The murder had been committed on the night of the 12th October. On the 25th, thirteen days after, the authorities began to bestir themselves, and as every trace pointed to the inn, the Mayor of Lanarce, accompanied by a party of young men, went to Peyrabeille to institute inquiries. On entering the kitchen, Marie Martin informed him that the Juge de Paix of Coucouron was already there in the parlour, and would speak with him. No one knew what passed between these magistrates, but presently the mayor came out and said to his attendants: "Gentlemen, you may depart, there is nothing to be done"; and, in fact, nothing was done. No search was made; some politenesses passed between the two officials and the hostess, and they retired with bows. Yet the corpse, all the while, was within a few yards of the house. It was discovered in a startling manner.
Philemon Pertuis, son-in-law of the Martins, who had left the house in which he had been for a few years at Peyrabeille, had retained the little farm about it, and employed the sheds and stable and cellars for his crops, etc.
One day he sent his servant, Jean Testud, with a tumbril to fetch away his potatoes that were in the cellar. Testud went in with a lamp and saw in a corner a barrel of bran. He was aware of an unpleasant smell in the cellar, which he could not explain. On one of his journeys the lamp went out, and he returned to grope for it. In so doing he put his hand into the barrel and encountered the cold remains of a human body. Frozen with horror, he staggered to the inn, sank in a chair, and said he was ill, and must go home to his parents at Banne.
Pierre Martin and his wife were uneasy. They went to the cellar and found there the lamp of Testud, and at once saw that the corpse must be removed. This was done during the night on the back of a mule, and was conveyed to a precipice at Lespéron and flung over it, so as to give an idea that Anjolras had fallen accidentally.
The body was discovered on October 26th, was identified and examined, and it was soon seen that this was no case of an accidental fall, but of murder. On November 1st, Martin and his wife and his nephew André, and after that Jean Rochette, were arrested, but were not brought to trial for three years, as the prosecution met with extraordinary difficulty in getting together evidence against them, so timorous were the peasants, so afraid of appearing in court and being subjected to cross-questioning, and of incurring the resentment of the relatives of the Martins, who were numerous. The two daughters were not arrested. Nothing could be wrung from the girl Marie Arnaud, who preserved throughout remarkable self-possession and self-restraint. André, as already said, was acquitted, but Pierre and his wife and Jean Rochette were guillotined close to the inn on October 2nd, 1833.
Pierre Martin affected to be penitent, made loud professions of remorse. Rochette was sullenly penitent, but Marion literally kicked the prison chaplain out of the cart in which he purposed attending her to the gallows, was resentful and hardened to the last, and when, on the scaffold, another priest held up the crucifix before her eyes as she was being bound to be placed under the fatal knife, she turned away her face from it with a scowl.
Vast crowds attended the execution, and when the bloody scene was over and the scaffold removed, the crowd spent the rest of the day till late into the night dancing over the spot where the blood had flowed, to the strains of a piper, whilst the old folks got fuddled over the liquor from the cellar of the inn, sold to them by the nearest relatives of the Martins, who had inherited it through the execution a few hours previously. To Peyrabeille may be applied the words of Jules Claretie, relative to Paris after the Terror: "Il y avait encore dans Paris une odeur de sang, et Paris cependant s'ammusait; folle de joie."
