The death of Sainte-Croix did the Marquise a disservice that his life had never brought upon her: he left his affairs open to the eyes of others. Papers that a living man may conceal, displace, or explain away remain singularly stubborn when he is no longer there to reclaim them; those discovered among his effects were suddenly to render perilous relationships that Marie-Madeleine de Brinvilliers had believed safely kept in secret.
She understood that she must take flight.
Flight, in a person accustomed to being waited upon, often begins with commands resembling those of an ordinary journey. A trunk is called for, linens are chosen, a pretext is given which the servants are not bound to believe, though they make a show of accepting it. Yet the difference reveals itself in the brief time allowed for preparations, in the possessions abandoned, in that nervous irritation that greets questions however natural.
In the depth of the house, someone was still waiting to be told for how many days.
A Fortune in the Family
Marie-Madeleine d’Aubray had married the Marquis de Brinvilliers. Her father held high office in Paris; his name and station gave him access to a world where scandals break into the open only late in the day, because many find it initially to their interest to treat them as mere misunderstandings.
Her liaison with Sainte-Croix, however, had provoked paternal intervention. Sainte-Croix had been imprisoned under a lettre de cachet. Early narratives make of this blow an element of the hostility that was subsequently to turn upon the father; to resentment they unite the prospect of the inheritance which his demise would place at her disposal.
The father died, and then two brothers. The poison had done its work amidst intimacies where one would naturally expect to draw near, pay calls, send gifts of sustenance, and inquire after health. Those very gestures by which a family acknowledges affection served as the conduit for that which destroyed it.
There is no need to imagine a secluded chateau, a secret chamber, and all the trappings with which poor romances encumber crime. A town house suffices, together with the license granted by blood kinship. He who comes as a stranger must find some manner of entering; the daughter and the sister already have their place.
What a Valet Knew
La Chaussée, a servant implicated in the crimes, was arrested. The papers discovered upon Sainte-Croix’s death had given suspicion a definite course; the inquiry no longer concerned itself merely with past illnesses, but with the persons who might have brought them about and the ties that bound them together.
A young valet named Martin learned of the arrest on returning from his errands. He had taken no part in anything; he possessed only that troublesome memory peculiar to domestic servants—that memory in which linger a visit received at an unaccustomed hour, a parcel one was forbidden to open, a door whose key had changed places. He had attached no meaning to these particulars. He was now to be asked why he had not found them suspicious.
His first thought was of flight. The Marquise was gone; those who possess the means to travel leave it to others to answer for what transpired in the house. He set aside a few coins, looked for a shirt, then paused before the ledger in which he had entered the household expenses. He had been made to alter several lines—not to disguise a poison he might have recognized, but to set down under an honest designation sums of money whose purpose he did not know.
The ledger did not prove the crime. It proved that he might be reproached for having written what he wrote.
The Road to Liège
The Marquise crossed the frontiers. The narratives of her flight trace her through several refuges as far as Liège, where she withdrew into a convent. Such an asylum offered that which a pursued person seeks: walls, established habits, intermediaries between oneself and the world. One had to hope that distance would slacken the pace of reports, and that high rank might still retain some power over those of whom protection was asked.
Yet an illustrious name serves two purposes. It facilitates assistance; it also provides the search with an object easily kept in mind. She who wished to be forgotten carried with her an identity far too notable to dissolve lightly into travel.
According to the early account followed in this chronicle, an emissary of the police presented himself in ecclesiastical disguise and succeeded in drawing her out from her sanctuary. The papers found upon her added fresh material to the prosecution’s dossier. The Marquise was conveyed back to Paris.
This time, those who ordered her journey no longer asked her for how many days she intended to remain.
Martin’s Ledger
Martin was interrogated. He committed the initial error of wishing to appear more perspicacious than he had been; questioning swiftly taught him that an explanation invented to cover former ignorance may bring one dangerously close to a complicity one never shared.
He began anew. He told what he had carried, what he had seen, what he had been bidden to set down. When he did not know, he said so as well, and of all his replies this was the one that demanded the greatest courage, for the men seated opposite him appeared to expect an entire history to issue from his recollections.
“Why did you alter that line?”
“Because I was commanded to do so.”
“Do you then alter accounts upon a command?”
Martin looked down at his hands.
“I am paid to keep them, Monsieur. I did not know that this sometimes meant having to defend them.”
What the Title Could Not Save
Brinvilliers was executed in Paris in 1676. Her body was burned after beheading. The name of the Marquise was to become one of the most famous in the annals of poison; that celebrity, by fixing every beam of light upon her, threatened to cast into fresh obscurity those persons whose deaths had made the affair possible.
Martin left the house. In the situation he subsequently secured, he was one day asked to alter an expense; he wished to know why. His new master complained of a servant who disputed too much. Yet he was obliging enough to furnish a reason, which Martin inscribed in the margin.
That evening, as he closed his ledger, he thought of the doors that had been opened to the daughter, to the sister, to the Marquise. He had not learned to distrust all names. He had learned that a name must never be made to answer in place of a fact.
Upon the following page, he carefully penned the date. Then he left the margin sufficiently wide.