The paper appeared to place Claude Peyrache in Yssengeaux on the 8th of October 1817. At the Riom Assizes, on the 23rd of May 1821, a barrister re-examined the receipt the man had brandished from the very beginning: in truth, it bore the date of the 8th of October 1818. A whole year had just shifted before the eyes of the public. It carried away with it the proof that was to justify Peyrache’s presence in an inn where he claimed to have heard three men confess to a murder.
One had to return to the morning of the 10th of September 1817, at Dunières. On the previous day, Jean Courbon, a prosperous landowner from Mazet, near Yssengeaux, had spent the day and part of the evening drinking in several taverns with Galland, Rispal, and Tavernier, three brothers-in-law. At five o’clock in the morning, his corpse was discovered in a two-foot trench behind an inn different from the one where he had parted from his companions. His money, his effects, and the fragments of a promissory note he had discharged to Tavernier were still in his pockets.
The body lay in a singular posture, the head bent upon the chest, the weight supported by the nape of the neck. His clothing and cravat showed no signs of struggle; neither contusion nor wound was observed. He still retained a lingering warmth and an extraordinary rigidity. Dr Thomas arrived without delay and attributed the death to an apoplectic stroke brought on by excessive drinking. Courbon’s heavy build and the opening of the body substantiated this explanation, according to Champagnac. His kinsmen and friends were well aware that sudden death had long been feared on account of his corpulence and intemperance.
Yet, less than a day after his burial, the word assassination spread through the canton. Galland, Rispal, and Tavernier were singled out. The official reports had noted no lesion whatever, but certain inhabitants began to speak of broken cervical vertebrae and bruises upon the neck and chest. No precise motive was ever established for the malice imputed to them. Galland was of a quarrelsome disposition; Rispal, on the contrary, was regarded as gentle, upright, and peaceable. These distinctions scarcely checked a rumour that grew daily in boldness.
Tavernier and Rispal were apprehended on the 3rd of October. Galland learned the following day that the gendarmes had called at his house, and he went to surrender himself as a prisoner. The court soon ordered the release of the three men, on the 8th of October. This discharge from prison did not quiet those inhabitants who had convinced themselves of their guilt; it exasperated certain minds and reinforced suspicion. At that time, the talk of towns and villages was full of the murder of Fualdès at Rodez, and several people believed they discerned in Courbon’s death the features of that other calamity.
A rumour reported by the tailors Aulanier and Celsette lent an initial support to the clamour: a man named Lardon claimed to have heard Anne Colombette assert that Galland had announced Courbon’s death while passing near her house. The chronicle assigns this conversation to the 8th of September 1817, while also placing it at the very moment the corpse was discovered behind the inn—which does not accord with its own dates of the 9th and 10th of September. Lardon eventually deposed as to what he claimed to have heard. But the testimony that was to carry the prosecution before the jury was that of Claude Peyrache.
Peyrache alleged that he had spent the night of the 8th of October in an inn at Yssengeaux, separated from the three brothers-in-law by a simple partition. He claimed to have heard them speaking of their crime. In the conversation he reported, one lamented that he had gone too far; Galland bade him hold his tongue, fearing they might be returned to prison. Another said they ought not to have killed Courbon; Galland replied that he was dead and that there was no use in regrets. A third explained that they had thrust the handkerchief in too deeply, which had caused the neck to swell and aroused suspicion. These utterances were not brought to the knowledge of the authorities until several months after the date on which Peyrache claimed to have overheard them.
On the 26th of August 1818, when summoned before the examining magistrate, he did not relate this scene. The next day, he repaired to the justice of the peace of Montfaucon and revealed the words he attributed to the three men. Called subsequently by delegation before the examining magistrate of Yssengeaux, he repeated the same account. The wives of Galland and Rispal were already protesting against this accusation. The indictment division committed the three brothers-in-law to the Haute-Loire Assizes.
Peyrache reiterated his story before the jurors, adding further details. The people of the inn declared that they had not seen him on the day stated; a witness maintained that he had occupied the bed in which Peyrache claimed to have slept. To prove his visit to Yssengeaux, the accused produced a receipt signed by Labatie, an attorney of the town. The document was acknowledged by its author and admitted as proof that he was indeed there on the 8th of October 1817. But the counsel for the defence petitioned in vain for a view of the premises and for the arrest of Peyrache and Lardon for perjury.
The proceedings lasted six days. On the 9th of March 1819, Galland and Rispal were sentenced to penal servitude for life as guilty of the murder; Tavernier received one year of imprisonment as an involuntary accessory to the homicide. Galland and Rispal were branded and transferred to the penal hulks at Toulon. The verdict had severed them from the free world without the defence’s questions regarding the adjacent room, the bed, and the very presence of Peyrache having been verified as requested.
Their wives did not abandon the prosecution for perjury. On the 20th of December 1819, by decision of the Keeper of the Seals, the court of Yssengeaux ordered acoustic experiments: could the conversation Anne Colombette allegedly had with Galland truly be heard? Could Peyrache have overheard what he purported to have intercepted at the inn? The investigators called fresh witnesses and examined the premises. The suspicions against Lardon, Colombette, Aulanier, and Celsette were deemed insufficient; they were discharged. For Peyrache, on the other hand, the experiment at the inn was to undermine the very foundation of his narrative.
He had spoken of a slight partition; the investigations established that a two-foot wall, plastered on both sides, divided the bedchambers. From the bed he had initially pointed out, it was impossible to hear the adjoining room. From the doorway, a few detached words might be caught, but never an entire sentence. Peyrache had also shifted his position: he had begun by stating that he listened from his bed, and then claimed to have crouched at the door. The bed he had indicated had been occupied by another witness. The very passages through which he claimed to have walked during the night had been incorrectly described.
There remained the receipt. Peyrache had insisted upon this document as irrefutable proof of his presence in 1817. Labatie remembered having provided him with a receipt upon settling an account on the day he had seen him; the attorney recognised the paper produced before the first assizes. In perusing its text at Riom, Maître Tailhand the elder finally noticed the year: the receipt bore the date of the 8th of October 1818, not 1817. A single numeral had hitherto served to uphold an entire night at the inn. The date no longer corroborated the testimony; it laid bare its falsehood.
Peyrache appeared on the 23rd of May 1821 before the Court of Assizes of Riom. Galland and Rispal had been brought from the hulks to attend these proceedings; they still laboured under the weight of their conviction. Their wives were seated at their side. The innkeeper, Perrot, and Rose Vidal, his servant-girl, declared they had not seen Peyrache. Deschomet affirmed that he had occupied the bed designated by him. The experts repeated that whole sentences could not be heard from the threshold, and nothing at all from the bed. Labatie confirmed that the receipt was indeed the one he had signed, but upon the date revealed by the advocate.
This time, the jury unanimously declared Peyrache guilty of perjury. He was sentenced to hard labour for life. The Court of Cassation dismissed his appeal on the 18th of June; on the 9th of August, it quashed the judgment that had condemned Galland and Rispal and ordered a new trial before the Court of Assizes of the Loire, at Montbrison. The two men departed to be tried anew, this time upon the surviving indictment, but after the judicial recognition of the perjury that had sent them to the hulks.
The judgment of Montbrison was delivered on the 5th of December 1821, after eight days of debate. The jury found Galland and Rispal not guilty of the homicide laid to their charge. The presiding judge pronounced their discharge and spoke of a judicial error that justice had just repaired as far as lay in its power. He counselled them to stifle their resentments and resume their place in society. Galland’s wife, who had been ill for seventeen days, died at Montbrison on the 14th of December; she had been able to attend only the first day of the trial. Louis XVIII granted Madame Rispal a pension of three hundred francs to redress, as far as possible, the injury sustained by her husband.