She Stands Accused

by She Stands Accused(Lit)

  Dr Guyot described the illness of the boy Albert and its result. He then went on to describe the illness of Mme Rabot. He and his confreres had attributed her sickness to the fact that she was enceinte, and to the effect of her child's death upon her while in that condition. A miscarriage of a distressing nature confirmed the first prognosis. But later he and his confreres saw reason to change their minds. He believed the boy had been poisoned, though he could not be certain. The mother, he was convinced, had been the victim of an attempt at poisoning, an opinion which found certainty in the case of Mme Briere. If Mme Rabot's pregnancy went some way in explaining her illness there was nothing of this in the illness of her mother. The explanation of everything was in repeated dosing of an arsenical substance.

  The witness had also attended Mme Roussell, of the Bout-du-Monde hotel. It was remarkable that the violent sickness to which this lady was subject for twenty days did not answer to treatment, but stopped only when she gave up taking food prepared for her by Helene Jegado.

  He had also looked after Perrotte Mace. Here also he had had doubts of the nature of the malady; at one time he had suspected pregnancy, a suspicion for which there were good grounds. But the symptoms that later developed were not consistent with the first diagnosis. When Perrotte died he and M. Revault, his confrere, thought the cause of death would be seen as poison in an autopsy. But the post-mortem was rejected by the parents. His feeling to-day was that Mme Roussell's paralysis was due to arsenical dosage, and that Perrotte had died of poisoning. Helene, speaking to him of Perrotte, had said, ``She's a chest subject. She'll never get better!'' And she had used the same phrase, ``never get better,'' with regard to little Rabot.

  M. Morio, the pharmacist of Rennes from whom the violet syrup was bought, said that Helene had often complained to him about Mme Roussell. During the illness of the Rabot boy she had said that the child was worse than anyone imagined, and that he would never recover. In the matter of the violet syrup he agreed it had come back to him looking red. The bottle had been put to one side, but its contents had been thrown away, and he had therefore been unable to experiment with it. He had found since, however, that arsenic in powder form did not turn violet syrup red, though possibly arsenic in solution with boiling water might produce the effect. The change seen in the syrup brought back from M. Rabot's was not to be accounted for by such fermentation as the mere warmth of the hand could bring about.

  Several witnesses, interrupted by denials and explanations from the accused, testified to having heard Helene say that neither the Rabot boy nor his mother would recover.

  The evidence of M. Roussell, of the Bout-du-Monde hotel, touched on the illnesses of his mother and Perrotte. He knew nothing of the food prepared by Helene; nor had the idea of poison occurred to him until her arrest. Helene's detestable character, her quarrels with other servants, and, above all, the thefts of wine he had found her out in were the sole causes of her dismissal. He had noticed that Helene never ate with the other domestics. She always found an excuse for not doing so. She said she had stomach trouble and could not hold down her food.

  The Veuve Roussell had to be helped into court by her son. She dealt with her own illness and with the death of Perrotte. Her illness did not come on until she had scolded Helene for her bad ways.

  Dr Revault, confrere of Guyot, regretted the failure to perform a post-mortem on the body of Perrotte. He had said to Roussell that if Perrotte's illness was analogous to cholera it was, nevertheless, not that disease. He believed it was due to a poison.

  The President: ``Chemical analysis has proved the presence of arsenic in the viscera of Perrotte. Who administered that arsenic, the existence of which was so shrewdly foreseen by the witness? Who gave her the arsenic? [To Helene] Do you know? Was it not you that gave it her, Helene?''

  At this Helene murmured something unintelligible, but, gathering her voice, she protested, ``I have never had arsenic in my hands, Monsieur le President—never!''

  Something of light relief was provided by Jean Andre, the cabinet-making ostler of Saint-Gilles, he for whose attention Helene had been a rival with Perrotte Mace.

  ``The service Helene gave was excellent. So was mine. She nursed Perrotte perfectly, but said it was in vain, because the doctors were mishandling the disease. She told me one day that she was tired of service, and that her one wish was to retire.''

  ``Did you attach a certain idea to the confidence about retiring?''

  ``No!'' Andre replied energetically.

  ``You were in hospital. When you came back, did Helene take good care of you?''

  ``She gave me bouillon every morning to build me up.''

  ``The bouillon she gave you did you no harm?''

  ``On the contrary, it did me a lot of good.''

  ``Wasn't the accused jealous of Perrotte—that good-looking girl who gave you so much of her favour?''

  ``In her life Perrotte was a good girl. She never was out of sorts for a moment—never rubbed one the wrong way.''

  ``Didn't Helene say to you that Perrotte would never recover?''

  ``Yes, she said that. `She's a lost woman,' she said; `the doctors are going the wrong way with the disease.'

  ``All the same,'' Andre went on, ``Helene never ate with us. She worked night and day, but ate in secret, I believe. Anyhow, a friend of mine told me he'd once seen her eating a crust of bread, and chewing some other sort of food at the same time. As for me—I don't know; but I don't think you can live without eating.''

  ``I couldn't keep down what I ate,'' Helene interposed. ``I took some bouillon here and there; sometimes a mouthful of bread—nothing in secret. I never thought of Andre in marriage—not him more than another. That was all a joke.''

  A number of witnesses, friends of Perrotte, who had seen her during her illness, spoke of the extreme dislike the girl had shown for Helene and for the liquids the latter prepared for her. Perrotte would say to Helene, ``But you're dirty, you ugly Bretonne!'' Perrotte had a horror of bouillon: ``Ah—these vegetable soups! I've had enough of them! It was what Helene gave me that night that made me ill!'' The witnesses did not understand all this, because the accused seemed to be very good to her fellow-servant. At the bedside Helene cried, ``Ah! What can I do that will save you, my poor Perrotte?'' When Perrotte was dying she wanted to ask Helene's pardon. Embracing the dying girl, the accused replied, ``Ah! There's no need for that, my poor Perrotte. I know you didn't mean anything.''

  A witness telling of soup Helene had made for Perrotte, which the girl declared to have been poisoned, it was asked what happened to the remainder of it. The President passed the question to Helene, who said she had thrown it into the hearth.

  % IV

  The most complete and important testimony in the trial was given by M. Theophile Bidard, professor to the law faculty of Rennes.

  The facts he had to bring forward, he said, had taken no significance in his mind until the last of them transpired. He would have to go back into the past to trace them in their proper order.

  He recalled the admission of Helene to his domestic staff and the good recommendations on which he had engaged her. From the first Helene proved herself to have plenty of intelligence, and he had believed that her intelligence was combined with goodness of heart. This was because he had heard that by her work she was supporting two small children, as well as her poor old mother, who had no other means of sustenance.

  (The reader will recollect that Helene was orphaned at the age of seven.)

  Nevertheless, said M. Bidard, Helene was not long in his household before her companion, Rose Tessier, began to suffer in plenty from the real character of Helene Jegado.

  Rose had had a fall, an accident which had left her with pains in her back. There were no very grave symptoms but Helene prognosticated dire results. One night, when the witness was absent in the country, Helene rose from her bed, and, approaching her fellow-servant's room, called several times in a sepulchral voice, ``Rose, Rose!'' That poor girl took fright, and h
id under the bedclothes, trembling.

  Next day Rose complained to witness, who took his domestics to task. Helene pretended it was the farm-boy who had perpetrated the bad joke. She then declared that she herself had heard some one give a loud knock. ``I thought,'' she said, ``that I was hearing the call for poor Rose.''

  On Sunday, the 3rd of November, 1850, M. Bidard, who had been in the country, returned to Rennes. After dinner that day, a meal which she had taken in common with Helene, Rose was seized with violent sickness. Helene lavished on her the most motherly attention. She made tea, and sat up the night with the invalid. In the morning, though she still felt ill, Rose got up. Helene made tea for her again. Rose once more was sick, violently, and her sickness endured until the witness himself had administered copious draughts of tea prepared by himself. Rose passed a fairly good night, and Dr Pinault, who was called in, saw nothing more in the sickness than some nervous affection. But on the day of the 5th the vomitings returned. Helene exclaimed, ``The doctors do not understand the disease. Rose is going to die!'' The prediction seemed foolish as far as immediate appearances were concemed, for Rose had an excellent pulse and no trace of fever.

  In the night between Tuesday and Wednesday the patient was calm, but on the morning of Wednesday she had vomitings with intense stomach pains. From this time on, said the witness, the life of Rose, which was to last only thirty-six hours, was nothing but a long-drawn and heart-rending cry of agony. She drew her last breath on the Thursday evening at half-past five. During her whole illness, added M. Bidard, Rose was attended by none save Helene and himself.

  Rose's mother came. In Rose the poor woman had lost a beloved child and her sole support. She was prostrated. Helene's grief seemed to equal the mother's. Tears were ever in her eyes, and her voice trembled. Her expressions of regret almost seemed to be exaggerated.

  There was a moment when the witness had his doubts. It was on the way back from the cemetery. For a fleeting instant he thought that the shaking of Helene's body was more from glee than sorrow, and he momentarily accused her in his mind of hypocrisy. But in the following days Helene did nothing but talk of ``that poor Rose,'' and M. Bidard, before her persistence, could only believe he had been mistaken. ``Ah!'' Helene said. ``I loved her as I did that poor girl who died in the Bout-du-Monde.''

  The witness wanted to find some one to take Rose's place. Helene tried to dissuade him. ``Never mind another femme de chambre,'' she said. ``I will do everything.'' M. Bidard contented himself with engaging another girl, Francoise Huriaux, strong neither in intelligence nor will, but nevertheless a sweet little creature. Not many days passed before Helene began to make the girl unhappy. ``It's a lazy-bones,'' Helene told the witness. ``She does not earn her keep.'' (``Le pain qu'elle mange, elle le vole.'') M. Bidard shut her up. That was his affair, he said.

  Francoise meantime conceived a fear of Helene. She was so scared of the older woman that she obeyed all her orders without resistance. The witness, going into the kitchen one day, found Helene eating her soup at one end of the table, while Francoise dealt with hers at the other extreme. He told Helene that in future she was to serve the repast in common, on a tablecloth, and that it was to include dessert from his table. This order seemed to vex Helene extremely. ``That girl seems to live without eating,'' she said, ``and she never seems to sleep.''

  One day the witness noticed that the hands and face of Francoise were puffy. He spoke to Helene about it, who became angry. She accused her companion of getting up in the night to make tea, so wasting the sugar, and she swore she would lock the sugar up. M. Bidard told her to do nothing of the sort. He said if Francoise had need of sugar she was to have it. ``All right—I see,'' Helene replied sullenly, obviously put out.

  The swelling M. Bidard had seen in the face and hands of Francoise attacked her legs, and all service became impossible for the girl. The witness was obliged to entrust Helene with the job of finding another chambermaid. It was then that she brought Rosalie Sarrazin to him. ``A very good girl,'' she said. `` If her dress is poor it is because she gives everything to her mother.''

  The words, M. Bidard commented, were said by Helene with remarkable sincerity. It was said that Helene had no moral sense. It seemed to him, from her expressions regarding that poor girl, who, like herself, devoted herself to her mother, that Helene was far from lacking in that quality.

  Engaging Rosalie, the witness said to his new domestic, ``You will find yourself dealing with a difficult companion. Do not let her be insolent to you. You must assert yourself from the start. I do not want Helene to rule you as she ruled Francoise.'' At the same time he repeated his order regarding the service of the kitchen meals. Helene manifested a sullen opposition. ``Who ever heard of tablecloths for the servants?'' she said. ``It is ridiculous!''

  In the first days the tenderness between Helene and the new girl was quite touching. But circumstance arose to end the harmony. Rosalie could write. On the 23rd of May the witness told Helene that he would like her to give him an account of expenses. The request made Helene angry, and increased her spite against the more educated Rosalie. Helene attempting to order Rosalie about, the latter laughingly told her, ``M. Bidard pays me to obey him. If I have to obey you also you'll have to pay me too.'' From that time Helene conceived an aversion from the girl.

  About the time when Helene began to be sour to Rosalie she herself was seized by vomitings. She complained to Mlle Bidard, a cousin of the witness, that Rosalie neglected her. But when the latter went up to her room Helene yelled at her, `` Get out, you ugly brute! In you I've brought into the house a stick for my own back!''

  This sort of quarrelling went on without ceasing. At the beginning of June the witness said to Helene, ``If this continues you'll have to look for another place.'' ``That's it!'' Helene yelled, in reply. ``Because of that girl I'll have to go!''

  On the 10th of June M. Bidard gave Helene definite notice. It was to take effect on St John's Day. At his evening meal he was served with a roast and some green peas. These last he did not touch. In spite of his prohibition against her serving at table, it was Helene who brought the peas in. ``How's this?'' she said to him. ``You haven't eaten your green peas—and them so good!'' Saying this, she snatched up the dish and carried it to the kitchen. Rosalie ate some of the peas. No sooner had she taken a few spoonfuls, however, than she grew sick, and presently was seized by vomiting. Helene took no supper. She said she was out of sorts and wanted none.

  The witness did not hear of these facts until next day. He wanted to see the remainder of the peas, but they could not be found. Rosalie still kept being sick, and he bade her go and see his doctor, M. Boudin. Helene, on a sudden amiable to Rosalie where she had been sulky, offered to go with her. Dr Boudin prescribed an emetic, which produced good effects.

  On the 15th of June Rosalie seemed to have recovered. In the meantime a cook presented herself at his house to be engaged in place of Helene. The latter was acquainted with the new-comer. A vegetable soup had been prescribed for Rosalie, and this Helene prepared. The convalescent ate some, and at once fell prey to violent sickness. That same day Helene came in search of the witness. ``You're never going to dismiss me for that young girl?'' she demanded angrily. M. Bidard relented. He said that if she would promise to keep the peace with Rosalie he would let her stay on. Helene seemed to be satisfied, and behaved better to Rosalie, who began to mend again.

  M. Bidard went into the country on the 21st of June, taking Rosalie with him. They returned on the 22nd. The witness himself went to the pharmacy to get a final purgative of Epsom salts, which had been ordered for Rosalie by the doctor. This the witness himself divided into three portions, each of which he dissolved in separate glasses of whey prepared by Helene. The witness administered the first dose. Helene gave the last. The invalid vomited it. She was extremely ill on the night of the 22nd-23rd, and Helene returned to misgivings about the skill of the doctors. She kept repeating, ``Ah! Rosalie will die! I tell you she will die!'' On the day of t
he 23rd she openly railed against them. M. Boudin had prescribed leeches and blisters. ``Look at that now, monsieur,'' Helene said to the witness. ``To-morrow's Rosalie's name-day, and they're going to put leeches on her!'' Rather disturbed, M. Bidard wrote to Dr Pinault, who came next day and gave the treatment his approval.

  Dr Boudin had said the invalid might have gooseberry syrup with seltzer water. Two glasses of the mixture given to Rosalie by her mother seemed to do the girl good, but after the third glass she did not want any more. Helene had given her this third glass. The invalid said to the witness, ``I don't know what Helene has put into my drink, but it burns me like red-hot iron.''

  ``Struck by those symptoms,'' added M. Bidard, ``I questioned Helene at once. It has not been given me more than twice in my life to see Helene's eyes. I saw at that moment the look she flung at Rosalie. It was the look of a wild beast, a tiger-cat. At that moment my impulse was to go to my work-room for a cord, and to tie her up and drag her to the justiciary. But one reflection stopped me. What was this I was about to do—disgrace a woman on a mere suspicion? I hesitated. I did not know whether I had before me a poisoner or a woman of admirable devotion.''

  The witness enlarged on the tortures of mind he experienced during the night, but said he found reason to congratulate himself on not having given way to his first impulse. On the morning of the 24th Helene came running to him, all happiness, to say that Rosalie was better.

  Three days later Rosalie seemed to be nearly well, so much so that M. Bidard felt he might safely go into the country. Next day, however, he was shocked by the news that Rosalie was as ill as ever. He hastened to return to Rennes.

  On the night of the 28th-29th the sickness continued with intensity. Every two hours the invalid was given calming medicine prescribed by Dr Boudin. Each time the sickness redoubled in violence. Believing it was a case of worms, the witness got out of bed, and substituted for the medicine a strong infusion of garlic. This stopped the sickness temporarily. At six in the morning it began again.