The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection (37 page)

Still distraught, Meg related that she had slept in her daughter’s bedroom because she had given her own bed to her mother, who had ailing legs. About midnight she had been awakened by the touch of a cloth on her face. Several people carrying shrouded lanterns were in the room. Three of them were men who wore long black coats; a fourth, carrying a pistol, was a red-haired woman. They demanded to know where Steinheil kept his money, referring to him as “your father,” indicating that they knew the layout of the house well enough to know this was normally Marthe’s room. After Meg told the intruders where her husband’s money was kept, they struck her on the head. When she awoke, she found herself tied and gagged. At last she had been able to spit out the cotton wad they had stuffed in her mouth, and began to call for help.

As word of the murders spread, reporters besieged the house. Hamard told them that it appeared Steinheil had surprised the burglars and been killed. Why Meg’s mother, Mme. Japy, had been strangled in her bed was still a mystery — nor was it clear why Meg had been spared, except that she recalled one of the burglars saying, “We don’t kill brats,” indicating that they had mistaken her for her daughter. The burglars had apparently expected to find the house empty, because the Steinheils had originally planned to go to Vert-Logis the day before. The family remained in Paris only because Mme. Japy’s legs were bothering her. As for suspects, Hamard mentioned that many of the male models Steinheil used for his historical paintings had been in the house and knew he kept money there.

iv

The police postponed their questioning of Meg until the following day, to allow her to recover somewhat from her shock. Now she embellished her story, reporting that everyone had gone to bed at 10:00
P.M.
after drinking rum toddies that Meg had made to encourage her mother to sleep. She recalled hearing the clock strike midnight just before the burglars appeared in her room. As for the men in long black coats, she now told the police that all the men had beards — one long and black with silver streaks, another red, and the third brown. The man with the long black beard had thin, bony hands. Asked if she recognized any of them, she said that she could not be sure. She added that the woman with red hair appeared to be a
souillon,
a slut.

Bertillon made a report on his findings at the crime scene, which tended to throw doubt on Meg’s story. Though rain had fallen heavily that night, there was no sign of water or tracks on the carpets, nor any indication of forced entry. The rope tied around the necks of the two victims had come from a supply of cord in the kitchen. As for the valuables in the house, most of Meg’s jewels were still in her room and the silver service in the dining room had been left behind. It was hard to tell how much money might have been taken, but given Steinheil’s finances, it hardly seemed enough to justify two murders.

Some evidence was harder to explain. The grandfather clock that Meg heard striking midnight had been stopped at 12:10, and there was a fingerprint on the pendulum that did not seem to match the prints of anyone who lived there. Moreover, two interesting pieces of information turned up that seemed to confirm Meg’s story. First, the management of the Hebrew Theater, where actors from eastern Europe presented plays in Hebrew and Yiddish, reported that on the night of May 30, three long black vestments intended for use in a play were found to be missing. Newspapers noted that these matched the description Meg had given of the clothes worn by the male burglars.

A second possible clue turned up the day after the crime, when an employee of the Paris Métro found on the floor of a subway car an invitation to an exhibition of Steinheil’s paintings at the impasse Ronsin in April, the month before the murders. On the back of the invitation, someone had written “Guibert, costumier pour théâtres.” Inside was the card of Jane Mazeline, an artist in her sixties. Investigation showed that the handwriting on the back did not match Mazeline’s, so the Sûreté decided that someone had stolen her invitation to gain entrance to the house, making himself familiar with the layout.

Following up on the Hebrew Theater theft, a detective showed Meg photographs of some of its patrons. One did indeed have a shaggy beard, and she promptly identified him as one of the burglars. It was an American poet and painter, Frederic Harrisson Burlingham, a well-known figure who wandered about the city in sandals. Detectives became excited when they learned he was said to have a red-haired mistress. But unfortunately, Burlingham had an ironclad alibi: he was in Burgundy at the time the murders were committed. Seeing how eagerly the Sûreté had responded to her accusation, however, Meg began casting about for more suspects.

She hired a lawyer, Anthony Aubin, who would make his reputation on this case. Aubin asked Magistrate Leydet to let him inspect the evidence that had been collected so far. This was so irregular a request that Leydet turned him down. Undaunted, Meg sent a letter to
L’Echo de Paris
declaring that she would conduct her own search for the murderers. Late in November, she found her first candidate: young Rémy Couillard, who had discovered her bound and naked on that fateful Sunday.

According to her, she first became suspicious of him when she needed the address of his parents at a time when he was out on an errand. She looked inside a leather case he had left in his coat, and found a letter he was supposed to have mailed for her. It was addressed to Marthe’s fiancé, and shockingly, Couillard seemed to have opened and read it. She reported this to the Sûreté, which didn’t think it suspicious. Meg then enlisted the aid of Henri Barby, an editor at
Le Matin
who had become her confidant. At her urging, Barby searched the leather case again and this time found a pearl wrapped in silk paper. Meg claimed that it was from an art nouveau ring that the burglars had taken.

The Sûreté brought Couillard in for questioning, and he admitted stealing the letter but denied ever having seen the pearl before. If he had been one of the burglars, he said, he could have stolen much more, for he knew secret hiding places that the family used for their valuables.

Meg also claimed that she had received anonymous letters saying that Couillard was in love with her daughter and wanted to break up the engagement. Furthermore, on the morning when he discovered her, she had felt he was tempted to strangle her instead of calling for help.

The police went to search Couillard’s room. Meg accompanied them and triumphantly picked up a small diamond from the floor. Here, she announced, was proof he had been in league with the burglars. The police took the hapless valet into custody.

Two days later, on November 25, Meg was called to the Sûreté, where Hamard and Magistrate Leydet were waiting for her. With them were two jewelers and a gemologist. One of the jewelers declared that the pearl Meg had said was in a ring stolen on May 30 had in fact been brought to his shop on June 12 — by Meg herself. At her request, he had removed it from the art nouveau ring where it had been mounted. When a picture of the pearl found in Couillard’s case appeared in the newspapers, the jeweler recognized it. It had an unusual shape and a distinctively placed hole used to attach it to the ring. The other jeweler, who had made the ring in the first place, confirmed that this was the pearl he had mounted.

It was clear that Meg had deliberately made a false accusation against Couillard and that she now had to be considered a suspect in the murders. Meg called her lawyer, Aubin, who persuaded Leydet to release her. Nonetheless, seven policemen now surrounded her house to keep her from fleeing.

That evening, Meg invited to her home two journalists whose friendship she had cultivated. Supposedly she wanted their advice, but in reality she was preparing a startling new accusation. In tears, she admitted lying about Couillard but then claimed she had done so because she had been threatened by the real culprit — -Alexander Wolff, the son of her trusted chambermaid. Wolff, she said, had long resented the Steinheils because he felt they exploited his mother. The only reason Meg had escaped was that he had tied her up with the intention of raping her but had been thwarted from doing so when he heard Couillard approaching. Nevertheless, he had threatened Meg that he would kill her, or tell the Sûreté that she had been his accomplice, if she revealed his name.

She persuaded the police guarding the house to take her to the Sûreté, where Hamard was summoned to hear her latest accusation. Alexander Wolff was arrested and brought in for questioning. Facing Meg, he flatly denied everything she had said, and now she began to waver. Perhaps, she said, the person who had threatened her was only someone who looked like Wolff. Since this was patently absurd, Hamard now began to pressure Meg, bringing Couillard and then Mariette Wolff in to confront her. Finally, Meg was placed under arrest, and everyone else was set free. Magistrate Leydet, presented with the new developments, told her that “by your lies and your concealment of evidence, you have misled justice and placed obstacles in the way of the seizure of the murderers.”
⁸
She was sent to the Santé.

v

Remarkably, at this point the Ministry of Justice took the case away from Leydet and replaced him as
juge d’instruction
with another prosecutor, Louis André. This seemed to be a baffling move, for Leydet had either solved, or was on the brink of solving, the case. André, for his part, acted as if he were starting a new investigation. He ordered the bodies of Steinheil and Mme. Japy exhumed so that they could be autopsied a second time. Bertillon and his assistants were sent back to the house and ordered to check again for fingerprints — something that would seem to have been pointless, considering how many regular residents of the house had been there since the murders.

Mariette Wolff now began to talk to the authorities about Meg’s many lovers. To the Sûreté, the most interesting of them was Borderel, who had told Meg he could not marry her if she was a divorced woman. That suggested a motive for her to murder her husband but of course still left the death of her mother an enigma. Here, André’s exhumation paid off with a valuable clue: the second autopsy found that Mme. Japy had not died of strangulation, despite the rope around her neck. The cause of death was asphyxiation: she had swallowed her dental plate. Because she would not have gone to bed with it in, she must have been placed in her bed by the killers. And of course that gave the lie to Meg’s story that everyone had fallen asleep before the crime.

A new witness stepped forward: an attorney who lived on the rue de Vaugirard, which intersects the impasse Ronsin. He had looked out his window around midnight on the night of the murder and saw a car parked at the corner. A man dressed in elegant clothing was standing next to it, smoking a cigar and holding an umbrella. The attorney watched until another man ran out of the
impasse.
The two got into the car and drove off.

On March 13, 1909, Magistrate André formally charged Meg with the premeditated murder of her husband and mother. Legal maneuvering delayed the start of the trial to November 3. There were only one hundred seats allotted for spectators in the Cour d’Assises de la Seine, making it the hottest ticket in town. Women were particularly interested in the trial; wives of foreign ambassadors, countesses, and the mistresses of politicians all pulled strings to obtain places in the courtroom. Marcel Proust astonished his friends by appearing before noon to attend.

The presiding judge, Charles-Bernard de Valles, sat on a raised platform, flanked by two associate judges; all three were clothed in red robes and, with gray beards and solemn faces, looked determined to maintain the dignity of justice. The prosecutor, Paul Trouard-Riolle, also wore a red robe, which did little to conceal his massive girth. Meg’s attorney, Aubin, and a colleague wore black robes. Aubin looked every centimeter the well-turned-out barrister, with curly black hair, mustache, and beard. Twelve men were admitted as jurors, ranging from middle-class “proprietors” to a musician, a bricklayer, and a baker. After they were seated, the spectators craned their necks to look at the doorway through which the defendant would be escorted.

A gasp went up at the sight of Meg, dramatically clothed in a black mourning dress and hat. Eleven months in prison had seemed to age her and turn the renowned peach glow of her skin to an unhealthy pallor. Many thought that her features looked harder, coarser than they had been in earlier newspaper pictures. Still, throughout the trial, Meg would become the mistress of the courtroom, skillfully battling the judge and the prosecutor.

Following French judicial practice, the trial began with the presiding judge interrogating the defendant. In theory this procedure was designed to determine the facts, but in this case it was clear that de Valles was going to serve as a prosecutor. He led Meg through a catalog of her lovers. (The scandalous episode with President Faure was not mentioned.) Hadn’t she been happy with Steinheil, who had enabled her to create a salon in his house in Paris? He was “a simple man,” Meg replied. “Too simple.”
⁹
Hadn’t Meg humiliated him? de Valles asked. Meg realized this was a trap and retorted that her husband had known nothing of her extramarital affairs. Nonetheless, she was sorry she had not been a good wife to him. When he fell in love with her, she had been merely a child. As she grew, she wanted lovers — friends — who understood her intellectual needs.

De Valles asked about money. Wasn’t that her real reason for taking lovers? Meg denied it, saying that she had never sold herself. Chouanard, who had rented the country villa, was the only one to give her large sums, and that was his choice, not hers.

Meg still insisted that the three black-clad men and the red-haired woman, never found, had committed the crimes. She also tried to excuse the false accusations she had made in the case. She had not been thinking clearly, she said, because the press had persecuted her, making it appear as if she were the murderer. Finding the unmailed letter in Couillard’s wallet had made her think he had deceived her on other matters.