She Stands Accused

by She Stands Accused(Lit)

  Lespere then repeated his story of the complaints made to him by Lacoste of his wife's conduct, of his intention of altering his will, and of his belief that Euphemie was capable of poisoning him in order to get a younger man. It was plain that this witness, a friend of Lacoste's for forty-six years, was not ready to make any admissions in her favour. He swore that Lacoste had told him his wife did not know she was his sole heir. He was allowed to say that on the death of Lacoste he had immediately assumed that the poisoning feared by Lacoste had been brought about. He had heard nothing from Lacoste of secret maladies or secret remedies, but had been so deep in Lacoste's confidence that he felt sure his old friend would have mentioned them. He had heard of such things only at the beginning of the case.

  The Procureur du Roi remarked here that reliance on the secret remedies was the `system' of the defence.

  That seemed to be the case. The `system' of the prosecution, on the other hand, was to snatch at anything likely to appear as evidence against the two accused. The points mainly at issue were as follows:

  (1) Did Meilhan have a chance of giving Lacoste a drink at the fair?

  (2) Did Lacoste become violently sick immediately on his return from the fair?

  (3) Did Lacoste suffer from the ailments attributed to him by his wife, and was he in the habit of dosing himself?

  (4) Did Meilhan receive money from Mme Lacoste, and, particularly, did she propose to allow him the supposed annuity?

  With regard to (1), several witnesses declared that Lacoste had complained to them of feeling ill after drinking with Meilhan, but none could speak of seeing the two men together. M. Mothe, the friend cited by Meilhan, less positive in his evidence in court than the acte d'accusation made him out to be, could not remember if it was on the 16th of May that he had spent the whole afternoon with Meilhan. It was so much his habit to be with Meilhan during the days of the fair that he had no distinct recollection of any of them. Another witness, having business with Lacoste, declared that on the day in question it was impossible for Meilhan to have been alone with Lacoste during the time that the latter was supposed to have taken the poisoned drink. Lescure, in whose auberge Lacoste was supposed to have had the drink, failed to remember such an incident. The evidence that Meilhan had given Lacoste the drink was all second-hand; that to the contrary was definite.

  For the most part the evidence with regard to (2), that Lacoste became very ill immediately on his return from the fair, was hearsay. The servants belonging to the Lacoste household all maintained that the vomiting did not seize the old man until the night of Wednesday-Thursday. Indeed, two witnesses testified that the old man, in spite of his supposed headache, essayed to show them how well he could dance. This was on his return from the fair where he was supposed to have been given a poisoned drink at three o'clock. The evidence regarding the seclusion of Lacoste by his wife was contradictory, but the most direct of it maintained that it was the old man himself, if anyone, who wanted to be left alone. On this point arises the question of the delay in calling the doctor. Witness after witness testified to Lacoste's hatred of the medical faculty and to his preference for dosing himself. He declared his faith in a local vet.

  On (3), the bulk of the evidence against Lacoste's having the suggested afflictions came simply from witnesses who had not heard of them. There was, on the contrary, quite a number of witnesses to declare that Lacoste did suffer from a skin disease, and that he was in the habit of using quack remedies, the stronger the better. It was also testified that Lacoste was in the habit of prescribing his remedies for other people. A witness declared that a woman to whom Lacoste had given medicine for an indisposition had become crippled, and still was crippled.

  With regard to (4), the Mayor merely repeated the evidence given in his first statement, but the cure', who also saw the deed assigning an annuity to Meilhan, said that it was not in Mme Lacoste's writing, and that it was signed with the unusual ``Euphemie.'' This last witness added that Mme Lacoste's reputation was irreproachable, and that her relations with her husband were happy.

  Evidence from a business-man in Tarbes showed that Mme Lacoste's handling of her fortune was careful to a degree, her expenditure being well within her income. This witness also proved that the Fourcades' evidence of Euphemie's misbehaviour could have been dictated from spite. Fourcade had been found out in what looked like a swindle over money which he owed to the Lacoste estate.

  The court then went more deeply into the medico-legal evidence. It were tedious to follow the course of this long argument. After a lengthy dissertation on the progress of an acute indigestion and the effects of a strangulated hernia M. Devergie said that, as the poison existed in the body, from the symptoms shown in the illness it could be assumed that death had resulted from arsenic. The duration of the illness was in accord with the amount of arsenic found.

  M. Flandin agreed with this, but M. Pelouze abstained from expressing an opinion. He, however, rather gave the show away, by saying that if he was a doctor he would take care to forbid any arsenical preparations. ``These preparations,'' he said moodily, ``can introduce a melancholy obscurity into the investigations of criminal justice.''

  Some sense was brought into the discussion by Dr Molas, of Auch. He put forward the then accepted idea of the accumulation of arsenic taken in small doses, and the power of this accumulation, on the least accident, of determining death.

  This was rather like chucking a monkey-wrench into the cerebration machinery of the Paris experts. They admitted that the absorption and elimination of arsenic varied with the individual, and generally handed the case over to the defence. M. Devergie was the only one who stuck out, but only partially even then. ``I persist in believing,'' he said, `` that M. Lacoste succumbed to poisoning by arsenic; but I use the word `poisoning' only from the point of view of science: arsenic killed him.''

  % VII

  The speech of the Procureur du Roi was another resume of the acte d'accusation, with consideration of that part of the evidence which suited him best.

  This was followed by the speech of Maitre Canteloup in defence of Meilhan. The speech was a good effort which demonstrated that, whatever rumour might accuse the schoolmaster of, there were plenty of people of standing who had found him upright and free from stain through a long life. It reproached the accusation with jugglery over dates and so forth in support of its case, and confidently predicted the acquittal of Meilhan.

  Then followed the speech of Maitre Alem-Rousseau on behalf of the Veuve Lacoste. Among other things the advocate brought forward the fact that Euphemie was not so poorly born as the prosecution had made out, but that she had every chance of inheriting some 20,000 francs from her parents. It was notorious that when Henri Lacoste first broached the subject of marriage with Euphemie he was not so rich as he afterwards became, but, in fact, believed he had lost the inheritance from his brother Philibert, this last having made a will in favour of a young man of whom popular rumour made him the father. This was in 1839. The marriage was celebrated in May of 1841. Henri Lacoste, it is true, had hidden his intentions, but when news of the marriage reached the ears of brother Philibert that brother was so delighted that he destroyed the will which disinherited Henri. It was thus right to say that Euphemie became the benefactor of her husband. Where was the speculative marriage on the part of Euphemie that the prosecution talked about?

  Maitre Alem-Rousseau made short work of the medico-legal evidence (he had little bother with the facts of the illness). Poison was found in the body. The question was, how had it got there? Was it quite certain that arsenic could not get into the human body save by ingestion, that it could not exist in the human body normally? The science of the day said no, he knew, but the science of yesterday had said yes. Who knew what the science of to-morrow would say?

  The advocate made use of the evidence of a witness whose testimony I have failed to find in the accounts of the trial. This witness spoke of Lacoste's having asked, in Bordeaux, for a certain liquor of ``Sai
nt-Louis,'' a liquor which Mme Lacoste took to be an anisette. ``No,'' said Lacoste, ``women don't take it.'' Maitre Alem-Rousseau had tried to discover what this liquor of Saint-Louis was. During the trial he had come upon the fact that the arsenical preparation known as Fowler's solution had been administered for the first time in the hospital of Saint-Louis, in Paris. He showed an issue of the Hospital Gazette in which the advertisement could be read: ``Solution de Fowler telle qu'on l'administre a SAINT-LOUIS!'' The jury could make what they liked of that fact.

  The advocate now produced documents to prove that the marriage of Euphemie with her grand-uncle had not been so much to her advantage, but had been—it must have been—a marriage of affection. At the time when the marriage was arranged, he proved, Lacoste had no more than 35,000 francs to his name. Euphemie had 15,000 francs on her marriage and the hope of 20,000 francs more. The pretence of the prosecution, that her contentment with the abject duties which she had to perform in the house was dictated by interest, fell to the ground with the preliminary assumption that she had married for her husband's money.

  Maitre Alem, defending the widow's gayish conduct after her husband's death, declared it to be natural enough. It had been shown to be innocent. He trounced the Press for helping to exaggerate the rumours which envy of Mme Lacoste's good fortune had created. He asked the jury to acquit Mme Lacoste.

  The Procureur du Roi had another say. It was again an attempt to destroy the `system' of the defence, but by making a mystery of the fact that the Lacoste-Verges marriage had not taken place in a church he gave the wily Maitre Alem an opportunity for following him.

  The summing-up of the President on the third day of the trial was, it is said, a model of clarity and impartiality. The jury returned on all the points put to them a verdict of ``Not guilty'' for both the accused.

  % VIII

  Another verdict may now seem to have been hardly possible. The accusation was built up on the jealousy of neighbours, on chance circumstances, on testimonies founded on petty spite. But, combined with the medico-legal evidence, the weight of circumstance might easily have hoisted the accused in the balance.

  It will be seen, then, how much on foot the case of the Veuve Lacoste was with that of the Veuve Boursier, twenty years before.

  It is on the experience of cases such as these two that the technique of investigation into arsenical poison has been evolved. In the case of Veuve Boursier you find M. Orfila discovering oxide of arsenic where M. Barruel saw only grains of fat. Four years previous to the case of the Veuve Lacoste that same Orfila came into the trial of Mme Lafarge with the first use in medical jurisprudence of the Marsh test, and based on the experiment a cocksure opinion which had much to do with the condemnation of that unfortunate woman. In the Lacoste trial you find the Parisian experts giving an opinion of no greater value than that of Orfila's in the Lafarge case, but find also an element of doubt introduced by the country practitioner, with his common sense on the then moot question of the accumulation, the absorption, and elimination of the drug.

  Nowadays we are quite certain that our experts in medical jurisprudence know all there is to know about arsenical poisoning. What are the chances, however, in spite of our apparently well-founded faith, that some bristle-headed local chemist with a fighting chin will not spring up at an arsenic-poisoning trial and, with new facts about the substance, blow to pieces the cocksure evidence of the leading expert in pathology? It may seem impossible that such a thing can ever happen again—a mistake regarding the action of arsenic on the human body. But when we discover it becoming a commonplace of science that one human may be poisoned by an everyday substance which thousands of his fellows eat with enjoyment as well as impunity—a substance, for instance, as everyday as porridge—who will dare say even now that the last word has been said and written of arsenic?

  But that, as the late George Moore so doted on saying, is quelconque. M. Orfila, sure about the grocer of the Rue de la Paix, was defeated by M. Barruel. M. Orfila, sure about the death of Charles Lafarge, is declared by to-day's experts in criminal jurisprudence and pathology to have been talking through his hat. According to the present experts, says ``Philip Curtin,'' Lafarge was not poisoned at all, but died a natural death. Because of M. Devergie it was for the Veuve Lacoste as much `touch and go' as it was for the Veuve Boursier twenty years before. Well might Marie-Fortunee Lafarge, hearing in prison of the verdict in the Lacoste trial, say, ``Ma condamnation a sauve Madame Lacoste!''

  In all this there's a moral lesson somewhere, but I'm blessed if I can put my finger on it.