Then, after a few remarks about my letter addressed to the Echo de Paris, and published on October 31, M. Hutin proceeds: "I arrived (at the house in the Impasse Ronsin) at about 9.30 P.M. As soon as M. Chabrier saw me, he exclaimed: 'Ah! you come as a saviour,' or at least he said, 'You are welcome.' (The bitter irony of it.)
"Mme. Steinheil herself received me with much sympathy. I noticed she was profoundly depressed (affaissée). She received me in the dining-room.... I told her that to my mind the best thing she could do was to free her conscience by telling me the whole truth. I told her that the next day, the Law, by its own methods, would extract the truth from her, and that she had better make a clean breast of everything.
"At about 10 P.M. M. de Labruyère arrived.
"He, too, strongly insisted that Mme. Steinheil should tell the truth. At one moment, Mme. Steinheil exclaimed: 'What do you want to know from me?'
"We said that she had certainly placed the pearl in Couillard's pocket-book herself, she admitted it, and we asked her why she had done it. She hesitated for a long time... then, finally declared that she had wished to divert the investigations of the Law from another person. It was quite clear that Mme. Steinheil was trying to escape the interview. Answering our questions she said she detested her husband, that they 'were poor,' that they 'had nothing.' I started raising false issues to get at the truth.... Then she declared that the criminal was Salvator (one of M. Steinheil's models). She retracted her words and said: 'No, I am losing my head. It is not Salvator, it is his brother.' Then she stated that she was fond of a man, M. Bdl., and that all she had done of late was in order to prove to him that she was still actively pursuing the affair.
"We asked her again why she had directed suspicion against Rémy Couillard. She replied: 'I have always had suspicions of him.' We told her that, in any case, she knew what had taken place on the night of May 30th-31st, that she knew who was the real criminal. And both M. de Labruyère and I declared to her that: 'We will not go until you tell us the name.' She exclaimed: 'I cannot tell you his name, because there is some one whom it would kill.' We asked her: 'Who? His wife? a sister?' She said: 'No, his mother... his mother would die of grief or would kill herself.'
"We asked her whether she referred to some one in the entourage, and finally she said: 'It is Alexandre Wolff, Mariette's son.' Then she begged us to let Wolff know very quickly so that he might get away. We asked her if Mariette knew about all this, and she replied: 'Oh! Mariette is there, watching us! She must not know anything. Yes, Mariette has known everything since... who knows how long?... Mariette will now probably turn against me.' Then narrating the crime, she told us: 'I did not ask Wolff to come. He came to steal the money.... There were no jewels. He terrorised me. He told me that if I spoke, he could assert that I had summoned him so that he might rid me of my husband.' She added that since then and even recently Alexandre Wolff had threatened to kill her and her daughter.
"I asked her if she were very sure that she was not again accusing an innocent person, if she spoke the truth, and she replied: 'Oh! the moment is too tragic for me not to tell the truth.' She added: 'My life is over,' and she talked about killing herself. I gave her the advice not to do such a thing, and to go in the morning and talk to the examining magistrate, and tell him the whole truth.
"At a certain moment, she rose.... She walked like an automaton, and her arms raised....
"M. de Labruyère and I left at about 12.50 A.M. expecting her to tell the whole truth in the morning, and expressing our sympathy with her.