On the eve of the closing of the debates, Alfred Roger asked leave to speak. “I wish to tell the truth,” he declared: he denied having set fire to Perreau’s outbuildings as well as to Boudin’s stable, admitting that he had hitherto lied. This recantation cast confusion over an already singular affair. For several months, Roger had proclaimed himself the author of both conflagrations, asserting then that he had accused himself solely to shield Perreau. The jury, however, declared both men guilty.
The first fire had consumed the farm buildings of Claude Perreau, a husbandman of Teigny, in the department of the Nièvre. At the assizes in May 1875, the report recorded that Perreau had languished for several years in a disastrous financial plight. His real estate was encumbered beyond its value, and his creditors pressed him hard. The buildings and the movable effects within them were insured for a sum the prosecution deemed far superior to their true worth. These circumstances formed the motive advanced by the crown; yet of themselves, they did not suffice to establish whose hand had prepared the flames.
On the 16th of August, Perreau gathered his implements and the gear scattered about the farmyard into the outbuildings. He then took his two children to the home of his sister, Madame Pannetier. On the following day, having locked the doors of the dwelling-house and its dependencies, he set out for Paris, where he claimed he wished to see his wife. Sixteen hours after his departure, on the 18th of August at about five o’clock in the morning, the villagers heard a detonation. They soon saw flames piercing the thatch and roof-timbers of a barn. A neighbour clambered upon the shed in an effort to arrest the progress of the fire, but it had already seized upon the interior of that structure as well. Both buildings were reduced to ashes; the dwelling-house was spared.
The fire had not spread by hazard, the prosecution contended. Beneath bundles of faggots in the hayloft, searchers discovered combustible materials, joiner’s shavings, and waste paper, all copiously strewn with hunting powder. A conduit pierced the wall and the roof; a paper fuse led to a packet of matches. The heat of the blaze in the shed was intended, according to the crown's reconstruction, to ignite the matches and communicate the flames to the loft. The contrivance had been disposed in close proximity to both structures. The prosecution estimated that more than two hours must have been required to remove, rearrange the faggots, and prime the apparatus.
The materials furnished further circumstantial evidence. The wood shavings bore a strong resemblance to those from Perreau’s own workshop; the paper, according to the court record, derived from letters addressed to the accused. Hunting powder was found upon his premises. On the eve of his departure, he had purchased a packet of tallow candles that could nowhere be found in the house. The prosecution drew a comparison between this disappearance and an earlier arson committed in the arrondissement, wherein a slow-match fashioned from candles had delayed ignition. Perreau denied having burned his premises. He likewise contested the inferences drawn from this chain of objects and dates.
The losses did not fall upon the proprietor alone. The insurance was meant to cover Perreau’s damages; yet a barn belonging to one Grasset and leased to Baudequin stood among the incinerated buildings. Baudequin had stored his harvest therein, valued at approximately 2,500 francs. Within the stable also lay the chest of a farmhand, containing his life’s savings—1,500 francs in banknotes. The press accounts did not permit one to determine whether the money was consumed by the flames or whether Roger had carried it off before quitting the scene. Other sums were advanced regarding Perreau’s damages; these remained mere estimates reported by the press rather than an exhaustive accounting.
The second fire occurred three months later, on the property of Boudin, the deputy mayor of the commune. Roger had just returned to Teigny following a sojourn in Valenciennes. He had first presented himself at the house of Perreau’s brother-in-law, Jean-Baptiste Pannetier, and subsequently sought a place to spend the night. Boudin gave him shelter, offered him supper, and lent him a blanket. He conducted him to sleep in a stable containing the bed and chest of an absent farmhand. During the night of the 25th to the 26th of November, the stable burned down, together with the adjoining barn and the harvested crops. The damage was appraised at 5,500 francs.
Roger had vanished, taking the blanket with him. He surrendered that very day to the gendarmerie at Clamecy and confessed to having fired Boudin’s premises. In his initial interrogations, he attributed his act to hatred and exasperation toward those who possessed worldly goods. This version was short-lived. On the 2nd of January, he addressed a lengthy letter to the examining magistrate wherein he laid claim to the burning of Perreau’s buildings as well. He maintained that he had fashioned the engine beneath the faggots, taken the shavings from the neighbouring shop, and set both fires with his own hand.
He then assigned an unexpected motive to this confession. Roger stated that he had encountered Perreau in prison, after having himself been detained at Le Havre and subsequently arrested at Varzy on a charge of vagrancy. Learning that Perreau stood accused of the August arson, he resolved, he said, to take the crime upon his own shoulders in order to deliver his fellow captive. He claimed to have subsequently set fire to Boudin’s farm to lend greater credibility to his confession. The letters Perreau had entrusted to him for Pannetier appeared to lend singular weight to their relationship: they urged the brother-in-law to destroy compromising evidence and to follow Roger’s counsel implicitly.
In October, Roger had delivered nine missives from Perreau to Martin Parré, who conveyed them to Pannetier. The latter, fearful of being discovered in possession of compromising papers, surrendered them to the mayor, who in turn alerted the public prosecutor. Upon Roger’s release, a search revealed seven more letters upon his person, destined for the same brother-in-law. The newspaper cited one of these letters: Perreau introduced the young man as someone intimately acquainted with his affairs and requested that his advice be followed. The connection between the two men was amply documented; what promises had passed between them, beyond the written word, remained open to conjecture.
The chronology, however, severely undermined Roger’s confession concerning the August fire. Judicial inquiries established, according to the report, that he was in Paris from the 16th to the 22nd of August and could not, therefore, have been present in Teigny at the hour of the conflagration. Roger nevertheless persisted in accusing himself, and Perreau availed himself of this confession to assert his own innocence. The newspaper concluded that Perreau had burned his own premises and that Roger had set the blaze at Boudin’s; it conceded, however, that it was far more difficult to fathom why Roger had accused himself of a crime he could not possibly have committed. This perplexity did not dissipate during the trial.
At the bar, Perreau strenuously maintained his innocence. Roger at first adhered to his claim of sole guilt for both deeds. Counsel for the defence pleaded for an acquittal, contending that the accusation rested upon inferences and probabilities rather than material proofs. Perreau’s advocate urged that the policies of insurance, the endorsements, and his wife’s jewellery had been left behind in the house. A juror asked whether these documents had indeed been discovered there; the presiding judge replied that the official minutes confirmed it. An insurance agent subsequently explained that three copies of the policy were drawn up, such that the loss of the policyholder’s duplicate would in no way have hindered the settlement of the claim. This deposition rebutted an argument of the defence, yet it did not resolve the question of the arson.
It was at this juncture that Roger recanted before the court. He denied having applied the torch either in August or in November, declaring that he had uttered nothing but falsehoods. The public prosecutor presented a few observations; the defence replied. Following the summing-up of the president and an hour and a half of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of guilty against both prisoners, with extenuating circumstances. The Court sentenced Perreau and Roger each to twenty years of hard labour. The contemporary account does not record the particular grounds upon which the jury reached its conclusions. It leaves the affair shrouded in its successive versions: Roger had claimed both fires, professed a desire to save Perreau, and ultimately denied them altogether. The jury, nonetheless, declared both men guilty.