When Adéline Grière injured herself while leaving the house at Villemomble, the inventory of Élodie Ménétret’s jewels remained unfinished. Monsieur Grassier’s housekeeper had carried away only a few pieces; the remainder was yet to be catalogued and placed in safekeeping. In the narrative the prosecution would later construct of those days, this accident afforded Euphrasie Mercier a decisive opportunity. Yet, in April 1883, no one could foresee what the garden flowerbed would eventually yield, nor that an interrupted inventory would become one of the first threads of a trial before the Court of Assizes.
Ménétret, born in 1840 and possessed of an estate which the indictment estimated at some 80,000 francs, had recently purchased a house and garden on Avenue du Raincy in Villemomble. She had paid 15,000 francs toward the agreed sum of 25,000. Mercier, formerly a customer of her bootmaking shop, had left the household of Madame de Raezkouska, where she had been employed, and was engaged to assist in setting up the new home. A letter from Ménétret read before the court spoke initially of day-work and assistance in the country. The notion of a partnership in the purchase, which Mercier subsequently maintained, found no mention there.
Ménétret had sought counsel from Grassier, her old friend, and from Grière, who kept her house. According to the depositions on record, she confided to them that the former bootmaker frightened and unsettled her. The Gazette, in publishing the indictment, ascribed this unease to the tales of murders and apparitions that Mercier was alleged to have fostered. The accused later denied having entertained such talk, offering other explanations for her mistress’s fears. What emerges from the judicial record, without presuming to decide in the witnesses’ stead what they did not see, is the portrait of a woman contemplating departure and the deposit of her securities.
On the 18th or 19th of April, Ménétret and Grière began drawing up a schedule of the jewels and papers. Mercier, according to the prosecution and the witnesses summoned, entered the room repeatedly. The inventory ceased when Grière, injured in a fall, was obliged to retire, taking only a few items of jewelry with her. Grassier returned shortly thereafter; he was never to see his friend again. Mercier contended at the hearing that Ménétret had departed and that she had subsequently seen her again. She spoke of a convent, a home where servants were received, the Luxembourg, and later of nocturnal visits in religious habit. The searches mentioned during the proceedings failed to trace Ménétret to any of the places designated.
The precise date of her disappearance cannot be reduced to simple certainty from the transcripts. The indictment placed her departure around the 24th of April; certain testimonies still mentioned visits or items returned in the adjacent days. The last note discovered among her papers, authenticated as being in her hand, instructed Mercier to settle minor debts and to retain whatever remained from the sale of her securities following several disbursements. Mercier acknowledged the handwriting, but accounted for the note by citing secret arrangements which, she claimed, the two women had concluded. The prosecution saw in it, on the contrary, the mark of a hand guided under duress or in the throes of agony. The text alone could not fix the hour or the circumstances of its composition.
Following this disappearance, the explanations attributed to Mercier varied. Ménétret was said to have left France, to have entered a convent in Rue du Rocher, and subsequently to have retired to Luxembourg. An undated letter, produced to prove that she was alive after April 1883, was disputed because a draft of it was found among Mercier’s own papers. The accused maintained it was authentic; the presiding judge noted that she produced none of the other letters she claimed to have received. The absence of any response to Grassier and to Ménétret’s kinsfolk weighed heavily in the debates, yet the trial did not transform every silence into direct testimony as to what had transpired within the house.
The indictment then reconstructed the transactions undertaken upon the missing woman’s estate. It charged Mercier with forged receipts amounting to 10,000 francs, a lease intended to establish her co-ownership of the house, and Ménétret’s forged signatures affixed to collect revenues and sell securities. Two sales of stock yielded, according to the case records, 39,706 francs 45 and 12,104 francs 30; a portion was converted into Russian mortgage bonds. Mercier admitted to certain writings, but asserted she had drawn them up upon Ménétret’s instructions, denying any intent to misappropriate her property. In Luxembourg, the notary Ransonnet, his clerk, and two men called as witnesses identified her as the person who had presented herself in August 1883 under the name of Élodie Ménétret to secure a power of attorney. She disputed their identification.
In 1885, the case took a new turn with the arrival of Alphonse Châteauneuf, Mercier’s nephew. The indictment stated that he had been informed of his aunt’s financial difficulties and that, upon examining her papers and observing her speech, he discovered elements that led him to suspect Ménétret had been murdered. The denunciation he lodged with the criminal investigation department on the 13th of August was not presented as an act stemming from an undisputed motive: the Gazette reported conflicting explanations of vengeance or cupidity, alongside the religious scruples invoked by Châteauneuf. He had previously attempted to obtain money from Mercier; this fact likewise remained in the record.
Excavations were carried out in the designated flowerbed. At a shallow depth, partially calcined bone fragments were unearthed, mingled with ashes and organic debris. The experts identified the skeleton of a woman, noting a false tooth, fillings, and dental gold that corresponded to the treatments recorded in the daybooks of Ménétret’s dentist. A metal armature, corresponding according to the indictment to the bow she wore about her neck, was likewise noted. Peculiarities in the roots of lilies led the experts to date the burial to the spring of 1883. In the bedroom, a cracked fireplace, floorboards steeped in grease, and soot laden with phosphoric acid were interpreted as traces of the combustion of substantial animal matter. The expert testimony supported the accusation; of itself, it could not supply the details of a murderous deed to which no witness had testified.
At the opening of the proceedings, on the 6th of April 1886, eighty-three witnesses had been subpoenaed. The courtroom could accommodate only a portion of them. Upon the exhibit table rested jars, boxes containing bones or ashes, fragments of marble, a travelling bag, and wooden panels. Mercier, born in Fourmies in 1820, was called forward. She did not dispute the labour she had performed throughout her life, but rejected the accusations regarding the disappearance. “I have never taken the trouble to murder a dog,” she replied when the presiding judge asked what answer she made to the hypothesis of murder. She maintained that Ménétret had departed, that their interests were intertwined, and that the contested instruments had been drawn up to conceal a joint purchase from her family.
Subsequent hearings brought forth neighbours, labourers, and individuals who had seen the house before or after the disappearance. Their recollections did not always agree. Gardeners stated that they had received orders not to touch a certain flowerbed; Mercier denied this or disputed the meaning of their words. Several recalled the notion of an ancient cemetery, which she was said to have put forward to explain bones found in the garden; communal plans and the municipal secretary situated the old burial ground elsewhere. Other witnesses described alterations within the house, unsettled debts, or sales of goods. These depositions were not to be confounded with the expert reports, and not all carried equal weight.
On the 10th of April, following the examination of the witnesses and the summing-up of the public prosecutor, the debates turned to the prisoner’s responsibility and the weight of the exhibits. Her defence, undertaken by Maîtres Barrou and Laguerre, challenged the charges. The Gazette does not reproduce each pleading in its entirety; on the following day, it published the findings of the jury. To every question put to them, the jurors answered in the affirmative, while admitting extenuating circumstances. The Court sentenced Euphrasie Mercier to twenty years’ solitary confinement. The report notes that she smiled as the verdict was pronounced; the court adjourned at a quarter past eleven at night.
Such was the judicial outcome of a disappearance that had commenced with a house to be shared, an interrupted inventory, and a friend who never reappeared. The flowerbed pointed out by Châteauneuf yielded human remains; expert examinations linked them to Ménétret; the legal deeds and securities laid bare the transactions attributed to Mercier; and the jury answered to the questions of guilt. The press recorded the facts, the versions, and the arguments; it does not permit us to overhear what was left unsaid, nor to enter into the minds of the two women. Yet it leaves us this sequence of traces—a letter, a power of attorney, a few bones beneath the flowers—to which the law, in 1886, delivered its final penal judgment.