"Gentlemen of the Court, gentlemen of the jury, after long hesitation, after scruples and doubts which yesterday he admitted to you, the Advocate-General has hardened in his conviction of Mme. Steinheil"s guilt."
This is all I hear. There is not one atom of strength left in me. I fall forward with my head on my hands, which rest on the wooden part.i.tion...
and I wait. Three times my counsel"s speech is interrupted by adjournments; three times I am dragged away from my seat to the guards"
room; three times I am dragged back to it, wondering when the unspeakable agony will end....
As I write, I have before me, the _Plaidoirie_ of Maitre Antony Aubin, extracted from the "Review of Great Contemporary Trials," and I will quote from it a few pages, those dealing with facts which have not yet been fully explained to the reader, and also certain pa.s.sages containing remarks, which, for reasons that will no doubt appear obvious, I could not have made myself....
"... I am only seeking the truth. Mme. Steinheil does not altogether deserve praise; but still less does she deserve the severe way in which you have been treating her. No pedestal, no pillory!... The Advocate-General exhausted himself during the past five months in the study of the dossier, but he has pa.s.sed by Mme. Steinheil. He has not studied her.... To speak plainly he knows nothing about her.
"Mme. Steinheil was kind, obliging, attentive, devoted to all... and what is most important of all: to her husband himself.
"Let us prove it.
"To show that she was goodness itself to her family--to Mme. Seyrig, to her brother Julien, and to Mme. Herr--nothing is easier. As regards Mme.
Seyrig, one example will be sufficient--the following letter which Mme.
Seyrig sent to her sister from Bizerte on September 23rd, 1903.
""MY DEAR MEG,--I hope that you are better.... My husband has been foolish enough to place money in real estate.... I am sorry to trouble you when you are ill, but I think that you will not hesitate, you who saved Julien, to save us. I don"t know how I shall go on. I feel I shall be ill if Henri has not those 20,000 francs."...
"The money was sent to Mme. Seyrig....
"Here is a recent letter from Mme. j.a.py to her daughter:
""MY DARLING LITTLE MEG,--How you must need a less tiring life, my dear child, and how I should love to see you have the strength to give up other people, and to think a little more of yourself and of the care which your health absolutely demands. Try to learn, my adored one, to think of yourself, and to forget wanting always to please others...."
"What does the Prosecution think of this? This woman, always so devoted--nay, too devoted--who knew her? Ignoring the reality, welcoming the most terribly untruthful rumours, never hesitating before inexcusable calumnies, and carried away by the frenzy of writing...
journalists have printed the statement that "Mme. Steinheil detested, abominated her mother."... I have read and re-read this atrocious libel!
And I, who knew the horror of it, have remained silent; yes, during that long _Instruction_ I have allowed the mud to flow, I said nothing. I didn"t protest, not even by a gesture, because, not to speak of the professional rule which imposed silence on me, I knew that a solemn hour would come when at last I should have the right to speak to you--the joy to speak to you and to convince you. And it is for such a woman that the penalty of death is tacitly, implicitly, evasively demanded. The penalty of death! What supreme irony! Perhaps you think that the Prosecution wanted to put it on one side by talking to you of the prisoner rather as an accomplice than as the chief author of the crime. Don"t be misled: an affirmative verdict on either of these questions means death. Death?
But, Monsieur l"Avocat-General, if you had proposed it to the jury, every one in this Court would have revolted....
"To return to this unfortunate and tortured woman. Opinion, which has been misled, has raised a barrier between Mme. Steinheil and the poor and humble. Well, let this barrier be broken down. The prisoner was only too anxious to a.s.sist them. Who says so? Marie Boucard, who was her maid for ten years, declared at the _Instruction_ on December 12th, 1908: "Mme. Steinheil was devoted to the poor." A former valet, Duclerc, stated: "She was extremely kind to her servants and all those around her, rendered services to all, and nursed the poor of the district!...
In Cote 3040 it is said that: "Of her old dresses she made with her own hands clothes which were sent afterwards to a charity organisation in Beaucourt."
"... In the painter"s studio the able Mme. Steinheil is ever active. Are costumes needed for her husband"s models? As an expert needlewoman she cuts and sews, and under her deft fingers the various materials soon become doublets and hose in the Henry IV. or Louis XIII. style. She works without respite. Sometimes she replaces a model, and for long hours she sits for her husband. Sometimes when a painting has to be completed she handles the brushes, for she is an able artist.... She is the useful collaborator who is ever a.s.sisting and completing her husband--that timid, easily depressed, and weak-willed husband....
"But what you wish to know is not only whether the husband was helped as an artist--although that has some importance--but also, and above all, whether as a man and a husband he was abandoned, left aside, and despised. You have heard on this point Mme. Steinheil"s two brothers-in-law, M. Geoffroy, and Monsieur Bonnot.... You have at once felt that those witnesses, bitter and hostile, spoke with animosity, and violently took part against their sister-in-law. It was they who stated that she took no care whatever of her husband and left him for three or four months at a time: "To go on one knows where," taking no interest whatever in his life or his health. Every word an inaccuracy! It was Mme. Steinheil who bought everything for the house, and even her husband"s clothes. That three or four months" journey? It was only an absence of a few weeks in 1907, when Mme. Steinheil went to England with her daughter and the Buisson family. "To go no one knows where!" Could any words be more misleading? When people don"t know, they should remain silent. Messieurs Geoffroy et Bonnot! The way of living and the health of her husband were indifferent to her? True, Steinheil lived as he pleased, but it cannot possibly be said that until his last hour he wasn"t cared for by his wife. Doctor Acheray has strongly denied the statements of the brother-in-law, and M. Courtois-Suffit himself told you that at the end of 1907 he was summoned by Mme. Steinheil to examine M. Steinheil.... As for Mme. Buisson, a witness who surely cannot be called partial, she stated that: "Mme. Steinheil was extremely kind and attentive to her husband, and cared about his health, seeing to it that he followed the diet prescribed for him."
"... When Mme. Steinheil sang, it was an unforgettable delight. Oh!
those hours of artistic beauty which have vanished!... The emotion, the genius of the composer possessed her, overwhelmed her--and carried away by her temperament, she was moved to tears, to anguish.... The guests have lost her salon. They have hardly turned the corner of the street, and she has hardly dried her tears before the poor nervous woman buries her head in her hands and thinks. Of what? Of her power? Of the magnetism of her voice? Her success must make her believe that people are easily conquered by her! Alas! However great her fascination, it is really she, after all, who is dominated by mysterious and invisible forces. How easily it is when one sees how quickly she is self-hypnotised, to realise how easily others may hypnotise her.... Is it possible then that this woman, who has been represented as so strong, was after all but a toy of men and events!
"... The Indictment said to Mme. Steinheil: "You wanted to get rid of your husband in order to marry M. Bdl." And M. Bdl. replied: "There was no thought in me of marrying again, and these are the reasons why: I had a daughter of twelve, and I wish to bring her up before thinking of marriage--and even then it isn"t certain that I should have thought of it. Besides, I had absolutely decided not to give a step-mother to my daughter, aged eighteen, who might marry soon...."
"... I wished M. Bdl. to let you hear the whole truth, and M. Bdl., asked by me in this Court whether he had given Mme. Steinheil reasons to hope that he would marry her, told you that she could not possibly have conceived any. I pressed the question, and he was firm in his reply: "Mme. Steinheil on this matter of marriage did not and could not have had any illusion."
"... Let us then put aside the so-called motive of the crime.
"... The accusation of matricide has been abandoned; the prosecution rightly feared your common sense; but, for a whole year public opinion believed her guilty because the newspapers printed these atrocious words, borrowed from the _Instruction_: "She hated her mother." And now that the unfortunate Mme. Steinheil, represented as an unnatural daughter, has been despised and loathed; now that, under the cover of this monstrous accusation of matricide, has grown up that other accusation, that of the murder of her husband, your conviction and your sense of justice, Monsieur l"Avocat General, make a curtsey to her and depart. It is all very well for you, but it isn"t enough for her. No, it is not enough for this poor woman, yesterday accused of two murders, to be accused to-day of one only--and I may say that later on, when people think over this trial, they will pity her profoundly, and feel indignant at the acc.u.mulation of errors against her....
... "Ceasing to regard Mme. j.a.py as a "victim," the Advocate-General has imagined her as a "witness."... I have my own version, quite a new one, concerning the death of Mme. j.a.py, the Advocate-General gravely declares. I have studied, I have searched, and doubted; then, finally, I have reached an explanation, a version....
... "And here is this strange version: the husband alone was to die; his death was premeditated. He was to be killed by two persons--the accomplice, Alexandre Wolff perhaps, but more likely Mariette Wolff....
As for Mme. j.a.py, she was to live to see, and later on be a "witness"
who would confirm the breaking in of the murderers. Only, by forcing a gag into her mouth, the aggressors acted too brutally; they only aimed at a "sham," but they went as far as reality--that is, suffocation, asphyxia. Instead of a living witness: a corpse.
... "Why have I called this version a strange one? Merely because it supposes that the criminals wanted to let Mme. j.a.py live. Now, investigations show that, on the contrary, the death of Mme. j.a.py was a decided thing, and that almost certainly the murderers began by killing her. In order to kill her, the miscreants did not only force into her mouth a large gag with such violence that one false tooth, pushed back into the throat, was broken; they strangled her with a cord fastened twice round her neck. Thus with this death, wilfully caused by strangulation, it is impossible to speak of a "witness" whom Mme.
Steinheil and her accomplice needed for their scheme. And then would not Mme. Steinheil really have been compromising and giving herself away if she had thus prepared, as it were, the evidence of her mother against Mariette or her son? But the Advocate-General means that Mme. j.a.py would have remained silent! But in that case, instead of a "witness,"
she would have become an accomplice herself. As you see, gentlemen of the jury, this version is but one more fable to add to all the fables in this affair. And would you like to know whence it comes? It is very simple. There is a newspaper, the _Matin_, of which we must speak here without complacency or fear. It was in the _Matin_, Monsieur l"Avocat General, that you found this gruesome remark: "_My mother, the was the alibi._" A pitiful joke that you have twisted in a different but no more successful form. For in the _Matin_ this sentence, "My mother, that was the alibi," meant that Mme. Steinheil, in order not to have been accused of having killed her husband, had thought it necessary to kill her mother. Nothing more or less! Only, the _Matin_ was too precise. It stated that Mme. Steinheil had made that statement to some one who, to relieve her conscience, had rushed to the newspaper"s office. It was easy to annihilate that tale. I went to the prison and showed the _Matin_ article to Mme. Steinheil. Without hesitation she wrote at once to Judge Andre, asking to be confronted with the person who it was said had heard the confession. Then came a difficulty: it was impossible to find that person; she had vanished into s.p.a.ce."...
My counsel proceeded to refute the theory of the Prosecution, who stated that there were no burglars, because entrance had not been _forced_ into the house, because no weapons had been brought in from outside... and for other reasons which have already been discussed at length such as: No jewels stolen, no money taken, no real disorder, &c.
Maitre Aubin had no difficulty in showing that the burglars needed no skeleton keys since the doors were open. They had placed a ladder near a window of the kitchen, but finding that the kitchen door was open, they entered that way. As for the statement that no "instruments of the crime" were brought in from outside, how did the prosecution know that?
All that was known was that the murderers used cords and wadding gags.
It was proved that the cord with which M. Steinheil was strangled came from the kitchen cupboard, open, and opposite the door. But the cords with which Mme. j.a.py was strangled and Mme. Steinheil bound did not come from the house. As for the gags, what could be more natural than that the murderers would use some of the wadding which they found in my mother"s room.
My counsel"s next task was to answer the statements that there had been no serious binding, no gag in my mouth, and that I had never been seriously ill.
Concerning the last point I may mention that it was chiefly based on the statement made by Mlle. Vogler, who from June 5th to July 5th, 1908, nursed me first at the d"Arlon"s and afterwards at my Bellevue villa.
Although I was kept alive by sea-water and morphia injections, this nurse did not hesitate to state that my illness was "pure comedy," that my temperature was always normal, and further that "every night at the same hour--between midnight and 1 A.M. Mme. Steinheil used to jump out of bed and wail: "I am afraid." Her eyes were dry. I felt her pulse and found it as steady as my own."
(_Dossier_ Cote 3225-3250)
My counsel merely remarked: "One cannot think of everything: Mlle.
Vogler forgot this letter sent by her to Mme. Steinheil.
"Friday, _November 6th_.
"DEAR MADAM,--What martyrdom you are still enduring! Have they not made you suffer enough! This morning I read in the _Matin_ of the dreadful day you spent at Boulogne. How you must suffer when you think of that awful day of torture. _If, however, it is ever necessary to prove how much you have suffered through fever and what horrible nights of delirium you went through_, don"t forget that I am at your disposal to testify to it. I follow your affair daily. How glad I should be for your sake if the murderers were found. If you have enemies, dear Madame, remember that there are also persons who share your sorrow. Accept, dear Madame, all my wishes for a speedy recovery and my sincere greetings.
"Your Nurse,
"MARGUERITE."
This letter was written on November 6th, 1908. The evidence from which I have quoted was given before M. Andre on December 8th, 1908, and on January 18th, 1909. I was in prison at the time, and Mlle. Vogler evidently feared no contradiction....
I must in all fairness add here that this most important letter was handed, at the time of the trial, by M. de Labruyere to my counsel, and it does him great credit.
M. de Labruyere happened to be with me when the letter reached me, and, having read it, he realised its importance and asked for it, saying he would have it published in the _Matin_. This was never done, and later, when I asked M. de Labruyere to return the letter to me, he was unable to find it. He discovered it, however, in time, and, as I have just stated, loyally handed it to Maitre Aubin at my trial.
Three more brief quotations from Maitre Aubin"s speech:
"... Ah, how many errors and shufflings would have been avoided if this fact, ascertained by Dr. Balthazard had been better interpreted: The mother was killed first and the husband afterwards; they both left their beds of their own free will, and the husband was undoubtedly strangled whilst he went to the a.s.sistance of his mother-in-law.
"How in such circ.u.mstances, can one imagine that Mme. Steinheil is guilty? If she had premeditated committing the crime alone or with an accomplice, would she not have been on the watch in those bed-rooms where she could have easily moved about without arousing suspicions?
Would she not have acted with perfidy and trickery in order to deal death or to have death dealt, so that it might be the more certain and the more rapid? Would she not have gone treacherously to the bed of her mother or of her husband in order to make sure that they were asleep and to take advantage of the fact?... But they were both killed, not only when awake, but when out of their beds? Well, then, I say that according to this it is impossible to eliminate the miscreants, for, cannot you see that if Mme. Steinheil were guilty of the murder of her husband alone, as it is said to-day, or of the murder of her husband and mother as it was thought before, they would not have gone to meet death, but rather death would have come to them."
[Ill.u.s.tration: