M. Lafarge made no secret of his wish to employ part of his wife’s fortune in developing his works. He had come upon an important discovery in iron smelting, and only needed capital to make it highly profitable. His wife was so persuaded of the value of this invention that she lent him money, and used her influence with her relatives to secure a loan for him in addition. Husband and wife now made wills whereby they bequeathed their separate estates to each other. Lafarge, however, made a second will, almost immediately, in favour of his mother and sister, carefully concealing the fact from his wife. Then he started for Paris, to secure a patent for his new invention, taking with him a general power of attorney to raise money on his wife’s property. During their separation many affectionate letters passed between them.
The first attempt to poison, according to the prosecution, was made at the time of this visit to Paris. Madame Lafarge now conceived the tender idea of having her portrait painted, and sending it to console her absent spouse. At the same time she asked her mother-in-law to make some small cakes to accompany the picture. They were made and sent, with a letter, written by the mother, at Marie Lafarge’s request, begging Lafarge to eat one of the cakes at a particular hour on a particular day. She would eat one also at Glandier at the same moment, and thus a mysterious affinity might be set up between them.
A great deal turned on this incident. The case containing the picture and the rest was despatched on the 16th of December, by diligence, and reached Paris on the 18th. But on opening the box, one large cake was found, not several small ones. How and when had the change been effected? The prosecution declared it was Marie’s doing. The box had undoubtedly been tampered with; it left, or was supposed to leave, Glandier fastened down with small screws. On reaching Paris it was secured with long nails, and the articles inside were not placed as they had been on departure. Lafarge tore off a corner of the large cake, ate it, and the same night was seized with violent convulsions. It was presumably a poisoned cake, although the fact was never verified, but Marie Lafarge was held responsible for it, and eventually charged with an attempt to murder her husband.
In support of this grave charge it was found that on the 12th of December, two days before the box left, she had purchased a quantity of arsenic from a chemist in the neighbouring town. Her letter asking for it was produced at the trial, and it is worth reproducing. “Sir,” she wrote, “I am overrun with rats. I have tried nux vomica quite without effect. Will you, and can you, trust me with a little arsenic? You may count upon my being most careful, and I shall only use it in a linen closet.” At the same time she asked for other drugs, of a harmless character.
Further suspicious circumstances were adduced against her. It was urged that after the case had been despatched to Paris she was strangely agitated, her excitement increasing on the arrival of news that her husband was taken ill, that she expressed the gravest fears of a bad ending, and took it almost for granted that he must die. Yet, as the defence presently showed, there were points also in her favour. Would Marie have made her mother-in-law write referring to the small cakes, one of which the son was to eat, if she knew that no small cakes, but one large one, would be found within? How could she have substituted the large for the small? There was as much evidence to show that she could not have effected the exchange as that she had done so. Might not someone else have made the change? Here was the first importation of another possible agency into the murder, which never seems to have been investigated at the time, but to which I shall return presently to explain how Marie Lafarge may have borne the brunt of another person’s crime. Again, if she wanted thus to poison her husband, it would have been at the risk of injuring her favourite sister also. For this sister lived in Paris, and Lafarge had written that she often called to see him. She might, then, have been present when the case was opened, and might have been poisoned too.
Lafarge so far recovered that he was able to return to Glandier, which he reached on the 5th of January, 1840. That same day Madame Lafarge wrote to the same chemist for more arsenic. It was a curious letter, and certainly calculated to prejudice people against her. She told the chemist that her servants had made the first lot into a clever paste which her doctor had seen, and for which he had given her a prescription; she said this “so as to quiet the chemist’s conscience, and lest he should think she meant to poison the whole province of Limoges.” She also informed the chemist that her husband was indisposed, but that this same doctor attributed it to the shaking of the journey, and that with rest he would soon be better.
But he got worse, rapidly worse. His symptoms were alarming, and pointed undoubtedly to arsenical poisoning, judged by our modern knowledge. Madame Lafarge, senior, now became strongly suspicious of her daughter-in-law, and insisted on remaining always by her son’s bedside. Marie opposed this, and wished to be her husband’s sole nurse, and, according to the prosecution, would have kept everyone else from him. She does not seem to have succeeded, for the relatives and servants were constantly in the sick-room. Some of the latter were very much on the mother’s side, and one, a lady companion, Anna Brun, afterwards deposed that she had seen Marie go to a cupboard and take a white powder from it, which she mixed with the medicine and food given to Lafarge. Madame Lafarge, senior, again, and her daughter, showed the medical attendant a cup of chicken broth on the surface of which white powder was floating. The doctor said it was probably lime from the whitewashed wall. The ladies tried the experiment of mixing lime with broth, and did not obtain the same appearance. Yet more, Anna Brun, having seen Marie Lafarge mix powder as before in her husband’s drink, heard him cry out, “What have you given me? It burns like fire.” “I am not surprised,” replied Marie quietly. “They let you have wine, although you are suffering from inflammation of the stomach.”
Yet Marie Lafarge made no mystery of her having arsenic. Not only did she speak of it in the early days, but during the illness she received a quantity openly before them all. It was brought to her at Lafarge’s bedside by one of his clerks, Denis Barbier (of whom more directly), and she put it into her pocket. She told her husband she had it. He had been complaining of the rats that disturbed him overhead, and the arsenic was to kill them. Lafarge took the poison from his wife, handed it over to a maid-servant, and desired her to use it in a paste as a vermin-killer. Here the facts were scarcely against Marie Lafarge.
As the husband did not improve, on the 13th his mother sent a special messenger to fetch a new doctor from a more distant town. On their way back to Glandier, this messenger, the above-mentioned Denis Barbier, confided to the doctor that he had often bought
