Then came one of those curious samples of 'what the soldier said' that are so often admitted in French criminal trials as evidence. Louise Clocher said she had seen Helene on the road between Auray and Lorient in the company of a soldier. When she told some one of it people said, "That wasn't a soldier! It was the devil you saw following her!"
One rather sympathizes with Helene in her protest against this testimony.
From Ploermel, Auray, Lorient, and other places doctors and relatives of the dead came to bear witness to Helene's cooking and nursing activities, and to speak of the thefts she had been found committing. Where any suspicion had touched Helene her piety and her tender care of the sufferers had disarmed it. The astonishing thing is that, with all those rumours of 'white livers' and so on, the woman could proceed from place to place within a few miles of each other, and even from house to house in the same towns, leaving death in her tracks, without once being brought to bay. Take the evidence of M. Le Dore, son-in-law of that Mme Hetel who died in Auray, His mother-in-law became ill just after Helene's reputation was brought to his notice. The old lady died next day.
"The day following the revelation," said M. Le Dore, "I put Helene out. She threw herself on the ground uttering fearsome yells. The day's meal had been prepared. I had it thrown out, and put Helene herself to the door with her luggage, INTO WHICH SHE HASTILY STOWED A PACKET. Mme Hetel died next day in fearful agony."
I am responsible for the italicizing. It is hard to understand why M. Le Dore did no more than put Helene to the door. He was suspicious enough to throw out the meal prepared by Helene, and he saw her hastily stow a packet in her luggage. But, though he was Mayor of Auray, he did nothing more about his mother-in-law's death. It is to be remarked, however, that the Hetels themselves were against the brusque dismissal of Helene. She had "smothered the mother with care and attentions."
But one gets perhaps the real clue to Helene's long immunity from the remark made in court by M. Breger, son-in-law of that Lorient couple, M. and Mme Dupuyde-Lome. He had thought for a moment of suspecting Helene of causing the child's death and the illness of the rest of the family, but "there seemed small grounds. What interest had the girl in cutting off their lives?"
It is a commonplace that murder without motive is the hardest to detect. The deaths that Helene Jegado contrived between 1833 and 1841, twenty-three in number, and the six attempts at murder which she made in that length of time, are, without exception, crimes quite lacking in discoverable motive. It is not at all on record that she had reason for wishing to eliminate any one of those twenty-three persons. She seems to have poisoned for the mere sake of poisoning. Save to the ignorant and superstitious, such as followed her in the streets to accuse her of having a "white liver" and a breath that meant death, she was an unfortunate creature with an odd knack of finding herself in houses where 'accidents' happened. Time and again you find her being taken in by kindly people after such 'accidents,' and made an object of sympathy for the dreadful coincidences that were making her so unhappy. It was out of sympathy that the Widow Lorey, of Locmine, took Helene into her house. On the widow's death the niece arrived. In court the niece described the scene on her arrival. "Helene embraced me," she said. "'Unhappy me!' she wept. 'Wherever I go everybody dies!' I pitied and consoled her." She pitied and consoled Helene, though they were saying in the town that the girl had a white liver and that her breath brought death!
Where Helene had neglected to combine her poisoning with detected pilfering the people about her victims could see nothing wrong in her conduct. Witness after witness—father, sister, husband, niece, son-in-law, or relation in some sort to this or that victim of Helene's—repeated in court, "The girl went away with nothing against her." And even those who afterwards found articles missing from their household goods: "At the same time I did not suspect her probity. She went to Mass every morning and to the evening services. I was very surprised to find some of my napkins among the stuff Helene was accused of stealing."
"I did not know of Helene's thefts until I was shown the objects stolen," said a lady of Vannes. "Without that proof I would never have suspected the girl. Helene claimed affiliation with a religious sisterhood, served very well, and was a worker."
It is perhaps of interest to note how Helene answered the testimony regarding her thieving proclivities. Mme Lejoubioux, of Vannes, said her furnishing bills went up considerably during the time Helene was in her service. Helene had purloined two cloths.