The saucepan had been washed. The rice, thrown away. When justice sought to interrogate that luncheon as to what had transpired in the shop, it found neither the dish served nor the remnants thereof. Hands had rinsed, scoured, and emptied the terrine: ordinary kitchen chores transformed into the exhibits of a capital charge. In Paris, in the year 1823, Marie-Adélaïde Bodin, widow Boursier, was called upon to explain why the dishes had been done while her husband lay dying.
Luncheon beside the Counter
The grocery occupied the corner of the Rue de la Paix and the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin. Guillaume-Étienne Boursier laboured there alongside his wife, whom he had wed in 1809 and by whom he had five children. An aged aunt, clerks, a servant girl, and household callers formed about them that modest world wherein no single eye beholds all, yet each observer retains some fragment. In the wake of the catastrophe, it became necessary to piece these recollections together; they would not fit so neatly as the goods arranged upon the shelves.
On the morning of the 28th of June, according to the servant Joséphine Blin, Boursier had risen as was his custom. He had even found leisure to daub mustaches upon the face of his sleeping wife, and then to call for a looking-glass when she awoke. He was to go abroad with a friend. Nothing in this dawn of day, as recounted before the court, portended what was to follow. Yet this conjugal jest was itself to become an argument: could one credit the suicide of a man who had just indulged in lighthearted pleasantries? The question would be put; the scene alone could furnish no answer.
Joséphine had prepared some rice, of which she claimed to have eaten and set aside a portion for the child. The master’s luncheon was carried in a saucepan and set down upon an escritoire, hard by the counter. A few minutes elapsed before he tasted it. He straightway complained of an ill flavour. From the kitchen, the servant replied that she had eaten of it without perceiving anything amiss. Madame Boursier was to declare that she had tasted it as well. On this latter point, the witnesses could only report her words; none came forward to say he had seen her carry the spoon to her lips.
Vomiting ensued. Physicians were summoned; remedies followed upon remedies, yet could not save the sufferer. Doctors Bordot and Tartra sought the cause of these violent attacks, whilst the house, which only hours before had been turned toward commerce, filled with the comings and goings attendant upon a deathbed agony. Boursier expired after some two days. The suspicion of poison had not yet displaced all other medical hypotheses in every conversation. It was not long, however, before it overtook the talk of the entire quarter.
What the Water Bore Away
In the interval, his wife had poured the rice into a terrine and run water through the saucepan. Joséphine had then scoured it. Who had given the order to wash? At the trial, the servant pointed to her mistress; the mistress denied it. Yet Joséphine acknowledged having resolved of her own accord to scour the vessel and empty the terrine. Thus there was no single act, performed by a solitary hand, the design of which was plain to see. There were several ordinary domestic tasks, conflicting answers, and, in the end, the remnants of a meal lost forever.
In the eyes of the prosecution, this disappearance took on the cast of a guilty precaution. The widow maintained she had merely wished to demonstrate the cleanliness of the pot. The selfsame difficulty arose concerning the opening of the corpse, initially declined after consultation with the household. Could a family refuse a post-mortem examination without seeking to conceal a crime? Could one construe their hesitation in the same light as that of a wife already fallen under suspicion? Death had invested ordinary domestic habits with a second meaning, far more perilous than the first.
Boursier’s body was eventually exhumed. Doctor Orfila laid the findings of the examination before the Court of Assizes: oxide of arsenic had been discovered in the stomach in quantities sufficient to cause death. Other practitioners confirmed the presence of the poison. Chemical analysis supplied the dossier with what rumour could not provide. Yet it inscribed no name beside the arsenic. Between the substance discovered and the person who had administered it, the prosecution had still to build the entire path.
The Guest in the House
That path led to Nicolas Kostolo. He claimed to hail from Constantinople, was seeking a situation, and had been taken in by the Boursiers. He had become the wife’s paramour. At the trial, he did not deny the liaison; his answers regarding money, women, and designs of marriage served principally to render him odious in the eyes of his hearers. The prosecution spared nothing of this portrait. Yet a man might show himself mercenary, vain, or frivolous without each of his vices constituting proof of murder.
The liaison lent the suspicion a narrative already half-written: a wife eager to rid herself of her husband, a paramour ready to assist her, and a luncheon providentially fatal. Kostolo had frequented the house and attended upon the sick man; notice was taken of even the last draught of tisane he had handed him. Yet it remained to be proved that one of these acts of presence or relief had harboured an act of poisoning. No witness had seen either of the accused introduce poison into the rice.
Arsenic, however, had figured in the history of that shop long before the demise. Boursier had purchased some in March 1822 to destroy rats. A former shop-boy, Bailly, had taken part in the task. What had become of it thereafter? Had his master preserved the remainder, as the youth had initially stated, or had Bailly stowed it himself in a bottle rack? Before the court, he maintained this second version. The first was promptly thrust before him. An explanation intended to elucidate the matter opened a new controversy within the case.
The Packet behind the Board
Had Bailly been tampered with? Had he altered his account following private visits? The Advocate General mooted proceedings for perjury. The widow’s counsel, Maître Couture, found himself obliged to explain his own conduct: he had sought a supplementary inquiry, but had refused all communication with the witness. Amidst these exchanges, the presiding judge recalled that a rigorous search had brought no arsenic to light within the shop.
Rousselot, recalled to the witness-box, then delivered a singular account. He had accompanied Bailly to the premises. Kneeling before an obscure bin, the lad had drawn forth two bags. One contained, according to the witness, rat poison; the other, a packet wrapped in grey paper wherein they had recognized arsenic. Rousselot stated that he had replaced it in the bin, and had subsequently nailed a board across the front to prevent anyone from meddling with it. That very packet, which the officers of justice had failed to discover, was thus said to be still there, behind its makeshift partition.
This was no fresh chemical analysis laid before the bench, but the testimony of a man recounting what he claimed to have found. Nor would the presence of a remnant have demonstrated that no portion had been abstracted. Yet it confounded the picture of a poison that had vanished into inevitably guilty hands. The more the prosecution sought to close the circle of reasoning, the more a witness forced the door ajar. Couture brought the jurors back to this fundamental difficulty: the impossibility of pointing with certainty to a hand forbade the arbitrary designation of a culprit merely to satisfy the appetite for a conviction.
Freedom beneath the Public Gaze
At the hearings of the 27th, 28th, and 29th of November 1823, the complexion of the trial altered entirely. The Advocate General abandoned the indictment against Kostolo, whilst continuing to heap opprobrium upon his morals. He maintained the charge against the widow. Couture notably contrasted the manner in which two similar declarations had been received: the servant claimed to have eaten of the rice, and her word was credited; the wife stated she had tasted it, and that very assertion was deemed suspect. He recalled, too, that the physicians had been summoned without delay. He urged that the circumstantial evidence be weighed without the added encumbrance of public scandal.
After an hour’s deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty for both defendants. Applause broke out in the courtroom; the presiding judge ordered the arrest of those who disturbed the peace. Then, having pronounced their discharge, he addressed to the widow an extended rebuke concerning her morals, her conscience, and her lost honour. She had just escaped the charge of murder; she was yet compelled to listen to the magistrate publicly branding her with an infamy that the verdict had not, in his estimation, wiped away.
The judicial collection of 1828 recounts that she reappeared almost immediately behind her counter, and that for several days running the crowd thronged before her door to catch a glimpse of her. This concluding tableau belongs to a chronicle that remains openly hostile to her. Yet it illustrates how this history was delivered to its readers: a woman restored to liberty, yet abandoned still to the judgment of passers-by. One might henceforth cross the threshold of the shop without beholding a prisoner in the dock. It remained to be seen how many patrons would consent to see in her nothing more than a grocer.