The Murders at Impasse Louvain

by Richard Grindal

  ‘And with my flat head, I suppose.’

  She laughed. ‘Now you know what it’s like to be an artist’s model. The hours are long, the pay is bad and the result is never flattering.’

  ‘I could accept all that, but I’m disappointed about one thing.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Didn’t you tell me that artists were expected to make advances to their models?’

  ‘Only male artists.’

  ‘There you are,’ Gautier complained. ‘You want the same rights as a man but you shirk the obligations.’

  XIV

  THE JUDICIAL examination of Josephine Hassler was, as Gautier had predicted, prolonged over several weeks. On the days when the magistrate, Loubet, summoned her for questioning, Gautier and another inspector went to St Lazare prison and took her in a carriage to the Palais de Justice. They were armed with revolvers, not to stop the prisoner escaping, but because the authorities were fearful of public demonstrations against her. The Impasse Louvain affair had aroused a surprising amount of public feeling and whenever Josephine Hassler was taken from or to St Lazare, crowds gathered to jeer and shout at her. There had even been some talk of a lynching.

  At the Palais de Justice, the inspectors took Josephine Hassler, invariably after a long wait of an hour or more, to the office of Loubet. There she was joined by her counsel, Maître Bonnard, one of the best-known and most highly-paid criminal lawyers in France. The procedure of examination was simple. Loubet sat on one side of a long table with the documents and notes on the case spread out in front of him. At one end of the table sat his clerk who had the duty of noting the magistrate’s questions and the prisoner’s answers and of preparing at the end of each session, a record of the proceedings which had to be signed as correct by all three of them. Josephine Hassler was placed at the other end of the table, which by chance and design, faced the windows so that a searching light fell across her face. The two inspectors and Maître Bonnard sat behind the magistrate, dumb witnesses, because they played no active part in the examination.

  Throughout the period of the instruction, Josephine Hassler wore the same clothes, a long, loose black dress, a black cloak and low-heeled shoes. The very simplicity of the clothes and the pallor of her face, totally devoid of cosmetics, made her seem to Gautier even more beautiful than usual, with an air of martyred innocence.

  On the day following each session of the interrogation he would receive a copy of the proceedings. These he was supposed to read through so that he could, if required, report to Courtrand on how the case was developing. This rarely happened as the Director of the Sûreté appeared to have lost all interest in the Impasse Louvain affair. The pattern of the examination did not vary much from day to day and Loubet’s strategy was evidently to question the prisoner repeatedly on statements she had already made, in the hope of finding inconsistencies or contradictions and thus trap her into an admission that she had been lying. A typical session was that recorded in the dossier of the case for the 2nd July.

  Crime at No. 8 Impasse Louvain Dossier No. 0327

  On July 2nd, We, Loubet, had brought before us the prisoner. Our examination of her was as follows:

  Question: Today we propose to question you on your statements about the events on the night when your husband and your mother were murdered. I must make it clear at the outset that few people are prepared to believe the bizarre story which you have told the police.

  Hassler: They may believe it or not as they choose, but what I have said is true.

  Question: Let us first look at your story as a whole. You are saying that three people, strangely dressed, broke into your house to steal valuable documents that were in your possession as well as any money or jewels that they might find?

  Hassler: That is correct.

  Question: And you say they killed your husband and your mother who disturbed them in this robbery?

  Hassler: It can only have happened like that, although of course I did not actually see them do it.

  Question: And you expect me to believe that the only reason why they did not kill you as well was that they thought you were your daughter?

  Hassler: Yes.

  Question: I put it to you, it is inconceivable that anyone could possibly mistake you, a woman of over 40, for a young girl of seventeen.

  Hassler: Why not? I was sleeping in my daughter’s bed and the room was dark.

  Question: Dark? Have you not already told us that the intruders were carrying lanterns?

  Hassler: Yes.

  Question: And was the light from these lanterns not bright enough for you to see and distinguish their faces, the colour of their hair and beards, the clothes they wore?

  Hassler: Yes.

  Question: But even so, not bright enough for the intruders to see that you were a middle-aged woman and not a girl?

  Hassler: I repeat, it was clear that they mistook me for my daughter.

  Question: Let us assume for the moment that what you say is true, however unlikely it seems. Here we have three cunning robbers who, because they were disturbed, killed two people in cold blood. Was it not folly for them to leave you, who might have been able to identify them, alive?

  Hassler: As I said, the light was dim and they were disguised. They might well have considered that I would not be able to make out their faces and thus identify them.

  Question: Now you are saying that the light was dim, although you were able to give the police a full and precise description of these people.

  Hassler: The light was bright enough for me to see them.

  Question: What’s this? Have you forgotten that when you were proved mistaken in your identification of the American York, you gave as an excuse the poor light in the bedroom?

  Hassler: I admit I was wrong about that and it was because I acted too hastily. Everyone was putting ideas into my head and it was they who suggested that this American must have been one of the men who broke into the house. I was overwrought and exhausted by the ordeal I had suffered and I convinced myself that I could recognize the American and that he must have been guilty.

  Question: Let us examine another point. You told the police that it was around midnight when you were left bound to your bed. More than six hours must have passed before you called for help. Why was that?

  Hassler: I was gagged.

  Question: Are you saying it took you all those hours to spit the gag out of your mouth?

  Hassler: As I have already said, when I was attacked and bound I fainted. It was only when I came out of my faint in the morning that I began trying to rid myself of the gag.

  Question: You cannot expect us to believe that you were in a faint for more than six hours. Doctors will tell you that is impossible and that a fainting fit can only last for a few seconds, minutes at the most.

  Hassler: In that case, I must have slept.

  Question: Slept? Although you had been attacked, threatened with death, bound and gagged, you slept peacefully half the night?

  Hassler: I can’t help it. That’s what happened.

  Question: We must also look at the question of the bonds. The rope around your husband’s neck was only loosely knotted and experts say the rope cannot have caused his death. And take your case. You have said that you dared not move or cry out or the rope would have strangled you, but both Monsieur Gide and your servant have said that the ropes which bound you were also not tied at all tightly, either at your wrists and ankles or around your neck.

  Hassler: I can only tell you what I know to be true.

  Question: We have evidence that the ropes which were used to bind you as well as those around your husband’s throat were cut from a length of cord that was kept in your kitchen and the cottonwool for the gags came from a supply in your boudoir which you had bought to stuff cushions.

  Hassler: If the police say so then it must be true, I suppose.

  Question: Do you expect us to believe that a group of people who had planned to rob a house would leave it to chan
ce that they could find ropes and gags there ready for them to use? Would they not rather have brought these things with them?

  Hassler: I believe that they expected to find the house empty or at the most occupied by my manservant. They may have known that I and my family had planned to spend the weekend in the country.

  Question: In that case, why did they bother to come to your house disguised?

  Hassler: How should I know? How should I understand the working of criminal minds? As you must have realized, Monsieur, I was brought up in a home where Christian virtues were placed first of all, where honesty was regarded just as highly as culture and social graces.

  As he read through this and the other reports of the examination, Gautier felt a growing sense of disquiet. Although the examination of Josephine Hassler was prolonged, the magistrate Loubet was being neither as searching nor as inquisitorial in his questions as one would have expected in a murder case. Long hours were spent in cross-examining the prisoner on relatively unimportant issues and when she gave an unsatisfactory or evasive answer, Loubet seldom pursued the matter with more aggressive questions. As an example there was the time when he was questioning her about the rings which she had reported as having been stolen. Even though Courtrand had proved that she had been lying about the rings, when Loubet raised the matter the only explanation she gave him was more or less the same as the story she had told before. Instead of pressing the matter further and demanding from her the name of the wealthy admirer who was supposed to have given her the jewels and the name of the jeweller who had made the set of duplicate rings, Loubet merely listened to her reply and had then switched to a completely different tack.

  In the meantime dozens of other witnesses were being questioned. Most of them could have had no possible connection with the crime nor any knowledge of it, but were only asked to testify on Josephine Hassler’s character. A wide selection of such people was produced: nursemaids and servants who had known her as a child; neighbours from Beaucourt; ladies in Paris society who had met her only a few times and on purely social occasions. All Loubet’s energies appeared to be directed towards blackening the prisoner’s character and proving that she was capable of murdering her husband and her mother.

  At times he also seemed to be trying, rather clumsily, to liven the interrogation with a touch of drama. There was the day when in reply to a question about discrepancies in her various statements, Josephine Hassler gave what was becoming her stock answer: that she had been so overwrought after the discovery of the murders that she had not known what she was saying.

  On this occasion she added: ‘All I could think of was that I had lost my mother.’

  ‘So!’ Loubet put in quickly. ‘You were not concerned that you had also lost your husband?’

  ‘Of course I was!’

  ‘Come Madame, why not admit that you never loved your husband. You wanted him out of the way, so you could continue with your adulterous life without hindrance. That was why you killed him. That is why you strangled him with your bare hands.’

  Josephine Hassler looked at him calmly and then held up her hands which, even after weeks in prison were soft and delicate and small. ‘With these?’ she asked Loubet quietly.

  Throughout the long and arduous sessions of examination and despite these occasional brushes with the magistrate, Josephine Hassler remained self-possessed and she took every opportunity to complain about the rigours of prison life and about the ordeal to which she was being subjected. Gautier wondered whether her sang-froid sprang from a confidence in her own innocence or a secret knowledge of the eventual knowledge of the judicial examination.

  One day when he was escorting her back to St Lazare from the Palais de Justice, she said to him without warning: ‘You believe I’ll be sent for trial, don’t you, Inspector? You think that I’ll be found guilty, sent to prison, perhaps to the guillotine.’

  ‘No, Madame,’ Gautier replied.

  ‘Ah! So you have begun to believe me at last! You have decided I’m innocent.’

  ‘That isn’t what I said. I just happen to believe that whatever part you may have played in this crime, you won’t be found guilty.’

  XV

  TOWARDS THE END of July, the examination of Josephine Hassler was finally concluded. The dossier of the case, which by this time ran into several thousand pages, was sent to the department of the Ministry of Justice known as the ‘Chambre des Mises en Accusations’, where five judges would study it and decide whether the accused should be sent on trial or released. The decision would not be announced for several days and the magistrate, Loubet, transferred his attention to another case. So Gautier found himself freed of the tedium of attending Josephine Hassler’s examination each day and of having to carry out the magistrate’s often tiresome instructions.

  As Courtrand was attending an international conference of police chiefs in Geneva and since, so long as he was in theory working on the Impasse Louvain murders Gautier would not be assigned to another case, he found himself suddenly with the luxury of time to spare. The sensible course would have been to forget Impasse Louvain, put in a modest but energetic stint on paperwork at headquarters each day and use the rest of his time to catch up on his social and domestic life. But for some reason he found that he could not put the case out of his mind. A nagging belief that justice was being manipulated to serve political ends irritated him and moreover his ingrained stubbornness prevented him from taking the easy way out and abandoning the case to the lawyers.

  He had two ideas, neither of them positive enough to be called a lead, which he wished to follow. One day he arranged to meet Surat at his office early in the morning and gave him his instructions.

  ‘You’ll find the address of that American artist, York, in the police dossier of the case. A girl named Mimi lives in the same building as him, a small-time model and part-time prostitute. Not long ago she was badly beaten up at some place in the Rue des Moulins. I want to know all about the assault, including the name of the man who did it. After you’ve seen the girl, go to the Ritz. You’ll be on more difficult ground there because the hotel won’t want to give information about the guests, but try to screw it out of the management. I want to know how many times this Colonel de Clermont has stayed in the hotel over the past two years, the length of his visits and anything else you can find out about the man: his habits, his friends, whether he throws his money about and if so on what.’

  Leaving the Sûreté, Gautier took an omnibus to the Gare de l’Est and caught a train bound for Montbeliard. It was a slow train which dawdled lazily through the countryside, stopping at a succession of small towns, the names of some of which he had never even heard before. He left it at Toussaint, the last stop before Montbeliard and an overgrown village which had pretensions to being a market town. A man driving a horse and trap was waiting for him at the station, for the local police had been alerted to his visit by telephone the previous day.

  Before setting out for the Chateau d’Ivry, he called in to see the police who confirmed what he had been told over the telephone, namely that Colonel de Clermont was in residence at the chateau. He did not explain the purpose of his visit, nor make any mention of the Impasse Louvain case, but he did encourage a little exchange of gossip about the local landowner. What he heard bore out the report that Surat had made. Colonel Gerard de Clermont was not popular in the neighbourhood. He neither made social advances to others nor welcomed them himself, he was close with his money and never gave donations to charity nor provided gifts at baptisms, birthdays or weddings. On the other hand he paid his bills promptly, went to church on Sundays and had not, as many other well-to-do landowners, flooded the district with a string of bastards by local girls.

  Armed with this unpromising information, Gautier was driven from the police station to the chateau, which proved to be a large, ugly house of grey stone set in flat parkland about five kilometres from Toussaint. His ring at the front door was answered by a manservant to whom he gave his official ca
rd, explaining that he wished to see Colonel de Clermont. The man disappeared with the card and returned shortly.

  ‘The master says he does not receive visits from police inspectors and that if you wish to speak to the staff, you should use the servants’ entrance.’

  ‘Does he now?’ Gautier asked roughly.

  Taking the card back, he wrote on the reverse side of it: ‘I have come here in connection with the recent arrest of Madame Josephine Hassler. If you prefer me to discuss the matter with your servants I shall of course be glad to do so.’

  Placing the card in an envelope which he sealed, he gave it back to the colonel’s servant and told him: ‘Take that to your master.’

  A few minutes later he was admitted to the house. The entrance hall was bleak and cheerless, made even more unwelcoming by the heads of animals, trophies of the chase, which stared down from the walls, their eyes fixed in the bright stare of death. Following the manservant, Gautier passed a half-open door and saw standing in the drawing-room beyond a woman, who was perhaps 25 and looked ten years older. She watched him pass with anxious, faded eyes.

  He was shown into a study which overlooked a terrace at the back of the house and in which a man sat writing at a large desk. Colonel Gerard de Clermont was tall and lean and dark. He was also athletic and strong and looked as though he might be proud of his strength; the kind of man who might vault a five-barred gate or just as easily throw an apple up into the air and slice it in two with a sword. He looked up at Gautier.

  ‘You policemen are getting above yourselves. How dare you presume to call on me without an appointment?’

  ‘The law does not concern itself with social niceties,’ Gautier replied.

  ‘Keep up that attitude and you won’t be an inspector much longer.’

  ‘And you, Colonel, are no longer a soldier. You command no one; certainly not me.’

  Although he had not been invited to sit down, Gautier drew a chair up to the desk and sat down facing de Clermont He did not have a very high regard for army officers, for the servile respect which they paid to those of higher rank than themselves, for their arrogance towards those whom they believed to be their inferiors. In his experience, no matter how brave they might have been in the field, army officers lacked moral courage and backed down in confrontations.