The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection Read Online Free

at Le Glandier, emphasizing her reference to arsenic. He linked her purchases of arsenic to Charles’s bouts of illness: Her first purchase came only a few days before she had sent her cake to Charles in Paris. Her second was one day before he returned home, where he steadily grew worse after eating food that she fed him. One of the most damning pieces of evidence seemed to be the chemical analysis of the so-called rat paste, which turned out to be bicarbonate of soda. The prosecutor drew the conclusion that Marie had substituted bicarbonate for the arsenic when she gave the material to the groom and used the real arsenic to poison her husband. When Marie was asked why the “arsenic” she had given to the groom was harmless, she cheerfully answered, “Now I understand why the rats continued coming. Bicarbonate would never stop them.” 22
    But Marie’s high-powered Paris lawyer, Maître Paillet, was ready to refute the prosecution. In Paris, he had shown Orfila copies of the autopsy and chemical reports, and Orfila picked holes in them. The local doctors in Brives were using outdated methods and were inept to boot. During one of their analyses, the test tube had exploded. Paillet grilled the doctors about their knowledge of the newest developments in toxicology, exposing them as woefully behind the times. He asked the doctors if they had ever heard of the Marsh apparatus, developed just four years earlier; they had not.
    Paillet called his own experts — three noted chemists from Limoges. They were asked to use Marsh’s method of measuring the amount of arsenic in Charles’s stomach. The chemists reported the results of their tests on February 5, dealing a severe blow to the prosecution’s case. The conclusion was that “in the materials presented to us no trace of arsenic is contained.” 23 The court record noted, “These final remarks produced an indescribable commotion in the court… Madame Lefarge, clasping her hands, raised her eyes to heaven.” 24 Paillet “wept tears of triumph.” 25 Couriers rushed to the nearest telegraph in Bordeaux to spread the word throughout France. The news elated Marie’s supporters everywhere.
    The prosecutor was not ready to give up. He pointed out that Paillet had referred to Orfila as France’s leading expert on poisons, but Orfila had not personally examined the evidence in the case. The counsel for the defense had often said that chemists could make errors. Did this not also apply to the chemists from Limoges? The prosecutor had learned that Orfila had stated that in cases of arsenic poisoning, arsenic is not always found in the stomach, but in other organs, such as the liver. Had the Limoges experts tested anything but the stomach? As it turned out, they had not. The prosecutor insisted that Orfila himself should be called on to testify. Perhaps this move was one of desperation, for he could not have known what Orfila would say.
    The defense attorney had little choice but to assent. Orfila was asked to come to Tulle, and he agreed. Lafarge’s body was exhumed and samples of other organs were taken from it. (The stomach was found in the drawer of a court clerk, where it had decayed considerably.) Nonetheless, Orfila set up the Marsh apparatus and set to work under the eyes of several of the other experts who had testified. He continued through the night of September 13 and appeared the next morning before a hushed court to give his opinion. Orfila declared that there “is arsenic in the body of Lafarge.” 26 Anticipating objections, he said that the poison did not come from the reagents with which he tested the material, nor from the earth around the coffin, which he had also tested. He further testified that the arsenic he found was not the arsenic compound that was naturally found in the human body. Only the bones, the scientist explained, have minute amounts of arsenic. The presiding judge asked the key question: “Do you consider the amount of arsenic obtained by