The red widow, p.10
The Red Widow, page 10
The crime scene photographs also show that the house had not been fully ransacked. Marthe’s bedroom hadn’t been touched. In Adolphe’s, the contents of his wallet had been strewn around the floor and the top drawer of his bureau had been opened, but many of his clothes were still lying neatly in them. Neither his armoire nor the other drawers in his bureau had been disturbed. The armoire in Meg’s bedroom had been opened and some items had been thrown on the floor, but for the most part, it was still in order and her clothes were carefully folded on its shelves.22 Her study was in the worst shape out of all the rooms in the house. Her desk drawers had been thrown onto the floor, along with the overturned inkstand and the mysterious gloves. Once the police investigated, they found that the gloves weren’t mysterious at all: they had been a gift from Meg’s ex-lover Chouanard.23 What’s more, there was a small bureau in this room whose drawers were firmly closed. All in all, it might have taken Meg, Mariette, or Rémy ten minutes or so to put everything back. In other words, it seems unlikely that Meg’s story about a robbery gone wrong was anything close to the truth.
The crime scene photograph of Meg’s study. The untouched bureau is to the left of the door, its drawer pulls still neatly lined up.
The crime scene photograph of Adolphe’s room. The cane found near his body is on the right, close to the armoire, which was undisturbed. The contents of his wallet are on the floor on the left, not far from the bureau whose top drawer is opened.
Even more perplexing was the state of Meg’s, Adolphe’s, and Émilie’s bodies.
For such dastardly criminals, the intruders had been remarkably considerate toward Meg’s person. She had been tied to the bed so gently that she bore no marks on her body or any other signs of struggle. And why tie individual toes to the bed when throwing the cord around her ankle would have been a faster and easier way to secure her feet? Rémy also stated that the bonds were so loose that she probably could have untied herself. Doctors would later conclude that the gag she claimed to have worked out of her mouth had no traces of saliva on it, indicating that it may have been no more than a prop.24
Additionally, the cords that bound Meg’s body to the bed and the one around Émilie’s neck had come from within the household, as did the material for the gag in Émilie’s mouth and the one Meg said had been in hers. In fact, it was the same cotton wadding that Meg had used to treat her mother’s aching joints.25 The murderers had come armed with a revolver but apparently not the material they used to attack the household’s residents.
Once the autopsy report came in, it became clear that the circumstances of Adolphe’s and Émilie’s deaths were not what they seemed. Adolphe had probably died when he was awake. The best explanation for why his corpse was on the bathroom floor with his legs bent underneath him was that he had gotten out of bed, walked toward the bathroom, and been strangled on the spot. As he fell (or was dropped) to the ground, his body awkwardly crumpled. However, there were few signs of struggle on his corpse. Doctors only found two small, relatively light bruises on his arms during the autopsy. The cane by his side was thus not something he had grabbed to defend himself but likely had been placed there after the murders to make it look like Adolphe had tried to fight his assailant off. And although there was a rope around his neck, he had actually been strangled by someone’s bare hands, another indication that the crime scene had been staged.26
Émilie had a cord around her neck and a gag in her mouth. However, the authorities announced that she died of asphyxiation, not strangulation. They claimed that the cotton wadding had been forced into her mouth with such ferocity that her dentures had slipped back into her throat and choked her.27 Even this might not have been the real story. Years later, a doctor who was present at her autopsy reported that Émilie had actually died of a heart attack, presumably brought on by the horror of what she saw that night.28 Whichever version is true, it seems that Émilie’s death was accidental and the cord—and possibly the gag—were just more props.*
Last but not least, there was the sheer preposterousness of Meg’s description of what the murderers were wearing. The hats she described looked more like sombreros than any headwear worn in France at the time.29 Meg also said that the robes were like those of “Russian Orthodox priests.”30 This garb was hardly the most common sight in Paris and would have been cumbersome in the midst of a robbery/murder.
All these details and inconsistencies led one doctor who was at the crime scene on the morning of May 31 to exclaim, “It’s a sham!”31
In many ways, it seemed that Meg’s account was just another one of her elaborate stories. Like so many others, it was designed to hide a truth that she did not want to reveal—or perhaps could not.
*Although Émilie’s death was probably accidental and not a murder, I refer to the crime as “the double murder” or “the murders” for the sake of simplicity.
CHAPTER 11
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?
This question has perplexed observers since the double murder itself. There is the strangeness of what happened, from the staged elements of the crime scene to Meg’s odd method of being tied to the bed. And there is the strangeness of what Meg said had happened, from the robes to the mysterious lanterns.
Sadly, the crime remains as unsolved as it was on the morning of May 31. Nevertheless, there are two basic theories of what happened. Both have existed, in some form or another, since the murders.1
The first on the surface is the simplest: Meg did it. She was desperate to be free of her husband and marry another man, but he wouldn’t divorce her. Murder it was. She would have needed help, especially since strangling Adolphe would have required more strength than she had. She would also have needed someone to tie her to the bed. Rémy, who was already in the house that night, was one possible accomplice. Another was Mariette, whose loyalty to Meg knew few bounds. For almost fifteen years, she had cooked for Meg, facilitated her affairs, kept her secrets, and refused to say a word to anyone.2 She could easily have come in from Vert-Logis to help her employer dispose of Adolphe.
This theory is not outside the realm of possibility, but it poses more problems than it solves. For one, if Meg had planned the murder, she would have had time to come up with a better story of what she had witnessed and would have been able to fake the crime scene more convincingly. She was an impulsive gambler and a sloppy liar, but even she had to have known that her account of what she had seen would strain belief.
There is also the issue of Émilie’s presence, even if we assume that her death was accidental. Meg was protective of her mother and typically regarded her as someone who needed to be sheltered and cared for. This is true in the days after Édouard’s death, when Meg took on the role of the head of the family. Just before the murders, Meg defended her mother after her sister Juliette flew into a rage over Émilie’s overspending.3 Given all this, it seems improbable that Meg would have chosen to murder Adolphe on a night when her mother would have been a witness to such a horrifying scene.
If Meg had decided to commit premeditated murder, it seems more likely that she would have come up with a scheme that was more discreet. After all, husband and wife had plenty of opportunities to be alone together, and there were numerous other ways she could have killed him, from a slow poisoning to staging an accident, that wouldn’t have raised as many questions. Adolphe wasn’t young, might have had a substance abuse problem, and was hardly full of pep. If he “fell” down the stairs one day, many might have thought that it was sad but hardly shocking.
The second main hypothesis about the crime is more complicated but fits more closely with the facts. In this version, the murderer was one of Meg’s prominent lovers, and the crime wasn’t a robbery gone wrong but an assignation gone wrong.
This theory gained particular prominence due to the work of Edmond Locard, who wrote about the murders as a hobby. During his day job, he was the most renowned forensic scientist in twentieth-century France. It was he, for instance, who first proposed that crime scene investigators should look for trace evidence to track down perpetrators. He also worked with many of the investigators of the double murder, including Bertillon and the head of the Parisian detective bureau.4 It is quite possible that one or both knew the real story of what happened on the Impasse Ronsin and told Locard the truth about the murders. Maybe there were whispers in a corridor of the police’s headquarters, or maybe there were secrets spilled during a long, wine-soaked evening.
According to Locard, Meg had a rich and powerful lover who had paid her handsomely for a few encounters. These assignations were long past, but the two remained “on excellent terms.”5 Although Locard never provided a name for this lover, he told a Parisian newspaper in 1955 that the man was a “boyar—MUCH MORE THAN A BOYAR—(attention here, every word counts).”6 “Boyar” is a term for a member of the Russian aristocracy, and Locard’s phrasing and use of all caps suggest that the lover was a member of the tsar’s family. One strong possibility is Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, Tsar Nicolas II’s uncle, a man known for his pursuit of Parisian pleasures and his fierce temper.7 He had been one of Meg’s clients and had been spotted dining in Paris a few days before the crime, only to leave the capital on June 1 in great haste, perhaps to put distance between himself and the murders.8
In May 1908, Meg, desperate for cash, asked her old lover to come to the house. She might have slipped something in the toddies she so lovingly prepared for Adolphe and Émilie to ensure that she and the Russian wouldn’t be interrupted. He arrived excited for their assignation, only to have Meg tell him that she wanted to postpone the sex. Perhaps she had her period. When she asked for the money in advance, her lover became incensed at her presumption. The two started arguing so loudly that they woke Adolphe up. As the drugged painter lumbered around, the Russian feared a trap. In Locard’s words, he “jumped at the intruder’s [i.e., Adolphe’s] throat. His strong hand gripped the neck of the painter, killed him while he was standing, and then let him fall.” Émilie also woke up and went to see what the commotion was. The sight of a well-dressed man standing over the corpse of her son-in-law was enough to send her into a heart attack.9
Others in the know provided additional support for this version, although there is some question about the nationality of the lover. A doctor who witnessed the autopsies claimed that the murderer was a powerful foreigner with diplomatic immunity and guessed the lover was British, not Russian. Although the perpetrator’s status and nationality are not the type of evidence that would have surfaced during the autopsies, it’s possible that someone in the Parisian police who knew the real story told the doctor what had happened. Roger de Chateleux, who was Meg’s lover in the 1910s and ghostwrote her memoirs, also confirmed the essentials of Locard’s account without attributing a specific nationality to the murderer.10
Two further bits of information support the notion that the murderer was someone of considerable wealth. Around 12:00 a.m. on the night of the crime, multiple witnesses saw an automobile idling outside the Impasse Ronsin. This could be a coincidence or an indication that Meg had a wealthy visitor.11 Additionally, in November 1908, Mariette, Meg’s cook and secret keeper, told journalists that they should “look among the greats” to find the perpetrator, a phrasing that indicates that she believed the murderer was someone from the top of the social hierarchy.12 This was the only time she spoke publicly about the identity of the murderer, as she typically refused to say a word about the crime. Yet it is clear that she knew something about who committed the murders and either helped Meg plan the events that night or hide what had happened.13
One merit of this theory is that it can help explain many of the more confusing elements of the crime. If it is true, then we know why Meg was in such a good mood on the evening of May 30: she saw her financial difficulties lifting. Same with the stopped clock: she did it to keep Adolphe and Émilie from waking up. The door to the house was unlocked even though Rémy remembered locking it because she opened it to let her lover in. The murderer was polite enough not to track mud in the house, though not so polite that he refrained from murdering Adolphe.
Following this theory, we could also imagine that as Meg and the Russian looked at the two dead bodies on their hands, they decided to stage a break-in. They put a cane by Adolphe and rope around his neck. A cord went around Émilie’s neck and a gag in her mouth. They dragged Émilie from the spot she had died to her bed out of consideration for Meg’s beloved mother. But they left Adolphe where he was, with his legs exposed in an undignified fashion, either because they didn’t care to make him comfortable after his death or because he was too heavy for them to move. Meg and the murderer rifled through the household’s belongings in a perfunctory fashion. In her haste, she probably overturned the inkstand in her study and splattered ink on her leg. As she was tearing through her desk drawers, she pulled out a pair of gloves that her ex Chouanard had given her. The lover took some valuables, tied Meg up, and put a gag next to her. He didn’t want to make her too uncomfortable. Still, there was a thrill in tying a beautiful, sexy woman to a bed, hence his decision to tie her toe by toe. We can imagine that this was a moment when he slowed down after rushing through the house to help stage a break-in. It might have given him a sense of power and control after a night that had gone so horribly wrong and had been far from the fun romp he had imagined.
All this staging was for Meg’s benefit, not his. He didn’t really care how fake it looked. Thanks to the gift of diplomatic immunity, he’d never be arrested. The crime would never be solved because the authorities would essentially refuse to solve it, lest they damage the reputation of someone so powerful and compromise diplomatic ties between France and Russia. Likewise, it also didn’t matter to him whether Meg had a plausible story of what happened. He just wanted to put the whole disaster of a night behind him.
Meg would be left to deal with the consequences and to explain what had happened. Panicked, she came up with the tale of the robed intruders.
As she did so, she may have drawn on two sources for her story. One was a crime that had occurred in Montbéliard, a city close to Beaucourt, in 1885, when Meg was sixteen. A tax collector named Brévard claimed that two men with blackened faces who were wearing long black blouses had entered his home, attacked him, and tied his pregnant wife to the bed. The robbers forced her to reveal the combination to the safe where her husband kept the tax revenue he had collected. Turns out, though, that Brévard had staged the whole thing to cover up the fact that he had spent all the money on alcohol and women.14
The other possible origin was an 1875 potboiler titled The Five Fingers of Birouk by Louis Ulbach. In it, a Russian soldier named Birouk schemed with a woman to kill a wealthy relative for his inheritance. To make it look like a robbery gone wrong, Birouk teamed up with two other men to break into the man’s house during the night. All three attackers were bearded and wore long robes. Birouk strangled the rich man with his bare hands and sliced a servant in half with a saber. The sole survivor was another servant who was found tied to her bed. The Steinheils had other books by Ulbach on their shelves, but not this one.15 Still, it’s quite possible that Meg had read it at some point.
In the early hours of May 31, Meg may have woven together these two tales to come up with something to tell the authorities. To explain why she had been spared, she claimed that the redheaded woman and the intruders had mistaken her for her daughter. Blaming the crime on one of Adolphe’s models conveniently fit many prejudices of the day about Italians, those who belonged to the world of the arts, and the type of men who were interested in modeling for Adolphe. Italian immigrants were regarded as particularly prone to violence, although this was not actually the case.16 Artists and the people who surrounded them were known to be on the eccentric side. They would be exactly the type of individuals who would wear strange outfits and fail to follow society’s rules, maybe even to the point of committing murder.17 Many in this era also associated male homosexuality with criminality.18 This was another group of people who didn’t behave as they should. It was well known in high-society circles and the Steinheils’ neighborhood that Adolphe had sex with men, including his models.19
According to Meg’s version of the double murder, Adolphe was the victim of a terrible crime. But he had acted recklessly by inviting dangerous men into his house who had given in to their worst inclinations toward violence. Homosexuality was also regarded as a symptom of France’s decline that would lead the nation to an early demise: Adolphe’s death was a warning about the perils of desire run amok.20 From a certain angle, he was responsible for the fate that befell him, just as France would be if its citizens gave in to the wrong types of sex. For Meg, this version of the murder may have been one last act of revenge against the husband she so hated.
If the killer was one of Meg’s royal lovers, she would have known that she didn’t have the backing of a powerful family or the protection of diplomatic immunity. She would also have guessed that she would face some level of scrutiny by virtue of being the sole survivor. But she also knew that she had a lot of sway in the halls of power. The authorities didn’t want a scandal, didn’t want the public to think the mistress of a deceased president had been involved in two murders. She knew they would do their best to protect her reputation and that it wouldn’t matter how believable her story was.
