Wallbottle is the scene of Mary Ann's next activities. Here she made the acquaintance of a married man with a sick wife. His name was Frederick Cotton. Soon after he had met Mary Ann his wife died. She died of consumption, with no more trace of gastric fever than is usual in her disease. But two of Cotton's children died of intestinal inflammation not long after their mother, and their aunt, Cotton's sister, who kept house for him, was not long in her turn to sicken and die in a like manner.
The marriage which Mary Ann brought off with Frederick Cotton at Newcastle anticipated the birth of a son by a mere three months. With two of Cotton's children by his former marriage, and with the infant son, the pair went to live at West Auckland. Here Cotton died—and the three children—and a lodger by the curious name of Natrass.
Altogether Mary Ann, in the twenty years during which she had been moving in Cornwall and about the northeastern counties, had, as it ultimately transpired, done away with twenty-four persons. Nine of these were the fruit of her own loins. One of them was the mother who gave her birth. Retribution fell upon her through her twenty-fourth victim, Charles Edward Cotton, her infant child. His death created suspicion. The child, it was shown, was an obstacle to the marriage which she was already contemplating—her fifth marriage, and, most likely, bigamous at that. The doctor who had attended the child refused a death certificate. In post-mortem examination arsenic was found in the child's body. Cotton was arrested.
She was brought to trial in the early part of 1873 at Durham Assizes. As said already, she was found guilty and sentenced to death, the sentence being executed upon her in Durham Gaol in March of that year. Before she died she made the following remarkable statement: ``I have been a poisoner, but not intentionally.''
It is believed that she secured the poison from a vermicide in which arsenic was mixed with soft soap. One finds it hard to believe that she extracted the arsenic from the preparation (as she must have done before administering it, or otherwise it must have been its own emetic) unintentionally.
What advantage Mary Ann Cotton derived from her poisonings can have been but small, almost as small as that gained by Helene Jegado. Was it for social advancement that she murdered husbands and children? Was she a `climber' in that sphere of society in which she moved? One hesitates to think that passion swayed her in being rid of the infant obstacle to the fifth marriage of her contemplation. With her ``all o'er-teeming loins,'' this woman, Hecuba in no other particular, must have been a very sow were this her motive.
But I have come almost by accident on the word I need to compare Mary Ann Cotton with Jegado. The Bretonne, creeping about her native province leaving death in her track, with her piety, her hypocrisy, her enjoyment of her own cruelty, is sinister and repellent. But Mary Ann, moving from mate to mate and farrowing from each, then savaging both them and the litter, has a musty sowishness that the Bretonne misses. Both foul, yes. But we needn't, we islanders, do any Jingo business in setting Mary Ann against Helene.
VII: THE MERRY WIDOWS
Twenty years separate the cases of these two women, the length of France lies between the scenes in which they are placed: Mme Boursier, Paris, 1823; Mme Lacoste, Riguepeu, a small town in Gascony, 1844. I tie their cases together for reasons which cannot be apparent until both their stories are told—and which may not be so apparent even then. That is not to say I claim those reasons to be profound, recondite, or settled in the deeps of psychology. The matter is, I would not have you believe that I join their cases because of similarities that are superficial. My hope is that you will find, as I do, a linking which, while neither profound nor superficial, is curious at least. As I cannot see that the one case transcends the other in drama or interest, I take them chronologically, and begin with the Veuve Boursier:
At the corner of Rue de la Paix and Rue Neuve Saint-Augustine in 1823 there stood a boutique d'epiceries. It was a flourishing establishment, typical of the Paris of that time, and its proprietors were people of decent standing among their neighbours. More than the prosperous condition of their business, which was said to yield a profit of over 11,000 francs per annum, it was the happy and cheerful relationship existing between les epoux Boursier that made them of such good consideration in the district. The pair had been married for thirteen years, and their union had been blessed by five children.
Boursier, a middle-aged man of average height, but very stout of build and asthmatically short of neck, was recognized as a keen trader. He did most of his trading away from the house in the Rue de la Paix, and paid frequent visits, sometimes entire months in duration, to Le Havre and Bordeaux. It is nowhere suggested that those visits were made on any occasion other than that of business. M. Boursier spent his days away from the house, and his evenings with friends.
It does not anywhere appear that Mme Boursier objected to her husband's absenteeism. She was a capable woman, rather younger than her husband, and of somewhat better birth and education. She seems to have been content with, if she did not exclusively enjoy, having full charge of the business in the shop. Dark, white of tooth, not particularly pretty, this woman of thirty-six was, for her size, almost as stout as her husband. It is said that her manner was a trifle imperious, but that no doubt resulted from knowledge of her own capability, proved by the successful way in which she handled her business and family responsibilities.
The household, apart from Mme and M. Boursier, and counting those employed in the epicerie, consisted of the five children, Mme Boursier's aunt (the Veuve Flamand), two porters (Delonges and Beranger), Mlle Reine (the clerk), Halbout (the book-keeper), and the cook (Josephine Blin).
On the morning of the 28th of June, which would be a Sunday, Boursier was called by the cook to take his usual dejeuner, consisting of chicken broth with rice. He did not like the taste of it, but ate it. Within a little time he was violently sick, and became so ill that he had to go to bed. The doctor, who was called almost immediately, saw no cause for alarm, but prescribed mild remedies. As the day went on, however, the sickness increased in violence. Dr Bordot became anxious when he saw the patient again in the evening. He applied leeches and mustard poultices. Those ministrations failing to alleviate the sufferings ofthe invalid, Dr Bordot brought a colleague into consultation, but neither the new-comer, Dr Partra, nor himself could be positive in diagnosis. Something gastric, it was evident. They did what they could, though working, as it were, in the dark.
The patient was no better next day. As night came on he was worse than ever. A medical student named Toupie was enlisted as nurse and watcher, and sat with the sufferer through the night—but to no purpose. At four o'clock in the morning of the Tuesday, the 30th, there came a crisis in the illness of Boursier, and he died.
The grief exhibited by Mme Boursier, so suddenly widowed, was just what might have been expected in the circumstances from a woman of her station. She had lost a good-humoured companion, the father of her five children, and the man whose genius in trading had done so much to support her own activities for their mutual profit. The Veuve Boursier grieved in adequate fashion for the loss of her husband, but, being a capable woman and responsible for the direction of affairs, did not allow her grief to overwhelm her. The dead epicier was buried without much delay—the weather was hot, and he had been of gross habit—and the business at the corner of Rue de la Paix went on as near to usual as the loss of the `outside' partner would allow.
Rumour, meantime, had got to work. There were circumstances about the sudden death of Boursier which the busybodies of the environs felt they might regard as suspicious. For some time before the death of the epicier there had been hanging about the establishment a Greek called Kostolo. He was a manservant out of employ, and not, even on the surface, quite the sort of fellow that a respectable couple like the Boursiers might be expected to accept as a family friend. But such, no less, had been the Greek's position with the household. So much so that, although Kostolo had no money and apparently no prospects, Boursier himself had asked him to be godfather
to a niece. The epicier found the Greek amusing, and, on falling so suddenly ill, made no objection when Kostolo took it on himself to act as nurse, and to help in the preparing of drinks and medicines that were prescribed.
It is perhaps to the rather loud-mouthed habits of this Kostolo that the birth of suspicion among the neighbours may be attributed. On the death of Boursier he had remarked that the nails of the corpse were blue a colour, he said, which was almost a certain indication of poisoning. Now, the two doctors who had attended Boursier, having failed to account for his illness, were inclined to suspect poisoning as the cause of his death. For this reason they had suggested an autopsy, a suggestion rejected by the widow. Her rejection of the idea aroused no immediate suspicion of her in the minds of the doctors.
Kostolo, in addition to repeating outside the house his opinion regarding the blueness of the dead Boursier's nails, began, several days after the funeral, to brag to neighbours and friends of the warm relationship existing between himself and the widow. He dropped hints of a projected marriage. Upon this the neighbours took to remembering how quickly Kostolo's friendship with the Boursier family had sprung up, and how frequently he had visited the establishment. His nursing activities were remembered also. And it was noticed that his visits to the Boursier house still went on; it was whispered that he visited the Veuve Boursier in her bedroom.
The circumstances in which Boursier had fallen ill were well known. Nobody, least of all Mme Boursier or Kostolo, had taken any trouble to conceal them. Anybody who liked to ask either Mme Boursier or the Greek about the soup could have a detailed story at once. All the neighbourhood knew it. And since the Veuve Boursier's story is substantially the same as other versions it may as well be dealt with here and now.
M. Boursier, said his widow, tasted his soup that Sunday morning. ``What a taste!'' he said to the cook, Josephine. ``This rice is poisoned.'' ``But, monsieur,'' Josephine protested, ``that's amazing! The potage ought to be better than usual this morning, because I made a liaison for it with three egg-yolks!''
M. Boursier called his wife, and told her he couldn't eat his potage au riz. It was poisoned. Mme Boursier took a spoonful of it herself, she said, and saw nothing the matter with it. Whereupon her husband, saying that if it was all right he ought to eat it, took several spoonfuls more.
``The poor man,'' said his widow, ``always had a bad taste in his mouth, and he could not face his soup.'' Then, she explained, he became very sick, and brought up what little of the soup he had taken, together with flots de bile.
All this chatter of poison, particularly by Kostolo and the widow, together with the persistent rumours of an adulterous association between the pair, gave colour to suspicions of a criminal complicity, and these in process of time came to the ears of the officers of justice. The two doctors were summoned by the Procureur-General, who questioned them closely regarding Boursier's illness. To the mind of the official everything pointed to suspicion of the widow. Word of the growing suspicion against her reached Mme Boursier, and she now hastened to ask the magistrates for an exhumation and a post-mortem examination. This did not avert proceedings by the Procureur. It was already known that she had refused the autopsy suggested by the two doctors, and it was stated that she had hurried on the burial.
Kostolo and the Widow Boursier were called before the Juge d'instruction.
% II
There is about the Greek Kostolo so much gaudy impudence and barefaced roguery that, in spite of the fact that the main concern of these pages is with women, I am constrained to add his portrait to the sketches I have made in illustration. He is of the gallery in which are Jingle and Montague Tigg, with this difference—that he is rather more sordid than either.
Brought before the Procureur du Roi, he impudently confessed that he had been, and still was, Mme Boursier's lover. He told the judge that in the lifetime of her husband Mme Boursier had visited him in his rooms several times, and that she had given him money unknown to her husband.
Mme Boursier at first denied the adulterous intimacy with Kostolo, but the evidence in the hands of the Procureur was too much for her. She had partially to confess the truth of Kostolo's statement in this regard. She emphatically denied, however, that she had ever even thought of, let alone agreed to, marriage with the Greek. She swore that she had been intimate with Kostolo only once, and that, as far as giving him money was concerned, she had advanced him but one small sum on his IOU.
These confessions, together with the information which had come to him from other investigations, served to increase the feeling of the Procureur that Boursier's death called for probing. He issued an exhumation order, and on the 31st of July an autopsy on the body of Boursier was carried out by MM. Orfila and Gardy, doctors and professors of the Paris faculty of medicine. Their finding was that no trace existed of any disorders to which the death of Boursier might be attributed—such, for example, as cerebral congestion, rupture of the heart or of a larger vessel—but that, on the other hand, they had come upon a sufficiency of arsenic in the intestines to have caused death.
On the 2nd of August the same two professors, aided by a third, M. Barruel, carried out a further examination of the body. Their testimony is highly technical. It is also rather revolting. I am conscious that, dealing, as I have had to, with so much arsenical poisoning (the favourite weapon of the woman murderer), a gastric odour has been unavoidable in many of my pages—perhaps too many. For that reason I shall refrain from quoting either in the original French or in translation more than a small part of the professors' report. I shall, however, make a lay shot on the evidence it supplies. Boursier's interior generally was in foul condition, which is not to be explained by any ingestion of arsenic, but which suggests chronic and morbid pituitousness. The marvel is that the man's digestion functioned at all. This insanitary condition, however, was taken by the professors, as it were, in their stride. They concentrated on some slight traces of intestinal inflammation.
`` One observed,'' their report went on,
about the end of the ileum some grains of a whitish appearance and rather stubbornly attached. These grains, being removed, showed all the characteristics of white arsenic oxide. Put upon glowing charcoal they volatilized, giving off white smoke and a garlic odour. Treated with water, they dissolved, and the solution, when brought into contact with liquid hydrosulphuric acid, precipitated yellow sulphur of arsenic, particularly when one heated it and added a few drops of hydrochloric acid.
These facts (including, I suppose, the conditions I have hinted at) allowed them to conclude (a) that the stomach showed traces of inflammation, and (b) that the intestinal canal yielded a quantity of arsenic oxide sufficient to have produced that inflammation and to have caused death.
The question now was forward as to where the arsenic found in the body had come from. Inquiry established the fact that on the 15th of May, 1823—that is to say, several weeks before his death—Boursier had bought half a pound of arsenic for the purpose of destroying the rats in his shop cellars. In addition, he had bought prepared rat-poison. Only a part of those substances had been used. The remaining portions could not be found about the shop, nor could Mme Boursier make any suggestions for helping the search. She declared she had never seen any arsenic about the house at all.
There was, however, sufficient gravity in the evidences on hand to justify a definite indictment of Mme Boursier and Nicolas Kostolo, the first of having poisoned her husband, and the second of being accessory to the deed.
The pair were brought to trial on the 27th of November, 1823, before the Seine Assize Court, M. Hardouin presiding. The prosecution was conducted by the AvocatGeneral, M. de Broe. Maitre Couture defended Mme Boursier. Maitre Theo. Perrin appeared for Kostolo.
The case created great excitement, not only in Paris, but throughout the country. Another poisoning case had not long before this occupied the minds of the public very greatly—that of the hypocritical Castaing for the murder of Auguste Ballet. Indeed, there had bee
n a lot of poisoning going on in French society about this period. Political and religious controversy, moreover, was rife. The populace were in a mood either to praise extravagantly or just as extravagantly to condemn. It happened that rumour convinced them of the guilt of the Veuve Boursier and Kostolo, and the couple were condemned in advance. Such was the popular spite against Mme Boursier and Kostolo that, it is said, Maitre Couture at first refused the brief for the widow's defence. He had already made a success of his defence of a Mme Lavaillaut, accused of poisoning, and was much in demand in cases where women sought judicial separation from their husbands. People were calling him ``Providence for women.'' He did not want to be nicknamed ``Providence for poisoners.'' But Mme Boursier's case being more clearly presented to him he took up the brief.
The accused were brought into court.
Kostolo was about thirty years of age. He was tall, distinctly good-looking in an exotic sort of way, with his dark hair, complexion, and flashing eyes. He carried himself grandly, and was elegandy clad in a frac noir. Not quite, as Army men were supposed once to say, ``the clean potato, it was easy enough to see that women of a kind would be his ready victims. It was plain, in the court, that Master Nicolas thought himself the hero of the occasion.
There was none of this flamboyance about the Widow Boursier. She was dressed in complete mourning, and covered her face with a handkerchief. It was manifest that, in the phrase of the crime reporters, ``she felt her position keenly.'' The usual questions as to her name and condition she answered almost inaudibly, her voice choked with sobs.
Kostolo, on the contrary, replied in organ tones. He said that he was born in Constantinople, and that he had no estate.
The acte d'accusation was read. It set forth the facts of the adulterous association of the two accused, of the money lent by Mme Boursier to Kostolo, of their meetings, and all the suspicious circumstances previous to the death of the epicier.
She Stands Accused Page 17
