Question. "It is interesting to observe, at any rate, as an oddity, that your story of the crime and the mise en scène appears to bear the stamp of your own imagination. For the tale of the black gowns sounds very much like reminiscence of the personages in several of your late husband's pictures. On the other hand several of the details bear a striking likeness to the incidents in a famous murder case which took place at Montbéliard in 1885, when you were sixteen years old, and which fascinated the population of that district where you were then living."
Answer. "I could not have lost my reason to the extent of saying I had seen men in black gowns if it had not been true. The personages in my husband's paintings, to which you refer, wear black gowns, which look in no way like the ecclesiastical gowns, plain, straight, and with tight-fitting sleeves, which the murderers wore. As for the Montbéliard murder case you mention, I don't remember it; I have never even heard of it at all. At home we [the young girls] did not read the newspapers. Montbéliard is an hour's distance from Beaucourt; I went there for my piano lessons.... I also learned painting at Montbéliard.... I drove there or went by rail.... I have never heard of that murder."
(M. André then proceeded to "prove" my guilt by the fact that I had got rid of "Turk," the borrowed dog, and that I had enticed my mother to come to my house at the end of May, and had prevented her from going to Bellevue, to which accusation I replied by stating once more the real facts, fully corroborated by our doctor.)
"... On Saturday, May 30th, it was at the last moment, when I saw that my mother could not stand on her legs, that we decided not to go to Bellevue to sleep."
Question. "As regards the problem of finding out why you premeditated the murder, not only of your husband but also of your mother, and if you had a direct rôle in those murders: the solution appears to lie in the 'moral preoccupation' you had at the time...."
(And M. André tried to prove that, being financially embarrassed, disliking my husband, and having constant quarrels with both him and my mother, I had thought of becoming the wife of M. Bdl., that a divorce being out of the question on account of M. Bdl.'s ideas, and also on account of M. Buisson's, on the matter, the "disappearance" of my husband and my mother had appeared to me as settling all difficulties and satisfying all my ambitions....)
Answer. "You are fiercely persecuting an unfortunate woman! Neither with my husband nor my mother have I ever had a quarrel or a disagreement. My husband and I had not lived together as husband and wife for the past fifteen years, and I enjoyed by his side a liberty which a divorce could not have increased. M. Bdl. did not wish to marry again. Besides, I don't think I would have married him, for he was terribly jealous. Besides, in his evidence, I believe he has said himself that at the beginning of May 1908 he had already decided not to see us [my husband and me] any more.... I had no reason whatever to kill my husband and my mother.... No one will ever believe that when they see from the letters which are 'under seal' what I was to my mother, and what she was to me. You say we were financially embarrassed in 1908, but that year was precisely the one in which my husband earned the most.... My husband was quite satisfied with everything I did, and as for me, I didn't interfere with his life, but left him quite free. We had been for ten years on intimate terms with the Buissons, and both M. Buisson and his wife could assert that there never was any kind of quarrel between my husband and me.... At the time of the drama I was happy, as I had not been for a long time before my husband's return to health, because of my daughter's happiness on account of her engagement to Pierre Buisson, and I because of her father's happiness...."
Question. "During the three months after the drama, events twice foiled your plans. Perturbed by the suspicions which existed against you in so many minds, M. Bdl. and also the Buisson family moved away, and kept away from you. In those circumstances, not only Marthe's future as you conceived it, but also your ambitions in regard to M. Bdl. ran serious risks of being irretrievably compromised. Hence, unless you were to allow a large portion of the advantages of the double murder to escape, the urgent necessity of a justification before public opinion. Hence, on October 30th, the daring move of your letter to the Echo de Paris, that is your claim, made publicly, for a prolongation of the inquiries, and of the search for the murderers of your husband and your mother. And since that prolongation has led to the revelations of your guilt, your attitude simply shows that you had the temerity to go as far as you could in your purpose of winning and enjoying, somehow or other, and at any cost, the fruits of your double crime."
Answer. "No! On the contrary, you have there a proof of my innocence! If I had had anything on my conscience, I should not have re-started the case, bravely, without fear of any one. No! If I had been guilty, I should not have had such temerity! A man would not have dared because men are cowards, and a woman would not have dared because women are too weak."
Question. "The result of the proceedings is that you are accused: