Castaing had enriched himself considerably by the opportune death of his friend Hippolyte. It might be made a matter of unfriendly comment that, on the first day of May preceding that sad event, Castaing had purchased ten grains of acetate of morphia from a chemist in Paris, and on September 18, less than a month before Hippolyte's death, he had purchased another ten grains of acetate of morphia from the same chemist. The subject of poisons had always been a favourite branch of Castaing's medical studies, especially vegetable poisons; morphia is a vegetable poison.

Castaing's position relative to Auguste Ballet was now a strong one. They were accomplices in the unlawful destruction of Hippolyte's will. Auguste believed it to be in his friend's power to ruin him at any time by revealing his dealings with Lebret. But, more than that, to Auguste, who believed that his 100,000 francs had gone into Lebret's pocket, Castaing could represent himself as so far unrewarded for his share in the business; Lebret had taken all the money, while he had received no recompense of any kind for the trouble he had taken and the risk he was encountering on his friend's behalf. Whatever the motive, from fear or gratitude, Auguste Ballet was persuaded to make a will leaving Dr. Edme Samuel Castaing the whole of his fortune, subject to a few trifling legacies. But Auguste's feelings towards his sole legatee were no longer cordial. To one or two of his friends he expressed his growing distaste for Castaing's society.

Dr. Castaing can hardly have failed to observe this change. He knew Auguste to be reckless and extravagant with his money; he learnt that he had realised another 100,000 francs out of his securities, and that he kept the money locked up in a drawer in his desk. If Auguste's fortune were dissipated by extravagance, or he revoked his will, Castaing stood to lose heavily. As time went on Castaing felt less and less sure that he could place much reliance on the favourable disposition or thrift of Auguste. The latter had fallen in love with a new mistress; he began to entertain expensively; even if he should not change his mind and leave his money away from Castaing, there might very soon be no money to leave. At the end of May, 1823, Castaing consulted a cousin of his, Malassis, a notary's clerk, as to the validity of a will made by a sick man in favour of his medical attendant. He said that he had a patient gravely ill who, not wishing to leave his money to his sister, whom he disliked, intended to leave it to him. Malassis reassured him as to the validity of such a will, and gave him the necessary instructions for preparing it. On May 29 Castaing sent Malassis the will of Auguste Ballet with the following note, "I send you the will of M. Ballets examine it and keep it as his representative." The will was dated December 1, 1822, and made Castaing sole legatee. On the same day that the will was deposited with Malassis, Castaing and Auguste Ballet started to-gether on a little two days' trip into the country. To his friends Auguste seemed in the best of health and spirits; so much so that his housekeeper remarked as he left how well he was looking, and Castaing echoed her remark, saying that he looked like a prince!

During the afternoon the two friends visited Saint Germain, then returned to Paris, and at seven o'clock in the evening arrived at the Tete Noire Hotel at Saint Cloud, where they took a double-bedded room, Castaing paying five francs in advance. They spent the following day, Friday, May 30, in walking about the neighbourhood, dined at the hotel at seven, went out again and returned about nine o'clock. Soon after their return Castaing ordered some warmed wine to be sent up to the bedroom. It was taken up by one of the maid-servants. Two glasses were mixed with lemon and sugar which Castaing had brought with him. Both the young men drank of the beverage. Auguste complained that it was sour, and thought that he had put too much lemon in it. He gave his glass to the servant to taste, who also found the drink sour. Shortly after she left the room and went upstairs to the bedside of one of her fellow-servants who was ill. Castaing, for no apparent reason, followed her up and stayed in the room for about five minutes. Auguste spent a bad night, suffering from internal pains, and in the morning his legs were so swollen that he could not put on his boots.

Castaing got up at four o'clock that morning and asked one of the servants to let him out. Two hours later he drove up in a cabriolet to the door of a chemist in Paris, and asked for twelve grains of tartar emetic, which he wanted to mix in a wash according to a prescription of Dr. Castaing. But he did not tell the chemist that he was Dr. Castaing himself. An hour later Castaing arrived at the shop of another chemist, Chevalier, with whom he had already some acquaintance; he had bought acetate of morphia from him some months before, and had discussed with him then the effects of vegetable poisons. On this particular morning he bought of his assistant thirty-six grains of acetate of morphia, paying, as a medical man, three francs fifty centimes for it instead of the usual price of four francs. Later in the morning Castaing returned to Saint Cloud, a distance of ten miles from Paris, and said that he had been out for a long walk. He found Auguste ill in bed. Castaing asked for some cold milk, which was taken up to the bedroom by one of the servants. Shortly after this Castaing went out again. During his absence Auguste was seized with violent pains and sickness. When Castaing returned he found his friend in the care of the people of the hotel. He told them to throw away the matter that had been vomited, as the smell was offensive, and Auguste told them to do as his friend directed. Castaing proposed to send for a doctor from Paris, but Auguste insisted that a local doctor should be called in at once.

Accordingly Dr. Pigache of Saint Cloud was summoned. He arrived at the hotel about eleven o'clock. Before seeing the patient Castaing told the doctor that he believed him to be suffering from cholera. Pigache asked to see the matter vomited but was told that it had been thrown away. He prescribed a careful diet, lemonade and a soothing draught.

Dr. Pigache returned at three o'clock, when he found that the patient had taken some lemonade, but, according to Castaing, had refused to take the draught. He called again that afternoon. Ballet was much better; he said that he would be quite well if he could get some sleep, and expressed a wish to return to Paris. Dr. Pigache dissuaded him from this and left, saying that he would come again in the evening. Castaing said that that would be unnecessary, and it was agreed that Pigache should see the patient again at eight o'clock the next morning. During the afternoon Castaing sent a letter to Paris to Jean, Auguste's negro servant, telling him to take the two keys of his master's desk to his cousin Malassis. But the negro distrusted Castaing. He knew of the will which his master had made in the doctor's favour. Rather than compromise himself by any injudicious act, he brought the keys to Saint Cloud and there handed them over to Castaing.

When Jean arrived his master complained to him of feeling very ill. Jean said that he hoped he would be well enough to go back to Paris the following day, to which Auguste replied, "I don't think so. But if I am lucky enough to get away to-morrow, I shall leave fifty francs for the poor here." About eleven o'clock that night Castaing, in Jean's presence, gave the sick man a spoonful of the draught prescribed by Dr. Pigache. Four or five minutes later Auguste was seized with terrible convulsions, followed by unconsciousness. Dr. Pigache was sent for. He found Ballet lying on his back unconscious, his throat strained, his mouth shut and his eyes fixed; the pulse was weak, his body covered with cold sweat; and every now and then he was seized with strong convulsions. The doctor asked Castaing the cause of the sudden change in Ballet's condition. Castaing replied that it had commenced shortly after he had taken a spoonful of the draught which the doctor had prescribed for him. Dr. Pigache bled the patient and applied twenty leeches. He returned about six; Ballet was sinking, and Castaing appeared to be greatly upset. He told the doctor what an unhappy coincidence it was that he should have been present at the deathbeds of both Hippolyte and his brother Auguste; and that the position was the more distressing for him as he was the sole heir to Auguste's fortune. To M. Pelletan, a professor of medicine, who had been sent for to St. Cloud in the early hours of Sunday morning, Castaing appeared to be in a state of great grief and agitation; he was shedding tears. Pelletan was from the first impressed by the suspicious nature of the case, and pointed out to Castaing the awkwardness of his situation as heir to the dying man. "You're right," replied Castaing, "my position is dreadful, horrible. In my great grief I had never thought of it till now, but now you make me see it clearly. Do you think there will be an investigation?" Pelletan answered that he should be compelled to ask for a post-mortem. "Ah! You will be doing me the greatest service," said Castaing, "I beg you to insist on a post-mortem. You will be acting as a second father to me in doing so." The parish priest was sent for to administer extreme unction to the dying man. To the parish clerk who accompanied the priest Castaing said, "I am losing a friend of my childhood," and both priest and clerk went away greatly edified by the sincere sorrow and pious demeanour of the young doctor. About mid-day on Sunday, June 1, Auguste Ballet died.

During the afternoon Castaing left the hotel for some hours, and that same afternoon a young man about twenty-five years of age, short and fair, left a letter at the house of Malassis. The letter was from Castaing and said, "My dear friend, Ballet has just died, but do nothing before to-morrow, Monday. I will see you and tell you, yes or no, whether it is time to act. I expect that his brother-in-law, M. Martignon, whose face is pock-marked and who carries a decoration, will call and see you. I have said that I did not know what dispositions Ballet may have made, but that before his death he had told me to give you two little keys which I am going to deliver to you myself to-morrow, Monday. I have not said that we are cousins, but only that I had seen you once or twice at Ballet's, with whom you were friendly. So say nothing till I have seen you, but whatever you do, don't say you are a relative of mine." When he returned to the hotel Castaing found Martignon, Lebret, and one or two friends of Auguste already assembled. It was only that morning that Martignon had received from Castaing any intimation of his brother-in-law's critical condition. From the first Castaing was regarded with suspicion; the nature of the illness, the secrecy maintained about it by Castaing, the coincidence of some of the circumstances with those of the death of Hippolyte, all combined to excite suspicion. Asked if Auguste had left a will Castaing said no; but the next day he admitted its existence, and said that it was in the hands of Malassis.

Monday, June 2, was the day fixed for the post-mortem; it was performed in the hotel at Saint Cloud. Castaing was still in the hotel under provisional arrest. While the post-mortem was going on his agitation was extreme; he kept opening the door of the room in which he was confined, to hear if possible some news of the result. At last M. Pelletan obtained permission to inform him of the verdict of the doctors. It was favourable to Castaing; no trace of death by violence or poison had been discovered.

The medical men declared death to be due to an inflammation of the stomach, which could be attributed to natural causes; that the inflammation had subsided; that it had been succeeded by cerebral inflammation, which frequently follows inflammation of the stomach, and may have been aggravated in this case by exposure to the sun or by over-indulgence of any kind.

II

THE TRIAL OF DR. CASTAING

Castaing expected, as a result of the doctors' report, immediate release. In this he was disappointed; he was placed under stricter arrest and taken to Paris, where a preliminary investigation commenced, lasting five months. During the early part of his imprisonment Castaing feigned insanity, going to disgusting lengths in the hope of convincing those about him of the reality of his madness. But after three days of futile effort he gave up the attempt, and turned his attention to more practical means of defence. In the prison at Versailles, whither he had been removed from Paris, he got on friendly terms with a prisoner, one Goupil, who was awaiting trial for some unimportant offence. To Goupil Castaing described the cruelty of his position and the causes that had led to his wrongful arrest. He admitted his unfortunate possession of the poison, and said that the 100,000 francs which he had invested he had inherited from an uncle. Through Goupil he succeeded in communicating with his mother in the hope that she would use her influence to stifle some of the more serious evidence against him. Through other prisoners he tried to get at the chemists from whom he had bought acetate of morphia, and persuade them to say that the preparation of morphia which he had purchased was harmless.

The trial of Castaing commenced before the Paris Assize Court on November 10, 1823. He was charged with the murder of Hippolyte Ballet, the destruction of a document containing the final dispositions of Hippolyte's property, and with the murder of Auguste Ballet. The three charges were to be tried simultaneously. The Act of Accusation in Castaing's case is a remarkable document, covering a hundred closely-printed pages. It is a well-reasoned, graphic and unfair statement of the case for the prosecution. It tells the whole story of the crime, and inserts everything that can possibly prejudice the prisoner in the eyes of the jury. As an example, it quotes against Castaing a letter of his mistress in which, in the course of some quarrel, she had written to him saying that his mother had said some "horrible things" (des horreurs) of him; but what those "horrible things" were was not revealed, nor were they ever alluded to again in the course of the trial, nor was his mistress called as a witness, though payments of money by Castaing to her formed an important part of the evidence against him. Again, the evidence of Goupil, his fellow prisoner, as to the incriminating statements made to him by Castaing is given in the Act of Accusation, but Goupil himself was not called at the trial.

During the reading of the Act of Accusation by the Clerk of the Court Castaing listened calmly. Only when some allusion was made to his mistress and their children did he betray any sign of emotion. As soon as the actual facts of the case were set out he was all attention, making notes busily. He is described as rather attractive in appearance, his face long, his features regular, his forehead high, his hair, fair in colour, brushed back from the brows; he wore rather large side-whiskers. One of the witnesses at Saint Cloud said that Castaing looked more like a priest than a doctor; his downcast eyes, gentle voice, quiet and unassuming demeanour, lent him an air of patience and humility.

The interrogatory of Castaing by the presiding judge lasted all the afternoon of the first day of the trial and the morning of the second. The opening part of it dealt with the murder of Hippolyte Ballet, and elicited little or nothing that was fresh. Beyond the purchase of acetate of morphia previous to Hippolyte's death, which Castaing reluctantly admitted, there was no serious evidence against him, and before the end of the trial the prosecution abandoned that part of the charge.

Questioned by the President as to the destruction of Hippolyte Ballet's will, Castaing admitted that he had seen a draft of a will executed by Hippolyte in favour of his sister, but he denied having told Auguste that Lebret had in his possession a copy which he was prepared to destroy for 100,000 francs. Asked to explain the assertion of Mlle. Percillie, Auguste's mistress, that statements to this effect had been made in her presence by both Auguste Ballet and himself, he said that it was not true; that he had never been to her house. "What motive," he was asked, "could Mlle. Percillie have for accusing you?" "She hated me," was the reply, "because I had tried to separate Auguste from her." Castaing denied that he had driven with Auguste to Lebret's office on October 8. Asked to explain his sudden possession of 100,000 francs at a moment when he was apparently without a penny, he repeated his statement that Auguste had given him the capital sum as an equivalent for an income of 4,000 francs which his brother had intended to leave him. "Why, when first asked if you had received anything from Auguste, did you say you had received nothing?" was the question.

"It was a thoughtless statement," was the answer. "Why," pursued the President, "should you not have admitted at once a fact that went to prove your own good faith? If, however, this fact be true, it does not explain the mysterious way in which Auguste asked Prignon to raise for him 100,000 francs; and unless those 100,000 francs were given to you, it is impossible to account for them. It is important to your case that you should give the jury a satisfactory explanation on this point." Castaing could only repeat his previous explanations.

The interrogatory was then directed to the death of Auguste Ballet. Castaing said that Auguste Ballet had left him all his fortune on account of a disagreement with his sister. Asked why, after Auguste's death, he had at first denied all knowledge of the will made in his favour and deposited by him with Malassis, he could give no satisfactory reason. Coming to the facts of the alleged poisoning of Auguste Ballet, the President asked Castaing why, shortly after the warm wine was brought up on the night of May 30, he went up to the room where one of the servants of the hotel was lying sick. Castaing replied that he was sent for by the wife of the hotel-keeper. This the woman denied; she said that she did not even know that he was a doctor. "According to the prosecution," said the judge, "you left the room in order to avoid drinking your share of the wine." Castaing said that he had drunk half a cupful of it. The judge reminded him that to one of the witnesses Castaing had said that he had drunk only a little.

A ridiculous statement made by Castaing to explain the purchase of morphia and antimony in Paris on May 31 was brought up against him. Shortly after his arrest Castaing had said that the cats and dogs about the hotel had made such a noise on the night of May 30 that they had disturbed the rest of Auguste, who, in the early morning, had asked Castaing to get some poison to kill them. He had accordingly gone all the way, about ten miles, to Paris at four in the morning to purchase antimony and morphia to kill cats and dogs. All the people of the hotel denied that there had been any such disturbance on the night in question. Castaing now said that he had bought the poisons at Auguste's request, partly to kill the noisy cats and dogs, and partly for the purpose of their making experiments on animals. Asked why he had not given this second reason before, he said that as Auguste was not a medical man it would have been damaging to his reputation to divulge the fact of his wishing to make unauthorised experiments on animals. "Why go to Paris for the poison?" asked the judge, "there was a chemist a few yards from the hotel. And when in Paris, why go to two chemists?" To all these questions Castaing's answers were such as to lead the President to express a doubt as to whether they were likely to convince the jury. Castaing was obliged to admit that he had allowed, if not ordered, the evacuations of the sick man to be thrown away. He stated that he had thrown away the morphia and antimony, which he had bought in Paris, in the closets of the hotel, because, owing to the concatenation of circumstances, he thought that he would be suspected of murder. In reply to a question from one of the jury, Castaing said that he had mixed the acetate of morphia and tartar emetic together before reaching Saint Cloud, but why he had done so he could not explain.

The medical evidence at the trial was favourable to the accused. Orfila, the famous chemist of that day, said that, though the symptoms in Auguste Ballet's case might be attributed to poisoning by acetate of morphia or some other vegetable poison, at the same time they could be equally well attributed to sudden illness of a natural kind. The liquids, taken from the stomach of Ballet, had yielded on analysis no trace of poison of any sort. The convulsive symptoms present in Ballet's case were undoubtedly a characteristic result of a severe dose of acetate of morphia.(14) Castaing said that he had mixed the acetate of morphia and tartar emetic together, but in any case no trace of either poison was found in Auguste's body, and his illness might, from all appearances, have been occasioned by natural causes. Some attempt was made by the prosecution to prove that the apoplexy to which Hippolyte Ballet had finally succumbed, might be attributed to a vegetable poison; one of the doctors expressed an opinion favourable to that conclusion "as a man but not as a physician." But the evidence did not go further.

(14) It was asserted some years later by one medical authority in Palmer's case that it might have been morphia and not strychnine that had caused the tetanic symptoms which preceded Cook's death.

To the young priest-like doctor the ordeal of his trial was a severe one. It lasted eight days. It was only at midday on the sixth day that the evidence was concluded. Not only was Castaing compelled to submit to a long interrogatory by the President, but, after each witness had given his or her evidence, the prisoner was called on to refute or explain any points unfavourable to him. This he did briefly, with varying success; as the trial went on, with increasing embarrassment. A great deal of the evidence given against Castaing was hearsay, and would have been inadmissible in an English court of justice. Statements made by Auguste to other persons about Castaing were freely admitted. But more serious was the evidence of Mlle. Percillie, Auguste's mistress. She swore that on one occasion in her presence Castaing had reproached Auguste with ingratitude; he had complained that he had destroyed one copy of Hippolyte Ballet's will, and for Auguste's sake had procured the destruction of the other, and that yet, in spite of all this, Auguste hesitated to entrust him with 100,000 francs. Asked what he had to say to this statement Castaing denied its truth. He had, he said, only been in Mlle. Percillie's house once, and then not with Auguste Ballet. Mlle. Percillie adhered to the truth of her evidence, and the President left it to the jury to decide between them.

A Mme. Durand, a patient of Castaing, gave some curious evidence as to a story told her by the young doctor. He said that a friend of his, suffering from lung disease, had been persuaded into making a will in his sister's favour. The sister had offered a bribe of 80,000 francs to her brother's lawyer to persuade him to make such a will, and paid one of his clerks 3,000 francs for drawing it up. Castaing, in his friend's interest, and in order to expose the fraud, invited the clerk to come and see him. His friend, hidden in an alcove in the room, overheard the conversation between Castaing and the clerk, and so learnt the details of his sister's intrigue. He at once destroyed the will and became reconciled with his brother, whom he had been about to disinherit. After his death the brother, out of gratitude, had given Castaing 100,000 francs.

President: Castaing, did you tell this story to Mme. Durand?

Castaing: I don't recollect.

Avocat-General: But Mme. Durand says that you did.

Castaing: I don't recollect.

President: You always say that you don't recollect; that is no answer. Have you, yes or no, made such a statement to Mme. Durand?

Castaing: I don't recollect; if I had said it, I should recollect it.

Another lady whom Castaing had attended free of charge swore, with a good deal of reluctance, that Castaing had told her a somewhat similar story as accounting for his possession of 100,000 francs.

Witnesses were called for the defence who spoke to the diligence and good conduct of Castaing as a medical student; and eighteen, whom he had treated free of expense, testified to his kindness and generosity. "All these witnesses," said the President, "speak to your generosity; but, for that very reason, you must have made little profit out of your profession, and had little opportunity for saving anything," to which Castaing replied: "These are not the only patients I attended; I have not called those who paid me for my services." At the same time Castaing found it impossible to prove that he had ever made a substantial living by the exercise of his profession.

One of the medical witnesses called for the defence, M. Chaussier, had volunteered the remark that the absence of any trace of poison in the portions of Auguste Ballet's body submitted to analysis, constituted an absence of the corpus delicti. To this the President replied that that was a question of criminal law, and no concern of his. But in his speech for the prosecution the Avocat-General dealt with the point raised at some length—a point which, if it had held good as a principle of English law, would have secured the acquittal of so wicked a poisoner as Palmer. He quoted from the famous French lawyer d'Aguesseau: "The corpus delicti is no other thing than the delictum itself; but the proofs of the delictum are infinitely variable according to the nature of things; they may be general or special, principal or accessory, direct or indirect; in a word, they form that general effect (ensemble) which goes to determine the conviction of an honest man." If such a contention as M. Chaussier's were correct, said the Avocat-General, then it would be impossible in a case of poisoning to convict a prisoner after his victim's death, or, if his victim survived, to convict him of the attempt to poison. He reminded the jury of that paragraph in the Code of Criminal Procedure which instructed them as to their duties: "The Law does not ask you to give the reasons that have convinced you; it lays down no rules by which you are to decide as to the fullness or sufficiency of proof... it only asks you one question: 'Have you an inward conviction?'" "If," he said, "the actual traces of poison are a material proof of murder by poison, then a new paragraph must be added to the Criminal Code—'Since, however, vegetable poisons leave no trace, poisoning by such means may be committed with impunity.'" To poisoners he would say in future: "Bunglers that you are, don't use arsenic or any mineral poison; they leave traces; you will be found out. Use vegetable poisons; poison your fathers, poison your mothers, poison all your families, and their inheritance will be yours—fear nothing; you will go unpunished! You have committed murder by poisoning, it is true; but the corpus delicti will not be there because it can't be there!" This was a case, he urged, of circumstantial evidence. "We have," he said, "gone through a large number of facts. Of these there is not one that does not go directly to the proof of poisoning, and that can only be explained on the supposition of poisoning; whereas, if the theory of the defence be admitted, all these facts, from the first to the last, become meaningless and absurd. They can only be refuted by arguments or explanations that are childish and ridiculous."

Castaing was defended by two advocates—Roussel, a schoolfellow of his, and the famous Berryer, reckoned by some the greatest French orator since Mirabeau. Both advocates were allowed to address the jury. Roussel insisted on the importance of the corpus delicti. "The delictum," he said, "is the effect, the guilty man merely the cause; it is useless to deal with the cause if the effect is uncertain," and he cited a case in which a woman had been sent for trial, charged with murdering her husband; the moral proof of her guilt seemed conclusive, when suddenly her husband appeared in court alive and well. The advocate made a good deal of the fact that the remains of the draught prescribed by Dr. Pigache, a spoonful of which Castaing had given to Auguste Ballet, had been analysed and showed no trace of poison. Against this the prosecution set the evidence of the chemist at Saint Cloud, who had made up the prescription. He said that the same day he had made up a second prescription similar to that of Dr. Pigache, but not made out for Auguste Ballet, which contained, in addition to the other ingredients, acetate of morphia. The original of this prescription he had given to a friend of Castaing, who had come to his shop and asked him for it a few days after Ballet's death. It would seem therefore that there had been two bottles of medicine, one of which containing morphia had disappeared.

M. Roussel combatted the suggestion that the family of Castaing were in a state of indigence. He showed that his father had an income of 10,000 francs, while his two brothers were holding good positions, one as an officer in the army, the other as a government official. The mistress of Castaing he represented as enjoying an income of 5,000 francs. He protested against the quantity of hearsay evidence that had been admitted into the case. "In England," he said, "when a witness is called, he is asked 'What have you seen?' If he can only testify to mere talk, and hearsay, he is not heard." He quoted the concluding paragraph of the will of Auguste Ballet as showing his friendly feeling towards Castaing: "It is only after careful reflection that I have made this final disposition of my property, in order to mark the sincere friendship which I have never for one moment ceased to feel for MM. Castaing, Briant and Leuchere, in order to recognise the faithful loyalty of my servants, and deprive M. and Mme. Martignon, my brother-in-law and sister, of all rights to which they might be legally entitled on my death, fully persuaded in soul and conscience that, in doing so, I am giving to each their just and proper due." "Is this," asked M. Roussel, "a document wrested by surprise from a weak man, extorted by trickery? Is he not acting in the full exercise of his faculties? He forgets no one, and justifies his conduct."

When M. Roussel came to the incident of the noisy cats and dogs at Saint Cloud, he was as ingenious as the circumstances permitted: "A serious charge engrosses public attention; men's minds are concentrated on the large, broad aspects of the case; they are in a state of unnatural excitement. They see only the greatness, the solemnity of the accusation, and then, suddenly, in the midst of all that is of such tragic and surpassing interest, comes this trivial fact about cats and dogs. It makes an unfavourable impression, because it is dramatically out of keeping with the tragedy of the story. But we are not here to construct a drama. No, gentlemen, look at it merely as a trivial incident of ordinary, everyday life, and you will see it in its proper light." M. Roussel concluded by saying that Castaing's most eloquent advocate, if he could have been present, would have been Auguste Ballet. "If Providence had permitted him to enter this court, he would cry out to you, 'Save my friend's life! His heart is undefiled! He is innocent!'"

M. Roussel concluded his speech at ten o'clock on Sunday night, November 16. The next morning Berryer addressed the jury. His speech in defence of Castaing is not considered one of his most successful efforts. He gave personal testimony as to the taste of acetate of morphia. He said that with the help of his own chemist he had put a quarter of a grain of the acetate into a large spoonful of milk, and had found it so insupportably bitter to the taste that he could not keep it in his mouth. If, he contended, Ballet had been poisoned by tartar emetic, then twelve grains given in milk would have given it an insipid taste, and vomiting immediately after would have got rid of the poison. Later investigations have shown that, in cases of antimonial poisoning, vomiting does not necessarily get rid of all the poison, and the convulsions in which Auguste Ballet died are symptomatic of poisoning either by morphia or antimony. In conclusion, Berryer quoted the words addressed by one of the Kings of France to his judges: "When God has not vouchsafed clear proof of a crime, it is a sign that He does not wish that man should determine it, but leaves its judgment to a higher tribunal."

The Avocat-General, in reply, made a telling answer to M. Roussel's attempt to minimise the importance of the cats and dogs: "He has spoken of the drama of life, and of its ordinary everyday incidents. If there is drama in this case, it is of Castaing's making. As to the ordinary incidents of everyday life, a man buys poison, brings it to the bedside of his sick friend, saying it is for experiments on cats and dogs, the friend dies, the other, his sole heir, after foretelling his death, takes possession of his keys, and proceeds to gather up the spoils—are these ordinary incidents of every-day life?"

It was nine o'clock at night when the jury retired to consider their verdict. They returned into court after two hours' deliberation. They found the prisoner "Not Guilty" of the murder of Hippolyte Ballet, "Guilty" of destroying his will, and "Guilty" by seven votes to five of the murder of Auguste Ballet. Asked if he had anything to say before judgment was given, Castaing, in a very loud voice, said "No; but I shall know how to die, though I am the victim of ill-fortune, of fatal circumstance. I shall go to meet my two friends. I am accused of having treacherously murdered them. There is a Providence above us! If there is such a thing as an immortal soul, I shall see Hippolyte and Auguste Ballet again. This is no empty declamation; I don't ask for human pity" (raising his hands to heaven), "I look to God's mercy, and shall go joyfully to the scaffold. My conscience is clear. It will not reproach me even when I feel" (putting his hands to his neck). "Alas! It is easier to feel what I am feeling than to express what I dare not express." (In a feeble voice): "You have desired my death; you have it!" The judges retired to consider the sentence. The candles were guttering, the light of the lamps was beginning to fade; the aspect of the court grim and terrible. M. Roussel broke down and burst into tears. Castaing leant over to his old schoolfellow: "Courage, Roussel," he said; "you have always believed me innocent, and I am innocent. Embrace for me my father, my mother, my brothers, my child." He turned to a group of young advocates standing near: "And you, young people, who have listened to my trial, attend also my execution; I shall be as firm then as I am now. All I ask is to die soon. I should be ashamed to plead for mercy." The judges returned. Castaing was condemned to death, and ordered to pay 100,000 francs damages to the family of Auguste Ballet.

Castaing was not ashamed to appeal to the Court of Cassation for a revision of his trial, but on December 4 his appeal was rejected. Two days later he was executed. He had attempted suicide by means of poison, which one of his friends had brought to him in prison, concealed inside a watch. His courage failed him at the last, and he met his death in a state of collapse.

It is not often, happily, that a young man of gentle birth and good education is a double murderer at twenty-six. And such a soft, humble, insinuating young man too!—good to his mother, good to his mistress, fond of his children, kind to his patients.

Yet this gentle creature can deliberately poison his two friends.

Was ever such a contradictory fellow?



Professor Webster

The best report of Webster's trial is that edited by Bemis. The following tracts in the British Museum have been consulted by the writer: "Appendix to the Webster Trial," Boston, 1850: "Thoughts on the Conviction of Webster"; "The Boston Tragedy," by W. E. Bigelow.

It is not often that the gaunt spectre of murder invades the cloistered calm of academic life. Yet such a strange and unwonted tragedy befell Harvard University in the year 1849, when John W. Webster, Professor of Chemistry, took the life of Dr. George Parkman, a distinguished citizen of Boston. The scene of the crime, the old Medical School, now a Dental Hospital, is still standing, or was when the present writer visited Boston in 1907. It is a large and rather dreary red-brick, three-storied building, situated in the lower part of the city, flanked on its west side by the mud flats leading down to the Charles River. The first floor consists of two large rooms, separated from each other by the main entrance hall, which is approached by a flight of steps leading up from the street level. Of these two rooms, the left, as you face the building, is fitted up as a lecture-room. In the year 1849 it was the lecture-room of Professor Webster. Behind the lecture-room is a laboratory, known as the upper laboratory, communicating by a private staircase with the lower laboratory, which occupies the left wing of the ground floor. A small passage, entered by a door on the left-hand side of the front of the building, separated this lower laboratory from the dissecting-room, an out-house built on to the west wall of the college, but now demolished. From this description it will be seen that any person, provided with the necessary keys, could enter the college by the side-door near the dissecting room on the ground floor, and pass up through the lower and upper laboratory into Professor Webster's lecture-room without entering any other part of the building. The Professor of Chemistry, by locking the doors of his lecture-rooms and the lower laboratory, could, if he wished, make himself perfectly secure against intrusion, and come and go by the side-door without attracting much attention. These rooms are little altered at the present time from their arrangement in 1849. The lecture-room and laboratory are used for the same purposes to-day; the lower laboratory, a dismal chamber, now disused and somewhat rearranged, is still recognisable as the scene of the Professor's chemical experiments.

On the second floor of the hospital is a museum, once anatomical, now dental. One of the principal objects of interest in this museum is a plaster cast of the jaws of Dr. George Parkman, made by a well-known dentist of Boston, Dr. Keep, in the year 1846. In that year the new medical college was formally opened. Dr. Parkman, a wealthy and public-spirited citizen of Boston, had given the piece of land, on which the college had been erected. He had been invited to be present at the opening ceremony. In anticipation of being asked to make a speech on this occasion Dr. Parkman, whose teeth were few and far between, had himself fitted by Dr. Keep with a complete set of false teeth. Oliver Wendell Holmes, then Professor of Anatomy at Harvard, who was present at the opening of the college, noticed how very nice and white the doctor's teeth appeared to be. It was the discovery of the remains of these same admirable teeth three years later in the furnace in Professor Webster's lower laboratory that led to the conviction of Dr. Parkman's murderer. By a strange coincidence the doctor met his death in the very college which his generosity had helped to build. Though to-day the state of the college has declined from the medical to the dental, his memory still lives within its walls by the cast of his jaws preserved in the dental museum as a relic of a case, in which the art of dentistry did signal service to the cause of justice.

In his lifetime Dr. Parkman was a well-known figure in the streets of Boston. His peculiar personal appearance and eccentric habits combined to make him something of a character. As he walked through the streets he presented a remarkable appearance. He was exceptionally tall, longer in the body than the legs; his lower jaw protruded some half an inch beyond the upper; he carried his body bent forward from the small of his back. He seemed to be always in a hurry; so impetuous was he that, if his horse did not travel fast enough to please him, he would get off its back, and, leaving the steed in the middle of the street, hasten on his way on foot. A just and generous man, he was extremely punctilious in matters of business, and uncompromising in his resentment of any form of falsehood or deceit. It was the force of his resentment in such a case that cost him his life.

The doctor was unfailingly punctual in taking his meals. Dr. Kingsley, during the fourteen years he had acted as his agent, had always been able to make sure of finding him at home at his dinner hour, half-past two o'clock. But on Friday, November 23, 1849, to his surprise and that of his family, Dr. Parkman did not come home to dinner; and their anxiety was increased when the day passed, and there was still no sign of the doctor's return. Inquiries were made. From these it appeared that Dr. Parkman had been last seen alive between one and two o'clock on the Friday afternoon. About half-past one he had visited a grocer's shop in Bridge Street, made some purchases, and left behind him a paper bag containing a lettuce, which, he said, he would call for on his way home. Shortly before two o'clock he was seen by a workman, at a distance of forty or fifty feet from the Medical College, going in that direction. From that moment all certain trace of him was lost. His family knew that he had made an appointment for half-past one that day, but where and with whom they did not know. As a matter of fact, Professor John W. Webster had appointed that hour to receive Dr. Parkman in his lecture-room in the Medical College.

John W. Webster was at this time Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy in Harvard University, a Doctor of Medicine and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the London Geological Society and the St. Petersburg Mineralogical Society. He was the author of several works on geology and chemistry, a man now close on sixty years of age. His countenance was genial, his manner mild and unassuming; he was clean shaven, wore spectacles, and looked younger than his years.

Professor Webster was popular with a large circle of friends. To those who liked him he was a man of pleasing and attractive manners, artistic in his tastes—he was especially fond of music—not a very profound or remarkable chemist, but a pleasant social companion. His temper was hasty and irritable. Spoilt in his boyhood as an only child, he was self-willed and self-indulgent. His wife and daughters were better liked than he. By unfriendly criticics{sic} the Professor was thought to be selfish, fonder of the good things of the table and a good cigar than was consistent with his duty to his family or the smallness of his income. His father, a successful apothecary at Boston, had died in 1833, leaving John, his only son, a fortune of some L10,000. In rather less than ten years Webster had run through the whole of his inheritance. He had built himself a costly mansion in Cambridge, spent a large sum of money in collecting minerals, and delighted to exercise lavish hospitality. By living consistently beyond his means he found himself at length entirely dependent on his professional earnings. These were small. His salary as Professor was fixed at L240 a year;(15) the rest of his income he derived from the sale of tickets for his lectures at the Medical College. That income was insufficient to meet his wants.

(15) I have given these sums of money in their English equivalents in order to give the reader an idea of the smallness of the sum which brought about the tragedy.

As early as 1842 he had borrowed L80 from his friend Dr. Parkman. It was to Parkman's good offices that he owed his appointment as a Professor at Harvard; they had entered the University as under-graduates in the same year. Up to 1847 Webster had repaid Parkman twenty pounds of his debt; but, in that year he found it necessary to raise a further loan of L490, which was subscribed by a few friends, among them Parkman himself. As a security for the repayment of this loan, the professor executed a mortgage on his valuable collection of minerals in favour of Parkman. In the April of 1848 the Professor's financial difficulties became so serious that he was threatened with an execution in his house. In this predicament he went to a Mr. Shaw, Dr. Parkman's brother-in-law, and begged a loan of L240, offering him as security a bill of sale on the collection of minerals, which he had already mortgaged to Parkman. Shaw accepted the security, and lent the money. Shaw would seem to have had a good deal of sympathy with Webster's embarrassments; he considered the Professor's income very inadequate to his position, and showed himself quite ready at a later period to waive his debt altogether.

Dr. Parkman was a less easy-going creditor. Forbearing and patient as long as he was dealt with fairly, he was merciless where he thought he detected trickery or evasion. His forbearance and his patience were utterly exhausted, his anger and indignation strongly aroused, when he learnt from Shaw that Webster had given him as security for his debt a bill of sale on the collection of minerals, already mortgaged to himself. From the moment of the discovery of this act of dishonesty on the part of Webster, Parkman pursued his debtor with unrelenting severity.

He threatened him with an action at law; he said openly that he was neither an honourable, honest, nor upright man; he tried to appropriate to the payment of his debt the fees for lectures which Mr. Pettee, Webster's agent, collected on the Professor's behalf. He even visited Webster in his lecture-room and sat glaring at him in the front row of seats, while the Professor was striving under these somewhat unfavourable conditions to impart instruction to his pupils—a proceeding which the Doctor's odd cast of features must have aggravated in no small degree.

It was early in November that Parkman adopted these aggressive tactics. On the 19th of that month Webster and the janitor of the College, Ephraim Littlefield, were working in the upper laboratory. It was dark; they had lit candles. Webster was reading a chemical book. As he looked up from the book he saw Parkman standing in the doorway leading from the lecture-room. "Dr. Webster, are you ready for me to-night?" asked Parkman. "No," replied the other, "I am not ready to-night." After a little further conversation in regard to the mortgage, Parkman departed with the ominous remark, "Doctor, something must be done to-morrow."

Unfortunately the Professor was not in a position to do anything. He had no means sufficient to meet his creditor's demands; and that creditor was unrelenting. On the 22nd Parkman rode into Cambridge, where Webster lived, to press him further, but failed to find him. Webster's patience, none too great at any time, was being sorely tried. To whom could he turn? What further resource was open to him? There was none. He determined to see his creditor once more. At 8 o'clock on the morning of Friday the 23rd, Webster called at Dr. Parkman's house and made the appointment for their meeting at the Medical College at half-past one, to which the Doctor had been seen hastening just before his disappearance. At nine o'clock the same morning Pettee, the agent, had called on the Professor at the College and paid him by cheque a balance of L28 due on his lecture tickets, informing him at the same time that, owing to the trouble with Dr. Parkman, he must decline to receive any further sums of money on his behalf. Webster replied that Parkman was a nervous, excitable man, subject to mental aberrations, but he added, "You will have no further trouble with Dr. Parkman, for I have settled with him." It is difficult to see how the Professor could have settled, or proposed to settle, with his creditor on that day. A balance of L28 at his bank, and the L18 which Mr. Pettee had paid to him that morning, represented the sum of Professor Webster's fortune on Friday, November 23, 1849.

Since the afternoon of that day the search for the missing Parkman had been unremitting. On the Saturday his friends communicated with the police. On Sunday hand-bills were issued stating the fact of the Doctor's disappearance, and on Monday, the 26th, a description and the offer of a considerable reward for the discovery of his body were circulated both in and out of the city. Two days later a further reward was offered. But these efforts were fruitless. The only person who gave any information beyond that afforded by those who had seen the Doctor in the streets on the morning of his disappearance, was Professor Webster. About four o'clock on the Sunday afternoon the Professor called at the house of the Revd. Francis Parkman, the Doctor's brother. They were intimate friends. Webster had for a time attended Parkman's chapel; and Mr. Parkman had baptised the Professor's grand-daughter. On this Sunday afternoon Mr. Parkman could not help remarking Webster's peculiar manner. With a bare greeting and no expression of condolence with the family's distress, his visitor entered abruptly and nervously on the object of his errand. He had called, he said, to tell Mr. Parkman that he had seen his brother at the Medical College on Friday afternoon, that he had paid him L90 which he owed him, and that the Doctor had in the course of their interview taken out a paper and dashed his pen through it, presumably as an acknowledgment of the liquidation of the Professor's debt. Having communicated this intelligence to the somewhat astonished gentleman, Webster left him as abruptly as he had come.

Another relative of Dr. Parkman, his nephew, Mr. Parkman Blake, in the course of inquiries as to his uncle's fate, thought it right to see Webster. Accordingly he went to the college on Monday, the 26th, about eleven o'clock in the morning. Though not one of his lecture days, the janitor Littlefield informed him that the Professor was in his room. The door of the lecture-room, however, was found to be locked, and it was only after considerable delay that Mr. Blake gained admittance. As he descended the steps to the floor of the lecture-room Webster, dressed in a working suit of blue overalls and wearing on his head a smoking cap, came in from the back door. Instead of advancing to greet his visitor, he stood fixed to the spot, and waited, as if defensively, for Mr. Blake to speak. In answer to Mr. Blake's questions Webster described his interview with Dr. Parkman on the Friday afternoon. He gave a very similar account of it to that he had already given to Mr. Francis Parkman. He added that at the end of their interview he had asked the Doctor for the return of the mortgage, to which the latter had replied, "I haven't it with me, but I will see it is properly cancelled." Mr. Blake asked Webster if he could recollect in what form of money it was that he had paid Dr. Parkman. Webster answered that he could only recollect a bill of L20 on the New Zealand Bank: pressed on this point, he seemed to rather avoid any further inquiries. Mr. Blake left him, dissatisfied with the result of his visit.

One particular in Webster's statement was unquestionably strange, if not incredible. He had, he said, paid Parkman a sum of L90, which he had given him personally, and represented the Doctor as having at their interview promised to cancel the mortgage on the collection of minerals which Webster had given as security for the loan of L490 that had been subscribed by Parkman and four of his friends. Now L120 of this loan was still owing. If Webster's statement were true, Parkman had a perfect right to cancel Webster's personal debt to himself; but he had no right to cancel entirely the mortgage on the minerals, so long as money due to others on that mortgage was yet unpaid. Was it conceivable that one so strict and scrupulous in all monetary transactions as Parkman would have settled his own personal claim, and then sacrificed in so discreditable a manner the claims of others, for the satisfaction of which he had made himself responsible?

There was yet another singular circumstance. On Saturday, the 24th, the day after his settlement with Parkman, Webster paid into his own account at the Charles River Bank the cheque for L18, lecture fees, handed over to him by the agent Pettee just before Dr. Parkman's visit on the Friday. This sum had not apparently gone towards the making up of the L90, which Webster said that he had paid to Parkman that day. The means by which Webster had been enabled to settle this debt became more mysterious than ever.

On Tuesday, November 27, the Professor received three other visitors in his lecture-room. These were police officers who, in the course of their search for the missing man, felt it their duty to examine, however perfunctorily, the Medical College. With apologies to the Professor, they passed through his lecture room to the laboratory at the back, and from thence, down the private stairs, past a privy, into the lower laboratory. As they passed the privy one of the officers asked what place it was. "Dr. Webster's private lavatory," replied the janitor, who was conducting them. At that moment Webster's voice called them away to examine the store-room in the lower laboratory, and after a cursory examination the officers departed.

The janitor, Ephraim Littlefield, did not take the opportunity afforded him by the visit of the police officers to impart to them the feelings of uneasiness; which the conduct of Professor Webster during the last three days had excited in his breast. There were circumstances in the Professor's behaviour which could not fail to attract the attention of a man, whose business throughout the day was to dust and sweep the College, light the fires and overlook generally the order and cleanliness of the building.

Littlefield, it will be remembered, had seen Dr. Parkman on the Monday before his disappearance, when he visited Webster at the College, and been present at the interview, in the course of which the Doctor told Webster that "something must be done." That Monday morning Webster asked Littlefield a number of questions about the dissecting-room vault, which was situated just outside the door of the lower laboratory. He asked how it was built, whether a light could be put into it, and how it was reached for the purpose of repair. On the following Thursday, the day before Parkman's disappearance, the Professor told Littlefield to get him a pint of blood from the Massachusetts Hospital; he said that he wanted it for an experiment. On the morning of Friday, the day of Parkman's disappearance, Littlefield informed the Professor that he had been unsuccessful in his efforts to get the blood, as they had not been bleeding anyone lately at the hospital. The same morning Littlefield found to his surprise a sledge-hammer behind the door of the Professor's back room; he presumed that it had been left there by masons, and took it down to the lower laboratory. This sledge-hammer Littlefield never saw again. About a quarter to two that afternoon Littlefield, standing at the front door, after his dinner, saw Dr. Parkman coming towards the College. At two o'clock Littlefield went up to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes' room, immediately above Professor Webster's, to help the Doctor to clear his table after his lecture, which was the last delivered that day. About a quarter of an hour later he let Dr. Holmes out, locked the front door and began to clear out the stoves in the other lecture-rooms. When he reached Webster's he was surprised to find that both doors, that of the lecture room and that of the lower laboratory, were either locked or bolted. He could hear nothing but the running of water in one of the sinks. About half-past five Littlefield saw the Professor coming down the back stairs with a lighted candle in his hand. Webster blew out the candle and left the building. Late that night Littlefield again tried the Professor's doors; they were still fastened. The janitor was surprised at this, as he had never known such a thing to happen before.

On Saturday, the 24th, though not lecturing that day, the Professor came to the College in the morning. He told Littlefield to light the stove in the lower laboratory. When Littlefield made to pass from the lecture-room into the Professor's private room at the back, and so down by the private stairs to the lower laboratory, the Professor stopped him and told him to go round by the door in front of the building. The whole of that day and Sunday, the Professor's doors remained fast. On Sunday evening at sunset Littlefield, who was talking with a friend in North Grove Street, the street that faces the College, was accosted by Webster. The Professor asked him if he recollected Parkman's visit to the College on Friday, the 23rd, and, on his replying in the affirmative, the Professor described to him their interview and the repayment of his debt. Littlefield was struck during their conversation by the uneasiness of the Professor's bearing; contrary to his habit he seemed unable to look him in the face, his manner was confused, his face pale.

During the whole of Monday, except for a visit from Mr. Parkman Blake, Professor Webster was again locked alone in his laboratory. Neither that night, nor early Tuesday morning, could Littlefield get into the Professor's rooms to perform his customary duties. On Tuesday the Professor lectured at twelve o'clock, and later received the visit of the police officers that has been described already. At four o'clock that afternoon, the Professor's bell rang. Littlefield answered it. The Professor asked the janitor whether he had bought his turkey for Thanksgiving Day, which was on the following Thursday. Littlefield said that he had not done so yet. Webster then handed him an order on his provision dealer. "Take that," he said, "and get a nice turkey; perhaps I shall want you to do some odd jobs for me." Littlefield thanked him, and said that he would be glad to do anything for him that he could. The janitor was the more surprised at Webster's generosity on this occasion, as this turkey was the first present he had received at the Professor's hands during the seven years he had worked in the College. Littlefield saw the Professor again about half-past six that evening as the latter was leaving the College. The janitor asked him if he wanted any more fires lighted in his rooms, because owing to the holidays there were to be no further lectures that week. Webster said that he did not, and asked Littlefield whether he were a freemason. The janitor said "Yes," and with that they parted.

Littlefield was curious. The mysterious activity of the Professor of Chemistry seemed to him more than unusual. His perplexity was increased on the following day. Though on account of the holidays all work had been suspended at the College for the remainder of the week, Webster was again busy in his room early Wednesday morning. Littlefield could hear him moving about. In vain did the janitor look through the keyhole, bore a hole in the door, peep under it; all he could get was a sight of the Professor's feet moving about the laboratory. Perplexity gave way to apprehension when in the course of the afternoon Littlefield discovered that the outer wall of the lower laboratory was so hot that he could hardly bear to place his hand on it. On the outer side of this wall was a furnace sometimes used by the Professor in his chemical experiments. How came it to be so heated? The Professor had told Littlefield on Tuesday that he should not be requiring any fires during the remainder of the week.

The janitor determined to resolve his suspicions. He climbed up to the back windows of the lower laboratory, found one of them unfastened, and let himself in. But, beyond evidences of the considerable fires that had been kept burning during the last few days, Littlefield saw nothing to excite peculiar attention. Still he was uneasy. Those he met in the street kept on telling him that Dr. Parkman would be found in the Medical College. He felt that he himself was beginning to be suspected of having some share in the mystery, whilst in his own mind he became more certain every day that the real solution lay within the walls of Professor Webster's laboratory. His attention had fixed itself particularly on the lavatory at the foot of the stairs connecting the upper and lower laboratories. This room he found to be locked and the key, a large one, had disappeared. He recollected that when the police officers had paid their visit to the college, the Professor had diverted their attention as they were about to inspect this room. The only method by which, unknown to the Professor and without breaking open the door, Littlefield could examine the vault of this retiring room was by going down to the basement floor of the college and digging a hole through the wall into the vault itself. This he determined to do.

On Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, Littlefield commenced operations with a hatchet and a chisel. Progress was slow, as that evening he had been invited to attend a festal gathering. On Friday the janitor, before resuming work, acquainted two of the Professors of the college with his proposed investigation, and received their sanction. As Webster, however, was going constantly in and out of his rooms, he could make little further progress that day. The Professor had come into town early in the morning.

Before going to the college he purchased some fish-hooks and gave orders for the making of a strong tin box with firm handles, a foot and a half square and a little more than a foot in depth; during the rest of the day he had been busy in his rooms until he left the college about four o'clock. Not till then was the watchful janitor able to resume his labours. Armed with a crowbar, he worked vigorously until he succeeded in penetrating the wall sufficiently to admit a light into the vault of the lavatory. The first objects which the light revealed to his eyes, were the pelvis of a man and two parts of a human leg.

Leaving his wife in charge of the remains, Littlefield went immediately to the house of Professor Bigelow, and informed him of the result of his search. They returned to the college some twenty minutes later, accompanied by the City Marshal. The human remains—a pelvis, a thigh and a leg—were taken out of the vault, and on a further search some pieces of bone were removed from one of the furnaces in the lower laboratory. The City Marshal at once dispatched three of his officers to Cambridge, to the house of Professor Webster.

To his immediate circle of friends and relations the conduct of the Professor during this eventful week had betrayed no unwonted discomposure or disturbance of mind. His evenings had been spent either at the house of friends, or at his own, playing whist, or reading Milton's "Allegro" and "Penseroso" to his wife and daughters. On Friday evening, about eight o'clock, as the Professor was saying good-bye to a friend on the steps of his house at Cambridge, the three police officers drove up to the door and asked him to accompany them to the Medical College. It was proposed, they said, to make a further search there that evening, and his presence was considered advisable. Webster assented immediately, put on his boots, his hat and coat, and got into the hired coach. As they drove towards the city, Webster spoke to the officers of Parkman's disappearance, and suggested that they should stop at the house of a lady who, he said, could give them some peculiar information on that subject. As they entered Boston, he remarked that they were taking the wrong direction for reaching the college. One of the officers replied that the driver might be "green," but that he would find his way to the college in time. At length the coach stopped. One of the officers alighted, and invited his companions to follow him into the office of the Leverett Street Jail. They obeyed. The Professor asked what it all meant; he was informed that he must consider himself in custody, charged with the murder of Dr. George Parkman. Webster, somewhat taken aback, desired that word should be sent to his family, but was dissuaded from his purpose for the time being. He was searched, and among other articles taken from him was a key some four or five inches long; it was the missing lavatory key. Whilst one of the officers withdrew to make out a mittimus, the Professor asked one of the others if they had found Dr. Parkman. The officer begged him not to question him. "You might tell me something about it," pleaded Webster. "Where did they find him? Did they find the whole body? Oh, my children! What will they do? What will they think of me? Where did you get the information?" The officers asked him if anybody had access to his apartments but himself. "Nobody," he replied, "but the porter who makes the fire." Then, after a pause, he exclaimed: "That villain! I am a ruined man." He was walking up and down wringing his hands, when one of the officers saw him put one hand into his waistcoat pocket, and raise it to his lips. A few moments later the unhappy man was seized with violent spasms. He was unable to stand, and was laid down in one of the cells. From this distressing state he was roused shortly before eleven, to be taken to the college. He was quite incapable of walking, and had to be supported by two of the officers. He was present there while his rooms were searched; but his state was painful in the extreme. He asked for water, but trembled so convulsively that he could only snap at the tumbler like a dog; his limbs were rigid; tears and sweat poured down his cheeks. On the way back to the jail, one of the officers, moved by his condition, expressed his pity for him. "Do you pity me? Are you sorry for me? What for?" asked Webster. "To see you so excited," replied the officer. "Oh! that's it," said the Professor.

The whole night through the prisoner lay without moving, and not until the following afternoon were his limbs relaxed sufficiently to allow of his sitting up. As his condition improved, he grew more confident. "That is no more Dr. Parkman's body," he said, "than mine. How in the world it came there I don't know," and he added: "I never liked the looks of Littlefield the janitor; I opposed his coming there all I could."

In the meantime a further examination of the Professor's rooms on Saturday had resulted in the discovery, in a tea-chest in the lower laboratory, of a thorax, the left thigh of a leg, and a hunting knife embedded in tan and covered over with minerals; some portions of bone and teeth were found mixed with the slag and cinders of one of the furnaces; also some fish-hooks and a quantity of twine, the latter identical with a piece of twine that had been tied round the thigh found in the chest.

Two days later the Professor furnished unwittingly some additional evidence against himself. On the Monday evening after his arrest he wrote from prison to one of his daughters the following letter:

"MY DEAREST MARIANNE,—I wrote Mama yesterday; I had a good sleep last night, and dreamt of you all. I got my clothes off, for the first time, and awoke in the morning quite hungry. It was a long time before my first breakfast from Parker's came; and it was relished, I can assure you. At one o'clock I was notified that I must appear at the court room. All was arranged with great regard to my comfort, and went off better than I had anticipated.

"On my return I had a bit of turkey and rice from Parker's. They send much more than I can eat, and I have directed the steward to distribute the surplus to any poor ones here.

"If you will send me a small canister of tea, I can make my own. A little pepper I may want some day. I would send the dirty clothes, but they were taken to dry. Tell Mama NOT TO OPEN the little bundle I gave her the other day, but to keep it just as she received it. With many kisses to you all. Good night!—From your affectionate

"FATHER."

"P.S.—My tongue troubles me yet very much, and I must have bitten it in my distress the other night; it is painful and swollen, affecting my speech. Had Mama better send for Nancy? I think so; or Aunt Amelia."

"Couple of coloured neck handkerchiefs, one Madras."

This letter, which shows an anxiety about his personal comfort singular in one so tragically situated, passed through the hands of the keeper of the jail. He was struck by the words underlined, "NOT TO OPEN," in regard to the small bundle confided to Mrs. Webster. He called the attention of the police to this phrase. They sent immediately an officer armed with a search warrant to the Professor's house. He received from Mrs. Webster among other papers a package which, on being opened, was found to contain the two notes given by Webster to Parkman as acknowledgments of his indebtedness to him in 1842 and 1847, and a paper showing the amount of his debts to Parkman in 1847. There were daubs and erasures made across these documents, and across one was written twice over the word "paid." All these evidences of payments and cancellations appeared on examination to be in the handwriting of the Professor.

After an inquest lasting nine days the coroner's jury declared the remains found in the college to be those of Dr. George Parkman, and that the deceased had met his death at the hands of Professor J. W. Webster. The prisoner waived his right to a magisterial investigation, and on January 26, 1850, the Grand Jury returned a true bill. But it was not until March 17 that the Professor's trial opened before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. The proceedings were conducted with that dignity and propriety which we look for in the courts of that State. The principal features in the defence were an attempt to impugn the testimony of the janitor Littlefield, and to question the possibility of the identification of the remains of Parkman's teeth. There was a further attempt to prove that the deceased had been seen by a number of persons in the streets of Boston on the Friday afternoon, after his visit to the Medical College. The witness Littlefield was unshaken by a severe cross-examination. The very reluctance with which Dr. Keep gave his fatal evidence, and the support given to his conclusions by distinguished testimony told strongly in favour of the absolute trustworthiness of his statements. The evidence called to prove that the murdered man had been seen alive late on Friday afternoon was highly inconclusive.

Contrary to the advice of his counsel, Webster addressed the jury himself. He complained of the conduct of his case, and enumerated various points that his counsel had omitted to make, which he conceived to be in his favour. The value of his statements may be judged by the fact that he called God to witness that he had not written any one of the anonymous letters, purporting to give a true account of the doctor's fate, which had been received by the police at the time of Parkman's disappearance. After his condemnation Webster confessed to the authorship of at least one of them.

The jury retired at eight o'clock on the eleventh day of the trial. They would seem to have approached their duty in a most solemn and devout spirit, and it was with the greatest reluctance and after some searching of heart that they brought themselves to find the prisoner guilty of wilful murder. On hearing their verdict, the Professor sank into a seat, and, dropping his head, rubbed his eyes behind his spectacles as if wiping away tears. On the following morning the Chief Justice sentenced him to death after a well-meaning speech of quite unnecessary length and elaboration, at the conclusion of which the condemned man wept freely.

A petition for a writ of error having been dismissed, the Professor in July addressed a petition for clemency to the Council of the State. Dr. Putnam, who had been attending Webster in the jail, read to the Council a confession which he had persuaded the prisoner to make. According to this statement Webster had, on the Friday afternoon, struck Parkman on the head with a heavy wooden stick in a wild moment of rage, induced by the violent taunts and threats of his creditor. Appalled by his deed, he had in panic locked himself in his room, and proceeded with desperate haste to dismember the body; he had placed it for that purpose in the sink in his back room, through which was running a constant stream of water that carried away the blood. Some portions of the body he had burnt in the furnace; those in the lavatory and the tea-chest he had concealed there, until he should have had an opportunity of getting rid of them.

In this statement Professor Webster denied all premeditation. Dr. Putnam asked him solemnly whether he had not, immediately before the crime, meditated at any time on the advantages that would accrue to him from Parkman's death. Webster replied "Never, before God!" He had, he protested, no idea of doing Parkman an injury until the bitter tongue of the latter provoked him. "I am irritable and violent," he said, "a quickness and brief violence of temper has been the besetting sin of my life. I was an only child, much indulged, and I have never secured the control over my passions that I ought to have acquired early; and the consequence is—all this!" He denied having told Parkman that he was going to settle with him that afternoon, and said that he had asked him to come to the college with the sole object of pleading with him for further indulgence. He explained his convulsive seizure at the time of his arrest by his having taken a dose of strychnine, which he had carried in his pocket since the crime. In spite of these statements and the prayers of the unfortunate man's wife and daughters, who, until his confession to Dr. Putnam, had believed implicity in his innocence, the Council decided that the law must take its course, and fixed August 30 as the day of execution.

The Professor resigned himself to his fate. He sent for Littlefield and his wife, and expressed his regret for any injustice he had done them: "All you said was true. You have misrepresented nothing." Asked by the sheriff whether he was to understand from some of his expressions that he contemplated an attempt at suicide, "Why should I?" he replied, "all the proceedings in my case have been just... and it is just that I should die upon the scaffold in accordance with that sentence." "Everybody is right," he said to the keeper of the jail, "and I am wrong. And I feel that, if the yielding up of my life to the injured law will atone, even in part, for the crime I have committed, that is a consolation."

In a letter to the Reverend Francis Parkman he expressed deep contrition for his guilt. He added one sentence which may perhaps fairly express the measure of premeditation that accompanied his crime. "I had never," he wrote, "until the two or three last interviews with your brother, felt towards him anything but gratitude for his many acts of kindness and friendship."

Professor Webster met his death with fortitude and resignation. That he deserved his fate few will be inclined to deny. The attempt to procure blood, the questions about the dissecting-room vault, the appointment made with Parkman at the college, the statement to Pettee, all point to some degree of premeditation, or at least would make it appear that the murder of Parkman had been considered by him as a possible eventuality. His accusation of Littlefield deprives him of a good deal of sympathy. On the other hand, the age and position of Webster, the aggravating persistency of Parkman, his threats and denunciations, coupled with his own shortness of temper, make it conceivable that he may have killed his victim on a sudden and overmastering provocation, in which case he had better at once have acknowledged his crime instead of making a repulsive attempt to conceal it. But for the evidence of Dr. Keep he would possibly have escaped punishment altogether. Save for the portions of his false teeth, there was not sufficient evidence to identify the remains found in the college as those of Parkman. Without these teeth the proof of the corpus delicti would have been incomplete, and so afforded Webster a fair chance of acquittal.



The Mysterious Mr. Holmes

"The Holmes-Pitezel Case," by F. B. Geyer, 1896; "Holmes' Own Story," Philadelphia, 1895; and "Celebrated Criminal Cases of America," by T. S. Duke, San Francisco, are the authorities for this account of the case.



I

HONOUR AMONGST THIEVES

In the year 1894 Mr. Smith, a carpenter, of Philadelphia, had patented a new saw-set. Wishing to make some money out of his invention, Mr. Smith was attracted by the sign:

B. F. PERRY

PATENTS BOUGHT AND SOLD

which he saw stretched across the window of a two-storied house, 1,316 Callowhill Street. He entered the house and made the acquaintance of Mr. Perry, a tall, dark, bony man, to whom he explained the merits of his invention. Perry listened with interest, and asked for a model. In the meantime he suggested that Smith should do some carpenter's work for him in the house. Smith agreed, and on August 22, while at work there saw a man enter the house and go up with Perry to a room on the second story.

A few days later Smith called at Callowhill Street to ask Perry about the sale of the patent. He waited half an hour in the shop below, called out to Perry who, he thought, might be in the rooms above, received no answer and went away. Next day, September 4, Smith returned, found the place just as he had left it the day before; called Perry again, but again got no answer. Surprised, he went upstairs, and in the back room of the second story the morning sunshine, streaming through the window, showed him the dead body of a man, his face charred beyond recognition, lying with his feet to the window and his head to the door. There was evidence of some sort of explosion: a broken bottle that had contained an inflammable substance, a broken pipe filled with tobacco, and a burnt match lay by the side of the body.

The general appearance of the dead man answered to that of B. F. Perry. A medical examination of the body showed that death had been sudden, that there had been paralysis of the involuntary muscles, and that the stomach, besides showing symptoms of alcoholic irritation, emitted a strong odour of chloroform. An inquest was held, and a verdict returned that B. F. Perry had died of congestion of the lungs caused by the inhalation of flame or chloroform. After lying in the mortuary for eleven days the body was buried.

In the meantime the Philadelphia branch of the Fidelity Mutual Life Association had received a letter from one Jephtha D. Howe, an attorney at St. Louis, stating that the deceased B. F. Perry was Benjamin F. Pitezel of that city, who had been insured in their office for a sum of ten thousand dollars. The insurance had been effected in Chicago in the November of 1893. Mr. Howe proposed to come to Philadelphia with some members of the Pitezel family to identify the remains. Referring to their Chicago branch, the insurance company found that the only person who would seem to have known Pitezel when in that city, was a certain H. H. Holmes, living at Wilmette, Illinois. They got into communication with Mr. Holmes, and forwarded to him a cutting from a newspaper, which stated erroneously that the death of B. F. Perry had taken place in Chicago.

On September 18 they received a letter from Mr. Holmes, in which he offered what assistance he could toward the identification of B. F. Perry as B. F. Pitezel. He gave the name of a dentist in Chicago who would be able to recognise teeth which he had made for Pitezel, and himself furnished a description of the man, especially of a malformation of the knee and a warty growth on the back of the neck by which he could be further identified. Mr. Holmes offered, if his expenses were paid, to come to Chicago to view the body. Two days later he wrote again saying that he had seen by other papers that Perry's death had taken place in Philadelphia and not in Chicago, and that as he had to be in Baltimore in a day or two, he would run over to Philadelphia and visit the office of the Fidelity Life Association.

On September 20 the assiduous Mr. Holmes called at the office of the Association in Philadelphia, inquired anxiously about the nature and cause of Perry's death, gave again a description of him and, on learning that Mr. Howe, the attorney from St. Louis, was about to come to Philadelphia to represent the widow, Mrs. Pitezel, and complete the identification, said that he would return to give the company any further help he could in the matter. The following day Mr. Jephtha D. Howe, attorney of St. Louis, arrived in Philadelphia, accompanied by Alice Pitezel, a daughter of the deceased. Howe explained that Pitezel had taken the name of Perry owing to financial difficulties. The company said that they accepted the fact that Perry and Pitezel were one and the same man, but were not convinced that the body was Pitezel's body. The visit of Holmes was mentioned. Howe said that he did not know Mr. Holmes, but would be willing to meet him. At this moment Holmes arrived at the office. He was introduced to Howe as a stranger, and recognised as a friend by Alice Pitezel, a shy, awkward girl of fourteen or fifteen years of age. It was then arranged that all the parties should meet again next day to identify, if possible, the body, which had been disinterred for that purpose.

The unpleasant duty of identifying the rapidly decomposing remains was greatly curtailed by the readiness of Mr. Holmes. When the party met on the 22nd at the Potter's Field, where the body had been disinterred and laid out, the doctor present was unable to find the distinctive marks which would show Perry and Pitezel to have been the same man. Holmes at once stepped into the breach, took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, put on the rubber gloves, and taking a surgeon's knife from his pocket, cut off the wart at the back of the neck, showed the injury to the leg, and revealed also a bruised thumbnail which had been another distinctive mark of Pitezel. The body was then covered up all but the teeth; the girl Alice was brought in, and she said that the teeth appeared to be like those of her father. The insurance company declared themselves satisfied, and handed to Mr. Howe a cheque for 9,175 dollars, and to Mr. Holmes ten dollars for his expenses. Smith, the carpenter, had been present at the proceedings at the Potter's Field. For a moment he thought he detected a likeness in Mr. Holmes to the man who had visited Perry at Callowhill Street on August 22 and gone upstairs with him, but he did not feel sure enough of the fact to make any mention of it.

In the prison at St. Louis there languished in the year 1894 one Marion Hedgspeth, serving a sentence of twenty years' imprisonment for an audacious train robbery. On the night of November 30, 1891, the 'Friscow express from St. Louis had been boarded by four ruffians, the express car blown open with dynamite, and 10,000 dollars carried off. Hedgspeth and another man were tried for the robbery, and sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment. On October 9, 1894, Hegspeth{sic} made a statement to the Governor of the St. Louis prison, which he said he wished to be communicated to the Fidelity Mutual Life Association. In the previous July Hedgspeth said that he had met in the prison a man of the name of H. M. Howard, who was charged with fraud, but had been released on bail later in the month. While in prison Howard told Hedgspeth that he had devised a scheme for swindling an insurance company of 10,000 dollars, and promised Hedgspeth that, if he would recommend him a lawyer suitable for such an enterprise, he should have 500 dollars as his share of the proceeds. Hedgspeth recommended Jephtha D. Howe. The latter entered with enthusiasm into the scheme, and told Hedgspeth that he thought Mr. Howard "one of the smoothest and slickest" men he had ever known. A corpse was to be found answering to Pitezel's description, and to be so treated as to appear to have been the victim of an accidental explosion, while Pitezel himself would disappear to Germany. From Howe Hedgspeth learnt that the swindle had been carried out successfully, but he had never received from Howard the 500 dollars promised him. Consequently, he had but little compunction in divulging the plot to the authorities.

It was realised at once that H. M. Howard and H. H. Holmes were the same person, and that Jephtha D. Howe and Mr. Holmes were not the strangers to each other that they had affected to be when they met in Philadelphia. Though somewhat doubtful of the truth of Hedgspeth's statement, the insurance company decided to set Pinkerton's detectives on the track of Mr. H. H. Holmes. After more than a month's search he was traced to his father's house at Gilmanton, N. H., and arrested in Boston on November 17.