At midnight, beneath a lashing rain, a man clad in a blue smock knocked at the door of Sébastien Perrin. He gave himself out as the servant of Piroz Liodoz, an intimate friend of the old man, and begged him to help carry a load of tobacco as far as Les Gobets. Perrin rose, dressed himself, and stepped out into the night alongside the stranger. On the following morning, his daughter Marie-Pierrette discovered his corpse lying in a field. Between the threshold of that dwelling and the muddy slope, a snare had been laid whose pretext would not long withstand the scrutiny of justice.
Sébastien Perrin, a yeoman farmer in the hamlet of Bellecombe, was near seventy years of age. His wife, Françoise Chapelu, and he had three children: Marie-Rose, Marie-Pierrette, and a fifteen-year-old son who had been laboring for several years in Lorraine. The elder daughter had resided for a considerable time under the paternal roof before wedding Louis Mathieu, a widower, father of two children, and a hemp-comber by trade. In 1825, she had removed to Orvoz, where the couple had had two children. Champagnac’s chronicle depicts her as a woman frequently accused of petty thefts by her neighbors and records that her parents bitterly reproached her conduct.
The account also makes sensible the atmosphere of dread that had settled over the household. Marie-Rose harbored the suspicion that her parents intended to reserve the larger portion of their estate for her brother. Champagnac relates that she perpetually whispered to her sister that their father and mother loved only the boy, striving to persuade her that they were both being dispossessed. One day, she placed in her hands a grey powder, folded within paper and muslin, bidding her cast it into the soup destined for their father, mother, and brother. This powder, she asserted, would turn the familial affection back toward the two sisters. The young girl hesitated, then concealed the packet, dreading that it might contain poison. She did not employ it; later, following a quarrel with Marie-Rose, she divulged the matter to her mother. The father and son examined the powder, pronounced it to be poison, and cast it into the fire.
In March 1828, a fresh altercation broke out beneath the parental roof. The mother upbraided her daughter for having sought to poison the family. Champagnac relates that Marie-Rose flew at her, seized her by the hair, and heaped abuse upon her; the ribbon of the mother's coif snapped, and this rupture alone was said to have averted strangulation. The father rushed in at his wife’s cries. The daughter took flight. On another occasion, he confided to Humbert Barlet that he was so deeply aggrieved by her that he would have disinherited her had he possessed the power. Then, weeping, he added that the wretched creature wished to do unto him a thing he could not bring himself to name.
On Sunday, December 7, the family retired to rest in the same chamber. The father occupied his own bed; the mother and Marie-Pierrette shared the other. The son was far away, in Lorraine, and Louis Mathieu had likewise been absent from the hamlet for several months, having departed to work at the hemp-combing. Shortly before midnight, someone violently rattled the kitchen latch. The mother called out, asking who was there. The stranger, perceiving that the voice issued from the bedchamber, went round the house and hailed them beneath the window.
He declared that he came on behalf of Liodoz to ask Perrin to carry tobacco to Les Gobets. In the dim light of the night, the husband and wife discerned a man of ordinary stature, clad in a blue smock. They did not recognize him. He represented himself as the manservant of Piroz Liodoz, of the parish of Évouaix. Perrin bade him enter; the man replied that he would first go inform his master, who had remained beside the loads, to wait with patience, and then returned almost immediately. Despite the rain, the old man followed him out.
The chronicle explains why such a pretext was capable of prevailing upon Perrin: Piroz Liodoz was the sobriquet of Claude-Marie Poncet, his closest friend. Yet Poncet had no tobacco whatever to transport to Les Gobets. The stranger had spoken in the patois of Évouaix, which differed from that of Belleydoux. His voice had seemed faint and unsteady; Mother Perrin initially paid little heed to this detail. Through the night, her husband did not return. By morning, absence had given way to mortal anguish.
On December 8, Marie-Pierrette set out between seven and eight o'clock to attend mass. In a field lying within musket-shot of the house, she caught sight of a body covered in mud and blood. Approaching, she recognized her father, and fled shrieking from the spot. The mayor was notified and caused the premises to be placed under guard. The official procès-verbaux fixed the first clue upon the path to Les Gobets: Perrin’s bonnet had been found lying there. A long trail of blood extended thence over some one hundred and twenty paces to the field of the Gros-Pommier. There, a blood-stained stone bearing adhered hair was collected. The physician noted several violent blows to the head and extensive contusions; he attributed death to blows struck with a blunt instrument.
During the opening hours, eyes turned toward the man in the blue smock. Perrin’s widow and her daughter had heard a male voice and believed the stranger hailed from Évouaix. Yet when interrogated as to whom their suspicions attached, they named Marie-Rose. The mother answered that her daughter alone could have slain the father. Marie-Pierrette added that, even if the stranger had indeed been present, her sister might well have acted in concert with him. On the morrow, Marie-Rose walked past the corpse and inquired of her mother where her father was. The mother retorted that she ought to know better than anyone. The following day, Marie-Rose offered to bring food to the men keeping watch over the body; her mother bade her go herself, seeing that she was the author of the calamity.
The inquest soon pieced together a chain of scattered traces. Neighbors reported having observed, on their way to mass, the footprints of an individual who had run barefoot by a circuitous path toward Marie-Rose’s house. It was likewise remarked that she suffered from a sprained arm and bore a scratch near her eye. On December 10, the gendarmes apprehended her and searched her dwelling, to no avail. On the following day, a second search was conducted within the stable. Wedged between the wall and a pile of firewood, the investigators brought to light a pair of blue canvas trousers, coated in fresh earth and stained with blood, with hairs matted in the gore. At the bottom of a cask, a blue smock exhibited identical stains. These garments belonged to Louis Mathieu, her husband, whom witnesses knew to be still in Lorraine.
A further inspection of the stable yielded other apparel: a woman’s shift, shoes, white stockings, and a bodice of blue woollen cloth. These, too, were marked with blood; earth and bits of chaff clung to the soles. Marie-Rose admitted ownership of the bodice, the shoes, and the stockings, but maintained that the bodice had been stolen from her, that the shift was not hers, and that she had worn the shoes while digging potatoes. The narrative notes that witnesses contradicted her regarding the date on which she had worn the bodice and the borrowing of the stockings. She claimed that the blood upon her footwear might be her own.
The magistrates sought at first to determine whether Louis Mathieu had returned from Lorraine, or whether another man had lent Marie-Rose assistance. The investigation produced no proof of an accomplice, and the husband’s absence was confirmed. They came presently to entertain the supposition that the figure in the blue smock was none other than Marie-Rose herself, arrayed in Mathieu’s garments, counterfeiting the voice and patois of the men of Évouaix. The chronicle records that neighbors reputed her capable of mimicking such manners of speech and passing herself off as a man. This hypothesis bound together the fabrication concerning the tobacco, the smock, the secreted garments, and the signs gathered in the stable; yet no witness had beheld who had led Perrin out of his house, nor who had struck him down.
A woman who kept the key to Marie-Rose’s house subsequently disclosed that Sébastien Perrin’s shovel and pitchfork had vanished from his door on December 7 and now stood within the stable, their hafts stained with blood. Under the prosecution’s theory, as reported by Champagnac, the daughter had carried them off, and one of these implements had served to bludgeon her father. Among the pieces of evidence cited were hairs, the field soil, and the stains upon the garments. As to the man said to have been left waiting by the tobacco, no name was ever established.
Marie-Rose appeared before the Court of Assizes of the Ain on February 19 and 20, 1829. The chronicler portrays her as composed during her interrogation and notes that she opposed flat denials to the facts alleged against her. When the manner of her father’s death was recounted, she answered that she was innocent. The public prosecutor pressed the accusation; after three-quarters of an hour of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of guilty. Questioned by the president of the court after the verdict, she rose and reiterated her innocence.
The sentence decreed that she be executed at Nantua. On May 23, 1829, the judgment was carried into effect. Thus the law concluded its business. Yet the narrative leaves lying at the stable door the garments of an absent husband, the nocturnal apparition beneath the casement, and the stranger’s patois: the magistrates reconciled these within the conjecture of a disguise, but no living witness had set eyes upon the assassin. Marie-Rose had been condemned and put to death; the chronicle assigns no other name to the figure that came to fetch her father into the rain.