A basket of eggs was still hooked upon Lecomte’s arm when he was cast to the ground.
On the 25th of April 1869, at about ten o’clock in the evening, a dozen persons were gathered at a crossroads in Estry, where the highways from Vassy to Caumont and from Vire to Aunay intersected. Lecomte, a day labourer from Presles, was returning home with his basket. He was in liquor. A band of youths amused themselves by shoving him from one side of their circle to the other, before finally knocking him down. The Gazette des tribunaux speaks of an unseemly jest that degenerated into an altercation and a scuffle, seemingly of no great moment.
Two men who were undressing in an upper chamber of a neighbouring inn came down, incensed at the manner in which Lecomte was being mishandled. Armed with cudgels, they struck out, according to the journal, somewhat at random against whomever they encountered. Onfray, who had already distinguished himself by the violence of his speech, thereupon arrived brandishing an enormous crowbar in both hands. He was twenty years of age.
Most of the onlookers were already fleeing. Lecomte remained alone at the crossroads, powerless to defend himself, and Onfray struck him upon the head. The blow felled him, leaving him near senseless. His assailant turned him onto his belly, then rained further blows upon his head and back. Witnesses were later to declare that the blows resounded as though falling upon seasoned timber.
Lecomte gave scarcely any further sign of life. Those surrounding him left him inanimate upon the roadway. The Gazette attributes this hesitation to a rural superstition: they were said to be unwilling to move his body before apprising the mayor. While he lay there, Onfray, who had withdrawn, returned half an hour later. He inquired whether the man was dead. A bystander concealed in the shadows replied that he was not. Onfray announced that he would deliver the finishing stroke; the witness then heard fresh violence descend upon the prostrate form.
Persons present then laid hold of Onfray. Through part of the night, he continued to talk. A witness had heard him cry out in the thick of the fray: “I must finish him; I must kill him!” Later, he was reportedly heard threatening to begin anew should Lecomte rise, and demanding of a butcher his knife with which to dispatch the wounded man. The mayor of Estry hesitated at first to repair to the scene, knowing that a dozen inflamed youths were assembled there and that the brawl had taken a tragic turn. The parish priest and the schoolmaster of Presles at length caused Lecomte to be carried into an inn.
Beside the body, when he was brought thither, Onfray is said to have begun to dance. The priest hastened forward and administered to the dying man the consolations of religion; Onfray is reported to have repeated that he had felled him, that he felt no remorse, and that he would do it again. The witnesses cited by the gazette relate these gestures and these utterances. Lecomte expired within the inn.
A woman named Douesnel, an innkeeper beneath whose roof Onfray lodged, had likewise encountered his fury. On the day of the murder, relates the newspaper, he had sought to suborn a young servant of one Oblin, in whose employ Onfray had formerly been: the lad was to abandon his place, set fire to the house, and permit Onfray to sleep upon the premises so that he might slay Oblin on the morrow. When questioned upon this matter, Onfray replied that he knew nothing of it. The presiding judge returned to this circumstance during the hearing.
The newspaper does not confine itself to the occurrences of that night; it also opens the trial with the antecedents of the family. Onfray denied having ever been convicted of theft, maintaining that the matter concerned vagrant mendicancy. The president confronted him with his judicial record, then rehearsed the sentences passed upon his father, his mother, and his grandmother. Onfray did not dispute the convictions of his kin. This catalogue of penal condemnations, set at the threshold of the interrogation, delineated the “milieu” in which, in the president’s view, the young man had been reared; yet of itself, it disclosed nothing of what had transpired at the crossroads. Touching his service with the parish priest of Estry, Onfray denied having been dismissed. Questioned regarding Oblin, he answered that he had never had cause to complain of him.
The president likewise reminded him that, on the evening of the murder, he had warned Dame Douesnel that he would not return to sleep at the inn. “It may be so; I had a mind to take a stroll,” Onfray replied. This foreannounced departure was not an avowal; yet it lent direct weight to the question that followed: what had he done during his stroll?
Onfray tendered his own version of the affray. He maintained that he had been jostled, that two cuffs had provoked his ire, and that he had seized a cudgel to lay about him in the press. The president opposed this with the depositions of the witnesses, which depicted an unprovoked assault upon an inoffensive man. Onfray answered that he was in drink and knew not what he did in such a state. To the objection that he had been capable of writing with a steady hand, he retorted that he was perhaps not drunk, but heated—which, he observed, was far more perilous.
The scene in court was not confined to this exchange. Whilst the witnesses gave their testimony, Onfray swore, laughed, blasphemed, and muttered menaces against those called to the bar. The journal records twenty witnesses summoned by the public prosecutor. The president addressed observations to several of their number, reproaching them for their timidity, indeed their “poltroonery,” though the report does not clarify whether this stricture applied to their conduct at the crossroads or their demeanour in the courtroom. He noted, on the other hand, the conduct of Dame Douesnel: though struck by Onfray, she had barred his way to prevent him from returning outside to deal further blows to Lecomte.
At the assize of the 9th of August, before the Cour d’assises of Calvados, the substitute advocate general de Panthou demanded a verdict without extenuating circumstances. Maître Laumonier pleaded for such leniency on behalf of his client. The journal summarises the verdict as entirely affirmative; the court sentenced Onfray to hard labour for life.
Onfray left the dock still threatening the local folk: should any of them fall into his hands, he declared, his cudgels were not yet broken. The Gazette concluded its account upon these words. Lecomte had reached the crossroads with a basket of eggs; after the melee, he departed it no more. The court, for its part, had not merely heard a defence of intoxication: it had heard the deposition of an innkeeper who, though struck by the accused, had stood her ground to keep him from returning to the man he had just laid low upon the earth.