“You have but one hour to live.” In Berkem, André Carvin the elder aimed a loaded revolver at the upper lip of Dr. Benoit and pressed the trigger as he uttered these words, according to the prosecution’s account reported by the Gazette des Tribunaux. The weapon failed to fire: the ramrod had remained lodged in one of the cylinder’s chambers. The physician seized the barrel and deflected it; a struggle ensued. To understand how Benoit found himself there, the chronicle must retrace its steps to the deposition that commenced the day of February 18, 1885.
As physician to the mutual aid society of La Madeleine-lez-Lille, Dr. Benoit examined those seeking admission and certified the state of their health; incurable individuals were excluded. On February 18, 1885, summoned as a witness before the justice of the peace for the central canton of Lille, he testified that Carvin the younger, long afflicted with an incurable disease, could only have obtained the certificate presented under the signature “Doctor Benoit” by means of a subterfuge. André Carvin the elder was present in the courtroom.
At the hearing of June 1, the accused was sixty-four years of age: born in Tournai (Belgium), he was a hosier residing in the hamlet of Berkem, at La Madeleine. This was the identity established by the chronicle on the threshold of the trial, before returning to the February hearing.
The bill of indictment treated this testimony as the origin of the attempt tried in June. Upon leaving the court, Carvin reportedly conceived a bitter resentment against the physician and resolved upon revenge. He returned to La Madeleine accompanied by several companions. The chronicle dwells upon the silence of the journey, and subsequently upon the remainder of the day, which he is said to have spent frequenting public houses, gathering intelligence, and uttering words that announced his design to kill Benoit.
Towards five o’clock in the evening, at the Priem tavern, the conversation turned once more to the affairs of the mutual aid society. Carvin, whom the report described as somewhat inflamed by drink, declared that the doctor had not two days to live because he had caused his son’s expulsion. “I shall do it my own way. He will get what is coming to him.” As he spoke, he displayed a bludgeon drawn from the pocket of his paletot. The threat was thus no mere phrase reported after the event: in the version submitted to the assize court, the object was present, visible at the very moment the words were uttered.
Four hours later, towards nine o’clock, Carvin was at the Duthoit estaminet. He asked the tavern-keeper to point out Dr. Benoit’s patients in the vicinity. She named Marie Martin; Carvin had the name inscribed upon a slip of paper. Towards a quarter to eleven, he asked her to read the note and added: “Justice is not just. I shall take justice into my own hands.” The tavern-keeper took the paper from him, tore it to pieces, and bade him go to bed. The gesture effaced the note, but not the sequence of events which the prosecution attached to that night.
Towards midnight, Carvin went to ring the bell at the doctor’s residence. The maidservant answered that her master was away; he insisted, asserting that the doctor must be at home. Shortly thereafter, Benoit returned from Berkem in the company of Dumont and Bertin. Carvin begged him to accompany him back to the hamlet: Madame Priem, he said, had just fallen ill and stood in need of care. The company set out once more. Dumont and Bertin walked ahead; Carvin remained beside the physician. The Gazette describes their conversation, attributing to Carvin an expressed admiration for the doctor’s devotion and self-sacrifice. These words spoken upon the road, reported in the indictment, acquired their full meaning in what followed.
At Berkem, the two companions retired to their homes. Benoit knocked several times at the door of the Priem tavern. Madame Priem appeared at a first-floor window. The doctor stated his name, his profession, and the reason for his call; she replied that no one was ill beneath her roof. At that very moment, according to the indictment, Carvin pointed the revolver—loaded with five balls—at Benoit and pressed the trigger. The mechanism failed. With his right hand, the physician seized the barrel and forced it aside.
The struggle continued while Carvin reproached him for what he had said that morning and asserted that he would die “in the prime of youth.” He added that Benoit would never succeed in wresting the revolver from him. Being unable, according to the report, to break his grip, the physician drew a knife from his trouser pocket and struck his assailant’s hand once or twice. Carvin finally relinquished the weapon. Benoit retrieved it and hastened at once to alert the rural constable. The situation reversed itself in an instant: the man who had come under pretext of a consultation was disarmed, while the physician summoned to accompany him remained master of the revolver.
Carvin was apprehended towards one o’clock in the morning at the Priem tavern, which he had entered to dress his wound. The prosecution subsequently attributed to him several concurrent declarations: before the Priem spouses, the rural constable, and the police commissioner, he reportedly admitted having resolved that very morning to kill Benoit, expressing regret at having missed his mark. Before the examining magistrate, he retracted these statements, maintaining that he had merely wished to frighten the physician. The report thus places two successive versions at the heart of the matter: the confession reported to his initial interlocutors, followed by the retraction offered to the magistrate.
A brief line follows this narrative: during the entire time he had resided at La Madeleine, Carvin had never been subject to any reproach. The article specifies neither who made this remark nor what circumstances of his past it summarized. It stands beside the acts alleged that night, insufficient either to explain or to contradict them. The account of the trial, published five days after the hearing, is itself succinct. M. Blondel, deputy public prosecutor, maintained the accusation; Maître d’Hooge appeared for the defense. The Gazette provides details neither of their arguments nor of the jury’s answers to each of the questions.
The verdict was recorded in a single sentence: Carvin was condemned to five years of solitary confinement. Between the morning’s deposition and the attack after midnight, the day and night unfolded a sequence in which the same physician was first summoned as a witness, then enticed under the pretense of a sick call, and finally forced to struggle to turn aside a revolver. In the midst of this chain of events, the jammed mechanism opened an interval; Benoit seized upon it to disarm Carvin and raise the alarm with the rural constable.