Now the police ordered a post mortem on Madame de Pauw, which was entrusted to the eminent toxicologist Doctor Tardieu, who expressed his belief that she had been poisoned, but could find no trace of the drug. The cause of death had been certified as a fall down-stairs. Then the deceased’s sister informed against La Pommerais, stating that he had effected a large insurance upon her life. Here the influence of Palmer’s evil example was obvious. Next the criminal himself gave ground for fresh suspicion by his greediness in seeking payment of the policies which he held. They had been effected in eight different offices, and for a total amount of 550,000 francs. The guilty intention was clear, for the woman was in great indigence, and the first premium of 18,840 francs had been produced by La Pommerais. Further evidence was abundantly forthcoming when the doctor was presently arrested. A great quantity of different poisons was found in his surgery, especially digitaline, a preparation from the common foxglove, well known for its baleful effect upon the heart.
The actual arrest was made by the then head of police, M. Claude, who has told the story in his “Memoirs.” They were acquaintances, and La Pommerais had so far presumed upon it as to ask M. Claude to back him in soliciting the appointment of medical officer at Mazas prison. When the law was to be set in motion Claude kindly thought to break the blow to the man at whose table he had dined, and went in person to serve the warrant. He found the two, man and wife, at breakfast. “Good news,” he began, “you are to have Mazas. I want you to come there with me now.” The criminal changed countenance for a moment, but the police officer reassured him. “The fact is,” he went on, “the director of Mazas has never been favorably disposed towards you, and he may object, still, to your appointment. You must let me bring you together, and we will talk him over.” La Pommerais yielded with rather a bad grace, and, on reaching the cab at the door in which two policemen were already seated, he knew his fate. This miscreant had one redeeming quality; he was devotedly attached to his wife, and it is said that when about to kneel down at the scaffold under the fatal knife he gave a last kiss to the priest in attendance, “pour Clothilde.”
A very curious story was communicated to the press immediately after his execution, which has since been definitely contradicted. It was to the effect that a certain Doctor Velpeau had obtained a promise from La Pommerais that he would make him some sign after he had passed the threshold of the grave. Velpeau is reported to have said to La Pommerais: “When the knife falls I shall be there, just in front of the scaffold, and I shall arrange that your head, when decapitated, comes at once into my hands. I propose to whisper into your ear, ‘Monsieur, as we have agreed, will you now, on hearing my voice, lower your right eyelid three times, keeping the left eye open?’” Velpeau declared that he carried out his part of the compact, and was prepared to swear that the severed head had twice made the sign as arranged; but the eyelid would not lift a third time, and, although Velpeau again and again asked for the sign, none came, and the head assumed a fixed rigidity. Death had put an end to the convulsive spasms by which possibly the previous signs had been produced. The story is extravagant and apocryphal, for the Abbé Crozes, when invited to give his opinion, settled the matter by declaring that Velpeau had never had any conversation with the dead man, and as a matter of fact was not present at the execution at all.
France contains in her criminal records one of the worst murders ever committed in any civilised country. The Crime of Pantin, as it was called at the time, was the wholesale massacre of a family—father, mother and six children—with the sole idea of becoming possessed of property to which no survivor could lay claim. Troppmann, who perpetrated it, laid the plan with such devilish ingenuity that for a long time the guilt was attributed to the father, Jean Kinck, assisted by his eldest son, and the first inquiries were centred upon them.
On the morning of the twentieth of September, 1869, at an early hour a workman, in crossing the plain of Pantin beyond the Buttes-Chaumont, to the northeast of Paris, noticed the traces of much blood spilt upon the ground, and near them a blood-stained handkerchief. Further on he saw protruding above the ground a human arm imperfectly buried, and using a spade he dug up, first one body and afterwards five more,—the body of a woman and those of five children. Some of the clothes carried buttons with the address of a tailor in Roubaix, who recognised them as having been ordered by a fellow townsman, by name Jean Kinck. This Kinck was absent from home. He had summoned his wife and children to join him in Paris on the nineteenth of September. They had duly arrived and taken rooms at a hotel near the Northern Railway Station, where the husband was already staying, having registered himself the week before under the name, Jean Kinck of Roubaix. He did not meet his wife on arrival, and she seemed much upset, but went out almost immediately with all her children, and never returned. Next morning, however, Jean Kinck came in, went up to his room, changed his clothes and again left, but before the discovery of the corpses was generally known.
Suspicion was soon drawn to this supposed Kinck, and it was found that some one like him had bought a pick and shovel at a toolmaker’s shop, which, later in the evening, he had carried off in the direction of Pantin. No doubt he was bent on digging the graves of his victims. Full details of his appearance, his condition and ways of life presently arrived from Roubaix. He was fifty years of age, gray haired, short of stature and well built, an industrious, enterprising brush maker, anxious to extend his business; for which purpose he had left Roubaix five weeks previously for Alsace, where he already owned a house. He meant to sell it and buy a larger one, in which he could live, and, at the same time, carry on his trade. Madame Kinck, a native of Turcoing, did not favor this project. She did not want to move to Germany, as she did not speak the language, and differences had arisen between the pair, supplying some motive for the murder. Three days passed before any satisfactory information came to hand. Nothing had been heard of the father, Jean Kinck, nothing of the son, but the father had left Roubaix in the beginning of September, the son Gustav eight or ten days later: it was generally believed that the Kinck who appeared at the hotel of the Northern Railway Station was Gustav, as the personal description tallied with him better than with the father.
Now, as so often happens in mysterious criminal cases, a bolt came from the blue. Jean Kinck, or some one passing for him, was suddenly arrested at Havre. Chance had strangely intervened in the interests of justice, and detection followed in an entirely unexpected manner. News was telegraphed to Paris that Jean Kinck had been arrested at Havre under peculiar circumstances. On the morning of the twenty-third of September a young man entered a café on the sea front at Havre, and became engaged in conversation with a sailor, whom he met there. He was anxious to know what steps to take to secure a passage for America. “Your papers must be in order,” was the first answer he received, and it came, not from his friend, but from an officious gendarme, who was loafing about the place, and inspired by the restless spirit of interference which so constantly disturbs the official mind. “You have your papers of course?” He received a negative reply. “No? Then you must come with me to the police office.” There was nothing for it but to obey, and they started off together, chatting pleasantly, but the stranger was manifestly uneasy, and when there was a sudden stoppage in the traffic he slipped aside and ran towards one of the basins of the dock. The gendarme followed close in his tracks, shouting, “Stop him, stop him! He is a murderer,” and there was little hope for the fugitive amidst the gathering crowd. But with one bound he sprang into the water, caught a floating buoy, and hung on there between life and death until he was fished out by some of the sailors with ropes and boat-hooks, and brought to shore half drowned. He was carried to the hospital, where he was put to bed and interviewed at once by the Commissary, to whom he would make no reply. He was a young man of about twenty, short, dark, with black eyes, a long beaky nose and close cut hair, a description which answered in many respects, save that of youth, to the missing Jean Kinck. His identity was established, however, beyond all doubt by the papers found on him. All of them were documents connected with the Kinck family. There was a contract for the sale of a house in Roubaix; notes of hand signed by Kinck in favor of people of the town; the contract of a house from another proprietor, and a number of private papers and letters in a pocketbook with a morocco purse, trimmed with copper, containing several coins; a silk handkerchief and some five-franc pieces; a valuable gold watch, a second watch, a small ring, a medallion and a pocket knife. Doubts were still expressed as to the identity of Jean Kinck, and it was generally supposed that he was Gustav. But then other letters were found in his possession, addressed to a certain Troppmann, and eventually it was proved that this was really his name.
The police paid an immediate visit to Roubaix to make further inquiries, and found that this Troppmann was a personal friend of Jean Kinck. In the house were a number of letters purporting to be from the husband, but, as was explained in one of them, written by another hand because Kinck had injured his wrist. These were the letters that had persuaded Madame Kinck to come to Paris. When the judges undertook the interrogation it was proved beyond doubt that these were from a mechanical engineer, an Alsacian by birth, who had long been intimate with Kinck, and constantly visited him at the drinking shop of the “Re-union of Friends,” of which Kinck was proprietor. Troppmann, when questioned, freely admitted these facts, and it was soon plainly seen that he bore the marks of a recent struggle with some enraged female. His cheeks were torn and scratched with many wounds; there were marks of nails that had gone deep into his flesh. Troppmann, who was brought without delay to Paris and confronted with the corpses in the Morgue, made no difficulty of recognising and identifying them; and he went so far as to confess that the murder had been organised by the Kincks, father and son, with his knowledge, although he had taken no active part in it. He refused to throw any light upon the whereabouts of the Kincks. As the inquiry proceeded, witnesses came forward who recognised Troppmann as the person who had bought the pick and shovel at the tool shop, and all that was now needed was to prove a motive for the crime. His possession of Kinck’s watch and valuables was prima facie evidence, and there were those who spoke as to the close relations that had existed between them. Troppmann was greedy for money, and was continually proposing schemes, promising great profit to Kinck if he would go into them. He was for ever begging him to advance capital, but Kinck was cautious, and would not risk a sou. Not less did Troppmann devise plans, by which he might bleed Jean Kinck, and the last seemed likely to succeed. He declared that he had discovered in the Alsacian mountains a plentiful supply of precious metals, gold, silver and mercury in large quantities, ready to be extracted by any enterprising hand.
Jean Kinck’s movements were at last traced. He had left Roubaix on the twenty-fourth of August, three or four weeks before the discovery of the bodies at Pantin, saying he would return in a few days. He went into Alsace, and was met by Troppmann, with whom he travelled by diligence to Soultz. This was the last heard of him, although letters not in his own hand reached Madame Kinck at Roubaix. A search had been made, however, in the neighborhood where he had last been seen, and his body was at last found, not far from Wattwiller, in a forest at the foot of the ruins of the ancient stronghold of Henenflung. It had been buried beneath a heap of stones raised high above the grave. The cause of death was not immediately apparent, but doctors presently reported that he had been poisoned with Prussic acid administered probably from a flask. No doubt he had been inveigled to this spot by fictitious reports of the presence of gold. Thus the last victim was accounted for, Gustav Kinck, the eldest son, having been disinterred some days before at no great distance from the other bodies in the plain of Pantin. The chain of damning evidence was complete. Link by link it wound round the accused, and definitely secured conviction upon trial. But every point had first been elicited beyond all doubt by the “instructing” or interrogating judge at Mazas, although Troppmann long took refuge in persistent denial of every fact or in obstinate silence. At last came the confrontation. The prisoner, who was examined throughout at Mazas in a large cell in the infirmary, was taken down to the Morgue, and suddenly brought into the presence of the corpse of Gustav Kinck, but then just discovered. He was seized with violent emotion, hid his face in a handkerchief, and refused to look at his murderous handiwork. “Come now,” insisted the magistrate, “confess that you struck the blow.” “No, no, it wasn’t I.” And he repeatedly asserted that the elder Kinck had taken his son’s life. This was his line of defence in court, greatly elaborated by his counsel, Maitre Lachaud, perhaps the most famous and eloquent advocate who has practised at the French bar; but he also asserted that Troppmann had accomplices, who should have been arraigned with him, and he insisted that it was wickedly unfair to allow one culprit to bear the whole brunt of the crime. The jury, however, remained unmoved by his impassioned appeal, and almost immediately found Troppmann guilty on all counts, on which the judge, never having accepted the theory of accomplices and satisfied that the law had laid its hand upon the real perpetrator of the crime, sentenced him to death. He was sent to the Conciergerie to await removal to the Grand Roquette.
Troppmann spent his last hours in a vain combat with the authorities, but after maintaining it for some days he fell into a state of prostration, and, when he came out to die, was already a broken-down, worn-out, old man of fifty, more than double his years. When they came to warn him for execution, he essayed to appear unconcerned, and, throughout the remainder of the painful scene, fought hard, but of course fruitlessly, for his life. Although subjected to the “toilette” and secured by straps and cords, he managed to break loose when on the scaffold, and strenuously resisted as they led him to the block. When his neck was laid under the axe of the guillotine, he pushed it so far forward that the axe on falling would have struck his shoulder, but the executioner held him in his place and deftly touched the spring which released the knife, and all was over. But the dying man in his frantic resistance had managed to get the executioner’s hand into his mouth and bit it fiercely.