The initial narrative of the tragedy charges three men with the murder of a French refugee. The opposing account accuses the victim’s own brothers of falling upon the officers and slaying their kinsman. Within the inn at Leith, that wild night left but one indubitable fact: Elias Poiret was dead. On 18 August 1691, it fell to the jury to choose between two tales that crossed beneath the selfsame roof.
The pannels at the bar were John, Master of Tarbett, Ensign Andrew Mowat, and James Sinclair. The pursuers, George and Isaac Poiret, were French Protestant refugees serving in the King’s Foot Guards. Their brother, Elias, was the victim. The libel set the scene in the house of John Brown, vintner in Leith, during the night of 8 March. The Poirets were lodged there. According to the prosecution, the three men entered George’s bedchamber, wounded him, withdrew, and presently returned. The two brothers, roused from slumber and scarce clad, ran down unarmed. The assailants fell upon them; Elias received a sword-thrust through the body and expired upon the spot.
The three prisoners threw back the charge. They asserted they had sought shelter beneath Brown’s roof from a furious tempest. They sat drinking peaceably in the hall when the Poirets and another Frenchman burst in, armed with pistols and swords. Two shots were allegedly discharged at Tarbett; thereafter the brothers fell upon the Scots. In this version, one of the Frenchmen ran Elias through in the thick of the fray, failing to recognise his brother in the gloom. Two camps, two tongues, and a single corpse: each side branded the other the aggressor.
The court first heard Christian Erskine, formerly a maidservant in Brown’s house. She did not witness the fatal stroke. Her testimony began earlier, in George Poiret’s bedchamber. Past midnight, Tarbett entered therein. George sat up in bed, uncovered, with a slight mark of blood upon his cheek. The two men spoke in French and appeared to dispute. Erskine called for Mowat, who arrived accompanied by another. George had drawn his sword, and the three men wrested it from his grasp. She saw no blows struck. Mowat brought Tarbett and the third man out, bidding the servant keep the chamber door fast.
Erskine believed Tarbett returned anon, knocking upon the door and demanding entry. George had risen, striking the ceiling with the fire-tongs to summon his brothers. The latter descended after hastily throwing on some garments. They parleyed with George, then crossed the hall. Isaac had his sword drawn. Erskine did not see the prisoners bear weapons or attack the Frenchmen. She hurried forth to raise the guard. As she went down, she heard a pistol-shot. When she returned, Elias lay stretched out dead, and Isaac’s hand was bloody, one of his fingers being nearly severed. Erskine knew not who had fired, nor did she see any man deliver the mortal stroke.
Jean Thomson, another former servant, suggested a possible motive for the opening scene, though she could shed no light upon the second. Tarbett had pressed her to sit beside him. She had retired into a room and bolted the door. When the clamour arose, she saw Mowat dragging Tarbett and another man out of George’s chamber. Tarbett declared he would go back and crave his pardon. Later, the Frenchmen came down armed, Isaac carrying a naked blade. Thomson ran out to call the town guard and heard a shot fired while upon her errand. She likewise saw nothing of the murder.
The house was straightway filled with material fragments. John Brown, the vintner, discovered the body upon entering the hall. Having summoned the watch, he found near the corpse a primed and cocked pistol, still loaded, and a sword within its scabbard. He subsequently joined in the search for Mowat. The ensign was discovered lurking beneath the timber of the stair, concealed behind a deal board. One witness related that he protested he had no weapon; others affirmed that beneath his cloak lay a drawn sword, bent and smeared with blood. He himself bore a wound upon his hand.
Robert Brown, the chirurgeon, compared the blade to the rent in Elias’s coat and the wound upon the body. The hole in the doublet answered to the sword. As to the wound itself, the chirurgeon could not speak with like assurance: after ten or twelve hours, he explained, the shape and dimensions of a flesh-wound alter. The trial therefore failed to establish an indisputable link between that blade and the mortal thrust. Blood upon the sword was real enough, so witnesses swore; its provenance was never determined by the reported examination.
To unearth Mowat, Brown had taken a candle and a lantern. A neighbour directed him to the stair; behind the plank, the man at first returned no answer to their summons. The constables levelled their muskets and compelled him to come forth. At this passage in the narrative, Brown marked an essential boundary: encompassed by the press, he had not himself seen the weapon stripped from the prisoner, though it was subsequently placed in his hands. It was naked, sorely bent, and bloody along blade and hilt alike. The thing seemed to accuse; yet the witness steadfastly refused to claim an observation he had not made.
The prosecution tested no less rigorously the depositions proffered against the three men. James de la Massie, a potential witness, was cast aside once it was shown he had uttered words of malice and resentment. His testimony could support neither the one nor the other narrative. Mowat and Tarbett remained bound to the scene, yet their conduct before and after the blow could not be confounded: Sinclair, the maidservants testified, had long been asleep in another room; Tarbett had entered the bedchamber and then departed; Mowat was found hidden, wounded, and bearing a bloody sword.
In the eyes of the Poiret brothers, Elias perished after the three men burst into their lodgings. In the eyes of the pannels, his death followed upon an onslaught led by the Frenchmen. Between these narratives there remained only the servant-maid who had run for succour, the report of a firearm during her absence, and her return to find a dead man and a brother with a bleeding hand. No witness had observed the events in the hall without interruption.
The assize returned their verdict: “Not Proven” as to all the charges. George and Isaac obtained no sentence of condemnation for the death of their brother. The finding did not brand them as the slayers of Elias; it merely left the mortal thrust without a perpetrator judicially determined. The record closes upon that unresolved note: three men acquitted, and a family bereft of a brother.