The Poisoning Angel (16 page)

‘What a twist of fate! It’s true that’s a very bad start for the defence, destroys it even,’ conceded the court chronicler.

This was not the opinion of the judge, who, after a word or two with his assessors, pronounced on the subject of the postponement.

‘Maître Magloire Dorange, the whole of France is currently moved by the
coup d’état
, but the cause of the country is still standing. There are interests common to us all that we must safeguard. Public peace, the peace of our cities, must above all be assured. The tutelary power in society must not abandon its mission. Political providence will decide the rest. As for your experts, only called to give their opinion as chemists, we think that their assistance is not indispensable to you. The trial will proceed. The court rejects your request.’

Extremely disappointed, the novice advocate sat down complaining timidly, ‘None the less you might take into account the fact that right now in Paris, where I was born, people like my father, who makes shoes there, are fighting for …’ Seeing this, the very experienced prosecutor stood up, displaying the full length of his black robe. He was apparently not at all dismayed by the arrival of the dictatorship and, eyes like a hawk, began harrying mild Magloire Dorange in powerful theatrical tones.

‘My dear new colleague, who seem too easily knocked off
balance and rendered silent for one with your role, you are Parisian? And your father is a shoemaker? Well, my friend, rather than wearing out your robe on the defence bench opposite me to no purpose, would you like some good advice? Go back to Paris and follow your father’s example on the barricades: make shoes! Ha, ha!’

Some people in the public seats creased up at this. The judge intervened. ‘Come now, Prosecutor Guillou du Bodan! A little professional courtesy …’

Under his breath the journalist was composing the title of his first article:
Little lamb of an advocate to be gobbled up by big bad wolf prosecutor.
The sculptor was spreading out the edges of his clay mound with a boasting chisel to produce a rough outline of his model, seated across the courtroom, while an usher solemnly read out the indictment so people had a better idea of the case being put against her.

‘The crime of having administered poison to five people who have died in Rennes, namely Albert Rabot, Joseph Ozanne, Perrotte Macé, Rose Tessier, Rosalie Sarrazin. Also thirty-two fatal poisonings in Morbihan.’

‘Not counting those that have gone unnoticed by the law!’ thundered Guillou du Bodan. ‘Because, gentlemen of the jury, be in no doubt that she has committed many more. We have here the longest female career ever in the history of murder. So we should leave no gravestone unturned and open every coffin lid we come across on her trail of death,’ he insisted, in the bullish manner common to all prosecutors, which in him had been boiled down to its most concentrated form.

‘Those cases in Morbihan known to us are covered by the
period of prescription …’ ventured Magloire Dorange.

‘We should mention them none the less, even if it grieves you, my little friend … and submit to most stringent examination the entire past of your client, who is the single most criminal being ever seen on this earth … and a thief as well!’

‘Oh, stealing a table napkin, a silk cord and a few handkerchiefs,’ countered the defence, putting things in perspective.

As she listened to what was being said about her, Thunderflower, more buttoned up than a priest’s cassock, drew her whole hood down over her face. The judge made the two police on either side of her turn it back down on to her back and shoulders. The sculptor thought it a good idea; he could see her features better like this. ‘It’s funny the way her cloche hat gives her donkey ears to the sides.’

His modelling spatulas – a round spoon here, a sharp point there, loop-ended tools with boxwood handles – twirled between the artist’s deft fingertips as he dug more deeply into his material, while President Boucly recounted the misdemeanours of Thunderflower’s terrible life, his lengthy sighs mingling with his slow narration.

‘Stomach troubles, vomiting, pains in the arms, swelling of the belly and the feet … exhumations that everywhere reveal the presence of arsenic in the corpses … A horrendous series of crimes committed with a cold-bloodedness, a daring, and a perversity that are truly terrifying … Anna Éveno, Louis Toursaint, Julie Toursaint, Jeanne Toursaint, Catherine Hétel, Émile Jouanno …’

‘Oh, gracious, another one! And to think that’s not the last …’
said Thunderflower wearily, putting her right hand through the opening in her cloak and pressing it under her left breast.

The sculptor appreciated the gesture from an aesthetic point of view, and added more clay to form the clenched hand, which now rested in front of the abdomen. Boucly interrupted his chilling list to whisper to his two counsellors, ‘Morvonnais and Delfaut, I note that she frequently touches her chest with a look of pain. What’s the matter?’

‘Didn’t you see it in the case file, President? The examining magistrate also noticed this gesture and had her looked at by a doctor. She’s suffering from a sudden malignant tumour in the left breast.’

‘Ah? So she’ll …’

Delfaut gave a grim smile. ‘That’s not what will kill her, President. You know that quite well. Proceed with reading the list.’

‘Jacques Kerallic, Denise Aupy …’ Boucly added. ‘Even if just in these instances, what have you, the accused, got to say in your defence?’

The tough old bird gave no answer. She remained sombre and silent, with her gaze like an owl’s. A big red-faced man sitting in the public gallery was annoyed by this and advised loudly, ‘If she persists in playing mute, too bad, stick a ladder in her belly and maybe that will open her mouth at the same time!’

Thunderflower lifted her eyes towards the speaker. Wasn’t it a shame to see him alive and well? She looked at him, eyes glinting, as an animal watches its prey. The smile she gave him was an invitation to death. The sculptor noticed the tips of her teeth between her lips. The journalist scribbled about the
palpable suspense. The modeller worked the clay. While he was forming the outlines of the bonnet, a phrenologist took the stand to describe the shape of the accused’s head.

‘Observe the sunken forehead, which gets broader from the base to the top, and the way the temples jut out. Well, I can state that inside such a skull the vertex has a perpendicular cut; the sinciput and the occiput must meet at right angles.’

‘Where I’m concerned, the inside of the skull is just Breton clay,’ joked the sculptor, starting on the facial features as the phrenologist, whose language could be abstruse on occasion, continued according to the pseudo-science much in vogue at the time.

‘Hélène’s facial features – the shape of the nose, the eyelids and the lips – are also indicative of an insensitive cerebral organisation, telling us she would destroy anything with equal indifference and no regret – a piece of wood, an animal, a human, anything you care to name. Never will you see the least emotion on a face shaped like this.’

‘Right, who is the next witness?’ President Boucly asked his assessors. Beneath the sharpness of a questioning eyebrow there was a dull and weary look in his eyes. ‘We’re rather short of witnesses from Morbihan as most of them were also victims. We had got to the village of Hennebont. Next came Lorient and the highly suspicious death of Madame Verron. Show the widower Matthieu Verron to the stand.’

On hearing the name – the first name, Matthieu, in particular – Thunderflower felt a tingling in her head. Her soul was plunged into despair. When Matthieu took his place before the jury, still
as handsome despite the passage of time, in his white collarless shirt and gilt-buttoned waistcoat, she looked at him only surreptitiously, head bowed, and a torrent of tears falling from her eyes. Her nose sniffed. Her lips trembled (which suggested that phrenology wasn’t all it was cracked up to be).

‘It’s only conjunctivitis. It’s very common in December!’ said the phrenologist, who had gone back to sit among members of the public, surprised at seeing the emotion on the face of the accused.

‘Monsieur Verron, do you remember Hélène?’ asked the judge.

‘I remember her as if she were a name carved into tree bark. My memory of her is ever more deeply embedded within me.’

‘Of course! After what she did to you …’ Guillou du Bodan inferred.

‘Yes, Monsieur le procureur, after what she did to me: with me, she opened a lock like a thief.’

‘Ah, what did I say to the defence just now?’ crowed Guillou du Bodan. ‘What did she steal from you?’

‘Something that was beating for her here, inside my shirt.’

‘Go on,’ requested the advocate gently, standing again.

Thunderflower lifted her right hand to her heart.

‘If I could have my time again, I would like to meet Hélène once more. At my house, she had occasional spells of joy interspersed with lengthy periods of despair that had no apparent cause. When I was out of mourning, I once mentioned a plan concerning the two of us, and she burst out laughing. “You must be mad!” she said, with little peals of laughter, then the very next morning she deserted me without a word, leaving me alone with …’

‘… an awful stomach ache, swollen limbs, which we can imagine, but from which you miraculously recovered,’ the judge sympathised.

‘It was she who must have been ill, and believed she was going to die, that poor creature I so longed to cradle in my arms, the way you waken a little girl from a nightmare.’

The crowd on the benches could not believe what they were hearing. ‘The wife’s poisoner became the husband’s lady friend?’ People who were unable to admit that agile love is able to grow even on a necklace of wretchedness like Thunderflower’s life showed their anger in shouts, oaths and gnashing of teeth. ‘The dead are lying under the ground and people are dancing on their graves!’ The journalist whistled through his teeth: ‘What a
coup de théâtre,
and what a scoop this will be for me!’ The sculptor was using a sponge to smooth the wide creases of the dress and shoes below the hem of the cloak, but went back to the face to try to render the distress in the serial killer’s absent look. The prosecutor was speechless (which was fairly rare). The young advocate with the Romantic hair considered it unnecessary to say anything more. The journalist was already writing the article that would cause a sensation. The judge decided: ‘Right, that’s enough for today. The hearing is adjourned. Let’s hope that by tomorrow everyone will have recovered their wits …’

The crowd began to disperse. The men went outside to smoke their pipes. As if she had granite legs in sand stockings the accused remained seated, motionless and glorious for ever, like her miniature replica made of red clay mixed with iron oxide on the sculptor’s base. He was spreading out a damp sheet, intending
to wrap his work in it to prevent it from drying out and cracking, when the reporter on
Le Conciliateur
asked again, ‘But really, what are you going to do with that?’

‘I have the next eight days of the trial to make as many plaster copies from this as I can. After the verdict I’m going to sell them outside the courts, among the people selling newspapers and holy dust and the singers’ handbills.’

‘Are you mad? Do you really believe there are human beings who will want to own a statue of Hélène Jégado?’

Through the glass of a little window behind the enthralled spectators, yells from outside could occasionally be heard in the courtroom.

‘
Le Conciliateur
for Saturday 13 December 1851, the second-to-last day of the trial!
Le Conciliateur!
’

‘Put her to death, she’s a madwoman, she’s sick!’

‘The only cure for her is the guillotine in Place du Champ-de-Mars!’

‘
Cheleuet-hui a Youang!
La, la, la … La, la!’

‘She’s not human!’

After a week of testimony from experts and witnesses, and of stubborn silence on the part of Thunderflower, the shouts of the crowd still gathered outside the courts filled the pauses, complete with sweeping and dramatic gestures, of the prosecutor general who, at almost six in the evening, was coming to the end of his vehement closing speech.

‘In short, as I have just demonstrated to you, gentlemen of the jury, from her earliest years Hélène Jégado has preferred to follow the path of evil. Like each of us she has made her choice. She must therefore bear the full weight of guilt for her deeds.’

He flourished his gown artistically, creating spectacular black billows before stretching an arm towards Thunderflower like a lightning bolt and thundering, ‘Expertly grilling and boiling her lethal concoctions in the malevolent furnace of her kitchen, Hélène was wicked from an early age. All her life she has followed the path of crime with a resolute step. Everything thus destines her for the devastating rigours of justice! Finally, before I sit down, I want to address you personally, Hélène. It might still be possible to do something for you if you were prepared now to express repentance.’

‘Repentance? I don’t know that word,’ Thunderflower apologised.

One of the two gendarmes flanking her translated into Bas-Breton, ‘
Morc’hed
.’