No confusion, no shame about them; and yet their conduct in the drawing-room of the Steinheil villa twelve months ago was despicable. Calmly they admitted having advised the “Tragic Widow” to “tell a new story,” as no one in Paris believed in her account of how the double crime had been committed. They also admitted having lied to the wretched woman, when they had told her that the villa was surrounded by a hostile mob, “come there to lynch her.” Madame Steinheil, they continued, was exhausted, out of her mind. She called for strychnine, with which to poison herself. Downstairs in the kitchen the cook, Mariette Wolff, was discovered on her knees, striving to cut open the tube of the gas-stove—to asphyxiate herself. The cook then produced a revolver, and cried: “Here is the only means of salvation.” Later on, tea was served in the drawing-room. M. Marcel Hutin and his two colleagues continued to browbeat Madame Steinheil. One of the Yellow Reporters cried: “I shall not leave this house until I know the truth.” Mariette Wolff entered the drawing-room and tried to soothe her mistress. And——
“So you tortured Madame Steinheil in her drawing-room. You drank her tea. You were her guests, she was your hostess,” interrupted M. de Valles, scathingly, indignantly. The “Tragic Widow,” leaning forward on the ledge of the dock, looked gratefully, thankfully, at the judge. The three Yellow Reporters strode out of court, each of them provoking angry exclamations from the barristers as they importantly passed by.
And then, the cook—Mariette Wolff, who had been in Madame Steinheil’s service for over twenty years; and who, according to the Yellow Press, “possessed all the secrets of the palpitating Steinheil Mystery.” Henri Rochefort, M. Arthur Meyer (director of the Gaulois, very Jewish in appearance, but a strong Anti-Semite and an ardent Catholic in politics), Madame Séverine (the famous woman journalist), four very charming lady barristers, all their male confrères—everyone, in fact, sprang up excitedly when Mariette made her long-expected appearance. She has since been described as a peasant out of one of Zola’s novels, and as “the double of Balzac’s fiendish Cousine Bette.” She has also been termed “a fury,” and “a rat” and “a monster.” For my part, when first I saw her through the open door of the witness-room, sipping a steaming grog and chatting and laughing with her son Alexandre, I summed her up as the French double of a typical English charwoman. She was wearing a battered black bonnet and a seedy black dress, and came to me more as a Dickensonian than a Zolaesque or a Balzacien character. But Mariette, happily drinking grog, and Mariette, facing a jury and judge, are two very different persons. In court, Madame Steinheil’s ex-cook was defiant, vindictive, violent. As she defended her former mistress, her beady, black eyes flashed, her chin and nose almost met—her yellow, knotted hand beat the air. Yes, she was a “fury”; yes—to use the French journalist’s pet epithet—she looked “sinister.” And, oh dear me, her abuse of the Yellow Reporters! Mariette’s crude language cannot be reproduced here. It became particularly strong when she related how she had ordered MM. Hutin, Barby and Labruyère out of the Impasse Ronsin Villa. It grew even stronger when she denied their allegations that she intended first of all to asphyxiate herself, and then to blow out her brains. She denied everything. “My mistress is innocent,” she cried. “She accused my son Alexandre of being a murderer, but it was those —— journalists who made her do that, and I forgive her: and so does Alexandre.” True, Alexandre Wolff, a horse-dealer’s assistant, with huge red hands and a neck like a bullock’s, told M. de Valles he bore Madame Steinheil “no grudge.” And the “Tragic Widow,” leaning forward, murmured melodiously: “Thank you, Alexandre.”
Full of incoherencies, contradictions, was the evidence of Remy Couillard, the late M. Steinheil’s valet, into whose pocket-book the “Tragic Widow” had placed the incriminating pearl. “I bear her no grudge,” blurted out the young man. “I beg your pardon, Remy,” said Madame Steinheil, always melodiously, when the valet (attired, since he was accomplishing his “military service,” in a cavalry uniform) withdrew. But, a moment later, she fell back in her chair, closed her eyes; and the black-gloved hands in her lap twitched convulsively, madly.
M. Borderel had stepped forward to give evidence: M. Borderel, the lover Madame Steinheil had declared twelve months ago to the examining magistrate to be the one and only man she had ever truly loved.
A hush in court as the middle-aged, red-eyed, broken-down widower from the beautiful country of the Ardennes, related the history of his intrigue with the “Tragic Widow.”
It will be remembered that the strongest point for the prosecution was that Madame Steinheil had murdered her husband in order to be free to marry “the rich châtelain, M. Borderel.” In a slow, solemn voice, M. Borderel stated: “Yes; Madame Steinheil did mention marriage to me, but I said it was impossible. I adored my late wife, I adore my children, and I felt I could not give them a step-mother; and Madame Steinheil fully understood that my decision was irrevocable. Therefore the assumption of the prosecution that Madame Steinheil murdered her husband in order to become my wife, is unwarrantable.” Here M. Borderel broke down. “I loved her. I was a widower. I was free. In becoming her lover, I behaved no more wrongly than thousands of my fellow-countrymen. It is a base lie that I ever suspected her of being guilty of that awful murder. On the morning after the crime, I was full of the deepest pity for her; and when she was accused in the newspapers I passionately told everyone she was innocent.” Up sprang Maître Aubin, counsel for the defence, with the cry: “Do you still believe her innocent?” And loudly, vigorously, whole-heartedly rang forth the answer: “With all my soul, with all my heart, upon my conscience.”
Even M. de Valles was moved by M. Borderel’s emotion, sorrow, chivalry. The disclosure of the “rich châtelain’s” liaison with the “Tragic Widow” caused such a scandal in the Ardennes that M. Borderel had to sell his estate; and he, too, has been persecuted continuously by Yellow photographers and journalists. Equally chivalrous was the evidence of Comte d’Arlon (to whose house Madame Steinheil was removed after the night of the murder), of M. Martin (a State official), and of other gentlemen who had been (platonic) friends of the “Tragic Widow.” Then, more chivalry from M. Pouce, an officer in the detective police. “I have been one of the detectives in charge of the Steinheil affair,” he cried. “But I have always believed in the innocence of Madame Steinheil. Had she told me she was guilty, I should not have believed her. She is innocent.” And finally, exuberant, fantastic chivalry on the part of a young man named René Collard: who, to the stupefaction of the Court, walked up to the Bench and cried: “Madame Steinheil is innocent. I myself am the red-headed woman who helped to commit the double murder.” M. de Valles then wiped his brow with his huge handkerchief, rapped on the silver inkstand with his paper-cutter, and cried: “Silence”—for the Court was buzzing with excitement. Hesitatingly René Collard (aged perhaps nineteen) related that he had disguised himself as a woman, bought a red wig, broken his way into the Steinheil villa (in the company of two friends), sacked the place, bound and gagged Madame Steinheil, strangled her husband, suffocated her mother. “Take this young man away,” said M. de Valles to a municipal guard, “and lock him up.” Two nights in prison brought young René Collard to his senses. He had seen Madame Steinheil’s photographs in the papers, had fallen in love with her: had resolved to save her at the risk of being guillotined by the awful M. Deibler! Said the examining magistrate: “Little idiot, I shall now send you home in the charge of a policeman, who will deliver you over to your parents.” And so, amorous, over-chivalrous young René Collard was conducted back to a dull, bourgeois flat in the Avenue Clichy, where his father and mother, after calling him a “villain,” a “criminal,” and a “monster,” took him into their arms, and hugged him, and called him “the best and most adorable of sons”; and then sent out Amélie, the only servant, to fetch a cream cake and a bottle of sweet champagne with which to celebrate the return home of the “wicked” but “adorable” Master René.
And now, half-past ten o’clock at night on Saturday, the 13th of November.—I have passed over the address to the jury of M. Trouard-Riolle, the Public Prosecutor—a mere repetition of the judge’s savage cross-examination of the “Tragic Widow” on the first two days of the trial; and I have also passed over Maître Aubin’s long, eloquent speech for the defence. And the last scenes I have now to describe rise up so vividly before me, that I adopt the present tense.
The jury have retired to an upstairs room to consider their verdict. Madame Steinheil, watched by municipal guards, is waiting—deadly pale, green shadows under her blue eyes, exhausted, a wreck—in the “Chambre des Accusés.” And in the stifling Court of Assizes, and in the cold marble corridors of the Palais de Justice, barristers, journalists and a few ornaments of le Tout Paris (who, somehow or other, have at last obtained admittance to the Law Courts) are frantically speculating upon the fate of Madame Steinheil. Most barristers say: “There are no proofs whatsoever. Therefore, acquittal.” The Tout Paris cries: “She should be imprisoned for life.” (And here, in yet another parenthesis, let us suggest that the Tout Paris’ mocking, vindictive attitude towards Madame Steinheil is provoked by malevolent jealousy. Madame la Comtesse, lively Pauline Boum, stout Baronne Goldstein cannot forgive the “Tragic Widow” for having been une femme ultra-chic—the favourite of the late President Félix Faure. Yet, as we all know in Paris, the life of these ladies is very far from exemplary. How terrifically would our great, kindly, satirical Thackeray have laid bare the true causes of the bitter hostility directed against the “Tragic Widow” by French Vanity Fair!)