Upon the floorboards adjoining the bed, the physicians discovered traces of vomit. The exudate was preserved, and examinations were subsequently made of the timber, the viscera, and the remaining fragments of the body. From their inquiries, the men of medicine drew a grave conclusion: Peter Tixier, a gentleman of independent means residing at La Meilleraye, had died after ingesting arsenic. It remained to be ascertained when the poison had been administered, by whose hand, and whether the circumstantial evidence was sufficient to designate a criminal agency.
Tixier, aged fifty-three, lived upon his private income at La Meilleraye, not far from Niort. Gout caused him intermittent suffering. In June 1865, a fresh attack left him debilitated; in early July, abdominal pains, vomiting, and diarrhoea supervened upon his chronic affliction. His condition worsened throughout the summer. Dr. Ganne, his physician of twenty-five years’ standing, initially believed it to be an ordinary distemper. Later, Dr. Ledain was summoned to assist him, and the suspicion of poisoning became unavoidable.
The primary difficulty lay in determining the precise onset of this new malady. Honorine Tixier, née Charlet, the widow of one of Peter’s brothers, paid her brother-in-law a visit on July 2 and departed on the morrow. She returned on the 15th, accompanied by her daughters, a governess, and a housemaid, and remained for several days. According to the prosecution, it was then that these inexplicable symptoms assumed a heightened intensity. Yet members of the household testified that the vomiting had begun prior to her arrival. Franziska Richard, Peter’s domestic servant for eight years, maintained that her master had suffered from it as early as June; other servants made similar depositions. The trial was not to reduce this discrepancy to a mere dispute of faulty recollection.
The physicians demanded that the patient’s egesta be carefully preserved. The two women, alleged the prosecution, delayed several days before complying, initially offering the excuse that they had forgotten. The matter was finally secured on August 6. It was dark, mingled with blood, and of an odour described as putrid. Regarding these remains, accusations and rebuttals clashed: Honorine maintained that she had mentioned the vomiting to the physicians much earlier; the latter insisted they had been informed of it only at a late date. The specimen thus became both an exhibit for forensic expertise and a measure of personal conduct.
Dr. Ganne and his colleague Ledain had these substances subjected to examination. The physicians charged with the autopsy likewise observed lesions upon the internal organs; the chemical analysis, conducted with the participation of a professor of pharmacy and an apothecary, demonstrated the presence of arsenic in several parts of the body. The practitioners who had attended Tixier interpreted this presence as proof of toxic ingestion. Dr. Morin, summoned shortly before death, had believed he recognized stomach cancer. The dissection failed to substantiate this diagnosis, yet his testimony was to fuel a broader debate: had the poisoning extended over several weeks, or had a single dose administered on August 1 dispatched a patient already languishing?
The prosecution brought charges against three individuals. Honorine Tixier, Franziska Richard—Peter’s domestic of eight years—and Franz Charlet, Honorine’s father, an elderly man of business, were alleged to have sought to preserve their uncle’s estate for the two daughters. The public prosecutor maintained that, should Honorine remarry, Tixier might have disposed of his fortune in favour of his cousins, of whom he was fond, rather than bequeathing his property to his nieces. He further attributed to Charlet a substantial debt owed to Tixier, reproaching him for having watched the progression of the malady with an unnatural vigilance. These motives formed the core of the prosecution’s theory; the judicial debates failed to elevate them to undisputed facts.
Charlet presented himself, on the contrary, as a man who refused to condemn without proof. He did not deny that Tixier had accused Dr. Ganne of having made him ill with his nostrums, but he stated that he had kept his opinions to himself. He acknowledged that the two men had engaged in business dealings and that a certain sum remained in dispute, while contesting the construction placed upon it by the prosecution. Several witnesses appeared to extol his integrity and to depict his commercial practices as those of a scrupulous man.
Honorine’s conduct was scrutinized with particular severity. The presiding judge reproached her for failing to remain at her brother-in-law’s bedside when she knew his condition to be grave, and for neglecting to inquire as to what he drank. She replied that she was obliged to return to her children, that she had not believed death to be imminent, and that Tixier’s attacks of gout had previously induced bouts of vomiting. She denied having administered any potion to him or having prepared the gruel mentioned by the physicians. She further affirmed that she had sought the counsel of other practitioners even before Ganne had cast suspicion upon anyone.
Franziska offered a different chronology. She maintained that the vomiting had commenced prior to Honorine’s arrival, and that Ganne had prescribed pills that burned her master’s stomach. She recounted Tixier’s grievances against his physician, though she made no claim to know what had brought about the illness. At one juncture during the preliminary examination, she had inquired of her master whether he suspected her mistress or herself; he was said to have reassured her, remarking that the matter would have no untoward consequences. These utterances demonstrated neither guilt nor innocence; they merely revealed the degree to which suspicion had already pervaded the household.
Dr. Ganne mounted an elaborate defence of his conduct. He explained that his first firm suspicion of poisoning had arisen only on July 25, solidifying thereafter upon examination of the egesta. He maintained that his own medicaments contained nothing deleterious and that his interventions had been governed solely by his medical duty. He had delayed his visits to the patient when detained by his mayoral obligations, yet maintained that he had promptly notified the judicial authorities. The widow reproached him for having prescribed a violent purgative and for having failed to detect the symptoms of poisoning earlier. A pecuniary disagreement between Ganne and Charlet lent another dimension to the dispute, each party disputing the other’s version of events.
Morin argued that a dose of arsenic administered on August 1 could account for the sudden demise, but he doubted any repeated ingestion prior to that date. In his view, chronic intoxication would have left far more considerable quantities within the liver and would have precluded the survival of certain intestinal worms discovered in the body. Ganne countered that the patient had received an antidote intended to counteract arsenic, and that even a small quantity might have exacerbated the effect of an irritating medicament. Thus the medical authorities could agree neither upon the duration nor upon the mechanism of the poisoning, notwithstanding that arsenic had indisputably been detected.
Members of the household and casual visitors added their recollections to those of the medical men. Certain witnesses placed the pains, vomiting, and burning sensations prior to Honorine’s return; others had observed them only thereafter. A tenant farmer related that, at the end of June, Tixier had complained of having “poison in his body” on account of a remedy prescribed by Ganne. Other witnesses declared that he esteemed and respected his physician. Tixier himself, interrogated before he expired, had described the burning in his throat and stomach, the diarrhoea, and his evening vomiting, yet declared he could not believe that any kinsman had made an attempt upon his life.
The trial was conducted at Niort from March 13 to 18, 1868. The prosecution persisted in its indictment of Honorine, but abandoned proceedings against Charlet and Richard. The defence argued that, even if arsenic had brought about the death, nothing proved that the widow had administered it. The manifestations of illness had preceded her prolonged sojourn; the prospects of remarriage and calculations of inheritance remained mere conjecture; the chemical analyses established the presence of a poison, but could not identify the hand that had given it.
After several days of deliberation, the jury acquitted all three defendants. The acquittal did not resolve the exact cause of death in all its circumstances, but it declined to transform a chain of suspicions into judicial proof of murder committed by these individuals. The chronicler, who himself recounts the tragedy with sharp strictures against the public prosecution, ultimately leaves the question unanswered: was Tixier the victim of a criminal hand, or of an ill-fated course of medical treatment? The court designated no culprit; the house at La Meilleraye kept its peace.
Archival Note: Adapted from the retrospective account “Der Tod des Rentier Peter Tixier,” published in 1883. The text recounts the court debates and forensic examinations, but does not reproduce the original judicial records. Arsenic was documented in the samples; the physicians diverged on the chronology and its interpretation. All defendants were acquitted in March 1868. The local OCR transcription has not been collated against a facsimile.