Shortly past eleven o'clock at night, the report of a pistol was heard within the bedchamber of Morel de la Combe. The manorial magistrate lay sleeping in an alcove, his wife but a few paces from him, behind a shared curtain. She awoke to find her husband lifeless. Meanwhile, the doors of the adjoining chambers had been barred with cords or billets of wood; those of the domestic servants, of the niece, and of Madame Morel herself had been fastened in this fashion. By the time assistance arrived, the assailant had vanished.
The murder occurred on January 7, 1783, in the parish of Saint-Jean-Soleymieux, in the province of Forez. Morel de la Combe sat as judge over the seigniory of Ladvieu. He had recently caused the interior of his residence to be repaired and had slept in that particular chamber only since the previous night. The discharge, fired from a weapon loaded with two lead balls, killed him upon the spot. His wife cried out for aid; the household and nearby inhabitants soon thronged the house, without discovering the assassin.
On the morrow, Madame Morel was removed from the dwelling; her nephew, a young ecclesiastic, and her niece likewise departed, followed by several servants. Two maidservants alone remained behind. The lieutenant of the seigniory repaired to the scene alongside the procureur-fiscal and a surgeon. He examined these two women, then mounted to the bedchamber. The deceased bore a wound at the temple; his nightcap, his head-ribbon, a portion of his hand, and the bedsheet showed marks from the shot. The post-mortem examination extracted two pewter balls from his head.
The official report likewise noted doors barricaded by means of cords and pieces of timber. The murderer had seemingly fetched the cords from the kitchen; several rooms had been secured from without, including those wherein slept the domestics and Madame Morel. The young cleric had met with no such hindrance. The chronicler deems this disparity singular, wondering whether it presumes the presence of accomplices; yet it does not suffice to establish their guilt. By morning, all had already altered within the house: the kin had abandoned the premises, and two maidservants remained solitary witnesses to an inquest that had shed no light upon the deed.
In the afternoon, the lieutenant returned to examine the doors and investigate how the killer might have gained entry or concealed himself. In the interval, suspicion had fallen upon the carpenter who had directed the repairs. His name was Pierre Barou. The magistrate inspected the apertures and the peculiar construction of Morel’s chamber, seeking to ascertain whether they afforded Barou the means to perpetrate the murder. Champagnac reproaches the magistrate for fixing his attention upon the carpenter before having examined the family and all five domestic servants. Only the two maidservants who stayed behind had been heard.
Barou worked for Morel, who treated him with benevolence and occasionally invited him to his table. The chronicle depicts him as a worthy craftsman and a father of a family, lacking any apparent motive to slay his employer. Yet he was soon linked to another accusation: that of having been incited to the murder by the parish priest of Chazelles. The charge against the ecclesiastic was not that he had discharged the pistol himself, but that he had counseled Barou to dispatch Morel so as to rid themselves of an enemy.
This accusation originated with Marie Solle, a parishioner of the priest. She claimed to have long harbored resentment toward him over a marriage she believed he had hindered her from contracting. Prior to the murder, she had lodged three separate complaints against the priest before the officers of the bailiwick of Montbrison; these had not been pursued, for want of witnesses willing to sustain her allegations, and one had not even led to a preliminary inquiry. The chronicle depicts her in abusive terms; yet for the legal investigation, the decisive fact was that this enmity was notorious, offering ground as much for a spiteful denunciation as for mistrust of her word. The alleged bond between the priest and Barou rested entirely upon this solitary deposition. Opposed to this malice stood the character drawn by the inhabitants of Chazelles. They affirmed that the priest had edified his parish by his virtues and his example, succoring the unfortunate and, for twenty years, sustaining numerous indigent families. The collective testimony of the parish did not disprove what might have been uttered during the alleged parley with Barou; yet it revealed how profoundly the accusation astounded those who knew the curate. He who until then was revered in his village as a protective shepherd now stood named in an inquest for complicity in a bloodcurdling murder committed under a neighboring roof.
On January 23, 1783, Solle was examined, recounting a conversation she claimed to have overheard two days before the crime. She declared that Barou and the curate had spoken of firing upon Morel to deliver themselves from a common adversary. The lieutenant who took her deposition did not summon the priest to appear. Nearly two years elapsed before the bailiwick of Montbrison issued a warrant for his bodily apprehension, on December 22, 1784. The tidings startled the town: many were acquainted with the deposition, but none could fathom why it should suddenly justify an arrest after so prolonged a silence.
Upon learning of the warrant, the curate did not seek refuge in flight. He set out toward Lyon, intending to cast himself upon the jurisdiction of his ecclesiastical judge, the official. It was midwinter; the road was gripped by snow and ice, the night pitch-black. He had trudged but a few leagues before being apprehended and conveyed to Montbrison. There, he was bound like a malefactor and exposed to the public gaze of the town. The criminal lieutenant sought to interrogate him; the priest claimed the privilege that placed him solely under the official’s authority. He subsequently lodged an appeal against the decree of bodily apprehension.
On January 5, 1785, an appellate decree received his petition and ordered the transmission of the proceedings to the registry of the Tournelle. On March 18, a second decree granted him provisional release in view of the weakness of the charges. These measures did not yet resolve the question of the murder; they merely shifted the debate before judges charged with weighing the dossier and the arguments of the defense. Pierre Barou likewise remained compromised in the accusation, while the identity of the person who had crossed the barricaded doors remained entirely unestablished.
De Sèze undertook the defense of the priest. He assailed the deposition of Solle, asserted the curate’s complete absence of motive to procure an assassination, and underscored that the prosecution offered no adequate proof. Champagnac portrays the pleading as a brilliant vindication of his client’s innocence; the account, however, is that of a chronicler partial to the accused. The tribunal was tasked with deciding upon the charge brought against them, not necessarily with discovering who had fired upon Morel.
By a decree of September 28, 1785, the parish priest of Chazelles and Pierre Barou were discharged of the accusation. The striking of their names from the prison registers was ordered, and they were granted leave to print and post the judgment of acquittal. After nearly two years of suspicion and imprisonment for the priest, the ruling dismissed the charge against both men and severed their legal fate from the death of Morel. It did not designate the assassin. The cords bound throughout the dwelling, the barred doors, and the fatal shot remained the relics of a crime whose author was nowhere named in the record.