On December 16, 1828, Charles Lebaron was found dead in his stable, behind his horses. The skirt of his shirt bore the imprint of bloody fingers; his clothing showed no signs of disorder, and the earthen floor initially yielded no obvious tale. Throughout the village, however, his wife, Cécile Leboucher, had repeatedly voiced her desire to be rid of him. Clément Vaultier, a farm servant placed under examination, ultimately confessed to the murder and named the mistress of the house as his accomplice. She at first denied everything, before offering in turn an account in which Vaultier had acted entirely alone. Lebaron’s death opened an inquiry in which each party sought to cast the full burden of the crime upon the other.
Cécile Leboucher had wed Charles Lebaron at the age of seventeen. Champagnac notes that she was, "it is said," forced into this union by her mother; the text does not elucidate what transpired, nor the origin of this tale. The marriage proved wretched. Cécile had once summoned her husband before the correctional police following a domestic quarrel, having, according to the chronicler, scratched her own face to secure his conviction. A petition for legal separation ensued, before the family succeeded in reconciling the pair. This peace was short-lived.
In the months preceding the murder, Cécile confided to a neighbor that her husband had scolded her and set her to her chores, adding: "Ah! if only we were rid of him!" The neighbor admonished her that such words ought never to be spoken. Cécile replied that he was frequently out with his cart and might easily fall beneath the wheels if he were in his cups. This exchange does not establish that any mishap had been contrived, yet it reveals that the notion of his demise was being uttered beyond the walls of the household.
Another exchange was reported with a day laborer named Vaultier. The man remarked that had he a husband such as hers, he would throttle him. Cécile asked whether he would truly be capable of such an act. Later, she proposed to Clément Leroy, then an indoor servant in her employ, that he assist her in poisoning her husband, promising that no harm would befall him and that she would marry him thereafter. Leroy is not numbered among the accused in the final disposition recorded by Champagnac. These utterances, drawn from depositions and court records, were admitted into the indictment; they did not yet determine who had taken part in Lebaron’s death.
On the morning of December 16, the King’s Prosecutor at Saint-Lô was informed that Lebaron had been found dead in his stable. The posture of the corpse rendered it improbable that the horses had caused his death. A meticulous inspection deepened the suspicion of murder. The garments showed no rents where the mud caked the knees and thighs, and no trace of blood could be discerned within the stable itself. The tail of the shirt, tucked into the trousers, bore the distinct mark of bloody fingers. The magistrates were left to discover how the body had been brought thither, and why it had been dressed.
The initial inquiries proved fruitless. Divers circumstances subsequently directed suspicion toward Vaultier, who was taken into custody. Under a first, and then a second interrogation, he finally confessed that he had slain Lebaron. He asserted that Cécile had long solicited him to the act, and that she had devised a pretext to lure the master to his house under color of fetching birdlime. On the Saturday preceding the murder, Lebaron had indeed called upon Vaultier, but the latter had then refused to do the deed.
On the Monday, the day of the crime, Cécile came repeatedly to seek Vaultier at her husband’s homestead, where he was at work. According to the servant’s deposition, she renewed her entreaties and pledged that he would never want for money. She urged that the occasion was favorable: her husband was away grinding wheat at a neighbor’s and would return exhausted. She would retire to bed beside him and their young daughter, leaving the door unlatched; at the appointed hour, she would carry the child into an adjoining chamber and return to assist Vaultier. Such were the terms of Vaultier’s confession, which he maintained throughout subsequent examinations.
Vaultier affirmed that he lingered in the farmyard after taking his leave, slipping into the house once the household slept. He recounted finding Lebaron asleep, striking him repeatedly, and seizing him by the throat. He maintained that Cécile emerged from the chamber where she had deposited her child and took her turn in striking her husband. These particulars formed the basis of the charge of complicity; they must remain attributed strictly to Vaultier, as Cécile disputed them and supplied a disparate account of that night.
The two, according to this confession, proceeded to dress the corpse and carried it out to the stable to foster the belief that Lebaron had been trampled by his horses. Vaultier recounted that they effaced the marks within the house, shifted a chair, and hid the neckerchiefs that had bound the victim’s head. He added that they drank brandy together once the deed was done. The magistrates recovered the neckerchiefs indicated by Vaultier from the pockets of Lebaron’s widow; they had been retrieved from beneath the straw palliasse of a bed. Slight spots of blood were visible on the jamb of the hearth, and pools of blood marked the path between the main gate and the stable.
Cécile Leboucher initially maintained that her husband had ridden off on horseback to his mother’s after returning from work. She claimed to have gone to bed as was her custom, only to discover toward five in the morning that he had not returned. She stated that she had repaired to Pierre Leboucher’s dwelling to voice her unease, before returning home to prepare soup with her daughter. It was then, by her account, that word was brought to her of the corpse’s discovery. She denied every circumstance disclosed by Vaultier.
When confronted with her accuser, Cécile altered her tale. On the day following her arrest, she admitted that her husband was lying in their bed when he was murdered. She asserted, however, that Vaultier had long pursued her to take her husband’s life, promising to provide for her needs after his death. On the night of the crime, she claimed, he mounted the bed and threatened both her and her daughter. She had supposedly fled into a closet, whereupon Vaultier compelled her under duress to help him carry the body away. Vaultier, for his part, did not retract his initial deposition and adhered to every detail he had furnished.
A witness reported having seen Vaultier and Cécile that night beneath the farm’s great gate, each bearing an end of a heavy burden. He stated that the woman let her end fall, and that Vaultier rebuked her sharply, fearing they might be taken unawares. They were said to have re-entered the farmhouse before proceeding to the stable. This testimony corroborated the discovery of the neckerchiefs and the trails of blood; while it did not of itself resolve the conflict between the two accounts, it firmly placed the pair in the act of conveying the corpse, precisely as the judicial inquiry had reconstructed it.
Both prisoners appeared before the Assize Court of the Manche during the second session of March 1829. Cécile was then twenty-two years of age. While the indictment was read, Vaultier appeared agitated for a moment; she trembled violently and at length, according to the chronicle. When the presiding judge asked Vaultier whether he had taken Lebaron’s life, he looked at Cécile and answered: "It was the two of us!" She continued to lay the entire guilt of the homicide upon him.
The medical practitioners presented to the Court their findings upon the body; divers violent particulars were disclosed, which Champagnac himself chose not to record. The jury returned a verdict of guilty against both prisoners, and they were condemned to death. The audience gave tumultuous vent to its satisfaction, to such a degree that the presiding judge was obliged to quell the shouts and applause.
Two irreconcilable accounts were thus weighed against each other: according to Vaultier, the widow Lebaron had orchestrated the assignation and struck her share of the blows; according to Cécile, he had coerced her into rendering assistance only after he had slain her husband. The unguarded words of the past, the marks inside the house, the concealed neckerchiefs, and the testimony regarding the midnight burden weighed heavily upon the deliberations. The jury found them both guilty. Beyond the verdict, the final image preserved by the chronicler is that of the condemned led away from a ravenous crowd, conducted along an unaccustomed path to shield them from the fury of the rabble.