The hamper had been fashioned to hold wine. Those who deposited it in the Rue des Moulins had preserved its reassuring outward form—that of a common delivery accepted without suspicion or inquiry into its history; they had merely altered its contents. On the 28th of March, 1810, between six and seven o’clock in the morning, two passers-by lifted it and perceived blood. A police commissioner arrived, ordered the cords untied, and Paris recovered a man whose servants had awaited his return since the previous day. His name was Cottentin. It was written within the lining of his hat: an ordinary precaution, the final service rendered him by a familiar possession.
The members of his household recognized him. A domestic servant, Joseph, specified what his master had carried upon his person when going out: his repeating watch, his gold chain, and a pocketbook containing papers and several bank notes. None of these were found upon him. The health officers noted the marks of a violent blow to the head and evidence of strangulation. It remained to discover where this gentleman had been received before ending in such wrapping, and by whose hand. In certain affairs, an inquiry begins among the victim’s enemies; in this one, it was to make the acquaintance of his dearest friend.
Lepeley-des-Longs-Champs enjoyed, in truth, the fullest measure of Cottentin’s confidence. The latter visited him several times a day and entrusted him with his silverware as well as his most important papers. For some months Lepeley had occupied furnished lodgings in the Rue Neuve-des-Bons-Enfants, above the entresol and several upper storeys: a dark anteroom leading to a bedchamber with an alcove. On March 28, toward four o’clock in the afternoon, the commissioner bade him follow. No sooner had he appeared before the magistrate than he took the initiative. He had an extraordinary tale to unfold. Justice had no need to wring the narrative from him; she would soon be obliged, however, to weigh its singular convenience.
On the eve, he recounted, Cottentin had come to submit to his judgment a proposed settlement with his commercial associates. Following this initial visit, he had returned around one o’clock. Two unknown men had then rung at the door, asked to see Cottentin, and demanded the settlement of certain debts to which they ascribed a peculiar character. One struck him with the butt of a pistol, then strangled him; the other held Lepeley at bay under the threat of his weapons. The deed was accomplished in a matter of minutes. The assassins departed without taking anything. Lepeley, overcome, had remained beside his deceased friend, utterly unable to raise the alarm.
A quarter of an hour later, he continued, a man with whom he conducted business, Héluin, arrived. Lepeley showed him the corpse and sought his counsel. He had thought of notifying the police commissioner; Héluin, he claimed, had dissuaded him. They had purchased a hamper filled with bottles, substituted the body for the wine, and organized its transport. Lepeley admitted to having defrayed the expenses. Thus, upon his own initiative, he declared that a murder had been committed within his chambers and that he had assisted in disposing of the victim. The two unknown men reserved his innocence; Héluin was made to bear the burden of the ill-advised decision.
An inspection of the lodgings revealed blood upon the newly washed tiled floor. Lepeley’s garments likewise bore stains, notwithstanding efforts at cleaning. He was taken into custody. In the dead of night, Héluin was discovered in a gaming house. He initially corroborated the substance of the account, while shifting a detail of no small consequence: it was he, he insisted, who had urged recourse to the police. Thus each professed to have wished to notify the authorities, and each claimed to have been dissuaded by the other. Their agreement regarding the conveyance of the body proved far sturdier than their accord concerning responsibilities.
The hamper had been entrusted to Héluin’s sister and her husband, the Thubrys, who served as concierges in the Rue des Moulins. They had been told it contained wine, soon to be fetched for Passy, and thence forwarded to Rouen. Inside the porter’s lodge, it had proved necessary to shift this cumbersome delivery to arrange the children’s pallet. Blood seeped forth. Thubry thereupon set out to find Héluin at the gaming house; he would no longer harbor such a charge. According to the statements collected, Héluin advised against going to the commissioner, warning that such a step would work their ruin. The hamper was ultimately carried across the street, where the morning pedestrians would discover it.
The sister contributed a recollection still less favorable to her brother. He had returned later that evening, seemingly intoxicated, displaying a gold watch and a quantity of money while boasting of a lucrative transaction. He had given her one hundred and fifty francs. She maintained that this sum was given in answer to an appeal for relief, and was not the wage of any criminal service. The inquiry could not rest content with distributing an equal measure of guilt to all whom the hamper had approached. It was necessary to determine what each party had known upon opening the door, shifting the burden, or receiving the coin.
The watch had pursued its journey. Héluin had pawned it with a gaming-house employee, who lent him five louis upon it. Pocketbooks were discovered at the residence of a woman with whom he lodged; Cottentin’s servants recognized one as resembling that carried by their master. In the privy vault of Lepeley’s furnished lodging-house were retrieved the pistols Cottentin was accustomed to carry, along with keys and a small phial he was known to use. These articles required no concerted testimony among themselves. Yet their dispersal brought the investigation back to the very same men, while the two unknown assailants of the initial tale remained entirely faceless.
Behind the theft, another pecuniary transaction took shape. Cottentin was laboring under commercial embarrassments; the examining magistrate suspected that, with Lepeley’s assistance, he had sought to shelter certain assets from the pursuit of his creditors. Among their transactions was an estate sold to Lepeley for eighteen thousand francs, though its value was estimated at a far higher sum. The contract acknowledged payment; yet, no funds having been disbursed, a private promissory note maintained the debt. This paper had been entrusted to a third party, Marguerit, who delivered it to the court after the murder. The matter must be viewed with due gradations of certainty: the accounts and the promissory note were genuine; the exact disposition Cottentin intended for his property remained a matter of judicial inquiry and inference.
On April 19, Héluin abandoned the fiction of the unknown assailants. In the deposition preserved in the chronicle, he confessed to having assisted Lepeley. The latter had spoken to him of a document jeopardizing his fortune, which he wished to recover from a certain individual. Héluin, having lost at the gaming tables money that Lepeley had entrusted to him for negotiation, had engaged to assist him. An initial visit by Cottentin had reportedly caused his resolve to waver; a midday meal and Lepeley’s exhortations had stiffened it. Upon Cottentin’s return, Héluin stated that he struck him over the head with his snuffbox, and subsequently fetched the cord with which Lepeley strangled him.
He added that Lepeley had searched the deceased, drawn out a folded paper, and rejoiced at having secured the coveted writing. The watch and a five-hundred-franc note were then reportedly handed to him, a portion of the funds defraying the cost of the hamper. This second account explained the blow, the cord, the stolen effects, and the conveyance. It also possessed an obvious convenience for the narrator: Héluin portrayed himself as an unwitting accomplice, misled as to the primary design and dominated by Lepeley. His confession was a cardinal piece of evidence; it did not warrant an uncritical acceptance of all his exculpatory pleadings. Confronted with these revelations, Lepeley denied them utterly.
Four persons appeared before the criminal court: the two men for their participation in the murder and theft, and the Thubry couple for having, according to the indictment, knowingly received the corpse. The proceedings further disclosed that the silverware entrusted to Lepeley had been pledged at the pawnshop. On July 1, 1810, following the unanimous verdict of the jury, Lepeley and Héluin were condemned to death; their appeal was rejected, and the chronicle records their execution without specifying the precise date. The concierges were acquitted. It is upon this distinction that the file must close: the same hamper had passed through several pairs of hands, but not all knew the nature of the burden they bore.