The butcher submitted meekly to their ministrations, while the inexperienced hand of the daughter was aided by the proven skill of the mother. Not the end of the week, but four days was the limit of Bourlette’s endurance. The knowledge which the younger woman did not have the other supplied. During the fourth day Bourlette passed into the Beyond, too weak in his final hour to voice further suspicion or to invoke a single curse.
III
This time the villagers did not stand idly by. Some one demanded that a doctor from the city be taken to view the remains of Bourlette. No sooner had the physician arrived at the village than a hundred tales were poured into his startled ears. Stories flocked upon him from all neighborhoods. Of these, one more than all the rest was later to count heavily against the pair.
It was to the effect that during the time the young Madame Bourlette was away, her mother, the Madame Aubertin, was seen to prowl at night at the back door of Bourlette’s house. She had kept her presence secret, and then had departed.
Did she have possession of her daughter’s key, and did she enter the house by this means? If this were probable, then indeed she could have had opportunity to scatter poison like dust to the four winds, over every article within her reach.
The villagers waited breathlessly to hear what the physician would report. A prompt examination was made. Arsenic — tons of it — was found in the stomach contents of the corpse.
Confronted with a direct accusation by the police, Yvette wailed: “We have had no luck here at all! No sooner do we settle down to live in a neighborhood, but people begin to die about us like flies. One day they are here, and the next day — piff paff — they are gone.”
Heaven only knows what further accusations were laid against Madame Aubertin, and what other deaths could be accounted to her!
The butcher, the baker — the indictment pointed to these two only. Meanwhile, where was — to complete the verse — the candlestick maker? That is to say, did Hennezal, the second husband of Madame Aubertin, have a hand in this reign of agony, convulsion and death? Hennezal, maker of goblets and ornaments, and candlesticks of glass?
It was to him, as a matter of fact, that the arsenic was actually traced. Was not arsenic used in the making of glassware?
Where else, indeed, could Madame Aubertin have obtained her instrument of destruction?
Upon all this evidence both mother and (laughter were tried, despite their protests; convicted, and sentenced to death.
But M. Grevy, a kind and overcompassionate man, who was also death on capital punishment, afterward pardoned Madame Aubertin and the young widow, Yvette. And they never paid.