Charlotte had kept back some soup for her friend. When she was asked why, the gesture no longer belonged to the ordinary life of the hospice: it was turned over, weighed, scrutinized for design. The friend was dead. Another nun had narrowly escaped the grave. In the small sideboard where the dish had awaited supper, justice believed it had discovered the exact place where an act of kindness had turned into a crime.
At Chinon, Charlotte Nautonnier de Castelfranc lived among the nursing sisters. She had passed sixty. For thirty-five years, she had been devoted to Madame Grandmaison, a woman older than herself whose means were modest. One possessed some wealth, the other needs she could not always meet; their friendship had devised quiet ways to remedy this disparity. These long-standing arrangements, which no one would ever have thought to bring before a tribunal, were now to return there in the form of depositions, a piece of furniture purchased, and a settled annuity.
On February 27, 1812, both meat broth and lean soup were served at the hospice dinner. Several boarders and sisters partook of the former and found it good. It happened occasionally that some was set aside for Madame Grandmaison's evening meal, at her own request. On this occasion, Charlotte herself put some aside for her friend and for Madame Prost-de-l’Isle. She placed the dish in a small sideboard belonging to her, in the refectory. This piece of furniture, situated near the entrance door, was not the place where food was customarily kept.
At supper, both women were seized with vomiting and convulsions. A physician was summoned; the gravity of the symptoms led him to suspect a deleterious substance. His treatment afforded some respite, but Madame Grandmaison's condition subsequently deteriorated. She died on February 29. Madame Prost-de-l’Isle survived. A servant, Nadreau, known as Fermé, who had tasted the soup before serving it, had likewise been taken ill. Thus there had been a meal shared without incident at noon, a dish set apart, and several persons stricken by evening. It was within that interval that the investigation sought what had changed.
The dish and the vessels used about the patients were examined. Mineral particles were observed in them. Arsenic or corrosive sublimate was considered, without the ability to identify the substance through adequate experiments: the quantity available was too slight. The post-mortem examination of Madame Grandmaison revealed lesions of the stomach and intestines; the practitioners concluded that a corrosive substance had acted upon them. The conviction of poisoning thus took shape far more swiftly than the determination of the agent that had allegedly caused it.
Charlotte soon found herself hemmed in by a succession of questions, every answer to which seemed to lead back to her name. Who had set the soup aside unbidden? Who had placed it in this unusual sideboard? Who had directed Fermé where to fetch it to be rewarmed? The servant reported that Charlotte had explained the removal of the dish: she wished to prevent it from being mingled with the food destined for the sick. At any other time, the explanation might have seemed ordinary and practical. After her friend's death, it became a precaution that the prosecution construed quite otherwise.
It was asserted that the refectory had not been left vacant between the deposit and the service, and that no one had been seen approaching the sideboard. From this supposed vigilance, the indictment drew a terrible conclusion for the sister: she alone could have introduced the poison. Yet to have seen no one act was not the same as having observed every single moment during which action was possible. The small piece of furniture had become the fulcrum of an argument that claimed to close all other avenues.
Even Charlotte’s grief was turned against her. After the first attacks of illness, she had run from one place to another, lamenting the misfortune of having kept that soup and reproaching herself with being the cause of all that had happened. It was urged against her that she had not remained at the patients' bedside to succour them. During the funeral, her tokens of sorrow were taken for affectation. Whether she was agitated or whether she wept, crime was detected in her conduct. The prosecution possessed that frightening facility of enlisting contrary gestures in the service of the very same design.
It remained to explain how she might have procured a toxic substance. For several years, the hospice pharmacy had kept a packet of corrosive sublimate. A sister in charge of the dispensary declared that it was difficult to find and that no use had been made of it for a long time. Yet a surgeon had taken some from it a few months earlier, with her assistance. Her statement had to be confronted with this acknowledged use. What remained of the packet was weighed, and a discrepancy was found with the recorded quantity, even after accounting for the surgeon's portion. To the prosecution, this deficit furnished the matter of the crime; yet it showed no hand reaching to take it.
Charlotte denied having touched the poison and declared that she had only recently learned of its existence in the dispensary. Her difficulty in retaining its name was again presented as an artifice. She was credited with ambition, jealousy, and the desire to become superior. The death of the two nuns would have profited her, it was asserted. Thus was constructed the portrait of a woman whom those close to her described as gentle and charitable: to every mark of affection there now answered the suspicion of feigned devotion, and to every service rendered, the possibility of a long-concealed calculation.
Before the Court of Assizes of Indre-et-Loire, the young advocate Bernazais set about dismantling this construction. He first challenged the poison. Relying on medical opinions, he maintained that the substance was arsenic and not corrosive sublimate. Yet the pharmacy, according to the evidence adduced by the defence, contained no arsenic. This objection struck directly at the connection between the depleted packet and the soup, which had figured so prominently in the prosecution's case. It does not afford us, of itself, a definitive chemical identification; it demonstrates why the assumed provenance could not be accepted without question.
Bernazais then recalled what was truly known of the relations between the two friends. Madame Grandmaison's nephews testified to Charlotte's solicitude. The goldsmith Bonhommaux related a singular circumstance: wishing to bestow upon her friend a piece of furniture she desired, Charlotte had delivered silverware to him, charging him to present the gift himself. She had likewise settled, before a notary, an annuity of seventy-five francs in the elderly lady's favour. These were no longer merely words of praise. Living witnesses, a legal instrument, and a transaction conferred a verifiable history upon this friendship.
On September 11, 1812, Charlotte Nautonnier was acquitted upon the unanimous verdict of the jury. Champagnac recounts the joy occasioned by this decision and takes her part without reserve. His chapter then turns to other persons whom early suspicions had touched: the servant Fermé and the receiver’s wife, Dame Ruelle. Both had been discharged by a ruling of the Court of Orléans. The chronicler dwells on what appeared suspicious to him in their conduct; these observations do not constitute a condemnation, nor do they point to an author of the crime.
The matter must be left at this juncture, so disappointing to those who demand that a culprit immediately replace the acquitted prisoner. One woman had died after a supper, another had survived, and Charlotte had regained her freedom. The narrative does not resolve the origin of the poisoning. But it preserves the cost of a piece of furniture, a small annuity, and the memory of thirty-five years: all that it had been necessary to recall so that a dish of soup might cease to encompass an entire life. The friend saved by the verdict could no longer visit the one for whom she had kept it.