The blood had soaked through the floorboards before anyone consented to relate what had transpired. On the 15th of May, 1808, two servant girls conversing at the Sollier homestead in Chaumont observed a liquid seeping from the barn loft. Ascending the ladder, they drew aside several sheaves of straw and caught sight of an arm. They ventured no further. It remained for them only to quit the house to raise the alarm; in this family, that solitary step would soon be turned into a grievance against them.
One of the women, Élisabeth Olivier, served under Jean-Baptiste Sollier. The other, Barbe Guilhelme, had come merely to visit her. It was Barbe who hastened to alert her own mistress; the mayor was notified and repaired forthwith to the scene. He recognized François, one of the master’s sons. The body remained guarded throughout the night, awaiting the justice of the peace from Susa. The discovery had now crossed the threshold of the domestic circle. The family was no longer the sole arbiter of what the neighbors might learn.
On the morrow, the corpse was examined, found stripped bare amidst the straw. The wounds upon the head were ascribed to blows dealt with a stone and a cudgel. Blood upon the fingers of the right hand gave reason to believe that François had attempted to shield his face. The occupants of the house insinuated a different tale: some rival in love, they suggested, might have come to murder him. They pointed out an outdoor trellis whose laths appeared strained, affording access to the barn from without. Thus, to all appearances, a path lay open to an unknown assailant.
Yet the magistrates soon learned that rancor had no need to climb by way of that trellis. The interests of the Sollier siblings collided over their father’s estate. Each child dreaded the advantages that might be conceded to the others. Two days prior to the discovery, an altercation had pitted François against the old man; the son had reportedly dashed him to the ground. The chronicle of Champagnac paints the entire household in the darkest hues. Such severity cannot serve as proof against any individual member, yet it preserves the memory of those discords that the magistrate was bound to untangle.
Joseph-Thomas, François’s brother, soon stood at the heart of their suspicions. He was reproached with past acts of violence against his kin and a singular animosity toward the deceased. An affair of François’s had allegedly jeopardized Joseph-Thomas’s own intended marriage to the daughter of a certain Joannes. Marriage, property, birthright: throughout the successive depositions and declarations, every coveted position seemed occupied by one who refused to yield. The motive bore no marks of an aimless malice. It had the narrow, stubborn proportions of a homestead that several heirs already deemed their own.
Marguerite, their sister, was likewise implicated. It was whispered that she had sharply upbraided the maidservant for having exposed the traces of blood. To this rebuke she would offer a different explanation: she had merely wished her father to be informed before strangers were called in. The distinction was of moment. Striving to preserve domestic authority, even in such an extremity, did not of itself establish that she had taken part in the murder. Yet at that juncture of the inquiry, the reprimand cast at the servant brought Marguerite perilously close to the secret unearthed beneath the straw.
The father’s demeanor in turn drew scrutiny. Apprised of the liquid dripping overhead, he had spoken alternately of wine and of the blood of a beast. He had dallied before answering the mayor. The magistrate recorded, moreover, the old man’s desire to inter the remains without awaiting the justice of the peace. Father, son, and daughter were taken into custody. The reactions of one, the words of another, and their shared repute gathered them into a single presumption of guilt; it remained to be seen whether this community of suspicion answered to a community of deed.
A search of the premises yielded material proofs. Beneath the kitchen staircase lay a bloodstained axe handle and a short, coffee-colored coat that François was accustomed to wear. Upon the shoulder of the garment clung hairs mingled with blood, among them a single grey hair. The chronicler discerns in this domestic hiding place a formidable argument against the hypothesis of an intruder. Yet the court possessed no means of individual identification comparable to those one might imagine today. The coat and the haft drew the investigation firmly back into the house; of themselves, they did not name the hand that had struck.
The father maintained that François had announced his intention to journey to Susa to collect payment for a delivery of plaster. Failing to see him on the following day, he had assumed the journey was accomplished. He denied all the allegations laid to his charge. Marguerite stated that she had been absent from the house for nearly the entire day, returning only after the discovery was made. Joseph-Thomas, at first, denied everything with equal firmness, even the presence of an axe within the dwelling. Then his account shifted. He now confessed to having slain his brother, but in his own defense.
He recounted that he had returned from the Joannes house around midnight. François, he alleged, had lain in wait for him near the stable, hurled a heavy stone at him, and dragged him by the hair, demanding, by prerogative of seniority, to wed before his younger brother. Joseph-Thomas claimed to have fled into the barn; pursued and struck anew, he had seized a stone and killed his adversary. His father, he then swore, knew nothing of the matter. This narrative left him saddled with the fatal blow, but sought to displace its cause: the accused presented himself as a man who had merely striven to escape a violent assault.
Another declaration followed. This time, Joseph-Thomas confessed to having waited until François was asleep before putting him to death, after which he had concealed his clothing. The change of story was fatal. Between beating back an attacking brother and stealing upon a slumbering one, the admitted conduct no longer admitted of self-defense. Champagnac imputes this new confession to remorse; yet he cannot disclose what passed within the prisoner’s soul. We possess only a divergent declaration, recorded by a chronicler persuaded of his guilt, and must beware of mistaking that conviction for an insight into the man’s conscience.
The father died in prison while the proceedings were yet pending. Thereupon, Joseph-Thomas retracted his confession and accused the dead man. The old father, he now asserted, had taken his part during a quarrel and had received from François a kick that had ultimately proved fatal. Later, the father had allegedly gone up and slain the son. Joseph-Thomas now depicted himself as an impotent onlooker; his earlier confession, he claimed, had been wrung from him by his father in the hope of saving them both. Thus the man whom his first account had cleared of all wrongdoing became the perpetrator at the very hour he could no longer reply.
The prosecution, however, held evidence of an overture made to a living witness. After the corpse had been brought to light, Joseph-Thomas had sought out the young Joannes woman. Drawing her aside from the company in which she sat, he had entreated her to declare that he had remained in her presence throughout the entire night of the 14th to the 15th of May. This solicited alibi squared neither with the struggle in the barn nor with the nocturnal vengeance he subsequently imputed to his father. Amidst his shifting tales, it laid bare a calculated attempt to procure from an outsider the testimony of an absolute absence.
On September 9, 1808, the court of Turin condemned Joseph-Thomas Sollier to death for the murder of his brother. Marguerite was acquitted: the proceedings had failed to establish her complicity. The judicial record preserves the sentence, without relating here its execution. As for the father, he had passed beyond the reach of human judgment. These three distinct fates must be held apart, even if the chronicler binds the entire family under a single homily on upbringing and domestic discord. Two servant girls had chanced upon a corpse; justice had been compelled to distinguish between persons whom suspicion had initially confounded. Beneath the straw lay a victim. Around him, the ties of blood availed neither to explain the murder nor to condemn all who shared in them.