Silent Witnesses (27 page)

This case highlights the fact that, despite the relative ease with which the Reinsch test could be performed, an expert knowledge of chemistry was still needed to ensure an accurate result. Both the Marsh and the Reinsch test were valid and effective methods of testing for arsenic, but only when the procedure was carried out correctly.

Another significant case in the history of forensic toxicology is that of the Frenchwoman Marie-Fortunée Lafarge, who was convicted of poisoning her husband in 1840. The case became a cause célèbre, as it was one of the earliest trials to be reported on daily by newspapers (see
Plate 12
), and because she was the first person convicted largely on direct forensic toxicological evidence—as opposed to the more indirect evidence that Mary Blandy was convicted on.

Marie-Fortunée Lafarge (née Chapelle) was born in Paris in 1816, the daughter of an army officer. She was said to be, through her grandmother's line, a direct descendant of King Louis XIII. She lost both her parents when she was still young and was eventually adopted by her maternal aunt, though she was already eighteen. The two did not get along and although Marie was educated and treated well, she was always made to feel like
une cousine pauvre
—“a poor cousin.”

When she reached the ripe old age of twenty-three and was still unmarried, her aunt took it upon herself to find Marie a husband. However, she failed to inform Marie of this little project. She engaged the services of a marriage broker, who eventually came up with a candidate who fitted the bill. His name was Charles Lafarge, and he was the son of a justice of the peace. He was twenty-eight years old and apparently a giant of a man, coarse and uncouth. His family had been left penniless by a succession of poor business deals, and his father saw the marriage as a way for them to get their hands on some more cash. Obviously he was not keen for Marie's family to learn of this ulterior motive, so he concealed the reality of the family finances, claiming that they were wealthy in both land and business.

Since all seemed satisfactory, a meeting was arranged between
Charles and Marie. Unfortunately she was unimpressed by him. Nevertheless she eventually agreed to marry him, since she was under the impression that he was a rich man. Their engagement was announced, and on August 10, 1839, they became husband and wife, then left Paris to begin life at the Lafarge estate.

Marie was horrified when she arrived; it was immediately clear that she and her family had been tricked. The house, which was contained within the ruins of a former monastery, was in a very poor state of repair, damp and rat-infested. There was no money, just a mountain of debt. Marie considered her new family little better than vulgar peasants. She locked herself in her room and wrote a letter to her new husband begging him to release her from the marriage and threatening to kill herself if he did not. He refused, but promised not to assert his marital privileges until the estate was restored. Marie also insisted that they each make a will leaving everything to the other. Charles did this but then promptly changed it to leave everything to his mother.

Then, while Charles was away in Paris trying to raise money for a new business venture, Marie unexpectedly sent him a Christmas cake along with—even more unexpectedly—a love letter. After eating the cake he became violently ill. He did not contact a doctor, however, and assumed that the cake must have been contaminated in some way while it was being transported. He returned to the estate, still feeling very unwell. Marie insisted that he take to his bed and that he should allow her to nurse him. She prepared all his food, and the illness immediately flared up again. The family doctor judged that it seemed a little like cholera.

Charles continued to experience a variety of symptoms including cramps, dehydration, and nausea. He became so ill
that the family decided that he should be watched twenty-four hours a day. A young cousin called Emma Pontier and a family friend called Anna Brun were chosen to help look after him. All the while, Marie continued to treat him with various medicaments, including gum arabic, which she said she swore by. In spite of this apparent care, however, Charles continued to deteriorate. He was prescribed eggnog to keep his strength up. It was Anna Brun who noticed Marie taking a white powder from a malachite box she owned and stirring it into the eggnog. When she asked what it was, Marie told her it was “orange blossom sugar,” which she was adding to the drink to sweeten it. This reply failed to satisfy Anna, and when she noticed a few white flakes still floating on the surface, she began collecting samples of the food that Marie prepared for Charles as evidence.

After two weeks spent suffering in extreme pain, Charles passed away. Marie seemed totally unfazed by her husband's death and remained calm even when informed that the police were being sent for. Two days later, a justice of the peace named Moran arrived from Brive. He immediately took possession of the soup and eggnog that Anna Brun had kept. Moran had heard of a new test that pathologists in Paris were using to detect the presence of arsenic. This was, in fact, the Marsh test. He asked the doctors who had treated Charles if they knew of it. Not wishing to seem foolish or uninformed, they said that they did—in fact, they had never even heard of the method, let alone carried out such a test themselves.

The doctors performing the autopsy had only removed the stomach before burial. They performed an old-fashioned and unreliable test that involved heating the sample to try to determine the presence of arsenic. When they did so, it gave off a
strong smell and formed a yellow precipitate, but the test was performed so incompetently that the test tube actually exploded. Still, they eventually concluded that there was a high concentration of arsenic in the body of Charles Lafarge.

Moran then turned his attentions to Emma Pontier. When questioned she admitted to hiding Marie Lafarge's small malachite box. When the box was recovered it was handed over at once to a Dr. Lespinasse for examination. He found that the substance it contained was indeed arsenic. Moran also learnt that before Charles had received the cake that made him ill, Marie had procured arsenic from a local chemist, claiming it was to treat a rat infestation. With this development, Moran felt compelled to act; he arrested and charged Marie with murder. She was incarcerated in the jail at Brive.

The trial took place in Tulle on September 3, 1840. A young lawyer called Charles Lachaud was appointed to defend Marie, assisted by several others. One of these, a man called Maître Paillet, was acquainted with the toxicologist Mathieu Orfila, who was, among other things, an acknowledged expert on the Marsh test. The strongest evidence against Marie was the test carried out by the doctors at Brive, which had concluded that there was arsenic present in the corpse. When Paillet wrote to him explaining how the results had been obtained, Orfila was furious at the outdated methods employed. He sent an affidavit to the court stating that the tests were conducted so ignorantly that they meant nothing.

The doctors' report stated that when they performed their test, it resulted in a yellow precipitate that they assumed to be arsenic. However, Orfila argued that as the test had been carried out incorrectly, the yellow precipitate could actually have been
caused by many other substances and could not be considered conclusive evidence. When Orfila's statement was read in court, it destroyed the evidence of the doctors from Brive. In an unexpected move, the prosecution then insisted that the stomach contents be subjected to the Marsh test as Orfila suggested.

Three chemists from Limoges were found who, despite their inexperience, attempted to carry out the test. However, when they did so, they found no traces of arsenic in the stomach sample. This was not a welcome development for the prosecution—they were keenly aware that the balance of evidence was tipping, and not in their favor. However, they had one last ace up their sleeves: they asked that the food that Anna Brun had hidden away should be similarly examined. The defense were by now feeling confident in their victory and so acquiesced. Unfortunately for Marie, this time the tests did find arsenic, and in prodigious quantities. This was a puzzling development—if there was poison in the food, then why was there no poison in the body? Finally it was decided that Orfila should be called personally.

A week later, Orfila arrived, and conducted the Marsh test on the contents of Lafarge's stomach himself, insisting that the three chemists watch his methods carefully. By the afternoon of the following day, Orfila had his answer: the previous tests had been incorrectly performed. There was arsenic in the body of Charles Lafarge, although admittedly in small quantities.

The defense tried in vain to discredit these new results but to no avail. On September 19, 1840, Marie Lafarge was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor. She was transported to Montpellier to serve her sentence. King Louis-Philippe later commuted the hard labor (but not the life sentence). In 1841, while still in prison, Marie wrote her
Mémoires,
which were published later that year. In them she completely denied any wrongdoing. In 1852, Napoleon III finally released her as an act of mercy, since she was suffering from tuberculosis. She died on November 7 that year, still proclaiming her innocence.

The case highlights just how important accurate toxicological testing could be. Had Orfila not become involved, the inaccurate results of the previous tests could well have led to a completely different outcome in the trial. It also led to King Louis-Philippe issuing a decree forbidding apothecaries to sell arsenic or any other poison to anyone not already known to them. Anyone buying a substance that could be used as a poison was also required to sign a register, a “poison book.” The rest of Europe soon adopted similar measures.

Although arsenic was undoubtedly preeminent among poisons, it was by no means the only substance used during this period. In fact, during the early years of the nineteenth century, new poisonous substances were being developed at an alarming rate: strychnine in 1818 and chloroform in 1831, for example. Even years later, in 1847, Mathieu Orfila confessed that he thought it possible that vegetable poisons would remain undetectable in the body and that there was nothing that he or anyone else could do about this problem. This is because the basis of vegetable poisons are alkaloids such as morphine, strychnine, and nicotine. These work in the nervous system and therefore leave no trace in the body that scientists in the early nineteenth century were able to detect. Fortunately for forensic science, Orfila was wrong on this count. A few years later a Belgian chemist named Jean Servais Stas (1813–1891) came up with a solution while working at the École Royale Militaire in Brussels.

Gustave Fougnies had no title, yet he was a wealthy man, having recently inherited the considerable fortune of his father, who had been a greengrocer. On November 20, 1850, he collapsed and died on the dining-room floor of the Château Bitremont where his sister Lydie lived in Belgium. This was, in itself, perhaps not entirely remarkable: he had been weak since birth and had even had his leg amputated as a result of his poor constitution—something that had only made his condition worse. What was remarkable was the apparent indifference of his sister to his death—if anything, she seemed pleased. However, once you dig into the family situation in a little more depth, the reason for this quickly becomes apparent.

Lydie was a countess, having married Count Hippolyte de Bocarmé, who was descended from the noble Belgian family of Visart de Bocarmé. Despite his title, Bocarmé was permanently short of money. He liked to live extravagantly but earned only around 2,000 francs a year and had therefore borrowed a substantial amount of money to fund his lavish lifestyle. It is highly probable that he married Lydie in 1840 at least in part for her money. In fact, she had little money of her own but would inherit the family fortune in the event of her brother's death, since he was unmarried and without children. Given his poor state of health, this seemed likely to occur in the relatively near future.

However, Fougnies then dropped a bombshell. He was engaged to be married. By this time Bocarmé's finances were in a ruinous state—he owed large sums and had been forced to mortgage much of his property. The news that he and Lydie could no longer rely on receiving any money from Gustave must have come as a severe blow.

Nevertheless, the couple feigned delight at the news and invited Gustave to lunch at Château Bitremont. Unusually, their four children were sent away to eat in another part of the house on this occasion, and Lydie—a countess, let us not forget—served the food herself. Shortly afterward, Gustave collapsed dead in the dining room. Lydie informed the servants that her brother had suffered a stroke, and vinegar was promptly poured down his throat on the grounds that it might help to revive him. It had no effect. Lydie then ordered that the servants should strip her brother naked and wash him with vinegar before removing him to a maid's room. She ordered for his clothes to be boiled and for the dining room to be scrubbed clean.