The portmanteau held the funds that a tax receiver was bound to remit to the Treasurer of the Estates of Burgundy. When Bosquillon arrived at the sign of the Quatre Fils Aymon in Charenton, the attendants who carried it to his chamber found it so heavy that he remarked to them that it held enough to provide dowries for several maidens. That very evening, the man had vanished. His chest was later found locked within the carriage, yet only a fraction of the money remained. A few weeks thence, the river deposited a body at the Port-au-Blé in Paris.
Bosquillon served at Auxonne as a collector of taxes. In October 1778, he was journeying to Paris to pay over the revenues collected; he also intended to establish a wine depot at Charenton for his eldest son. Prior to his departure, his wife had assisted him in packing the funds into a yellowish leather portmanteau. She had counselled him against travelling alone with such a sum and had urged him to take along Foulin, a trusted retainer. Bosquillon set forth without him.
He departed Auxonne on 14 October and reached Charenton on the 18th, toward four or five o'clock in the afternoon. At the inn kept by Leblanc, he had his carriage put up and the portmanteau carried to his chamber. It was entrusted to the innkeeper’s son and the postilion. They noted its great weight. The traveller's remark, which Champagnac later records as having perhaps proved fatal, conferred upon the luggage a decisive role in the affair: a considerable sum had been seen, though never publicly counted.
The Leblancs maintained that bread and wine had been served to the newcomer. He was said to have taken a crust, ordered pigeons and cutlets for his supper, and then disappeared before the table was laid. The household sought him, then waited until midnight. The chronicle points out that they did not immediately inform the authorities, nor Bosquillon’s sister, a nun residing near Charenton. Eight days elapsed before they presented themselves to the magistrate to render their account and have the seals affixed.
This delay did not establish what had transpired, yet it fed the chronicler’s suspicion. The innkeepers also spread the report that their guest had uttered words touching upon the person of the King and might harbour designs against the government. They advised the magistrate to write to the Lieutenant General of Police and request that searches be conducted along the road to Fontainebleau. This political trail diverged from the money Bosquillon carried, without in any way explaining his absence.
When the seals were removed on 7 November, the portmanteau lay within the carriage trunk, still secured by its padlock. It contained a mere two thousand two hundred and sixty-five livres. The magistrate committed this sum and the remaining effects to the keeping of Masson. Champagnac thereafter faults the magistrate of Charenton for having ordered no search of the premises. A fortnight later, the waters brought forth another clue, more terrible and yet equally incomplete.
On 16 November, a corpse was washed ashore at the Port-au-Blé in Paris. River boatmen drew it from the water and carried it to the lower jail of the Châtelet. In the pockets were found a six-livre crown, a pasteboard snuffbox, spectacles, three keys, and several trifling items. There was neither watch, nor purse, nor shoe buckles. The physicians and surgeons, according to their report, discovered neither wound nor contusion; they attributed the death to submersion. The turnkeys, however, declared they had observed a wound in the left side. Two days later, the body was identified as that of Bosquillon and interred under his name at Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois.
At Auxonne, his wife was still unaware that he was dead. She believed her husband had long since reached Paris and reproached him only for his silence. When she learned that his body had been found drowned and already buried, she set out at once. Champagnac portrays her arriving almost dead with grief, so distraught as to be incapable of comprehending so extraordinary an end. The thought of murder did not immediately present itself to her mind. In the months that followed, another possibility sustained her hopes: perhaps Bosquillon was held captive in the Bastille.
She returned to Paris, visited the police bureaus, obtained warrants from the minister to search for her husband across the houses of correction, provided his description, and questioned whomever she met. She found no trace of him. When at last she was compelled to accept his death, she took up lodgings in Charenton to reopen the inquiry, working from the rumours gathered throughout the neighbourhood. What she gleaned formed an accusing portrait: mournful cries heard in the evening, Leblanc the younger seen dishevelled and spotted with drops of blood, a bundle the size of a man carried toward the Seine, and then the innkeepers counting money and abruptly purchasing a house and furniture.
The widow deemed that these circumstances pointed plainly enough to the culprits and denounced the Leblancs to a police commissioner on 4 May 1781. The King’s prosecutor at the Châtelet lodged a formal complaint and ordered an information to be drawn up. Yet the judicial inquiry lapsed for two years. In August 1783, the public prosecutor requested its resumption and the publication of a monitory. The investigation was revived in November, then suspended once more, only to be resumed the following spring. Each step brought the matter closer to the court without ever yielding a definitive answer.
In August 1784, decrees for personal appearance were issued against the Leblancs; their maidservant, Tudon, was subjected to a decree of bodily arrest. The confrontations took place in the autumn. The widow Bosquillon joined the proceedings as a civil party and appealed against what she perceived as undue leniency shown toward the innkeepers and the maid. During this procedure, the younger Leblanc died suddenly. The young man’s death gave rise to a fresh rumour: that his parents had made away with him to silence a dangerous witness. The chapter does not record this as established fact, but merely as public report.
On 15 June 1785, the Parlement issued an arrest ordering the bodily seizure of Leblanc the elder, his wife, and Tudon, subsequently remanding the proceedings to the bailiwick of the Palais. Fresh complaints, informations, confrontations, and monitories ensued. The Leblancs presented their defence and challenged several facts alleged by the widow, accusing certain witnesses of falsehood. The very accumulation of evidence which, to the Bosquillon family, seemed to convict the innkeepers, thus lost its clarity as soon as it was confronted with the rejoinders of the opposing party.
The bailiwick of the Palais found insufficient grounds either to establish the crime or to declare innocence. By a sentence of 26 October 1785, it ordered a further inquiry for the term of one year and retained the accused in prison. The Parlement confirmed this decision on 14 March 1786. It is upon this state of suspense that Champagnac’s chapter concludes. The chronicle does not record who took the money, how Bosquillon came to enter the Seine, nor whether the accused were ultimately condemned or set at liberty.
The widow had set out in search of a husband whom she first believed might still be living behind prison walls. She had recovered his body, gathered depositions, appealed to the law, and waited for justice to take its course. Yet the last known ruling resolves nothing: the Leblancs and Tudon remain incarcerated, the dossier stands open, and the testimonies remain in conflict. The traveller of Charenton lingers between two irreconcilable narratives: vanished from his room according to the innkeepers, the victim of a murder according to his widow. The law leaves this contradiction in suspense.