The keys were taken back from her, she was handed a certificate of good conduct, and the carriage destined to bear her away was duly paid for. It would be difficult to imagine a departure more decorously arranged, had not those who ordered it already begun to suspect that this woman brought death into every house she entered.
The master wished above all else for her to be gone. He did not yet dare to translate his unease into an accusation. She therefore received the customary tokens of esteem at the very moment they sought to deliver themselves of her presence; and the paper that commended her might serve, elsewhere, to unbar a new door.
She went by the name of Nannette Schönleben. Criminal history would remember her under that of Anna Margaretha Zwanziger.
The First House
In 1808, she entered the service of Magistrate Glaser at Kasendorf as housekeeper. He was then living apart from his wife. The new domestic enjoyed a favorable reputation; her skill and manners had earned her patronage. Nothing in her installation bore the likeness of the beginning of a cause that a jurist would later recount among the remarkable crimes of his age.
Glaser’s wife returned. A few weeks later, she fell ill and died. The circumstances did not lead immediately to an accusation of poisoning; the housekeeper quitted the service and found another place.
One must weigh what so swift a transition signifies in a narrative. To the reader, a death is already the first term in a series. To those who lived through it, it still belongs to a particular house, to a known individual, to explanations sought in bodily health and proximate occurrences. The housekeeper who takes her leave carries away her effects. No one imagines they are watching the departure of the thread that will bind this chamber to other chambers.
The Invalid of Sanspareil
Grohmann, another magistrate, was in failing health. In his employ, Schönleben proved attentive; she tended to the bedside, assisted the sick man, and occupied that place willingly granted to one whose presence relieves the embarrassment of others. In the spring of 1809, his condition worsened. He died in May.
As he had long been infirm, his demise found an explanation ready to hand. The housekeeper appeared profoundly afflicted. Her devotion, far from compromising her, contributed to procuring her a new engagement; her qualities as a sick-nurse were well known, and there was just then need of a trustworthy person by the side of a woman about to be delivered of a child.
It was in this manner that she entered the household of Gebhard.
Mother and infant at first fared well. Then the young woman took ill, and died shortly after the birth. The widower found himself with a house to keep, a babe in arms to nurse, and an employee who already understood the needs of both. He retained her.
The place became all the more necessary as death had removed those who might otherwise have filled it.
What Was Whispered Without Accusation
Certain persons remarked upon the succession of deaths. Feuerbach’s account shows, however, that these anxieties long remained in the realm of presentiment or superstitious dread; men spoke of an ill-omened presence before framing the notion of a criminal act. The outward semblance of piety, humility, and dutiful service rendered an accusation difficult to conceive.
Gebhard therefore continued to accept this assistance. During the summer, several incidents occurred in and around the house: guests, passers-by, and servants fell ill after consuming what had been set before them. These occurrences were not all known to the same persons; some were taken for isolated accidents, while others were connected only in retrospect.
A gathering at the skittle-ground brought about a change in the state of affairs. Several participants, Gebhard among them, were seized with sudden illness after drinking together. This time, the number of persons and the proximity of the circumstances made it far more difficult to preserve an individual explanation for each fact.
A friend urged him on. The master resolved to dismiss the housekeeper.
One Recommendation Too Many
He took back her keys, yet gave her a favorable certificate. This detail, in the ancient narrative, is worth an entire scene: a man feels fear enough to revoke a servant’s access to his house, but not certainty enough to write down why. He resolves his embarrassment by recommending her to those who as yet know nothing.
The carriage was made ready. The housekeeper displayed an assiduous devotion until the very moment of her departure, bidding farewell to the servants and to the child. Shortly after she had quitted the house, the infant and two servant-maids fell gravely ill. Suspicion at last assumed a definite shape; household goods were examined, and the inquest began to assemble what each successive hearth had remained ignorant of concerning the others.
The journey that was to carry Schönleben toward another existence would no longer permit her to leave the former ones behind.
The Name in the Docket
Arrested and interrogated, she appeared under her true name. The facts were reviewed, confronted, and inscribed in a chronology whose perusal altered the meaning of every former recommendation. The woman who had been welcomed for her devotion was prosecuted for poisonings committed in the very midst of her ministrations.
Feuerbach, who chronicled this affair, was not content merely to report the acts and the legal proceedings. He sought to describe a personality, a relation to poison, and intentions at times set forth with an assurance that belongs as much to his century and his art as a narrator. We may follow the investigation without adopting all of these intimate explanations; a history becomes less instructive when it claims to know with certainty that which the evidence permits us only to surmise.
Zwanziger was condemned and executed at Bamberg in 1811. The households could at last affix a common name to their misfortunes. This knowledge came too late for the dead, but it stripped from the survivors that peculiar solitude wherein each believes himself stricken by a fatality resembling no other.
There remains, at the beginning of the end, that certificate bestowed at the moment of departure. One imagines it neatly folded, preserved among useful papers, ready to be presented to a master anxious to engage a trustworthy person. The housekeeper had no need to invent its praises; an uneasy man had penned them merely that she might depart.
The danger had received its recommendation from those who desired only to see it pass into another house.