Landru's Secret
Page 18
Moro got up, hoping to cut short this disastrous exchange before Landru incriminated himself. Landru had said all he could say about Thérèse’s disappearance, Moro observed; perhaps the court should proceed to the examination of witnesses.
Gilbert declined Moro’s proposal and returned to his pursuit of Landru.
Why did Landru maintain that Thérèse had never spent the night at The Lodge when a neighbour saw her picking flowers in the back garden?
Landru spread his arms in protest: “But it’s the pleasure of every Parisienne on a day out in the country to pick a flower, to prove that she has been there!”
“Why did you keep her personal papers?”
“It was a sacred deposit.”
(“Rumeurs violentes”: Le Gaulois)
“It’s a singular ‘sacred deposit’ that concerns a commercial matter,” Gilbert said. “Enfin, do you know where she has gone?”
“I have told you that I did not wish to know anything beyond the commercial sphere. Her private life does not concern me!”
“The same response as for Mme Cuchet.”
“And the same reserve, monsieur le président,” Landru said with dignity. “Her private life, like mine, is a wall.”
“Behind which you shelter.”
(“Sensation”: Le Gaulois)
“One last time,” said Gilbert, when the noise from the gallery had subsided. “You refuse to say where she has gone?”
“Absolutely.”
Mme Tréborel, Thérèse’s 34-year-old former concierge, was “thin, aggressive and disagreeable”, Le Populaire remarked unpleasantly. Moro salvaged something from a terrible afternoon when Mme Tréborel gave an incoherent answer during cross-examination and Gilbert interrupted to “clarify” what she had said.
Moro feigned shock at the judge’s intervention.
“I have the right to speak to the witness,” Gilbert said calmly.
“Yes, but not to draw conclusions from her evidence!” Moro retorted.
“Come on, maître, where have I done that?” Gilbert shot back.
“If you have something to say to myself or the jury, please say it after the verdict,” Moro scolded Gilbert, addressing him like a schoolboy caught cheating in class. It was pure flummery, as both he and Gilbert knew. All that mattered to Moro was giving the jurors an uneasy feeling that Gilbert might not be entirely impartial.
Mme Tréborel was followed by Thérèse’s only son Vincent, still a postal clerk and “very emotional” about insinuations in the press that he had not cared about his mother. Vincent insisted that if Thérèse had still been alive she would have written to him: “She had great affection for him, despite some differences that had arisen between her and his wife.”
No one had the heart to ask Vincent why he had made no further effort to track down Thérèse after she had failed to reply to his last letter.
The detective Riboulet was the final witness of the day, explaining at tedious length how he had established that Landru had given Thérèse the codename “Brésil” in his carnet. “During this deposition, the public gradually began to leave,” Le Rappel reported. “It was before an almost empty courtroom that the hearing ended at 5.25 pm.”
***
Day Five: Friday, 11 November
Lucien Coulond, the sketchwriter for Le Journal, was appalled by how fashionable women, down from Paris for a day out at the trial, were steadily invading the press benches. Coulond did a headcount on Friday: out of 60 seats reserved for journalists, 19 were occupied by “mincing, chattering ladies”, he noted in disgust. According to Coulond, these ladies “put their hands to their faces, brandish their lorgnettes, titter at every picturesque or scabrous detail and pout disapprovingly when one of the actors in the drama, defendant or witness, delivers a poor speech.”
“Parigotte”, a columnist for the newspaper La Justice, was convinced that most of the women in the gallery were sympathetic to Landru. “In remembering his mysterious history, they are, in spite of themselves, aroused with curiosity, vanity and jealousy; all of which predisposes them to be indulgent.”
***
Gilbert turned at the start of Friday’s session to Marie-Angélique Guillin, the 52-year-old retired housekeeper who had vanished at The Lodge in August 1915. Marie-Angélique was “uncultured” and foolish, Gilbert said; so stupid that she had fallen for Landru’s story about being the next Consul General to Australia, in search of a wife to accompany him to diplomatic receptions. On the evidence table, Marie-Angélique’s tatty pyjamas and cheap chestnut wig spoke of a woman more deserving of pity than contempt.
Marie-Angélique had told a neighbour that she had seen other women’s clothes and shoes at The Lodge while spying through the keyhole of a locked room. Was she mistaken? Gilbert asked Landru.
“Women always embroider stories because of their vanity,” Landru replied knowingly. “Do you really believe I would have left a woman’s clothes lying around if I was bringing another one to see me?”
(“Laughter”: Le Petit Journal)
Landru refused to say what had happened to Marie-Angélique, citing his familiar “wall” of privacy. However, he did wish to make an observation about the police.
“It has only been three years since the police began looking for Mme Guillin,” Landru said. “Give them a bit more time and perhaps they will find her!”
(“Laughter”: Le Journal)
He dismissed as absurd the allegation that he had forged a letter by Marie-Angélique to her bank in order to steal her savings. Regarding her possessions, he had not paid much attention to what she was selling him.
“Even her wig?” Gilbert enquired. To drive his point home, Gilbert ordered a court official to bring Marie-Angélique’s hairpiece to Landru.
“I don’t remember it,” said Landru, refusing to look at the wig. “When you’re buying en bloc you don’t open up everything to inspect the goods.”
Godefroy asked Landru why he would not reveal Marie-Angélique’s whereabouts.
“If I know something on this matter, it’s a secret that is not mine to share,” Landru said, giving Godefroy exactly the answer he wanted.
“You are not forgetting that your head is at stake, are you?” Godefroy taunted Landru.
“You have threatened me with my head!” Landru shouted back. “My only regret is that I have just the one head to offer you.”
“Messieurs les jurés,” Moro said, “you will understand that regardless of my client’s attitude, you will have to judge whether there is sufficient proof to cut off the only head that he possesses.”
It was a feeble witticism, but Moro had at least reminded the jury that Landru’s wild behaviour did not prove he was a murderer.
***
Moro’s point was underscored by the witnesses who followed, none of whom had any evidence that Landru had killed Marie-Angélique. A woman who lived in the same apartment block recalled seeing Marie-Angélique and Landru walking arm in arm along the street below. Another neighbour remembered warning Marie-Angélique not to hand over her savings to her fiancé. Marie-Angélique’s estranged daughter admitted that she and her husband had not worried too much when they heard no more from her mother. They had decided that her boat to Australia with her new husband might have been sunk by a German torpedo.
Gilbert came to Landru’s theft of Marie-Angélique’s sizeable investments following her disappearance.
Monsieur Lesbazeilles was the bank manager who had allowed Landru to withdraw part of Marie-Angélique’s savings in November 1915, three months after she vanished. A tall, thin man in his forties, Lesbazeilles became flustered when Moro asked why he had agreed to bring the cheque to an address in western Paris that Landru had given him.
Lesbazeilles denied the whole visit, claiming that Landru must have withdrawn the money at the bank. Moro read Lesbazeilles’ witness statement back to him, making sure the jury grasped an important detail. Lesbazeilles had also recalled seeing a middle-aged woman in the litt
le apartment on Avenue des Ternes when he handed Landru the cheque. This woman must have been Marie-Angélique Guillin, Lesbazeilles had told the police.
Landru had been waiting for this moment. The witness was correct, Landru remarked courteously to Lesbazeilles; his companion had indeed been Mme Guillin. Landru could even refresh Lesbazeilles’ memory about the apartment’s location: “45 Avenue des Ternes, ground floor, to the left of an interior courtyard, reached via two or three steps beneath a canopy”. At Moro’s invitation, Landru drew a precise sketch of the apartment.
All the newspapers grasped the significance of this exchange. If Lesbazeilles’ deposition was accurate, then Marie-Angélique must have been alive at 45 Avenue des Ternes several months after Landru allegedly killed her. In the circumstances, Gilbert could not refuse Moro’s request for further enquiries by the police at the address.
***
Day Six: Saturday, 12 November
Landru was on perky form when he entered the court on Saturday, flanked by his usual escort of guards. “He takes off his bowler hat and gives the jurors a pleasant wave… a nice, friendly one,” Le Gaulois remarked.
Moro was late and missed the first hour, which was devoted to the final witnesses in l’affaire Guillin. None of them had any first-hand knowledge of what had happened to Marie-Angélique when she left Paris.
Finally Moro bustled into court, full of apologies, just as Gilbert began examining Landru on a critical issue: Why had he terminated his lease at Vernouillet in August 1915 and then rented the Villa Tric outside Gambais four months later?
“Was it because the house where you lived in Vernouillet was squeezed between two other buildings?” Gilbert enquired, alluding to a murderer’s need for privacy.
It was partly a matter of cost, Landru replied carefully, and partly because The Lodge had been too “dark” for his taste. “Note as well that I rented at Gambais with an option to buy the property. Now, someone who commits a crime – I am being modest, since I’m accused of committing seven crimes at this place – seeks to flee as quickly as possible from the theatre of his exploits.”
Gilbert let the jurors dwell on Landru’s supercilious reply while officials spread a plan of the Villa Tric’s layout on the evidence table. Once the jurors had inspected the plan, Gilbert resumed.
Why had Landru used the name “Dupont” when he had signed the lease on the villa?
“What do you expect?” Landru said, amazed at the judge’s obtuseness. “I often changed my name because I was being pursued by the law.”
“This sally by Landru prompted a burst of giggling from some fashionable ladies,” Le Journal reported. Several of them had even crept to the front of the gallery to get a better sight of the defendant. As an official shooed the women back to their seats, Gilbert threatened to clear the court if he heard more laughter.
Gilbert wanted to know why Landru had bought his little oven for the villa. “The court insinuates that I bought this oven in order to burn my victims,” Landru said. “Here, I appeal to the good sense of the jurors. It was winter; I couldn’t just die of cold and not be able to cook a hot meal.”
It was a good riposte, but Landru could not resist spoiling the effect with an irrelevant complaint about how “persons unknown” had stolen most of his coal. “I didn’t go to the police, for reasons you will understand.”
Pierre Vallet, the cobbler in Gambais who had doubled up as the villa’s janitor, was the next witness. He was a lean artisan in his early fifties with a hunted, defensive manner. Vallet had seen more of Landru than anyone else in Gambais, yet he seemed confused about what he could recall and his testimony made no sense. Vallet’s son Marcel, who had also visited the house regularly, was scarcely more coherent. Marcel said he remembered almost nothing about Landru, and certainly nothing sinister or suspicious. It was hard to tell whether the Vallets were as dim as they seemed to be, or accomplished actors who wanted nothing to do with the trial.
Auguste Tric, the owner of the villa, broad-chested, frock-coated and possessed of a splendid waxed moustache, was a well-to-do provincial businessman who had made his money as a shoe manufacturer. Monsieur Tric was also long-suffering, his former home a ruin, repeatedly ransacked by souvenir hunters.
Like the Vallets, Tric appeared keen to get off the witness stand as quickly as possible. He told Gilbert that he had no complaints against his former tenant, save one. There had once been a muddle about whether Landru was really called “Dupont”. Landru had admitted to Tric that his real name was “Guillet”, in business with a man called “Dupont”. Tric had let the matter drop.
***
At the start of the mid-afternoon interval, the singer and film star Polaire, renowned for her tightly corseted waist and bizarre publicity stunts, saw a chance to get into the next day’s newspapers. She left her seat in the VIP section of the gallery, walked straight past the soldier guarding the well of the court, and approached Landru as he was about to leave the defence box with his prison escort.
“Landru shot her one of his enigmatic and intriguing glances which from time to time seems like a lamp that illuminates his soul,” Le Siècle remarked. “Polaire instinctively withdrew, struck by her encounter.”
***
After the break, Gilbert examined Landru about Berthe Héon, the 55-yearold cleaning woman who had disappeared at Gambais in December 1915. Gilbert related Berthe’s “cascade of sorrows” in the decade before she met Landru, losing her two legitimate children, her long-term partner, her son-in-law, and finally, in the spring of 1915, her adored natural daughter Marcelle in childbirth.
Landru was still incensed by his first sight of Berthe, when she opened the door of Marcelle’s apartment one summer’s day in 1915.
“As soon as I saw her, I could see she had lied about her age,” Landru recalled. “She had counted her years from the date of her first communion.”
(“Laughter”: Le Petit Parisien)
Landru insisted that he had only been interested in selling Berthe’s furniture and that his lonely hearts advert had merely been a subterfuge to get his foot in her door.
“Didn’t you object when Mme Héon presented you as her fiancé?” Gilbert asked.
“Absolutely not. Why should I contradict her? It did not worry me at all.”
“Mme Héon told her friends that you would take her to Tunisia after her marriage. Is that why she wanted to get rid of her furniture?”
“You will see very soon that she did it because she had debts,” Landru replied. “I even had to settle 260 francs in rent arrears that Mme Héon owed to her landlady.”
This was true, but Gilbert ignored the oddity of a marriage swindler settling his victim’s debts.
“Where did Mme Héon live after you sold her furniture?” asked Gilbert, closing in on Berthe’s disappearance.
“I will not allow myself to reply to you. Here, we come back once more to the same question.”
“Your private life, no doubt.”
“If you wish. I arranged the sale of Mme Héon’s furniture, that’s all. If we wanted to go further, we would have to discuss the whole basis of the charges.”
“But that’s what we’re here to do!”
“In these conditions, monsieur le président, I will reiterate my entreaty to you. It is now three years since I was charged; let the proofs be brought before me.”
“It’s not a question of that,” Gilbert objected. “Can you indicate, yes or no, what became of Mme Héon?”
“I have nothing to say.”
Landru denied he had taken Berthe to Gambais in early December 1915. He also had an ingenious explanation for why, on the day in question, he had written down the price of a return train ticket and a one-way ticket in his carnet. He was new to the area and had wanted a reminder of how much it would cost him to use the different stations that served Gambais. “It is curious to consider how my unfortunate carnet is the prosecution’s breviary,” he remarked.
At the end of the sessi
on, the journalist Lucien Coulond reflected on the prosecution’s “particularly nebulous evocation” of Berthe, the only alleged victim for whom there was no known photograph. No one had brought this lonely, bereaved woman to life, Coulond thought. “The widow Héon appears among these ghosts of the missing women like an indeterminate shadow.”
Chapter 16
You Accuse Me, You Prove It
Day Seven: Monday, 14 November
Germaine Soubray, a young actress at the Grand Guignol theatre, swept into court on Monday morning with her VIP pass, dressed up warm against the cold, misty weather. Max Viterbo, a theatre critic covering the trial for Le Siècle, watched her being shown to her seat.
“Perhaps she dreams of incarnating one of Landru’s victims in her next show at the Grand Guignol,” Viterbo mused to his readers. “One would burn her totally nude. It would be superb.”
Viterbo continued to scour the gallery for any other starlets, amid the “chattering” women whose presence in court he and the other male reporters deplored. Over the weekend, Le Journal had attacked these female spectators who were turning the trial “more and more into a spectacle”. Meanwhile on its front page, Le Journal ran a cartoon showing Landru roasting a body on a skewer.
“For her engagement present, she asked me for une broche [brooch or cooking spit],” Landru sniggered, as human fat dripped into the fire.
***
The real Landru had spent much of Sunday in a special room set aside for him at the Palais de Justice, working through the case files on the typist Anna Collomb, who had disappeared at Gambais in December 1916.
“You will be rid of me in a fortnight,” Landru remarked to his guard. “Have patience, my innocence will soon be proclaimed.”
Gilbert summarised 44-year-old Anna as “thrifty” but with “loose” morals, giving both Godefroy and Moro an opening. Godefroy planned to portray Anna as silly and vulnerable, an easy target for a marriage swindler such as Landru. Moro intended to suggest that Anna had been a slut who had slept with plenty of other men; this “Anna” might easily have tired of her family and Landru and gone off to fresh pastures, probably abroad.