Greatly to her anger and astonishment, she discovered that she had been hoaxed. Her victim had left nothing except debts, and she had wasted valuable arsenic upon him. To add insult to injury, rumours spread that Gesina had inherited a large fortune, and several persons who had lent her money began to press for repayment.
Besides being a murderess, Gesina was very mean. She could borrow from the poorest of her acquaintances, but she would not repay them even when she had a considerable amount to her credit. She loved money, and nothing pleased her better than to add to her store of gold coins. She was in the habit of carrying five hundred pounds about with her in notes and gold, and she gradually acquired a collection of jewellery.
It is difficult to write of her as a human being. One can hardly imagine that she ever existed, and yet all the details of her career I have given are on the official records of the German Criminal Courts.
Gesina with the blue eyes and the merry laugh went through life scattering death on each side of her. She could crack a joke with a man who was dying at her hands. She could dress in black and shed tears over a coffin, and at the same time debate with herself as to her next victim. She poisoned innocent and inoffensive persons just to keep her hand in. When she had over a thousand pounds she murdered a woman because she had asked for the return of a loan of five pounds.
The last-named affair occurred after the murder of the lover who had tricked her in death. Gesina's friend lived in Hamburg, and, having fallen upon evil times, and hearing that her old acquaintance was now a rich widow, she wrote asking to be repaid the money she had lent her. Gesina sent an affectionate letter in return, inviting Katrine to visit her, when she would not only pay her the debt, but add a present for her past kindness. It is only necessary for me to add that Katrine never returned to Hamburg for my readers to realize what happened to her when she became Gesina's guest.
But on account of her numerous crimes Gesina was compelled to change her residence frequently, and when she bought a house in Bremen it was the sixth German town in which she had settled.
The house she took was capable of accommodating several families, and she considered it a safe investment for her "earnings." But somehow things went wrong. She was an expert poisoner, but she was not good at business, and eventually she had to raise a mortgage on her property at a ruinous rate of interest.
Gesina's ambition had always been to appear better off than her neighbours, and now, in order to gratify her vanity, she forgot her old passion for hoarding money. She lived luxuriously and dressed well, and, realizing that her mind was beginning to be reflected in her face, she took to paint and powder to conceal her true character. Youth had fled from her, although she was young in years. She was thin, scraggy, and unpleasing to the eye, but Gesina acquired the art of making up, and she was able to pose as a young-looking widow who had known sorrow without having been hardened by it.
For two years she played her part so well that she escaped detection. The "pretty widow" became a well-known character in Bremen, and it was often rumoured that she was about to be married again. But somehow an accident always happened at the critical moment. Either it was the wrong man, and then Gesina simply poisoned him, or else the right man became uneasy and backed out of the engagement, and the murderess felt that she dare not protest too much lest she should expose herself and her past to inquiry. Anyhow, she was still a widow when the mortgagees foreclosed and took possession of her apartment house.
Gesina was now really poor. All her savings had gone, and with them her credit. She was actually in danger of starvation, and her condition was so forlorn that when the new owner of the house—he had purchased it from the mortgagees—came to turn her out and install his own family, he was so touched by her distress—and she looked so pathetically pretty as she sobbed in the darkened room—that he gave her the position of his housekeeper.