She Stands Accused

by She Stands Accused(Lit)

  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 th
an 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.