+My lord told him:  ``Symon, you have had a hand in this poisoning
+business----''
+
+``No, my good lord, I had but a finger in it, which almost cost
+me my life, and, at the best, cost me all my hair and nails.'' 
+For the truth was that Symon was somewhat liquorish, and finding
+the syrup swim from the top of the tart as he carried it, he did
+with his finger skim it off: and it was believed, had he known
+what it had been, he would not have been his taster at so dear a
+rate.
+    
+Coke, with his bullying methods and his way of acting both as
+judge and chief prosecutor, lacks little as prototype for the
+later Judge Jeffreys.  Even before the jury retired he was at
+pains to inform Mrs Turner that she had the seven deadly sins:
+viz., a whore, a bawd, a sorcerer, a witch, a papist, a felon,
+and a murderer, the daughter of the devil Forman.''[13]  And
+having given such a Christian example throughout the trial, he
+besought her ``to repent, and to become the servant of Jesus
+Christ, and to pray Him to cast out the seven devils.''  It was
+upon this that Anne begged the Lord Chief Justice to be merciful
+to her, putting forward the plea of having been brought up with
+the Countess of Essex, and of having been ``a long time her
+servant.''  She declared that she had not known of poison in the
+things that were sent to Sir Thomas Overbury.
+
+
+[13] State Trials.
+
+
+
+The jury's retirement was not long-drawn.  They found her guilty.
+
+Says Weldon:
+
+The Wednesday following she was brought from the sheriff's in a
+coach to Newgate and there was put into a cart, and casting money
+often among the people as she was carried to Tyburn, where she
+was executed, and whither many men and women of fashion followed
+her in coaches to see her die.
+
+Her speeches before execution were pious, like most speeches of
+the sort, and ``moved the spectators to great pity and grief for
+her.''  She again related ``her breeding with the Countess of
+Somerset,'' and pleaded further of ``having had no other means to
+maintain her and her children but what came from the Countess.'' 
+This last, of course, was less than the truth.  Anne was not so
+indigent that she needed to take to poisoning as a means of
+supporting her family.  She also said ``that when her hand was
+once in this business she knew the revealing of it would be her
+overthrow.''    
+
+In more than one account written later of her execution she is
+said to have worn a ruff and cuffs dressed with the yellow starch
+which she had made so fashionable, and it is maintained that this
+association made the starch thereafter unpopular.  It is
+forgotten that with Anne the recipe for the yellow starch
+probably was lost.  Moreover, the elaborate ruff was then being
+put out of fashion by the introduction of the much more
+comfortable lace collar. In any case, ``There is no truth,''
+writes Judge Parry,
+
+
+in the old story[14] that Coke ordered her to be executed in the
+yellow ruff she had made the fashion and so proudly worn in
+Court.  What did happen, according to Sir Simonds d'Ewes, was
+that the hangman, a coarse ruffian with a distorted sense of
+humour, dressed himself in bands and cuffs of yellow colour, but
+no one heeded his ribaldry; only in after days none of either sex
+used the yellow starch, and the fashion grew generally to be
+detested.
+
+
+[14] Probably started by Michael Sparke (``Scintilla'') in Truth
+Brought to Light (1651).
+
+
+
+Pretty much, I should think, as the tall `choker' became detested
+within the time of many of us.    After Mrs Turner Sir Gervase
+Elwes was brought to trial as an accessory.  The only evidence
+against him was that of the liar Franklin, who asserted that Sir
+Gervase had been in league with the Countess.  It was plain,
+however, both from Weston's statements and from Sir Gervase's
+own, that the Lieutenant of the Tower had done his very best to
+defeat the Turner-Essex-Northampton plot for the poisoning of
+Overbury, throwing away the ``rosalgar'' and later draughts, as
+well as substituting food from his own kitchen for that sent in
+by Turner.  ``Although it must have been clear that if any of
+what was alleged against him had been true Overbury's poisoning
+would never have taken five months to accomplish, he was
+sentenced and hanged.''[15]
+
+
+[15] Sabatini, The Minion.
+
+
+
+This, of course, was a glaring piece of injustice, but Coke no
+doubt had his instructions.  Weston, Mrs Turner, Elwes, and,
+later, Franklin had to be got out of the way, so that they could
+not be confronted with the chief figure against whom the Great
+Oyer was directed, and whom it was designed to pull down, Robert
+Carr, Earl of Somerset --and with him his wife.  Just as much of
+the statements and confessions of the prisoners in the four
+preliminary trials was used by Coke as suited his purpose.  It is
+pointed out by Amos, in his Great Oyer of Poisoning, that a large
+number of the documents appertaining to the Somerset trial show
+corrections and apparent glosses in Coke's own handwriting, and
+that even the confessions on the scaffold of some of the
+convicted are holographs by Coke.  As a sample of the suppression
+of which Coke was guilty I may put forward the fact that
+Somerset's note to his own physician, Craig, asking him to visit
+Overbury, was not produced.  Yet great play was made by Coke of
+this visit against Somerset.  Wrote Somerset to Craig, ``I pray
+you let him have your best help, and as much of your company as
+he shall require.''
+
+It was never proved that it was Anne Turner and Lady Essex who
+corrupted the lad Reeves, who with Weston administered the
+poisoned clyster that murdered Overbury.  Nothing was done at all
+to absolve the apothecary Loubel, Reeves's master, of having
+prepared the poisonous injection, nor Sir Theodore Mayerne, the
+King's physician, of having been party to its preparation.  Yet
+it was demonstrably the injection that killed Overbury if he was
+killed by poison at all.  It is certain that the poisons sent to
+the Tower by Turner and the Countess did not save in early
+instances, get to Overbury at all--Elwes saw to that--or Overbury
+must have died months before he did die.
+
+According to Weldon, who may be supposed to have witnessed the
+trials, Franklin confessed ``that Overbury was smothered to
+death, not poisoned to death, though he had poison given him.'' 
+And Weldon goes on to make this curious comment:
+
+
+Here was Coke glad, how to cast about to bring both ends
+together, Mrs Turner and Weston being already hanged for killing
+Overbury with poison; but he, being the very quintessence of the
+law, presently informs the jury that if a man be done to death
+with pistols, poniards, swords, halter, poison, etc., so he be
+done to death, the indictment is good if he be but indicted for
+any of those ways.  But the good lawyers of those times were not
+of that opinion, but did believe that Mrs Turner was directly
+murthered by my lord Coke's law as Overbury was without any law.
+
+
+Though you will look in vain through the reports given in the
+State Trials for any speech of Coke to the jury in exactly these
+terms, it might be just as well to remember that the
+transcriptions from which the Trials are printed were prepared
+UNDER Coke's SUPERVISION, and that they, like the confessions of
+the convicted, are very often in his own handwriting.
+
+At all events, even on the bowdlerized evidence that exists, it
+is plain that Anne Turner should have been charged only with
+attempted murder.  Of that she was manifestly guilty and,
+according to the justice of the time, thoroughly deserved to be
+hanged.  The indictment against her was faulty, and the case
+against her as full of holes as a colander.  Her trial was
+`cooked' in more senses than one.
+
+It was some seven months after the execution of Anne Turner that
+the Countess of Essex was brought to trial.  This was in May.  In
+December, while virtually a prisoner under the charge of Sir
+William Smith at Lord Aubigny's house in Blackfriars, she had
+given birth to a daughter.  In March she had been conveyed to the
+Tower, her baby being handed over to the care of her mother, the
+Countess of Suffolk.  Since the autumn of the previous year she
+had not been permitted any communication with her husband, nor he
+with her.  He was already lodged in the Tower when she arrived
+there.
+
+On a day towards the end of May she was conveyed by water from
+the Tower to Westminster Hall.  The hall was packed to
+suffocation, seats being paid for at prices which would turn a
+modern promoter of a world's heavyweight-boxing-championship
+fight green with envy.  Her judges were twenty-two peers of the
+realm, with the Lord High Steward, the Lord Chief Justice, and
+seven judges at law.  It was a pageant of colour, in the midst of
+which the woman on trial, in her careful toilette, consisting of
+a black stammel gown, a cypress chaperon or black crepe hood in
+the French fashion, relieved by touches of white in the cuffs and
+ruff of cobweb lawn, struck a funereal note.  Preceded by the
+headsman carrying his axe with its edge turned away from her, she
+was conducted to the bar by the Lieutenant of the Tower.  The
+indictment was read to her, and at its end came the question: 
+``Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset, how sayest thou?  Art
+thou guilty of this felony and murder or not guilty?''
+
+There was a hushed pause for a moment; then came the low-voiced
+answer:  ``Guilty.''
+
+Sir Francis Bacon, the Attorney-General--himself to appear in the
+same place not long after to answer charges of bribery and
+corruption--now addressed the judges.  His eloquent address was a
+commendation of the Countess's confession, and it hinted at royal
+clemency.
+
+In answer to the formal demand of the Clerk of Arraigns if she
+had anything to say why judgment of death should not be given
+against her the Countess made a barely audible plea for mercy,
+begging their lordships to intercede for her with the King.  Then
+the Lord High Steward, expressing belief that the King would be
+moved to mercy, delivered judgment.  She was to be taken thence
+to the Tower of London, thence to the place of execution, where
+she was to be hanged by the neck until she was dead--and might
+the Lord have mercy on her soul.
+
+The attendant women hastened to the side of the swaying woman. 
+And now the halbardiers formed escort about her, the headsman in
+front, with the edge of his axe turned towards her in token of
+her conviction, and she was led away.
+
+
+
+% VI
+
+It is perfectly clear that the Countess of Somerset was led to
+confess on the promise of the King's mercy.  It is equally clear
+that she did not know what she was confessing to.  Whatever might
+have been her conspiracy with Anne Turner it is a practical
+certainty that it did not result in the death of Thomas Overbury. 
+There is no record of her being allowed any legal advice in the
+seven months that had elapsed since she had first been made a
+virtual prisoner.  She had been permitted no communication with
+her husband.  For all she knew, Overbury might indeed have died
+from the poison which she had caused to be sent to the Tower in
+such quantity and variety.  And she went to trial at Westminster
+guilty in conscience, her one idea being to take the blame for
+having brought about the murder of Overbury, thinking by that to
+absolve her husband of any share in the plot.  She could not have
+known that her plea of guilty would weaken Somerset's defence. 
+The woman who could go to such lengths in order to win her
+husband was unlikely to have done anything that might put him in
+jeopardy.  One can well imagine with what fierceness she would
+have fought her case had she thought that by doing so she could
+have helped the man she loved.
+
+But Frances Howard, no less than her accomplice Anne Turner, was
+the victim of a gross subversion of justice.  That she was guilty
+of a cruel and determined attempt to poison Overbury is beyond
+question, and, being guilty of that, she was thoroughly deserving
+of the fate that overcame Anne Turner, but that at the last she
+was allowed to escape.  Her confession, however, shackled
+Somerset at his trial.  It put her at the King's mercy.  Without
+endangering her life Somerset dared not come to the crux of his
+defence, which would have been to demand why Loubel had been
+allowed to go free, and why the King's physician, Mayerne, had
+not been examined.  To prevent Somerset from asking those
+questions, which must have given the public a sufficient hint of
+King James's share in the murder of Overbury, two men stood
+behind the Earl all through his trial with cloaks over their
+arms, ready to muffle him.  But, whatever may be said of
+Somerset, the prospect of the cloaks would not have stopped him
+from attempting those questions.  He had sent word to King James
+that he was ``neither Gowrie nor Balmerino,'' those two earlier
+victims of James's treachery.  The thing that muffled him was the
+threat to withdraw the promised mercy to his Countess.  And so he
+kept silent, to be condemned to death as his wife had been, and
+to join her in the Tower.
+
+Five weary years were the couple to eat their hearts out there,
+their death sentences remitted, before their ultimate banishment
+far from the Court to a life of impoverished obscurity in the
+country.  Better for them, one would think, if they had died on
+Tower Green.  It is hard to imagine that the dozen years or so
+which they were to spend together could contain anything of
+happiness for them--she the confessed would-be poisoner, and he
+haunted by the memory of that betrayal of friendship which had
+begun the process of their double ruin.  Frances Howard died in
+1632, her husband twenty-three years later.  The longer lease of
+life could have been no blessing to the fallen favourite.
+
+There is a portrait of Frances Howard in the National Portrait
+Gallery by an unknown artist.  It is an odd little face which
+appears above the elaborate filigree of the stiff lace ruff and
+under the carefully dressed bush of dark brown hair.  With her
+gay jacket of red gold-embroidered, and her gold-ornamented grey
+gown, cut low to show the valley between her young breasts, she
+looks like a child dressed up.  If there is no great indication
+of the beauty which so many poets shed ink over there is less
+promise of the dire determination which was to pursue a man's
+life with cruel poisons over several months.  It is, however, a
+narrow little face, and there is a tight-liddedness about the
+eyes which in an older woman might indicate the bigot.  Bigot she
+proved herself to be, if it be bigotry in a woman to love a man
+with an intensity that will not stop at murder in order to win
+him.  That is the one thing that may be said for Frances Howard. 
+She did love Robert Carr.  She loved him to his ruin.
+
+
+
+
+IV: A MODEL FOR MR HOGARTH
+
+On a Sunday, the 5th of February, 1733, there came toddling into
+that narrow passage of the Temple known as Tanfield Court an
+elderly lady by the name of Mrs Love.  It was just after one
+o'clock of the afternoon.  The giants of St Dunstan's behind her
+had only a minute before rapped out the hour with their clubs.
+
+Mrs Love's business was at once charitable and social.  She was
+going, by appointment made on the previous Friday night, to eat
+dinner with a frail old lady named Mrs Duncomb, who lived in
+chambers on the third floor of one of the buildings that had
+entry from the court.  Mrs Duncomb was the widow of a law
+stationer of the City.  She had been a widow for a good number of
+years.  The deceased law stationer, if he had not left her rich,
+at least had left her in fairly comfortable circumstances.  It
+was said about the environs that she had some property, and this
+fact, combined with the other that she was obviously nearing the
+end of life's journey, made her an object of melancholy interest
+to the womenkind of the neighbourhood.
+
+Mrs Duncomb was looked after by a couple of servants.  One of
+them, Betty Harrison, had been the old lady's companion for a
+lifetime.  Mrs Duncomb, described as ``old,'' was only sixty.[16] 
+Her weakness and bodily condition seem to have made her appear
+much older.  Betty, then, also described as ``old,'' may have
+been of an age with her mistress, or even older.  She was, at all
+events, not by much less frail.  The other servant was a
+comparatively new addition to the establishment, a fresh little
+girl of about seventeen, Ann (or Nanny) Price by name.
+
+
+[16] According to one account.  The Newgate Calendar (London
+1773) gives Mrs Duncomb's age as eighty and that of the maid
+Betty as sixty.
+
+
+
+Mrs Love climbed the three flights of stairs to the top landing. 
+It surprised her, or disturbed her, but little that she found no
+signs of life on the various floors, because it was, as we have
+seen, a Sunday.  The occupants of the chambers of the staircase,
+mostly gentlemen connected in one way or another with the law,
+would be, she knew abroad for the eating of their Sunday dinners,
+either at their favourite taverns or at commons in the Temple
+itself.  What did rather disturb kindly Mrs Love was the fact
+that she found Mrs Duncomb's outer door closed--an unwonted
+fact--and it faintly surprised her that no odour of cooking
+greeted her nostrils.
+
+Mrs Love knocked.  There was no reply.  She knocked, indeed, at
+intervals over a period of some fifteen minutes, still obtaining
+no response.  The disturbed sense of something being wrong became
+stronger and stronger in the mind of Mrs Love.
+
+On the night of the previous Friday she had been calling upon Mrs
+Duncomb, and she had found the old lady very weak, very nervous,
+and very low in spirits.  It had not been a very cheerful visit
+all round, because the old maidservant, Betty Harrison, had also
+been far from well.  There had been a good deal of talk between
+the old women of dying, a subject to which their minds had been
+very prone to revert.  Besides Mrs Love there were two other
+visitors, but they too failed to cheer the old couple up.  One of
+the visitors, a laundress of the Temple called Mrs Oliphant, had
+done her best, poohpoohing such melancholy talk, and attributing
+the low spirits in which the old women found themselves to the
+bleakness of the February weather, and promising them that they
+would find a new lease of life with the advent of spring.  But
+Mrs Betty especially had been hard to console.
+
+``My mistress,'' she had said to cheerful Mrs Oliphant, ``will
+talk of dying.  And she would have me die with her.''
+
+As she stood in considerable perturbation of mind on the
+cheerless third-floor landing that Sunday afternoon Mrs Love
+found small matter for comfort in her memory of the Friday
+evening.  She remembered that old Mrs Duncomb had spoken
+complainingly of the lonesomeness which had come upon her floor
+by the vacation of the chambers opposite her on the landing.  The
+tenant had gone a day or two before, leaving the rooms empty of
+furniture, and the key with a Mr Twysden.
+
+Mrs. Love, turning to view the door opposite to that on which she
+had been rapping so long and so ineffectively, had a shuddery
+feeling that she was alone on the top of the world.
+
+She remembered how she had left Mrs Duncomb on the Friday night. 
+Mrs Oliphant had departed first, accompanied by the second
+visitor, one Sarah Malcolm, a charwoman who had worked for Mrs
+Duncomb up to the previous Christmas, and who had called in to
+see how her former employer was faring.  An odd, silent sort of
+young woman this Sarah, good-looking in a hardfeatured sort of
+way, she had taken but a very small part in the conversation, but
+had sat staring rather sullenly into the fire by the side of
+Betty Harrison, or else casting a flickering glance about the
+room.  Mrs Love, before following the other two women downstairs,
+had helped the ailing Betty to get Mrs Duncomb settled for the
+night.  In the dim candle-light and the faint glow of the fire
+that scarce illumined the wainscoted room the high tester-bed of
+the old lady, with its curtains, had seemed like a shadowed
+catafalque, an illusion nothing lessened by the frail old figure
+under the bedclothing.
+
+It came to the mind of Mrs Love that the illness manifesting
+itself in Betty on the Friday night had worsened.  Nanny, she
+imagined, must have gone abroad on some errand.  The old servant,
+she thought, was too ill to come to the door, and her voice would
+be too weak to convey an answer to the knocking.  Mrs Love, not
+without a shudder for the chill feeling of that top landing,
+betook herself downstairs again to make what inquiry she might. 
+It happened that she met one of her fellow-visitors of the Friday
+night, Mrs Oliphant.
+
+Mrs Oliphant was sympathetic, but could not give any information. 
+She had seen no member of the old lady's establishment that day. 
+She could only advise Mrs Love to go upstairs again and knock
+louder.
+
+This Mrs Love did, but again got no reply.  She then evolved the
+theory that Betty had died during the night, and that Nanny, Mrs
+Duncomb being confined to bed, had gone to look for help,
+possibly from her sister, and to find a woman who would lay out
+the body of the old servant.  With this in her mind Mrs Love
+descended the stairs once more, and went to look for another
+friend of Mrs Duncomb's, a Mrs Rhymer.
+
+Mrs Rhymer was a friend of the old lady's of some thirty years'
+standing.  She was, indeed, named as executrix in Mrs Duncomb's
+will.  Mrs Love finding her and explaining the situation as she
+saw it, Mrs Rhymer at once returned with Mrs Love to Tanfield
+Court.
+
+The two women ascended the stairs, and tried pushing the old
+lady's door.  It refused to yield to their efforts.  Then Mrs
+Love went to the staircase window that overlooked the court, and
+gazed around to see if there was anyone about who might help. 
+Some distance away, at the door, we are told, ``of my Lord Bishop
+of Bangor,'' was the third of Friday night's visitors to Mrs
+Duncomb, the charwoman named Sarah Malcolm.  Mrs Love hailed her.
+
+``Prithee, Sarah,'' begged Mrs Love, ``go and fetch a smith to
+open Mrs Duncomb's door.''
+
+``I will go at all speed,'' Sarah assured her, with ready
+willingness, and off she sped.  Mrs Love and Mrs Rhymer waited
+some time.  Sarah came back with Mrs Oliphant in tow, but had
+been unable to secure the services of a locksmith.  This was
+probably due to the fact that it was a Sunday.
+
+By now both Mrs Love and Mrs Rhymer had become deeply
+apprehensive, and the former appealed to Mrs Oliphant.  ``I do
+believe they are all dead, and the smith is not come!'' cried Mrs
+Love.  ``What shall we do, Mrs Oliphant?''
+
+Mrs Oliphant, much younger than the others, seems to have been a
+woman of resource.  She had from Mr Twysden, she said, the key of
+the vacant chambers opposite to Mrs Duncomb's.  ``Now let me
+see,'' she continued, ``if I cannot get out of the back chamber
+window into the gutter, and so into Mrs Duncomb's apartment.''
+
+The other women urged her to try.[17]  Mrs Oliphant set off, her
+heels echoing in the empty rooms.  Presently the waiting women
+heard a pane snap, and they guessed that Mrs Oliphant had broken
+through Mrs Duncomb's casement to get at the handle.  They heard,
+through the door, the noise of furniture being moved as she got
+through the window.  Then came a shriek, the scuffle of feet. 
+The outer door of Mrs Duncomb's chambers was flung open.  Mrs
+Oliphant, ashen-faced, appeared on the landing.  ``God!  Oh,
+gracious God!'' she cried.  ``They're all murdered!
+
+
+[17] One account says it was Sarah Malcolm who entered via the
+gutter and window.  Borrow, however, in his Celebrated Trials,
+quotes Mrs Oliphant's evidence in court on this point.
+
+
+
+% II
+
+All four women pressed into the chambers.  All three of the women
+occupying them had been murdered.  In the passage or lobby little
+Nanny Price lay in her bed in a welter of blood, her throat
+savagely cut.  Her hair was loose and over her eyes, her clenched
+hands all bloodied about her throat.  It was apparent that she
+had struggled desperately for life.  Next door, in the
+dining-room, old Betty Harrison lay across the press-bed in which
+she usually slept.  Being in the habit of keeping her gown on for
+warmth, as it was said, she was partially dressed.  She had been
+strangled, it seemed, ``with an apron-string or a pack-thread,''
+for there was a deep crease about her neck and the bruised
+indentations as of knuckles.  In her bedroom, also across her
+bed, lay the dead body of old Mrs Duncomb.  There had been here
+also an attempt to strangle, an unnecessary attempt it appeared,
+for the crease about the neck was very faint.  Frail as the old
+lady had been, the mere weight of the murderer's body, it was
+conjectured, had been enough to kill her.
+
+These pathological details were established on the arrival later
+of Mr Bigg, the surgeon, fetched from the Rainbow Coffee-house
+near by by Fairlow, one of the Temple porters.  But the four
+women could see enough for themselves, without the help of Mr
+Bigg, to understand how death had been dealt in all three cases. 
+They could see quite clearly also for what motive the crime had
+been committed.  A black strong-box, with papers scattered about
+it, lay beside Mrs Duncomb's bed, its lid forced open.  It was in
+this box that the old lady had been accustomed to keep her money.
+
+If any witness had been needed to say what the black box had
+contained there was Mrs Rhymer, executrix under the old lady's
+will.  And if Mrs. Rhymer had been at any need to refresh her
+memory regarding the contents opportunity had been given her no
+farther back than the afternoon of the previous Thursday.  On
+that day she had called upon Mrs Duncomb to take tea and to talk
+affairs.  Three or four years before, with her rapidly increasing
+frailness, the old lady's memory had begun to fail.  Mrs Rhymer
+acted for her as a sort of unofficial curator bonis, receiving
+her money and depositing it in the black box, of which she kept
+the key.
+
+On the Thursday, old Betty and young Nanny being sent from the
+room, the old lady had told Mrs Rhymer that she needed some
+money--a guinea.  Mrs Rhymer had gone through the solemn process
+of opening the black box, and, one must suppose--old ladies
+nearing their end being what they are--had been at need to tell
+over the contents of the box for the hundredth time, just to
+reassure Mrs Duncomb that she thoroughly understood the duties
+she had agreed to undertake as executrix
+
+At the top of the box was a silver tankard.  It had belonged to
+Mrs Duncomb's husband.  In the tankard was a hundred pounds. 
+Beside the tankard lay a bag containing guinea pieces to the
+number of twenty or so.  This was the bag that Mrs Rhymer had
+carried over to the old lady's chair by the fire, in order to
+take from it the needed guinea.
+
+There were some half-dozen packets of money in the box, each
+sealed with black wax and set aside for particular purposes after
+Mrs Duncomb's death.  Other sums, greater in quantity than those
+contained in the packets, were earmarked in the same way.  There
+was, for example, twenty guineas set aside for the old lady's
+burial, eighteen moidores to meet unforeseen contingencies, and
+in a green purse some thirty or forty shillings, which were to be
+distributed among poor people of Mrs Duncomb's acquaintance.  The
+ritual of telling over the box contents, if something ghostly,
+had had its usual effect of comforting the old lady's mind.  It
+consoled her to know that all arrangements were in order for her
+passing in genteel fashion to her long home, that all the
+decorums of respectable demise would be observed, and that ``the
+greatest of these'' would not be forgotten.  The ritual over, the
+black box was closed and locked, and on her departure Mrs Rhymer
+had taken away the key as usual.
+
+The motive for the crime, as said, was plain.  The black box had
+been forced, and there was no sign of tankard, packets, green
+purse, or bag of guineas.
+
+The horror and distress of the old lady's friends that Sunday
+afternoon may better be imagined than described.  Loudest of the
+four, we are told, was Sarah Malcolm.  It is also said that she
+was, however, the coolest, keen to point out the various methods
+by which the murderers (for the crime to her did not look like a
+single-handed effort) could have got into the chambers.  She drew
+attention to the wideness of the kitchen chimney and to the
+weakness of the lock in the door to the vacant rooms on the other
+side of the landing.  She also pointed out that, since the bolt
+of the spring-lock of the outer door to Mrs Duncomb's rooms had
+been engaged when they arrived, the miscreants could not have
+used that exit.
+
+This last piece of deduction on Sarah's part, however, was made
+rather negligible by experiments presently carried out by the
+porter, Fairlow, with the aid of a piece of string.  He showed
+that a person outside the shut door could quite easily pull the
+bolt to on the inside.
+
+The news of the triple murder quickly spread, and it was not long
+before a crowd had collected in Tanfield Court, up the stairs to
+Mrs. Duncomb's landing, and round about the door of Mrs Duncomb's
+chambers.  It did not disperse until the officers had made their
+investigations and the bodies of the three victims had been
+removed.  And even then, one may be sure, there would still be a
+few of those odd sort of people hanging about who, in those times
+as in these, must linger on the scene of a crime long after the
+last drop of interest has evaporated.
+
+
+
+
+% III
+
+Two further actors now come upon the scene.  And for the proper
+grasping of events we must go back an hour or two in time to
+notice their activities.
+
+They are a Mr Gehagan, a young Irish barrister, and a friend of
+his named Kerrel.[18]  These young men occupy chambers on
+opposite sides of the same landing, the third floor, over the
+Alienation Office in Tanfield Court.
+
+
+[18] Or Kerrol--the name varies in different accounts of the
+crime.
+
+
+
+Mr Gehagan was one of Sarah Malcolm's employers.  That Sunday
+morning at nine she had appeared in his rooms to do them up and
+to light the fire.  While Gehagan was talking to Sarah he was
+joined by his friend Kerrel, who offered to stand him some tea. 
+Sarah was given a shilling and sent out to buy tea.  She returned
+and made the brew, then remained about the chambers until the
+horn blew, as was then the Temple custom, for commons.  The two
+young men departed.  After commons they walked for a while in the
+Temple Gardens, then returned to Tanfield Court.
+
+By this time the crowd attracted by the murder was blocking up
+the court, and Gehagan asked what was the matter.  He was told of
+the murder, and he remarked to Kerrel that the old lady had been
+their charwoman's acquaintance.    
+
+The two friends then made their way to a coffee-house in Covent
+Garden.  There was some talk there of the murder, and the theory
+was advanced by some one that it could have been done only by
+some laundress who knew the chambers and how to get in and out of
+them.  From Covent Garden, towards night, Gehagan and Kerrel went
+to a tavern in Essex Street, and there they stayed carousing
+until one o'clock in the morning, when they left for the Temple. 
+They were not a little astonished on reaching their common
+landing to find Kerrel's door open, a fire burning in the grate
+of his room, and a candle on the table.  By the fire, with a dark
+riding-hood about her head, was Sarah Malcolm.  To Kerrel's
+natural question of what she was doing there at such an unearthly
+hour she muttered something about having things to collect. 
+Kerrel then, reminding her that Mrs Duncomb had been her
+acquaintance, asked her if anyone had been ``taken up'' for the
+murder.
+
+``That Mr Knight,'' Sarah replied, ``who has chambers under her,
+has been absent two or three days.  He is suspected.''
+
+``Well,'' said Kerrel, remembering the theory put forward in the
+coffee-house, and made suspicious by her presence at that strange
+hour, ``nobody that was acquainted with Mrs Duncomb is wanted
+here until the murderer is discovered.  Look out your things,
+therefore, and begone!''
+
+Kerrel's suspicion thickened, and he asked his friend to run
+downstairs and call up the watch.  Gehagan ran down, but found
+difficulty in opening the door below, and had to return.  Kerrel
+himself went down then, and came back with two watchmen.  They
+found Sarah in the bedroom at a chest of drawers, in which she
+was turning over some linen that she claimed to be hers.  The now
+completely suspicious Kerrel went to his closet, and noticed that
+two or three waistcoats were missing from a portmanteau.  He
+asked Sarah where they were; upon which Sarah, with an eye to the
+watchmen and to Gehagan, begged to be allowed to speak with him
+alone.
+
+Kerrel refused, saying he could have no business with her that
+was secret.
+
+Sarah then confessed that she had pawned the missing waistcoats
+for two guineas, and begged him not to be angry.  Kerrel asked
+her why she had not asked him for money.  He could readily
+forgive her for pawning the waistcoats, but, having heard her
+talk of Mrs Lydia Duncomb, he was afraid she was concerned with
+the murder.  A pair of earrings were found in the drawers, and
+these Sarah claimed, putting them in her corsage.  An odd-looking
+bundle in the closet then attracted Kerrel's attention, and he
+kicked it, and asked Sarah what it was.  She said it was merely
+dirty linen wrapped up in an old gown.  She did not wish it
+exposed.  Kerrel made further search, and found that other things
+were missing.  He told the watch to take the woman and hold her
+strictly.
+
+Sarah was led away.  Kerrel, now thoroughly roused, continued his
+search, and he found underneath his bed another bundle.  He also
+came upon some bloodstained linen in another place, and in a
+close-stool a silver tankard, upon the handle of which was a lot
+of dried blood. 
+
+Kerrel's excitement passed to Gehagan, and the two of them went
+at speed downstairs yelling for the watch.  After a little the
+two watchmen reappeared, but without Sarah.  They had let her go,
+they said, because they had found nothing on her, and, besides,
+she had not been charged before a constable.
+
+One here comes upon a recital by the watchmen which reveals the
+extraordinary slackness in dealing with suspect persons that
+characterized the guardians of the peace in London in those
+times.  They had let the woman go, but she had come back.  Her
+home was in Shoreditch, she said, and rather than walk all that
+way on a cold and boisterous night she had wanted to sit up in
+the watch-house.  The watchmen refused to let her do this, but
+ordered her to ``go about her business,'' advising her sternly at
+the same time to turn up again by ten o'clock in the morning. 
+Sarah had given her word, and had gone away.
+
+On hearing this story Kerrel became very angry, threatening the
+two watchmen, Hughes and Mastreter, with Newgate if they did not
+pick her up again immediately.  Upon this the watchmen scurried
+off as quickly as their age and the cumbrous nature of their
+clothing would let them.  They found Sarah in the company of two
+other watchmen at the gate of the Temple.  Hughes, as a means of
+persuading her to go with them more easily, told her that Kerrel
+wanted to speak with her, and that he was not angry any longer. 
+Presently, in Tanfield Court, they came on the two young men
+carrying the tankard and the bloodied linen.  This time it was
+Gehagan who did the talking.  He accused Sarah furiously, showing
+her the tankard.  Sarah attempted to wipe the blood off the
+tankard handle with her apron.  Gehagan stopped her.
+
+Sarah said the tankard was her own.  Her mother had given it her,
+and she had had it for five years.  It was to get the tankard out
+of pawn that she had taken Kerrel's waistcoats, needing thirty
+shillings.  The blood on the handle was due to her having pricked
+a finger.
+
+With this began the series of lies Sarah Malcolm put up in her
+defence.  She was hauled into the watchman's box and more
+thoroughly searched.  A green silk purse containing twenty-one
+guineas was found in the bosom of her dress.  This purse Sarah
+declared she had found in the street, and as an excuse for its
+cleanliness, unlikely with the streets as foul as they were at
+that age and time of year, said she had washed it.  Both bundles
+of linen were bloodstained.  There was some doubt as to the
+identity of the green purse.  Mrs Rhymer, who, as we have seen,
+was likelier than anyone to recognize it, would not swear it was
+the green purse that had been in Mrs Duncomb's black box.  There
+was, however, no doubt at all about the tankard.  It had the
+initials ``C. D.'' engraved upon it, and was at once identified
+as Mrs Duncomb's.  The linen which Sarah had been handling in Mr
+Kerrel's drawer was said to be darned in a way recognizable as
+Mrs Duncomb's.  It had lain beside the tankard and the money in
+the black box.
+
+
+
+% IV
+
+There was, it will be seen, but very little doubt of Sarah
+Malcolm's guilt.  According to the reports of her trial, however,
+she fought fiercely for her life, questioning the witnesses
+closely.  Some of them, such as could remember small points
+against her, but who failed in recollection of the colour of her
+dress or of the exact number of the coins said to be lost, she
+vehemently denounced.
+
+One of the Newgate turnkeys told how some of the missing money
+was discovered.  Being brought from the Compter to Newgate, Sarah
+happened to see a room in which debtors were confined.  She asked
+the turnkey, Roger Johnson, if she could be kept there.  Johnson
+replied that it would cost her a guinea, but that from her
+appearance it did not look to him as if she could afford so much. 
+Sarah seems to have bragged then, saying that if the charge was
+twice or thrice as much she could send for a friend who would pay
+it.  Her attitude probably made the turnkey suspicious.  At any
+rate, after Sarah had mixed for some time with the felons in the
+prison taproom, Johnson called her out and, lighting the way by
+use of a link, led her to an empty room.
+
+``Child,'' he said, ``there is reason to suspect that you are
+guilty of this murder, and therefore I have orders to search
+you.''  He had, he admitted, no such orders.  He felt under her
+arms; whereupon she started and threw back her head.  Johnson
+clapped his hand on her head and felt something hard.  He pulled
+off her cap, and found a bag of money in her hair.
+
+``I asked her,'' Johnson said in the witness-box, ``how she came
+by it, and she said it was some of Mrs Duncomb's money.  `But, Mr
+Johnson,' says she, `I'll make you a present of it if you will
+keep it to yourself, and let nobody know anything of the matter. 
+The other things against me are nothing but circumstances, and I
+shall come well enough off.  And therefore I only desire you to
+let me have threepence or sixpence a day till the sessions be
+over; then I shall be at liberty to shift for myself.' ''
+
+To the best of his knowledge, said this turnkey, having told the
+money over, there were twenty moidores, eighteen guineas, five
+broad pieces, a half-broad piece, five crowns, and two or three
+shillings.  He thought there was also a twenty-five-shilling
+piece and some others, twenty-three-shilling pieces.  He had
+sealed them up in the bag, and there they were (producing the bag
+in court).    
+
+The court asked how she said she had come by the money.
+
+Johnson's answer was that she had said she took the money and the
+bag from Mrs Duncomb, and that she had begged him to keep it
+secret.  ``My dear,'' said this virtuous gaoler, ``I would not
+secrete the money for the world.
+
+``She told me, too,'' runs Johnson's recorded testimony, ``that
+she had hired three men to swear the tankard was her
+grandmother's, but could not depend on them: that the name of one
+was William Denny, another was Smith, and I have forgot the
+third.  After I had taken the money away she put a piece of
+mattress in her hair, that it might appear of the same bulk as
+before.  Then I locked her up and sent to Mr Alstone, and told
+him the story.  `And,' says I, `do you stand in a dark place to
+be witness of what she says, and I'll go and examine her
+again.'''
+
+Sarah interrupted:  ``I tied my handkerchief over my hair to hide
+the money, but Buck,[19] happening to see my hair fall down, he
+told Johnson; upon which Johnson came to see me and said, `I find
+the cole's planted in your hair.  Let me keep it for you and let
+Buck know nothing about it.'  So I gave Johnson five broad pieces
+and twenty-two guineas, not gratis, but only to keep for me, for
+I expected it to be returned when sessions was over.  As to the
+money, I never said I took it from Mrs Duncomb; but he asked me
+what they had to rap against me.  I told him only a tankard.  He
+asked me if it was Mrs Duncomb's, and I said yes.''
+
+
+[19] Peter Buck, a prisoner.
+
+
+
+The Court:  ``Johnson, were those her words:  `This is the money
+and bag that I took'?''
+
+Johnson:  ``Yes, and she desired me to make away with the bag.''
+
+Johnson's evidence was confirmed in part by Alstone, another
+officer of the prison.  He said he told Johnson to get the bag
+from the prisoner, as it might have something about it whereby it
+could be identified.  Johnson called the girl, while Alstone
+watched from a dark corner.  He saw Sarah give Johnson the bag,
+and heard her ask him to burn it.  Alstone also deposed that
+Sarah told him (Alstone) part of the money found on her was Mrs
+Duncomb's.
+
+There is no need here to enlarge upon the oddly slack and casual
+conditions of the prison life of the time as revealed in this
+evidence.  It will be no news to anyone who has studied
+contemporary criminal history.  There is a point, however, that
+may be considered here, and that is the familiarity it suggests
+on the part of Sarah with prison conditions and with the cant
+terms employed by criminals and the people handling them.
+
+Sarah, though still in her earliest twenties,[20] was known
+already--if not in the Temple--to have a bad reputation.  It is
+said that her closest friends were thieves of the worst sort. 
+She was the daughter of an Englishman, at one time a public
+official in a small way in Dublin.  Her father had come to London
+with his wife and daughter, but on the death of the mother had
+gone back to Ireland.  He had left his daughter behind him,
+servant in an ale-house called the Black Horse.
+
+
+[20] Born 1711, Durham, according to The Newgate Calendar.
+
+
+
+Sarah was a fairly well-educated girl.  At the ale-house,
+however, she formed an acquaintance with a woman named Mary
+Tracey, a dissolute character, and with two thieves called
+Alexander.  Of these three disreputable people we shall be
+hearing presently, for Sarah tried to implicate them in this
+crime which she certainly committed alone.  It is said that the
+Newgate officers recognized Sarah on her arrival.  She had often
+been to the prison to visit an Irish thief, convicted for
+stealing the pack of a Scots pedlar.
+
+It will be seen from Sarah's own defence how she tried to
+implicate Tracey and the two Alexanders:
+
+``I freely own that my crimes deserve death; I own that I was
+accessory to the robbery, but I was innocent of the murder, and
+will give an account of the whole affair.
+
+``I lived with Mrs Lydia Duncomb about three months before she
+was murdered.  The robbery was contrived by Mary Tracey, who is
+now in confinement, and myself, my own vicious inclinations
+agreeing with hers.  We likewise proposed to rob Mr Oakes in
+Thames Street.  She came to me at my master's, Mr Kerrel's
+chambers, on the Sunday before the murder was committed; he not
+being then at home, we talked about robbing Mrs Duncomb.  I told
+her I could not pretend to do it by myself, for I should be found
+out.  `No,' says she, `there are the two Alexanders will help
+us.'  Next day I had seventeen pounds sent me out of the country,
+which I left in Mr Kerrel's drawers.  I met them all in Cheapside
+the following Friday, and we agreed on the next night, and so
+parted.
+
+``Next day, being Saturday, I went between seven and eight in the
+evening to see Mrs Duncomb's maid, Elizabeth Harrison, who was
+very bad.  I stayed a little while with her, and went down, and
+Mary Tracey and the two Alexanders came to me about ten o'clock,
+according to appointment.''
+
+On this statement the whole implication of Tracey and the
+Alexanders by Sarah stands or falls.  It falls for the reason
+that the Temple porter had seen no stranger pass the gate that
+night, nobody but Templars going to their chambers.  The one fact
+riddles the rest of Sarah's statement in defence, but, as it is
+somewhat of a masterpiece in lying invention, I shall continue to
+quote it.    ``Mary Tracey would have gone about the robbery just
+then, but I said it was too soon.  Between ten and eleven she
+said, `We can do it now.'  I told her I would go and see, and so
+went upstairs, and they followed me.  I met the young maid on the
+stairs with a blue mug; she was going for some milk to make a
+sack posset.  She asked me who were those that came after me.  I
+told her they were people going to Mr Knight's below.  As soon as
+she was gone I said to Mary Tracey, `Now do you and Tom Alexander
+go down.  I know the door is ajar, because the old maid is ill,
+and can't get up to let the young maid in when she comes back.' 
+Upon that, James Alexander, by my order, went in and hid himself
+under the bed; and as I was going down myself I met the young
+maid coming up again.  She asked me if I spoke to Mrs Betty.  I
+told her no; though I should have told her otherwise, but only
+that I was afraid she might say something to Mrs Betty about me,
+and Mrs Betty might tell her I had not been there, and so they
+might have a suspicion of me.''
+
+There is a possibility that this part of her confession, the tale
+of having met the young maid, Nanny, may be true.[21]  And here
+may the truth of the murder be hidden away.  Very likely it is,
+indeed, that Sarah encountered the girl going out with the blue
+mug for milk to make a sack posset, and she may have slipped in
+by the open door to hide under the bed until the moment was ripe
+for her terrible intention.  On the other hand, if there is truth
+in the tale of her encountering the girl again as she returned
+with the milk--and her cunning in answering ``no'' to the maid's
+query if she had seen Mrs Betty has the real ring--other ways of
+getting an entry were open to her.  We know that the lock of the
+vacant chambers opposite Mrs Duncomb's would have yielded to
+small manipulation.  It is not at all unlikely that Sarah, having
+been charwoman to the old lady, and with the propensities picked
+up from her Shoreditch acquaintances, had made herself familiar
+with the locks on the landing.  So that she may have waited her
+hour in the empty rooms, and have got into Mrs Duncomb's by the
+same method used by Mrs Oliphant after the murder.  She may even
+have slipped back the spring-catch of the outer door.  One
+account of the murder suggests that she may have asked Ann Price,
+on one pretext or other, to let her share her bed.  It certainly
+was not beyond the callousness of Sarah Malcolm to have chosen
+this method, murdering the girl in her sleep, and then going on
+to finish off the two helpless old women.
+
+
+[21] This confession, however, varies in several particulars with
+that contained in A Paper delivered by Sarah Malcolm on the Night
+before her Execution to the Rev. Mr Piddington, and published by
+Him (London, 1733).
+
+
+
+The truth, as I have said, lies hidden in this extraordinarily
+mendacious confection.  Liars of Sarah's quality are apt to base
+their fabrications on a structure, however slight, of truth.  I
+continue with the confession, then, for what the reader may get
+out of it.
+
+``I passed her [Nanny Price] and went down, and spoke with Tracey
+and Alexander, and then went to my master's chambers, and stirred
+up the fire.  I stayed about a quarter of an hour, and when I
+came back I saw Tracey and Tom Alexander sitting on Mrs Duncomb's
+stairs, and I sat down with them.  At twelve o'clock we heard
+some people walking, and by and by Mr Knight came home, went to
+his room, and shut the door.  It was a very stormy night; there
+was hardly anybody stirring abroad, and the watchmen kept up
+close, except just when they cried the hour.  At two o'clock
+another gentleman came, and called the watch to light his candle,
+upon which I went farther upstairs, and soon after this I heard
+Mrs Duncomb's door open; James Alexander came out, and said, `Now
+is the time.'  Then Mary Tracey and Thomas Alexander went in, but
+I stayed upon the stair to watch.  I had told them where Mrs
+Duncomb's box stood.  They came out between four and five, and
+one of them called to me softly, and said, `Hip!  How shall I
+shut the door?'  Says I, ` 'Tis a spring-lock; pull it to, and it
+will be fast.'  And so one of them did.  They would have shared
+the money and goods upon the stairs, but I told them we had
+better go down; so we went under the arch by Fig-tree Court,
+where there was a lamp.  I asked them how much they had got. 
+They said they had found fifty guineas and some silver in the
+maid's purse, about one hundred pounds in the chest of drawers,
+besides the silver tankard and the money in the box and several
+other things; so that in all they had got to the value of about
+three hundred pounds in money and goods.  They told me that they
+had been forced to gag the people.  They gave me the tankard with
+what was in it and some linen for my share, and they had a silver
+spoon and a ring and the rest of the money among themselves. 
+They advised me to be cunning and plant the money and goods
+underground, and not to be seen to be flush.  Then we appointed
+to meet at Greenwich, but we did not go.[22]
+
+
+[22] In Mr Piddington's paper the supposed appointment is for ``3
+or 4 o'clock at the Pewter Platter, Holbourn Bridge.''
+
+
+
+``I was taken in the manner the witnesses have sworn, and carried
+to the watch-house, from whence I was sent to the Compter, and so
+to Newgate.  I own that I said the tankard was mine, and that it
+was left me by my mother: several witnesses have swore what
+account I gave of the tankard being bloody; I had hurt my finger,
+and that was the occasion of it.  I am sure of death, and
+therefore have no occasion to speak anything but the truth.  When
+I was in the Compter I happened to see a young man[23] whom I
+knew, with a fetter on.  I told him I was sorry to see him there,
+and I gave him a shilling, and called for half a quartern of rum
+to make him drink.  I afterwards went into my room, and heard a
+voice call me, and perceived something poking behind the curtain. 
+I was a little surprised, and looking to see what it was, I found
+a hole in the wall, through which the young man I had given the
+shilling to spoke to me, and asked me if I had sent for my
+friends.  I told him no.  He said he would do what he could for
+me, and so went away; and some time after he called to me again,
+and said, `Here is a friend.'
+
+
+[23] One Bridgewater.
+
+
+
+``I looked through, and saw Will Gibbs come in.  Says he, `Who is
+there to swear against you?'  I told him my two masters would be
+the chief witnesses.  `And what can they charge you with?' says
+he.  I told him the tankard was the only thing, for there was
+nothing else that I thought could hurt me.  `Never fear, then,'
+says he; `we'll do well enough.  We will get them that will rap
+the tankard was your grandmother's, and that you was in
+Shoreditch the night the act was committed; and we'll have two
+men that shall shoot your masters.  But,' said he, `one of the
+witnesses is a woman, and she won't swear under four guineas; but
+the men will swear for two guineas apiece,' and he brought a
+woman and three men.  I gave them ten guineas, and they promised
+to wait for me at the Bull Head in Broad Street.  But when I
+called for them, when I was going before Sir Richard Brocas, they
+were not there.  Then I found I should be sent to Newgate, and I
+was full of anxious thoughts; but a young man told me I had
+better go to the Whit than to the Compter.
+
+``When I came to Newgate I had but eighteenpence in silver,
+besides the money in my hair, and I gave eighteenpence for my
+garnish.  I was ordered to a high place in the gaol.  Buck, as I
+said before, having seen my hair loose, told Johnson of it, and
+Johnson asked me if I had got any cole planted there.  He
+searched and found the bag, and there was in it thirty-six
+moidores, eighteen guineas, five crown pieces, two half-crowns,
+two broad pieces of twenty-five shillings, four of twenty-three
+shillings, and one half-broad piece.  He told me I must be
+cunning, and not to be seen to be flush of money.  Says I, `What
+would you advise me to do with it?'  `Why,' says he, `you might
+have thrown it down the sink, or have burnt it, but give it to
+me, and I'll take care of it.'  And so I gave it to him.  Mr
+Alstone then brought me to the condemned hold and examined me.  I
+denied all till I found he had heard of the money, and then I
+knew my life was gone.  And therefore I confessed all that I
+knew.  I gave him the same account of the robbers as I have given
+you.  I told him I heard my masters were to be shot, and I
+desired him to send them word.  I described Tracey and the two
+Alexanders, and when they were first taken they denied that they
+knew Mr Oakes, whom they and I had agreed to rob.
+
+``All that I have now declared is fact, and I have no occasion to
+murder three persons on a false accusation; for I know I am a
+condemned woman.  I know I must suffer an ignominious death which
+my crimes deserve, and I shall suffer willingly.  I thank God He
+has given me time to repent, when I might have been snatched off
+in the midst of my crimes, and without having an opportunity of
+preparing myself for another world.''    There is a glibness and
+an occasional turn of phrase in this confession which suggests
+some touching up from the pen of a pamphleteer, but one may take
+it that it is, in substance, a fairly accurate report.  In spite
+of the pleading which threads it that she should be regarded as
+accessory only in the robbery, the jury took something less than
+a quarter of an hour to come back with their verdict of ``Guilty
+of murder.''  Sarah Malcolm was sentenced to death in due form.
+
+
+
+% V
+
+Having regard to the period in which this confession was made,
+and considering the not too savoury reputations of Mary Tracey
+and the brothers Alexander, we can believe that those three may
+well have thought themselves lucky to escape from the mesh of
+lies Sarah tried to weave about them.[24]  It was not to be
+doubted on all the evidence that she alone committed that cruel
+triple murder, and that she alone stole the money which was found
+hidden in her hair.  The bulk of the stolen clothing was found in
+her possession, bloodstained.  A white-handled case-knife,
+presumably that used to cut Nanny Price's throat, was seen on a
+table by the three women who, with Sarah herself, were first on
+the scene of the murder.  It disappeared later, and it is to be
+surmised that Sarah Malcolm managed to get it out of the room
+unseen.  But to the last moment possible Sarah tried to get her
+three friends involved with her.  Say, which is not at all
+unlikely, that Tracey and the Alexanders may have first suggested
+the robbery to her, and her vindictive maneouvring may be
+understood.
+
+
+[24] On more than one hand the crime is ascribed to Sarah's
+desire to secure one of the Alexanders in marriage.
+
+
+
+It is said that when she heard that Tracey and the Alexanders had
+been taken she was highly pleased.  She smiled, and said that she
+could now die happy, since the real murderers had been seized. 
+Even when the three were brought face to face with her for
+identification she did not lack brazenness.  ``Ay,'' she said,
+``these are the persons who committed the murder.''  ``You know
+this to be true,'' she said to Tracey.  ``See, Mary, what you
+have brought me to.  It is through you and the two Alexanders
+that I am brought to this shame, and must die for it.  You all
+promised me you would do no murder, but, to my great surprise, I
+found the contrary.''
+
+She was, you will perceive, a determined liar.  Condemned, she
+behaved with no fortitude.  ``I am a dead woman!'' she cried,
+when brought back to Newgate.  She wept and prayed, lied still
+more, pretended illness, and had fits of hysteria.  They put her
+in the old condemned hold with a constant guard over her, for
+fear that she would attempt suicide
+
+The idlers of the town crowded to the prison to see her, for in
+the time of his Blessed Majesty King George II Newgate, with the
+condemned hold and its content, composed one of the fashionable
+spectacles.  Young Mr Hogarth, the painter, was one of those who
+found occasion  to visit Newgate to view the notorious murderess. 
+He even painted her portrait.  It is said that Sarah dressed
+specially for him in a red dress, but that copy--one which
+belonged to Horace Walpole--which is now in the National Gallery
+of Scotland, Edinburgh, shows her in a grey gown, with a white
+cap and apron.  Seated to the left, she leans her folded hands on
+a table on which a rosary and a crucifix lie.  Behind her is a
+dark grey wall, with a heavy grating over a dark door to the
+right.  There are varied mezzotints of this picture by Hogarth
+himself still extant, and there is a pen-and-wash drawing of
+Sarah by Samuel Wale in the British Museum.
+
+The stories regarding the last days in life of Sarah Malcolm
+would occupy more pages than this book can afford to spend on
+them.  To the last she hoped for a reprieve.  After the ``dead
+warrant'' had arrived, to account for a paroxysm of terror that
+seized her, she said that it was from shame at the idea that,
+instead of going to Tyburn, she was to be hanged in Fleet Street
+among all the people that knew her, she having just heard the
+news in chapel.  This too was one of her lies.  She had heard the
+news hours before.  A turnkey, pointing out the lie to her, urged
+her to confess for the easing of her mind.
+
+One account I have of the Tanfield Court murders speaks of the
+custom there was at this time of the bellman of St Sepulchre's
+appearing outside the gratings of the condemned hold just after
+midnight on the morning of executions.[25]  This performance was
+provided for by bequest from one Robert Dove, or Dow, a merchant-
+tailor.  Having rung his bell to draw the attention of the
+condemned (who, it may be gathered, were not supposed to be at
+all in want of sleep), the bellman recited these verses:
+
+  All you that in the condemned hold do lie,
+  Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die.
+  Watch all and pray; the hour is drawing near
+  That you before th' Almighty must appear.
+
+  Examine well yourselves, in time repent,
+  That you may not t'eternal flames be sent:
+  And when St 'Pulchre's bell to-morrow tolls,
+  The Lord above have mercy on your souls!
+          Past twelve o'clock![26]
+
+
+[25] It was once done by the parish priest.  (Stowe's Survey of
+London, p. 195, fourth edition, 1618.)
+
+[26] The bequest of Dove appears to have provided for a further
+pious admonition to the condemned while on the way to execution. 
+It was delivered by the sexton of St Sepulchre's from the steps
+of that church, a halt being made by the procession for the
+purpose.  This admonition, however, was in fair prose.
+
+
+
+A fellow-prisoner or a keeper bade Sarah Malcolm heed what the
+bellman said, urging her to take it to heart.  Sarah said she
+did, and threw the bellman down a shilling with which to buy
+himself a pint of wine.
+
+Sarah, as we have seen, was denied the honour of procession to
+Tyburn.  Her sentence was that she was to be hanged in Fleet
+Street, opposite the Mitre Court, on the 7th of March, 1733.  And
+hanged she was accordingly.  She fainted in the tumbril, and took
+some time to recover.  Her last words were exemplary in their
+piety, but in the face of her vindictive lying, unretracted to
+the last, it were hardly exemplary to repeat them.
+
+She was buried in the churchyard of St Sepulchre's.
+
+
+
+
+V: ALMOST A LADY[27]
+
+[27] Thanks to my friend Billy Bennett, of music-hall fame, for
+his hint for the chapter title.
+
+
+Born (probably illegitimately) in a fisherman's cottage, reared
+in a workhouse, employed in a brothel, won at cards by a royal
+duke, mistress of that duke, married to a baron, received at
+Court by three kings (though not much in the way of kings),
+accused of cozenage and tacitly of murder, died full of piety,
+`cutting up' for close on L150,000--there, as it were in a
+nutshell, you have the life of Sophie Dawes, Baronne de
+Feucheres.
+
+In the introduction to her exhaustive and accomplished biography
+of Sophie Dawes,[28] from which a part of the matter for this
+resume is drawn, Mme Violette Montagu, speaking of the period in
+which Sophie lived, says that ``Paris, with its fabulous wealth
+and luxury, seems to have been looked upon as a sort of Mecca by
+handsome Englishwomen with ambition and, what is absolutely
+necessary if they wish to be really successful, plenty of
+brains.''
+
+
+[28] Sophie Dawes, Queen of Chantilly (John Lane, 1912).
+
+
+
+It is because Sophie had plenty of brains of a sort, besides the
+attributes of good looks, health, and by much a disproportionate
+share of determination, and because, with all that she attained
+to, she died quite ostracized by the people with whom it had been
+her life's ambition to mix, and was thus in a sense a failure--it
+is because of these things that it is worth while going into
+details of her career, expanding the precis with which this
+chapter begins.
+
+Among the women selected as subjects for this book Sophie Dawes
+as a personality wins `hands down.'  Whether she was a criminal
+or not is a question even now in dispute.  Unscrupulous she
+certainly was, and a good deal of a rogue.  That modern American
+product the `gold-digger' is what she herself would call a
+`piker' compared with the subject of this chapter.  The blonde
+bombshell, with her `sugar daddy,' her alimony `racket,' and the
+hundred hard-boiled dodges wherewith she chisels money and goods
+from her prey, is, again in her own crude phraseology, `knocked
+for a row of ash-cans' by Sophie Dawes.  As, I think, you will
+presently see.
+
+Sophie was born at St Helens, Isle of Wight--according to herself
+in 1792.  There is controversy on the matter.  Mme Montagu in her
+book says that some of Sophie's biographers put the date at 1790,
+or even 1785.  But Mme Montagu herself reproduces the list of
+wearing apparel with which Sophie was furnished when she left the
+`house of industry' (the workhouse).  It is dated 1805.  In those
+days children were not maintained in poor institutions to the
+mature ages of fifteen or twenty.  They were supposed to be armed
+against life's troubles at twelve or even younger.  Sophie, then,
+could hardly have been born before 1792, but is quite likely to
+have been born later.
+
+The name of Sophie's father is given as ``Daw.''  Like many
+another celebrity, as, for example, Walter Raleigh and
+Shakespeare, Sophie spelled her name variously, though ultimately
+she fixed on ``Dawes.''  Richard, or Dickey, Daw was a fisherman
+for appearance sake and a smuggler for preference.  The question
+of Sophie's legitimacy anses from the fact that her mother, Jane
+Callaway, was registered at death as ``a spinster.''  Sophie was
+one of ten children.  Dickey Daw drank his family into the
+poorhouse, an institution which sent Sophie to fend for herself
+in 1805, procuring her a place as servant at a farm on the
+island.
+
+Service on a farm does not appear to have appealed to Sophie. 
+She escaped to Portsmouth, where she found a job as hotel
+chambermaid.  Tiring of that, she went to London and became a
+milliner's assistant.  A little affair we hear, in which a mere
+water-carrier was an equal participant, lost Sophie her place. 
+We next have word of her imitating Nell Gwynn, both in selling
+oranges to playgoers and in becoming an actress--not, however, at
+Old Drury, but at the other patent theatre, Covent Garden.  Save
+that as a comedian she never took London by storm, and that she
+lacked Nell's unfailing good humour, Sophie in her career matches
+Nell in more than superficial particulars.  Between selling
+oranges and appearing on the stage Sophie seems to have touched
+bottom for a time in poverty.  But her charms as an actress
+captivated an officer by and by, and she was established as his
+mistress in a house at Turnham Green.  Tiring of her after a
+time--Sophie, it is probable, became exigeant with increased
+comfort--her protector left her with an annuity of L50.
+
+The annuity does not appear to have done Sophie much good.  We
+next hear of her as servant-maid in a Piccadilly brothel, a
+lupanar much patronized by wealthy emigres from France, among
+whom was Louis-Henri-Joseph, Duc de Bourbon and later Prince de
+Conde, a man at that time of about fifty-four.
+
+The Duc's attention was directed to the good looks of Sophie by a
+manservant of his.  Mme Montagu says of Sophie at this time that
+``her face had already lost the first bloom of youth and
+innocence.''  Now, one wonders if that really was so, or if Mme
+Montagu is making a shot at a hazard.  She describes Sophie a
+little earlier than this as having
+
+developed into a fine young woman, not exactly pretty or
+handsome, but she held her head gracefully, and her regular
+features were illumined by a pair of remarkably bright and 
+intelligent eyes.  She was tall and squarely built, with legs and
+arms which might have served as models for a statue of Hercules. 
+Her muscular force was extraordinary.  Her lips were rather thin,
+and she had an ugly habit of contracting them when she was angry. 
+Her intelligence was above the average, and she had a good share
+of wit.
+
+
+At the time when the Duc de Bourbon came upon her in the
+Piccadilly stew the girl was probably no more than eighteen.  If
+one may judge her character from the events of her subsequent
+career there was an outstanding resiliency and a resoluteness as
+main ingredients of her make-up, qualities which would go a long
+way to obviating any marks that might otherwise have been left on
+her by the ups and downs of a mere five years in the world.  If,
+moreover, Mme Montagu's description of her is a true one it is
+clear that Sophie's good looks were not of the sort to make an
+all-round appeal.  The ways in which attractiveness goes, both in
+men and in women, are infinite in their variety.  The reader may
+recall, in this respect, what was said in the introductory
+chapter about Kate Webster and the instance of the bewhiskered
+'Fina of the Spanish tavern.  And since a look of innocence and
+the bloom of youth may, and very often do, appear on the faces of
+individuals who are far from being innocent or even young, it may
+well be that Sophie in 1810, servant-maid in a brothel though she
+was, still kept a look of country freshness and health, unjaded
+enough to whet the dulled appetence of a bagnio-haunting old rip. 
+The odds are, at all events, that Sophie was much less artificial
+in her charms than the practised ladies of complacency upon whom
+she attended.  With her odd good looks she very likely had just
+that subacid leaven for which, in the alchemy of attraction, the
+Duc was in search.
+
+The Duc, however, was not the only one to whom Sophie looked
+desirable.  Two English peers had an eye on her--the Earl of
+Winchilsea and the Duke of Kent.  This is where the card affair
+comes in.  The Duc either played whist with the two noblemen for
+sole rights in Sophie or, what is more likely, cut cards with
+them during a game.  The Duc won.  Whether his win may be
+regarded as lucky or not can be reckoned, according to the taste
+and fancy of the reader, from the sequelae of some twenty years.
+
+
+
+% II
+
+With the placing of Sophie dans ses meubles by the Duc de Bourbon
+there began one of the most remarkable turns in her career.  In
+1811 he took a house for her in Gloucester Street, Queen's
+Square, with her mother as duenna, and arranged for the
+completion of her education.
+
+As a light on her character hardly too much can be made of this
+stage in her development.  It is more than likely that the
+teaching was begun at Sophie's own demand, and by the use she
+made of the opportunities given her you may measure the strength
+of her ambition.  Here was no rich man's doxy lazily seeking a
+veneer of culture, enough to gloss the rough patches of speech
+and idea betraying humble origin.  This fisherman's child,
+workhouse girl, ancilla of the bordels, with the thin smattering
+of the three R's she had acquired in the poor institution, set
+herself, with a wholehearted concentration which a Newnham `swot'
+might envy, to master modern languages, with Greek, Latin, and
+music.  At the end of three years she was a good linguist, could
+play and sing well enough to entertain and not bore the most
+intelligent in the company the Duc kept, and to pass in that
+company --the French emigre set in London--as a person of equal
+education.  If, as it is said, Sophie, while she could read and
+write French faultlessly, never could speak it without an English
+accent, it is to be remembered that the flexibility of tongue and
+mind needed for native-sounding speech in French (or any other
+language) is so exceptional as to be practically non-existent
+among her compatriots to this day.  The fault scarcely belittles
+her achievement.  As well blame a one-legged man for hopping when
+trying to run.  Consider the life Sophie had led, the sort of
+people with whom she had associated, and that temptation towards
+laissez-faire which conquers all but the rarest woman in the mode
+of life in which she was existing, and judge of the constancy of
+purpose that kept that little nose so steadfastly in Plutarch and
+Xenophon.
+
+If in the year 1812 the Duc began to allow his little Sophie
+about L800 a year in francs as pin-money he was no more generous
+than Sophie deserved.  The Duc was very rich, despite the fact
+that his father, the old Prince de Conde, was still alive, and
+so, of course, was enjoying the income from the family estates.
+
+There is no room here to follow more than the barest outline of
+the Duc de Bourbon's history.  Fully stated, it would be the
+history of France.  He was a son of the Prince de Conde who
+collected that futile army beyond the borders of France in the
+royalist cause in the Revolution.  Louis-Henri was wounded in the
+left arm while serving there, so badly wounded that the hand was
+practically useless.  He came to England, where he lived until
+1814, when he went back to France to make his unsuccessful
+attempt to raise the Vendee.  Then he went to Spain.
+
+At this time he intended breaking with Sophie, but when he got
+back to Paris in 1815 he found the lady waiting for him.  It took
+Sophie some eighteen months to bring his Highness up to scratch
+again.  During this time the Duc had another English fancy, a
+Miss Harris, whose reign in favour, however, did not withstand
+the manoeuvring of Sophie.
+
+Sophie as a mistress in England was one thing, but Sophie
+unattached as a mistress in France was another.  One wonders why
+the Duc should have been squeamish on this point.  Perhaps it was
+that he thought it would look vulgar to take up a former mistress
+after so long.  At all events, he was ready enough to resume the
+old relationship with Sophie, provided she could change her name
+by marriage.  Sophie was nothing loth.  The idea fell in with her
+plans.  She let it get about that she was the natural daughter of
+the Duc, and soon had in tow one Adrien-Victor de Feucheres.  He
+was an officer of the Royal Guard.  Without enlarging on the
+all-round tawdriness of this contract it will suffice here to say
+that Sophie and Adrien were married in London in August of 1818,
+the Duc presenting the bride with a dowry of about L5600 in
+francs.  Next year de Feucheres became a baron, and was made
+aide-de-camp to the Duc.
+
+Incredible as it may seem, de Feucheres took four years to
+realize what was the real relationship between his wife and the
+Prince de Conde.  The aide-de-camp and his wife had a suite of
+rooms in the Prince's favourite chateau at Chantilly, and the
+ambition which Sophie had foreseen would be furthered by the
+marriage was realized.  She was received as La Baronne de
+Feucheres at the Court of Louis XVIII.  She was happy--up to a
+point.  Some unpretty traits in her character began to develop: a
+violent temper, a tendency to hysterics if crossed, and, it is
+said, a leaning towards avaricious ways.  At the end of four
+years the Baron de Feucheres woke up to the fact that Sophie was
+deceiving him.  It does not appear, however, that he had seen
+through her main deception, because it was Sophie herself, we are
+told, who informed him he was a fool--that she was not the
+Prince's daughter, but his mistress.
+
+Having waked up thus belatedly, or having been woken up by Sophie
+in her ungoverned ill-temper, de Feucheres acted with
+considerable dignity.  He begged to resign his position as aide
+to the Prince, and returned his wife's dowry.  The departure of
+Sophie's hitherto complacent husband rather embarrassed the
+Prince.  He needed Sophie but felt he could not keep her
+unattached under his roof and he sent her away--but only for a
+few days.  Sophie soon was back again in Chantilly.
+
+The Prince made some attempt to get de Feucheres to return, but
+without success.  De Feucheres applied for a post in the Army of
+Spain, an application which was granted at once.  It took the
+poor man seven years to secure a judicial separation from his
+wife.
+
+The scandal of this change in the menage of Chantilly --it
+happened in 1822--reached the ears of the King, and the Baronne
+de Feucheres was forbidden to appear at Court.  All Sophie's
+energies from then on were concentrated on getting the ban
+removed.  She explored all possible avenues of influence to this
+end, and, incidentally drove her old lover nearly frantic with
+her complaints giving him no peace.  Even a rebuff from the
+Duchesse de Berry, widow of the son of that prince who was
+afterwards Charles X, did not put her off.  She turned up one day
+at the Tuileries, to be informed by an usher that she could not
+be admitted.
+
+This desire to be reinstated in royal favour is at the back of
+all Sophie's subsequent actions--this and her intention of
+feathering her own nest out of the estate of her protector.  It
+explains why she worked so hard to have the Prince de Conde
+assume friendly relations with a family whose very name he hated:
+that of the Duc d'Orleans.  It is a clue to the mysterious death,
+eight years later, of the Prince de Conde, last of the Condes, in
+circumstances which were made to pass as suicide, but which in
+unhampered inquiry would almost certainly have been found to
+indicate murder.
+
+
+
+% III
+
+Louis-Henri-Joseph, Duc de Bourbon and Prince de Conde, seems to
+have been rather a simple old man: a useless old sinner, true
+enough, but relatively harmless in his sinning, relatively venial
+in his uselessness.  It were futile to seek for the morality of a
+later age in a man of his day and rank and country, just as it
+were obtuse to look for greatness in one so much at the mercy of
+circumstance.  As far as bravery went he had shown himself a
+worthy descendant of ``the Great Conde.''  But, surrounded by the
+vapid jealousies of the most useless people who had ever tried to
+rule a country, he, no more than his father, had the faintest
+chance to show the Conde quality in war.  Adrift as a
+comparatively young man, his world about his ears, with no
+occupation, small wonder that in idleness he fell into the
+pursuit of satisfactions for his baser appetites.  He would have
+been, there is good reason to believe, a happy man and a busy one
+in a camp.  There is this to be said for him: that alone among
+the spineless crowd of royalists feebly waiting for the miracle
+which would restore their privilege he attempted a blow for the
+lost cause.  But where in all that bed of disintegrating chalk
+was the flint from which he might have evoked a spark?
+
+The great grief of the Prince's life was the loss of his son, the
+young Duc d'Enghien, shamefully destroyed by Bonaparte.  It is
+possible that much of the Prince's inertia was due to this blow. 
+He had married, at the early age of fourteen,
+Louise-Marie-Therese-Mathilde d'Orleans, daughter of
+Louis-Philippe, Duc d'Orleans and the Duchesse de Chartres, the
+bride being six years older than her husband.  Such a marriage
+could not last.  It merely sustained the honeymoon and the birth
+of that only son.  The couple were apart in eighteen months, and
+after ten years they never even saw each other again.  About the
+time when Sophie's husband found her out and departed the
+Princesse died.  The Prince was advised to marry again, on the
+chance that an heir might be born to the large fortune he
+possessed.  But Sophie by then had become a habit with the
+Prince--a bad one--and the old man was content to be left to his
+continual hunting, and not to bother over the fact that he was
+the last of his ancient line.
+
+It may be easily believed that the Prince's disinclination to
+marry again contented Sophie very well.  And the fact that he had
+no direct heir was one in which she saw possibilities
+advantageous to herself.
+
+The Prince was then sixty-six years old.  In the course of nature
+he was almost bound to predecease her.  His wealth was enormous,
+and out of it Sophie wanted as much by bequest as she could get. 
+She was much too shrewd, however, to imagine that, even if she
+did contrive to be made his sole heir, the influential families
+who had an eye upon the great possessions of the Prince, and who
+through relationship had some right to expect inheritance, would
+allow such a will to go uncontested.  She therefore looked about
+among the Prince's connexions for some one who would accept
+coheirship with herself, and whose family would be strong enough
+in position to carry through probate on such terms, but at the
+same time would be grateful enough to her and venal enough to
+further her aim of being reinstated at Court.  Her choice in this
+matter shows at once her political cunning, which would include
+knowledge of affairs, and her ability as a judge of character.
+
+It should be remembered that, in spite of his title of Duc de
+Bourbon, Sophie's elderly protector was only distantly of that
+family.  He was descended in direct line from the Princes de
+Conde, whose connexion with the royal house of France dated back
+to the sixteenth century.  The other line of `royal' ducs in the
+country was that of Orleans, offshoot of the royal house through
+Philippe, son of Louis XIII, and born in 1640.  Sophie's
+protector, Louis-Henri-Joseph, Prince de Conde, having married
+Louise-Marie, daughter of the great-grandson of this Philippe,
+was thus the brother-in-law of that Louis-Philippe, Duc
+d'Orleans, who in the Revolution was known as ``Egalite.''  This
+was a man whom, for his political opinion and for his failure to
+stand by the King, Louis XVI, the Prince de Conde utterly
+detested in memory.  As much, moreover, as he had hated the
+father did the Prince de Conde detest Egalite's son.  But it was
+out of this man's family that Sophie selected, though ultimately,
+her coheir.
+
+Before she arrived at this point, however, Sophie had been at
+pains to do some not very savoury manoeuvring.
+
+By a dancer at the Opera, called Mimi, the Prince de Conde had an
+illegitimate daughter, whom he had caused to be educated and whom
+he had married to the Comte de Rully.  The Comtesse de Rully and
+her husband had a suite at Chantilly.  This was an arrangement
+which Sophie, as reigning Queen of Chantilly, did not like at
+all.  While the Rully woman remained at Chantilly Sophie could
+not think that her sway over the Prince was quite as absolute as
+she wished.  It took her six years of badgering her protector,
+from 1819 to 1825, to bring about the eviction.
+
+But meantime (for Sophie's machinations must be taken as
+concurrent with events as they transpire) the Baronne de
+Feucheres had approached the son of Philippe-Egalite, suggesting
+that the last-born of his six children, the Duc d'Aumale, should
+have the Prince de Conde for godfather.  If she could persuade
+her protector to this the Duc d'Orleans, in return, was to use
+his influence for her reinstatement at Court.  And persuade the
+old man to this Sophie did, albeit after a great deal of
+badgering on her part and a great deal of grumbling on the part
+of the Prince.
+
+The influence exerted at Court by the Duc d'Orleans does not seem
+to have been very effective.  The King who had dismissed her the
+Court, Louis XVIII, died in 1824.  His brother, the Comte
+d'Artois, ascended the throne as Charles X, and continued by
+politically foolish recourses, comparable in history to those of
+the English Stuarts, to alienate the people by attempting to
+regain that anachronistic absolute power which the Revolution had
+destroyed.  He lasted a mere six years as king.  The revolution
+of 1830 sent him into exile.  But up to the last month or so of
+those six years he steadfastly refused to have anything to do
+with the Baronne de Feucheres--not that Sophie ever gave up
+manoeuvring and wheedling for a return to Court favour.
+
+About 1826 Sophie had a secret proposition made to the King that
+she should try to persuade the Prince de Conde to adopt as his
+heir one of the brothers of the Duchesse de Berry, widow of the
+King's second son--or would his Majesty mind if a son of the Duc
+d'Orleans was adopted?  The King did not care at all. 
+
+After that Sophie pinned her faith in the power possessed by the
+Duc d'Orleans.  She was not ready to pursue the course whereby
+her return to Court might have been secured--namely, to abandon
+her equivocal position in the Prince de Conde's household, and
+thus her power over the Prince.  She wanted first to make sure of
+her share of the fortune he would leave.  She knew her power over
+the old man.  Already she had persuaded him to buy and make over
+to her the estates of Saint-Leu and Boissy, as well as to make
+her legacies to the amount of a million francs.  Much as she
+wanted to be received again at Court, she wanted more just as
+much as she could grab from the Prince's estate.  To make her
+inheritance secure she needed the help of the Duc d'Orleans.
+
+The Duc d'Orleans was nothing loth.  He had the mind of a French
+bourgeois, and all the bourgeois itch for money.  He knew that
+the Prince de Conde hated him, hated his politics, hated his very
+name.  But during the seven years it took Sophie to bring the
+Prince to the point of signing the will she had in mind the son
+of Philippe-Egalite fawned like a huckster on his elderly and, in
+more senses than one, distant relative.  The scheme was to have
+the Prince adopt the little Duc d'Aumale, already his godchild,
+as his heir.
+
+The ways by which Sophie went about the job of persuading her old
+lover do not read pleasantly.  She was a termagant.  The Prince
+was stubborn.  He hated the very idea of making a will--it made
+him think of death.  He was old, ill, friendless.  Sophie made
+his life a hell, but he had become dependent upon her.  She
+ill-used him, subjecting him to physical violence, but yet he was
+afraid she might, as she often threatened, leave him.  Her way of
+persuading him reached the point, it is on record, of putting a
+knife to his throat.  Not once but several times his servants
+found him scratched and bruised.  But the old man could not
+summon up the strength of mind to be quit of this succubine
+virago.
+
+At last, on the 29th of August, 1829, Sophie's `persuasions'
+succeeded.  The Prince consented to sign the will, and did so the
+following morning.  In its terms the Duc d'Aumale became
+residuary legatee, and 2,000,000 francs, free of death-duty, were
+bequeathed to the Prince's ``faithful companion, Mme la baronne
+de Feucheres,'' together with the chateaux and estates of
+Saint-Leu-Taverny, Boissy, Enghien, Montmorency, and
+Mortefontaine, and the pavilion in the Palais-Bourbon, besides
+all the Prince's furniture, carriages, horses, and so on. 
+Moreover, the estate and chateau of Ecouen was also given her, on
+condition that she allowed the latter to be used as an orphanage
+for the descendants of soldiers who had served with the Armies of
+Conde and La Vendee.  The cost of running this establishment,
+however, was to be borne by the Duc d'Aumale.
+
+It might be thought that Sophie, having got her way, would have
+turned to kindness in her treatment of her old lover.  But no. 
+All her mind was now concentrated on working, through the Duc
+d'Orleans, for being received again at Court.  She ultimately
+succeeded in this.  On the 7th of February, 1830, she appeared in
+the presence of the King, the Dauphin and Dauphine.  In the
+business of preparing for this great day Chantilly and the Prince
+de Conde were greatly neglected.  The beggar on horseback had to
+be about Paris.
+
+But events were shaping in France at that time which were to be
+important to the royal family, to Sophie and her supporters of
+the house of Orleans, and fatal in consequence to the old man at
+Chantilly.
+
+On the 27th of July revolution broke out in France.  Charles X
+and his family had to seek shelter in England, and
+Louis-Philippe, Duc d'Orleans, became--not King of France, but
+``King of the French'' by election.  This consummation had not
+been achieved without intrigue on the part of Egalite's son.  It
+was not an achievement calculated to abate the Prince de Conde's
+hatred for him.  Rather did it inflame that hatred.  In the
+matter of the famous will, moreover, as the King's son the little
+Duc d'Aumale would be now in no need of the provision made for
+him by his unwilling godfather, while members of the exiled royal
+family--notably the grandson of Charles, the Duc de Bordeaux,
+certainly cut out of the Prince's will by the intrigues of Sophie
+and family--were in want of assistance.  This is a point to be
+remembered in the light of subsequent events.
+
+
+
+% IV
+
+While she had been looking after herself Sophie Dawes had not
+been unmindful ofthe advancement of hangers-on of her own family. 
+She had about her a nephew and a niece.  The latter, supposed by
+some to have a closer relationship to Sophie than that of mere
+niece, she had contrived to marry off to a marquis.  The Marquise
+de Chabannes de la Palice need not here concern us further.  But
+notice must be taken of the nephew.  A few million francs,
+provided by the Prince de Conde, had secured for this James Dawes
+the title of Baron de Flassans, from a domain also bestowed upon
+him by Sophie's elderly lover.  De Flassans, with some minor post
+in the Prince's household, acted as his aunt's jackal.
+
+If Sophie, after the election to kingship of Louis-Philippe,
+found it necessary to be in Paris a great deal to worship at the
+throne her nephew kept her well informed about the Prince de
+Conde's activities.  The old man, it appeared, had suddenly
+developed the habit of writing letters.  The Prince, then at the
+chateau of Saint-Leu expressed a desire to remove to Chantilly. 
+He was behaving very oddly all round, was glad to have Sophie out
+of his sight, and seemed unwilling even to hear her name.  The
+projected move to Chantilly, as a fact, was merely a blind to
+cover a flight out of Sophie's reach and influence.  Rumour arose
+about Saint-Leu and in Paris that the Prince had made another
+will--one in which neither Sophie nor the Duc d'Aumale was
+mentioned.  This was a move of which Sophie had been afraid.  She
+saw to it that the Prince did not get away from Saint-Leu. 
+Rumour and the Prince's conduct made Sophie very anxious.  She
+tried to get him to make over to her in his lifetime those
+properties which he had left to her in his will, and it is
+probable enough that she would have forced this request but for
+the fact that, to raise the legal costs, the property of
+Saint-Leu would have had to be sold.
+
+This was the position of affairs about the middle of August 1830. 
+It was believed the Prince had already signed a will in favour of
+the exiled little Duc de Bordeaux, but that he had kept the act
+secret from his mistress.
+
+On the morning of the 11th of the month the Prince was met
+outside his bedroom in his night attire.  It was a young man
+called Obry who thus met the Prince.  He was the old man's
+godchild.  The old man's left eye was bleeding, and there was a
+scratch on his cheek as if made by a fingernail.  To Obry the
+Prince attributed these wounds to the spite of the Baronne de
+Feucheres.  Half an hour later he told his valet he had hit his
+head against a night-table.  Later again in the day he gave
+another version still: he had fallen against the door to a secret
+staircase from his bedroom while letting the Baronne de Feucheres
+out, the secret staircase being in communication with Sophie's
+private apartments.
+
+For the next ten days or so the Prince was engaged in contriving
+his flight from the gentle Sophie, a second plan which again was
+spoiled by Sophie's spies.  There was something of a fete at
+Saint-Leu on the 26th, the Prince's saint's day.  There was a
+quarrel between Sophie and the Prince on the morning of the 26th
+in the latter's bedroom.  Sophie had then been back in Saint-Leu
+for three days.  At midnight on the 26th the old man retired
+after playing a game or two at whist.  He was to go on the 30th
+to Chantilly.  He was accompanied to his bedroom by his surgeon
+and a valet, one Lecomte, and expressed a desire to be called at
+eight o'clock.  Lecomte found a paper in the Prince's trousers
+and gave it to the old man, who placed it on the mantelshelf. 
+Then the valet, as he said later, locked the door of the Prince's
+dressing-room, thus --except for the entrance from the secret
+staircase--locking the old man in his room.
+
+The Prince's apartments were on the first floor of the chateau. 
+His bedroom was approached through the dressing-room from the
+main corridor.  Beyond the dressing-room was a passage, turning
+left from which was the bedroom, and to the right in which was an
+entrance to an anteroom.  Facing the dressing-room door in this
+same passage was the entrance to the secret staircase already
+mentioned.  The staircase gave access to the Baronne de
+Feucheres' apartments on the entrance floor.  These, however,
+were not immediately under the Prince's rooms.  An entresol
+intervened, and here the rooms were occupied by the Abbe Briant,
+a creature of Sophie's and her secretary, the Widow Lachassine,
+Sophie's lady's-maid, and a couple named Dupre.  These last, also
+spies of Sophie's, had their room direcdy below the Prince's
+bedroom, and it is recorded that the floor was so thin that they
+could hear not only the old man's every movement, but anything he
+said.
+
+Adjacent to the Prince's room, and on the same floor, were the
+rooms occupied by Lambot, the Prince's aide, and the valet
+Lecomte.  Lambot was a lover of Sophie's, and had been the great
+go-between in her intrigues with the Orleans family over the
+will.  Lecomte was in Sophie's pay.  Close to Sophie's apartments
+on the entrance floor were the rooms occupied by her nephew and
+his wife, the de Flassans.  It will be seen, therefore, that the
+wing containing the Prince's rooms was otherwise occupied almost
+completely by Sophie's creatures.
+
+You have, then, the stage set for the tragedy which was about to
+ensue: midnight; the last of the Condes peaceably in his bedroom
+for the night, and locked in it (according to Lecomte).  About
+him, on all sides, are the creatures of his not too scrupulous
+mistress.  All these people, with the exception of the Baronne de
+Flassans, who sat up writing letters until two, retire about the
+same time.
+
+And at eight o'clock next morning, there being no answer to
+Lecomte's knocking to arouse the Prince, the door is broken open
+at the orders of the Baronne de Feucheres.  The Prince is
+discovered dead in his bedroom, suspended by the neck, by means
+of two of his own handkerchiefs knotted together, from the
+fastening of one of the French windows.
+
+The fastening was only about two and a half feet off the floor. 
+The handkerchief about the dead man's neck was loose enough to
+have permitted insertion of all the fingers of a hand between it
+and the neck.  The second handkerchief was tied to the first, and
+its other end was knotted to the window-fastening, and the dead
+man's right cheek was pressed against the closed shutter.  The
+knees were bent a little, the feet were on the floor.  None of
+the usual indications of death by strangulation were present. 
+The eyes were half closed.  The face was pale but not livid.  The
+mouth was almost closed.  There was no protrusion of the tongue.
+
+On the arrival of the civil functionaries, the Mayor of Saint-Leu
+and a Justice of the Peace from Enghien, the body was taken down
+and put on the bed.  It was then found that the dead man's ankles
+were greatly bruised and his legs scratched.  On the left side of
+the throat, at a point too low for it to have been done by the
+handkerchief, there was some stripping of the skin.  A large red
+bruise was found between the Prince's shoulders.
+
+The King, Louis-Philippe, heard about the death of the Prince de
+Conde at half-past eleven that same day.  He immediately sent his
+High Chancellor, M. Pasquier, and his own aide-de-camp, M. de
+Rumigny, to inquire into the matter.  It is not stretching things
+too far to say that the King's instructions to these gentlemen
+are revealed in phrases occurring in the letters they sent his
+Majesty that same evening.  Both recommend that Drs Marc and
+Marjolin should be sent to investigate the Prince's tragic death. 
+But M. Pasquier mentions that ``not a single document has been
+found, so a search has already been made.''  And M. de Rumigny
+thinks ``it is important that nobody should be accused who is
+likely to benefit by the will.''  What document was expected to
+be discovered in the search?  Why, a second will that would
+invalidate the first.  Who was to benefit by the first will? 
+Why, the little Duc d'Aumale and Dame Sophie Dawes, Baronne de
+Feucheres!
+
+The post-mortem examination was made by the King's own
+physicians.  During the examination the Prince's doctors, MM.
+Dubois and Gendrin, his personal secretary, and the faithful one
+among his body-servants, Manoury, were sent out of the room.  The
+verdict was suicide.  The Prince's own doctors maintained that
+suicide by the handkerchiefs from the window-fastening was
+impossible.  Dr Dubois wrote his idea of how the death had
+occurred:
+
+
+The Prince very likely was asleep in his bed.  The murderers must
+have been given entrance to his bedroom--I have no wish to ask
+how or by whom.  They then threw themselves on the Prince,
+gripped him firmly, and could easily pin him down on his bed;
+then the most desperate and dexterous of the murderers suffocated
+him as he was thus held firmly down; finally, in order to make it
+appear that he had committed suicide and to hinder any judicial
+investigations which might have discovered the identity of the
+assassins, they fastened a handkerchief about their victim's
+neck, and hung him up by the espagnolette of the window.
+
+
+And that, at all hazards, is about the truth of the death of the
+Duc de Bourbon and Prince de Conde.  There was some official
+display of rigour in investigation by the Procureur; there was
+much play with some mysterious papers found a good time after the
+first discovery half-burned in the fireplace of the Prince's
+bedroom; there was a lot put forward to support the idea of
+suicide; but the blunt truth of the affair is that the Prince de
+Conde was murdered, and that the murder was hushed up as much as
+possible.  Not, however, with complete success.  There were few
+in France who gave any countenance to the theory of suicide.
+
+The Prince, it will be remembered, had a practically disabled
+left arm.  It is said that he could not even remove his hat with
+his left hand.  The knots in the handkerchiefs used to tie him to
+the espagnolette were both complicated and tightly made. 
+Impossible for a one-handed man.  His bed, which at the time of
+his retiring to it stood close to the alcove wall, was a good
+foot and a half away from that wall in the morning.  Impossible
+feat also for this one-handed man.  It was the Prince's habit to
+lie so much to one side of the bed that his servants had to prop
+the outside edge up with folded blankets.  On the morning when
+his death was discovered it was seen that the edges still were
+high, while the centre was very much pressed down.  There was, in
+fact, a hollow in the bed's middle such as might have been made
+by some one standing on it with shoes on.  It is significant that
+the bedclothes were neatly turned down.  If the Prince had got up
+on a sudden impulse to commit suicide he is hardly likely, being
+a prince, to have attempted remaking his bed.  He must, moreover,
+since he could normally get from bed only by rolling on his side,
+have pressed out that heightened edge.  Manoury, the valet who
+loved him, said that the bed in the morning looked more as if it
+had been SMOOTHED OUT than remade.  This would tend to support
+the theory of Dr Dubois.  The murderers, having suffocated the
+Prince, would be likely to try effacing the effects of his
+struggling by the former method rather than the latter.
+
+But the important point of the affair, as far as this chapter on
+it is concerned, is the relation of Sophie Dawes with it on the
+conclusion of murder.  How deeply was she implicated?  Let us see
+how she acted on hearing that there was no reply to Lecomte's
+knocking, and let us examine her conduct from that moment on.
+
+Note that the Baronne de Feucheres was the first person whom
+Lecomte and the Prince's surgeon apprised of the Prince's
+silence.  She rushed out of her room and made for the Prince's,
+not by the secret staircase, but by the main one.  She knew,
+however, that the door to the secret staircase from the Prince's
+room was not bolted that night.  This knowledge was admitted for
+her later by the Prince's surgeon, M. Bonnie.  She had gone up to
+the Prince's room by the main staircase in order to hide the
+fact, an action which gives a touch of theatricality to her
+exhibited concern about the Prince's silence.
+
+The search for documents spoken of by M. Pasquier in his letter
+to the King had been carried out by Sophie in person, with the
+aid of her nephew de Flassans and the Abbe Briant.  It was a
+thorough search, and a piece of indecorousness which she excused
+on the ground of being afraid the Prince's executors might find a
+will which made her the sole heir, to the exclusion of the Duc
+d'Aumale.
+
+Regarding the `accident' which had happened to the Prince on the
+11th of August, she said it was explained by an earlier attempt
+on his part to do away with himself.  She tried to deny that she
+had been at Saint-Leu at the time of the actual happening, when
+the fact was that she only left for Paris some hours later.
+
+When, some time later, the Prince's faithful valet Manoury made
+mention of the fact that the Prince had wanted to put the width
+of the country between himself and his mistress, Sophie first
+tried to put the fear of Louis-Philippe into the man, then,
+finding he was not to be silenced that way, tried to buy him with
+a promise of employment.
+
+It is beyond question that the Prince de Conde was murdered.  He
+was murdered in a wing of the chateau in which he was hemmed in
+on all sides by Sophie's creatures.  It is impossible that Sophie
+was not privy, at the least, to the deed.  It is not beyond the
+bounds of probability that she was an actual participator in the
+murder.
+
+She was a violent woman, as violent and passionate as she was
+determined.  Not once but many times is it on record that she
+physically ill-used her elderly lover.  There was one occasion,
+it is said, when the Prince suddenly came upon her in a very
+compromising position with a younger man in the park of one of
+his chateaux.  Sophie, before the Prince could utter a protest,
+cut him across the face with her riding-whip, and finished up by
+thrashing him with his own cane.
+
+Here you have the stuff, at any rate, of which your murderesses
+of the violent type are made.  It is the metal out of which your
+Kate Websters, your Sarah Malcolms, your Meteyards and Brownriggs
+fashion themselves.  It takes more than three years of scholastic
+self-discipline, such as Sophie Dawes in her ambition subjected
+herself to, to eradicate the inborn harridan.  The very
+determination which was at the back of Sophie's efforts at
+self-education, that will to have her own way, would serve to
+heighten the sick rage with which she would discover that her
+carefully wrought plans of seven years had come to pieces.  What
+was it that the Abbe Pelier de Lacroix had in ``proof of the
+horrible assassination'' of the Prince de Conde, but that he was
+prevented from placing before the lawyers in charge of the later
+investigation, if not the fact that the Prince had made a later
+will than the one by which Sophie inherited so greatly?  The Abbe
+was the Prince's chaplain.  He published a pamphlet declaring
+that the Prince had made a will leaving his entire fortune to the
+little Duc de Bordeaux, but that Sophie had stolen this later
+will.  Who likelier to be a witness to such a will than the
+Prince's chaplain?
+
+It needs no great feat of imagination to picture what the effect
+of such a discovery would be on a woman of Sophie's violent
+temper, or to conceive how little the matter of taking a life
+especially the life of a feeble old man she was used to bullying
+and mishandling--would be allowed to stand in the way of rescuing
+her large gains.  Murder of the Prince was her only chance.  It
+had taken her seven years to bring him to the point of signing
+that first will.  He was seventy-four years of age, enfeebled,
+obstinate, and she knew of his plans to flee from her.  Even
+supposing that she could prevent his flight, could she begin all
+over again to another seven years of bullying and
+wheedling--always with the prospect of the old man dying before
+she could get him to the point again of doing as she wished?  The
+very existence of the second will was a menace.  It only needed
+that the would-be heirs of the Prince should hear of it, and
+there would be a swoop on their part to rescue the testator from
+her clutches.  In the balance against 2,000,000 francs and some
+halfdozen castles with their estates the only wonder is that any
+reasonable person, knowing the history of Sophie Dawes, should
+hesitate about the value she was likely to place on the old man's
+life.
+
+The inquiry begun in September of 1830 into the circumstances
+surrounding the death of the Prince was cooked before it was
+dressed.  The honest man into whose hands it was placed at first,
+a M. de la Hurpoie, proved himself too zealous.  After a night
+visit from the Procureur he was retired into private life.  After
+that the investigators were hand-picked.  They concluded the
+investigation the following June, with the declaration that the
+Prince had committed suicide, a verdict which had its reward--in
+advancement for the judges.
+
+In the winter of 1831-32 there was begun a lawsuit in which the
+Princes de Rohan brought action against Sophie and the Duc
+d'Aumale for the upsetting of the will under which the latter two
+had inherited the Prince de Conde's fortune.  The grounds for the
+action were the undue influence exerted by Sophie.  The Princes
+de Rohan lost.
+
+Thus was Sophie twice `legally' vindicated.  But public opinion
+refused her any coat of whitewash.  Never popular in France, she
+became less and less popular in the years that followed her legal
+triumphs.  Having used her for his own ends, Louis-Philippe
+gradually shut off from her the light of his cod-like
+countenance.[29]
+
+
+[29] Lacenaire, the notorious murderer-robber in a biting song,
+written in prison, expressed the popular opinion regarding
+Louis-Philippe's share in the Feucheres-Conde affair.  The song,
+called Petition d'un voleur a un roi son voisin, has this final
+stanza:
+
+    ``Sire, oserais-je reclamer?
+    Mais ecoutez-moi sans colere:
+    Le voeu que je vais exprimer
+    Pourrait bien, ma foi, vous deplaire.
+    Je suis fourbe, avare, mechant,
+    Ladre, impitoyable, rapace;
+    J'ai fait se pendre mon parent:
+    Sire, cedez-moi votre place.''
+
+
+
+Sophie found little joy in her wide French possessions.  She
+found herself without friends before whom she could play the
+great lady in her castles.  She gradually got rid of her
+possessions, and returned to her native land.  She bought an
+estate near Christchurch, in Hampshire, and took a house in Hyde
+Park Square, London.  But she did not long enjoy those English
+homes.  While being treated for dropsy in 1840 she died of
+angina.  According to the famous surgeon who was at her bedside
+just before her demise, she died ``game.''
+
+It may almost be said that she lived game.  There must have been
+a fighting quality about Sophie to take her so far from such a
+bad start.  Violent as she was of temper, greedy, unscrupulous,
+she seems yet to have had some instincts of kindness.  The
+stories of her good deeds are rather swamped by those of her bad
+ones.  She did try to do some good with the Prince's money round
+about Chantilly, took a definite and lasting interest in the
+alms-houses built there by ``the Great Conde,'' and a request in
+her own will was to the effect that if she had ever done anything
+for the Orleans gang, the Prince de Conde's wishes regarding the
+use of the chateau of Ecouen as an orphanage might be fulfilled
+as a reward to her.  The request never was fulfilled, but it does
+show that Sophie had some affinity in kindness to Nell Gwynn.
+
+How much farther--or how much better--would Sophie Dawes have
+fared had her manners been less at the mercy of her temper?  It
+is impossible to say.  That she had some quality of greatness is
+beyond doubt.  The resolution of character, the will to achieve,
+and even the viraginous temper might have carried her far had she
+been a man some thirty years earlier in the country of her
+greater activities.  Under Napoleon, as a man, Sophie might have
+climbed high on the way to glory.  As a woman, with those traits,
+there is almost tragic inevitability in the manner in which we
+find her ranged with what Dickens called ``Glory's bastard
+brother''--Murder.
+
+
+
+
+VI: ARSENIC A LA BRETONNE
+
+On Tuesday, the 1st of July, in the year 1851, two gentlemen,
+sober of face as of raiment, presented themselves at the office
+of the Procureur-General in the City of Rennes.  There was no
+need for them to introduce themselves to that official.  They
+were well-known medical men of the city, Drs Pinault and Boudin. 
+The former of the two acted as spokesman.
+
+Dr Pinault confessed to some distress of mind.  He had been
+called in by his colleague for consultation in the case of a
+girl, Rosalie Sarrazin, servant to an eminent professor of law,
+M. Bidard.  In spite of the ministrations of himself and his
+colleague, Rosalie had died.  The symptoms of the illness had
+been very much the same as in the case of a former servant of M.
+Bidard's, a girl named Rose Tessier, who had also died.  With
+this in mind they had persuaded the relatives of Rosalie to
+permit an autopsy.  They had to confess that they had found no
+trace of poison in the body, but they were still convinced the
+girl had died of poisoning.  With his colleague backing him, Dr
+Pinault was able to put such facts before the Procureur-General
+that that official almost at once reached for his hat to
+accompany the two doctors to M. Bidard's.
+
+The door of the Professor's house was opened to them by Helene
+Jegado, another of M. Bidard's servants.  She was a woman of
+forty odd, somewhat scraggy of figure and, while not exactly
+ugly, not prepossessing of countenance.  Her habit of looking
+anywhere but into the face of anyone addressing her gave her
+rather a furtive air.
+
+Having ushered the three gentlemen into the presence of the
+Professor, the servant-woman lingered by the door.
+
+``We have come, M. Bidard,'' said the Procureur, ``on a rather
+painful mission.  One of your servants died recently--it is
+suspected, of poisoning.''
+
+``I am innocent!''
+
+The three visitors wheeled to stare, with the Professor, at the
+grey-faced woman in the doorway.  It was she who had made the
+exclamation.
+
+``Innocent of what?'' demanded the Law officer.  ``No one has
+accused you of anything!''
+
+This incautious remark on the part of the servant, together with
+the facts already put before him by the two doctors and the
+information he obtained from her employer, led the
+Procureur-General to have her arrested.  Helene Jegado's past was
+inquired into, and a strange and dreadful Odyssey the last twenty
+years of her life proved to be.  It was an Odyssey of death.
+
+Helene was born at Plouhinec, department of Morbihan, on
+(according to the official record) ``28 prairial,'' in the
+eleventh year of the republic (1803).  Orphaned at the age of
+seven, she was sheltered by the cure of Bubry, M. Raillau, with
+whom two of her aunts were servants.  Sixteen years later one of
+those aunts, Helene Liscouet, took Helene with her into service
+with M. Conan, cure at Seglien, and it was here that Helene
+Jegado's evil ways would appear first to become manifest.  A girl
+looking after the cure's sheep declared she had found grains of
+hemp in soup prepared for her by Helene.
+
+It was not, however, until 1833 that causing death is laid at her
+charge.    
+
+In that year she entered the service of a priest in Guern, one Le
+Drogo.  In the space of little more than three months, from the
+28th of June to the 3rd of October, seven persons in the priest's
+household died.  All those people died after painful vomitings,
+and all of them had eaten food prepared by Helene, who nursed
+each of them to the last.  The victims of this fatal outbreak of
+sickness included Helene's own sister Anna (apparently on a visit
+to Guern from Bubry), the rector's father and mother, and Le
+Drogo himself.  This last, a strong and vigorous man, was dead
+within thirty-two hours of the first onset of his illness. 
+Helene, it was said, showed the liveliest sorrow over each of the
+deaths, but on the death of the rector was heard to say, ``This
+won't be the last!''  Nor was it.  Two deaths followed that of Le
+Drogo.
+
+Such a fatal outbreak did not pass without suspicion.  The body
+of the rector was examined by Dr Galzain, who found indications
+of grave disorder in the digestive tracts, with inflammation of
+the intestines.  His colleague, Dr Martel, had suspicions of
+poison, but the pious sorrow of Helene lulled his mind as far as
+she was concerned.
+
+We next find Helene returned to Bubry, replacing her sister Anna
+in the service of the cure there.  In three months three people
+died:  Helene's aunt Marie-Jeanne Liscouet and the cure's niece
+and sister.  This last, a healthy girl of about sixteen, was dead
+within four days, and it is to be noted that during her brief
+illness she drank nothing but milk from the hands of Helene.  But
+here, as hitherto, Helene attended all the sufferers.  Her grief
+over their deaths impressed every one with whom she came in
+contact.
+
+From Bubry Helene went to Locmine.  Her family connexion as
+servants with the clergy found her room for three days in the
+rectory, after which she became apprentice to a needlewoman of
+the town, one Marie-Jeanne Leboucher, with whom she lived.  The
+Widow Leboucher was stricken ill, as also was one of her
+daughters.  Both died.  The son of the house, Pierre, also fell
+ill.  But, not liking Helene, he refused her ministrations, and
+recovered.  By this time Helene had become somewhat sensitive. 
+
+``I'm afraid,'' she said to a male relative of the deceased
+sempstress, ``that people will accuse me of all those deaths. 
+Death follows me wherever I go.''  She quitted the Leboucher
+establishment in distress.
+
+A widow of the same town offered her house room.  The widow died,
+having eaten soup of Helene's preparing.  On the day following
+the Widow Lorey's death her niece, Veuve Cadic, arrived.  The
+grief-stricken Helene threw herself into the niece's arms.
+
+``My poor girl!'' exclaimed the Veuve Cadic.
+
+``Ai--but I'm so unhappy!'' Helene grieved.  ``Where-ever I
+go--Seglien, Guern, Bubry, Veuve Laboucher's--people die!
+
+She had cause for grief, sure enough.  In less than eighteen
+months thirteen persons with whom she had been closely associated
+had died of violent sickness.  But more were to follow.
+
+In May of 1835 Helene was in service with the Dame Toussaint, of
+Locmine.  Four more people died.  They were the Dame's
+confidential maid, Anne Eveno, M. Toussaint pere, a daughter of
+the house, Julie, and, later, Mme Toussaint herself.  They had
+eaten vegetable soup prepared by Helene Jegado.  Something
+tardily the son of the house, liking neither Helene's face nor
+the deathly rumours that were rife about her, dismissed her.
+
+To one as burdened with sorrow as Helene Jegado appeared to be
+the life conventual was bound to hold appeal.  She betook herself
+to the pleasant little town of Auray, which sits on a sea arm
+behind the nose of Quiberon, and sought shelter in the convent of
+the Eternal Father there.  She was admitted as a pensionnaire. 
+Her sojourn in the convent did not last long, for queer disorders
+marked her stay.  Linen in the convent cupboards and the garments
+of the pupils were maliciously slashed.  Helene was suspect and
+was packed off.
+
+Once again Helene became apprentice to a sempstress, this time an
+old maid called Anne Lecouvrec, proprietress of the
+Bonnes-oeuvres in Auray.  The ancient lady, seventy-seven years
+of age, tried Helene's soup.  She died two days later.  To a
+niece of the deceased Helene made moan:  ``Ah!  I carry sorrow. 
+My masters die wherever I go!''
+
+The realization, however, did not prevent Helene from seeking
+further employment.  She next got a job with a lady named Lefur
+in Ploermel, and stayed for a month.  During that time Helene's
+longing for the life religious found frequent expression, and she
+ultimately departed to pay a visit, so she said, to the good
+sisters of the Auray community.  Some time before her departure,
+however, she persuaded Anne Lefur to accept a drink of her
+preparing, and Anne, hitherto a healthy woman, became very ill
+indeed.  In this case Helene did not show her usual solicitude. 
+She rather heartlessly abandoned the invalid--which would appear
+to have been a good thing for the invalid, for, lacking Helene's
+ministrations, she got better.
+
+Helene meantime had found a place in Auray with a lady named
+Hetel.  The job lasted only a few days.  Mme Hetel's son-in-law,
+M. Le Dore, having heard why Helene was at need to leave the
+convent of the Eternal Father, showed her the door of the house. 
+That was hasty, but not hasty enough.  His mother-in-law, having
+already eaten meats cooked by Helene, was in the throes of the
+usual violent sickness, and died the day after Helene's
+departure.
+
+Failing to secure another place in Auray, Helene went to Pontivy,
+and got a position as cook in the household of the Sieur Jouanno. 
+She had been there some few months when the son of the house, a
+boy of fourteen, died after a sickness of five days that was
+marked by vomiting and convulsions.  In this case an autopsy was
+immediately held.  It revealed an inflamed condition of the
+stomach and some corrosion of the intestines.  But the boy had
+been known to be a vinegar-drinker, and the pathological
+conditions discovered by the doctor were attributed by him to the
+habit.
+
+Helene's next place was with a M. Kerallic in Hennebont.  M.
+Kerallic was recovering from a fever.  After drinking a tisane
+prepared by Helene he had a relapse, followed by repeated and
+fierce vomiting that destroyed him in five days.  This was in
+1836.  After that the trail of death which had followed Helene's
+itineracy about the lower section of the Brittany peninsula was
+broken for three years.
+
+In 1839 we hear of her again, in the house of the Dame Veron,
+where another death occurred, again with violent sickness.
+
+Two years elapse.  In 1841 Helene was in Lorient, domestic
+servant to a middle-aged couple named Dupuyde-Lome, with whom
+lived their daughter and her husband, a M. Breger.  First the
+little daughter of the young couple died, then all the members of
+the family were seized by illness, its onset being on the day
+following the death of the child.  No more of the family died,
+but M. Dupuy and his daughter suffered from bodily numbness for
+years afterwards, with partial paralysis and recurrent pains in
+the extremities.
+
+Helene seems to have made Lorient too hot for herself, and had to
+go elsewhere.  Port Louis is her next scene of action.  A
+kinswoman of her master in this town, one Duperron, happened to
+miss a sheet from the household stock.  Mlle Leblanc charged
+Helene with the theft, and demanded the return of the stolen
+article.  It is recorded that Helene refused to give it up, and
+her answer is curious.
+
+``I am going into retreat,'' she declared.  ``God has forgiven me
+my sins!''
+
+There was perhaps something prophetic in the declaration.  By the
+time Helene was brought to trial, in 1854, her sins up to this
+point of record were covered by the prescription legale, a sort
+of statute of limitations in French law covering crime.  Between
+1833 and 1841 the wanderings of Helene Jegado through those quiet
+Brittany towns had been marked by twenty-three deaths, six
+illnesses, and numerous thefts.
+
+There is surcease to Helene's death-dealing between the years of
+1841 and 1849, but on the inquiries made after her arrest a
+myriad of accusers sprang up to tell of thefts during that time. 
+They were petty thefts, but towards the end of the period they
+begin to indicate a change in Helene's habits.  She seems to have
+taken to drink, for her thefts are mostly of wine and eau de vie.
+
+In March 1848 Helene was in Rennes.  On the 6th of November of
+the following year, having been dismissed from several houses for
+theft, she became sole domestic servant to a married couple
+called Rabot.  Their son, Albert, who was already ill, died in
+the end of December.  He had eaten a farina porridge cooked by
+Helene.  In the following February, having discovered Helene's
+depredations from the wine-cupboard, M. Rabot gave her notice. 
+This was on the 3rd of the month.  (Helene was to leave on the
+13th.)  The next day Mme Rabot and Rabot himself, having taken
+soup of Helene's making, became very ill.  Rabot's mother-in-law
+ate a panade prepared by Helene.  She too fell ill.  They all
+recovered after Helene had departed, but Rabot, like M.
+Dupuy-de-Lome, was partially paralysed for months afterwards.
+
+In Helene's next situation, with people called Ozanne, her way of
+abstracting liquor again was noticed.  She was chided for
+stealing eau de vie.  Soon after that the Ozannes' little son
+died suddenly, very suddenly.  The doctor called in thought it
+was from a croup fever.
+
+On the day following the death of the little Ozanne Helene
+entered the service of M. Roussell, proprietor of the
+Bout-du-Monde hotel in Rennes.  Some six weeks later Roussell's
+mother suddenly became ill.  She had had occasion to reproach
+Helene for sullen ill-manners or something of that sort.  She ate
+some potage which Helene had cooked.  The illness that ensued
+lasted a long time.  Eighteen months later the old lady had
+hardly recovered.
+
+In the hotel with Helene as fellow-servant there was a woman of
+thirty, Perrotte Mace, very greatly relied upon by her masters,
+with whom she had been five years.  She was a strongly built
+woman who carried herself finely.  Perrotte openly agreed with
+the Veuve Roussell regarding Helene's behaviour.  This, with the
+confidence reposed in Perrotte by the Roussells, might have been
+enough to set Helene against her.  But there was an additional
+cause for jealousy: Jean Andre, the hotel ostler, but also
+described as a cabinet-maker, though friendly enough with Helene,
+showed a marked preference for the younger, and comelier,
+Perrotte.  The Veuve Roussell fell ill in the middle of June.  In
+August Perrotte was seized by a similar malady, and, in spite of
+all her resistance, had to take to her bed.  Vomiting and purging
+marked the course of her illness, pains in the stomach and limbs,
+distension of the abdomen, and swelling of the feet.  With her
+strong constitution she put up a hard fight for her life, but
+succumbed on the 1st of September, 1850.  The doctors called in,
+MM. Vincent and Guyot, were extremely puzzled by the course of
+the illness.  At times the girl would seem to be on the mend,
+then there would come a sudden relapse.  After Perrotte's death
+they pressed for an autopsy, but the peasant relatives of the
+girl showed the usual repugnance of their class to the idea. 
+Helene was taken red-handed in the theft of wine, and was
+dismissed.  Fifteen days later she took service with the Bidards.
+
+These are the salient facts of Helene's progression from 1833 to
+1851 as brought out by the investigations made by and for the
+Procureur-General of Rennes.  All possible channels were explored
+to discover where Helene had procured the arsenic, but without
+success.  Under examination by the Juge d'instruction she stoutly
+denied all knowledge of the poison.  ``I don't know anything
+about arsenic--don't know what it is,'' she repeated.  ``No
+witness can say I ever had any.''  It was believed that she had
+secured a large supply in her early days, and had carried it with
+her through the years, but that at the first definite word of
+suspicion against her had got rid of it.  During her trial
+mention was made of packets found in a chest she had used while
+at Locsine, the place where seven deaths had occurred.  But it
+was never clearly established that these packets had contained
+arsenic.  It was never clearly established, though it could be
+inferred, that Helene ever had arsenic at all. 
+
+
+
+% II
+
+The first hearings of Helene's case were taken before the Juge
+d'instruction in Rennes, and she was remanded to the assizes for
+Ille-et-Vilaine, which took place, apparently, in the same city. 
+The charges against her were limited to eleven thefts, three
+murders by poisoning, and three attempts at murder by the like
+means.  Under the prescription legale twenty-three poisonings,
+six attempts at poisoning, and a number of thefts, all of which
+had taken place within the space of ten years, had to be left out
+of the indictment.  We shall see, however, that, under the
+curious rules regarding permissible evidence which prevail in
+French criminal law, the Assize Court concerned itself quite
+largely with this prescribed matter.
+
+The trial began on the 6th of December, 1851, at a time when
+France was in a political uproar--or, more justly perhaps, was
+settling down from political uproar.  The famous coup d'etat of
+that year had happened four days before.  Maitre Dorange,
+defending Helene, asked for a remand to a later session on the
+ground that some of his material witnesses were unavailable owing
+to the political situation.  An eminent doctor, M. Baudin, had
+died ``pour maintien des lois.''  There was some argument on the
+matter, but the President ruled that all material witnesses were
+present.  Scientific experts could be called only to assist the
+court.
+
+The business of this first day was taken up almost completely by
+questions on the facts produced in investigation, and these
+mostly facts covered by the prescription.  The legal value of
+this run of questions would seem doubtful in the Anglo-Saxon idea
+of justice, but it gives an indication of the shiftiness in
+answer of the accused.  It was a long interrogation, but Helene
+faced it with notable self-possession.  On occasion she answered
+with vigour, but in general sombrely and with lowered eyes.  At
+times she broke into volubility.  This did not serve to remove
+the impression of shiftiness, for her answers were seldom to the
+point.
+
+Wasn't it true, she was asked, that in Locmine she had been
+followed and insulted with cries:   ``C'est la femme au foie
+blanc; elle porte la mort avec elle!''?  Nobody had ever said
+anything of the sort to her, was her sullen answer.  A useless
+denial.  There were plenty of witnesses to express their belief
+in her ``white liver'' and to tell of her reputation of carrying
+death.
+
+Asked why she had been dismissed from the convent at Auray, she
+answered that she did not know.  The Mother Superior had told her
+to go.  She had been too old to learn reading and writing. 
+Pressed on the point of the slashed garments of the pupils and
+the linen in the convent cupboards, Helene retorted that somebody
+had cut her petticoats as well, and that, anyhow, the sisters had
+never accused her of working the mischief.
+
+This last answer was true in part.  The evidence on which Helene
+had been dismissed the convent was circumstantial.  A sister from
+the community described Helene's behaviour otherwise as edifying
+indeed.
+
+After the merciless fashion of French judges, the President came
+back time and again to attack Helene on the question of poison. 
+If Perrotte Mace did not get the poison from her--from whom,
+then?
+
+``I don't know anything of poison,'' was the reply, with the
+pious addendum, ``and, God willing, I never will!''
+
+This, with variations, was her constant answer.
+
+``Qu'est-ce que c'est l'arsenic? Je n'en ai jamais vu d'arsenic,
+moi!''
+
+The President had occasion later to take her up on these denials. 
+The curate of Seglien came to give evidence.  He had been curate
+during the time of M. Conan, in whose service Helene had been at
+that time.  He could swear that M. Conan had repeatedly told his
+servants to watch that the domestic animals did not get at the
+poisoned bait prepared for the rats.  M. Conan's servants had
+complete access to the arsenic used.
+
+Helene interposed at this point.  ``I know,'' she said, ``that M.
+Conan had asked for arsenic, but I wasn't there at the time.  My
+aunt told me about it.''
+
+The President reminded her that in her interrogaion she had
+declared she knew nothing of arsenic, nor had heard anyone speak
+of it.  Helene sullenly persisted in her first declaration, but
+modified it with the admission that her aunt had told her the
+stuff was dangerous, and not to be used save with the strictest
+precautions.
+
+This evidence of the arsenic at Seglien was brought forward on
+the second day of the trial, when witnesses began to be heard. 
+Before pursuing the point of where the accused might have
+obtained the poison I should like to quote, as typical of the
+hypocritical piety exhibited by Helene, one of her answers on the
+first day.
+
+After reminding her that Rose Tessier's sickness had increased
+after taking a tisane that Helene had prepared the President
+asked if it was not the fact that she alone had looked after
+Rose.
+
+``No,'' Helen replied.  ``Everybody was meddling.  All I did was
+put the tisane on to boil.  I have suffered a great deal,'' she
+added gratuitously.  ``The good God will give me grace to bear up
+to the end.  If I have not died of my sufferings in prison it is
+because God's hand has guided and sustained me.''
+
+With that in parenthesis, let us return to the evidence of the
+witnesses on the second day of the trial.  A great deal of it had
+to do with deaths on which, under the prescription, no charge
+could be made against Helene, and with thefts that equally could
+not be the subject of accusation.
+
+Dr Galzain, of Ponivy, who, eighteen years before, had performed
+the autopsy on Le Drogo, cure of Guern, testified that though he
+had then been puzzled by the pathological conditions, he was now
+prepared to say they were consistent with arsenical poisoning. 
+
+Martel, a pharmacist, brother of the doctor who had attended Le
+Drogo, spoke of his brother's suspicions, suspicions which had
+recurred on meeting with the cases at Bubry.  They had been
+diverted by the lavishly affectionate attendance Helene had given
+to the sufferers.
+
+Relatives of the victims of Locmine told of Helene's predictions
+of death, and of her plaints that death followed her everywhere. 
+They also remarked on the very kind ministrations of Helene.
+
+Dr Toussaint, doctor at Locmine, and son to the house in which
+Helene had for a time been servant, told of his perplexity over
+the symptoms in the cases of the Widow Lorey and the youth
+Leboucher.  In 1835 he had been called in to see Helene herself,
+who was suffering from an intermittent fever.  Next day the fever
+had disappeared.  He was told that she had been dosing herself,
+and he was shown a packet which had been in her possession.  It
+contained substances that looked like kermes-mineral,[30] some
+saffron, and a white powder that amounted to perhaps ten grammes. 
+He had disliked Helene at first sight.  She had not been long in
+his mother's service when his mother's maid-companion (Anne
+Eveno), who also had no liking for Helene, fell ill and died. 
+His father fell violently ill in turn, seemed to get better, and
+looked like recovering.  But inexplicable complications
+supervened, and his father died suddenly of a haemorrhage of the
+intestinal canal.  His sister Julie, who had been the first to
+fall sick, also seemed to recover, but after the death of the
+father had a relapse.  In his idea Helene, having cured herself,
+was able to drug the invalids in her care.  The witness ordered
+her to be kept completely away from the sufferers, but one night
+she contrived to get the nurses out of the way.  A confrere he
+called in ordered bouillon to be given.  Helene had charge of the
+kitchen, and it was she who prepared the bouillon.  It was she
+who administered it.  Three hours later his sister died in agony.
+
+
+[30] Or, simply, kermes--a pharmaceutical composition, containing
+antimony and sodium sulphates and oxide of antimony--formerly
+used as an expectorant.
+
+
+
+The witness suggested an autopsy.  His family would not agree. 
+The pious behaviour of Helene put her beyond suspicion, but he
+took it on himself to dismiss her.  During the illness of his
+father, when Helene herself was ill, he went reluctantly to see
+her, being told that she was dying.  Instead of finding her in
+bed he came upon her making some sort of white sauce.  As soon as
+he appeared she threw herself into bed and pretended to be
+suffering intense pain.  A little later he asked to see the
+sauce.  It had disappeared.
+
+He had advised his niece to reserve his sister's evacuations. 
+His niece replied that Helene was so scrupulously tidy that such
+vessels were never left about, but were taken away at once to be
+emptied and cleaned.  ``I revised my opinion of the woman after
+she had gone,'' added the witness.  ``I thought her very well
+behaved.''
+
+
+HELENE.  I never had any drugs in my possession--never.  When I
+had fever I took the powders given me by the doctor, but I did
+not know what they were!
+
+THE PRESIDENT.  Why did you say yesterday that nothing was ever
+found in your luggage?
+
+HELENE.  I didn't remember.
+
+THE PRESIDENT.  What were you doing with the saffron?  Wasn't it
+in your possession during the time you were in Seglien?
+
+HELENE.  I was taking it for my blood.
+
+THE PRESIDENT.  And the white powder--did it also come from
+Seglien?
+
+HELENE [energetically].  Never have I had white powder in my
+luggage!  Never have I seen arsenic!  Never has anyone spoken to
+me of arsenic!
+
+Upon this the President rightly reminded her that she had said
+only that morning that her aunt had talked to her of arsenic at
+Seglien, and had warned her of its lethal qualities.  ``You deny
+the existence of that white powder,'' said the President,
+``because you know it was poison.  You put it away from you with
+horror!''
+
+The accused several times tried to answer this charge, but
+failed.  Her face was beaded with moisture.
+
+
+THE PRESIDENT.  Had you or had you not any white powder at
+Losmine?
+
+HELENE.  I can't say if I still had fever there.
+
+THE PRESIDENT.  What was that powder?  When did you first have
+it?
+
+HELENE.  I had taken it at Locmine.  Somebody gave it to me for
+two sous.
+
+THE PRESIDENT.  Why didn t you say so at the beginning, instead
+of waiting until you are confounded by the witness?  [To Dr
+Toussaint]  What would the powder be, monsieur?  What powder
+would one prescribe for fever?
+
+DR TOUSSAINT.  Sulphate of quinine; but that's not what it was.
+
+
+Questioned by the advocate for the defence, the witness said he
+would not affirm that the powder he saw was arsenic.  His present
+opinion, however, was that his father and sister had died from
+injections of arsenic in small doses.
+
+A witness from Locmine spoke of her sister's two children
+becoming ill after taking chocolate prepared by the accused.  The
+latter told her that a mob had followed her in the street,
+accusing her of the deaths of those she had been servant to.
+
+Then came one of those curious samples of `what the soldier said'
+that are so often admitted in French criminal trials as evidence. 
+Louise Clocher said she had seen Helene on the road between Auray
+and Lorient in the company of a soldier.  When she told some one
+of it people said, ``That wasn't a soldier!  It was the devil you
+saw following her!''
+
+One rather sympathizes with Helene in her protest against this
+testimony.
+
+From Ploermel, Auray, Lorient, and other places doctors and
+relatives of the dead came to bear witness to Helene's cooking
+and nursing activities, and to speak of the thefts she had been
+found committing.  Where any suspicion had touched Helene her
+piety and her tender care of the sufferers had disarmed it.  The
+astonishing thing is that, with all those rumours of `white
+livers' and so on, the woman could proceed from place to place
+within a few miles of each other, and even from house to house in
+the same towns, leaving death in her tracks, without once being
+brought to bay.  Take the evidence of M. Le Dore, son-in-law of
+that Mme Hetel who died in Auray, His mother-in-law became ill
+just after Helene's reputation was brought to his notice.  The
+old lady died next day.
+
+``The day following the revelation,'' said M. Le Dore, ``I put
+Helene out.  She threw herself on the ground uttering fearsome
+yells.  The day's meal had been prepared.  I had it thrown out,
+and put Helene herself to the door with her luggage, INTO WHICH
+SHE HASTILY STOWED A PACKET.  Mme Hetel died next day in fearful
+agony.''
+
+I am responsible for the italicizing.  It is hard to understand
+why M. Le Dore did no more than put Helene to the door.  He was
+suspicious enough to throw out the meal prepared by Helene, and
+he saw her hastily stow a packet in her luggage.  But, though he
+was Mayor of Auray, he did nothing more about his mother-in-law's
+death.  It is to be remarked, however, that the Hetels themselves
+were against the brusque dismissal of Helene.  She had
+``smothered the mother with care and attentions.''
+
+But one gets perhaps the real clue to Helene's long immunity from
+the remark made in court by M. Breger, son-in-law of that Lorient
+couple, M. and Mme Dupuyde-Lome.  He had thought for a moment of
+suspecting Helene of causing the child's death and the illness of
+the rest of the family, but ``there seemed small grounds.  What
+interest had the girl in cutting off their lives?''
+
+It is a commonplace that murder without motive is the hardest to
+detect.  The deaths that Helene Jegado contrived between 1833 and
+1841, twenty-three in number, and the six attempts at murder
+which she made in that length of time, are, without exception,
+crimes quite lacking in discoverable motive.  It is not at all on
+record that she had reason for wishing to eliminate any one of
+those twenty-three persons.  She seems to have poisoned for the
+mere sake of poisoning.  Save to the ignorant and superstitious,
+such as followed her in the streets to accuse her of having a
+``white liver'' and a breath that meant death, she was an
+unfortunate creature with an odd knack of finding herself in
+houses where `accidents' happened.  Time and again you find her
+being taken in by kindly people after such `accidents,' and made
+an object of sympathy for the dreadful coincidences that were
+making her so unhappy.  It was out of sympathy that the Widow
+Lorey, of Locmine, took Helene into her house.  On the widow's
+death the niece arrived.  In court the niece described the scene
+on her arrival.  ``Helene embraced me,'' she said.  ``'Unhappy
+me!' she wept.  `Wherever I go everybody dies!'  I pitied and
+consoled her.''  She pitied and consoled Helene, though they were
+saying in the town that the girl had a white liver and that her
+breath brought death!
+
+Where Helene had neglected to combine her poisoning with detected
+pilfering the people about her victims could see nothing wrong in
+her conduct.  Witness after witness --father, sister, husband,
+niece, son-in-law, or relation in some sort to this or that
+victim of Helene's--repeated in court, ``The girl went away with
+nothing against her.''  And even those who afterwards found
+articles missing from their household goods:  ``At the same time
+I did not suspect her probity.  She went to Mass every morning
+and to the evening services.  I was very surprised to find some
+of my napkins among the stuff Helene was accused of stealing.'' 
+``I did not know of Helene's thefts until I was shown the objects
+stolen,'' said a lady of Vannes.  ``Without that proof I would
+never have suspected the girl.  Helene claimed affiliation with a
+religious sisterhood, served very well, and was a worker.''
+
+It is perhaps of interest to note how Helene answered the
+testimony regarding her thieving proclivities.  Mme Lejoubioux,
+of Vannes, said her furnishing bills went up considerably during
+the time Helene was in her service.  Helene had purloined two
+cloths.
+
+Helene:  ``That was for vengeance.  I was furious at being sent
+away.
+
+Sieur Cesar le Clerc and Mme Gauthier swore to thefts from them
+by Helene.
+
+Helene:  ``I stole nothing from Mme Gauthier except one bottle of
+wine.  If I commit a larceny it is from choler.  WHEN I'M FURIOUS
+I STEAL!''
+
+It was when Helene began to poison for vengeance that retribution
+fell upon her.  Her fondness for the bottle started to get her
+into trouble.  It made her touchy.  Up to 1841 she had poisoned
+for the pleasure of it, masking her secret turpitude with an
+outward show of piety, of being helpful in time of trouble.  By
+the time she arrived in Rennes, in 1848, after seven years during
+which her murderous proclivities seem to have slept, her
+character as a worker, if not as a Christian, had deteriorated. 
+Her piety, in the face of her fondness for alcohol and her
+slovenly habits, and against her now frequently exhibited bursts
+of temper and ill-will, appeared the hypocrisy it actually was. 
+Her essays in poisoning now had purpose and motive behind them. 
+Nemesis, so long at her heels, overtook her.
+
+
+
+% III
+
+It is not clear in the accounts available to me just what
+particular murders by poison, what attempts at poisoning, and
+what thefts Helene was charged with in the indictment at Rennes. 
+Twenty-three poisonings, six attempts, and a number of thefts had
+been washed out, it may be as well to repeat, by the prescription
+legale.  But from her arrival in Rennes, leaving the thefts out
+of account, her activities had accounted for the following:  In
+the Rabot household one death (Albert, the son) and three
+illnesses (Rabot, Mme Rabot, the mother-in-law); in the Ozanne
+establishment one death (that of the little son), in the hotel of
+the Roussells one death (that of Perrotte Mace) and one illness
+(that of the Veuve Roussell); at the Bidards two deaths (Rose
+Tessier and Rosalie Sarrazin).  In this last establishment there
+was also one attempt at poisoning which I have not yet mentioned,
+that of a young servant, named Francoise Huriaux, who for a short
+time had taken the place of Rose Tessier.  We thus have five
+deaths and five attempts in Rennes, all of which could be
+indictable.  But, as already stated, the indictment covered three
+deaths and three attempts.
+
+It is hard to say, from verbatim reports of the trial, where the
+matter of the indictment begins to be handled.  It would seem
+from the evidence produced that proof was sought of all five
+deaths and all five attempts that Helene was supposed to be
+guilty of in Rennes.  The father of the boy Ozanne was called
+before the Rabot witnesses, though the Rabot death and illnesses
+occurred before the death of the Ozanne child.  We may, however,
+take the order of affairs as dealt with in the court.  We may see
+something of motive on Helene's part suggested in M. Ozanne's
+evidence, and an indication of her method of covering her crime.
+
+M. Ozanne said that Helene, in his house, drank eau de vie in
+secret, and, to conceal her thefts, filled the bottle up with
+cider.  He discovered the trick, and reproached Helene for it. 
+She denied the accusation with vigour, and angrily announced her
+intention of leaving.  Mme Ozanne took pity on Helene, and told
+her she might remain several days longer.  On the Tuesday
+following the young child became ill.  The illness seemed to be a
+fleeting one, and the father and mother thought he had recovered. 
+On the Saturday, however, the boy was seized by vomiting, and the
+parents wondered if they should send for the doctor.  ``If the
+word was mine,'' said Helene, who had the boy on her knees, ``and
+the child as ill as he looks, I should not hesitate.''  The
+doctor was sent for about noon on Sunday.  He thought it only a
+slight illness.  Towards evening the child began to complain of
+pain all over his body.  His hands and feet were icy cold.  His
+body grew taut.  About six o'clock the doctor came back.  ``My
+God!'' he exclaimed.  ``It's the croup!''  He tried to apply
+leeches, but the boy died within a few minutes.  Helene hastened
+the little body into its shroud.
+
+Helene, said Ozanne, always talked of poison if anyone left their
+food.  ``Do you think I'm poisoning you?'' she would ask.
+
+A girl named Cambrai gave evidence that Helene, coming away from
+the cemetery after the burial of the child, said to her, ``I am
+not so sorry about the child.  Its parents have treated me
+shabbily.''  The witness thought Helene too insensitive and
+reproached her.
+
+``That's a lie!'' the accused shouted.  ``I loved the child!''
+
+The doctor, M. Brute, gave evidence next.  He still believed the
+child had died of a croup affection, the most violent he had ever
+seen.  The President questioned him closely on the symptoms he
+had seen in the child, but the doctor stuck to his idea.  He had
+seen nothing to make him suspect poisoning.    
+
+The President:  ``It is strange that in all the cases we have
+under review the doctors saw nothing at first that was serious. 
+They admit illness and prescribe mild remedies, and then,
+suddenly, the patients get worse and die.''
+
+M. Victor Rabot was called next.  To begin with, he said,
+Helene's services were satisfactory.  He had given her notice
+because he found her stealing his wine.  Upon this Helene showed
+the greatest discontent, and it was then that Mme Rabot fell ill. 
+A nurse was put in charge of her, but Helene found a way to get
+rid of her.  Helene had no love for his child.  The child had a
+horror of the servant, because she was dirty and took snuff.  In
+consequence Helene had a spite against the boy.  Helene had never
+been seen eating any of the dishes prepared for the family, and
+even insisted on keeping certain of the kitchen dishes for her
+own use.
+
+At the request of his father-in-law Helene had gone to get a
+bottle of violet syrup from the pharmacist.  The bottle was not
+capped.  His father-in-law thought the syrup had gone bad,
+because it was as red as mulberry syrup, and refused to give it
+to his daughter (Mme Rabot).  The bottle was returned to the
+pharmacist, who remarked that the colour of the syrup had
+changed, and that he did not recognize it as his own.
+
+Mme Rabot having corroborated her husband's evidence, and told of
+Helene's bad temper, thieving, and disorderliness, Dr Vincent
+Guyot, of Rennes, was called.
+
+Dr Guyot described the illness of the boy Albert and its result. 
+He then went on to describe the illness of Mme Rabot.  He and his
+confreres had attributed her sickness to the fact that she was
+enceinte, and to the effect of her child's death upon her while
+in that condition.  A miscarriage of a distressing nature
+confirmed the first prognosis.  But later he and his confreres
+saw reason to change their minds.  He believed the boy had been
+poisoned, though he could not be certain.  The mother, he was
+convinced, had been the victim of an attempt at poisoning, an
+opinion which found certainty in the case of Mme Briere.  If Mme
+Rabot's pregnancy went some way in explaining her illness there
+was nothing of this in the illness of her mother.  The
+explanation of everything was in repeated dosing of an arsenical
+substance.
+
+The witness had also attended Mme Roussell, of the Bout-du-Monde
+hotel.  It was remarkable that the violent sickness to which this
+lady was subject for twenty days did not answer to treatment, but
+stopped only when she gave up taking food prepared for her by
+Helene Jegado.
+
+He had also looked after Perrotte Mace.  Here also he had had
+doubts of the nature of the malady; at one time he had suspected
+pregnancy, a suspicion for which there were good grounds.  But
+the symptoms that later developed were not consistent with the
+first diagnosis.  When Perrotte died he and M. Revault, his
+confrere, thought the cause of death would be seen as poison in
+an autopsy.  But the post-mortem was rejected by the parents. 
+His feeling to-day was that Mme Roussell's paralysis was due to
+arsenical dosage, and that Perrotte had died of poisoning. 
+Helene, speaking to him of Perrotte, had said, ``She's a chest
+subject.  She'll never get better!'' And she had used the same
+phrase, ``never get better,'' with regard to little Rabot.
+
+M. Morio, the pharmacist of Rennes from whom the violet syrup was
+bought, said that Helene had often complained to him about Mme
+Roussell.  During the illness of the Rabot boy she had said that
+the child was worse than anyone imagined, and that he would never
+recover.  In the matter of the violet syrup he agreed it had come
+back to him looking red.  The bottle had been put to one side,
+but its contents had been thrown away, and he had therefore been
+unable to experiment with it.  He had found since, however, that
+arsenic in powder form did not turn violet syrup red, though
+possibly arsenic in solution with boiling water might produce the
+effect.  The change seen in the syrup brought back from M.
+Rabot's was not to be accounted for by such fermentation as the
+mere warmth of the hand could bring about.
+
+Several witnesses, interrupted by denials and explanations from
+the accused, testified to having heard Helene say that neither
+the Rabot boy nor his mother would recover.
+
+The evidence of M. Roussell, of the Bout-du-Monde hotel, touched
+on the illnesses of his mother and Perrotte.  He knew nothing of
+the food prepared by Helene; nor had the idea of poison occurred
+to him until her arrest.  Helene's detestable character, her
+quarrels with other servants, and, above all, the thefts of wine
+he had found her out in were the sole causes of her dismissal. 
+He had noticed that Helene never ate with the other domestics. 
+She always found an excuse for not doing so.  She said she had
+stomach trouble and could not hold down her food.
+
+The Veuve Roussell had to be helped into court by her son.  She
+dealt with her own illness and with the death of Perrotte.  Her
+illness did not come on until she had scolded Helene for her bad
+ways.
+
+Dr Revault, confrere of Guyot, regretted the failure to perform a
+post-mortem on the body of Perrotte.  He had said to Roussell
+that if Perrotte's illness was analogous to cholera it was,
+nevertheless, not that disease.  He believed it was due to a
+poison.
+
+The President:  ``Chemical analysis has proved the presence of
+arsenic in the viscera of Perrotte.  Who administered that
+arsenic, the existence of which was so shrewdly foreseen by the
+witness?  Who gave her the arsenic?  [To Helene]  Do you know? 
+Was it not you that gave it her, Helene?''
+
+At this Helene murmured something unintelligible, but, gathering
+her voice, she protested, ``I have never had arsenic in my hands,
+Monsieur le President--never!''
+
+Something of light relief was provided by Jean Andre, the
+cabinet-making ostler of Saint-Gilles, he for whose attention
+Helene had been a rival with Perrotte Mace.
+
+``The service Helene gave was excellent.  So was mine.  She
+nursed Perrotte perfectly, but said it was in vain, because the
+doctors were mishandling the disease.  She told me one day that
+she was tired of service, and that her one wish was to retire.''
+
+``Did you attach a certain idea to the confidence about
+retiring?''
+
+``No!'' Andre replied energetically.
+
+``You were in hospital.  When you came back, did Helene take good
+care of you?''
+
+``She gave me bouillon every morning to build me up.''
+
+``The bouillon she gave you did you no harm?''
+
+``On the contrary, it did me a lot of good.''
+
+``Wasn't the accused jealous of Perrotte--that good-looking girl
+who gave you so much of her favour?''
+
+``In her life Perrotte was a good girl.  She never was out of
+sorts for a moment--never rubbed one the wrong way.''
+
+``Didn't Helene say to you that Perrotte would never recover?''
+
+``Yes, she said that.  `She's a lost woman,' she said; `the
+doctors are going the wrong way with the disease.'
+
+``All the same,'' Andre went on, ``Helene never ate with us.  She
+worked night and day, but ate in secret, I believe.  Anyhow, a
+friend of mine told me he'd once seen her eating a crust of
+bread, and chewing some other sort of food at the same time.  As
+for me--I don't know; but I don't think you can live without
+eating.''
+
+``I couldn't keep down what I ate,'' Helene interposed.  ``I took
+some bouillon here and there; sometimes a mouthful of
+bread--nothing in secret.  I never thought of Andre in
+marriage--not him more than another.  That was all a joke.''
+
+A number of witnesses, friends of Perrotte, who had seen her
+during her illness, spoke of the extreme dislike the girl had
+shown for Helene and for the liquids the latter prepared for her. 
+Perrotte would say to Helene, ``But you're dirty, you ugly
+Bretonne!''  Perrotte had a horror of bouillon:  ``Ah--these
+vegetable soups!  I've had enough of them!  It was what Helene
+gave me that night that made me ill!''  The witnesses did not
+understand all this, because the accused seemed to be very good
+to her fellow-servant.  At the bedside Helene cried, ``Ah!  What
+can I do that will save you, my poor Perrotte?''  When Perrotte
+was dying she wanted to ask Helene's pardon.  Embracing the dying
+girl, the accused replied, ``Ah! There's no need for that, my
+poor Perrotte.  I know you didn't mean anything.''
+
+A witness telling of soup Helene had made for Perrotte, which the
+girl declared to have been poisoned, it was asked what happened
+to the remainder of it.  The President passed the question to
+Helene, who said she had thrown it into the hearth.
+
+
+
+% IV
+
+The most complete and important testimony in the trial was given
+by M. Theophile Bidard, professor to the law faculty of Rennes.
+
+The facts he had to bring forward, he said, had taken no
+significance in his mind until the last of them transpired.  He
+would have to go back into the past to trace them in their proper
+order.
+
+He recalled the admission of Helene to his domestic staff and the
+good recommendations on which he had engaged her.  From the first
+Helene proved herself to have plenty of intelligence, and he had
+believed that her intelligence was combined with goodness of
+heart.  This was because he had heard that by her work she was
+supporting two small children, as well as her poor old mother,
+who had no other means of sustenance.
+
+(The reader will recollect that Helene was orphaned at the age of
+seven.)
+
+Nevertheless, said M. Bidard, Helene was not long in his
+household before her companion, Rose Tessier, began to suffer in
+plenty from the real character of Helene Jegado.
+
+Rose had had a fall, an accident which had left her with pains in
+her back.  There were no very grave symptoms but Helene
+prognosticated dire results.  One night, when the witness was
+absent in the country, Helene rose from her bed, and, approaching
+her fellow-servant's room, called several times in a sepulchral
+voice, ``Rose, Rose!''  That poor girl took fright, and hid under
+the bedclothes, trembling.
+
+Next day Rose complained to witness, who took his domestics to
+task.  Helene pretended it was the farm-boy who had perpetrated
+the bad joke.  She then declared that she herself had heard some
+one give a loud knock.  ``I thought,'' she said, ``that I was
+hearing the call for poor Rose.''
+
+On Sunday, the 3rd of November, 1850, M. Bidard, who had been in
+the country, returned to Rennes.  After dinner that day, a meal
+which she had taken in common with Helene, Rose was seized with
+violent sickness.  Helene lavished on her the most motherly
+attention.  She made tea, and sat up the night with the invalid. 
+In the morning, though she still felt ill, Rose got up.  Helene
+made tea for her again.  Rose once more was sick, violently, and
+her sickness endured until the witness himself had administered
+copious draughts of tea prepared by himself.  Rose passed a
+fairly good night, and Dr Pinault, who was called in, saw nothing
+more in the sickness than some nervous affection.  But on the day
+of the 5th the vomitings returned.  Helene exclaimed, ``The
+doctors do not understand the disease.  Rose is going to die!'' 
+The prediction seemed foolish as far as immediate appearances
+were concemed, for Rose had an excellent pulse and no trace of
+fever.
+
+In the night between Tuesday and Wednesday the patient was calm,
+but on the morning of Wednesday she had vomitings with intense
+stomach pains.  From this time on, said the witness, the life of
+Rose, which was to last only thirty-six hours, was nothing but a
+long-drawn and heart-rending cry of agony.  She drew her last
+breath on the Thursday evening at half-past five.  During her
+whole illness, added M. Bidard, Rose was attended by none save
+Helene and himself.
+
+Rose's mother came.  In Rose the poor woman had lost a beloved
+child and her sole support.  She was prostrated.  Helene's grief
+seemed to equal the mother's.  Tears were ever in her eyes, and
+her voice trembled.  Her expressions of regret almost seemed to
+be exaggerated.
+
+There was a moment when the witness had his doubts.  It was on
+the way back from the cemetery.  For a fleeting instant he
+thought that the shaking of Helene's body was more from glee than
+sorrow, and he momentarily accused her in his mind of hypocrisy. 
+But in the following days Helene did nothing but talk of ``that
+poor Rose,'' and M. Bidard, before her persistence, could only
+believe he had been mistaken.  ``Ah!'' Helene said.  ``I loved
+her as I did that poor girl who died in the Bout-du-Monde.''
+
+The witness wanted to find some one to take Rose's place.  Helene
+tried to dissuade him.  ``Never mind another femme de chambre,''
+she said.  ``I will do everything.''  M. Bidard contented himself
+with engaging another girl, Francoise Huriaux, strong neither in
+intelligence nor will, but nevertheless a sweet little creature. 
+Not many days passed before Helene began to make the girl
+unhappy.  ``It's a lazy-bones,'' Helene told the witness.  ``She
+does not earn her keep.''  (``Le pain qu'elle mange, elle le
+vole.'')  M. Bidard shut her up.  That was his affair, he said.
+
+Francoise meantime conceived a fear of Helene.  She was so scared
+of the older woman that she obeyed all her orders without
+resistance.  The witness, going into the kitchen one day, found
+Helene eating her soup at one end of the table, while Francoise
+dealt with hers at the other extreme.  He told Helene that in
+future she was to serve the repast in common, on a tablecloth,
+and that it was to include dessert from his table.  This order
+seemed to vex Helene extremely.  ``That girl seems to live
+without eating,'' she said, ``and she never seems to sleep.''
+
+One day the witness noticed that the hands and face of Francoise
+were puffy.  He spoke to Helene about it, who became angry.  She
+accused her companion of getting up in the night to make tea, so
+wasting the sugar, and she swore she would lock the sugar up.  M.
+Bidard told her to do nothing of the sort.  He said if Francoise
+had need of sugar she was to have it.  ``All right--I see,''
+Helene replied sullenly, obviously put out.
+
+The swelling M. Bidard had seen in the face and hands of
+Francoise attacked her legs, and all service became impossible
+for the girl.  The witness was obliged to entrust Helene with the
+job of finding another chambermaid.  It was then that she brought
+Rosalie Sarrazin to him.  ``A very good girl,'' she said.  `` If
+her dress is poor it is because she gives everything to her
+mother.''
+
+The words, M. Bidard commented, were said by Helene with
+remarkable sincerity.  It was said that Helene had no moral
+sense.  It seemed to him, from her expressions regarding that
+poor girl, who, like herself, devoted herself to her mother, that
+Helene was far from lacking in that quality.
+
+Engaging Rosalie, the witness said to his new domestic, ``You
+will find yourself dealing with a difficult companion.  Do not
+let her be insolent to you.  You must assert yourself from the
+start.  I do not want Helene to rule you as she ruled
+Francoise.''  At the same time he repeated his order regarding
+the service of the kitchen meals.  Helene manifested a sullen
+opposition.  ``Who ever heard of tablecloths for the servants?''
+she said.  ``It is ridiculous!''
+
+In the first days the tenderness between Helene and the new girl
+was quite touching.  But circumstance arose to end the harmony. 
+Rosalie could write.  On the 23rd of May the witness told Helene
+that he would like her to give him an account of expenses.  The
+request made Helene angry, and increased her spite against the
+more educated Rosalie.  Helene attempting to order Rosalie about,
+the latter laughingly told her, ``M. Bidard pays me to obey him. 
+If I have to obey you also you'll have to pay me too.''  From
+that time Helene conceived an aversion from the girl.
+
+About the time when Helene began to be sour to Rosalie she
+herself was seized by vomitings.  She complained to Mlle Bidard,
+a cousin of the witness, that Rosalie neglected her.  But when
+the latter went up to her room Helene yelled at her, `` Get out,
+you ugly brute!  In you I've brought into the house a stick for
+my own back!''
+
+This sort of quarrelling went on without ceasing.  At the
+beginning of June the witness said to Helene, ``If this continues
+you'll have to look for another place.''  ``That's it!'' Helene
+yelled, in reply.  ``Because of that girl I'll have to go!''
+
+On the 10th of June M. Bidard gave Helene definite notice.  It
+was to take effect on St John's Day.  At his evening meal he was
+served with a roast and some green peas.  These last he did not
+touch.  In spite of his prohibition against her serving at table,
+it was Helene who brought the peas in.  ``How's this?'' she said
+to him.  ``You haven't eaten your green peas--and them so good!'' 
+Saying this, she snatched up the dish and carried it to the
+kitchen.  Rosalie ate some of the peas.  No sooner had she taken
+a few spoonfuls, however, than she grew sick, and presently was
+seized by vomiting.  Helene took no supper.  She said she was out
+of sorts and wanted none.
+
+The witness did not hear of these facts until next day.  He
+wanted to see the remainder of the peas, but they could not be
+found.  Rosalie still kept being sick, and he bade her go and see
+his doctor, M. Boudin.  Helene, on a sudden amiable to Rosalie
+where she had been sulky, offered to go with her.  Dr Boudin
+prescribed an emetic, which produced good effects.
+
+On the 15th of June Rosalie seemed to have recovered.  In the
+meantime a cook presented herself at his house to be engaged in
+place of Helene.  The latter was acquainted with the new-comer. 
+A vegetable soup had been prescribed for Rosalie, and this Helene
+prepared.  The convalescent ate some, and at once fell prey to
+violent sickness.  That same day Helene came in search of the
+witness.  ``You're never going to dismiss me for that young
+girl?'' she demanded angrily.  M. Bidard relented.  He said that
+if she would promise to keep the peace with Rosalie he would let
+her stay on.  Helene seemed to be satisfied, and behaved better
+to Rosalie, who began to mend again.
+
+M. Bidard went into the country on the 21st of June, taking
+Rosalie with him.  They returned on the 22nd.  The witness
+himself went to the pharmacy to get a final purgative of Epsom
+salts, which had been ordered for Rosalie by the doctor.  This
+the witness himself divided into three portions, each of which he
+dissolved in separate glasses of whey prepared by Helene.  The
+witness administered the first dose.  Helene gave the last.  The
+invalid vomited it.  She was extremely ill on the night of the
+22nd-23rd, and Helene returned to misgivings about the skill of
+the doctors.  She kept repeating, ``Ah!  Rosalie will die!  I
+tell you she will die!''  On the day of the 23rd she openly
+railed against them.  M. Boudin had prescribed leeches and
+blisters.  ``Look at that now, monsieur,''  Helene said to the
+witness.  ``To-morrow's Rosalie's name-day, and they're going to
+put leeches on her!''  Rather disturbed, M. Bidard wrote to Dr
+Pinault, who came next day and gave the treatment his approval.
+
+Dr Boudin had said the invalid might have gooseberry syrup with
+seltzer water.  Two glasses of the mixture given to Rosalie by
+her mother seemed to do the girl good, but after the third glass
+she did not want any more.  Helene had given her this third
+glass.  The invalid said to the witness, ``I don't know what
+Helene has put into my drink, but it burns me like red-hot
+iron.''
+
+``Struck by those symptoms,'' added M. Bidard, ``I questioned
+Helene at once.  It has not been given me more than twice in my
+life to see Helene's eyes.  I saw at that moment the look she
+flung at Rosalie.  It was the look of a wild beast, a tiger-cat. 
+At that moment my impulse was to go to my work-room for a cord,
+and to tie her up and drag her to the justiciary.  But one
+reflection stopped me.  What was this I was about to do--disgrace
+a woman on a mere suspicion?  I hesitated.  I did not know
+whether I had before me a poisoner or a woman of admirable
+devotion.''
+
+The witness enlarged on the tortures of mind he experienced
+during the night, but said he found reason to congratulate
+himself on not having given way to his first impulse.  On the
+morning of the 24th Helene came running to him, all happiness, to
+say that Rosalie was better.
+
+Three days later Rosalie seemed to be nearly well, so much so
+that M. Bidard felt he might safely go into the country.  Next
+day, however, he was shocked by the news that Rosalie was as ill
+as ever.  He hastened to return to Rennes.
+
+On the night of the 28th-29th the sickness continued with
+intensity.  Every two hours the invalid was given calming
+medicine prescribed by Dr Boudin.  Each time the sickness
+redoubled in violence.  Believing it was a case of worms, the
+witness got out of bed, and substituted for the medicine a strong
+infusion of garlic.  This stopped the sickness temporarily.  At
+six in the morning it began again.
+
+The witness then ran to Dr Pinault's, but met the doctor in the
+street with his confrere, Dr Guyot.  To the two doctors M. Bidard
+expressed the opinion that there were either worms in the
+intestines or else the case was one of poisoning.  ``I have
+thought that,'' said Dr Pinault, ``remembering the case of the
+other girl.''  The doctors went back with M. Bidard to his house. 
+Magnesia was administered in a strong dose.  The vomiting
+stopped.  But it was too late.
+
+Until that day the witness's orders that the ejected matter from
+the invalid should be conserved had been ignored.  The moment a
+vessel was dirty Helene took it away and cleaned it.  But now the
+witness took the vessels himself, and locked them up in a
+cupboard for which he alone had the key.  His action seemed to
+disturb Helene Jegado.  From this he judged that she had intended
+destroying the poison she had administered.
+
+From that time Rosalie was put into the care of her mother and a
+nurse.  Helene tried hard to be rid of the two women, accusing
+them of tippling to the neglect of the invalid.  ``I will sit up
+with her,'' she said to the witness.  The witness did not want
+her to do so, but he could not prevent her joining the mother.
+
+In the meantime Rosalie suffered the most dreadful agonies.  She
+could neither sit up nor lie down, but threw herself about with
+great violence.  During this time Helene was constantly coming
+and going about her victim.  She had not the courage, however, to
+watch her victim die.  At five in the morning she went out to
+market, leaving the mother alone with her child.  The poor
+mother, worn out with her exertions, also went out, to ask for
+help from friends.  Rosalie died in the presence of the witness
+at seven o'clock in the morning of the 1st of July.  Helene
+returned.  ``It is all over,'' said the witness.  Helene's first
+move was to look for the vessels containing the ejections of the
+invalid to throw them out.  These were green in hue.  M. Bidard
+stopped her, and locked the vessels up.  That same day justice
+was invoked.
+
+M. Bidard's deposition had held his hearers spellbound for over
+an hour and a half.  He had believed, he added finally, that, in
+spite of her criminal conduct, Helene at least was a faithful
+servant.  He had been wrong.  She had put his cellar to pillage,
+and in her chest they had found many things belonging to him,
+besides a diamond belonging to his daughter and her wedding-ring.
+
+The President questioned Helene on the points of this important
+deposition.  Helene simply denied everything.  It had not been
+she who was jealous of Rosalie, but Rosalie who had been jealous
+of her.  She had given the two girls all the nursing she could,
+with no intention but that of helping them to get better.  To the
+observation of the President, once again, that arsenic had been
+administered, and to his question, what person other than she had
+a motive for poisoning the girls, or had such opportunity for
+doing so, Helene answered defiantly, ``You won't redden my face
+by talking of arsenic.  I defy anybody to say they saw me give
+arsenic.''
+
+The Procureur-General invited M. Bidard to say what amount of
+intelligence he had found in Helene.  M. Bidard declared that he
+had never seen in any of his servants an intelligence so acute or
+subtle.  He held her to be a phenomenon in hypocrisy.  He put
+forward a fact which he had neglected to mention in his
+deposition.  It might throw light on the character of the
+accused.  Francoise had a dress hanging up to dry in the mansard. 
+Helene went up to the garret above this, made a hole in the
+ceiling, and dropped oil of vitriol on her companion's dress to
+burn it.
+
+Dr Pinault gave an account of Rosalie's illness, and spoke of the
+suspicions he and his colleagues had had of poisoning.  It was a
+crime, however, for which there seemed to be no motive.  The
+poisoner could hardly be M. Bidard, and as far as suspicion might
+touch the cook, she seemed to be lavish in her care of the
+patient.  It was not until the very last that he, with his
+colleagues, became convinced of poison.
+
+Rosalie dead, the justiciary went to M. Bidard's.  The cupboards
+were searched carefully.  The potion which Rosalie had thought to
+be mixed with burning stuff was still there, just sampled.  It
+was put into a bottle and capped.
+
+An autopsy could not now be avoided.  It was held next day.  M.
+Pinault gave an account of the results.  Most of the organs were
+in a normal condition, and such slight alterations as could be
+seen in others would not account for death.  It was concluded
+that death had been occasioned by poison.  The autopsy on the
+exhumed body of Perrotte Mace was inconclusive, owing to the
+condition of adipocere.
+
+Dr Guyot spoke of the case of Francoise Huriaux, and was now sure
+she had been given poison in small doses.  Dr Boudin described
+the progress of Rosalie's illness.  He was in no doubt, like his
+colleagues, that she had been poisoned.
+
+The depositions of various witnesses followed.  A laundress said
+that Helene's conduct was to be explained by jealousy.  She could
+not put up with any supervision, but wanted full control ofthe
+household and ofthe money.
+
+Francoise Huriaux said Helene was angry because M. Bidard would
+not have her as sole domestic.  She had resented Francoise's
+being engaged.  The witness noticed that she became ill whenever
+she ate food prepared for her by Helene.  When she did not eat
+Helene was angry but threw out the food Francoise refused.
+
+Several witnesses testified to the conduct of Helene towards
+Rosalie Sarrazin during her fatal illness.  Helene was constant,
+self-sacrificing, in her attention to the invalid.  One incident,
+however, was described by a witness which might indicate that
+Helene's solicitude was not altogether genuine.  One morning,
+towards the end of Rosalie's life, the patient, in her agony,
+escaped from the hold of her mother, and fell into an awkward
+position against the wall.  Rosalie's mother asked Helene to
+place a pillow for her.  ``Ma foi!'' Helene replied.  ``You're
+beginning to weary me.  You're her mother!  Help her yourself!''
+
+The testimony of a neighbour, one Francoise Louarne, a domestic
+servant, supports the idea that Helene resented the presence of
+Rosalie in the house.  Helene said to this witness, ``M. Bidard
+has gone into the country with his housemaid.  Everything SHE
+does is perfect.  They leave me here--to work if I want to, eat
+my bread dry: that's my reward.  But the housemaid will go before
+I do.  Although M. Bidard has given me my notice, he'll have to
+order me out before I'll go.  Look!'' Helene added.  ``Here's the
+bed of the ugly housemaid--in a room not too far from the
+master's.  Me--they stick me up in the mansard!''  Later, when
+Rosalie was very ill, Helene pretended to be grieved.  ``You
+can't be so very sorry,'' the witness remarked; ``you've said
+plenty that was bad about the girl.'' 
+
+Helene vigorously denounced the testimony as all lies.  The woman
+had never been near Bidard's house.
+
+The pharmacist responsible for dispensing the medicines given to
+Rosalie was able to show that arsenic could not have got into
+them by mistake on his part.
+
+At the hearing of the trial on the 12th of December Dr Pinault
+was asked to tell what happened when the emissions of Rosalie
+Sarrazin were being transferred for analysis.
+
+
+DR PINAULT.  As we were carrying out the operation Helene came
+in, and it was plain that she was put out of countenance.
+
+M. BIDARD [interposing].  We were in my daughter's room, where
+nobody ever came.  When Helene came to the door I was surprised. 
+There was no explanation for her appearance except that she was
+inquisitive.
+
+DR PINAULT.  She seemed to be disturbed at not finding the
+emissions by the bed of the dead girl, and it was no doubt to
+find them that she came to the room.
+
+HELENE.  I had been given a funnel to wash.  I was bringing it
+back.
+
+M. BIDARD.  Helene, with her usual cleverness, is making the most
+of a fact.  She had already appeared when she was given the
+funnel.  Her presence disturbed me.  And to get rid of her I
+said, ``Here, Helene, take this away and wash it.''
+
+The accused persisted in denying M. Bidard's version of the
+incident.
+
+
+
+% V
+
+M. Malagutti, professor of chemistry to the faculty of sciences
+in Rennes, who, with M. Sarzeau, had been asked to make a
+chemical analysis of the reserved portions of the bodies of
+Rosalie, Perrotte Mace, and Rose Tessier, gave the results of his
+and his colleague s investigations.  In the case of Rosalie they
+had also examined the vomitings.  The final test on the portions
+of Rosalie's body carried out with hydrochloronitric acid--as
+best for the small quantities likely to result in poisoning by
+small doses--gave a residue which was submitted to the Marsh
+test.  The tube showed a definite arsenic ring.  Tests on the
+vomit gave the same result.
+
+The poisoning of Perrotte Mace had also been accomplished by
+small doses.  Arsenic was found after the strictest tests, which
+obviated all possibility that the substance could have come from
+the ground in which the body was interred.
+
+In the case of Rose Tessier the tests yielded a huge amount of
+arsenic.  Rose had died after an illness of only four days.  The
+large amount of arsenic indicated a brutal and violent poisoning,
+in which the substance could not be excreted in the usual way.
+
+The President then addressed the accused on this evidence.  She
+alone had watched near all three of the victims, and against all
+three she had motives of hate.  Poisoning was established beyond
+all doubt.  Who was the poisoner if not she, Helene Jegado?
+
+Helene:  ``Frankly, I have nothing to reproach myself with.  I
+gave them only what came from the pharmacies on the orders of the
+doctors.''
+
+After evidence of Helene's physical condition, by a doctor who
+had seen her in prison (she had a scirrhous tumour on her left
+breast), the speech for the defence was made.
+
+M. Dorange was very eloquent, but he had a hopeless case.  The
+defence he put up was that Helene was irresponsible, but the
+major part of the advocate's speech was taken up with a
+denouncement of capital punishment.  It was a barbarous
+anachronism, a survival which disgraced civilization. 
+
+The President summed up and addressed the jury:
+
+``Cast a final scrutiny, gentlemen of the jury,'' he said, ``at
+the matter brought out by these debates.  Consult yourselves in
+the calm and stillness of your souls.  If it is not proved to you
+that Helene Jegado is responsible for her actions you will acquit
+her.  If you think that, without being devoid of free will and
+moral sense, she is not, according to the evidence, as well
+gifted as the average in humanity, you will give her the benefit
+of extenuating circumstance.
+
+``But if you consider her culpable, if you cannot see in her
+either debility of spirit or an absence or feebleness of moral
+sense, you will do your duty with firmness.  You will remember
+that for justice to be done chastisement will not alone suffice,
+but that punishment must be in proportion to the offence.''
+
+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 God 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 pronounced 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 passed 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 analysis 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 arsenic.
+
+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 constitution 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 anticipated 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 Natrass.
+
+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 arsenic was found in the
+child's body.  Cotton was arrested.
+
+She was brought to trial in the early part of 1873 at Durham
+Assizes.  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 arsenic was mixed with soft soap.  One finds it hard to
+believe that she extracted the arsenic 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 passion 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 circumstances 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 circumstances
+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 godfather 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 circumstances in which Boursier had fallen ill were well
+known.  Nobody, 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.''  ``But, monsieur,'' Josephine protested, ``that's
+amazing!  The potage ought to be better than usual this morning,
+because I made a liaison for it with three egg-yolks!''
+
+M. Boursier called his wife, and told her he couldn't eat his
+potage au riz.  It was poisoned.  Mme Boursier took a spoonful of
+it herself, she said, and saw nothing the matter with it. 
+Whereupon her husband, saying that if it was all right he ought
+to eat it, took several spoonfuls more. 
+
+``The poor man,'' said his widow, ``always had a bad taste in his
+mouth, and he could not face his soup.''  Then, she explained, he
+became very sick, and brought up what little of the soup he had
+taken, together with flots de bile.
+
+All this chatter of poison, particularly by Kostolo and the
+widow, together with the persistent rumours of an adulterous
+association between the pair, gave colour to suspicions of a
+criminal complicity, and these in process of time came to the
+ears of the officers of justice.  The two doctors were summoned
+by the Procureur-General, who questioned them closely regarding
+Boursier's illness.  To the mind of the official everything
+pointed to suspicion of the widow.  Word of the growing suspicion
+against her reached Mme Boursier, and she now hastened to ask the
+magistrates for an exhumation and a post-mortem examination. 
+This did not avert proceedings by the Procureur.  It was already
+known that she had refused the autopsy suggested by the two
+doctors, and it was stated that she had hurried on the burial.
+
+Kostolo and the Widow Boursier were called before the Juge
+d'instruction.
+
+
+
+% II
+
+There is about the Greek Kostolo so much gaudy impudence and
+barefaced roguery that, in spite of the fact that the main
+concern of these pages is with women, I am constrained to add his
+portrait to the sketches I have made in illustration.  He is of
+the gallery in which are Jingle and Montague Tigg, with this
+difference--that he is rather more sordid than either.
+
+Brought before the Procureur du Roi, he impudently confessed that
+he had been, and still was, Mme Boursier's lover.  He told the
+judge that in the lifetime of her husband Mme Boursier had
+visited him in his rooms several times, and that she had given
+him money unknown to her husband.
+
+Mme Boursier at first denied the adulterous intimacy with
+Kostolo, but the evidence in the hands of the Procureur was too
+much for her.  She had partially to confess the truth of
+Kostolo's statement in this regard.  She emphatically denied,
+however, that she had ever even thought of, let alone agreed to,
+marriage with the Greek.  She swore that she had been intimate
+with Kostolo only once, and that, as far as giving him money was
+concerned, she had advanced him but one small sum on his IOU.
+
+These confessions, together with the information which had come
+to him from other investigations, served to increase the feeling
+of the Procureur that Boursier's death called for probing.  He
+issued an exhumation order, and on the 31st of July an autopsy on
+the body of Boursier was carried out by MM. Orfila and Gardy,
+doctors and professors of the Paris faculty of medicine.  Their
+finding was that no trace existed of any disorders to which the
+death of Boursier might be attributed--such, for example, as
+cerebral congestion, rupture of the heart or of a larger
+vessel--but that, on the other hand, they had come upon a
+sufficiency of arsenic in the intestines to have caused death.
+
+On the 2nd of August the same two professors, aided by a third,
+M. Barruel, carried out a further examination of the body.  Their
+testimony is highly technical.  It is also rather revolting.  I
+am conscious that, dealing, as I have had to, with so much
+arsenical poisoning (the favourite weapon of the woman murderer),
+a gastric odour has been unavoidable in many of my pages--perhaps
+too many.  For that reason I shall refrain from quoting either in
+the original French or in translation more than a small part of
+the professors' report.  I shall, however, make a lay shot on the
+evidence it supplies.  Boursier's interior generally was in foul
+condition, which is not to be explained by any ingestion of
+arsenic, but which suggests chronic and morbid pituitousness. 
+The marvel is that the man's digestion functioned at all.  This
+insanitary condition, however, was taken by the professors, as it
+were, in their stride.  They concentrated on some slight traces
+of intestinal inflammation.
+
+`` One observed,'' their report went on,
+
+about the end of the ileum some grains of a whitish appearance
+and rather stubbornly attached.  These grains, being removed,
+showed all the characteristics of white arsenic oxide.  Put upon
+glowing charcoal they volatilized, giving off white smoke and a
+garlic odour.  Treated with water, they dissolved, and the
+solution, when brought into contact with liquid hydrosulphuric
+acid, precipitated yellow sulphur of arsenic, particularly when
+one heated it and added a few drops of hydrochloric acid.
+
+
+These facts (including, I suppose, the conditions I have hinted
+at) allowed them to conclude (a) that the stomach showed
+traces of inflammation, and (b) that the intestinal canal yielded
+a quantity of arsenic oxide sufficient to have produced that
+inflammation and to have caused death.
+
+The question now was forward as to where the arsenic found in the
+body had come from.  Inquiry established the fact that on the
+15th of May, 1823--that is to say, several weeks before his
+death--Boursier had bought half a pound of arsenic for the
+purpose of destroying the rats in his shop cellars.  In addition,
+he had bought prepared rat-poison.  Only a part of those
+substances had been used.  The remaining portions could not be
+found about the shop, nor could Mme Boursier make any suggestions
+for helping the search.  She declared she had never seen any
+arsenic about the house at all.
+
+There was, however, sufficient gravity in the evidences on hand
+to justify a definite indictment of Mme Boursier and Nicolas
+Kostolo, the first of having poisoned her husband, and the second
+of being accessory to the deed.
+
+The pair were brought to trial on the 27th of November, 1823,
+before the Seine Assize Court, M. Hardouin presiding.  The
+prosecution was conducted by the AvocatGeneral, M. de Broe. 
+Maitre Couture defended Mme Boursier.  Maitre Theo.  Perrin
+appeared for Kostolo.
+
+The case created great excitement, not only in Paris, but
+throughout the country.  Another poisoning case had not long
+before this occupied the minds of the public very greatly--that
+of the hypocritical Castaing for the murder of Auguste Ballet. 
+Indeed, there had been a lot of poisoning going on in French
+society about this period.  Political and religious controversy,
+moreover, was rife.  The populace were in a mood either to praise
+extravagantly or just as extravagantly to condemn.  It happened
+that rumour convinced them of the guilt of the Veuve Boursier
+and Kostolo, and the couple were condemned in advance.  Such
+was the popular spite against Mme Boursier and Kostolo that, it
+is said, Maitre Couture at first refused the brief for the
+widow's defence.  He had already made a success of his defence of
+a Mme Lavaillaut, accused of poisoning, and was much in demand in
+cases where women sought judicial separation from their husbands. 
+People were calling him ``Providence for women.''  He did not
+want to be nicknamed ``Providence for poisoners.''  But Mme
+Boursier's case being more clearly presented to him he took up
+the brief.
+
+The accused were brought into court.
+
+Kostolo was about thirty years of age.  He was tall, distinctly
+good-looking in an exotic sort of way, with his dark hair,
+complexion, and flashing eyes.  He carried himself grandly, and
+was elegandy clad in a frac noir.  Not quite, as Army men were
+supposed once to say, ``the clean potato, it was easy enough to
+see that women of a kind would be his ready victims.  It was
+plain, in the court, that Master Nicolas thought himself the hero
+of the occasion.
+
+There was none of this flamboyance about the Widow Boursier.  She
+was dressed in complete mourning, and covered her face with a
+handkerchief.  It was manifest that, in the phrase of the crime
+reporters, ``she felt her position keenly.''  The usual questions
+as to her name and condition she answered almost inaudibly, her
+voice choked with sobs.
+
+Kostolo, on the contrary, replied in organ tones.  He said that
+he was born in Constantinople, and that he had no estate.
+
+The acte d'accusation was read.  It set forth the facts of the
+adulterous association of the two accused, of the money lent by
+Mme Boursier to Kostolo, of their meetings, and all the
+suspicious circumstances previous to the death of the epicier.
+
+The cook-girl, Josephine Blin, had prepared the potage au riz in
+the kitchen, using the small iron pan that it was her wont to
+employ.  Having made the soup, she conveyed it in its terrine to
+a small secretaire in the dining-room.  This secretaire stood
+within the stretch of an arm from the door of the comptoir in
+which Mme Boursier usually worked.  According to custom,
+Josephine had divided the potage in two portions--one for
+Boursier and the other for the youngest child.  The youngster and
+she had eaten the second portion between them, and neither had
+experienced any ill-effects.
+
+Josephine told her master that the soup was ready.  He came at
+her call, but did not eat the soup at once, being otherwise
+occupied.  The soup stood on the secretaire for about fifteen
+minutes before Boursier started to eat it.
+
+According to the accused, the accusation went on, after
+Boursier's death the two doctors asked that they might be allowed
+to perform an autopsy, since they were at a loss to explain the
+sudden illness.  This Mme Boursier refused, in spite of the
+insistence of the doctors.  She refused, she said, in the
+interest of her children.  She insisted, indeed, on a quick
+burial, maintaining that, as her husband had been tres replet,
+the body would rapidly putrefy, owing to the prevailing heat, and
+that thus harm would be done to the delicate contents of the
+epicerie.
+
+Led by rumours of the bluish stains--almost certain indications
+of a violent death--the authorities, said the accusation, ordered
+an exhumation and autopsy.  Arsenic was found in the body.  It
+was clear that Boursier, ignorant, as he was, of his wife's bad
+conduct, had not killed himself.  This was a point that the widow
+had vainly attempted, during the process of instruction, to
+maintain.  She declared that one Clap, a friend of her late
+husband, had come to her one day to say that a certain Charles, a
+manservant, had remarked to him, ``Boursier poisoned himself
+because he was tired of living.''  Called before the Juge
+d'instruction, Henri Clap and Charles had concurred in denying
+this.
+
+The accusation maintained that the whole attitude of Mme Boursier
+proved her a poisoner.  As soon as her husband became sick she
+had taken the dish containing the remains of the rice soup,
+emptied it into a dirty vessel, and passed water through the
+dish.  Then she had ordered Blin to clean it, which the latter
+did, scrubbing it out with sand and ashes.
+
+Questioned about arsenic in the house, Mme Boursier said, to
+begin with, that Boursier had never spoken to her about arsenic,
+but later admitted that her husband had mentioned both arsenic
+and mort aux rats to her.
+
+Asked regarding the people who frequented the house she had
+mentioned all the friends of Boursier, but neglected to speak of
+Kostolo.  Later she had said she never had been intimate with the
+Greek.  But Kostolo, `` barefaced enough for anything,'' had
+openly declared the nature of his relations with her.  Then Mme
+Boursier, after maintaining that she had been no more than
+interested in Kostolo, finding pleasure in his company, had been
+constrained to confess that she had misconducted herself with the
+Greek in the dead man's room.  She had given Kostolo the run of
+her purse, the accusation declared, though she denied the fact,
+insisting that what she had given him had been against his note. 
+There was only one conclusion, however.  Mme Boursier, knowing
+the poverty of her paramour, had paid him as her cicisbeo,
+squandering upon him her children's patrimony.
+
+The accusation then dealt with the supposed project of marriage,
+and declared that in it there was sufficient motive for the
+crime.  Kostolo was Mme Boursier's accomplice beyond any doubt. 
+He had acted as nurse to the invalid, administering drinks and
+medicines to him.  He had had full opportunity for poisoning the
+grocer.  Penniless, out of work, it would be a good thing for him
+if Boursier was eliminated.  He had been blatant in his visits to
+Mme Boursier after the death of the husband.
+
+Then followed the first questioning of the accused.    
+
+Mme Boursier said she had kept tryst with Kostolo in the
+Champs-Elysees.  She admitted having been to his lodgings once. 
+On the mention of the name of Mlle Riene, a mistress of
+Kostolo's, she said that the woman was partly in their
+confidence.  She had gone with Mlle Riene twice to Kostolo's
+rooms.  Once, she admitted, she had paid a visit to Versailles
+with Kostolo unknown to her husband.
+
+Asked if her husband had had any enemies, Mme Boursier said she
+knew of none.
+
+The questioning of Kostolo drew from him the admission that he
+had had a number of mistresses all at one time.  He made no bones
+about his relations with them, nor about his relations with Mme
+Boursier.  He was quite blatant about it, and seemed to enjoy the
+show he was putting up.  Having airily answered a question in a
+way that left him without any reputation, he would sweep the
+court with his eyes, preening himself like a peacock.
+
+He was asked about a journey Boursier had proposed making.  At
+what time had Boursier intended making the trip?
+
+``Before his death,'' Kostolo replied.
+
+The answer was unintentionally funny, but the Greek took credit
+for the amusement it created in court.  He conceived himself
+a humorist, and the fact coloured all his subsequent answers.
+
+Kostolo said that he had called to see Boursier on the first day
+of his illness at three in the afternoon.  He himself had
+insisted on helping to nurse the invalid.  Mme Boursier had
+brought water, and he had given it to the sick man.
+
+After Boursier's death he had remarked on the blueness of the
+fingernails.  It was a condition he had seen before in his own
+country, on the body of a prince who had died of poison, and the
+symptoms of whose illness had been very like those in Boursier's. 
+He had then suspected that Boursier had died of poisoning.
+
+The loud murmurs that arose in court upon his blunt confession of
+having misconducted himself with Mme Boursier fifteen days after
+her husband's death seemed to evoke nothing but surprise in
+Kostolo.  He was then asked if he had proposed marriage to Mme
+Boursier after Boursier's death.
+
+``What!'' he exclaimed, with a grin.  ``Ask a woman with five
+children to marry me--a woman I don't love?''
+
+Upon this answer Kostolo was taken to task by the President of
+the court.  M. Hardouin pointed out that Kostolo lived with a
+woman who kept and fed him, giving him money, but that at the
+same time he was taking money from Mme Boursier as her lover,
+protesting the while that he loved her.  What could the Greek say
+in justification of such conduct?
+
+``Excuse me, please, everybody,'' Kostolo replied, unabashed. 
+``I don't know quite how to express myself, but surely what I
+have done is quite the common thing?  I had no means of living
+but from what Mme Boursier gave me.''
+
+The murmurs evoked by the reply Kostolo treated with lofty
+disdain.  He seemed to find his audience somewhat prudish.
+
+To further questioning he answered that he had never proposed
+marriage to the Veuve Boursier.  Possibly something might have
+been said in fun.  He knew, of course, that the late Boursier had
+made a lot of money.
+
+The cook, Josephine Blin, was called.  At one time she had been
+suspect.  Her version of the potage incidents, though generally
+in agreement with that of the accused widow, differed from it in
+two essential points.  When she took Boursier's soup into the
+dining-room, she said, Mme Boursier was in the comptoir, three or
+four paces away from the desk on which she put the terrine.  This
+Mme Boursier denied.  She said she had been in the same comptoir
+as her husband.  Josephine declared that Mme Boursier had ordered
+her to clean the soup-dish out with sand, but her mistress
+maintained she had bade the girl do no more than clean it.  For
+the rest, Josephine thought about fifteen minutes elapsed before
+Boursier came to take the soup.  During that time she had seen
+Mme Boursier writing and making up accounts.
+
+Toupie, the medical student, said he had nursed Boursier during
+the previous year.  Boursier was then suffering much in the same
+way as he had appeared to suffer during his fatal illness.  He
+had heard Mme Boursier consulting with friends about an autopsy,
+and her refusal had been on their advice.
+
+The doctors called were far from agreeing on the value of the
+experiments they had made.  Orfila, afterwards to intervene in
+the much more universally notorious case of Mme Lafarge, stuck to
+his opinion of death by arsenic.  If his evidence in the Lafarge
+case is read it will be seen that in the twenty years that had
+passed from the Boursier trial his notions regarding the proper
+routine of analysis for arsenic in a supposedly poisoned body had
+undergone quite a change.  But by then the Marsh technique had
+been evolved.  Here, however, he based his opinion on experiments
+properly described as ``very equivocal;'' and stuck to it.  He
+was supported by a colleague named Lesieur.
+
+M. Gardy said he had observed that the greater part of the grains
+about the ileum, noted on the 1st of August, had disappeared next
+day.  The analysis had been made with quantities too small.  He
+now doubted greatly if the substance taken to be arsenic oxide
+would account for death.
+
+M. Barruel declared that from the glareous matter removed from
+the body only a grain of the supposed arsenic had been extracted,
+and that with difficulty.  He had put the substance on glowing
+charcoal, but, in his opinion, the experiment was VERY EQUIVOCAL. 
+It was at first believed that there was a big amount of arsenic,
+but he felt impelled to say that the substance noted was nothing
+other than small clusters of fat.  The witness now refused to
+conclude, as he had concluded on the 1st of August, that enough
+poison had been in the body to cause death.
+
+It would almost seem that the medical evidence should have been
+enough to destroy the case for the prosecution, but other
+witnesses were called.
+
+Bailli, at one time a clerk to Boursier, said he had helped his
+patron to distribute arsenic and rat-poison in the shop cellars. 
+He was well aware that the whole of the poison had not been used,
+but in the course of his interrogation he had failed to remember
+where the residue of the poisons had been put.  He now
+recollected.  The unused portion of the arsenic had been put in a
+niche of a bottle-rack.
+
+In view of evidence given by a subsequent witness Bailli's rather
+sudden recovery of memory might have been thought odd if a friend
+of his had not been able to corroborate his statement.  The
+friend was one Rousselot, another grocer.  He testified that he
+and Bailli had searched together.  Bailli had then cudgelled that
+dull ass, his brain, to some effect, for they had ultimately come
+upon the residue of the arsenic bought by Boursier lying with the
+remainder of the mort aux rats.  Both the poisons had been placed
+at the bottom of a bottle-rack, and a plank had been nailed over
+them.
+
+Rousselot, asked why he had not mentioned this fact before,
+answered stupidly, ``I thought you knew it!''
+
+The subsequent witness above referred to was an employee in the
+Ministere du Roi, a man named Donzelle.  In a stammering and
+rather confused fashion he attempted to explain that the
+vacillations of the witness Bailli had aroused his suspicions. 
+He said that Bailli, who at first had been vociferous in his
+condemnation of the Widow Boursier, had later been rather more
+vociferous in her defence.  The witness (Donzelle) had it from a
+third party that Mme Boursier's sister-in-law had corrupted other
+witnesses with gifts of money.  Bailli, for example, could have
+been seen carrying bags of ecus under his arm, coming out of the
+house of the advocate briefed to defend Mme Boursier.
+
+Bailli, recalled, offered to prove that if he had been to Maitre
+Couture's house he had come out of it in the same fashion as he
+had gone in--that was, with a bag of bay salt under each arm.
+
+Maitre Couture, highly indignant, rose to protest against the
+insinuation of the witness Donzelle, but the President of the
+court and the Avocat-General hastened to say that the eminent and
+honourable advocate was at no need to justify himself.  The
+President sternly reprimanded Donzelle and sent him back to his
+seat.
+
+
+
+% III
+
+The Avocat-General, M. de Broe, stated the case for the
+prosecution.  He made, as probably was his duty, as much as he
+could of the arsenic said to have been found in the body (that
+precipitated as yellow sulphur of arsenic), and of the adultery
+of Mme Boursier with Kostolo.  He dwelt on the cleaning of the
+soup-dish, and pointed out that while the soup stood on the desk
+Mme Boursier had been here and there near it, never out of arm's
+reach.  In regard to Kostolo, the Greek was a low scallywag, but
+not culpable.
+
+The prosecution, you observe, rested on the poison's being
+administered in the soup.
+
+In his speech for the defence the eloquent Maitre Couture began
+by condemning the gossip and the popular rumour on which the case
+had been begun.  He denounced the action of the magistrates in
+instituting proceedings as deplorably unconsidered and hasty.
+
+Mme Boursier, he pointed out, had everything to lose through the
+loss of her husband.  Why should she murder a fine merchant like
+Boursier for a doubtful quantity like Kostolo?  He spoke of the
+happy relationship that had existed between husband and wife,
+and, in proof of their kindness for each other, told of a comedy
+interlude which had taken place on the Sunday morning.
+
+Boursier, he said, had to get up before his wife that morning,
+rising at six o'clock.  His rising did not wake his wife, and,
+perhaps humorously resenting her lazy torpor, he found a piece of
+charcoal and decorated her countenance with a black moustache. 
+It was true that Mme Boursier showed some petulance over her
+husband's prank when she got down at eight o'clock, but her
+ill-humour did not last long.  Her husband caressed and petted
+her, and before long the wife joined her merry-minded husband in
+laughing over the joke against her.  That, said Maitre Couture,
+that mutual laughter and kindness, seemed a strange preliminary
+to the supposed poisoning episode of two hours or so later.
+
+The truth of the matter was that Boursier carried the germ of
+death in his own body.  What enemy had he made?  What vengeance
+had he incurred?  Maitre Couture reminded the jury of Boursier's
+poor physical condition, of his stoutness, of the shortness of
+his neck.  He brought forward Toupie's evidence of Boursier's
+illness of the previous year, alike in symptoms and in the
+sufferings of the invalid to that which proved fatal on Tuesday
+the 30th of June.  Then Maitre Couture proceeded to tear the
+medical evidence to pieces, and returned to the point that Mme
+Boursier had been sleeping so profoundly, so serenely, on the
+morning of her supposed contemplated murder that the prank played
+on her by her intended victim had not disturbed her.
+
+The President's address then followed.  The jury retired, and
+returned with a verdict of ``Not guilty.''
+
+On this M. Hardouin discharged the accused, improving the
+occasion with a homily which, considering the ordeal that Mme
+Boursier had had to endure through so many months, and that might
+have been considered punishment enough, may be quoted merely as a
+fine specimen of salting the wound:
+
+``Veuve Boursier,'' said he, ``you are about to recover that
+liberty which suspicions of the gravest nature have caused you to
+lose.  The jury declares you not guilty of the crime imputed to
+you.  It is to be hoped that you will find a like absolution in
+the court of your own conscience.  But do not ever forget that
+the cause of your unhappiness and of the dishonour which, it may
+be, covers your name was the disorder of your ways and the
+violation of the most sacred obligations.  It is to be hoped that
+your conduct to come may efface the shame of your conduct in the
+past, and that repentance may restore the honour you have lost.''
+
+
+
+% IV
+
+Now we come, as the gentleman with the crimson handkerchief coyly
+showing between dress waistcoat and shirt might have said, waving
+his pointer as the canvas of the diorama rumbled on its rollers,
+to Riguepeu!
+
+Some twenty years have elapsed since the Veuve Boursier stumbled
+from the stand of the accused in the Assize Court of the Seine,
+acquitted of the poisoning of her grocer husband, but convicted
+of a moral flaw which may (or may not) have rather diminished
+thereafter the turnover of the epicerie in the Rue de la Paix. 
+One hopes that her punishment finished with her acquittal, and
+that the mood of the mob, as apt as a flying straw to veer for a
+zephyr as for a whirlwind, swung to her favour from mere
+revulsion on her escape from the scaffold.  The one thing is as
+likely as the other.  Didn't the heavy man of the fit-up show,
+eighteen months after his conviction for rape (the lapse of time
+being occupied in paying the penalty), return as an actor to the
+scene of his delinquency to find himself, not, as he expected,
+pelted with dead cats and decaying vegetables, but cheered to the
+echo?  So may it have been with the Veuve Boursier.
+
+Though in 1844, the year in which the poison trial at Auch was
+opened, four years had passed since the conviction of Mme Lafarge
+at Tulle, controversy on the latter case still was rife
+throughout France.  The two cases were linked, not only in the
+minds of the lay public, but through close analogy in the idea of
+lawyers and experts in medical jurisprudence.  From her
+prison cell Marie Lafarge watched the progress of the trial in
+Gascony.  And when its result was published one may be sure she
+shed a tear or two.
+
+But to Riguepeu . . .
+
+You will not find it on anything but the biggest-scale maps.  It
+is an inconsiderable town a few miles from Vic-Fezensac, a town
+not much bigger than itself and some twenty kilometres from Auch,
+which is the capital of the department of Gers.  You may take it
+that Riguepeu lies in the heart of the Armagnac district.
+
+Some little distance from Riguepeu itself, on the top of a rise,
+stood the Chateau Philibert, a one-floored house with red tiles
+and green shutters.  Not much of a chateau, it was also called
+locally La Maison de Madame.  It belonged in 1843 to Henri
+Lacoste, together with considerable land about it.  It was
+reckoned that Lacoste, with the land and other belongings, was
+worth anything between 600,000 and 700,000 francs.
+
+Henri had become rich late in life.  The house and the domain had
+been left him by his brother Philibert, and another brother's
+death had also been of some benefit to him.  Becoming rich, Henri
+Lacoste thought it his duty to marry, and in 1839, though already
+sixty-six years of age, picked on a girl young enough to have
+been his granddaughter.
+
+Euphemie Verges was, in fact, his grand-niece.  She lived with
+her parents at Mazeyrolles, a small village in the foothills of
+the Pyrenees.  Compared with Lacoste, the Verges were said to be
+poor.  Lacoste took it on himself to look after the girl's
+education, having her sent at his charges to.a convent at Tarbes. 
+In 1841, on the 2nd of May, the marriage took place.
+
+If this marriage of youth with crabbed age resulted in any
+unhappiness the neighbours saw little of it.  Though it was
+rumoured that for her old and rich husband Euphemie had given up
+a young man of her fancy in Tarbes, her conduct during the two
+years she lived with Lacoste seemed to be irreproachable. 
+Lacoste was rather a nasty old fellow from all accounts.  He was
+niggardly, coarse, and a womanizer.  Euphemie's position in the
+house was little better than that of head domestic servant, but
+in this her lot was the common one for wives of her station in
+this part of France.  She appeared to be contented enough with
+it.
+
+About two years after the marriage, on the 16th of May, 1843, to
+be exact, after a trip with his wife to the fair at Riguepeu, old
+Lacoste was taken suddenly ill, ultimately becoming violently
+sick.  Eight days later he died.
+
+By a will which Henri had made two months after his marriage his
+wife was his sole beneficiary, and this will was no sooner proved
+than the widow betook herself to Tarbes, where she speedily began
+to make full use of her fortune.  Milliners and dressmakers were
+called into service, and the widow blossomed forth as a lady of
+fashion.  She next set up her own carriage.  If these proceedings
+had not been enough to excite envy among her female neighbours
+the frequent visits paid to her in her genteel apartments by a
+young man did the trick.  The young man came on the scene less
+than two months after the death of the old man.  It was said that
+his visits to the widow were prolonged until midnight.  Scandal
+resulted, and out of the scandal rumour regarding the death of
+Henri Lacoste.  It began to be said that the old man had died of
+poison.
+
+It was in December, six months after the death of Lacoste, that
+the rumours came to the ears of the magistrates.  Nor was there
+lack of anonymous letters.  It was the Widow Lacoste herself,
+however, who demanded an exhumation and autopsy on the body of her
+late husband--this as a preliminary to suing her traducers.  Note,
+in passing, how her action matches that of Veuve Boursier.
+
+On the orders of the Juge d'instruction an autopsy was begun on
+the 18th of December.  The body of Lacoste was exhumed, the
+internal organs were extracted, and these, with portions of the
+muscular tissue, were submitted to analysis by a doctor of Auch,
+M. Bouton, and two chemists of the same city, MM. Lidange and
+Pons, who at the same time examined samples of the soil in which
+the body had been interred.  The finding was that the body of
+Lacoste contained some arsenical preparation.
+
+The matter now appearing to be grave, additional scientific
+assurance was sought.  Three of the most distinguished chemists
+in Paris were called into service for a further analysis.  They
+were MM. Devergie, Pelouze, and Flandin.  Their report ran in
+part:
+
+
+The portion of the liver on which we have experimented proved to
+contain a notable quantity of arsenic, amounting to more than
+five milligrammes; the portions of the intestines and tissue
+examined also contained appreciable traces which, though in
+smaller proportion than contained by the liver, accord with the
+known features of arsenical poisoning.  There is no appearance of
+the toxic element in the earth taken from the grave or in the
+material of the coffin.
+
+
+As soon as Mme Lacoste was apprised of the findings of the
+autopsy she got into her carriage and was driven to Auch, where
+she visited a friend of her late husband and of herself.  To him
+she announced her intention of surrendering herself to the
+Procureur du Roi.  The friend strongly advised her against
+doing any such thing, advice which Mme Lacoste accepted with
+reluctance.
+
+On the 5th of January a summons to appear was issued for Mme
+Lacoste.  She was seen that day in Auch, walking the streets on
+the arm of a friend.  She even went to the post-office, but the
+police agents failed to find her.  She stopped the night in the
+town.  Next day she was at Riguepeu.  She was getting out of her
+carriage when a servant pointed out gendarmes coming up the hill
+with the Mayor.  When those officials arrived Euphemie was well
+away.  Search was made through the house and outbuildings, but
+without result.  ``Don't bother yourself looking any further,
+Monsieur le Maire,'' said one of the servants.  ``The mistress
+isn't far away, but she's in a place where I could hide a couple
+of oxen without you finding them.
+
+From then on Mme Lacoste was hunted for everywhere.  The roads to
+Tarbes, Toulouse, and Vic-Fezensac were patrolled by brigades of
+gendarmes day and night, but there was no sign of the fugitive. 
+It was rumoured that she had got away to Spain, that she was
+cached in a barrel at Riguepeu, that she was in the fields
+disguised as a shepherd, that she had taken the veil.
+
+In the meantime the process against her went forward.  Evidence
+was to hand which seemed to inculpate with Mme Lacoste a poor and
+old schoolmaster of Riguepeu named Joseph Meilhan.  The latter,
+arrested, stoutly denied not only his own part in the supposed
+crime, but also the guilt of Mme Lacoste.  ``Why doesn't she come
+forward?'' he asked.  ``She knows perfectly well she has nothing
+to fear--no more than I have.''
+
+From the `information' laid by the court of first instance at
+Auch a warrant was issued for the appearance of Mme Lacoste and
+Meilhan before the Assize of Gers.  Mme Lacoste was apparently well
+instructed by her friends.  She did not come into the open until
+the last possible moment.  She gave herself up at the Auch prison
+on the 4th of July.
+
+Her health seemed to have suffered little from the vicissitudes
+of her flight.  It was noticed that her hair was short, a fact
+which seemed to point to her having disguised herself.  But, it
+is said, she exhibited a serenity of mind which consorted ill
+with the idea of guilt.  She faced an interrogation lasting three
+hours without faltering.
+
+On the 10th of July she appeared before the Gers Assize Court,
+held at Auch.  The President was M. Donnoderie.  Counsel for the
+prosecution, as it were, was the Procureur du Roi, M. Cassagnol. 
+Mme Lacoste was defended by Maitre Alem-Rousseau, leader of the
+bar of Auch.
+
+The case aroused the liveliest interest, people flocking to the
+town from as far away as Paris itself--so much so that at 6.30 in
+the morning the one-time palace of the Archbishops of Auch, in
+the hall of which the court was held, was packed.
+
+The accused were called.  First to appear was Joseph Meilhan.  He
+was a stout little old boy of sixty-six, rosy and bright-eyed,
+with short white hair and heavy black eyebrows.  He was calm and
+smiling, completely master of himself.
+
+Mme Lacoste then appeared on the arm of her advocate.  She was
+dressed in full widow's weeds.  A little creature, slender but
+not rounded of figure, she is described as more agreeable-looking
+than actually pretty.
+
+After the accused had answered with their names and descriptions
+the acte d'accusation was read.  It was a long document.  It
+recalled the circumstances of the Lacoste marriage and of the
+death of the old man, with the autopsy and the finding of traces
+of arsenic.  It spoke of the lowly household tasks that Mme
+Lacoste had performed with such goodwill from the beginning, and
+of the reward for her diligence which came to her by the making
+of a holograph will in which her husband made her his sole heir.
+
+But the understanding between husband and wife did not last long,
+the acte went on.  Lacoste ardently desired a son and heir, and
+his wife appeared to be barren.  He confided his grief to an old
+friend, one Lespere.  Lespere pointed out that Euphemie was not
+only Lacoste's wife, but his kinswoman as well.  To this Lacoste
+replied that the fact did not content him.  ``I tell you on the
+quiet,'' he said to his friend, ``I've made my arrangements.  If
+SHE knew--she's capable of poisoning me to get herself a younger
+man.''  Lespere told him not to talk rubbish, in effect, but
+Lacoste was stubborn on his notion.
+
+This was but a year after the marriage.  It seemed that Lacoste
+had a melancholy presentiment of the fate which was to be his.
+
+It was made out that Euphemie suffered from the avarice and
+jealousy of her old husband.  She was given no money, was hardly
+allowed out of the house, and was not permitted even to go to
+Vespers alone.  And then, said the accusation, she discovered
+that her husband wanted an heir.  She had reason to fear that he
+would go about getting one by an illicit association.
+
+In the middle of 1842 she overheard her husband bargaining with
+one of the domestics.  The girl was asking for 100 pistoles (say,
+L85), while her husband did not want to give more than 600 francs
+(say, L24).  ``Euphemie Verges had no doubt,'' ran the
+accusation, ``that this was the price of an adulterous contract,
+and she insisted on Marie Dupuys' being sent from the house. 
+This was the cause of disagreement between the married pair,
+which did not conclude with the departure of the servant.''
+
+Later another servant, named Jacquette Larrieux, told Mme Lacoste
+in confidence that the master was trying to seduce her by the
+offer of a pension of 2000 francs or a lump sum of 20,000.
+
+Euphemie Verges, said the accusation, thus thought herself
+exposed daily, by the infidelity of her husband, to the loss of
+all her hopes.  Also, talking to a Mme Bordes about the two
+servants some days after Lacoste's death, she said, ``I had a bad
+time with those two girls!  If my husband had lived longer I
+might have had nothing, because he wanted a child that he could
+leave everything to.''
+
+The acte d'accusation enlarged on the situation, then went on to
+bring in Joseph Meilhan as Euphemie's accomplice.  It made him
+out to be a bad old man indeed.  He had seduced, it was said, a
+young girl named Lescure, who became enceinte, afterwards dying
+from an abortion which Meilhan was accused of having procured. 
+It might be thought that the society of such a bad old man would
+have disgusted a young woman, but Euphemie Verges admitted him to
+intimacy.  He was, it was said, the confidant for her domestic
+troubles, and it was further rumoured that he acted as intermediary
+in a secret correspondence that she kept up with a
+young man of Tarbes who had been courting her before her
+marriage.  The counsels of such a man were not calculated to help
+Mme Lacoste in her quarrels with her unfaithful and unlovable
+husband.
+
+Meanwhile M. Lacoste was letting new complaints be heard
+regarding his wife.  Again Lespere was his confidant.  His wife
+was bad and sulky.  He was very inclined to undo what he had done
+for her.  This was in March of 1843.
+
+Towards the end of April he made a like complaint to another old
+friend, one Dupouy, who accused him of neglecting old friends
+through uxoriousness.  Lacoste said he found little pleasure
+in his young wife.  He was, on the contrary, a martyr.  He was on
+the point of disinheriting her.
+
+And so, with the usual amount of on dit and disait-on, the acte
+d'accusation came to the point of Lacoste at the Riguepeu fair. 
+He set out in his usual health, but, several hours later, said to
+one Laffon, ``I have the shivers, cramps in the stomach.  After
+being made to drink by that ---Meilhan I felt ill.''
+
+Departing from the fair alone, he met up with Jean Durieux, to
+whom he said, ``That ---of a Meilhan asked me to have a drink, and
+afterwards I had colic, and wanted to vomit.''
+
+Arrived home, Lacoste said to Pierre Cournet that he had been
+seized by a colic which made him ill all over, plaguing him,
+giving him a desire to vomit which he could not satisfy.  Cournet
+noticed that Lacoste was as white as a sheet.  He advised going
+to bed and taking hot water.  Lacoste took the advice.  During
+the night he was copiously sick.  The old man was in bed in an
+alcove near the kitchen, but next night he was put into a room
+out of the way of noise.
+
+Euphemie looked after her husband alone, preparing his drinks and
+admitting nobody to see him.  She let three days pass without
+calling a doctor.  Lacoste, it was true, had said he did not want
+a doctor, but, said the accusation, ``there is no proof that he
+persisted in that wish.''
+
+On the fourth day she sent a summary of the illness to Dr Boubee,
+asking for written advice.  On the fifth day a surgeon was
+called, M. Lasmolles, who was told that Lacoste had eaten a meal
+of onions, garlic stems, and beans.  But the story of this meal
+was a lie, a premeditated lie.  On the eve of the fair Mme
+Lacoste was already speaking of such a meal, saying that that
+sort of thing always made her husband ill.
+
+According to the accusation, the considerable amount of poison
+found in the body established that the arsenic had been
+administered on several occasions, on the first by Meilhan and on
+the others by Mme Lacoste.
+
+When Henri Lacoste had drawn his last breath his wife shed a few
+tears.  But presently her grief gave place to other preoccupations. 
+She herself looked out the sheet for wrapping
+the corpse, and thereafter she began to search in the desk for
+the will which made her her husband's sole heir.
+
+Next day Meilhan, who had not once looked in on Lacoste during
+his illness, hastened to visit the widow.  The widow invited him
+to dinner.  The day after that he dined with her again, and they
+were seen walking together.  Their intimacy seemed to grow daily. 
+But the friendship of Mme Lacoste for Meilhan did not end there. 
+Not very many days after the death of Lacoste Meilhan met the
+Mayor of Riguepeu, M. Sabazan, and conducted him in a mysterious
+manner into his schoolroom.  Telling the Mayor that he knew him
+to be a man of discretion, he confided in him that the Veuve
+Lacoste intended giving him (Meilhan) a bill on one Castera.  Did
+the Mayor know Castera to be all right?  The Mayor replied that a
+bill on Castera was as good as gold itself.  Meilhan said that
+Mme Lacoste had assured him this was but the beginning of what
+she meant to do for him.
+
+Meilhan wrote to Castera, who called on him.  The schoolmaster
+told Castera that in return for 2000 francs which she had
+borrowed from him Mme Lacoste had given him a note for 1772
+francs, which was due from Castera to Henri Lacoste as part
+inheritance from a brother.  Meilhan showed Castera the original
+note, which was to be renewed in Meilhan's favour.  The accusation
+dwelt on the different versions regarding his
+possession of the note given by Meilhan to the Mayor and to
+Castera.  Meilhan was demonstrably lying to conceal Mme Lacoste's
+liberality.
+
+Some little time after this Meilhan invited the Mayor a second
+time into the schoolroom, and told him that Mme Lacoste meant to
+assure him of a life annuity of 400 francs, and had asked him to
+prepare the necessary document for her to sign.  But there was
+another proposition.  If Meilhan would return the note for 1772
+francs owing by Castera she would make the annuity up to 500. 
+What, asked Meilhan, would M. le Maire do in his place?  The
+Mayor replied that in Meilhan's place he would keep the Castera
+note and be content with the 400 annuity.  Then Meilhan asked the
+Mayor to draw up for him a specimen of the document necessary for
+creating the annuity.  This M. Sabazan did at once, and gave the
+draft to Meilhan.
+
+Some days later still Meilhan told M. Sabazan that Mme Lacoste
+did not wish to use the form of document suggested by the Mayor,
+but had written one herself.  Meilhan showed the Mayor the
+widow's document, and begged him to read it to see if it was in
+proper form.  Sabazan read the document.  It created an annuity
+of 400 francs, payable yearly in the month of August.  The Mayor
+did not know actually if the deed was in the writing of Mme
+Lacoste.  He did not know her fist.  But he could be certain that
+it was not in Meilhan's hand.
+
+This deed was later shown by Meilhan to the cure of Riguepeu, who
+saw at least that the deed was not in Meilhan's writing.  He
+noticed that it showed some mistakes, and that the signature of
+the Widow Lacoste began with the word ``Euphemie.''
+
+In the month of August Meilhan was met coming out of Mme
+Lacoste's by the Mayor.  Jingling money in his pocket, the
+schoolmaster told the Mayor he had just drawn the first payment
+of his annuity.  Later Meilhan bragged to the cure of Basais that
+he was made for life.  He took a handful of louis from his
+pocket, and told the priest that this was his daily allowance.
+
+``Whence,'' demanded the acte d'accusation, ``came all those
+riches, if they were not the price of his share in the crime?''
+
+But the good offices of Mme Lacoste towards Meilhan did not end
+with the giving of money.  In the month of August Meilhan was
+chased from his lodgings by his landlord, Lescure, on suspicion
+of having had intimate relations with the landlord's wife.  The
+intervention of the Mayor was ineffective in bringing about a
+reconciliation between Meilhan and Lescure.  Meilhan begged Mme
+Lacoste to intercede, and where the Mayor had failed she
+succeeded.
+
+While Mme Lacoste was thus smothering Meilhan with kindnesses she
+was longing herself to make the most of the fortune which had
+come to her.  From the first days of her widowhood she was
+constantly writing letters which Mme Lescure carried for her. 
+Euphemie had already begun to talk of remarriage.  Her choice was
+already made.  ``If I marry again,'' she said, a few days after
+the death of Lacoste, ``I won't take anybody but M. Henri Berens,
+of Tarbes.  He was my first love.''
+
+The accusation told of Euphemie's departure for Tarbes, where
+almost her first caller was this M. Henri Berens.  The next day
+she gave up the lodgings rented by her late husband, to establish
+herself in rich apartments owned by one Fourcade, which she
+furnished sumptuously.  The accusation dwelt on her purchase of
+horses and a carriage and on her luxurious way of living.  It
+also brought forward some small incidents illustrative of her
+distaste for the memory of her late husband.  It dealt with
+information supplied by her landlord which indicated that her
+conscience was troubled.  Twice M. Fourcade found her trembling, as
+with fear.  On his asking her what was the matter she replied, ``I
+was thinking of my husband--if he saw me in a place furnished like
+this!''
+
+(It need hardly be pointed out, considering the sour and
+avaricious ways of her late husband, that Euphemie need not have
+been conscience-stricken with his murder to have trembled over
+her lavish expenditure of his fortune.  But the point is typical
+of the trivialities with which the acte d'accusation was padded
+out.)
+
+The accusation claimed that a young man had several times been
+seen leaving Euphemie's apartments at midnight, and spoke of
+protests made by Mme Fourcade.  Euphemie declared herself
+indifferent to public opinion.
+
+Public opinion, however, beginning to rise against her, Euphemie
+had need to resort to lying in order to explain her husband's
+death.  To some she repeated the story of the
+onion-garlic-and-beans meal, adding that, in spite of his
+indigestion, he had eaten gluttonously later in the day.  To
+others she attributed his illness to two indigestible repasts
+made at the fair.  To others again she said Lacoste had died of a
+hernia, forced out by his efforts to vomit.  She was even accused
+of saying that the doctor had attributed the death to this cause. 
+This, said the indictment, was a lie.  Dr Lasmolles declared that
+he had questioned Lacoste about the supposed hernia, and that the
+old man denied having any such thing.
+
+What had brought about Lacoste's fatal illness was the wine
+Meilhan had made him drink at Rigeupeu fair.
+
+With the rise of suspicion against her and her accomplice, Mme
+Lacoste put up a brave front.  She wrote to the Procureur du Roi,
+demanding an exhumation, with the belief, no doubt, that time
+would have effaced the poison.  At the same time she sent the
+bailiff Labadie to Riguepeu, to find out the names of those who
+were traducing her, and to say that she intended to prosecute her
+calumniators with the utmost rigour of the law.  This, said the
+accusation, was nothing but a move to frighten the witnesses
+against her into silence.  Instead of making good her threats the
+Widow Lacoste disappeared.
+
+On the arrest of Meilhan search of his lodgings resulted in the
+finding of the note on Castera for 1772 francs, and of a sum of
+800 francs in gold and silver.  But of the deed creating the
+annuity of 400 francs there was no trace.
+
+Meilhan denied everything.  In respect of the wine he was said to
+have given Lacoste he said he had passed the whole of the 16th of
+May in the company of a friend called Mothe, and that Mothe could
+therefore prove Meilhan had never had a drink with Lacoste. 
+Mothe, however, declared he had left Meilhan that day at three
+o'clock in the afternoon, and it was just at this time that
+Meilhan had taken Lacoste into the auberge where he lived to give
+him the poisoned drink.  It was between three and four that
+Lacoste first showed signs of being ill.
+
+Asked to explain the note for 1772 francs, Meilhan said that,
+about two months after Lacoste's death, the widow complained of
+not having any ready money.  She had the Castera note, and he
+offered to discount it for her.  This was a palpable lie, said
+the accusation.  It was only a few days after Lacoste's death
+that Meilhan spoke to the Mayor about the Castera note. 
+Meilhan's statement was full of discrepancies.  He told Castera
+that he held the note against 2000 francs previously lent to the
+widow.  He now said that he had discounted the note on sight. 
+But the fact was that since Meilhan had come to live in Riguepeu
+he had been without resources.  He had stripped himself in order
+to establish his son in a pharmacy at Vic-Fezensac.  His profession
+of schoolmaster scarcely brought him in enough for
+living expenses.  How, then, could he possibly be in a position
+to lend Mme Lacoste 2000 francs?  And how had he managed to
+collect the 800 odd francs that were found in his lodgings?  The
+real explanation lay in the story he had twice given to the
+Mayor, M. Sabazan: he was in possession of the Castera note
+through the generosity of his accomplice.
+
+Meilhan was in still greater difficulty to explain the document
+which had settled on him an annuity of 400 francs, and which had
+been seen in his hands.  Denial was useless, since he had asked
+the Mayor to make a draft for him, and since he had shown that
+functionary the deed signed by Mme Lacoste.  Here, word for word,
+is the explanation given by the rubicund Joseph:
+
+``My son,'' he said, ``kept asking me to contribute to the upkeep
+of one of his boys who is in the seminary of Vic-Fezensac.  I
+consistently refused to do so, because I wanted to save what
+little I might against the time when I should be unable to work
+any longer.  Six months ago my son wrote to the cure, begging him
+to speak to me.  The cure, not wishing to do so, sent on the
+letter to the Mayor, who communicated with me.  I replied that I
+did not wish to do anything, adding that I intended investing my
+savings in a life annuity.  At the same time I begged M. Sabazan
+to make me a draft in the name of Mme Lacoste.  She knew nothing
+about it.  M. Sabazan sent me on the draft.  It seemed to me well
+drawn up.  I rewrote it, and showed it to M. Sabazan.  At the
+foot of the deed I put the words `Veuve Lacoste,' but I had been
+at pains to disguise my handwriting.  I did all this with the
+intention of making my son believe, when my infirmities obliged
+me to retire to his household, that my income came from a life
+annuity some one had given me; and to hide from him where I had put
+my capital I wanted to persuade M. Sabazan that the deed
+actually existed, so that he could bear witness to the fact to my
+son.''    Here, said the accusation, Meilhan was trying to make
+out that it was on the occasion of a letter from his son that he
+had spoken to the Mayor of the annuity.
+
+The cure of Riguepeu, however, while admitting that he had
+received such a letter from Meilhan's son, declared that this was
+long before the death of Henri Lacoste.  The Mayor also said that
+he had spoken to Meilhan of his son's letter well before the time
+when the accused mentioned the annuity to him and asked for a
+draft of the assignment.
+
+The accusation ridiculed Meilhan's explanation, dubbing it just
+another of the schoolmaster's lies.  It brought forward a
+contradictory explanation given by Meilhan to one Thener, a
+surgeon, whom he knew to be in frequent contact with the son whom
+the document was intended to deceive.  Meilhan informed Thener
+that he had fabricated the deed, and had shown it round, in order
+to inspire such confidence in him as would secure him refuge when
+he had to give up schoolmastering.
+
+These contradictory and unbelievable explanations were the fruit
+of Meilhan's efforts to cover the fact that the annuity was the
+price paid him by the Widow Lacoste for his part in the murder of
+her husband.  It was to be remembered that M. Sabazan, whose
+testimony was impeccable, had seen Meilhan come from the house of
+Mme Lacoste, and that Meilhan had jingled money, saying he had
+just drawn the first payment of his annuity.
+
+The accusation, in sum, concentrated on the suspicious
+relationship between Meilhan and the Widow Lacoste.  It was a
+long document, but something lacking in weight of proof--proof of
+the actual murder, that is, if not of circumstance.
+
+
+
+% V
+
+The process in a French criminal court was--and still
+is--somewhat long-winded.  The Procureur du Roi had to go over
+the accusation in detail, making the most of Mme Lacoste's
+intimacy with the ill-reputed old fellow.  That parishioner, far
+from being made indignant by the animadversions of M. Cassagnol,
+listened to the recital of his misdeeds with a faint smile.  He
+was perhaps a little astonished at some of the points made
+against him, but, it is said, contented himself with a gesture of
+denial to the jury, and listened generally as if with pleasure at
+hearing himself so well spoken of.
+
+He was the first of the accused to be questioned.
+
+It was brought out that he had been a soldier under the Republic,
+and then for a time had studied pharmacy.  He had been a
+corn-merchant in a small way, and then had started schoolmaster.
+
+Endeavour was made to get him to admit guilty knowledge of the
+death of the Lescure girl.  He had never even heard of an
+abortion.  The girl had a stomach-ache.  This line failing, he
+was interrogated on the matter of being chased from his lodgings
+by the landlord-father, it would seem, of the aforementioned
+girl.  (It may be noted that Meilhan lived on in the auberge
+after her death.)  Meilhan had an innocent explanation of the
+incident.  It was all a mistake on the part of Lescure.  And he
+hadn't been chased out of the auberge.  He had simply gone out
+with his coat slung about his shoulders.  Mme Lacoste went with
+him to patch the matter up.
+
+He had not given Lacoste a drink, hadn't even spoken with him, at
+the Riguepeu fair, but had passed the day with M. Mothe.  Cournet
+had told him of Lacoste's having a headache, but had said nothing
+of vomitings.  He had not seen Lacoste during the latter's
+illness, because Lacoste was seeing nobody.
+
+This business of the annuity had got rather entangled, but he
+would explain.  He had lodged 1772 francs with Mme Lacoste, and
+she had given him a bill on Castera.  Whether he had given the
+money before or after getting the bill he could not be sure.  He
+thought afterwards.  He had forgotten the circumstances while in
+prison.
+
+Meilhan stuck pretty firmly to his story that it was to deceive
+his son that he had fabricated the deed of annuity.  He couldn't
+help it if the story sounded thin.  It was the fact.
+
+How had he contrived to save, as he said, 3000 francs?  His
+yearly income during his six years at Riguepeu had been only 500
+francs.  The court had reason to be surprised.
+
+``Ah!  You're surprised!'' exclaimed Meilhan, rather put out. 
+But at Breuzeville, where he was before Riguepeu, he had bed and
+board free.  In Riguepeu he had nothing off the spit for days on
+end.  He spent only 130 francs a year, he said, giving details. 
+And then he did a little trade in corn.
+
+He had destroyed the annuity deed only because it was worthless. 
+As for what he had said to the Mayor about drawing his first
+payment of the pension, he had done it because he was a bit
+conscience-stricken over fabricating the deed.  He had been
+bragging--that was all.
+
+The President, having already chidden Meilhan for being prolix in
+his answers, now scolded him for anticipating the questions.  But
+the fact was that Meilhan was not to be pinned down.
+
+The first questions put to Mme Lacoste were with regard to her
+marriage and her relations with her husband.  She admitted,
+incidentally, having begun to receive a young man some six weeks
+after her husband's death, but she had not known him before
+marriage.  Meilhan had carried no letters between them.  She had
+married Lacoste of her own free will.  Lacoste had not asked any
+attentions from her that were not ordinarily sought by a husband,
+and her care of him had been spontaneous.  It was true he was
+jealous, but he had not formally forbidden her pleasures.  She
+had renounced them, knowing he was easily upset.  It was true
+that she had seldom gone out, but she had never wanted to. 
+Lacoste was no more avaricious than most, and it was untrue that
+he had denied her any necessaries.
+
+Taken to the events of the fair day, Tuesday, the 16th of May,
+Mme Lacoste maintained that her husband, on his return,
+complained only of a headache.  He had gone to bed early, but he
+usually did.  That night he slept in the same alcove as herself,
+but next night they separated.  In spite of the contrary evidence
+of witnesses, of which the President reminded her, Mme Lacoste
+firmly maintained that it was not until the Wednesday-Thursday
+night that Lacoste started to vomit.  It was not until that night
+that she began to attend to him.  She had given him lemonade,
+washed him, and so on.
+
+The President was saying that nobody had been allowed near him,
+and that a doctor was not called, when the accused broke in with
+a lively denial.  Anybody who wanted to could see him, and a
+doctor was called.  This was towards the last, the President
+pointed out.  Mme Lacoste's advocate intervened here, saying that
+it was the husband who did not wish a doctor called, for reasons
+of his own.  The President begged to be allowed to hear the
+accused's own answers.  He pointed out that the ministrations of
+the accused had effected no betterment, but that the illness had
+rapidly got worse.  The delay in calling a doctor seemed to lend
+a strange significance to the events.
+
+Mme Lacoste answered in lively fashion, accenting her phrases
+with the use of her hands:  ``But, monsieur, you do not take into
+account that it was not until the night of Wednesday and the
+Thursday that my husband began to vomit, and that it was two days
+after that he--he succumbed.''
+
+The President said a way remained of fixing the dates and
+clearing up the point.  He had a letter written by M. Lacoste to
+the doctor in which he himself explained the state of his
+illness.  It was pointed out to him that the letter had been
+written by Mme Lacoste at her husband's dictation.
+
+The letter was dated the 19th (Friday).  It was directed to M.
+Boubee, doctor of medicine, in Vic-Fezensac.  Perhaps it would be
+better to give it in the original language.  It is something
+frank in detail:
+
+
+Depuis quelque temps j'avais perdu l'appetit et m'endormais de
+suite quand j'etais assis.  Mercredi il me vint un secours de
+nature par un vomissement extraordinaire.  Ces vomissements m'ont
+dure pendant un jour et une nuit; je ne rendais que de la bile. 
+La nuit passee, je n'en ai pas rendu; dans ce moment, j'en rends
+encore.  Vous sentez combien ces efforts reiteres m'ont fatigue;
+ces grands efforts m'ont fait partir de la bile par en bas; je
+vous demanderai, monsieur, si vous ne trouveriez pas a propos que
+je prisse une medecine d'huile de ricin ou autre, celle que vous
+jugerez a propos.  Je vous demanderai aussi si je pourrais
+prendre quelques bains.           [signe]
+                                  LACOSTE PHILIBERT
+
+Je rends beaucoup de vents par en bas.  Pour la boisson, je ne
+bois que de l'eau chaude et de l'eau sucree.  (Il n'y a pas eu de
+fievre encore.)
+
+
+The Procureur du Roi maintained that this letter showed the
+invalid had already been taken with vomiting before it was
+considered necessary to call in a doctor.  But Mme Lacoste's
+advocate pointed out that the letter was written by her, when she
+had overcome Lacoste's distaste for doctors.
+
+The President made much of the fact that Mme Lacoste had
+undertaken even the lowliest of the attentions necessary in a
+sick-room, when other, more mercenary, hands could have been
+engaged in them.  The accusation from this was that she did these
+things from a desire to destroy incriminating evidences.  Mme
+Lacoste replied that she had done everything out of affection for
+her husband.
+
+Asked by the court why she had not thought to give Dr Boubee any
+explanations of the illness, she replied that she knew her
+husband was always ill, but that he hid his maladies and was
+ashamed of them.  He had, it appeared, hernias, tetters, and
+other maladies besides.  It was easy for her to gather as much,
+in spite of the mystery Lacoste made of them; she had seen him
+rubbing his limbs at times with medicaments, and at others she
+had seen him taking medicines internally.  He was always vexed
+when she found him at it.  She did not know what doctor
+prescribed the medicaments, nor the pharmacist who supplied them. 
+Her husband thought he knew more than the doctors, and usually
+dealt with quacks.
+
+Mme Lacoste was questioned regarding her husband's will, and on
+his longing to have an heir of his own blood.  She knew of the
+will, but did not hear any word of his desire to alter it until
+after his death.  With regard to Lacoste's attempts to seduce the
+servants, she declared this was a vague affair, and she had found
+the first girl in question a place elsewhere.
+
+Her letter to the Procureur du Roi demanding an exhumation and
+justice against her slanderers was read.  Then a second one, in
+which she excused her absence, saying that she would give
+herself up for judgment at the right time, and begged him to add
+her letter to the papers of the process.
+
+The President then returned to the question of her husband's
+attempts to seduce the servants.  She denied that this was the
+cause of quarrels.  There had been no quarrels.  She did not know
+that her husband was complaining outside about her.
+
+She denied all knowledge of the arsenic found in Lacoste's body,
+but suggested that it might have come from one or other of the
+medicines he took.
+
+Questioned with regard to her intimacy with Meilhan, she declared
+that she knew nothing of his morals.  She had intervened in the
+Lescure affair at the request of Mme Lescure, who came to deny
+the accusation made by Lescure.  This woman had never acted as
+intermediary between herself and Meilhan.  Meilhan had not been
+her confidant.  She looked after her late husband's affairs
+herself.  She had handed over the Castera note to Meilhan against
+his loan of 2000 francs, but she had never given him money as a
+present.  Nor had she ever spoken to Meilhan of an annuity.  But
+Meilhan, it was objected, had been showing a deed signed
+``Euphemie Lacoste.''  The accused quickly replied that she never
+signed herself ``Euphemie,'' but as ``Veuve Lacoste.''  Upon this
+the President called for several letters written by the accused. 
+It was found that they were all signed ``Veuve Lacoste.''
+
+The evidence of the Fourcades regarding her conduct in their
+house at Tarbes was biased, she said.  She had refused to take up
+some people recommended by her landlady.  The young man who had
+visited her never remained longer than after ten o'clock or
+half-past, and she saw nothing singular in that.
+
+The examination-in-chief of Mme Lacoste ended with her firm
+declaration that she knew nothing of the poisoning of her
+husband, and that she had spoken the truth through all her
+interrogations.  Some supplementary questions were answered by
+her to the effect that she knew, during her marriage, that her
+husband had at one time suffered from venereal disease; and that
+latterly there had been recrudescences of the affection, together
+with the hernia already mentioned, for which her husband took
+numerous medicaments.
+
+Throughout this long examination Mme Lacoste showed complete
+self-possession, save that at times she exhibited a Gascon
+impatience in answering what she conceived to be stupid
+questions.
+
+
+
+% VI
+
+The experts responsible for the analysis of Lacoste's remains
+were now called.  All three of those gentlemen from Paris, MM.
+Pelouze, Devergie, and Flandin, agreed in their findings.  Two
+vessels were exhibited, on which there glittered blobs of some
+metallic substance.  This substance, the experts deposed, was
+arsenic obtained by the Marsh technique from the entrails and the
+muscular tissue from Lacoste's body.  They could be sure that the
+substances used as reagents in the experiments were pure, and
+that the earth about the body was free from arsenic.
+
+M. Devergie said that science did not admit the presence of
+arsenic as a normal thing in the human body.  What was not made
+clear by the expert was whether the amount of arsenic found in the
+body of Lacoste was consistent with the drug's having been taken in
+small doses, or whether it had been given in one dose. 
+Devergie's confrere Flandin later declared his conviction that
+the death of Lacoste was due to one dose of the poison, but, from
+a verbatim report, it appears that he did not give any reason for
+the opinion.
+
+At this point Mme Lacoste was recalled, and repeated her
+statement that she had seen her husband rubbing himself with an
+ointment and drinking some white liquid on the return of a
+syphilitic affection.
+
+Dr Lasmolles testified that Lacoste, though very close-mouthed,
+had told him of a skin affection that troubled him greatly.  The
+deceased dosed himself, and did not obey the doctors' orders.  It
+was only from a farmer that he understood Lacoste to have a
+hernia, and Lacoste himself did not admit it.  The doctor did not
+believe the man poisoned.  He had been impressed by the way Mme
+Lacoste looked after her husband, and the latter did not complain
+about anyone.  M. Lasmolles had heard no mention from Lacoste of
+the glass of wine given him by Meilhan.
+
+After M. Devergie had said that he had heard of arsenical
+remedies used externally for skin diseases, but never of any
+taken internally, M. Plandin expressed his opinion as before
+quoted.
+
+The next witness was one Dupouy, of whom some mention has already
+been made.  Five days before his death Lacoste told him that,
+annoyed with his wife, he definitely intended to disinherit her. 
+Dupouy admitted, however, that shortly before this the deceased
+had spoken of taking a pleasure trip with Mme Lacoste.
+
+Lespere then repeated his story of the complaints made to him by
+Lacoste of his wife's conduct, of his intention of altering his
+will, and of his belief that Euphemie was capable of poisoning
+him in order to get a younger man.  It was plain that this
+witness, a friend of Lacoste's for forty-six years, was not ready
+to make any admissions in her favour.  He swore that Lacoste had
+told him his wife did not know she was his sole heir.  He was
+allowed to say that on the death of Lacoste he had immediately
+assumed that the poisoning feared by Lacoste had been brought
+about.  He had heard nothing from Lacoste of secret maladies or
+secret remedies, but had been so deep in Lacoste's confidence
+that he felt sure his old friend would have mentioned them.  He
+had heard of such things only at the beginning of the case.
+
+The Procureur du Roi remarked here that reliance on the secret
+remedies was the `system' of the defence.
+
+That seemed to be the case.  The `system' of the prosecution, on
+the other hand, was to snatch at anything likely to appear as
+evidence against the two accused.  The points mainly at issue
+were as follows:
+
+(1) Did Meilhan have a chance of giving Lacoste a drink at the
+fair?
+
+(2) Did Lacoste become violently sick immediately on his return
+from the fair?
+
+(3) Did Lacoste suffer from the ailments attributed to him by his
+wife, and was he in the habit of dosing himself?
+
+(4) Did Meilhan receive money from Mme Lacoste, and,
+particularly, did she propose to allow him the supposed annuity?
+
+
+With regard to (1), several witnesses declared that Lacoste had
+complained to them of feeling ill after drinking with Meilhan,
+but none could speak of seeing the two men together.  M. Mothe,
+the friend cited by Meilhan, less positive in his evidence in
+court than the acte d'accusation made him out to be, could not
+remember if it was on the 16th of May that he had spent the whole
+afternoon with Meilhan.  It was so much his habit to be with
+Meilhan during the days of the fair that he had no distinct
+recollection of any of them.  Another witness, having business
+with Lacoste, declared that on the day in question it was
+impossible for Meilhan to have been alone with Lacoste during the
+time that the latter was supposed to have taken the poisoned
+drink.  Lescure, in whose auberge Lacoste was supposed to have
+had the drink, failed to remember such an incident.  The evidence
+that Meilhan had given Lacoste the drink was all second-hand;
+that to the contrary was definite.
+
+For the most part the evidence with regard to (2), that Lacoste
+became very ill immediately on his return from the fair, was
+hearsay.  The servants belonging to the Lacoste household all
+maintained that the vomiting did not seize the old man until the
+night of Wednesday-Thursday.  Indeed, two witnesses testified that
+the old man, in spite of his supposed headache, essayed to show
+them how well he could dance.  This was on his return from the fair
+where he was supposed to have been given a poisoned drink at three
+o'clock.  The evidence regarding the seclusion of Lacoste by his
+wife was contradictory, but the most direct of it
+maintained that it was the old man himself, if anyone, who wanted
+to be left alone.  On this point arises the question of the delay
+in calling the doctor.  Witness after witness testified to
+Lacoste's hatred of the medical faculty and to his preference for
+dosing himself.  He declared his faith in a local vet.
+
+On (3), the bulk of the evidence against Lacoste's having the
+suggested afflictions came simply from witnesses who had not
+heard of them.  There was, on the contrary, quite a number of
+witnesses to declare that Lacoste did suffer from a skin disease,
+and that he was in the habit of using quack remedies, the
+stronger the better.  It was also testified that Lacoste was in
+the habit of prescribing his remedies for other people.  A
+witness declared that a woman to whom Lacoste had given medicine
+for an indisposition had become crippled, and still was crippled.
+
+With regard to (4), the Mayor merely repeated the evidence given
+in his first statement, but the cure', who also saw the deed
+assigning an annuity to Meilhan, said that it was not in Mme
+Lacoste's writing, and that it was signed with the unusual
+``Euphemie.''  This last witness added that Mme Lacoste's
+reputation was irreproachable, and that her relations with her
+husband were happy.
+
+Evidence from a business-man in Tarbes showed that Mme Lacoste's
+handling of her fortune was careful to a degree, her expenditure
+being well within her income.  This witness also proved that the
+Fourcades' evidence of Euphemie's misbehaviour could have been
+dictated from spite.  Fourcade had been found out in what looked
+like a swindle over money which he owed to the Lacoste estate.
+
+The court then went more deeply into the medico-legal evidence. 
+It were tedious to follow the course of this long argument. 
+After a lengthy dissertation on the progress of an acute
+indigestion and the effects of a strangulated hernia M. Devergie
+said that, as the poison existed in the body, from the symptoms
+shown in the illness it could be assumed that death had resulted
+from arsenic.  The duration of the illness was in accord with the
+amount of arsenic found.
+
+M. Flandin agreed with this, but M. Pelouze abstained from
+expressing an opinion.  He, however, rather gave the show away,
+by saying that if he was a doctor he would take care to forbid
+any arsenical preparations.  ``These preparations,'' he said
+moodily, ``can introduce a melancholy obscurity into the
+investigations of criminal justice.''
+
+Some sense was brought into the discussion by Dr Molas, of Auch. 
+He put forward the then accepted idea of the accumulation of
+arsenic taken in small doses, and the power of this accumulation,
+on the least accident, of determining death.
+
+This was rather like chucking a monkey-wrench into the
+cerebration machinery of the Paris experts.  They admitted that
+the absorption and elimination of arsenic varied with the
+individual, and generally handed the case over to the defence. 
+M. Devergie was the only one who stuck out, but only partially
+even then.  ``I persist in believing,'' he said, `` that M.
+Lacoste succumbed to poisoning by arsenic; but I use the word
+`poisoning' only from the point of view of science: arsenic
+killed him.''
+
+
+
+% VII
+
+The speech of the Procureur du Roi was another resume of the acte
+d'accusation, with consideration of that part of the evidence
+which suited him best.
+
+This was followed by the speech of Maitre Canteloup in defence of
+Meilhan.  The speech was a good effort which demonstrated that,
+whatever rumour might accuse the schoolmaster of, there were
+plenty of people of standing who had found him upright and free
+from stain through a long life.  It reproached the accusation
+with jugglery over dates and so forth in support of its case, and
+confidently predicted the acquittal of Meilhan.
+
+Then followed the speech of Maitre Alem-Rousseau on behalf of the
+Veuve Lacoste.  Among other things the advocate brought forward
+the fact that Euphemie was not so poorly born as the prosecution
+had made out, but that she had every chance of inheriting some
+20,000 francs from her parents.  It was notorious that when Henri
+Lacoste first broached the subject of marriage with Euphemie he
+was not so rich as he afterwards became, but, in fact, believed he
+had lost the inheritance from his brother Philibert, this last
+having made a will in favour of a young man of whom popular rumour
+made him the father.  This was in 1839.  The marriage was
+celebrated in May of 1841.  Henri Lacoste, it is true, had hidden
+his intentions, but when news of the marriage reached the ears of
+brother Philibert that brother was so delighted that he destroyed
+the will which disinherited Henri.  It was thus right to say that
+Euphemie became the benefactor of her husband.  Where was the
+speculative marriage on the part of Euphemie that the prosecution
+talked about?
+
+Maitre Alem-Rousseau made short work of the medico-legal evidence
+(he had little bother with the facts of the illness).  Poison was
+found in the body.  The question was, how had it got there?  Was
+it quite certain that arsenic could not get into the human body
+save by ingestion, that it could not exist in the human body
+normally?  The science of the day said no, he knew, but the
+science of yesterday had said yes.  Who knew what the science of
+to-morrow would say?
+
+The advocate made use of the evidence of a witness whose
+testimony I have failed to find in the accounts of the trial. 
+This witness spoke of Lacoste's having asked, in Bordeaux, for a
+certain liquor of ``Saint-Louis,'' a liquor which Mme Lacoste
+took to be an anisette.  ``No,'' said Lacoste, ``women don't take
+it.''  Maitre Alem-Rousseau had tried to discover what this
+liquor of Saint-Louis was.  During the trial he had come upon the
+fact that the arsenical preparation known as Fowler's solution
+had been administered for the first time in the hospital of
+Saint-Louis, in Paris.  He showed an issue of the Hospital
+Gazette in which the advertisement could be read:  ``Solution de
+Fowler telle qu'on l'administre a SAINT-LOUIS!''  The jury could
+make what they liked of that fact.
+
+The advocate now produced documents to prove that the marriage of
+Euphemie with her grand-uncle had not been so much to her
+advantage, but had been--it must have been--a marriage of
+affection.  At the time when the marriage was arranged, he
+proved, Lacoste had no more than 35,000 francs to his name. 
+Euphemie had 15,000 francs on her marriage and the hope of 20,000
+francs more.  The pretence of the prosecution, that her
+contentment with the abject duties which she had to perform in
+the house was dictated by interest, fell to the ground with the
+preliminary assumption that she had married for her husband's
+money.
+
+Maitre Alem, defending the widow's gayish conduct after her
+husband's death, declared it to be natural enough.  It had been
+shown to be innocent.  He trounced the Press for helping to
+exaggerate the rumours which envy of Mme Lacoste's good fortune
+had created.  He asked the jury to acquit Mme Lacoste.
+
+The Procureur du Roi had another say.  It was again an attempt to
+destroy the `system' of the defence, but by making a mystery of
+the fact that the Lacoste-Verges marriage had not taken place in
+a church he gave the wily Maitre Alem an opportunity for
+following him.
+
+The summing-up of the President on the third day of the trial
+was, it is said, a model of clarity and impartiality.  The jury
+returned on all the points put to them a verdict of ``Not
+guilty'' for both the accused.
+
+
+
+% VIII
+
+Another verdict may now seem to have been hardly possible.  The
+accusation was built up on the jealousy of neighbours, on chance
+circumstances, on testimonies founded on petty spite.  But,
+combined with the medico-legal evidence, the weight of
+circumstance might easily have hoisted the accused in the
+balance.
+
+It will be seen, then, how much on foot the case of the Veuve
+Lacoste was with that of the Veuve Boursier, twenty years before.
+
+It is on the experience of cases such as these two that the
+technique of investigation into arsenical poison has been
+evolved.  In the case of Veuve Boursier you find M. Orfila
+discovering oxide of arsenic where M. Barruel saw only grains of
+fat.  Four years previous to the case of the Veuve Lacoste that
+same Orfila came into the trial of Mme Lafarge with the first use
+in medical jurisprudence of the Marsh test, and based on the
+experiment a cocksure opinion which had much to do with the
+condemnation of that unfortunate woman.  In the Lacoste trial you
+find the Parisian experts giving an opinion of no greater value
+than that of Orfila's in the Lafarge case, but find also an
+element of doubt introduced by the country practitioner, with his
+common sense on the then moot question of the accumulation, the
+absorption, and elimination of the drug.
+
+Nowadays we are quite certain that our experts in medical
+jurisprudence know all there is to know about arsenical
+poisoning.  What are the chances, however, in spite of our
+apparently well-founded faith, that some bristle-headed local
+chemist with a fighting chin will not spring up at an
+arsenic-poisoning trial and, with new facts about the substance,
+blow to pieces the cocksure evidence of the leading expert in
+pathology?  It may seem impossible that such a thing can ever
+happen again--a mistake regarding the action of arsenic on the
+human body.  But when we discover it becoming a commonplace of
+science that one human may be poisoned by an everyday substance
+which thousands of his fellows eat with enjoyment as well as
+impunity--a substance, for instance, as everyday as
+porridge--who will dare say even now that the last word has been
+said and written of arsenic?
+
+But that, as the late George Moore so doted on saying, is
+quelconque.  M. Orfila, sure about the grocer of the Rue de la
+Paix, was defeated by M. Barruel.  M. Orfila, sure about the
+death of Charles Lafarge, is declared by to-day's experts in
+criminal jurisprudence and pathology to have been talking through
+his hat.  According to the present experts, says ``Philip
+Curtin,'' Lafarge was not poisoned at all, but died a natural
+death.  Because of M. Devergie it was for the Veuve Lacoste as
+much `touch and go' as it was for the Veuve Boursier twenty years
+before.  Well might Marie-Fortunee Lafarge, hearing in prison of
+the verdict in the Lacoste trial, say, ``Ma condamnation a sauve
+Madame Lacoste!''
+
+In all this there's a moral lesson somewhere, but I'm blessed if
+I can put my finger on it.
+
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+Abbot, George, Archbishop of Canterbury
+Alem-Rousseau, Maitre; on arsenic 
+Amos (Great Oyer of Poisoning)
+Ansell, Mary 
+Aqua fortis--see Poisons 
+Armstrong, poisoner
+Arsenic--see Poisons 
+Artois, Comte d'--see Charles X
+Aumale, Duc d'
+
+Bacon, Sir Francis
+Balfour, Rev. James
+Ballet, Auguste
+Barruel, Dr.
+Barry, Philip Beaufroy
+Berry, Duchesse de
+Bidard, Professor; evidence against Helene Jegado
+Black, Mrs (Armagh)
+Blandy, Mary
+Bordeaux, Duc de
+Bordot, Dr.
+Borgia, Cesare
+Borgia, Lucretia
+Borgia, Rodrigo, Pope Alexander VI
+Borrow, George
+Boubee, Dr.
+Boudin, Dr.
+Bourbon, Louis-Henri-Joseph, Duc de, afterwards Prince de Conde
+Bourbon, Louise-Marie-Therese-Mathilde d'Orleans, Duchesse de
+Boursier, Veuve; case compared with Veuve Lacoste's
+Bouton, Dr.
+Briant, Abbe
+Brock, Alan
+Broe, M. de, Avocat-General
+Brownrigg, Elizabeth
+Bruce, Rev. Robert
+Burke and Hare
+Burning at the stake
+
+Canteloup, Maitre
+Cantharides--see Poisons 
+Carew, Edith Mary
+Carr, Robert
+Cassagnol, M., Procureur du Roi, Auch
+Castaing, poisoner
+Cecil, Robert, Lord Salisbury
+Chabannes de la Palice, Marquise de
+Charles X, King of France; flight from France
+Cleopatra
+Coke, Sir Edward, Lord Chief Justice
+Conde, Louis-Henri-Joseph, Prince de--see Bourbon, Duc de Conde,
+Louis-Joseph, Prince de
+Cotton, Mary Ann
+Couture, Maitre; speech in defence of Mme Boursier
+Cream, Neill
+``Curtin, Philip,''
+
+Dawes, James, made Baron de Flassans
+Dawes, Sophie,
+Devergie, M., chemist
+Diamond powder--see Poisons 
+Diblanc, Marguerite
+Dilnot, George
+Donnoderie, M., Assize President, Auch
+Dorange, Maitre; defence of Helene Jegado
+Dubois, Dr, his account of the Prince de Conde's death
+Dunnipace, Laird of--see Livingstone, John 
+Dyer, Amelia
+
+``Egalite''--see Orleans, Louis-Philippe 
+Elwes, Sir Gervase 
+Enghien, Duc d'
+Essex, Countess of--see Howard, Frances 
+Essex, Robert Devereux, third Earl of
+
+Farnese, Julia
+Feucheres, Adrien-Victor, Baron de; marriage with Sophie Dawes;
+separation
+Feucheres, Baronne de--see Dawes, Sophie 
+Flanagan, Mrs. poisoner 
+Flandin, M., chemist
+Flassans, Baronde--see Dawes, James 
+Fly-papers, for arsenic
+Forman, Dr 
+``Fowler's solution''
+Franklin, apothecary 
+
+Gardy, Dr
+Gendrin, Dr
+Gibbon, Edward
+Gowrie mystery
+Gribble, Leonard R.
+Gunness, Belle
+
+Hardouin, M., Assize President, Seine
+Harris, Miss
+Henry, Prince of Wales, son of James VI and I
+Higgins, Mrs, poisoner
+Hogarth, William
+Holroyd, Susannah, poisoner
+Howard family
+Howard, Frances, Countess of
+Essex, Countess of Somerset; early marriage; attracted to Robert
+Carr; begs Essex to agree to annul marriage; administers poison to
+husband; annulment petition presented; nullity suit succeeds;
+enmity to Overbury inexplicable; arrest and trial; death; portrait
+Howard, Thomas, Earl of Suffolk
+
+Jack the Ripper
+Jael 
+James VI and I, cruelty and inclemency of; double dealing
+of; share in Overbury's murder
+Jegado, HeleneJ
+Jesse, Tennyson
+Jones, Inigo
+Judith 
+
+Kent, Edward Augustus, Duke of
+Kincaid, John, Laird of Warriston
+Kipling, Rudyard
+Kostolo (the Boursier case)
+
+Lacenaire, murderer and robber, his verses against King Louis-
+Philippe
+Lacoste, Henri
+Lacoste, Veuve
+Lacroix, Abbe Pelier de, his evidence re death of Prince de Conde
+refused
+Lafarge, Marie-Fortunee
+Lambot, aide-de-camp to last Prince de Conde
+Lapis costitus--see Poisons 
+Lavaillaut, Mme 
+Lecomte, valet to last Prince de Conde
+Lesieur, chemist
+Lidange, chemist
+Linden, Mme van der
+Livingstone, or Kincaid, Jean
+Livingstone, John, of Dunipace 
+Locusta
+Logan, Guy
+Lombroso, Cesare
+Loubel, apothecary 
+
+MACE, PERROTTE (Jegado victim)
+``Maiden,'' the
+Mainwaring, Sir Arthur
+Malcolm, Sarah; portraits of
+Malgutti, Professor, his evidence re arsenic in Jegado trial
+Manoury, valet to last Prince de Conde
+``Marsh technique,'' arsenic 
+Maybrick, Mrs, poisoner
+Mayerne, Sir Theodore
+Meilhan, Joseph
+Mercury--see Poisons
+Messalina
+Moinet, Paul
+Molas, Dr, arsenic theory
+Monson, Sir Thomas
+Montagu, Violette
+Murdo, Janet
+`Mute of malice,'
+
+Northampton, Henry Howard, Earl of
+Norwood, Mary
+
+O'Donnell, Elliot
+Orfila, Professor; change of opinions re arsenic; intervention in
+Lafarge case
+Orleans, Louis-Philippe, Duc d', (King of the French); bourgeois
+traits of; elected King
+Orleans, Louis-Philippe (``Egalite''), Duc d'
+Orleans, Louise-Marie-Therese-Mathilde d'--see Bourbon, Louise-
+Marie-Therese-Mathilde d'Orleans, Duchesse de 
+Overbury, Sir Thomas
+
+Parry, Judge A. E.
+Partra, Dr
+Pasquier, M.
+Paul III, Pope
+Pearcy, Mrs, murderess
+Pearson, Sarah 
+Pelouze, chemist
+Perrin, Maitre Theo.
+Phosphorus--see Poisons 
+Piddington, Rev. Mr.
+Pinault, Dr. of Rennes
+Pitcairn's trials
+Pitois, Dr. his estimate of character of Helene Jegado
+Poisons: aqua fortis; arsenic (from fly-papers),(white),(from a
+vermicide); cantharides; diamond powder; great spiders; lapis
+costitus; mercury (metallic),(corrosive sublimate); phosphorus;
+porridge;``rosalgar'' ; strychnine
+Poisons, reasons murderesses are inclined to use
+Pons, chemist
+Porridge, poisoning--see Poisons
+Porta, Guglielmo della
+Pritchard, Dr, poisoner
+
+Rachel, MME
+Rais, Gilles de
+Rochester, Viscount--see Carr, Robert
+Rohan, the Princes de, their lawsuit v. Sophie Dawes
+``Rosalgar''--see Poisons 
+Roughead, William
+Row, breaking on--see Wheel 
+Rully, Comtesse de
+Rumigny, M. de, aide-de-camp to Louis-Philippe
+
+Sabatini, Rafael
+Saint-Louis, Liquor of--see
+``Fowler's solution 
+Sarrazin, Rosalie (Jegado victim)
+Sarzeau, Dr, his evidence re arsenic in Jegado case
+Seddon, poisoner
+Smith (``brides in the bath'')
+Somerset, Countess of--see Howard, Frances 
+Somerset, Earl of--see Carr, Robert 
+Spara, Hieronyma
+Spiders, great--see Poisons
+Strychnine--see Poisons 
+Suffolk, Countess of
+Suffolk, Earl of--see Howard, Thomas
+
+Tessier, Rose (Jegado victim)
+Toffana, poisoner
+Turner, Anne; as beauty specialist; her lover; relations with
+Countess of Essex; a spy for Northampton (?); causes poisoned food
+to be carried to Overbury in the Tower; arrest; trial; condemnation
+and execution 
+Turner, Dr George
+
+Vigoureux, La
+Voisin, La
+
+Wade, Sir Willlam 
+Wainewright, poisoner
+Walpole, Horace
+Warriston, Lady--see Livingstone, Jean 
+Webster, Kate
+Weir, Robert
+Weissmann-Bessarabo, Mme
+Weissmann-Bessarabo, Paule Jacques
+Weldon, Antony
+Wheel,Breaking on the 
+Winchilsea, Earl of
+
+Zwanziger, Anna
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of She Stands Accused by Victor MacClure
+
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