by Landru's Secret- The Deadly Seductions of France's Lonely Hearts Serial Killer (retail) (epub)
“I have the absolute conviction that my daughter has died and that she has been murdered. She would not have left us without any news for the past four years. She adored her little sister too much. For sure, my daughter is no more!”
Mme Colin turned to address Landru, returning his glare across the well of the court:
“My daughter was not ill and she was not afraid of coming home. She visited us every Sunday, for I had the greatest indulgence for her. She had a good heart and deserved pity.”
Landru carried on staring at Mme Colin.
“My daughter has been murdered and I am not frightened of looking you in the face.” She would not move, her hands gripping the bar, summoning all her courage to keep on holding Landru’s eye. And then she broke down, still clenching the bar, and wept.
Chapter 17
Let Us Not Look for Tragedy
Day Nine: Wednesday, 16 November
Mistinguett, the reigning queen of French musical theatre, her 46-year-old legs reportedly insured for 500,000 francs, glided into court on Wednesday morning. She was covering the trial for an English newspaper, Mistinguett announced to her new colleagues on the press benches. She pulled out a large notepad and began to jot down her first impressions.
Gilbert opened his brief on Célestine Buisson, the eighth alleged victim, last seen at Gambais in August 1917. Célestine, 44 at the time she met Landru, “was the epitome of a good little housewife, barely knowing how to read or write,” Gilbert told the jurors. Various other details about Célestine seemed relevant to his pen portrait: she had a wig, a policeman lover who had died in the war, an illegitimate son and the “thoroughly creditable desire” to make a new home, using her nest egg of about 10,000 francs, a substantial sum.
Gilbert asked Landru why Célestine had met him in May 1915 via one of his lonely hearts adverts.
“She considered me as a brother, our relations were purely commercial.”
(“Laughter”: Le Petit Parisien)
“She addresses you in one letter as ‘mon chéri’.”
“It’s a family term.”
“She says in the same letter: ‘I would like to be alone with you.’ That’s tender for a sister. She writes: ‘I love my son, but you, you surpass him.’”
“Mme Buisson was a vulgar woman,” Landru explained patiently. “She did not have a precise notion of the meaning of words.”
“So, your advert was a ruse to disguise your business from her.”
“Ruse is much too severe a word!”
“You used it yourself during an earlier examination.”
Gilbert asked why Landru had not seen Célestine for six months, following their first meeting in May 1915.
“According to the prosecution, I was at this time in the process of murdering Mme Laborde-Line and Mme Héon. I must have been a very busy man.”
In this roundabout exchange, Gilbert kept making Landru repeat his absurd claim that he was like a “brother” or “comrade” to Célestine. Moro was just as keen to make Landru stay quiet, even if it meant acknowledging that his client was a liar.
“Messieurs les jurés, there are two kinds of men,” Moro interjected: “Those who, having never had lovers, nonetheless try to dishonour women; and those who, having perhaps had mistresses, refuse to say so. I am sure your choice is made.”
It was a weak intervention, since Landru had just dishonoured Célestine by calling her vulgar.
Gilbert asked Landru to confirm that he travelled to Gambais with Célestine on 19 August 1917. Landru made a show of consulting one of his dossiers before agreeing with Gilbert. However, he added, “I am astonished that you have not pointed out that on the day in question, I bought a return and a single ticket.”
“I was waiting for you to indicate this fact and for you to provide an explanation,” said Gilbert, content to let Landru dig himself into a hole.
“Eh bien! It’s really very simple. I bought a return for myself because I was coming back to Paris on business, while Mme Buisson was staying in Gambais, so only needed a one-way ticket.”
Gilbert noted that Landru had written “10.15” in his carnet on the page for Saturday, 1 September 1917, the same day Célestine had vanished, according to the charge sheet.
“What became of Mme Buisson after that date?”
“What became of her?” Landru considered the matter for a moment. “She stayed in Gambais until the 10th or 11th of September.”
“How do you explain the leap in your carnet accounts on 1 September from 88 francs 30 centimes to 1,031 francs?”
“These financial details escape me,” Landru said airily. “I believe I recall that on 1 September I received 1,000 francs from a client.”
“Messieurs les jurés will appreciate that,” Gilbert remarked. “What about the recording of the hour on 1 September?”
Landru’s patience was exhausted. “I am ashamed to have to tell you once again that it referred to the time of the cab from Gambais to Houdan.”
“That’s wrong, the police checked.”
Landru tried another tack, asking how the prosecution could say Célestine had disappeared on 1 September when the police had found postcards she had subsequently written from Gambais.
“Witnesses will contradict that statement,” Gilbert instructed the jurors.
Moro finally saw an opening in this difficult exchange for Landru. Raising a point of order, Moro suggested to Godefroy that Landru’s noting of the hour on 1 September 1917 was not itself evidence of murder.
“Will you produce the proof that Landru committed a murder on this date?” Moro asked Godefroy.
Godefroy framed his response carefully. “I am persuaded that the women disappeared on those days, at the hours indicated,” he said.
“I was asking for certainty and you reply with possibilities,” Moro countered.
Gilbert asked Landru why he had withdrawn the remainder of Célestine’s investments after she disappeared. Landru was ready for this question, claiming that Célestine had owed him money.
Why, then, had Landru used his wife to fake Célestine’s signature on the bank authorisation papers?
Landru had also scripted this answer: “Monsieur le président, I have a particular conception of the law. For me, no offence has been committed when it causes no harm. So, Mme Buisson was travelling at the time, but the assets belonged to me.”
“That’s your opinion, not mine,” Gilbert said sharply.
Landru bowed his head in mock deference to the judge. “Your opinion must be more enlightened, monsieur le président.”
One of the jurors, a businessman from the suburbs of Versailles, asked Landru why Célestine had not taken her trunk with her when she left Gambais.
Landru gestured at Célestine’s battered brown trunk, placed in the well of the court for the jury’s inspection. “It was the war, luggage was a nuisance to carry around, especially a great big trunk like this one.”
Godefroy wanted to read more extracts from Célestine’s letters to Landru. “‘My little angel, you will come and wake me – ‘”
“If I had been her lover,” Landru interrupted, “she would not have asked me to come to her home to wake her up. I would have been sleeping with her.”
“Look, Landru, you are too intelligent –”
“Oh! monsieur l’avocat-général, you are too generous towards me, for I’m really not that intelligent.”
Moro had had enough of Landru’s banter, which he could see was irritating the jurors.
“Landru,” he warned, “don’t have any illusions. You have tested the indulgence of the prosecutor to the limit.”
Still Landru refused to desist, grumbling loudly about Godefroy’s “iron fist inside his velvet glove”. Gilbert cut in, ordering Landru to heed the wise words of his counsel. At last Landru sat down and to Moro’s relief, returned to his colour-coded dossiers.
***
Célestine’s younger sister Marie Lacoste was called to testify. She accepted a sea
t, not because she was in tears, as Le Petit Parisien mistakenly reported, but because she was lame. A photograph in L’Excelsior showed a sombre young woman in a wide-brimmed hat and fur stole, clasping her walking stick as she glared disdainfully at Landru.
Marie was the strongest prosecution witness to appear so far in the trial. She testified “with emotion and firmness”, waving her stick from time to time at “this individual”, as she referred to Landru. In telling detail, Marie recalled how Landru, alias Georges Frémyet, a rich industrialist, had duped Célestine into handing him almost all her savings. Marie described the layout of the Villa Tric, its grim interior and suspicious outbuildings. She also catalogued Landru’s recurring visits to the Paris house where she worked as a maid, following Célestine’s disappearance in 1917.
Landru had assured her that Célestine was alive and well, but always came on his own, Marie said. “I asked him why and he told me vaguely, ‘Oh, she is staying in the country.’”
Moro declined to cross-examine Marie; he had nothing to gain. Neither Godefroy nor Gilbert asked Marie about her crucial role in bringing Landru to justice, assisted by Anna Collomb’s sister Ryno. It was not in the prosecution’s interest to have the police exposed to further ridicule for their failure to follow up Marie and Ryno’s detective work.
Instead, Marie took it upon herself to deliver a final, withering statement to the jurors directly to her left. “I am convinced that if my sister were still alive, she would not have left her son without any news, a poor child who is blind,” she declared. “My sister was murdered.”
She stood up, shot Landru one last look of contempt, and limped out of court, her duty done.
***
Day Ten: Thursday, 17 November 1921
Fresh from “Paris en l’Air”, her latest show, Mistinguett arrived next morning for her second day’s reporting in a black dress set off by a little white ruff in pleated muslin and “a superb pearl necklace”.
“In my opinion he is guilty,” she told her friend Max Viterbo, the theatre critic for Le Siècle.
“So you would convict Landru?” Viterbo asked.
“I didn’t say that!”
Viterbo was confused. “Then you would not convict him?”
Mistinguett looked archly at Viterbo. “I didn’t say that either!”
With that, she pulled out her enormous notebook and got to work.
Félix Belle, the correspondent for Le Gaulois, could just about tolerate Mistinguett, but he wanted all the other women attending “the Landru theatre” thrown out.
“Everywhere there are painted faces, plunging necklines, bare arms, jewellery and pearl necklaces,” Belle complained. “Drenched by this flood of silk, the unfortunate chroniclers of the judicial process are submerged like shipwrecks.”
The correspondent for L’Intransigeant agreed with Belle, deploring the “open cleavages” and “naked arms”, which he claimed had turned the press benches into a “feminine” stage pit. “Never, at the height of his conquests, did Landru dream of such a success.”
***
Louise Jaume, the devout 38-year-old dress shop assistant who had disappeared at Gambais in November 1917, was the next missing woman on the charge sheet. Louise was “gentle, a little coquette, and quite avaricious”, in Gilbert’s muddled pen portrait. Her estranged sister and father in southern France might have provided a more rounded picture of Louise, but they had declined to cooperate with the investigation. Even after her disappearance, they had shown no interest in Louise’s fate.
It rapidly became plain that the prosecution had nothing to tie Landru to Louise’s presumed murder apart from the notes in his carnet. Furthermore, Louise had been poor, once again casting doubt on the prosecution’s claim that Landru had only killed for money.
“Are you going to speak again about my greed?” Landru taunted Gilbert and Godefroy. “Is that still the motive for this alleged murder, which you can’t prove any more than the others?”
As usual, Landru refused to fill in the details: “Why hasn’t the judiciary done its own research? It’s always the same thing; you advance facts which you can’t prove. Moi, I cannot tell you at all.”
“You cannot say anything or you will not say anything?” Gilbert asked.
“Put down that I cannot, it’s more polite.”
Gilbert focused on Louise’s last journey with Landru by train to Houdan, the nearest station to Gambais, on 25 November 1917.
“You say you only bought a single fare for Mme Jaume because she was staying on at the Villa Tric.”
“And I will prove it.”
Gilbert pointed out that on 26 November, Landru had written “5 o’clock” in his carnet beneath the date and that Louise had not been seen since.
“That’s wrong. Mme Jaume came back to Paris several days later.”
Gilbert asked Landru why he, not Louise, had given a friend of Louise a box of chocolates on New Year’s Day, 1918. Landru said that the chocolates must have been bought by Louise, because he had not written down the cost in his carnet.
“Tell me rather where Mme Jaume was at this time,” Gilbert interjected.
Landru stayed silent.
“Do you not wish to reply?”
Landru bowed his head. “Non, monsieur,” he said quietly and sadly.
(“Stupefied murmuring”: Le Petit Parisien)
Gilbert applied more pressure. “Why, in the carnet for 26 November 1917, did you write ‘récuperation Lyanes, 274 francs 60’?”
“No, really, if we’re going to carry on like this, I’d prefer to leave,” Landru lashed out, turning towards the exit. Landru’s guards blocked him, just as Moro was rising to restrain his client. Landru collected himself and then said in an injured tone: “I am truly sorry to see you attach such importance to my carnet. These are personal notes.”
Gilbert moved on to the story Landru had given Mme Lhérault, Louise’s former employer at the dress shop, about Louise going to America to take a job.
“Had she departed when you said that?” Gilbert asked.
“Ah! monsieur le président, here we arrive at a moment where I can no longer say anymore what Mme Jaume has done.”
“For what reason?”
“I don’t have the right to say,” Landru said, as if this was obvious. “She sold me her furniture, it was mine. One point, that’s all.”
Godefroy remarked on Landru’s refusal to say what had happened to Louise: “I am warning you that I will be making a powerful argument on this matter.”
“Well, monsieur l’avocat général, I thank you for having the charity to notify me in advance.”
(“Laughter”: Le Gaulois)
Suddenly Landru raised his right arm in the air and held it there, waiting for the court to fall silent. “I request a delay of 24 hours, monsieur l’avocatgénéral, to give you the address of one of the missing women,” he announced.
Landru’s declaration, “launched out of the blue, and for no apparent reason, caused a sensation,” Le Journal reported. Gilbert took note of the request, without granting Landru’s wish: if he had news to relate to the court, he could offer it at any time.
Godefroy plodded on with his questions about Louise.
“You lifted the 274 francs from the body of Mme Jaume after you killed her at 5.00 pm, as written in the carnet,” Godefroy accused Landru.
“Prove it,” Landru hit back.
Many of the audience were on their feet, trying to get a better view of this latest bust-up between Landru and Godefroy, while a few bolder spectators crept forward to the gangway at the front of the gallery. Gilbert called an interval, hoping to calm things down.
***
Gilbert was losing control of the court, with each new breach of protocol encouraging another one. “During the break, ladies’ sleeves are emptied of their contents which, for once, are not make-up boxes,” Le Populaire’s reporter commented. “Flasks of chocolat au lait and café-crême, brioches, madeleines and nougats all appea
r; tomorrow, no doubt, Landru will be judged in champagne.”
***
Mme Eugénie Lhérault, the patronne of the dress shop where Louise had worked, took the oath. She remembered Louise telling her one day: “‘My fiancé is a real homebody and yet he is very bizarre around the house and garden; at Gambais he sweeps up dead leaves and puts them in a hangar.’” This was as close as Mme Lhérault could get to proving that Landru had murdered Louise.
Brigadier Riboulet returned to testify about the suspicious notes in Landru’s carnet for the date 26 November 1917, the day Louise had disappeared. In his considered view, Riboulet thought there was a “correspondence” (“rapport”) between the hour that Landru had noted, 5.00 pm, and the time of the murder.
“What ‘rapport’?” Moro asked Riboulet sharply. “There is a rapport which indicates nothing apart from the rapport between the note and the hour.”
(“Laughter”: Le Populaire)
***
Day Eleven: Friday, 18 November 1921
By noon on Friday, the reporter for L’Ouest-Éclair reckoned there were around 500 people queuing outside the Palais de Justice, double the court’s seating capacity.
Among those locked out when the doors slammed shut was an old lady from a remote village in Auvergne. Back home, she explained, nobody believed in the existence of the Bluebeard of Gambais. Her fellow villagers thought he was a myth, invented by the authorities “to distract the public from the general situation”.
Only she had believed in this Bluebeard, the widow said proudly, and to prove her neighbours wrong, she had travelled all the way to Paris and queued for three days running in the hope of gaining admission.
“All I want is to see Landru for five minutes to confirm he is flesh and bones.”
Overhearing her tale, several people persuaded a court official to give her a special pass to sit with the VIPs, who today included the Duke and Duchess of Valentinois.
***
“He [Landru] made his entrée and doffed his bowler hat at the jurors in such a studied, ceremonious fashion that the audience burst out laughing,” Le Petit Journal reported. Landru halted for a moment, taken aback by this affront to his dignity.