Landru's Secret

by Landru's Secret- The Deadly Seductions of France's Lonely Hearts Serial Killer (retail) (epub)

  Marie-Jeanne got her first inkling that Annette’s monsieur might not be reliable when their train from Toulon pulled into the Gare de Lyon. Annette had written ahead, asking “Lucien” to meet her and Marie-Jeanne off the train “so I can have the pleasure of giving you a little kiss”. She and Marie-Jeanne struggled onto the platform with their heavy suitcases, searching in vain for him among the crowds milling around the station. Finally they gave up and made their own way to Villa Stendhal, wondering what had happened to him.

  Landru was furious when he heard by letter from Annette that she had brought Marie-Jeanne to stay with her. He wrote straight back to explain that he would not in future be visiting Annette chez elle, if her niece was also at home. Instead, he proposed a plan. On agreed dates, at agreed times, Annette should despatch Marie-Jeanne for a long walk – preferably a very long walk. Annette would then stand at her window and look out for him, giving a secret sign to show it was safe to come up.

  Even this subterfuge failed to reassure Landru. At the end of October, Annette wrote to complain that she had not heard from him for more than a week. He replied that he had just returned from another business trip. Annette wrote immediately by pneumatique, the express postal service that shot mail around Paris through a network of pressurised underground air tubes. She would be waiting for him next day at 3.00 pm outside the Bourse metro station, just in case he had time to see her. If not, she would be delighted to see him next morning at Villa Stendhal.

  Landru failed to make either rendezvous. Annette wrote again, fearful that Marie-Jeanne’s arrival had “cast a shadow” over their relationship.

  “Mon chéri,” she went on, “I have however a great need for affection and yours would make me so happy. You know that I will always be at your disposition on the day and the hour that you want to see me again.”

  Annette did not say that she desired a bit more than affection from her vieux monsieur. She was “enchanted by his kind attention in bringing her little cakes”, a woman friend recalled, but would have preferred him to give her some money.

  ***

  Across Paris, Célestine Buisson had not seen or heard for weeks from her fiancé, who was supposedly away on another of his important business trips. She would just have to be patient, Célestine told her younger sister Marie, who was increasingly suspicious of this oily, evasive monsieur. On one of her weekly visits to see Célestine, Marie tried to express her reservations. It was hopeless; Célestine simply refused to listen to such nonsense.

  Landru’s main goal during the autumn of 1916 was to fleece the typist Anna Collomb, even as he bustled around Paris looking for other women to snare. Step by step, he was getting his hands on all Anna’s precious savings: 500 francs here, 800 francs there, and then a big one on 10 November, 2,000 francs, all noted in his carnet. The normally secretive Anna told her younger sister Ryno about these “loans” and Ryno then told their mother. Pressed by both of them, Anna said that while her fiancé had lots of money he was sometimes short of cash. Besides, he always promised to pay her back soon.

  In late November, Anna handed in her notice at the insurance company’s typing pool. She and her fiancé would soon marry and move to his country house, Anna explained to a work friend; best of all, her little daughter would at last be able to live with her. It was not clear whether Anna had ever dared tell anyone in her family about her illegitimate girl. Ryno probably knew; her parents probably did not; and later, none of them was keen to talk about the subject in public.

  As Christmas 1916 approached, Ryno sensed that Anna’s attempt to rebuild her life with a new husband had gone badly wrong. In front of their mother, Ryno insisted to Anna that the family had to meet her fiancé. Cornered by Ryno, Anna explained tearfully that she, too, wanted to introduce him to the family but unfortunately he disliked the idea.

  “Here was her great sorrow,” Ryno remembered Anna saying. “She hoped, however, to encourage him to have better feelings towards her family.”

  Finally, Anna persuaded Landru, alias Frémyet, to have Ryno over for dinner at their apartment on Rue de Châteaudun on Sunday, 17 December. At the last minute he went out on “urgent business”, leaving Anna to dine alone with her sister. Ryno would not be put off. The following Sunday, Christmas Eve, she turned up again, having been assured by Anna that “Frémyet” would definitely be there.

  This time he opened the door, bowed elaborately to Ryno and ushered her into an apartment decked out with bouquets and garlands of flowers; not for Mme Collomb, he explained, but in honour of her delightful sister.

  Over dinner, Ryno observed this peculiar man with his over-polished manners and “cold inquisitorial stare” and decided she did not like him. To Ryno’s surprise, he escorted her back across Paris to her parents’ apartment, leaving Anna behind. On the metro, he chatted away about the factory he planned to build in the south of France, where he would live with Anna after their marriage. But not to worry, Landru went on; he would personally drive all the way to Paris to collect Ryno and her parents for regular visits to see Anna, the soon-to-be Mme Frémyet. His fulsome performance seemed even more dubious to Ryno when he insisted on delivering her all the way to her parents’ apartment door.

  Next morning, Christmas Day, Anna arrived at the family’s apartment on Boulevard Voltaire without her fiancé, who had also been invited. He was “busy”, she said vaguely. Over lunch, Anna blurted out what she had already told Ryno: that her fiancé used the false name “Cuchet” when claiming his refugee’s allowance. Anna’s mother was appalled and demanded that Anna reveal her fiancé’s financial situation. Anna started to cry. He had almost cleaned her out, she confessed, having “borrowed” nearly all her nest egg of 8,000 francs.

  Anna left the apartment at about 6.00 pm, explaining that she and “Frémyet” would be visiting his country villa on Boxing Day, returning on 27 December. The family could not talk Anna out of this trip, so they made her promise to see them again as soon as she returned to Paris. Their plan was to disentangle Anna from this obvious swindler and somehow get her money back.

  At dawn on 26 December, Landru and Anna took a taxi from Rue de Châteaudun to the Gare des Invalides, carrying only hand luggage. Landru purchased a return ticket for himself and a one-way ticket for Anna to Garancières, one of the stations for Gambais.

  On 27 December, he bought two beef steaks from the butcher in Gambais, noted in his carnet. Sometime later, Landru wrote “4h” (4.00 pm) beneath the date on the page. His business done, he caught the evening train to Paris on his return ticket, travelling alone.

  Chapter 6

  Lulu

  A few days later, Annette Pascal’s sharp-eyed niece Marie-Jeanne spotted the man she had sarcastically dubbed “Monsieur Mystère” as she looked out of Annette’s sixth-floor window. There he was, pacing up and down the street below, waiting for Annette to give him her “secret signal”. It was too late; Annette had forgotten to make Marie-Jeanne go on one of her boring, enforced walks.

  Marie-Jeanne skipped downstairs, opened the door and had the pleasure of registering Landru’s shock. Then she introduced herself with a smile.

  “Cheeky,” Landru said, wagging his finger at Marie-Jeanne.

  For the time being, he put up with this impertinent young woman. During January and February 1917 he visited Annette regularly, bringing her and Marie-Jeanne little presents of brioches, biscuits and fruit. Then he would take Annette off to a cheap hotel for a few hours, leaving Marie-Jeanne to mind the little dressmaking workshop.

  ***

  In early March, Landru cast around for another outlet for one of his lonely hearts adverts. He selected L’Echo de Paris, a conservative Catholic newspaper that saw the soldiers dying in the mud and squalor of the trenches as necessary martyrs for the nation’s sins.

  “Nothing is more beautiful and more mysterious than these children, now frozen, who gave to a France in flames the virtues needed to save it,” the nationalist writer and politician Maurice Barrès declared
in a front-page essay on 9 March. Further inside, Landru’s notice appeared:

  Man, 50, widowed for a long time, no children, educated, savings of 20,000 francs and good situation to marry lady in similar situation.

  Louise Jaume, a 38-year-old dress shop assistant, was ardently patriotic and devout, just like L’Echo de Paris, her regular newspaper. Louise was also lonely, despite at least four men in her life. There was Joe, who would soon be killed by a German shell; Paul, somewhere in the trenches in northern France; Raphael, an art teacher bunkered down near Verdun; and Léon, a former priest turned military ambulance orderly. Joe, Paul, Raphael and Léon were Louise’s pen pals and honorary godsons, for she was one of thousands of French women who were so-called “war godmothers” (“marraines de guerre”), writing morale-boosting letters to homesick soldiers at the front.

  A fifth man wanted nothing to do with Louise ever again. Paul Jaume, Louise’s estranged husband, lived in Italy, and was the reason why the childless Louise had replied to Landru’s intriguing advert. Risking God’s wrath, Louise had recently written to Paul to announce that she was suing him for divorce.

  A miserable pilgrimage had brought Louise to this crisis for her soul. Her widowed and remarried father, a retired businessman in Toulouse, had long since washed his hands of Louise, as had her sister, married to a doctor in Montpellier. Both were convinced that Paul Jaume had fleeced Louise of her dowry, before bolting to Italy in 1914. In their view, Louise must now suffer the consequences. Almost broke, Louise wrote begging letters from time to time to her only sympathetic relative, an uncle who ran a grocery in Toulouse. He sent her small sums, on condition that she did not tell his wife, who also disapproved of Louise.

  Paul Jaume later suggested that he had left Louise because she was frigid and hysterical. He had found her “rather cold” and “reserved”, while also being prone to sudden bursts of laughter or weeping, for no apparent reason. Louise’s intense Catholic faith “verged at times on mysticism”, her husband complained. All in all, he found her tiresome.

  Louise had made two attempts to rescue her marriage. The first time, in the summer of 1915, she had gone initially to a village near Montpellier for the funeral of her grandmother, hoping to repair relations with her family. Louise’s sister told her she would most definitely not be welcome to spend some time at the sister’s home; nor was Louise’s father interested in seeing her. She continued on her way, stuffing her travel money into the folds of her dress to guard against bandits when she crossed the Italian border.

  Louise made it safely to the farm in Tuscany that Paul Jaume managed for a business friend. He agreed to take her to see Rome but refused to share his bed with her. Finally she gave up and returned to Paris. She then had second thoughts, showing up again at the farmhouse a few months later. Her husband once more insisted on what he called “brother/sister” sleeping arrangements until Louise despaired of him.

  It took her another 18 months before she summoned the courage to write to Paul and announce she was seeking a divorce. Louise now set out to find another husband who she hoped would treat her a little more kindly.

  ***

  Landru introduced himself to Louise as “Lucien Guillet”, an engineer from the occupied Ardennes region in north-eastern France. They met outside the same metro station where he had made his first rendezvous with Annette Pascal the previous year, because Louise’s little apartment on Rue des Lyanes was only five minutes’ walk from Villa Stendhal. Perhaps mindful of Annette’s proximity, Landru suggested that he and Louise should take the metro to western Paris for a promenade in the Bois de Boulogne.

  As they strolled through the woods, Landru impressed Louise with his seemingly sincere religious faith; he may even have told her, truthfully, that he had once been a church sub-deacon. She was charmed as well by his courtesy. He delivered her all the way back to her apartment on Rue des Lyanes, where he presented her with a bouquet of poppies, a keepsake until their next meeting.

  When he left Louise, Landru recorded the street number in his carnet, wrote “possible” against her entry, and caught another metro, heading north, still on the prowl; for the one thing he had not managed to do with Louise was the thing that, right now, he wanted most of all.

  ***

  As usual, 19-year-old Andrée Babelay had just spent Sunday visiting her mother and two younger sisters in the northern suburbs. Now she was travelling back on the metro to her latest job as a nanny for a fortune teller in north-east Paris.

  During the past seven years, Andrée’s remarried mother Mme Colin had found her flighty daughter positions as a florist’s assistant, a dairy maid, a factory girl and a chamber maid. None of these jobs had lasted long, with Andrée either failing to turn up for work or walking out in a huff. Once, Mme Colin had spent five frantic days hunting for Andrée, eventually finding her sleeping rough at an employment agency. Andrée was a loving daughter but “a little indisciplined”, Mme Colin later admitted.

  On this Sunday evening, sitting alone on the metro, Andrée may have been looking for the sort of proposition she had probably accepted before. She was a plump, jolly girl, not averse to being chatted up by older men with a bit of money and then spending the night with them.

  Landru looked at Andrée and closed in. He took her to a room he rented near the Gare du Nord, bluffing to the concierge that Andrée was his niece.

  Two days later, Mme Colin became aware of Andrée’s latest escapade when her daughter did not make a rendezvous for an afternoon’s shopping together in central Paris.

  Feeling apprehensive, Mme Colin headed to the home of the fortune teller, who explained that Andrée had dropped by the previous day to quit her job and collect her belongings. Andrée had announced grandly that she had met an older monsieur with a car and a place in the country. Mme Colin was used to Andrée’s tall stories, but this one seemed to have some basis in fact. The fortune teller had seen a bearded gentleman at the wheel of his camionnette on the street outside, while Andrée was fetching her suitcase.

  When Mme Colin finally got home that night, she found a brief letter from Andrée waiting for her. Andrée said that she had got a temporary job in the suburbs and would be in touch again in a few days’ time; she gave no address. Mme Colin began rummaging through Andrée’s handbag, which Andrée had accidentally left behind after her last visit. Inside the bag, Andrée had stuffed two letters from her current boyfriend, a young soldier in the trenches. The boyfriend was evidently in a panic, because Andrée had just told him she might be pregnant. This news, Mme Colin decided, was probably why Andrée had gone to ground.

  All this time, Andrée was enjoying herself with “Lucien” or “Lulu”, as she had decided to call her pretend uncle. “Dinner with Andrée, 2 francs”, Landru noted on 14 March; and then, two days later, “a dinner with Andrée, a purchase of bonbons for Andrée, an evening with Andrée at the Petit Casino music theatre”.

  On 23 March they caught the train to Houdan, the nearest station for Gambais. Landru travelled on a return ticket, Andrée on a single, carrying only a soft holdall bag. Over the next fortnight, Landru made three return trips to Paris, leaving Andrée on each occasion at the villa. She passed the time learning to ride a bicycle, well enough for Landru to suggest one day that they cycle all the way to one of his favourite haunts, a pond set deep in the forest on the other side of Gambais.

  On 10 April, Landru gave Andrée 5 francs pocket money to spend in the village, writing two question marks in his carnet after her name. This was the last time he mentioned her. On 12 April, he wrote “4 o’clock, evening” beneath the date on the page. He had almost left it too late, because there was no cab service at this time of day. Walking briskly, he just managed to catch the train that left Houdan for Paris at 5.23 pm, the next note in his carnet.

  ***

  Landru returned to a city transfixed by the military fantasies of General Robert Nivelle, the new French commander-in-chief. Self-assured and persuasive, Nivelle planned to deploy
overwhelming force to smash through a supposed weak point in German defences north of the Aisne. In Nivelle’s abstract strategic mind, a projected 10,000 French casualties during the first day of the offensive on 16 April 1917 seemed an acceptable level of losses.

  Throughout that week, Landru read the newspapers with concern as they prematurely heralded “the victorious Franco-British offensive”. Lille, Rocroi, the Ardennes – all seemed within the Allies’ sights. If the censored military bulletins were accurate, Landru’s cover stories set in Germanoccupied northern France would soon be blasted away.

  In Paris, Célestine Buisson was oblivious to the sound and fury of this latest “big push”. She was busy homemaking, her favourite métier, at the little apartment near the Porte de Clignancourt in northern Paris where Landru had just moved her. Célestine applied her woman’s touch to their new home, bringing plenty of sheets and towels from her old apartment, all with her embroidered initials, as well as her prized porcelain tea service for entertaining guests.

  Landru had rented the apartment in Célestine’s name, explaining that he was still waiting for replacement identity papers for the ones he had left behind in Lille. It was all too frustrating for Célestine who was sure – as her fiancé was sure – that this obstacle to their impending marriage would soon be sorted out.

  Célestine’s younger sister Marie came to inspect the apartment and also, discreetly, to get a better sense of whether Célestine had fallen into the hands of a swindler. Marie could not make any headway with Célestine, who proudly showed off the gold earrings with inlaid pearls that her monsieur had just given her. Unknown to Célestine, Landru had stolen them from an earlier fiancée.