Of course, one result of the belief that women could not control themselves was that courts and juries were frequently more tolerant, not to say forgiving, of women accused of crimes. Ann-Louise Shapiro, a modern feminist author, found that the acquittal rate for women in France was over 50 percent in the 1890s, while only about 30 percent for men. Women criminals sometimes became “celebrities as well as pariahs.” 4 The Cours d’Assises were popular places to go for entertainment, and society women were often spectators at the trials of other women. They were known to bring picnic baskets containing canapés, sandwiches, and champagne to consume during recesses. Furthering the trend, many theater companies found that audiences flocked to plays that imitated courtroom dramas.
Shapiro cites a famous case of the 1880s in which Marie Bière, a young actress, shot Robert Gentien, a young man-about-town who had fathered her child. Gentien refused to acknowledge the infant as his own and even when the child died did not attend its funeral. Bière shot him twice in the back as he was out walking with a new mistress. Though she failed to kill him, she was tried for attempted murder. Bière’s attorneys showed that Gentien was her first lover, that she resisted his suggestion to have an abortion because she wanted to be the mother of his child, and that she had even attempted suicide in his presence in a vain attempt to win his sympathy. Bière was acquitted by twelve male jurors who wept openly as their verdict was announced.
La Lanterne editorialized that “the jury, in acquitting Mlle. Bière, had performed a useful service.” 5 A wittier commentator, in Le Figaro, wrote that the defendant “be canonized as Sainte Marie, patron saint of gunsmiths, to whom abandoned women might make pilgrimages to have their revolvers blessed.” 6 Gentien himself was obliged to flee Paris to avoid public opprobrium.
i
The popularity of crime stories, not only the supposedly factual faits divers but also the fictional feuilletons, was often cited as a cause of female criminality. One social critic, Jules Langevin, stated that “the roman feuilleton performs the same ravages in women’s brains, perhaps does even graver damage, than does alcohol in the brains of men.” 7 Writing in 1902, a Dr. Séverin Icard cited the case of a young woman who regularly came to his office with a bewildering variety of symptoms. Finally, Dr. Icard noticed that the diseases these symptoms indicated were occurring in alphabetical order. Further investigation revealed that the patient had been receiving copies of a medical dictionary, issued in installments, and so developed hysterical symptoms of the disease described in that month’s reading.
The sexism went both ways. Two murder cases in the Belle Époque created enormous scandals, not only because the accused in both cases were women of good breeding, but also because they used their femininity to evade responsibility for what seemed like utterly ruthless crimes. Certainly what happened to these two murderers stood in stark contrast to the members of the Bande à Bonnot. And their trials showed that the search for truth — or the attempts to conceal it — could extend even into the courtroom.
ii
The first defendant was Marguerite Steinheil (“Meg” to the newspaper writers), who was already notorious for her role in the sudden death of President Faure in 1899. Long after the event, the story still circulated that Faure had died while in the throes of a passion so intense that his dead fingers were impossible to prize from the hair of the naked young woman whose head was in his lap.
The legend only added a certain piquancy to Meg’s reputation. Looking at her husband, who had been forty when he married her in 1890 (she was then twenty-one), one could understand why a woman as beautiful and vibrant as Meg might want to take a lover. Steinheil was timid, balding, and dull. The only reason Meg had married him in the first place was that her recently widowed mother feared that her headstrong young daughter would marry a handsome but penniless young officer she had fallen in love with.
Steinheil, a mediocre academic painter, had no fortune. All he had to offer Meg was a large house in a fashionable cul-de-sac called the impasse Ronsin, in the fifteenth arrondissement, where they settled down after honeymooning in Italy. In June 1891, Meg gave birth to a daughter, Marthe, and soon became bored. All around her she saw people living in luxury, but Steinheil could not afford to give her fine clothes and jewelry. Meg looked for excitement and luxuries outside marriage, using her youth and charm to attract wealthy lovers. Her first was a government prosecutor, Manuel Baudouin. She was with him for four years; during that time she explained the lavish gifts she received by telling Steinheil they were from an Aunt Lily. Meg went to visit her aunt frequently, and it seems likely that if Steinheil was unaware of what was really going on, it was a willful ignorance on his part. At some point, Meg had also made it clear to him that the sexual part of their marriage was over. From then on they slept in separate bedrooms.
Steinheil received fringe benefits from Meg’s liaisons when her lovers asked him to paint portraits or other works of art. When Meg became the mistress of President Faure in 1897, Steinheil received a government commission for a large historical painting. His rising income enabled Meg to hold the weekly salons where she presided over three or four hundred guests, including some of the leading social, artistic, and political figures of the time. Among them were Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty; Émile Zola; Hippolyte-François-Alfred Chauchard, the founder of the Louvre grand magasin (department store); and Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal. It was said that even the Prince of Wales graced her drawing room while on a visit to France.
Steinheil, however, was becoming more of a burden to her. He had begun to need opium to sleep at night, and now in his mid-fifties, he was less and less able to turn out canvases that Meg could “sell” to her lovers. Thus, in 1905, she took up with Émile Chouanard, a wealthy widower not much older than she. A man used to having his own way, he quickly tired of the game of meeting her furtively in hotel rooms. Instead, he offered to pay the rent for a villa where they could spend days (and nights) in privacy and comfort. Meg took him up on this and rented a place called the Vert-Logis, forty-five minutes by train from Paris, in the town of Bellevue. Meg signed the lease with the name of a friend but had to share her secret with her longtime maid, Mariette Wolff, who took on the duties of housekeeper at Vert-Logis.
Unfortunately, Chouanard broke off the liaison in November 1907, apparently because Meg had presumptuously tried to influence his choice of a fiancé for his daughter. Not long after, as if to console herself that she was still attractive, Meg fainted while riding the Métro — seemingly to entice a well-dressed young man standing nearby. She had a good eye for men, for he turned out to be the Count Emmanuel de Balincourt. He walked her home and was invited to dinner. Before long, he found himself in her bed at Vert-Logis, which she had kept after the breakup with Chouanard. However, while de Balincourt was posing for Steinheil to paint his portrait, he was overcome by guilt at cuckolding the man and broke off the relationship.
Meg was at an age when women who live off their beauty are fearful when they look into the mirror. She also had her daughter, now in her teens, to consider. A husband would one day have to be found for Marthe, and Meg wanted to be able to give her, not only a good dowry, but a respectable family background. Her next lover seemed chosen with those goals in mind. He was Maurice Borderel, a widower with three adolescent children of his own. Borderel, from the Ardennes region, was not a sophisticated Parisian like her other lovers, and soon fell in love with her, assuming the responsibility for paying the rent at Vert-Logis. (Meg was now using the villa as a country home for her family, including her husband, daughter, and mother.)
However, Borderel told Meg frankly that he could not marry her. He did not wish his children to have a stepmother, not even if Meg divorced her husband. He felt that it would dishonor his first wife’s memory to put a divorcée in her place. Things might be different when his children were older and on their own, another ten years, say. Or perhaps if Meg’s husband were to die… but
Borderel promised nothing.
iii
On Sunday, May 31, 1908, precisely at 6:00 A.M., Rémy Couillard, the Steinheil family’s valet, started down from his bedroom on the top floor of the house in the impasse Ronsin. He heard muffled cries coming from the second-floor bedroom that belonged to the Steinheils’ daughter, Marthe. That seemed strange, for he knew Marthe was at Vert-Logis, where the rest of the family had planned to go that afternoon. Meg’s mother, Mme. Japy, had arrived two days earlier and was sleeping in one of the other bedrooms on the second floor. When Couillard investigated, he found Meg bound hand and foot to Marthe’s bed, with her nightgown pulled up around her face. Only twenty, Couillard was somewhat transfixed by the sight, until Meg screamed that there were burglars in the house and told him to go for help.
Afraid to leave the room, Couillard threw open the shutters and began to shout. Three people heard him — a neighbor, a night watchman, and a policeman. They rushed into the house and gingerly searched the ground floor for intruders. Finding none, they went upstairs, where Couillard was struggling to free Meg from her bonds. In the two bedrooms next to hers, they discovered more shocking sights: the bodies of Meg’s husband and mother, with cords tied around their necks indicating that they had been strangled.
Within hours, an impressive array of law enforcement figures had arrived at the Steinheil residence to investigate, among them Alphonse Bertillon, who personally took photographs of the crime scenes and dusted the house for fingerprints. Also present was Octave Hamard, head of the Sûreté, who arrived with seven assistants in tow to announce that he was taking personal charge of the case. Finally, Magistrate Joseph Leydet, a close friend of the family who was rumored to be one of Meg’s lovers, had requested assignment as juge d’instruction to assemble evidence and determine what charges should be brought. Clearly, the case was already regarded as more than an ordinary one.
Still distraught, Meg related that she had slept in her daughter’s bedroom because she had given her own bed to her mother, who had ailing legs. About midnight she had been awakened by the touch of a cloth on her face. Several people carrying shrouded lanterns were in the room. Three of them were men who wore long black coats; a fourth, carrying a pistol, was a red-haired woman. They demanded to know where Steinheil kept his money, referring to him as “your father,” indicating that they knew the layout of the house well enough to know this was normally Marthe’s room. After Meg told the intruders where her husband’s money was kept, they struck her on the head. When she awoke, she found herself tied and gagged. At last she had been able to spit out the cotton wad they had stuffed in her mouth, and began to call for help.
As word of the murders spread, reporters besieged the house. Hamard told them that it appeared Steinheil had surprised the burglars and been killed. Why Meg’s mother, Mme. Japy, had been strangled in her bed was still a mystery — nor was it clear why Meg had been spared, except that she recalled one of the burglars saying, “We don’t kill brats,” indicating that they had mistaken her for her daughter. The burglars had apparently expected to find the house empty, because the Steinheils had originally planned to go to Vert-Logis the day before. The family remained in Paris only because Mme. Japy’s legs were bothering her. As for suspects, Hamard mentioned that many of the male models Steinheil used for his historical paintings had been in the house and knew he kept money there.
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The police postponed their questioning of Meg until the following day, to allow her to recover somewhat from her shock. Now she embellished her story, reporting that everyone had gone to bed at 10:00 P.M. after drinking rum toddies that Meg had made to encourage her mother to sleep. She recalled hearing the clock strike midnight just before the burglars appeared in her room. As for the men in long black coats, she now told the police that all the men had beards — one long and black with silver streaks, another red, and the third brown. The man with the long black beard had thin, bony hands. Asked if she recognized any of them, she said that she could not be sure. She added that the woman with red hair appeared to be a souillon, a slut.
Bertillon made a report on his findings at the crime scene, which tended to throw doubt on Meg’s story. Though rain had fallen heavily that night, there was no sign of water or tracks on the carpets, nor any indication of forced entry. The rope tied around the necks of the two victims had come from a supply of cord in the kitchen. As for the valuables in the house, most of Meg’s jewels were still in her room and the silver service in the dining room had been left behind. It was hard to tell how much money might have been taken, but given Steinheil’s finances, it hardly seemed enough to justify two murders.
Some evidence was harder to explain. The grandfather clock that Meg heard striking midnight had been stopped at 12:10, and there was a fingerprint on the pendulum that did not seem to match the prints of anyone who lived there. Moreover, two interesting pieces of information turned up that seemed to confirm Meg’s story. First, the management of the Hebrew Theater, where actors from eastern Europe presented plays in Hebrew and Yiddish, reported that on the night of May 30, three long black vestments intended for use in a play were found to be missing. Newspapers noted that these matched the description Meg had given of the clothes worn by the male burglars.
A second possible clue turned up the day after the crime, when an employee of the Paris Métro found on the floor of a subway car an invitation to an exhibition of Steinheil’s paintings at the impasse Ronsin in April, the month before the murders. On the back of the invitation, someone had written “Guibert, costumier pour théâtres.” Inside was the card of Jane Mazeline, an artist in her sixties. Investigation showed that the handwriting on the back did not match Mazeline’s, so the Sûreté decided that someone had stolen her invitation to gain entrance to the house, making himself familiar with the layout.
Following up on the Hebrew Theater theft, a detective showed Meg photographs of some of its patrons. One did indeed have a shaggy beard, and she promptly identified him as one of the burglars. It was an American poet and painter, Frederic Harrisson Burlingham, a well-known figure who wandered about the city in sandals. Detectives became excited when they learned he was said to have a red-haired mistress. But unfortunately, Burlingham had an ironclad alibi: he was in Burgundy at the time the murders were committed. Seeing how eagerly the Sûreté had responded to her accusation, however, Meg began casting about for more suspects.
She hired a lawyer, Anthony Aubin, who would make his reputation on this case. Aubin asked Magistrate Leydet to let him inspect the evidence that had been collected so far. This was so irregular a request that Leydet turned him down. Undaunted, Meg sent a letter to L’Echo de Paris declaring that she would conduct her own search for the murderers. Late in November, she found her first candidate: young Rémy Couillard, who had discovered her bound and naked on that fateful Sunday.
According to her, she first became suspicious of him when she needed the address of his parents at a time when he was out on an errand. She looked inside a leather case he had left in his coat, and found a letter he was supposed to have mailed for her. It was addressed to Marthe’s fiancé, and shockingly, Couillard seemed to have opened and read it. She reported this to the Sûreté, which didn’t think it suspicious. Meg then enlisted the aid of Henri Barby, an editor at Le Matin who had become her confidant. At her urging, Barby searched the leather case again and this time found a pearl wrapped in silk paper. Meg claimed that it was from an art nouveau ring that the burglars had taken.
The Sûreté brought Couillard in for questioning, and he admitted stealing the letter but denied ever having seen the pearl before. If he had been one of the burglars, he said, he could have stolen much more, for he knew secret hiding places that the family used for their valuables.
Meg also claimed that she had received anonymous letters saying that Couillard was in love with her daughter and wanted to break up the engagement. Furthermore, on the morning when he discovered her, she had felt he was tempted to strang
le her instead of calling for help.
The police went to search Couillard’s room. Meg accompanied them and triumphantly picked up a small diamond from the floor. Here, she announced, was proof he had been in league with the burglars. The police took the hapless valet into custody.
Two days later, on November 25, Meg was called to the Sûreté, where Hamard and Magistrate Leydet were waiting for her. With them were two jewelers and a gemologist. One of the jewelers declared that the pearl Meg had said was in a ring stolen on May 30 had in fact been brought to his shop on June 12 — by Meg herself. At her request, he had removed it from the art nouveau ring where it had been mounted. When a picture of the pearl found in Couillard’s case appeared in the newspapers, the jeweler recognized it. It had an unusual shape and a distinctively placed hole used to attach it to the ring. The other jeweler, who had made the ring in the first place, confirmed that this was the pearl he had mounted.
It was clear that Meg had deliberately made a false accusation against Couillard and that she now had to be considered a suspect in the murders. Meg called her lawyer, Aubin, who persuaded Leydet to release her. Nonetheless, seven policemen now surrounded her house to keep her from fleeing.
That evening, Meg invited to her home two journalists whose friendship she had cultivated. Supposedly she wanted their advice, but in reality she was preparing a startling new accusation. In tears, she admitted lying about Couillard but then claimed she had done so because she had been threatened by the real culprit — -Alexander Wolff, the son of her trusted chambermaid. Wolff, she said, had long resented the Steinheils because he felt they exploited his mother. The only reason Meg had escaped was that he had tied her up with the intention of raping her but had been thwarted from doing so when he heard Couillard approaching. Nevertheless, he had threatened Meg that he would kill her, or tell the Sûreté that she had been his accomplice, if she revealed his name.
The Crimes of Paris Page 29
