The stick had at first been chosen out of charity. From the wine-merchant’s woodpile, Roch had drawn a stout bough, stripping the bark so that it might not gall his companion’s hand. He was to carry a turkey as far as Saint-Ouen. The next morning, a tavern scullion would state that he had seen blood upon it; yet the cook had already cast it into the hearth. An article that might have spoken to justice had ended as common firewood. There remained only the memory of those who had seen it carried past.
On January 21, 1828, Raget had come to Paris in pursuit of two things: five hundred francs and a fowl for an entertainment planned for the morrow. A former soldier who had become a wine-merchant at Saint-Ouen under the sign of the Canonnier français, he was accustomed to applying to Thibout, a cook who had previously lent him funds. His friend did not have the required sum upon his person. He appointed a meeting at a vintner’s, met him there, and counted out the coin. They drank together, pursued their conversation in a coffee-house, and parted company around half-past two in the afternoon.
Raget did not turn directly homeward toward Saint-Ouen. At eight in the evening, he entered the establishment of Osmond, an innkeeper and vintner in Clignancourt. He called for victuals, then for drink, and invited four men present to share his potations. Among them sat a lodger known by the name of Petit-Jean. This was Roch. He had served in the ranks, deserted, suffered a military sentence that had been remitted, and then deserted anew. The assumed name allowed him to live in Paris; he had found casual labor and had lodged with Osmond since December.
Toward ten o’clock, Raget wished to settle his reckoning. He drew from his pocket a handkerchief containing the five hundred francs received from Thibout and laid it upon the table. The money intended to sustain his trade was thus exposed to the fellows he had only just met. He then asked for a staff upon which to sling the turkey, which was wrapped in a cloth. Roch undertook to fetch it unbidden. When Raget sought a companion for the road, he turned to him. Roch consented, on condition that he might lodge for the night at the tradesman’s house in Saint-Ouen. The promise was given, and the two men went out.
They returned a few minutes later. This time, Raget was in a fury: he accused his fellow of having attempted to throw him down into the mire, perhaps to rob him, and declared he would have none of his assistance. Roch replied that he was quite willing to remain behind. There was therefore no unbroken bond of trust leading smoothly from the table to the highway; there was this halt, this return before witnesses, this suspicion voiced before the final departure. Osmond and his wife had both men before their eyes. The peril, if Raget had perceived it, had not yet assumed the shape of an accomplished fact.
Raget called once more for liquor. The innkeeper and his wife at first refused, deeming him already too deep in his cups, but at last consented to a final round upon his pledge that he would depart. He asked for a lantern and altered his mind regarding Roch once again, inviting him to attend him. Around half-past eleven, they quitted Clignancourt together. Roch bore the fowl, the staff, and the lantern; Raget leaned upon his arm. The scene is of a deceitful simplicity: one man was lending his arm to another, and the objects committed to his hands were the very ones the latter required to reach his home.
In the morning, Raget was discovered dead. His head bore numerous wounds; the inquest described the effects of both a cutting instrument and a blunt weapon. A few paces away lay the lantern, stripped of its candle. Roch had not returned to sleep at Osmond’s. Suspicion fell upon him at once, and his description was dispatched to the gendarmerie. On January 23, he was apprehended in a wineshop in Les Batignolles. He denied having slain Raget. He claimed to have seen him fall and to have endeavored to raise him before going on his way.
The inquiry then retraced his movements following the parting he alleged. During the night, he had taken a hackney-coach to the house of Labruyère, a lodging-house keeper in the Rue Pierre-Lescaut. There he had supped with a woman named Justier. She had remarked that his hands and garments were exceedingly foul, as well as the repeated attention he paid them. The following day, the turkey intended for the feast at Saint-Ouen was served at that table, where the coachman Chalmet also dined. Roch had hired his carriage for the day. The fowl was no longer a purchase carried home to a friend; it now attended the survivor of that night’s walk.
In the kitchen, the lad Kowaski had caught sight of several drops upon the staff which he took to be blood. The wood had subsequently been burned. The garments met another fate. Roch tore them into shreds and threw them through the casement; Kowaski gathered up the fragments, at first retaining only a half-smock, which Roch demanded back. To venture out, the latter wrapped himself in the coachman’s greatcoat and went to purchase apparel at the Marché Saint-Jacques. He changed his shoes as well, leaving the old pair with the vendor. The articles he discarded became, in the eyes of the investigators, far more precious than those he had just acquired.
Several items were recovered and submitted to the examination of Barruel and Vauquelin. Their chemical analysis concluded the marks to be stains of blood. Roch had initially spoken of stains from chewing tobacco; he then invoked the blood that the turkey might have shed. The lodging-house keeper’s wife countered this explanation by pointing to the state of the bird, which had been slaughtered at least two days prior and whose wound was dry. Before the Court of Assizes, he further submitted that he might have injured himself or bled from the nose upon falling while attempting to raise Raget. The scientific analyses did not attribute this blood to any identified individual; they nonetheless confronted his successive explanations with an unyielding material obstacle.
At the trial on April 30, 1828, Roch maintained that he was not the author of the homicide. The prosecution brought together the final walk, his absence from his lodgings, his possession of the turkey, his expenditures, and the abandoned garments. Each article directed the witnesses back to the very same interval of time: after the departure from Osmond’s, and before the arrival at Labruyère’s. No disquisition upon the prisoner’s appearance was as precise as this itinerary. The jury deliberated for an hour and a half, returned an affirmative verdict on both murder and theft, and the court pronounced the sentence of death.
His appeal was dismissed. On June 27, at the close of the journey from Bicêtre to Paris, Roch asked to see Appert, a philanthropist he had known during his military service. The interview preserved in the chronicle did not yield the confession that had been expected. Roch acknowledged the robbery, but continued to deny the murder. He admitted that the circumstances might well lead his judges to condemn him, while still repudiating that ultimate responsibility. His words had once again shifted in their scope: what he now disputed was no longer every offense committed against Raget, but the very act that had bereft him of life.
Appert remained at his side until the hour of departure for the scaffold. Roch was put to death without having, in this narrative, confessed to the homicide. The chronicle dwells upon his composure; the record preserves, above all, the gulf between that denial and the jury’s verdict. As for the staff fashioned with such care at Osmond’s, it could never be produced before the court. Other objects had taken its place: shoes, a torn smock, a lantern found upon the road. Raget had asked for aid to reach his home; it was by the traces of that proffered aid that justice tracked his final companion.