When I returned to "my" cell at the Saint-Lazare prison, I had not lost all hope. Maître Aubin, as I was on my way to the Dépôt, declared: "There is absolutely nothing against you. You may be released at any time, now. Never mind M. André! When the dossier of the Instruction is read by those who have power to decide whether you are to be set free or tried in the Court of Assize, they will realise your innocence. The fact that you did not obtain a favorable reply to your recent petition, proves nothing."
The petition was a "demande de liberté provisoire" (provisional liberty), which I handed to Judge André at the close of the last Instruction but one.
The exact contents of this petition may interest the reader, inasmuch as it reveals various facts in connection with the crime, which I have hardly mentioned so far:
(No. 342) March 8th, 1909. Monsieur le Juge d'Instruction.
"Following public opinion, which is so terribly against me but which, when it is better informed, will necessarily become again generous and just, you have considered me a monstrous criminal. I have endured your ten interrogatories, your sixty hours of questions, without flinching, and have always asserted my innocence. You have not believed me—could not believe me after all the foolish or extravagant things I have said and done, and have been made to say and do—(this last sentence was dictated to me by my counsel, who suggested that it would not be wise to be too aggressive). My narrative of the crime seemed to you, as to other people, fantastic and unacceptable; I was the only culprit, or I had an accomplice whom I had influenced, or by whom I had been influenced! The assassins, Monsieur le Juge, were those I said, and their number was the number I gave. And it is your own experts in their reports, your dossier in its final state, which prove it. I, the only criminal! To think that such a gross and abominable idea should be held for one moment! Why? To make it hang together it has been necessary to introduce the theory of a sleeping-draught or of some poison! Now, after the expert, Dr. Ogier, had declared that the bodies of the victims contained no trace of narcotic or poison, comes Dr. Balthazard, who supplies this irresistible argument: that my husband and my mother were so little poisoned, so little under the influence of a narcotic, that the latter got out of her bed and that the former rose and walked to the bath-room, both victims having incontrovertibly been killed at the spot and in the position in which their bodies were found. Thus is destroyed the odious hypothesis of the 'Tragic Widow,' giver of poison or narcotic, and slayer, with her own hands and without help, of her husband and mother.
"There remains the hypothesis according to which I am still guilty, but had the assistance of an accomplice. Without insisting on the imprudence entailed by the choice of any accomplice—an inadmissible imprudence as you perceived, since you have continuously and persistently regarded me as the only culprit—which facts in regard to this theory has the Instruction brought out? None. And yet it is not for lack of investigations and clues; your dossiers are full of inquiries concerning all the persons who knew me, from my most distant acquaintances to my own brother. That is not all, and here again Reason and Science supply some information. M. Bertillon and Dr. Balthazard have succeeded in ascertaining the following facts: the small clock, surely handled by one of the assassins and thrown into a cupboard, bears finger-prints which have not been identified; the brandy bottle used a few hours before the crimes for the grogs, brought up almost full in the evening and found almost empty on the morning after the crime, bears numerous unidentified finger-prints, especially around the neck, as if the murderers had drunk from the bottle. On the carpet a number of ink-spots were found, which came from the pool of ink in the boudoir (where the murderers knocked over the ink-stand on the desk which contained the money and the dummy bundle of documents); those spots had dropped from the edge of some flowing garment, which could not have been one of mine, since I had undressed on the Saturday night in the bath-room, and since my clothes were found there on the Sunday morning, without any ink-spots on them or under the hem. To whom did this long loose garment, to whom did that gown which left its traces on the carpet, belong? Was it not to the woman I denounced, or to one of the murderers dressed as I have said? An ink-spot was found on my knee—was it not made by one of the men when binding me to the bed?"...
(Then, I showed how the gowns stolen at the Hebrew Theatre must have been those worn by the murderers, and I mentioned the extraordinary and all-important discovery of the cards in the Underground, the day after the crime, cards which pointed to the Hebrew Theatre and to the "stolen gowns.")
..."Allow me to add that four letters which are in the Dossier corroborate my narrative: Two letters from a certain Arthur Rewer, one of which is dated June 2nd, three days after the crime, a letter posted at Boulogne-sur-Seine, and the fourth written by an Italian woman and sent from Oporto (Portugal). You have assuredly attached some importance to them, especially to the two Rewer letters, since you appointed an expert in handwriting and ordered all kinds of investigations and inquiries. Now, in his letter of June 2nd, Arthur Rewer declared that on the night of the crime, he had seen, and even followed (at about 12.30 A.M.), four men (I only saw three men on the fatal night, but the fourth evidently kept watch downstairs) and a woman who left the Impasse Ronsin with bags. And the writer gave a description of these people which tallied with my own! I am endeavouring to submit to your high conscience proofs of my own innocence taken from your dossier, and how many other proofs there are which make my guilt impossible! And, reminding you how much, for my own life and for my daughter I needed my husband, reminding you of my love for my mother I protest to you once more: I am innocent!
"Besides, what motive could have led me to commit such a ghastly crime? It was not a desire to be free to marry, since the person you know of, would not and could not marry again for eight years! (M. Bdl. has often said, and to others beside me, that he would never give a step-mother to his children, and that before marrying again, he would wait till they were all grown up, which meant about eight years.) For financial reasons? How could one admit it, since, if the death of my mother brought me a small income, my husband's deprived me of one far larger! As regards the jewels which I declare to have been stolen, you know that, contrary to the news spread abroad, it has been impossible to find a single one, outside the four jewels I myself handed to M. Souloy on June 12th, as I have already told M. Leydet, and also that not one of my mother's jewels taken by the murderers, has been discovered.
"That is why, Monsieur le Juge, at the present stage of the Instruction, I ask you to give me back my child, and to put an end to this torture which is now more than useless and for which your conscience may some day prick you. I have the honour to ask you to grant me 'provisional liberty,' and I duly promise to remain at your disposal and to help you with all my power in the search for the Truth.