The Poisoning Angel

by Jean Teulé

  Some people in the public seats creased up at this. The judge intervened. ‘Come now, Prosecutor Guillou du Bodan! A little professional courtesy …’

  Under his breath the journalist was composing the title of his first article: Little lamb of an advocate to be gobbled up by big bad wolf prosecutor. The sculptor was spreading out the edges of his clay mound with a boasting chisel to produce a rough outline of his model, seated across the courtroom, while an usher solemnly read out the indictment so people had a better idea of the case being put against her.

  ‘The crime of having administered poison to five people who have died in Rennes, namely Albert Rabot, Joseph Ozanne, Perrotte Macé, Rose Tessier, Rosalie Sarrazin. Also thirty-two fatal poisonings in Morbihan.’

  ‘Not counting those that have gone unnoticed by the law!’ thundered Guillou du Bodan. ‘Because, gentlemen of the jury, be in no doubt that she has committed many more. We have here the longest female career ever in the history of murder. So we should leave no gravestone unturned and open every coffin lid we come across on her trail of death,’ he insisted, in the bullish manner common to all prosecutors, which in him had been boiled down to its most concentrated form.

  ‘Those cases in Morbihan known to us are covered by the period of prescription …’ ventured Magloire Dorange.

  ‘We should mention them none the less, even if it grieves you, my little friend … and submit to most stringent examination the entire past of your client, who is the single most criminal being ever seen on this earth … and a thief as well!’

  ‘Oh, stealing a table napkin, a silk cord and a few handkerchiefs,’ countered the defence, putting things in perspective.

  As she listened to what was being said about her, Thunderflower, more buttoned up than a priest’s cassock, drew her whole hood down over her face. The judge made the two police on either side of her turn it back down on to her back and shoulders. The sculptor thought it a good idea; he could see her features better like this. ‘It’s funny the way her cloche hat gives her donkey ears to the sides.’

  His modelling spatulas – a round spoon here, a sharp point there, loop-ended tools with boxwood handles – twirled between the artist’s deft fingertips as he dug more deeply into his material, while President Boucly recounted the misdemeanours of Thunderflower’s terrible life, his lengthy sighs mingling with his slow narration.

  ‘Stomach troubles, vomiting, pains in the arms, swelling of the belly and the feet … exhumations that everywhere reveal the presence of arsenic in the corpses … A horrendous series of crimes committed with a cold-bloodedness, a daring, and a perversity that are truly terrifying … Anna Éveno, Louis Toursaint, Julie Toursaint, Jeanne Toursaint, Catherine Hétel, Émile Jouanno …’

  ‘Oh, gracious, another one! And to think that’s not the last …’ said Thunderflower wearily, putting her right hand through the opening in her cloak and pressing it under her left breast.

  The sculptor appreciated the gesture from an aesthetic point of view, and added more clay to form the clenched hand, which now rested in front of the abdomen. Boucly interrupted his chilling list to whisper to his two counsellors, ‘Morvonnais and Delfaut, I note that she frequently touches her chest with a look of pain. What’s the matter?’

  ‘Didn’t you see it in the case file, President? The examining magistrate also noticed this gesture and had her looked at by a doctor. She’s suffering from a sudden malignant tumour in the left breast.’

  ‘Ah? So she’ll …’

  Delfaut gave a grim smile. ‘That’s not what will kill her, President. You know that quite well. Proceed with reading the list.’

  ‘Jacques Kerallic, Denise Aupy …’ Boucly added. ‘Even if just in these instances, what have you, the accused, got to say in your defence?’

  The tough old bird gave no answer. She remained sombre and silent, with her gaze like an owl’s. A big red-faced man sitting in the public gallery was annoyed by this and advised loudly, ‘If she persists in playing mute, too bad, stick a ladder in her belly and maybe that will open her mouth at the same time!’

  Thunderflower lifted her eyes towards the speaker. Wasn’t it a shame to see him alive and well? She looked at him, eyes glinting, as an animal watches its prey. The smile she gave him was an invitation to death. The sculptor noticed the tips of her teeth between her lips. The journalist scribbled about the palpable suspense. The modeller worked the clay. While he was forming the outlines of the bonnet, a phrenologist took the stand to describe the shape of the accused’s head.

  ‘Observe the sunken forehead, which gets broader from the base to the top, and the way the temples jut out. Well, I can state that inside such a skull the vertex has a perpendicular cut; the sinciput and the occiput must meet at right angles.’

  ‘Where I’m concerned, the inside of the skull is just Breton clay,’ joked the sculptor, starting on the facial features as the phrenologist, whose language could be abstruse on occasion, continued according to the pseudo-science much in vogue at the time.

  ‘Hélène’s facial features – the shape of the nose, the eyelids and the lips – are also indicative of an insensitive cerebral organisation, telling us she would destroy anything with equal indifference and no regret – a piece of wood, an animal, a human, anything you care to name. Never will you see the least emotion on a face shaped like this.’

  ‘Right, who is the next witness?’ President Boucly asked his assessors. Beneath the sharpness of a questioning eyebrow there was a dull and weary look in his eyes. ‘We’re rather short of witnesses from Morbihan as most of them were also victims. We had got to the village of Hennebont. Next came Lorient and the highly suspicious death of Madame Verron. Show the widower Matthieu Verron to the stand.’

  On hearing the name – the first name, Matthieu, in particular – Thunderflower felt a tingling in her head. Her soul was plunged into despair. When Matthieu took his place before the jury, still as handsome despite the passage of time, in his white collarless shirt and gilt-buttoned waistcoat, she looked at him only surreptitiously, head bowed, and a torrent of tears falling from her eyes. Her nose sniffed. Her lips trembled (which suggested that phrenology wasn’t all it was cracked up to be).

  ‘It’s only conjunctivitis. It’s very common in December!’ said the phrenologist, who had gone back to sit among members of the public, surprised at seeing the emotion on the face of the accused.

  ‘Monsieur Verron, do you remember Hélène?’ asked the judge.

  ‘I remember her as if she were a name carved into tree bark. My memory of her is ever more deeply embedded within me.’

  ‘Of course! After what she did to you …’ Guillou du Bodan inferred.

  ‘Yes, Monsieur le procureur, after what she did to me: with me, she opened a lock like a thief.’

  ‘Ah, what did I say to the defence just now?’ crowed Guillou du Bodan. ‘What did she steal from you?’

  ‘Something that was beating for her here, inside my shirt.’

  ‘Go on,’ requested the advocate gently, standing again.

  Thunderflower lifted her right hand to her heart.

  ‘If I could have my time again, I would like to meet Hélène once more. At my house, she had occasional spells of joy interspersed with lengthy periods of despair that had no apparent cause. When I was out of mourning, I once mentioned a plan concerning the two of us, and she burst out laughing. “You must be mad!” she said, with little peals of laughter, then the very next morning she deserted me without a word, leaving me alone with …’

  ‘… an awful stomach ache, swollen limbs, which we can imagine, but from which you miraculously recovered,’ the judge sympathised.

  ‘It was she who must have been ill, and believed she was going to die, that poor creature I so longed to cradle in my arms, the way you waken a little girl from a nightmare.’

  The crowd on the benches could not believe what they were hearing. ‘The wife’s poisoner became the husband’s lady friend?’ People who were unable
to admit that agile love is able to grow even on a necklace of wretchedness like Thunderflower’s life showed their anger in shouts, oaths and gnashing of teeth. ‘The dead are lying under the ground and people are dancing on their graves!’ The journalist whistled through his teeth: ‘What a coup de théâtre, and what a scoop this will be for me!’ The sculptor was using a sponge to smooth the wide creases of the dress and shoes below the hem of the cloak, but went back to the face to try to render the distress in the serial killer’s absent look. The prosecutor was speechless (which was fairly rare). The young advocate with the Romantic hair considered it unnecessary to say anything more. The journalist was already writing the article that would cause a sensation. The judge decided: ‘Right, that’s enough for today. The hearing is adjourned. Let’s hope that by tomorrow everyone will have recovered their wits …’

  The crowd began to disperse. The men went outside to smoke their pipes. As if she had granite legs in sand stockings the accused remained seated, motionless and glorious for ever, like her miniature replica made of red clay mixed with iron oxide on the sculptor’s base. He was spreading out a damp sheet, intending to wrap his work in it to prevent it from drying out and cracking, when the reporter on Le Conciliateur asked again, ‘But really, what are you going to do with that?’

  ‘I have the next eight days of the trial to make as many plaster copies from this as I can. After the verdict I’m going to sell them outside the courts, among the people selling newspapers and holy dust and the singers’ handbills.’

  ‘Are you mad? Do you really believe there are human beings who will want to own a statue of Hélène Jégado?’

  Through the glass of a little window behind the enthralled spectators, yells from outside could occasionally be heard in the courtroom.

  ‘Le Conciliateur for Saturday 13 December 1851, the second-to-last day of the trial! Le Conciliateur!’

  ‘Put her to death, she’s a madwoman, she’s sick!’

  ‘The only cure for her is the guillotine in Place du Champ-de-Mars!’

  ‘Cheleuet-hui a Youang! La, la, la … La, la!’

  ‘She’s not human!’

  After a week of testimony from experts and witnesses, and of stubborn silence on the part of Thunderflower, the shouts of the crowd still gathered outside the courts filled the pauses, complete with sweeping and dramatic gestures, of the prosecutor general who, at almost six in the evening, was coming to the end of his vehement closing speech.

  ‘In short, as I have just demonstrated to you, gentlemen of the jury, from her earliest years Hélène Jégado has preferred to follow the path of evil. Like each of us she has made her choice. She must therefore bear the full weight of guilt for her deeds.’

  He flourished his gown artistically, creating spectacular black billows before stretching an arm towards Thunderflower like a lightning bolt and thundering, ‘Expertly grilling and boiling her lethal concoctions in the malevolent furnace of her kitchen, Hélène was wicked from an early age. All her life she has followed the path of crime with a resolute step. Everything thus destines her for the devastating rigours of justice! Finally, before I sit down, I want to address you personally, Hélène. It might still be possible to do something for you if you were prepared now to express repentance.’

  ‘Repentance? I don’t know that word,’ Thunderflower apologised.

  One of the two gendarmes flanking her translated into Bas-Breton, ‘Morc’hed.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said with a nod, and remained silent.

  ‘Have you nothing to say, Hélène? You won’t give us an expression of regret? Then I have nothing more to add.’

  What a performance from Guillou du Bodan. The public was won over. The defence had its work cut out. When his turn came to take the floor, the young advocate caught everyone by surprise.

  ‘Gentlemen of the jury, I have no desire to refute one by one the charges you have just heard from the prosecutor. Not only do I accept them all, but I think he has omitted many and I would have applauded if he had charged my evil client with yet more shameful deeds and crimes. For she is a monster!’

  What a way to start a closing speech for the defence! There was stupefaction amongst the listeners. One man asked his neighbour for confirmation: ‘Who’s speaking now, the defence?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shit, you’d be justified in wondering if he’s in the right job. The cook won’t be getting off.’

  Guillou du Bodan was still reeling from Magloire Dorange’s opening words, as the defence advocate continued amidst the stunned silence he had caused to descend on the court.

  ‘Listen, gentlemen of the jury! Listen! Do you hear what they’re shouting outside the courts? Listen carefully.’

  The jurors strained their ears and heard, through the little closed window, distant shouts like ‘Old peasant slut!’, ‘Fat bitch from the sticks’, ‘She’s not human.’

  ‘Do you hear?’ continued the advocate. ‘She’s not human! There speaks the voice of public opinion, as well as the defence here before you this late afternoon. Yes, my client is not human and cannot then be condemned as a human being would be.’

  ‘Not bad,’ was the prosecutor’s professional opinion, as he spotted the cunning angle of attack of his inspired young colleague with the Romantic hair, who continued, pointing to the accused in his turn.

  ‘We have here a monster, a phenomenon no less exceptional than the Cyclops or legendary creatures, half man, half tiger. Look at her! Just look at my monstrous client!’

  Magloire Dorange had turned into someone exhibiting a bear or a five-legged sheep at the fair. It was as if, at any moment, he would drum up the crowds with his patter: ‘Roll up to see the woman with three heads who can jump five metres – but since her cage is only a metre long she’ll do five jumps in succession.’ He astonished the court by undermining Thunderflower much more than the prosecutor had done.

  ‘Hélène’s acts of poisoning are without reason or motive. She poisons people, that’s all. She would poison you with arsenic, Monsieur le président and Monsieur le procureur, and she would bake me a little cake as well, even though I’m here to defend her. She kills whoever she comes across. It’s a curse. She is no longer a human being. To we who are, she is unfathomable, beyond all understanding. She’s a mystery like certain natural phenomena. Gentlemen of the jury, could you pass judgement on the wind, the rain, the snow, the tides, the fairies and korrigans of ancestral legends told on the moors of Basse-Bretagne? Would you give your opinion on the galaxies? And night, day, eclipses, what do you think of them? Are they to be condemned or pardoned?’

  The young advocate, with sweeping gestures and wide eyes as if he were in a trance, was improvising for all he was worth.

  ‘My client’s name is on everyone’s lips, and no one can remember anyone to compare with her. The name of Brinvilliers has been mentioned, but only to add that Hélène Jégado stands head and shoulders above that famous female poisoner. So I have had no difficulty in understanding why, after lengthy consideration of the case in hand, the most learned specialists at the bar have reached the same conclusion. “There’s a problem here, some mystery …”’

  As if under hypnosis, he went on, ‘Who, which writer might one day be able to tell us the relationship responsible for her crimes? Who will be able to lay bare the consequent logic that has determined Hélène’s entire life? For my part, I remain confounded and shall not attempt to stutter some explanation that would satisfy no one. But how can we avoid imagining that when she was very young she suffered a deep mental disturbance, some disruption of the brain, which brought with it a phenomenal lack of sense of responsibility? And that from then on she made her way through life, all alone, as if she had a scythe, to become a figure of terror? For her, our moral compass does not exist. My client, a member of the human race? Be careful, for that is a calumny against humanity.’

  From outside, where the night was taking the air, the crowd could see through the little window as the advocat
e waved his arms like a man drowning in the sea.

  ‘I believe there are creatures for whom there exists, above human justice, a different truth. Beings made like this go directly towards their goal without concerning themselves with obstacles. When Hélène, who has committed countless crimes, cannot kill people, she attacks clothes, or books, as she did at the convent in Auray. And when she can no longer harm people or things, she turns on herself. Because know, gentlemen of the jury, that since her arrest Hélène has developed a terrifying illness in her chest, one that spares no one. She will die of it, because she has to kill.’

  Thunderflower – reviled by everyone – listened in a state of languid indifference. She drifted into sleep, one hand pressed to her heart, while the young advocate, dripping with sweat, was getting worked up on her behalf.

  ‘Ah, what am I doing at this moment? Rather than asking you to spare her life, should I not be begging you to take it? For Hélène, your pitiless verdict would mean deliverance from the terrible physical sufferings to come. But no, gentlemen of the jury, you will not do this because you are not murderers! Patiently, obstinately and ceaselessly, Hélène has destined to death all those with whom she has come into contact. Her extraordinary perversity is a madness, but if it is legitimate to protect oneself from a madwoman, is it right to punish her?’

  Shaking their heads from side to side, certain jurors did indeed seem to be asking themselves whether … and then Magloire Dorange hammered home his point.

  ‘Make a distinction between the fate you have in store for Hélène and that which you would inflict on a criminal possessed of all his faculties. And then will you hesitate between a dungeon door closing for ever on a curse, and the executioner who kills in public to teach people that they must not kill?’

  The argument hit its mark. The advocate concluded, ‘The prosecutor asks Hélène to repent. All well and good, but we must allow her time for that. Repentance will not be born quickly in her soul. You know that. Therefore it is in the name of justice that I entreat you to grant her the benefit of extenuating circumstances. Mercy for her soul!’