In spite of the prosecution and its wilful blindness to all the proofs of my innocence, the jury of the Paris Assize Court, in November 1909, after I had spent a whole year in prison, saw the truth and acquitted me.
In my heart I have often blessed the honest and zealous Underground employé who handed the cards he had found to the police. There can be no doubt that the "stolen black gowns" helped the jurors to understand that I had spoken the truth, and could not have murdered my husband and my mother. And I have often blessed the memory of my father, too. For had he not taught me to observe and see at a glance the main lines, the striking or essential parts of a person or object? And how without that training of the eye and mind could I have noticed and remembered on that night of terror the principal points of the murderers' attire?
CHAPTER XVI
INVESTIGATIONS
A CURIOUS thing happened while I was at Bellevue. I received from my notary, who had received it from the judicial authorities, a package which contained a number of things found at my house: a few letters from President Faure, some letters from M. B., and the President's talisman! If these objects are returned to me, I thought, it is evidently because it is not desired that anything concerning the late President of the Republic and the Attorney-General be brought up in the "Affair of the Impasse Ronsin." This impression was right, as will be fully realised later on. Every phase of my past life, from my earliest years to the date of the mysterious murder, was investigated, except my relations with magistrates and with President Faure.
The circle of my friends was daily growing smaller, which was perhaps only human, since I was in trouble. I still received many letters from friends and acquaintances, but they were every day fewer in number. And their tone grew less sympathetic, their style more formal.... Soon no letters reached me at all. No one seemed to remember me, not even the few friends in whom I had absolute confidence, and I painfully repeated to myself a saying of my mother's: "A friend who ceases to be a friend never was a friend."
Letters, however, kept pouring into the letter-box of Vert-Logis. But they were all anonymous letters, a few threatening me or calling me a criminal, the others denouncing as the authors of the double-murder, my cook, Mariette, her son, Alexandre Wolff, my valet, Rémy Couillard and others. The letters gave me all kinds of "information" about their past life and doings, suggested theories of the crime that were so crowded with details that one might have thought the writers had been present when it was committed. I burnt them all, except a few, which, when I was not too ill, I read and re-read, with an interest that became almost morbid.... They haunted me, some of those letters, and I lived in an atmosphere of suspicion that was painful and distractful.
Couillard was at Bellevue. Naturally enough he had not wanted to remain at the house in the Impasse Ronsin. He was nervous, trembling, frightened of everybody and everything, and was a pitiful object to look at.... I pitied him ... and I pitied myself.
Marthe was with me, and her presence, her solicitude, her love, enabled me to bear my cross. At the same time, I remembered the Inspector's startling promises, and the words spoken both by M. Leydet and M. Hamard: "Be patient ... we will find them...."
Doctor Regal—appointed by the authorities—came on June 26th with Inspector Pouce to see if I were strong enough to bear the journey from Bellevue to Boulogne (on the Seine). It appeared that M. Leydet was compelled, on account of the public feeling against me, to ask me further questions, in the presence this time of M. Grandjean, substitut of the Procureur de la République. The new examination would take place at the house of M. Brouard, the husband of M. Steinheil's sister Marguerite, whom the reader perhaps remembers as the lady who received me in Paris, when I returned from my wedding-trip.
I was only too anxious to assist the law in its investigations, and I consented to go to Boulogne—where I was to be kept from 1 P.M. till late in the evening! The nurse, who had accompanied us, of course, had to give me occasional doses of ether to enable me to breathe, and to reply to the questions I was asked. Marthe and M. Boeswilwald were in the next room, for serious fears were entertained that I might utterly collapse. I spent several long hours lying full length on a stretcher placed on the floor. The nurse remained near me.