At Parcé, Maison-Neuve and La Faucherie were separated only by the ordinary intercourse of two farming households. The Pipelier couple worked the former tenancy; the Peignés dwelt in the latter. According to the indictment read before the Assize Court of the Sarthe, Peigné repaired almost daily to his neighbours’ house, often several times in a day. He appeared the most devoted of Pipelier’s friends. Yet the repeated visits, the talk gathered through the neighbourhood, and the familiarities witnessed by several observers soon bred suspicion of an illicit liaison between him and Pipelier’s wife.
The woman Pipelier conceded that Peigné was enamoured of her, though she maintained she had repulsed his advances. To this assertion the prosecution opposed scenes recounted by witnesses. A woman named Joubert stated that during the harvest, Pipelier had asked her to call Peigné, who was then busy in an adjoining field. Upon her arrival, she reportedly flung walnuts into the husbandman’s face; he allegedly threw her down and held her embraced upon the ground for nearly a quarter of an hour. On rising, she had supposedly tossed his hat aside and smeared his face. The narrative does not record what Joubert then made of the scene; it renders her deposition one of the circumstantial indications later invoked by the prosecution.
Another witness, Pierre Corbin, a young servant in the Pipeliers’ employ, related that upon returning from Mass one Sunday, some four weeks before his master’s death, he had caught sight through a half-open door of Peigné kissing his mistress. He described them, moreover, as sitting frequently very close to one another, knees touching and fingers interlaced. This intimacy was not unknown to all. The bill of indictment states that Pipelier was aware of the rumours, yet lent them no credit and lived in good intelligence with his wife. Within the Peigné household, the rumour bore another consequence: Peigné’s wife, disfigured by smallpox in 1870, was reportedly deeply wounded by the talk and jealous of the woman Pipelier. She was often seen weeping in silence.
In August 1872, this woman fell ill. Her frequent bouts of vomiting lasted nearly three weeks. The Parcé physician, Dr. Pasteau, visited her two or three times, diagnosing an intermittent fever accompanied by gastric disorders; he prescribed sulphate of quinine and castor oil. At his final visit, on 25 August, he perceived no distinct, characterized malady. On 27 August, according to the date supplied by the Gazette, the sufferer expired without an agony, as if worn out. The journal nonetheless associates this 27 August with a Monday, whereas the date fell upon a Tuesday; its account provides no means of resolving this discrepancy. The physician, taken by surprise, could make nothing of this demise.
The Gazette mentions neither autopsy nor inquiry at that juncture. The death remained unexplained until that of Pipelier. Following his wife’s decease, Peigné frequented Maison-Neuve with still greater assiduity. Then came the journey to La Flèche. On Tuesday, 21 January, the two men agreed to travel thither together on the morrow: Pipelier would accompany his friend to the market and assist him in driving swine. They set forth at three o'clock in the morning. After parting ways during the forenoon, they met again for dinner about three in the afternoon at the Grand inn. On the homeward road, they halted at Le Bailleul and drank a glass of wine at the widow Chaumont’s tavern.
Pipelier returned home about nine o'clock in the evening, complaining that his dinner had sat ill with him. Yet he went out almost immediately to take supper at Peigné’s. The latter’s sister, Madame Godin, had prepared soup, fried ham, and cider. The two men supped merrily. Upon returning to his own hearth around half past ten, Pipelier complained once more. He declared his stomach felt icy cold. His wife offered him an infusion prepared beforehand; he drank a little of it. Towards eleven o'clock, the vomiting began, continuing throughout the night and into the following day.
The indictment proceeds to trace a day that the neighbourhood would subsequently reinterpret in the light of death. The woman Pipelier nursed her husband alone. Peigné called in the morning, and again around seven in the evening, alleging at first a letter he wished to have read, and returning this second time with his son and the woman Corbin. At eight o'clock, the patient growing worse, Madame Pipelier sent for her brother-in-law and sister-in-law. They expressed astonishment that no physician had been summoned. She replied that her husband had objected to it; Peigné remarked that it was too late to fetch the doctor that evening, promising to seek Dr. Bazin in Sablé the following morning.
Around nine o'clock, Peigné took his leave. The brother and sister-in-law prepared a pap with the wine they had brought, of which Pipelier partook. He attempted to rise, but collapsed before reaching his bed. His wife retired to rest, leaving the two kinsfolk at the bedside of the dying man, whose breathing had grown stertorous. Around eleven o'clock, his sister-in-law heard his respiration cease and approached the bed: he was dead. The woman Pipelier displayed intense grief, then sent her manservant to inform Peigné that he need no longer trouble himself to fetch the doctor.
The suddenness of the decease and the absence of both physician and priest aroused suspicion. On Saturday the 25th, the magistrates arrived at Maison-Neuve. Dr. Degaille, assisted by Dr. Pasteau, performed the post-mortem examination. The digestive tract was violently inflamed; the lungs bore marks of intense congestion. The practitioners deemed these symptoms compatible with poisoning. Chemical analysis detected arsenic in the stomach, the intestines, the liver, and the dejections, even upon the bed linens. Peigné and the woman Pipelier were apprehended on 31 January.
The investigation brought the death of Peigné’s wife once more to the fore. Her body was exhumed. Her viscera likewise contained a considerable quantity of arsenic. The journal thus distinguished two deaths and two charges: Peigné alone was alleged to have poisoned his wife; he was subsequently alleged to have conspired with the woman Pipelier against her husband. Such was the thesis of the indictment. It bound the fatalities to the purported intrigue and to the paramours' presumed desire to marry, though it did not yet constitute the verdict of the jury.
The bill reported that Peigné had begged Madame Pipelier’s sister to warn him should she hear it said that her brother-in-law’s death was not natural. To those who sought to reassure him, he was reported to have answered that were he found guilty, he would destroy himself before being guillotined. To a neighbour, he allegedly said: “Even if Pipelier poisoned himself, I shall suffer death for it none the less.” The journal termed these utterances an almost explicit confession; yet they remained reported speech, and Peigné denied the facts. He claimed utter innocence in his wife’s death, if indeed poisoning had occurred, and portrayed his visits to Pipelier as those of an honest neighbour.
The question of the poison occupied a definite place in the prosecution’s case. Peigné had allegedly petitioned the mayor for a certificate to procure arsenic, meant, so he claimed, for treating livestock; the certificate had been refused him. He had likewise solicited it from a druggist, asserting a desire to kill rats. The report added that both households possessed rat poison. Madame Pipelier admitted at the bar having purchased some from an itinerant hawker, but maintained it was solely to destroy vermin. She denied having yielded to Peigné’s advances. Before the court, the latter acknowledged the journey and the shared meals with Pipelier, but contested the charge and denied paying court to his wife.
The pleadings did not erase the gulf between what was established by chemical tests, what the witnesses asserted, and what the prosecution inferred from their comparison. The medical experts confirmed arsenical poisoning. Joubert stood by her deposition regarding the harvest scene; Corbin had spoken of the intimacy between the two accused; Madame Pipelier’s son, called to the stand, provoked his mother’s tears. Maître Leporché, for the defence, entered a protest when the accused woman’s conference with the curé of Parcé was mentioned. The presiding judge made it clear that the priest had repeated her words only with the woman Pipelier’s express permission.
All questions were answered in the affirmative, with extenuating circumstances. Peigné was sentenced to penal servitude for life; the woman Pipelier to twenty years of the same penalty. The judgment concluded the trial without restoring to Peigné’s wife or to Pipelier the light denied to their final days. It fixed the punishment of each accused party and affirmed the double poisoning. At Maison-Neuve, one death had awakened suspicion of another; before the Assizes, the physicians, the kin, and the neighbours had each voiced their share of a history whose two victims could no longer tell their own.