D’Arconville had taken four hundred livres with him to aid in the pursuit of the murderers. He arrived bearing coin, family ties, and the resolve to join in the prosecution. He entered Paris bound fast upon a horse. Along the way, the archers pointed him out to passers-by as the slaughterer. The inquest had scarcely commenced; the street already possessed its culprit.
This sudden reversal of fortune turned upon an old family dispute. Long before the corpses lay discovered, there had been a deed of gift, a marriage, yet another marriage, and those prudent dispositions whereby men of law presume to govern the future. Charles du Moulin, an advocate of renown, had no thought of taking a wife when, in 1537, he bestowed the lordship of Mignaud, in the Beauce, upon his brother Ferri. The latter was entering into wedlock. The contract provided for a dower yielding an annuity of two hundred livres, redeemable for three thousand livres, under the terms recorded in the chronicle.
The following year, Charles married in his turn. The generosity of the bachelor proved an embarrassment to the husband. He sought to recover his land, suffered defeat before a first court of law, and subsequently obtained leave to re-enter into possession of Mignaud, upon condition that he honour his sister-in-law’s dower. The two brothers litigated once more, then reached a composition in 1543. Peace was restored between them; their contracts, far less accommodating, continued to produce their effects.
Ferri left an only daughter. Her guardian caused her to accept the succession under benefit of inventory—a precaution designed to prevent the debts from exceeding the estate received. Yet this status of heiress carried with it, in the family settlement recounted by Champagnac, an unfortunate consequence: it barred the young woman from claiming the dower. The annuity of two hundred livres thus ceased to encumber Mignaud. The heirs of Charles were deeply interested in seeing that nothing should change.
D’Arconville married Ferri’s daughter. The reckoning soon presented itself to his mind: with the debts discharged, the inheritance yielded less than the surrendered annuity. He was advised to turn his wife’s minority to advantage by petitioning for letters of rescission against the acceptance of the succession. These he obtained. An ancient obligation, which the other branch of the family believed extinguished, threatened once again to revive.
Charles had died in the interim. His daughter had wedded Bobie, an advocate before the Parlement and bailli of Coulommiers. D’Arconville went to seek him out. He set forth his proceeding and proposed to submit their dispute to the arbitration of notable persons. Bobie consented. At that moment, the matter might yet have been settled around a table, between two families sufficiently connected to know each other and sufficiently self-interested to stand in need of arbiters.
Then four thousand eight hundred livres entered into Bobie’s house.
This sum arose from the redemption of an annuity belonging to his wife. The domestics were well aware of its presence, the compilation reports. The coined specie lay there, within easy reach of the imagination of all who moved through the residence. A sum of such magnitude provided theft with an immediate motive; yet, in the opening stages of the pursuit, it was to weigh far less than an annuity disputed for years past.
One Saturday in January 1571, Bobie announced his departure for Coulommiers. He hesitated several times, then set forth. He left behind his wife, two children, a lackey, and a maidservant. The elder child was eight years of age; the infant, twenty-two months. Sunday passed without the door being unbarred. On Monday, no soul appeared either.
A neighbour had heard an uproar. He was acquainted with the ill terms upon which the couple lived, and fancied he recognized yet another domestic quarrel. According to his deposition, he had supposed the altercation would spend itself. The acts of violence wherewith Bobie at times visited his wife, recorded by the chronicle, had thus supplied a familiar explanation for a noise that ought to have raised the alarm. Men had refrained from meddling in what they believed they already understood.
When apprehension grew too great, the neighbours gave notice to the lieutenant criminel. A commissaire presented himself with witnesses and caused the door to be forced. The mother, the two children, and the maidservant had had their throats cut. The lackey had vanished.
The presses and chests were broken open. The plate remained; the gold and coined money had been carried off. In the privies, rings, candles, and the cloak of the missing servant were found. The house thus offered the investigators several material traces, not least among them the flight of a man belonging to the narrow circle of those present at the master’s departure.
Bobie returned on the Thursday. Having learned of the calamity, he lodged a complaint against d’Arconville. His reasoning rested upon the profit he presumed his kinsman stood to gain: the death of his wife and children favoured, in his eyes, the man who contested their settlement of interests. The civil dispute furnished a name for the criminal roll. A decree for his arrest promptly followed.
D’Arconville was then residing at La Châtre, in the Brie. He had leased his lands in the Beauce the preceding August and, at the outset of 1571, had undertaken several journeys to that province, notably to treat with his tenant and visit kinsmen of the Chancellor de L’Hôpital, to whom he was allied. Upon learning of the murders, he took horse for Paris. The four hundred livres destined to defray the costs of the pursuit accompanied him.
The lieutenant criminel de robe courte encountered him at La Queue-en-Brie. He was arrested. He was bound. Then the men charged with conducting him took pains to proclaim, all along the highway, the crime they imputed to him. At La Châtre, further arrests ensued: his wife, his domestics. They were carted away. To the gazing rabble, she in her turn became the slaughterer’s wife.
In Paris, the prisoners were separated. The couple’s goods and estates were seized. Yet the inquest into d’Arconville’s conduct yielded, according to Champagnac, none but favourable reports. Examined on the very day following his imprisonment, he opposed one paramount fact to the accusation: he had been travelling in the Beauce at the time of the crime. His wife’s answers accorded with his own.
Six weeks elapsed before she and the domestics were set at liberty. Her husband remained under the guard of a commissaire. The spouses appealed against the decree, their imprisonment, and the seizures. They summoned Bobie to maintain the suit he had instigated. The latter refused to constitute himself a civil party and left the prosecution to the Procureur Général, while continuing to assert his accusation.
Étienne Pasquier then undertook d’Arconville’s defence. He confronted a difficulty found in no legal inventory: the public and the bench were vehemently prejudiced against his client. The account records that his opening address was met with jeers, yet his pleading possessed such force as to transform them into applause. Beneath this reversal of the courtroom's temper, the essential argument remained the total absence of adverse testimony, opposed to a charge erected solely upon presumed self-interest.
D’Arconville was discharged of the accusation. Bobie was condemned in costs and to three thousand francs in damages, according to the figure preserved in the compilation. He who had offered to defray the search for the murderers obtained redress for having been hunted down as one of their number.
As for the lackey, he remained missing. Champagnac accounts him the murderer, noting that a clerk had warned Bobie of his nocturnal prowlings about the house following the arrival of the funds. This conviction on the part of the chronicler is accompanied by no record of any trial of the domestic. What became of him remains unknown. In the devastated house, four souls had lost their lives; upon the road to Paris, another man had narrowly escaped the loss of his good name, for the mere fault of having had an annuity to claim.