The pair of tied pockets had remained over the back of a chair. Marie-Françoise-Victoire Salmon had taken them off on Sunday to put on a cleaner set. Into the small closet where she slept, beside the dining room, anyone was free to enter. That article of dress, laid aside, would soon weigh far more heavily than all her answers. Within it, crumbs mingled with a white substance would be discovered; they would be exhibited and passed from hand to hand. Seven days would elapse before the court received them. For the servant girl, those seven days were to open nearly five years of imprisonment.
She had arrived in Caen on the 1st of August 1781, with the ordinary yet momentous design of finding a place. The daughter of a day labourer from Méautis, she had been in domestic service since her adolescence. She had tried seamstressing in Bayeux without managing to earn a livelihood; it had been necessary to return to service. Madame Huet Duparc engaged her that very day, for wages of fifty livres. In the afternoon, Marie brought her bundle. By evening, she was already at work. Entering a household took but a few hours; discovering the relations between those who dwelt there demanded far longer.
Seven persons lived under that roof: Monsieur and Madame Duparc, their three children, and Madame's aged parents, Monsieur and Madame de Beaulieu. The new servant's duties were to prepare a gruel for the old man every morning, then escort his wife to Mass, make the purchases, run errands, and keep the house. Her mistress and the daughter of the house were to take part in certain tasks. The day after her hiring, Madame Duparc instructed her in the preparation of the gruel, specifying that no salt was to be put into it. Marie learned the household ways by performing them, under the eyes of those she was bound to serve.
On Monday, the 6th of August, the milk was brought to the house, contrary to the very recent custom whereby she had gone to fetch it. In Champagnac’s account, Marie cleans the saucepan, receives from her mistress the jar containing the flour, and begins the preparation before several members of the family. Madame Duparc then inquires whether she has salted it. Upon her answering in the negative, the mistress takes the vessel, approaches the sideboard, and scatters into it a substance drawn from a saltcellar. That gesture by the mistress was later to become one of the arguments for the defence; it does not suffice, of itself, to point to a substitute poisoner.
The gruel was served. Marie then accompanied the old lady to Mass, and subsequently set out upon the errands she had been assigned. Upon her return, towards half past eleven, she was informed that the old gentleman was suffering from griping pains and vomiting. She was ordered to put him to bed, and then to watch over him. Thus she passed from household errands to sick nursing, without ever ceasing to be the one commanded to carry out the necessary tasks. An apothecary's apprentice was summoned. The patient expired late in the afternoon.
Marie spent the night beside the body with a hired nurse. The following morning, her mistress reproached her for keeping her best pockets on for rough work. She accordingly took back the pair hanging upon the chair. Worn out by the vigil, she left Madame Duparc and her daughter to attend to the meal; the arrival of the master and the care required by his horse drew her away from the kitchen once more. At table, certain diners remarked that they felt something crunch beneath their teeth. Yet the dinner proceeded. Presently several persons came forward complaining of pains, and the word poison entered the house.
Almost at once, it made its way out into the street. The death of the old gentleman, on the previous day, received an explanation that seemed to complement that of the repast: the maidservant was alleged to have begun with him, before turning upon the rest. Marie had been there only a few days. That brevity, which might well have rendered the accusation singular, likewise deprived her of any longstanding support among the neighbours. The household was known; the girl was not yet known. She became the focal point where all events could converge without alarming those whom people were accustomed to greeting.
Exhaustion drove her to seek rest upon a bed. There they came to interrogate her. A surgeon, Hébert, demanded to examine her pockets; she untied their strings herself. He declared that he had gathered, among the crumbs, a white, glistening matter. The pockets had not remained under her watch during the Sunday and the Monday. Nor, subsequently, did that matter remain uninterruptedly in identified hands. Yet questions regarding its custody occupied far less attention than the impression produced by the discovery. It was believed that tangible proof had been seized—proof which the servant girl's words could no longer efface.
The examination of Beaulieu's body concluded that poisoning had taken place. It remained to be established by whom, by what means, and with what evidence against Marie. The chronicle, strongly partisan in her favour, attacks the depositions of the family and the proceedings of the procureur Revel. It openly casts suspicion upon other inhabitants of the house. The servant's prosecution, for its part, went forward with her name at the head of the roll. A charge of domestic theft was added. To her who asked why she should have wished to murder masters she had only just met, the prosecution now also opposed the portrait of a dishonest employee.
Marie answered. Champagnac depicts her pointing out contradictions, describing with precision the actions of her service, and refusing the ambiguities wherein they sought to trap her. She knew what she had done and what she had been commanded to do. But knowing how to relate one's day did not ensure that the narrative would be accepted. On the 18th of April 1782, she was condemned to be burned alive. The appeal did not save her: on the 17th of May, the sentence was confirmed. She was conducted back to Caen to be executed. She had sought in that city wages and a roof; they were preparing a pyre for her.
A declaration of pregnancy stayed the execution. The chronicle presents this as a final shift of despair, rather than as an established pregnancy. The respite was brief. A new date was already looming when the entreaties undertaken on her behalf reached the royal authority. The order of reprieve reached Rouen on the 26th of July, and Caen on the 28th. It was opened on the 29th, the very day appointed for the execution. Marie once again escaped death. She remained in custody, however, and nearly four additional years were to pass before she ceased to be held as an accused felon.
The case was reopened. In 1784, a review was granted; in March 1785, the original conviction was quashed. Yet the ruling retained Marie in prison pending further investigations. The magistrates had found cause to abandon the sentence without as yet restoring her liberty. She pursued her appeals. The matter was ultimately brought before the Parlement of Paris, where the advocate Fournel undertook her defence. On the 23rd of May 1786, she was discharged of all accusations.
Paris wished to see her. Her presence was announced at theatrical performances; charitable gifts were pressed upon her. After having been held up as a menace in a kitchen in Caen, she became a figure to be applauded. She subsequently married and obtained an office for the distribution of stamped paper. The chronicle does not supply every detail of that second life. One may at least take leave of her upon this change of labour: documents to receive, to deliver—an employment for which she answered in her own name. The little bundle carried into the Duparc household had borne the promise of a viable existence. She had been obliged to endure two capital sentences and so many years of waiting before she could at last begin it anew.