Little Demon in the City of Light: A True Story of Murder and Mesmerism in Belle Epoque Paris (16 page)

On July 11, Chéron wrote, Michel and his young companion returned to Gower Street with a large trunk they had bought at a shop called Zwanziger’s at 251 Euston Road.
“I can still see it,” Chéron remembered, “all dark brown, and the interior decorated with blue stars on a white background.” A few days later, on July 14, the young woman was off to Paris alone, taking the huge trunk, packed only
with a dress or two and a hat. Monsieur Michel accompanied her to Victoria Station and put her on the train.

Less than two weeks later, that same trunk was again on a train, this time to Lyon, with the murdered Gouffé inside.

The Paris newspapers went crazy over the letter. Now there were two tantalizing suspects linked to the bloody trunk. The portraits of the conspirators wasted no time on psychological subtleties: Eyraud came across as a dangerous degenerate while Gabrielle was a cheeky young coquette. But Eyraud was portrayed not only in shades of evil. His brutality was given a romantic tint; though he was ill-mannered and balding, Eyraud was depicted as something of a ladies’ man who had attracted a saucy young mistress. Aghast at the coverage, Jaume exclaimed in his diary:
“The reporting rises to the height of the most epileptic novels!”

The Sûreté now bustled with activity. Goron wanted to know more from the Chérons: Did they overhear the lodgers plotting a crime? Did they see anything that might reveal where the suspects fled? He sent an agent to track down the Frenchwoman living in London, Marie-Alexandrine Vespres, who had directed Eyraud to the Chérons. What did she know about him? Where did she think he might be now?

Goron also needed someone to interview workers at Zwanziger’s: What did the trunk buyers reveal while in the shop? What did they look like? Where were they heading? The man for the job was Brigadier Soudais, who was chasing leads on the Channel Island of Jersey. He was ordered to London, where he was to meet another agent named Emil Houlier.

By December 6, the agents stood inside Zwanziger’s surrounded by trunks, listening to salesman Hermann Lauterback describe his encounter with the suspects. The male customer, who had a heavy mustache, was not satisfied by any of several pieces Lauterback had showed him: one wasn’t wide enough, another wasn’t long enough. They were on the point of leaving when Lauterback brought out one last trunk—a piece so large that it had sat around the shop for two years. No one had had any use for this behemoth.

“That’s the one!” the customer cried. “That’s just the size I want.”

When Lauterback pointed to exactly where the trunk had sat in
the shop, Soudais took string measurements for the length, height, and depth of the space and pocketed the evidence to show Goron.

Next Soudais made his way to 151 Gower Street to visit the Chérons and found the couple greatly upset over their role in this heinous case. Gazing at a photo of the famous trunk, Madame Chéron said in tears,
“Oui, monsieur. That’s it.”

Soudais then pounded the pavement in the Cherons’ neighborhood, looking for leads on the lodgers, and discovered they had shown up several times at a nearby saloon. Several regulars recalled one shocking incident. Eyraud and Gabrielle were drinking in the saloon when he decided he wanted to show off his hypnotic prowess. He told patrons he was going to put Gabrielle to sleep and demonstrate how he could control her completely. But when he started to talk her into a trance Gabrielle resisted and clawed him in the face. Eyraud reflexively grabbed her and smacked her, causing an uproar among the surprised inebriates. Those who witnessed it remembered the tussle for its bizarre mix of hypnotism and brutality.

Eyraud’s barbarity also was recorded by the London correspondent for
Le Petit Journal
, who was doing some of his own sleuthing. Witnesses told him that one night Eyraud climbed into a coach and tried to prevent Gabrielle from entering. When she jumped onto the running board he pushed her off, sending her stumbling into the street as the coach departed. Another time Eyraud tried to strangle Gabrielle but she managed to break free and yell for help; the next day she displayed the tracks of his fingers on her neck.

Back at the Sûreté offices in Paris, Soudais’s string measurements didn’t satisfy Goron. While the width and height were accurate, the length failed to match the trunk exactly. The chief refused to let this pass, insisting that the smallest discrepancy left an opening for his critics. Inspector Jaume took a different view.
“This is not a big thing,” he reckoned privately in his diary, “as all the other measurements agree exactly. That suffices for certain people who would say,
‘Vive la petite différence!’
 ”

But Goron demanded absolute certainty and he reckoned there was only one way to ensure it: He shut down the morgue exhibition and prepared to take the original bloody trunk to London himself. The three-week run had served its purpose, shaking loose some leads
and reinvigorating the investigation. On December 11, the trunks were moved out of the morgue and Goron and his sidekick, Inspector Jaume, were set to travel immediately to London.

But then an intruder from Lyon swept into Paris and the departure was put on hold.

Georges Chenest, the Lyon prosecutor, forced his way into Paul Dopffer’s office, claiming he had come on an important legal matter. The trunk, he reminded the Paris investigating judge, was officially under the jurisdiction of Lyon because it was found there; it was only on loan to Paris. Chenest demanded it be returned because it may have played a role in a separate case officials in Lyon were now investigating. Dopffer was dubious: How could the same trunk have figured in a second, unrelated case—especially now that its history had been confirmed? Dopffer recognized the demand for what it was—a ridiculous attempt to obstruct the Gouffé inquiry—and he rejected it out of hand.

But Chenest wasn’t finished. Here was the real reason for his visit: He wished to lodge a complaint against Chief Goron and his sidekick Inspector Jaume who, the prosecutor charged, had publicly criticized the Lyon justice system and ridiculed the Lyon prosecutor’s office. Apparently the provincial authorities were still smarting from Goron’s coup in Lyon: The Sûreté had shown local investigators how to solve a mystery and embarrassed everyone associated with the corrupt interrogation of the coachman Étienne Laforge and inept handling of the Millery corpse. Chenest, in fact, had reason for his complaint: It was true that Goron and Jaume had spoken to the press and denigrated the work of the Lyon authorities. For Chenest, the humiliation ran so deep that he traveled to Paris to insist that Judge Dopffer issue a public reprimand of the Sûreté slanderers. And by the way, Chenest added for good measure, that macabre exhibition of the trunk at the morgue was, in his estimation, an abomination.

Dopffer yielded nothing; he did not take kindly to Chenest’s high-handed buffoonery: In any showdown between Paris and the
provinces, there was no doubt of Dopffer’s loyalties. Informed of the complaint, Jaume jeered in his diary:
“Chenest is going to return empty-handed to Lyon.”

The disruption delayed Goron and Jaume’s departure for London by more than a week. Finally they left Paris on December 20 aboard an 11:00 a.m. train for the coast. Goron had the flu, the victim of a virulent pandemic that had erupted in Russia and was sweeping across the world: Paris, Berlin, Vienna, London, and much of Europe along the Mediterranean, and as far away as the United States. Over the next two years, the disease would touch nearly half the human race, killing an estimated one million people. But nothing was to stand in the chief’s way.
“I was very sick at this time,” he noted, “but I reckoned it was necessary to move quickly and I left without waiting for the authorization of my doctors.” London’s subfreezing temperatures didn’t help.
“Brr!” Jaume exclaimed. “It’s cold. I can no longer find myself in the fog of London.”

To keep the murder trunk from creating public alarm, Goron hid it inside a specially made sack tied closed with string and stamped with an official seal indicating it was evidence of a criminal investigation in Paris. He also doused it with disinfectant to mellow the stench of rotting corpse that still clung to it. But his scrupulous preparations weren’t enough to prevent what Goron described as a
“burlesque incident” at the hands of English customs agents at Victoria Station. Despite his protests, the British agents broke the French seal, untied the strings, and pulled the trunk out of its gray canvas sack. The officious agents, who, Goron noted, “were almost as annoying as our own,” got a nasty surprise when they lifted the lid. If they expected to cast their eyes on a mountain of smuggled tea or layers of tobacco, they were disappointed to discover, as Goron had told them, that the trunk was entirely empty. They were taken aback, however, when the opened trunk exhaled the stench of death. “They found,” Goron was pleased to report, “that it had an extraordinary odor. I’d think so! It smelled of the cadaver!”

After the comedy at customs, the detectives made their way to Scotland Yard, where the London witnesses—the Chérons, Marie-Alexandrine Vespres, and Hermann Lauterback of Zwanziger’s—were assembled for a 2:30 p.m. inquest. Presiding was the eighty-five-year-old judge Sir James Taylor Ingham, and seated beside him was a representative
of the minister of the interior, a man named Edward Leigh Pemberton. The trunk, still in its wrapping, was placed in full view.

Goron was to lead the questioning. He rose, kissed the Bible, and swore to tell the truth.

“May God be of aid to you,” the elderly judge said.

Fighting back the ill effects of the flu, Goron invited Lauterback to examine the trunk closely: the lock, the nails, the leather covering, the interior lining. An interpreter was on hand to make sure the Frenchmen and the Britons could understand one another.

Lauterback said he had no doubt this was a trunk from Zwanziger’s, for it bore two characteristics found nowhere else: the interior lining marked with blue stars and a unique manufacturer’s notch on the lock. He recalled that he sold the trunk on July 11 to a man fitting the description of Michel Eyraud.

“Do you know where the trunk went after it left your store?” Goron asked.

“Gower Street, the home of Monsieur Chéron,” he answered without hesitation.

When the Chérons were asked to inspect the trunk, they also recognized it beyond doubt. Georges Chéron remembered being struck by the large, uncommon nails used in its construction.

And what of the two lodgers? Goron wanted to know. In the eyes of Monsieur Chéron, they were as perfect a fit to Eyraud and Gabrielle as he could imagine.

So a man who looked like Eyraud had purchased the trunk. But Lauterback didn’t know Eyraud personally; he’d never seen him until he stepped off the street into his shop. And Chéron had never seen Eyraud until he rented a room to him. Yet he claimed he was certain a couple matching the description of the fugitives spent time at his home. Could these witnesses have been mistaken? Goron needed someone who knew Eyraud and could place him definitively at the Gower Street residence, with the trunk.

Marie-Alexandrine Vespres, the woman who had recommended the lodger to the Chérons, stepped forward and placed her hand on the Bible. Goron peppered her with questions. How did she know the lodger? Why did she act as his intermediary? Was this man really her uncle, as she had told Chéron? Wilting under the interrogation, Vespres admitted that she was not the lodger’s niece but rather had
been his lover in Paris fourteen years earlier, at age sixteen. She had since moved to London, and they had stayed in touch. Goron asked how she came to send the lodger to the Chérons? In June, she said, the man wrote to her asking if she could find a room in London for his daughter. Vespres said she now knew the young woman with him was not his daughter but his mistress Gabrielle Bompard. Vespres was acquainted with the Chérons, who she knew had a vacancy, so she sent the man along to them.

She had yet to utter the lodger’s name. So Goron pressed her. Name the man. Vespres wavered and then at last acknowledged that the lodger was in fact Michel Eyraud.

Goron was now satisfied on one point: There was no question that the trunk belonged to Eyraud and Gabrielle. But other questions still had to be resolved. Were they the authors of the crime? Did this man and his mistress kill Gouffé and stuff him into the trunk? In hindsight, the Chérons noticed some behavior that seemed suspicious. It always baffled Madame Chéron why Gabrielle needed such an enormous trunk; the young woman had so little clothing—why not just a travel bag? When she asked about it one day, Gabrielle chirped:
“Oh, we’ll have plenty to fill it with in Paris!”

Then on July 14, Eyraud received a telegram from Gabrielle, who was already in Paris. In light of what occurred less than two weeks later, the terse message now sounded sinister to anyone seeking evidence of a crime; though not conclusive, it raised the possibility of a premeditated killing. In the telegram, Gabrielle told Eyraud:
“Come. All is ready.”

Five days before the murder, on July 21, Eyraud left London.

While there was still no proof the couple killed Gouffé, some facts were clear. In early July, Eyraud and Gabrielle were in London, where they rented a room at 151 Gower Street and purchased a large trunk at Zwanziger’s. Later in the month they returned to Paris with the nearly empty trunk. On July 26 Gouffé failed to return home from a night out. Eyraud and Gabrielle also vanished that same Friday evening. And on the following day, July 27, they traveled aboard a train to Lyon, with the oversized trunk from Zwanziger’s, which weighed 230 pounds. As Gabrielle had promised, they found plenty to fill it.

Goron telegraphed the results of his mission to the Paris prefect
of police, Henri-Auguste Loze, who immediately sent back a note of congratulations. Loze told Goron he would inform the prosecutor, who would issue arrest warrants for Michel Eyraud and Gabrielle Bompard.
“From then on I had certitude about the case,” Goron noted. “I had only to finish it. It was necessary to find the scene of the crime and to get our hands on Eyraud and his mistress.”