by Landru's Secret- The Deadly Seductions of France's Lonely Hearts Serial Killer (retail) (epub)
Moro was late again, a recurring pattern in the trial, because he generally spent the mornings in Paris dealing with other legal and political commitments before travelling down to Versailles. He and Navières probably had no idea that the statement Landru now asked the court’s permission to make about Berthe Héon, who had vanished at Gambais in December 1915, would lead the defence into a trap.
“One has searched in vain for Mme Héon, following her so-called disappearance,” Landru declared to the hushed court. “One has searched for her in a ‘very meticulous’ fashion in all quarters. She was however living very close to her apartment at 159 Rue de Rennes, at the Hôtel du Mans, in a little room overlooking the courtyard for which I could draw a plan, as I did for 45 Avenue des Ternes.”
“That’s interesting, particularly interesting,” Gilbert remarked knowingly.
“It’s even more interesting than you think, Landru,” Godefroy added with relish. “We will pursue further investigations immediately.”
The press was one step ahead, with reporters already calling into their news desks from the phone booths in the corridor to get the Hôtel du Mans checked out.
***
Moro arrived just as Gilbert began examining Landru about Annette Pascal, the dressmaker who had disappeared in April 1918. Annette was “likeable” but “loose”, Gilbert said, making her sound like a warmhearted tart.
“Was she your mistress as soon as you met her?” he asked Landru.
“I am silent.”
Gilbert pointed out that Annette’s niece Marie-Jeanne and several of Annette’s seamstress friends all said that Landru had proposed marriage to her.
“They were just cackling like women together always do,” Landru remarked dismissively.
Why, then, had Landru taken Annette to Gambais at the end of March 1918?
“Mme Pascal was a little nervous about the bombing raids,” Landru said. “It was an agreeable détente for her.”
He said he had bought Annette a one-way train ticket for her next visit, on 4 April 1918, because her departure was “definitive” – and no, regrettably, he could not recall why he had written “17h 15” in his carnet under the date for 5 April.
Gilbert came to the letters Annette had written on 5 April to her sister Louise in Toulon and to her friend Mme Carbonnel, a seamstress. Landru said he had no idea why the letter to Louise had been crudely post-dated in another hand to read “19 April”.
“What became of Mme Pascal?”
“But she stayed at Gambais.”
“And perhaps she is still there. For since April 1918, a death-like silence has enveloped her, as with the other missing women.”
“Let’s not look for tragedy in all this history.”
Gilbert tried again. “Why did nobody hear anything more from Mme Pascal after 5 April 1918?”
Landru said nothing.
Why had Landru sold all Annette’s modest valuables and personal effects, right down to her denture?
“Pardon,” Landru corrected Gilbert, “this denture belonged to my father. It was very old and had rubber mountings, not gold ones. I sold it for less than 35 francs. A modern denture like Mme Pascal’s would have fetched a much higher price.”
***
In her despair, Annette’s older sister Louise, Annette’s “maman”, had filed her own civil suit against Landru, even though she had no chance of obtaining any financial compensation from the bankrupt defendant. Louise’s counsel now intervened for the first time in the trial.
Maître Louis Lagasse, 61, tubby, bald and irascible, was a prominent avocat at the Paris Bar. Lagasse wanted to know what had become of Annette’s fluffy white cat Minette, which she had brought with her to Gambais.
“It’s no longer me who has to reply here, but the correspondence of Mme Pascal,” Landru declared. “She said that the cat was very homesick.”
(“Laughter”: Le Petit Journal)
Landru denied that the “vicious stray” he had strangled and buried in the villa’s garden was the same creature as Minette. Lagasse sat down after this odd exchange, which got the jury no closer to the truth about Annette’s fate.
Mme Dèves, a seamstress who had worked for Annette, was asked by Gilbert if she recognised the defendant.
“Yes, I recognise the murderer Landru,” she said, jabbing her finger at him. Moro objected immediately to the witness’s prejudicial language. Gilbert upheld the objection, reminding Mme Dèves that she was here to testify, not to accuse. She pondered Gilbert’s advice for a moment and then turned to face Landru.
“Murderer!” she screamed at the defendant.
Annette’s older friend Mme Carbonnel, a big, blousy woman, knew little about court procedure. After taking the oath she turned her back on Landru and introduced herself to the jury in a loud “mezzo-soprano” voice.
Once Gilbert had called her to order, Mme Carbonnel repeated a lurid tale from her witness statement. Annette had come back from a night with Landru at Rue de Rochechouart, terrified out of her wits. According to Mme Carbonnel, Annette said Landru had put her into a hypnotic trance, from which she had awoken to find his hands around her neck. Here, Mme Carbonnel pretended to strangle herself and faint.
Moro said Mme Carbonnel’s anecdote was pure hearsay and should be dismissed as such by the jury. However, a reporter from Le Gaulois newspaper thought enough of her tale to call Dr Gustave Geley, director of Paris’s Institut Métaphysique, for an expert opinion.
Geley rejected the notion that Landru might have exercised an “occult”, hypnotic power over Annette and his other fiancées. The reason why so many women had fallen for Landru was obvious, Geley opined: “the natural curiosity of all daughters of Eve, their desire for fresh sensations, and the feminine attraction to horror”.
***
Day Twelve: Saturday, 19 November
The temperature plummeted overnight, shrouding Versailles in icy fog. Next morning, a reporter for Le Paris Parisien estimated there were about 1,000 people trying to bluff or shove their way into the Palais de Justice for Saturday’s session. Inside the overfilled courtroom, Lucien Coulond of Le Journal decided that most of the audience had come purely to amuse themselves.
Coulond thought that Landru, the star of the show, was on the brink of collapse, after almost a fortnight of relentless examination:
“He no longer has the studied calm of the trial’s first days. He is febrile. He makes brusque starts. He springs to his feet like a jack in the box. And when one hits him with one of those questions that he has so much trouble answering, one can see his temporal artery quivering like a compass needle.”
***
Gilbert began the hearing with a change to the schedule, for a reason that only became evident at the end of the afternoon. Instead of calling the rest of the witnesses in Annette Pascal’s case, Gilbert moved to the last alleged victim on the charge sheet: 37-year-old Marie-Thérèse Marchadier, who had disappeared in January 1919.
Gilbert made Marie-Thérèse sound like an easy target for Landru: a career prostitute looking to better herself through marriage, with stacks of furniture that she wanted to sell. Yet Gilbert’s portrait of Marie-Thérèse, based on the réquisitoire, failed to answer two questions:
Why had Landru picked up a debt-ridden prostitute at a time when he was reduced to borrowing small change from his wife?
Why had an experienced street girl like Marie-Thérèse allowed herself to be hoodwinked by an obvious crook?
Landru claimed he had wanted to rent a room from Marie-Thérèse as a workshop to make the automobile radiator he had invented. Somehow, the negotiation had progressed to buying her furniture.
“I believe that, according to your custom, you spoke as well of marriage to Mlle Marchadier,” Gilbert said sarcastically.
“It’s not impossible, but it was above all with a view to ‘psychological studies’.”
Gilbert asked Landru about Marie-Thérèse’s two visits to the Villa Tric in January 1919. Why had L
andru borrowed money from his wife and the cobbler in Gambais to pay for the train tickets?
“My wallet had been stolen.”
“Why didn’t you report the theft?”
Landru was incredulous: “Can you seriously see me, on the run from the law, presenting myself to the police?”
Gilbert wanted to discuss in more detail the second of Marie-Thérèse’s visits, on 13 January 1919, after her apartment had been cleared by Landru. According to Landru’s carnet, he had returned alone to Paris on 14 January.
“What became of Mlle Marchadier?”
“She remained in Gambais.”
“For how long?”
“Four or five days, perhaps. I wasn’t paying attention,” Landru shrugged.
“For the last time, do you wish to tell us what became of Mlle Marchadier?”
“I don’t have to immerse myself in her private life.”
“Oh! Mlle Marchadier’s profession was fairly public,” said Gilbert, referring to her career as a prostitute.
Landru now changed his story, effectively admitting he had just lied. He said that he had returned by train to Paris with Marie-Thérèse Marchadier and parted company with her outside the station. He regretted that he could not remember Marie-Thérèse’s new home in Paris. However, he was sure her friends could give the court “this luminous address”, a snide reference to the lights that prostitutes kept on when they were open for business.
Landru found it easier to explain why he had killed the three little griffon dogs that Marie-Thérèse had brought with her to the villa. He said she had “formally ordered” their destruction because she could not afford to feed them or pay for dog licences.
Why had he hung the dogs with a cord? Gilbert asked.
Landru paused, as if he did not wish to answer. At last he looked up and told Gilbert that strangulation was “the gentlest of deaths”, drawing gasps from the audience.
A juror stuck up his hand. Why had Landru killed the dog that Marie-Thérèse had borrowed from her friend Mme Poillot?
Landru stuttered that Mme Poillot must have left Paris, having fallen ill, and no doubt her dog would have been a nuisance to her.
Moro had had enough of jurors asking alarmingly pertinent questions. “In a very moderate harangue”, Moro put the jurors on guard against “certain forms of questions” that presumed Landru’s motives. For once Gilbert supported Moro, reminding the jurors “not to betray their sentiments” about the case.
On that note, Gilbert called a brief interval.
***
At 3.15 pm, when Gilbert returned to the court, he put Marie-Thérèse’s case temporarily to one side and went back to Annette Pascal’s disappearance. Brigadier Riboulet appeared for his familiar turn on the witness stand, explaining how all the police’s efforts to trace Annette had failed.
Rather than take another general swipe at the investigation, Moro made a more pointed attack on Riboulet’s detective skills. Moro observed that there were “contradictions” in Riboulet’s analysis of Landru’s notes in his carnet. In particular, Moro wished to know why Riboulet thought there was a “rapport” between Landru’s noting of the hour on 5 April 1918 and the alleged time of the murder.
With Gilbert’s permission, Riboulet brought the carnet over to Moro, so the two of them could go through the relevant pages together.
At this moment, Louise Fauchet’s barrister Louis Lagasse began to ask Riboulet a question, which was instantly drowned out by Moro’s protest to Gilbert. Moro was adamant that a lawyer representing a civil plaintiff – in this instance, Lagasse – had no right to ask a witness follow-up questions after the defence.
Nothing had prepared Gilbert for Moro’s next remark. “I am now withdrawing from the case for as long as the civil party [Lagasse] is engaged in this part of the trial,” Moro announced. He stuffed his notes into his briefcase and strode ostentatiously towards the exit in a swirl of flowing robes.
Just in time, Gilbert summoned Moro back for a hasty conclave with Lagasse by the judges’ bench. Lagasse grudgingly gave assurances of his “good intentions”, ceding a minor victory to Moro, and the hearing resumed.
Moro was still not done with putting Lagasse firmly in his place. A few minutes later, Lagasse tried to ask a handwriting expert about the alteration of the date on Annette’s last letter to her sister Louise. It was a legitimate question, but again interrupted Moro’s cross-examination. This time Moro carried out his threat, flouncing out of the courtroom, his face “very pale”, followed by Navières.
Seeing his barristers abandon him, Landru shouted: “I demand that the trial is declared in default, since I no longer have a lawyer!”
Landru picked up his colour-coded dossiers, grabbed his bowler hat and made ready to go, in his own mind a free man at last. Gilbert snapped at Landru to stay in his seat, while the guards blocked the defendant’s exit route. The judge then called a recess, gathered up Godefroy and Lagasse, and went off to find Moro.
Moro soon returned, beaming broadly, along with Navières, Godefroy, Lagasse and Gilbert. There had been a “misunderstanding”, Moro explained to the jurors, perhaps “a little too lively”, but he was happy to take his place again alongside Maître Lagasse. Moro sounded as if he was making a generous concession.
Lagasse probably knew Moro’s courtroom tricks well enough to realise that the whole fracas was a mark of respect. Unlike the pedestrian Godefroy, Lagasse was a skilful avocat who had the potential to cause trouble for the defence when his client, Annette’s sister Louise, was finally summoned to testify.
***
Louise had waited a long time for her settling of accounts with Landru. From her home in Toulon, she had chivvied Bonin with peremptory notes, handed over all Annette’s correspondence, given her witness statement, consulted with another sister in Tunisia, and via her capable daughter Marie-Jeanne (who wrote much better French) kept up the pressure on the authorities in Paris for more than two years. Louise wanted revenge on the killer of her little sister Annette, who had called her “maman” and had never really grown up.
Shortly before 5.00 pm, the reason why Gilbert had delayed Louise’s appearance in court became clear. She sat in a chair on the witness stand, sad and frightened, staring blankly around her. Through glazed eyes, Louise saw the judges, the jury, the lawyers and Landru and froze, too nervous even to take the oath. A quick nod of agreement from Lagasse, Moro and Godefroy, and Gilbert took pity on her. The trial would be adjourned till Monday.
Chapter 18
You Cannot Live With the Dead
Day Thirteen: Monday, 21 November
The trial had become “a nauseating spectacle”, Lucien Coulond, the sketchwriter for Le Journal, decided on Monday. As soon as Landru entered the courtroom, the audience let out “oohs” and “aahs”, craning to get a glimpse of the “wretched, emaciated” defendant.
Today, it was not just Landru whom the public had come to ogle. Fernande Segret, Landru’s mistress and self-styled “survivor”, was due to testify. She had already confided to a journalist who had taken her out to lunch that some of her evidence might need to be heard in closed session because it was so shocking.
“Closed session,” the reporter exclaimed, as Fernande tucked into a crème caramel.
“Yes. I believe they want to ask me some delicate questions about Landru’s physiology. They have used the word ‘sadism’ but this is not true at all. He is an attentive man, very normal, who goes to bed early and sleeps like a baby.”
Fernande’s entrée was scheduled for later in the day. The hearing began with Godefroy making what he called “an important announcement” about the cleaning woman Berthe Héon, who Landru said had stayed at the Hôtel du Mans in the autumn of 1915, shortly before she vanished.
There was “a parcel of truth” here, Godefroy told Landru, for the police had established that Berthe did stay briefly at a hotel in October 1915 after Landru had sold her furniture. However, Berthe had soon moved on Landru’s orders
to a more interesting address.
“I would request in relation to this matter that the court should now hear a witness,” Godefroy declared, labouring to build the suspense. “You believe, Landru, that the dead don’t leave their tombs. Eh bien! The person is going to come before us who will speak for one of your victims.”
She came to the witness stand with her hands stuffed into a muff, her chubby face framed by a wide-brimmed velvet hat. Juliette Auger, 27, was not required to take the oath because she had been summoned personally by Gilbert. A few days earlier, Gilbert had received a letter from Juliette and now he asked her to tell her story.
She spoke in a flat, monotone voice, as if she had learned her lines by heart in order to quell her nerves. Juliette explained that she had been the best friend of Berthe’s daughter Marcelle, who had died in childbirth in the spring of 1915. Many times, Juliette had visited Marcelle’s rough, unkempt grave in southern Paris, keeping her promise to Berthe to lay flowers while Berthe was away in Tunisia with her new husband. Over the years, Juliette had often wondered why this man, whom she had met, had not honoured his parting pledge to buy a nice, marble tombstone for Marcelle.
In April 1919, Juliette had seen a newspaper photograph of Landru and realised that he was Berthe’s fiancé. Juliette had thought about going to the police, but as she had noted (a little disingenuously) in her letter to Gilbert, she had assumed that other witnesses had known where Berthe had gone in October 1915. Besides, Juliette had not wanted her name in the press.
She had decided to come forward after reading about the confusion over the identity of the mystery woman in the apartment at 45 Avenue des Ternes. Juliette knew for certain that the woman seen by the bank manager Lesbazeilles had been Berthe, not Marie-Angélique Guillin, as Landru had claimed:
“Mme Héon came to see me as the month of November 1915 approached and announced that she had moved and was now living in a hotel on Rue de Rennes, opposite the Gare Montparnasse. She told me that her fiancé Monsieur Petit [Landru] did not wish her to stay there. Finally, she gave me a rendezvous for 8 November at her new address, 45 Avenue des Ternes.”