For two years, the absence of Neyret admitted of two competing explanations. His garments were discovered in a skiff moored near the bridge of Valence; it was believed he had chosen the waters of the Rhône. Yet on the very morrow of his disappearance, another rumour whispered that he had been murdered and cast into the river. Champagnac likens this trial, which held the department of the Drôme in suspense for nearly two years, to the celebrated affair of Rodez. The first proceeding concluded with the acquittal of all six accused. The second, instituted following fresh revelations, led to no such uniform outcome: two men were condemned to hard labour for life, a third was acquitted by the court despite the verdict of the jury, and the remaining implicated parties escaped condemnation.
Neyret was a veteran of the armies retired to Valence. He had wedded the daughter of a widow named Dupont, a maiden who had received a crown of roses and a dowry of six hundred francs at a local festival celebrating the most virtuous young woman among her peers. Neyret and his bride employed this sum to establish a modest shop. Their enterprise faltered, and Neyret failed to meet his obligations. Champagnac relates that his wife—united to him out of interest, according to the chronicler—abandoned him and seized what remained of their trade. He further imputes to her conduct deemed scandalous. These assessments belong to the narrative of that era; they do not constitute judicial determinations.
In the early days of August 1818, Neyret vanished. Towards the middle of the month, at four of the clock in the morning, a jacket and a hat were discovered in a skiff near the Valence bridge. These effects were recognized as having belonged to him. They might well have suggested self-destruction, but it was not Neyret who had been found beside the water: there were merely the garments he was known to wear. Almost immediately, another rumour spread through the town. It spoke of a body pierced with nine knife wounds and cast into the Rhône. The chronicle does not record that the corpse was ever recovered. Thus, two explanations—suicide and assassination—clung to the very same relics, without the latter sufficing to decide the question.
Suspicion fell upon the wife and her mother. They were arrested, after which Chaléat, a young man who had maintained relations with the woman Neyret, was indicted for complicity. Three other individuals—Mélanie Durand, Vigne, and the latter’s wife—had initially been examined as witnesses; their denials and reticence caused them, in turn, to be brought before the bar. The trial of the six defendants commenced on the 20th of March 1819. A circumstance concerning an alibi so thoroughly entangled the case that, after four hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty for all six. They were forthwith set at liberty.
This decision did not lay to rest the enigma of Neyret’s disappearance. The magistrates received fresh revelations concerning other parties involved. The original defendants could not be placed in jeopardy a second time following their acquittal; they reappeared solely as witnesses. After two years of silence, the widow Neyret confessed her participation and accused her mother, her uncle Blanc, Chaléat, Sabot, Palandre, Lamotte, Vigne, and Vigne’s wife. Blanc had hanged himself in prison. The widow asserted that an outsider had witnessed the scene and could corroborate her account.
The particulars supplied by the widow led to Adélaïde Houdard, who was apprehended in Paris within a house of debauchery. Compelled at first to admit that she had been in Valence at the time of the crime, she was conveyed back to that town. After protracted hesitation, she disclosed the details of the scene as she claimed to have witnessed it. According to her deposition, the woman Neyret had invited her to a supper alongside several women and four or five men. The wife’s mother arrived at nightfall; Vigne came next; then Neyret entered the house and reproached his wife for her preparations. Houdard related that a tall, well-proportioned man had hurled himself upon the husband, while other men struck him with a bottle and dragged him into an adjoining room. She claimed to have seen one of them stab him there while the others held him down. Seized with terror, she took refuge in the other room and swooned. When she regained her senses, she recounted, the murderers forced her to swear an oath of silence.
On the 30th of August 1820, Sabot, Jean-Baptiste François, known as Lamotte, Palandre, and Houdard stood trial before the Court of Assizes of the Drôme. Seventy-four witnesses were examined over five sittings. The testimony of Ferrier was keenly anticipated: he claimed to have accompanied Chaléat to the house of the woman Neyret. Upon departing, he had drawn near a shutter behind which the room was illuminated. He affirmed having seen four men carrying a lifeless body, which they laid upon a mattress. An elderly woman allegedly plunged a knife into the corpse. Ferrier stated that he had recognized none of the men; he had seen Chaléat upon the threshold and two women bearing a torch.
It fell in turn to the widow Neyret to account for herself. She stated that Chaléat had requested her to prepare a supper on the 10th of August, and that Vigne was to invite Mélanie Durand. The errand had been forgotten. At the moment her husband entered, according to her deposition, she was in the company of Vigne, Houdard, and her mother. Neyret struck her across the face; Chaléat lunged at him. Then Sabot, Lamotte, Palandre, and Vigne allegedly arrived, hurled a bottle, and dragged Neyret into a third chamber, where his throat was cut. The widow explained that she had remained in the second room and knew nothing of the particulars of his slaughter. She added that her uncle Blanc arrived subsequently and, with Lamotte, conveyed the body to the Rhône. She maintained that the four women present had been compelled to swear an oath of silence.
The accounts of Houdard, Ferrier, and the widow did not coincide regarding either the persons present or their specific actions. Houdard, having now become an accused, altered certain elements of her deposition. Ferrier maintained that he had not recognized the slayers. The widow distinguished between what she claimed to have witnessed in the supper room and what had transpired in the neighbouring chamber. Counsel for the defence fastened upon the contradictions between these declarations and the earlier versions given by the principal witnesses. The jurors were thus presented not with a single, unanimously described scene, but with narratives whose details had shifted in the course of the inquiry.
At the conclusion of five days of argument, the jury acquitted Houdard unanimously. Palandre was pronounced guilty by seven votes against five, yet the court embraced the favourable minority and acquitted him. Sabot and Lamotte were likewise found guilty by seven votes against five; this time, the court adopted the finding of the majority. The jurors found them guilty of complicity in the murder of Neyret, but without premeditation. They were condemned to penal servitude for life, to public exposure in the pillory, and to the branding iron.
Sabot and Lamotte persisted in protesting their innocence, denouncing as slanderers the witnesses who had testified against them. Their conviction did not resolve all the depositions of the trial into common certitudes: Houdard was acquitted, Palandre walked from the courtroom a free man, and those acquitted in 1819 were immune from further prosecution. The closing scene of the chapter restores neither the corpse of Neyret nor a single definitive version of that night; it halts before the two convicts, who continued to maintain that they had borne no part in the murder.