Eighteen days elapsed before the examining magistrate was notified. Louis Daigremont had been committed to the earth; the neighbors had deliberated, some whispering of poison, others refusing to entertain it. Death had been swift; doubt, however, settled in by degrees. In that house at Saint-Aignan-sur-Roë, an explanation had first been sought for the sudden illness of a man returned from his labor in the fields. It would require the reopening of his grave to grant those conversations some firmer support than the mere memory of a supper and the opinions each held regarding his wife.
Daigremont cultivated the land in the arrondissement of Château-Gontier. His marriage to Louise Bruchet dated back eighteen months. She was ten years his junior and, according to the chronicle, had consented to the match only under compulsion. A child had been born of the union. Domestic quarrels multiplied; Louis at times threatened Louise and had subjected her to blows. The ancient account nonetheless presents him as a man well-liked by his neighbors, laying the responsibility for the household’s violence squarely upon the wife’s disposition. The fact must be preserved without adopting the apology: what unfolded behind closed doors could scarcely be measured by the husband’s reputation abroad.
On Friday, May 30, 1828, another dispute broke out. Louis departed for his work around two in the afternoon and returned at eight to take his supper. The servant girl had assisted in the preparations of the meal. She would later describe the unusual manner in which her mistress had arranged the bread intended for her husband’s bowl, keeping the dish inside a drawer before bidding the girl pour in the broth. At the moment, the service proceeded without interruption. The soup was brought, the husbandman began to eat, and immediately complained of its taste.
He observed at the bottom of the vessel what appeared to be curds or lumps. Louise replied that a few drops of porridge had fallen into it, reproaching him for his perpetual scolding. He continued his meal. The explanation seemed suited to the incident: one preparation mingled with another, a disgruntled man, a wife weary of his complaints. Yet when he subsequently attempted to eat an egg, violent pains seized him. Vomiting ensued, and night transformed the domestic board into the remembrance of a peril now too late to avert.
The neighbors summoned to the bedside ascribed his state to the very cold water Louis had drunk during the afternoon, under the oppressive heat of strenuous toil. This supposition assigned his agony to a cause outside the supper. The stricken man asked for the parish priest and sent for his kin to bid them farewell. His condition worsened throughout the night. Come morning, his groans subsided alongside his strength; toward eleven o’clock, he expired. None among those who surrounded him had yet received from medical examination any certainty as to what had ended his life.
A second occurrence, however, shifted suspicion. Several barnyard fowls in the vicinity perished, and a dog fell ill. It was observed that these beasts had come near the matter voided by Daigremont. The villagers drew a parallel between their symptoms and those of the husbandman. It was by no means an experiment conducted by men of science, but a common observation of the farmyard and its surroundings, weighed alongside the other events of that night. It prevented the inquiry from closing altogether upon a cup of cold water or a sudden malady.
The debates dragged on. Certain voices defended Louise; others noted her aloofness from the deathbed, her haste to cleanse the room, her demeanor when suggestions were made to alert kin or the physician. The selfsame actions could be interpreted either as the callousness of a wife or as the ordinary conduct of a woman overwhelmed by a domestic crisis. It was the recollections of the servant girl, combined with the material circumstances, that brought these conjectures into sharper focus. The young woman had witnessed the meal being prepared; she could speak of objects touched, displaced, and kept out of her reach.
When the authorities were finally apprised, the magistrate ordered an exhumation. The autopsy disclosed severe lesions of the digestive tract. The chemical tests recounted in the chronicle concluded that arsenic was present in the contents of the stomach. The cold water drunk in the fields had sustained the rumors of the initial days. The discovery within the viscera now turned the entire investigation toward whatever had been set before the patient, and toward those persons who had enjoyed access to the dishes. The inquiry now possessed a physical determination of poison, quite separate from conjectures formed on a countenance. This finding did not name the hand that had administered it; it compelled the court to discover how the substance had entered the house and found its way into Louis’s supper.
Arsenic had indeed been present. Louise had urged her husband to procure some under the pretext of destroying vermin; the maidservant deposed that there were no rats upon the premises. Steps taken to obtain other hazardous substances were likewise reported. Upon her arrest, an authorization issued in the husband’s name was seized. The document bore a regular appearance: the name of a husbandman, a domestic requirement, an official permit from the mayoralty. The prosecution perceived therein one of the preparations for the crime, while the servant girl’s testimony connected the purchase directly to the reserved bowl.
Louise was taken into custody nineteen days after the demise. She entreated her servant to maintain silence and, during the interrogations, made signs to her which the investigators noted. She ultimately turned upon the girl, accusing her of having poisoned Louis, and subsequently of having attempted to poison her mistress. The witness was thus cast as the perpetrator of the very acts she was helping to bring to light. At the Assizes, when asked whether she maintained this imputation, Louise answered that she knew nothing of it. The charge leveled against the servant was thus not sustained by the accused with the same firmness as her own denials.
The trial opened on October 10, 1828, before the Court of Assizes of the Mayenne. Louise denied the charges. With regard to a sum of money discovered in her armoire, she asserted that a magistrate had placed it there to work her ruin. Questioned regarding her wedding coifs, which she had torn apart following the bereavement, she explained that she had not been happy. The court listened to answers of an entirely disparate nature: one impugned the investigator, the other laid bare conjugal misery. Neither the confessed unhappiness nor the conduct under scrutiny dispensed the jurors from weighing the physical proof of the deed charged.
A gendarme named Quentin also reported her questions concerning the results of the autopsy. Louise was alleged to have asked him whether poison had been detected, thereafter voicing a dread of being put to death. The chronicler multiplies his remarks upon her composure, her silences, and her tears, each capable of being rendered under his pen as an index of guilt. The prosecution rested, however, on firmer foundations than such readings of countenance: the accessible poison, the meal prepared, the observations of the maid, the death, and the examination of the corpse. Her defense had to confront them as a whole.
The jury rendered its verdict by seven votes to five. The bench unanimously upheld the finding and condemned Louise Bruchet to death. This initial division must not be obscured by the certainty of the chronicler: the jurors had not all spoken with one voice. The contemporary account terminates with the decree; it does not chronicle an execution. Of Louis, it preserves the final complaints over his soup; of Louise, an alliance she deemed unhappy and facts she continued to deny. Between them, a maidservant had been obliged to establish the gravity of what she had witnessed in the ordinary course of her domestic duties.