The Crimes of Paris

by Dorothy Hoobler; Thomas Hoobler

  She persuaded the police guarding the house to take her to the Sûreté, where Hamard was summoned to hear her latest accusation. Alexander Wolff was arrested and brought in for questioning. Facing Meg, he flatly denied everything she had said, and now she began to waver. Perhaps, she said, the person who had threatened her was only someone who looked like Wolff. Since this was patently absurd, Hamard now began to pressure Meg, bringing Couillard and then Mariette Wolff in to confront her. Finally, Meg was placed under arrest, and everyone else was set free. Magistrate Leydet, presented with the new developments, told her that “by your lies and your concealment of evidence, you have misled justice and placed obstacles in the way of the seizure of the murderers.” 8 She was sent to the Santé.

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  Remarkably, at this point the Ministry of Justice took the case away from Leydet and replaced him as juge d’instruction with another prosecutor, Louis André. This seemed to be a baffling move, for Leydet had either solved, or was on the brink of solving, the case. André, for his part, acted as if he were starting a new investigation. He ordered the bodies of Steinheil and Mme. Japy exhumed so that they could be autopsied a second time. Bertillon and his assistants were sent back to the house and ordered to check again for fingerprints — something that would seem to have been pointless, considering how many regular residents of the house had been there since the murders.

  Mariette Wolff now began to talk to the authorities about Meg’s many lovers. To the Sûreté, the most interesting of them was Borderel, who had told Meg he could not marry her if she was a divorced woman. That suggested a motive for her to murder her husband but of course still left the death of her mother an enigma. Here, André’s exhumation paid off with a valuable clue: the second autopsy found that Mme. Japy had not died of strangulation, despite the rope around her neck. The cause of death was asphyxiation: she had swallowed her dental plate. Because she would not have gone to bed with it in, she must have been placed in her bed by the killers. And of course that gave the lie to Meg’s story that everyone had fallen asleep before the crime.

  A new witness stepped forward: an attorney who lived on the rue de Vaugirard, which intersects the impasse Ronsin. He had looked out his window around midnight on the night of the murder and saw a car parked at the corner. A man dressed in elegant clothing was standing next to it, smoking a cigar and holding an umbrella. The attorney watched until another man ran out of the impasse. The two got into the car and drove off.

  On March 13, 1909, Magistrate André formally charged Meg with the premeditated murder of her husband and mother. Legal maneuvering delayed the start of the trial to November 3. There were only one hundred seats allotted for spectators in the Cour d’Assises de la Seine, making it the hottest ticket in town. Women were particularly interested in the trial; wives of foreign ambassadors, countesses, and the mistresses of politicians all pulled strings to obtain places in the courtroom. Marcel Proust astonished his friends by appearing before noon to attend.

  The presiding judge, Charles-Bernard de Valles, sat on a raised platform, flanked by two associate judges; all three were clothed in red robes and, with gray beards and solemn faces, looked determined to maintain the dignity of justice. The prosecutor, Paul Trouard-Riolle, also wore a red robe, which did little to conceal his massive girth. Meg’s attorney, Aubin, and a colleague wore black robes. Aubin looked every centimeter the well-turned-out barrister, with curly black hair, mustache, and beard. Twelve men were admitted as jurors, ranging from middle-class “proprietors” to a musician, a bricklayer, and a baker. After they were seated, the spectators craned their necks to look at the doorway through which the defendant would be escorted.

  A gasp went up at the sight of Meg, dramatically clothed in a black mourning dress and hat. Eleven months in prison had seemed to age her and turn the renowned peach glow of her skin to an unhealthy pallor. Many thought that her features looked harder, coarser than they had been in earlier newspaper pictures. Still, throughout the trial, Meg would become the mistress of the courtroom, skillfully battling the judge and the prosecutor.

  Following French judicial practice, the trial began with the presiding judge interrogating the defendant. In theory this procedure was designed to determine the facts, but in this case it was clear that de Valles was going to serve as a prosecutor. He led Meg through a catalog of her lovers. (The scandalous episode with President Faure was not mentioned.) Hadn’t she been happy with Steinheil, who had enabled her to create a salon in his house in Paris? He was “a simple man,” Meg replied. “Too simple.” 9 Hadn’t Meg humiliated him? de Valles asked. Meg realized this was a trap and retorted that her husband had known nothing of her extramarital affairs. Nonetheless, she was sorry she had not been a good wife to him. When he fell in love with her, she had been merely a child. As she grew, she wanted lovers — friends — who understood her intellectual needs.

  De Valles asked about money. Wasn’t that her real reason for taking lovers? Meg denied it, saying that she had never sold herself. Chouanard, who had rented the country villa, was the only one to give her large sums, and that was his choice, not hers.

  Meg still insisted that the three black-clad men and the red-haired woman, never found, had committed the crimes. She also tried to excuse the false accusations she had made in the case. She had not been thinking clearly, she said, because the press had persecuted her, making it appear as if she were the murderer. Finding the unmailed letter in Couillard’s wallet had made her think he had deceived her on other matters.

  After the first day, the newspapers generally gave Meg high marks for successfully parrying de Valles’s questions, more by theatrics than by the veracity of her answers. One reporter dubbed her “the Sarah Bernhardt of the Assises.” 10

  The examination resumed on the following day, and Meg seemed to have gained confidence. De Valles had discovered that a detective novel, Les cing doigts de Birouk (The Five Fingers of Birouk), described a crime very similar to the one in Meg’s account of the murders — black-robed burglars and all. The police had found several books by the same author, Louis Ulback, in the Steinheils’ library. Did Meg enjoy those novels? She replied that she did, but had never read that particular one.

  Various inconsistencies in Meg’s story were noted, and she attributed them all to police incompetence. The cotton gag that she said she had spit out to cry for help was found to have no traces of saliva on it. Meg responded that the police had probably picked up the wrong piece of cotton. Why would the burglars strangle Meg’s mother and husband with pieces of cord they had cut from a supply in the kitchen? “They told you all of this?” Meg responded as if surprised, drawing laughter from the spectators. 11 Irritated at Meg’s riposte, de Valles suggested that she was indeed a cold-hearted killer, for she had murdered her own mother to cover up the fact that her intended victim was her husband. Meg was waiting for this and launched into an extended soliloquy about the love she had for her mother.

  So it went for three days of examination. Questions from the judge were answered by passionate speeches from Meg. Even the fact that Meg had placed the incriminating pearl in Couillard’s case, something she could hardly deny, was brushed aside. “I have been punished enough for that!” she said. “I have been in prison a year for having placed Couillard there for a day.” 12

  The prosecutor, Trouard-Riolle, now took command of the case. He was to call some eighty witnesses to testify, most of them experts of various sorts reporting on the physical evidence. Bertillon, for instance, said that he had found ninety-one fingerprints at the crime scene, but that only a fraction of these were clear enough to identify. Much of this testimony was tedious for the jury to sit through.

  When the prosecutor summoned young Couillard, however, the jurors sat up to listen. Now serving his required military service and hence decked out in a handsome uniform, Couillard had become a minor celebrity. Vendors outside the court sold postcards with his picture. Nevertheless he made a crucial error describing the scene when he
discovered Meg in bed, recalling now that she had been covered by a blanket. This differed from the deposition he had originally given the police, in which he stated that she had been nearly naked. The defense attorney made much of the discrepancy, and Couillard merely replied that his original deposition had been wrong.

  He added that Meg had at first told him not to talk about the crime to anyone. In the lively procedure of the French judicial system, Meg was permitted to respond immediately that he was lying. She further demanded to know about the letter he had stolen. Couillard responded that he had forgotten to mail it and countered with the accusation that Meg had instructed him to claim, falsely, that the thieves had stolen some draperies — draperies that never existed. Meg again hotly denied it. On this indecisive note, Couillard was excused.

  Three days later, with little testimony of note in the interim, Mariette Wolff came to the stand. There were great expectations: she was privy to all Meg’s secrets and, since Meg had accused Mariette’s son, had no reason to be discreet. But Mariette disappointed the prosecutor by suddenly developing a shockingly poor memory.

  De Valles once more took over the questioning, leading Mariette through the events leading up to the night of the murders. Nearly all of his questions drew the answer, “I don’t remember.” Even the night of November 25–26, when Meg had accused Mariette’s son of murder, had now become serene in the housekeeper’s recollection. Astonishingly, she claimed no one had told her that Meg had accused her son of the murders. Frustrated, the prosecutor dismissed her.

  Following her to the stand was Alexander Wolff, the very person who had been the object of Meg’s reckless accusations. Did he feel resentment toward her? Not at all, he responded, for it had been an exciting time for him. Clinging to straws, the prosecutor asked if it was true that his sister had provided a watchdog to protect the Steinheil house, and that Meg had sent it away just before the murders. Actually, Alexander said, it was he who had taken the dog back to his sister’s: it was a very poor watchdog and would have been of no use. Clearly, for some reason, Meg’s housekeeper and her son were not going to incriminate her.

  Thwarted, the prosecutor began to call some of Meg’s lovers. Chouanard, the most generous of them, had gone on a long trip to avoid testifying. De Balincourt, who had helped Meg home from the Métro, was reluctant to say how deep their involvement had been. Finally, Borderel, the man Meg had supposedly killed her husband in order to marry, came to the stand. As he entered, he turned to Meg and gave her a look that told the spectators he still loved her. He was a sympathetic figure, neither an aristocrat nor a wealthy businessman using power to attract young women, but instead a respectable middle-aged widower who was in search of someone to console him for the loss of his wife. He described an idyllic affair, but one that he had told Meg from the start could not end in marriage. She had seemed content with that. After the murder, when the newspapers had revealed Borderel as Meg’s lover, it had shocked his family and neighbors (he was the mayor of a village in the Ardennes), but he had come now to tell the truth as a matter of honor.

  He was the last witness for the prosecution and could easily have been the first for the defense, because the impression he left was completely sympathetic to Meg. Her attorney, Aubin, added to that by immediately presenting character witnesses. Relatives testified to Meg’s love for her mother and said that she had never tried to get an advance on her inheritance, indicating that she was not in need of money. Aubin then called André Paisant, an attorney who had been a good friend of the Steinheils. He gave a portrait of their marriage that moved many of the spectators to tears. Adolphe Steinheil was an “almost childlike” man, a dreamer, “melancholic, disappointed, beaten, sitting in his big armchair, watching the fall of night.” Meg brought joy into his life, “gave him courage, was his inspiration, pawned her jewelry to pay for his extravagances.” 13 When Paisant first learned about Meg’s lovers, his initial response was to condemn her, but over time his disapproval turned to pity. Hoping to leave the jury with that emotion in mind, Aubin closed his presentation.

  The prosecutor, Trouard-Riolle, began his summation with a detailed recounting of the evidence. To most observers, the jury appeared bored and unimpressed. However, as Trouard-Riolle reached the end of a long day, he hinted at spectacular revelations to come. Some of the technical testimony had indicated that it was nearly impossible for one person to have committed the murders. Meg must have had an accomplice, and the prosecutor implied that he would indicate who that person had been on the following day.

  The next morning, Trouard-Riolle never specifically named his suspect, but as he gradually filled in the description of her, everyone realized it was Mariette Wolff. As he took the jury through the supposed events of the night of the murder, the prosecutor said that Meg and “this woman” planned to catch Mme. Japy asleep in her bed, tie and gag her, strangle Steinheil, and then tie Meg to the bed. Meg’s mother would then be able to confirm Meg’s story of burglars. Unfortunately, the gag forced her dentures down her throat and killed her. Trouard-Riolle left the jury with a powerful argument: If there really had been burglar-murderers in the house, why did they not murder Meg and eliminate any possible witness? And why had the clock stopped? Meg had stopped it herself because, Trouard-Riolle declared, like the tell-tale heart of the murder victim in Poe’s famous story, it made a noise in the silent house that she could not bear to listen to.

  The following day, November 13, Aubin gave the summary for the defense. He pointed out the holes in the prosecution’s case, notably that there had been no motive at all for Meg to kill her mother. Nor, he added, was there any convincing reason for her to murder her husband. Meg “was his idol — alas, the idol also of others… she was radiant and adorned with all the charms, a bouquet of smiles. Everyone wanted to pluck from the bouquet. So, she was unfaithful.” 14 But she was not a murderess.

  Aubin pointed out that Mme. Japy would surely have been aware of it if Meg and her female accomplice had bound her. How then could she provide an alibi for them? What really happened, he suggested, was that thieves broke into the house, expecting to find it empty, and then killed Steinheil when he discovered them. Leaving Meg alive, they thought, would throw suspicion on her — and it did.

  As his trump card, Aubin brought Meg’s daughter, Marthe, to the courtroom for the first time in the trial, seating her behind her mother. Aubin signaled for her to rise: “I call to my side,” he said, “this pure and noble child. I want her close to me, stretching her arms appealingly toward you and defending her mother! These two unfortunate beings, how many tears they have already shed, how many tears they will still shed! Ah, gentlemen of the jury, give them the means to console one another and to forget together.” 15

  Meg responded to the judge’s invitation to make a final statement by dissolving into tears. That was probably her best argument.

  In the French system of justice, a unanimous verdict was not required. Seven to five would be enough to convict; six to six would mean acquittal. However, when the jury deliberated till midnight without reaching a verdict, courtroom observers felt it a bad sign for Meg. De Valles asked them to continue their discussions. On three occasions they asked him to explain the penalties for different kinds of verdicts.

  At last, at 1:30 in the morning of November 14, the jurors filed into the courtroom. Despite the hour, many spectators had remained to hear the denouement of the drama, and they were not disappointed: the jury announced that it had found Meg not guilty of all charges. Amid the cheers, she fainted.

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  Meg escaped her notoriety by moving to England, but those who believed in her innocence, as well as those who argued for her guilt, continued to speculate on what really happened at the impasse Ronsin that murderous Saturday night in 1908. Her own memoirs, published in 1912, shed no further light on the crime.

  In 1925, however, a man whose credentials as a criminologist could not be questioned published his own reconstruction of the case. This was Dr. Edm
ond Locard, now director of the forensic laboratory at Lyons. His book Le crime et les criminels had a chapter on methods of strangulation, and he used the Steinheil case to show how one method (manual) might be mistaken for a second (using a cord). In doing so, Locard went much further than simply describing the causes of death of Steinheil and Mme. Japy — he reconstructed the case in such detail that people assumed he had access to hitherto secret sources.

  Locard portrayed Meg, in that phase of her life, as little better than a high-class streetwalker, saying that she picked up lovers at the Métro exits regularly, pretending to twist “her too-delicate ankle” when a wealthy-looking man came near. Accepting his gallant offer to see her home, she would lead him to the impasse Ronsin, where she made it clear that her husband would look the other way if a romance began. De Balincourt had testified at the trial that this was how he met Meg, and certainly she might have repeated the performance with others.

  Locard asked rhetorically, “Is it in this way, or by some intermediary, that one day she makes the acquaintance of an aristocratic foreigner?” 16 He suggested that Meg cultivated this mysterious figure and from time to time obtained money from him. One day, in need of more, Meg calls him to come to the house, but she is not “able to comply with his passionate demands. He feels that he has been duped. Fury. Clamour.” Then Steinheil “makes the mistake of poking his worried nose into the business,” 17 further arousing the suspicions of the aristocratic foreigner that this is a blackmail scheme. There is a scuffle, and the foreigner takes Steinheil by the throat, only to discover that the artist is even weaker than he looks. His larynx crushed, Steinheil falls to the floor, where the police find him later. As for Meg’s unfortunate mother, she investigates the noises she hears, and on seeing Steinheil’s body, she swallows her dentures, choking to death.