Section one of Weird Crimes. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
LibriVox dot org. Weird Crimes by Seaberry Quinn, Number one. Bluebeard,
compiled from transcripts of the judicial records of the ancient Duchy of Brittany. Not
long ago, the world was startled by the revelations of the trial of Henrie
Lanjrue, accused of murdering ten women and an eighteen year old boy, Bluebeard.
The newspapers dubbed him, comparing him to the most grisly character in all
the fairy tales. How few of those who echoed the news writer's epithet realized
that Lanjeroux, who later expiated his crimes upon the guillotine at Versailles, and
even the Bluebeard, whose story still frightens fretful children to still were but amateurs
in crime compared to the man who first bore the name, the man whose
trial and conviction rocked medieval France to its foundations, and whose criminal exploits surpassed
the wildest flights of imaginative fiction. Never in the stories of Poe of Gautier
of de Montpaissan. Not even Bramstoker's Count Dracula has a character more depraved,
more terrible, more fascinating been portrayed than Gilles de la Valle, sirre Deretes,
Marshal of France, chamberlain to the French King and cousin to the mighty
Duke of Brittany. The most monstrously depraved imagination, says a French criminologist,
never could have conceived what this trial reveals. This memorable trial presents horrors unsurpassed
in the entire volume of the world's history. During the year fourteen forty,
terrible rumors spread through Brittany, especially through the ancient Pays de Retes, which
extends along the Lois from Nante to Pemboeuff In hundreds of peasant cottages. Mothers
wept for children they would see no more, and that the village ends were
The laborers repaired from their fields to drink an evening cup of wine. Whispered
curses mingled with sighs, and exclamations of grief were heard, And always when
the peasants muttered their sullen complaints to each other, the name of the Sire
Derets was whispered in that day. The great feudal lords owned the common people
almost as absolutely as they owned the land itself, and the Sire Derets.
Chateau was strong. His men at arms were many. What could a handful
of wooden shod peasants armed only with scythes and flails avail against the king's favorite?
But one last hope remained to the peasantry. Though the chivalry of France
was a mighty institution, the Church of Rome was mightier. No noble be
his sword ever so long where his arrogance so great dared lay a hand upon
the humblest village priest and to their spiritual advisors, the peasants betook themselves when
they're pleased to the civil authorities fell on deaf ears. Word was born to
Jean Chateau, Giron, Bishop of Nantes, that oppression lay heavy upon his
people in Brittany, and like the energetic prince of the church he was,
the bishop despatched his agents to investigate their reports. Gilles de Lavald, the
investigators found, had suddenly quit a most promising career at court to immure himself
in his country seat at Mashcoul, a gloomy chateau composed of huge towers and
surrounded by deep moats. Also, since his residence in the country, he
had deeded vast tracts of land to John V, Duke of Brittany, in
order, it was whispered, to prevent that nobleman's too close scrutiny of his
actions. While the Marshal kept closely to his house most of the time,
he was wont to make occasional trips to nearby towns, always accompanied by a
princely retinue. He spent money with a lavish hand, enriching innkeepers tradesmen beyond
their wildest dreams, and distributing vast sums of gold to the poor. It
might have been supposed that the townspeople would have welcomed his coming as a visitation
from the good Saint Nicholas himself. Yet the bishop's agents found whenever the Marshal
left a town, the cries of the poor, which had been restrained while
the clink of his men at arms sounded in the streets, broke forth.
Tears flowed, curses were uttered, A long continued wail went up to heaven.
Mothers had lost their children. Babes had been snatched from the cradle,
infants had been spirited almost from their mother's breasts, and it was known by
sad experience that the vanished little ones would never be seen again. Derretz's castle
at Mashchul was always in condition to resist siege. The drawbridge was raised,
the portcullis down, the gate's clothes, the retainers constantly under arms. No
one except the marshal's own servants. The investigators heard, had even been known
to go through the chateau's mysterious gates and come forth alive. In the surrounding
country, strange tales of horror and deviltry circulated in hushed whispers. Yet it
was observed that the chapel of the castle was gorgeously decked with silk and cloth
of gold, and the sacred vessels were encrusted with gems. The excessive devotion
of the marshal was also noted. He was said to be passionately fond of
ecclesiastical music, and to hear Mass three times daily. But when dusk settled
over the forest, and one by one the castle windows became illuminated, peasants
would point to one casement high up in an isolated tower, from which a
clear light streamed through the gloom. They told of a fierce red glare which
came from that window at times, and of agonized cries, children's cries ringing
from it, cries which had no answer but the howl of the wolf as
he rose to quest and kill his prey. By night, once or twice
a week, the drawbridge was lowered, and the servants of de Retz stood
at the gateway, distributing close money and food to beggars who crowded round.
It often happened that children were among those beggars. The servants would offer them
rare dainties if they would go to the kitchen for them. Those little tats
who accepted the offers were never seen again. Charges had been laid before the
Duke of Brittany accusing the Marshal as a wholesale murderer of children. The Duke
had treated the accusations and the accusers alike with scorn. When this report was
laid before the Bishop, he summoned Pierre de Lospitol, Grand Seneschal of Brittany,
for a conference. Together, they demanded that the Duke ordered the arrest
of the Marshal on a charge of murder, threatening action by the Church if
he refused. Reluctantly, the Duke had Pierre de Lospitol proceed with the prosecution.
Action followed immediately. A sergeant arms was given a warrant authorizing him to
take the very mighty, very powerful Sire Torets and his accomplices into custody.
Jean Labat, the sergeant was a man worth of the master. He served,
though warned that resistance would likely be encountered at the chateau. He selected
a posse of twenty chosen men and marched to the castle gate, calling lustily
upon the Sire, directs to surrender. Who calls? Demanded the Marshal from
behind the Portcullis Wabbe, replied the sergeant, drawing his sword. The Marshal
turned pale, crossed himself, and ordered the drawbridge lowered, saying it is
impossible to resist fight. Years before, an astrologer had warned him he would
one day fall into the hands of an abbe. Until the moment the sergeant
demanded his surrender, the marshal had supposed the prophecy meant he would one day
become a monk, accompanied by two of his retainers, who had been inseparable
companions, Allrie m Pontou by name, the marshal crossed the drawbridge and handed
his sword to Jean Libbey. Closely guarded by the sergeant's posse, the accused
men made their way to Nantes, where Pierre de Lospitaux waited to dispense stern
and even handed justice. It was well for the sire Direts that Labbey had
brought his score of dauntless peace officers with him. When word passed among the
villagers that redoubted Gilles de la Val was riding towards Nante, surrounded by a
bodyguard of Ajan's arms. Peasants left their fields, women their kitchens, and
laborers dropped their tools to throng the streets way. Cried John Lebbe, give
way to the servants of my lord Bishop. A sullen murmur from the crowd
answered him. Suddenly a woman shrills, scream rent the noonday, calm my
child. She screaked a cast of God, restore my child. Then a
wild, wrathful howl broke from the crowd, rang along the Nante's road,
and died away. Only when the Great gates of the Chateau de Bouffet claimed
shut behind the prisoner. The whole population of Nante was in a turmoil.
It was whispered the investigation would be a farce. The Duke would surely screen
his kinsmen. The Sire Directs would be forced to surrender some more of his
land. Perhaps after that he would be released. Justice weighed heavily only on
the poor. Sure Enough, an attempt was made to shield the accused.
Jean de Toucherons, whose office it was to collect evidence against the prisoners,
was approached by the Duke and told that it would be pleasing to the great
nobleman if the evidence was so colored as to render the charge on which derets
would be tried less than capital. But the Duke reckoned without. The Bishop
of Nantes and Pierre de Lospital, Grand Seneschal of Brittany, these fearless exponents
of justice, summoned de Toucherons. Before them, Monsieur said de la Hospital,
fixing his penetrating black eyes on the lawyer, Jotti lies plain before you,
situ be well performed. The bishop fingered the jeweled cross suspended from his
neck. Bites golden chain, you have taken an oath to do equal justice
to origin. Poor monsieur, he reminded de toucherons x communication. Maybe the
penaltiful oath breaking criminal procedure then in vogue in France differed from that of England,
and that the accused was not permitted to confront his accusus face to face.
At the trial. Evidence for the prosecution was taken before a commissioner especially
nominated for that purpose, then reduced to writing. The transcript of this testimony
was then transmitted to the trial justice, who summoned the accuse before him,
read a brief summary of the offense of which he was charged, and proceeded
to examine him. No opportunity was afforded the prisoner for cross examination of the
prosecution's witnesses, nor was he informed of the nature of their testimony. It
remained for the judge to piece together the stories of the prosecution and defense,
deciding for himself whether the prisoner had adequately refuted the testimony of his accusers.
Such a thing as trial by jury was undreamed of anywhere outside of England.
Manifestly unfair as this procedure was in many respects, it had one advantage lacked
by the common law system. The accused was unable to invent false testimony with
which to meet unexpected statements made by the prosecution's witnesses. The investigation opened on
the morning of September eighteenth, fourteen forty. The witnesses were introduced into the
Hall of Justice singly, or in groups if they were relations. On entering
the room, each witness knelt before the commissioner, kissed the crucifix and swore
with his hand on the Gospels that he would speak the truth and nothing but
the truth. After this he related all the facts in his knowledge pertaining to
the case, without being either interrogated or interrupted. The first to present herself
was Bowing Lusoud, living at Laroche Bernard. Tears streaming down her face,
she related how two years before, in the month of September, the Sire
de Retz with all his retinue, passed through Laroche Barnard. She lived opposite
the house where the nobleman stopped her child, a lad of ten, the
finest in the village, had attracted the attention of Directs as he stood a
window, leaning on his squire's shoulder. Pontu Direct's servants spoke to the boy,
asking him what he intended to be when he grew up. I soldia,
the lad replied very well. Pontou answered, come with me and I
will give you a sword. The child entered the house with Pontu for the
coveted weapon and was never seen again. Deposition followed deposition, always to the
same effect. Parents had left their houses, sometimes only for a few moments,
when they returned that their children were gone. An old beggar woman,
once subsisting on the peasants alms, had been observed going toward the castle at
evening, many times accompanied by children. She invariably returned alone. In a
few months, from some unknown source, she had amassed a competence, moved
from the neighborhood, and was seen no more. Thirty children had disappeared from
a single village within a year, and the victims were always boy. No
girl child had been molested. So frequently had the kidnappings become that parents dared
not send children to tend sheeper goats or carry food to their fathers or brothers
working in the fields. When Jean Labat went to the chateau to Arrestaurets Paren
Lussard, half crazed with grief at the loss of her child, had accompanied
him. Entering a stable while the sergeant's guard was there to protect her.
She had found a heap of ashes and powder, which gave off a sickly
and peculiar smell. At the bottom of a trough, she found a child's
shirt, half burned, the remaining portion caked with dried blood. After several
days spent in taking similar testimony, the prosecution announced its case complete and court
was open to hear what defense Gille de la Valle, Sire Derets and Marshal
of France, had to offer to the dastardly crimes charged against him. The
Marshal entered the courtroom dressed in dublet and hose of white satin, thickly sown
with seed pearls. About his neck hung several golden collars emblems of his orders
of knighthood. On his breast a half score military decorations blazed for the Sire
Direts had been a mighty warrior of France before he took up his abode in
the country and became the object of terrible suspicions. On a dozen hotly contested
fields, he had led the French forces to victory, and had engaged in
the Siege of Orleans, with Jean Dark, entering the castle's moat with her
and being severely wounded by an English pikeman. Upon his head was a cap
of ermine, the royal fur, which none but the King and a few
of his most valuable nobles were privileged to wear. No one at first glance
would have thought the Sire Direts capable of such horrid crimes as those of which
he stood accused. His face was somewhat pale and war and repose, an
expression of gentle melancholy. But his beard was his outstanding characteristic. In sharp
contrast to his hair and mustache, which were light, almost blonde, it
was jet black, yet in certain lights it assumed a blue hue. It
was this peculiarity which earned for the Sire Direts the surname of blue Beard,
a name that has attached to him in popular romance since the Middle Ages,
though his story has undergone a strange change, remaining in general memory only as
the ghastly fairy tale which frightened children today. Mild and gentle as Direts's face
appeared at first glance, However, a closer inspection revealed an innate cruelty in
his eyes. There always smoldered a lurking, sinister expression, which now and
again glowed like charcoal embers when blown upon by the fire bellows. At such
times he ground his teeth like a wild beast about to leap upon its prey,
and his lips became so contracted they showed pale and bloodless against his beard.
Then it was his beard appeared to bristol and show its blue shade more
than ever, and his face paled to a corpse gray. After a few
moments, his features became serene again, a sweet smile on the lips,
which had a moment before been set in a diabolical snarl, and his expression
relapsed into a vague and tender, melancholy Messieurs, said the Marshal, lifting
his furred cap and saluting his judges with formal politeness, Pray expedite my matter
as quickly as possible. I would that my unfortunate case be soon disposed of,
for I am peculiarly anxious to consecrate myself to God's service. He has
pardoned my sins, and I would even enter a monastery and become a monk.
I fear not. I shall richly endow several of the churches of Nante's,
and shall distribute the greater portion of my goods among the poor the betters,
to secure the salvation of my soul. Had this been Spain, where
religious fervor swayed even the actions of courts of justice, the Sire directs as
Plea might easily have operated to discontinue the prosecution. But the Frenchman is as
practical in things spiritual as in things temporal. Monseigneur gravely replied Pierre de lospitour.
It is ever well to think of the salvation of one's soul, but
you will please remember that we are now concerned with the salvation of your body.
A look of impatience flitted across the face of gild de Ritz. I
have confessed to the Father superior of the Carmelites. He answered, through is
absolution, I have been able to communicate. I am therefore guiltless and purified.
Pierre de Lospital drummed noiselessly on the polished table before him with his finger
tips. True servant of the church, though he was the talk of confession
and purification pleased him not at all. To day he was sitting in this
secular capacity of judge, the body of a man accused of killing the bodies
of helpless children was on trial before him. Let the superior of the Carmelites
supervise the welfare of the prisoner's soul. He Pierre Lospitol would perform the earthly
office. Men's justice is not in common with that of God, he said
finally, Nor though you were forty times confessed and shriven, can I tell
you what your sentence will be until they have heard the evidence in your case.
Be ready then to make your defense. And listened calfully to the charges
brought against you. He nodded to the courts clerk, who rose an unrolled
apartment. He ye, Gille de la Vor, sired the rats conseiller.
To Majesty the King and Marshal of France, read the priest, forasmuch as
it has come to our ears that you have seized and caused to be seized
the bodies of several little children of the Diocese of Nantes, not only ten
or twenty, but thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, one hundred,
two hundred and more and have murdered them with inhuman tortures, afterwards burning their
bodies to ashes. We do charge, and a joy your true answer to
make to these charges, and say whether ye be guilty or not guilty of
these abominable doings. The grave eyes appeared. De Lospitalal never left the prisoner's
face while the indictment was being read. What justification can you make? He
asked, dickon oath and the holy Gospels to declare the truth, not I,
exclaimed the marshal haughtily. The witnesses are bound to declare that testimony on
oath, But I, the accused, need take no oath. I will
make no answer. Pierre de lospital rose from his chair, gathering his scarlet
robes of office about him. He was a small man, wiry and quick
as a terrier, and with something of the terrier's nervous activity in his movements.
His great head, with its high white brow, seemed to weigh down
his diminutive body. His eyes, large and black, have been likened to
the pools of new ink, and truly, like the ink, they recorded
everything. These eyes, he fixed on Derets in an unwinking stare. Do
you refuse to plead, he asked, in a voice of ominous calm.
I do, thundered the marshal, the deathlike pallor, which told of his
ungovernable temper beginning to spread over his face. I'm Marshal of France. I'm
Pierre de lospital stretched out a scarlet clad arm and pointed to a baize curtain
hanging near the judge's bench. The portiere swung back, revealing an alcove recessed
from the main chamber. In it was a long, low bench of dark
wood, worn smooth and polished by much use. At either end were curious
rope and ring attachments, and above it was a windlass over which the ropes
wound. Standing beside the instrument were two men in close fitting tights of brown
stuff uncouth headgear, Masking their faces through the eye holes in their masks,
they watched Pierre de Lospitol expectantly. Gilderettes glanced once through the uncurtained doorway and
cast a look of murderers hated his judge, But a pallor more sallow than
that of rage overspread his face. For the low wooden bench in the alcove
was the rack, and the masks. Men beside it were the official torturers
of the court, gilderettes, who delighted in the sight of suffering children,
enjoyed in the sound of their death moans, had no stomach for the rac
I will answer, he said, attempting to compose his features. Torture me
not good, Monsieur de lospitale. I implore you as to the charges,
I say nothing. They are simply false and Columnus, indeed, answered his
judge. And am I too believed that all the people who complain of having
lost their children light under oath? Undoubtedly, replied the Marshal, his equanimity
restored now that the curtain had been again drawn before the rack, What am
I to know of their brats? Am I their keeper? Gain me the
same answer, remarked Pierre de Lospital. However, as you solemnly deny these
charges, we must question Marier and Pontheu. Orier Pontu, cried the Marshal,
trembling, surely thy accuse me of nothing not as yet they have not
been questioned, but they are about to be brought into court, and I
do not think they will lie in the face of justice. I demand that
my servants be brought not forward as witnesses against their master. Stormed the Marshal,
his brow wrinkling and his beard bristling blue upon his chin. A master
is above the gossiping tales of his servants. Do you think, monsieur,
your servants will accuse you. I demand that I, a marshal of France,
a baron of the duchy, should be sheltered from the slanders of small
folk who might disown as my servants if they are untrue to me. Justice
knows no smiled folk and no great We shall see what Torrier and Ponteu have
to say. Pierre de l'opeito nodded meaningly toward the curtain concealing the rack.
There are means of gleaning this ruth had a sign from the judge. Guards
led the sire to red back to his prison in the corridor outside the courtroom,
the Marshal passed to Arier and Ponteu, escorted by a jan darn Henrier
averted his eyes, but Pontu burst into tears at the sight of his master.
Deretz held out his hand, which Pontu kissed affectionately. Remember I'll have
done for you, my children, said the Marshal and be good and faithful
servants. Again, Ponteu covered his hands with kisses, but Oria shank from
him with a shudder in silence. The two culprits were conducted to the bar
of the court. Pierre de Laspital looked sharply from one to the other,
then signed to the clerk to read the indictment, which charged them as accomplices
of the Sire de Retz. Never for an instant did the eyes of the
President of the Court leave the face of Oria, while the clerk droned out
the charge. Henrier was a sharp contrast to Pontu. Ponteu's bullet head,
short, thick neck, and undershot jawed nature, innately cruel and bestial.
Nothing but torture carried past the limit of human endurance would wring the truth from
him. Henrier, on the other hand, was as fragile and as prettily
made as a girl. Slender and tall, with tapering white fingers and blonde
hair falling in loose curls about his ears, he looked anything but the criminal
he was accused of being. His blue eyes, though set too close together,
were mild and timid in expression, and the slope of his beardless chin,
bespoken nature rather weak than wicked. What say ye or atch ad men,
guilty or not guilty? Asked Pierre de las Patol, still gazing fixedly
at Henrie halas, Monsieur exclaimed, Henrie, I am even as you say.
I shall tell all, for I have another master besides my poor master
of rats, and I shall soon be with the heavenly one. He would
have continued had not a shout from too interrupted him. Monsieur le juge,
he cried, My poor friend is tossing the head. He's mad. All
he says is but the raving of a lunatic. Ah pontou out of their
non mouth. Hast thou convicted thyself, returned Pierre de Lospatal, For hadst
thou not been concerned and devil trated, thou wouldst not have feared their friends
or ravings proceed. He nodded to Arie, and see to it that thou
speakest but the tithe. But Henriette seemed to have lost the power of speech.
Only incoherent murmurings came from his nervously working lips. At last, he
managed to gasp, Monsieur le George, I cannot speak to the abominable words
I have to utter while that is in my sight. He pointed a trembling
finger to the great crucifix suspended about the judge's bench. Led by Pierre de
Lospital, the court and stood with bared heads while amid a deathlike silence,
the image of the Lord was veiled in black bunting condensed. Henrier's testimony was
as follows. On graduating from the University of Angus, he had taken the
situation of reader in the household of Sire Direts from the first The Marshal had
taken a liking to him and soon made him chamberlain and confidante. When he
had been in the household about six months, the Marshal decided to deed the
castle Chantons to the Duke of Brittany. The night preceding the morning the Duke
took possession, the marshals summoned Henria, Pontou, and one petite robin to
his bed chamber. When all were assembled, Direts compelled Henrie to kneel on
the bare floor and take a solemn and horrible oath, never to reveal what
was about to be told him. The oath taken the Sire. Direts told
them he was expecting the Duke's officers to take over the chateau of the following
day, and before that happened, there were certain matters which had to be
disposed of. Ponto and Robin grinned knowingly at this, but Henrie was in
the dark until the other two servants procured ropes and poles tipped with hooks.
They then led the way to an old, disused well, giving Henria a
torch in one of the grappling hooks. They lowered him into the well with
instructions to pass up all he found there. What was his horror to find
the whole filled with bodies of children, long dead. Almost fainting from fright
and horror, he had nevertheless proceeded with the task assigned him, and before
daybreak the well was emptied and the little bodies, all of them terribly mutilated,
burned to ashes in a great bonfire the other two servitors built. He
had counted thirty six heads in the well, but more bodies than heads.
Following this horrifying experience, life went on as usual within the Marshall's household for
several months. Direts was deeply religious, and attended daily masses in his private
chapel, accompanied by his entire suite. But one day, just at dusk,
the Marshal summoned Herrier to a room in a remote tower where a great
fire was blazing on the hearth. Fetch me a child, his master ordered,
curtly, not daring to ask an explanation, Henrier went outside the castle,
seized a little boy he found in a nearby road, and carried him
to his lord Kellett. The sire direts bade him Hillett. The young secretary
stammered, how dolt direct stemped his foot impatiently, at the same time drawing
back his lips like a snarling beast slit its throat. Henria carried out the
fiendish order, while the Marshal stood by and gloated at the side of the
little one's death. Agonies and began a life of crime unspeakable for Arier.
Child after child he bore to his master, always with the same fatal result.
Sometimes Derretz himself inflicted the death stroke. More often he stood by watching
his servants performing the deed. Lucky was the child whose life ended with one
quick blow from knifer axe torture, slow and horrible was the lot of the
great majority of the little victims. When one of these massacres was finished,
and the port infant finally dead, the Marshal was invariably filled with remorse for
the deed. He would toss weeping and preying on the bed, or recite
fervent litanies on his knees while his servants washed up the floor and incinerated the
little victims in the great fireplace. An insupportable odor filled the room where these
slaughters invariably took place, but the Marshal inhaled it with keenest delight Enrie acknowledged
he had seen no less than forty children done to death in this manner,
and so good a description was he able to give of several that it was
possible to identify them as children whose parents had testified to their loss. Relating
the case of two lads named Hamelin Babes, of three and four years respectively,
he told how the older boy waited his turn, weeping and praying,
while his little brother was slowly tortured to death. But this is incredible,
exclaimed Pierre del Hospital, whose eyes dilated at the horrors of Henrier's revelations.
Only some of the caesars of Rome have been charged with such detestable crimes.
Monsieur le Jeuge Henria replied. It was the acts of these caesar's my master
desired to emulate. I used to rid him the chronicles of Serroneus and Tacitus.
He never tired hearing them, but ever urged me. Toriid more and
more? How many children do you estimate? As Sire Dorets and his servants
killed daraken in his long eye from my own wretched part, confessed to killing
twelve with my own hand at my master's orders, and I have brought him
more temtary score. I know this devil's business has long gone on before I
entered his service. Have you more to declare? Asked the president of the
court, signing himself with the cross. Nay Mongers said to ask Ponteux,
my friend, to corroborate what I have said. Pontius, said Pierre Delaspita,
turning his burning eyes on the other culprit I commands you, in the
name of God and of Justice, to declare, order to know the deep
grave lines about the older servant's mouth LinkedIn as his facial muscles tightened, but
he kept silence for those who will not speak dereris to raq, the judge
reminded him, signing to the torturers to make ready. But Pontu, heartless
murderer though he was, had still the virtue of loyalty to the hand that
fed him. Not until the executioners had forced him on the rack and the
cold iron of the jives bit into his wrists and ankles, did he commence
his confession. Then, as the head torturer laid his hand the windlass,
which would tighten the ropes, dislocating the prisoner's knee and elbow joints, Pontu's
confession began. If he had maintained a stubborn silence in the face of torture,
his volubility was great enough now all that Henrie had told him more.
He related heaping description of crime after revolting crime before the court, till Pierre
de Lspital would hear no more enough, exclaimed the judge, cutting short the
prisoner's abhorrent tale, where a thousand men on trial before us, thou hast
told enough to convict them all. Next day, Gille de la Valle stood
once more before his judges, What then, Serb mike you to the charges,
asked Pierre de laspitalt I am Chamberlayne and marshal to his Veneratan mojesty.
The King France began the prisoner arrogantly. This is no affair of the King
of France, thundered the judge, and sinsed at the criminal's effrontery. Confess
or by a Lydian Saint Denis, you go to the race. Cowed his
iron nerve broke by the thread of torture, Gil de la Vald told such
a story as no court before or since ever listened to. Shortly before his
voluntary retirement from the royal court, he had chanced upon a Latin book detailing
the lives of the Caesars. Tales of revolting cruelty which would have sickened an
ordinary man, thrilled him with the greatest pleasure. He resolved to imitate or
surpass these monsters of antiquity. That very night he carried his resolve into execution
by running his sword through a luckless wife he came upon in the streets of
Paris. But Paris was a great city under the ever watchful eye of the
King's officers. His plans could not be carried out there in safety, so
as soon as he could wind up his affairs, he renounced his promising career
as a courtier and submerged himself at his principal country seat. From the day
he settled at Marsh School, his depredations on the childhood of the diocese of
Nantes began. In less than seven years, he had committed personally or by
agent, more than eight hundred child murders. The confession finished, Gilles de
la Valle looked expectantly at his judges. He was a very great, a
very powerful nobleman. Yet the President of the Court had shown himself fearless and
impartial throughout the trial. Would they order his lands confiscated? Would they dare
imprison him, Grand signor and favorite of the king though he was. Pierre
de Lospital, president of the Court, glanced from left to right where his
associate justices sat. Each way, he looked his colleagues, met his eyes
steadily, and nodded briefly significantly. Pierre de L'spatalle looked down upon the prisoner,
as though some loathsome reptile were coiled upon the pavement before him, A
mort, he said shortly, and at the words a bell high up in
the tower of the Hall of Justices began to toll. Gille de la Val
fell back apace, his jaw relaxing as he looked upon the stern faced man
who had pronounced the sentence a mort to death. Gille de la Val,
Sire de Retz, Chamberlain and councilor to the King, cousin of John V,
Duke of Brittany and Marshal of France. I'd been sentenced to die like
a common felon amourt, he muttered, wonderingly, stunned by the two word
sentence, to hang in shame between two criminals. I Lord so died.
Dear mast, whispered Henrie, who pale and tearful, had stood to receive
his sentence. The Sire Derets turned on him with an animals snarl. His
lips went back from his teeth, and his beard showed blue in the half
light streaming through the court room windows. You, he began, raising his
clenched fists over his trembling servant. You try, are you to A gent
dame laid hands on him and led him from the Justice hall. Every effort
was made to stay execution. John V, Duke of Brittany, was not
pleased that his cousin should die upon the gallows gold lands. All the mighty
fortune of the mighty Sire Derets were offered the Bishop of Nantes. If only
he would consent to have the sentence commuted, churches would be endowed, Countless
masses should be said for the souls of the worthy poor, Splendid abbeys should
be built. Next morning, a procession of priests, monks and civil guards
wound its way through the Nantes to the meadow of Biess, on the further
side of the River Loire. Three men, hands bound to sides, iron
clanking at their ankles, marched near its head. The procession halted near a
line of poplar trees, where three gibbets, the center, one somewhat higher
than its neighbors, had been erected out of the depths. Have I cried
unto thee O, Lord, Lord, hear my voice. Let thine ears
be attentive to the voice of my supplication, chanted the choir. The tallest
of the three prisoners, elegantly dressed in white satin, mounted the rickety step
ladder standing beneath the center gallows, A masked executioner adjusted the noose about his
neck, being careful not to disturb his pointed blue black beard on the creamy
lace ruffles at his throat. The other two condemned knelt in their chains beneath
their respective gibbets. They a brave soldier of our Lord d'a masta. They
called a ruffle of drums, a swelling anew of the de profundus from the
choir of monks. The tall stool was struck from under him, and the
body of Gille de la Valle swayed grotesquely in mid air above the fire of
brushwood and pitch. The executioner lighted under it. From the crowd came six
veiled women and six barefooted carmelite friars, carrying an ornate coffin. The body
of Gilderettes was cut down, scarcely scorched, and carried toward the carmelite church
of our Lady. Two more high stools crashed to earth, Two more bodies
dangled at Rope's ends. Two more fires roared beneath the gallows, but no
coffin was brought forward for Enrie and Pontou, their bodies crisped to ashes,
borne away by the autumn breezes among the poplars of the Loire and the meadow
of b S, while in the carmelite church of Our Lady, a mighty
choir of monks chanted the responses of a solemn high mass of requiem above the
remains of Gille de Laval Cioretz, Chamberlain and courtier to the King Marshal of
France, and Bluebeard, the greatest criminal ever tried before a court of justice.
Note from the peculiarities of his case, as related by his servants and
himself, there can be no doubt that Gille de Laval, like the famous
check the Ripper of London, was a victim of that form of insanity known
to modern psychiatrists as algolognia see a Abril psychoanalysis, Wharton and still medical jurisprudence,
Church and Peterson, nervous diseases and insanity. But his insanity was not
such as would entitle him to escape legal execution, either under the common or
civil law, since by his own confession, he knew the unlawfulness of his
acts and was clearly able to distinguish between right and wrong, as his fits
of remorse showed. See Clark, or any standard text book on criminal law
see berry Quinn. This is the first of a series of articles written for
Weird Tales by Sea Berry Quinn. The second will appear in the November issue.
End of section one, Section two of Weird Crimes by Sea Berry Quinn.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Ben Tucker.
Number two, The Grave Robbers, the thief who would steal the pennies off
a dead man's eyes is proverbially the meanest crook in the world, judged by
present day standards. He is also a piker. For the post war inflation
everything else mortuary thievery has increased its anti. Robbing the dead, or more
accurately, stealing from the bereaved, is so mean a form of crime that
it is fortunately seldom met with. Yet a few crooks have specialized in this
despicable thievery and found it while it lasted exceedingly remunerative. Late in nineteen twenty
one and early in nineteen twenty two, the police of Chicago began to receive
complaints from recently bereaved residents of the city's West side. The articles stolen varied
in kind and value, but the circumstances surrounding the crimes were invariably the same.
A family which had lost a member would attend the internment, and when
they returned they found their home had been burglarized and rifled of every valuable of
an easily portable nature. For three months, this funeral burglar carried his flashlight
in jimmy in the wake of death in Chicago's West Side. More than fifteen
complaints were lodged with the authorities, and the burglaries went merrily on. At
last, the police department decided to set a trap for the thief. Special
officers were detailed to the case, and when a prominent resident died, they
asked permission to attend the funeral services. When the friends and mourners had entered
the waiting limousines and driven off to the cemetery, the officers remained behind.
Scarcely had the last motor in the funeral procession disappeared. When the telephone began
to ring imperatively, the officers glanced significantly at each other and let the bell
continue to jangle. Five minutes passed again, the phone rang, and again
the officers ignored it another five minutes, and the telephone rang again, longer,
this time as if the party on the line were urging Central to make
an effort to get the family again. The detectives remained mute. Hardly enough
time to allow a rapid walker to travel from the corner drug store to the
residence elapsed before the police heard the sharp click of a rear window being forced,
and a neatly dressed young man stepped briskly from the butler's pantry to the
dining room, making with unerring instinct for the sideboard where the family silver was
stored. At the station house, he gave his name as Benjamin Schumurky,
aged twenty one, and admitted being the perpetrator of the series of burglaries which
had cost bereaved chicagoans thousands of dollars. His system, he told the police,
was a simple one. Each morning, he searched the obituary columns in
the daily papers. When the names of people living in prosperous sections of the
city appeared, he made careful note of the day and hour of the funeral,
noting whether services be from the home church or undertaking establishment. After allowing
a reasonable time for the obsequies. He would ring up the family residence.
If anyone answered, he would announce himself as a friend of the deceased and
offer condolences. Then, after another interval, he would call again. If
he received another answer, he would repeat the farce of tendering simple and bide
his time. When his telephone call was finally unanswered, or if his first
ring brought no response, he would go to the house, force a window,
and make off with silverware, jewelry, and anything else easily carried.
His gentile appearance averted suspicion even if he were seen leaving a prosperous neighborhood with
a bundle. A speedy trial followed in residence of Chicago's West Side will have
to defer the doubtful pleasure of entertaining mister Shimerky until he has exhausted the hospitality
of Joliet Penitentiary. An attempt to practice the same specialty was nipped almost in
the bud in New York early in nineteen twenty two. Samuel Deutsch, a
four times offender against the New York burglary Statute, was caught red handed by
a young woman who happened to remain in the house to straighten up the rooms
while the family was attending the burial of a deceased relative at Woodlawn Cemetery.
When discovered, Deutsch told that the young lady. It's all right, I'm
the undertaker. You're a thie, replied the courageous girl and grabbed him,
calling loudly for help. At the same time. He shook her off,
but was captured before he left the block. You've got me right, he
admitted the policeman. I used to look up deal bits, and when I've
seen a bunch of them in the same neighborhood, I'd grab me at Jimmy
and knew me stuff had to it. Choose her Murky's precaution of telephoning.
The chances are he would still be at liberty. As it is, he
had been made very comfortable in his old cell at Sing Sing, where he
will continue for twenty years less time off for good behavior. No less ingenious
and decidedly safer for its perpetrator was the scheme conceived by Samuel f Ware,
a Negro undertaker of Atlanta, Georgia, for mulleting relatives of persons he had
buried. Where's plan had for its basis the principle of the Indian gift.
He would sell a casket, then steal it back again. Doctors and undertaker's
mistakes, and often their profits, are usually permanently screened from public view by
several cubic feet of earth, and Where's dereliction might have gone unsuspected indefinitely had
it not been for his desire to secure the last split scent of profit from
his perfidy. An expensive casket might be sold, stolen back, and resold
two or three times, but after its fourth or fifth in tournament it began
to look shop worn. A little time and expense spent in refinishing it would
have made it a readily immergentable commodity once more. But Where was averse even
to the small overhead chargeable against his profits. Accordingly, he employed an emissary
to canvass the smaller funeral supply houses offering high grade caskets at prices attractively below
the usual wholesale. One of these traveling salesmen approached the Southern Undertaking Supply and
Sales Company of Jacksonville and told them a certain Atlanta undertaker was preparing to furnish
them a limited number of fine caskets had a price far below that of the
manufacturers. Solo. Indeed were the prices quoted that the company's secretary became suspicious
and communicated his suspicions to police Chief Beavers of Atlanta. Chief Beavers also suspected
that all was not as it should be, in detailed two plainclothesmen to investigate
these bargain counter caskets. South View Cemetery is the principal Negro berrying ground of
Atlanta, and it was here the detectives began their quest. Nothing untoward was
apparent. The place presented the usual hodgepodge of expensive monuments and neglected graves common
to all Negro cemeteries in the South. The wind sawed dolefully through the Lombardy
poplars, birds twittered and quarreled in the branches. A pair of Negro grave
diggers applied their mournful trade and the unyielding yellow clay. While just stuck around
tonight and see what happens, one of the detectives said. The other agreed,
and after a cursory inspection of the graveyard and a few formal questions to
the grave diggers, the sluice left that night. They posted themselves behind the
fence where they could get a full view of several new and flower decked graves.
Toward morning, and undertaker's motor casket wagon drove to the cemetery gate,
was admitted, and chugged its way to the new section of the graveyard.
Three men armed with mattox and spades alighted, carefully removed the floral pieces from
a grave, and commenced to dig tins. With excitement, the detectives saw
the trio unearthed and expensive casket tumble the body back into the grave, replaced
the earthen flowers, then drive off with the burial case, for which several
hundred dollars had recently been paid. Drawing their revolvers, the detective barred the
wagon's passage. The occupants attempted to run them down, but the side of
the officers guns and shields, coupled with the fact that they were white men,
dampened their ardor for the exploit. They surrendered. When the officers inspected
their catch, they found they had taken Samuel f Ware, president of a
prosperous Negro undertaking company, and Thurman Jones and Claude Mattox grave diggers and the
cemetery's employee. A few days after War's duplicity became known in Atlanta, the
traditional belief that colored people in the South always give cemeteries a wide berth exploded
with an impressive baying. Scores of enraged colored residence of the city whose dead
had been in the Southview Cemetery, armed with picks, shovels, hose,
rakes, any sort of delving instrument they could find, descended upon the Peaceful
God's acre and began a personal investigation of their relatives graves. The first grave
opened was that of Nancy Joy, one time Belle of Auburn Avenue. Her
casket was gone. It was found in the next grave to be explored,
that of a Negro man, where had stolen it after burying Nancy and resold
it to the man's family. For some reason, perhaps because he had not
yet gotten around to it, he had not stolen that particular casket a second
time. As each grave was opened, new whalings and moanings arose, until
it seemed the cemetery was witnessing a gigantic, multiple funeral, each part of
which was equipped with a large and demonstrative core of mourners. For a time
it appeared that the cemetery would be bereft of its dead. But after striving
futilely to calm the excited negroes, the cemetery authorities sent for the police,
who put an abrupt stop to the impromptu investigation, where Jones and Maddox were
indicted by the Fulton County Grand Jury shortly afterwards, the indictment charging violation of
section four oh eight of the State Penal Code, which prescribes a maximum penalty
of ten years imprisonment for the one hung removal of a body from its grave.
A novel defense was outlined, the contention being that the caskets alleged to
be stolen were really rented. The suggestion of this remarkable defense, involving the
psychology of the fine funeral, was made by one of the grave diggers arrested
with where where I told us? He said that he wasn't stealing those caskets.
He said he had just rented them to the families so they could make
a big show of having a fond funeral. He said his customers had agreed
to let him put the bodies in playing boxes. Afterward and take back the
expensive caskets, though he could rent them to other people. The caskets were
removed under cover of darkness, it was explained, so that nobody would know
of Where's arrangement with his patrons. There was no indication of such an understanding,
however, among the Negroes who had thronged Southview Cemetery when Where's operations were
being unofficially investigated, neither was there any evidence of rental agreements. When his
case came on for trial before the petit jury, a verdict of guilty was
quickly arrived at, and the miscreant who had betrayed his patron's trust received a
sentence of the extreme penalty provided by the statute, ten years imprisonment at hard
labor. The third article in this absorbing series, while appear in an early
issue of Weird Tales, end of section two Section three of Weird Crimes by
Sea Barry Quinn, this LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by
Ben Tucker. Number three, The Magic Mirror Murders we gets Barbara the blacksmith
of the little Bavarian hamlet of Laisher three to the daughter of Peter Reisinger,
we gets landsman. If he gets landsman, pretty, Barbara replied from her
doorstep, think your young cloud a boat's ill weather. This morning, the
blacksmith studied a fleck of cotton wool vapor riding languidly across the blue German sky.
Then turned his smile on Barbara again. Nine he opined, tis but
a wind cloud? But why so anxious about to wither? Is it to
a picnic party? You go? I'll decked in your pretties. Barbara brushed
the tip of her nose with a tiny cluster of corn flowers plucked her father's
dooryard. Indeed, as the blacksmith had said, she was dressed in her
finest A cloth skirt, a neat little jacket of the same material, a
blouse, of course, linen spotlessly laundered, pinchback ear rings, even stockings
of white cotton and leather shoes were among her morning finery. And by this
last it might be known she was wearing the very best her wardrobe afforded for
poverty rode heavily on the shoulders of the Bavarian peasantry in eighteen oh seven,
and both men and women went barefoot or shod with wood, except upon gala
occasions. Stockings and leather shoes were worn only to mass in celebration of the
King's birthday. Were other extraordinary fits. The girl smiled coquettishly at her neighbor.
Perhaps I go to look for work, perhaps to seek a husband,
who knows, she answered. But the blacksmith began, then broke off with
a puzzled shake of his head. The ways of young folks were beyond him.
He resumed his way towards his forage, while Barbara set out in the
opposite direction along the Hamlets single street. When the day's work was done,
the blacksmith returned to his home in his evening meal of black bread and pea
soup, But Barbara did not return that night. Barbara did not return at
all. It was as if she had walked over the rim of the earth
at the horizon. Her parents frantic inquiries for her. Weeks and months went
by, but no one could tell them of her whereabouts. Village heads were
shaken, Dire surmises of her fate were uttered by local wiseacres, and her
disappearance had taken its place in neighborhood tradition. Almost when gossip was suddenly revived
by the disappearance of Katherine Seytel, a belle of the neighboring community of Regendorff.
Early in January eighteen o eight. Katherine had set out from her father's
house, also dressed in the best clothes she had possessed. Like Barbara,
she answered questions concerning her destination evasively, and like Barbara, she seemed to
vanish, like a smoke wreath from her grandsire's pipe. She was gone,
and no one could or would give any news of her. Matters might have
simmered down in her case, as in that of Barbara Reasoner, had it
not been that Katherine's elder sister, while Burgha Sydel, was a spinster of
more than ordinary firmness of purpose. While others shrugged their shoulders over Katherine's disappearance,
some even hinting the path she had taken led to the sort of ease
purchased with shame, while Burga insisted her little sister was the victim of foul
play. So vehemently did she assert this belief to all she talked with that
the neighbors began to look upon her with a sort of tolerant pity. One
day early in the spring of eighteen o eight, while Burgo was passing through
the public market of Regendorff, when she espied with amazement a bit of cloth
she recognized as coming from the skirt Catherine had warned the morning she left home.
Entering the shop, she excitedly demanded whence the cloth came. After a
moment's hesitation, the Hebrew proprietor of the place informed her he had bought the
goods from a certain Fraul Beechell, wife of Andrew Beechell, a day laborer
who lived nearby. He volunteered the further information that Frau Beechell was one of
his regular customers, trading cloth and trinkets for goods, and often selling him
garments or cloth remnants for cash. Though this offered no real evidence to support
her suspicions, Wilburgo felt more convinced than ever that her sister had been murdered
or spirited away, and determined to find what part Beachell had played in the
mystery. With greater cunning than might have been expected from one of her station
in life, she went not directly to Beachell's house, but to the neighborhood
in which he lived. Pretending to be in search of work, she interviewed
every household in the vicinity of the Beechell home, bringing in the Beechell family
incidentally in her conversation, and adding together such scraps of information as different neighbors
let drop. That night, she reviewed the result of her work and found
herself in possession of the following facts and rumors. Andrew Beechell, a day
laborer and the son of a day laborer, was about forty eight years old.
Because of his indolence, he was usually out of employment, and the
small vegetable garden before his house was more productive of weeds than any other crop.
About a year before, however, his fortunes had suddenly taken a turn
for the better. He had in some way secured a couple of pigs,
a goat, and several geese, and had been heard to both of a
contemplated purchase of a cow. None of the neighbors could account for this sudden
prosperity, since Beachell had been, if possible, lazier. Since his fortunes
began to mend them before, his clothing and that of his wife was noticeably
better than formerly, and disregarding the usual custom of having all his garments made
at home, he had fallen to patronizing and nearby Taylor, he supplying the
materials while the tailor fashioned the garments. Beachell was noted for his good nature,
or rather for his lack of aggressiveness in former days, having permitted himself
to be bested in every encounter, whether physical or verbal, rather than defend
himself. He was known for a coward both physical and moral, always seeking
to ingratiate himself with those he met and resorting to the most servile flattery in
order to secure the barest toleration from his acquaintances. Of late, he had
achieved a greater esteem among a certain element of the locality, since he had
shown a willingness to buy beer for whoever would consent to drink with him.
At the end, it must be remembered that fiscal conditions in the Germany of
that day were as stringent as those of the post war period, only the
pressure was from exactly the opposite direction. In the disorganization following the World War,
the republic suffered from an inflated currency, literally from too much money.
In eighteen o eight, poverty was due to lack of money of any sort,
and a few pence secured by the sale of articles of little intrinsic worth,
might easily raise a peasant to a position far above that of his struggling
neighbors, whose whole time was occupied in securing the barest necessities of life.
Bearing this in mind, we can realize how articles of practically no value,
provided they could be obtained without cost, might enable a poverty crushed German to
outdistance his fellows. A floating logs valueless to the man on shore. To
the spent swimmer, it may mean salvation. While burghas Sidel was aware of
all this, a lifetime of poverty had impressed her with a very definite appreciation
of values, even the value of a piece of secondhand clothing, and her
sister had worn an entire outfit of new clothing besides several articles of cheap jewelry
on the day she disappeared, while Burgo pondered the information she had gleaned for
several days before she again sought the neighborhood where Bitchell lived. A few guarded
inquiries disclosed the name of the tailor Bitchell patronized. She located a shop and
predending faintness from the heat. It was early May, went in and begged
a drink of water, while the tradesman fetched her a cup. She inspected
his shop and suddenly started forward in her seat upon a hook ready for delivery.
Hung a waistcoat, and it was made of cloths such as her vanished
sister had worn for a cloak when last seen. Doncashun she told the tailor,
draining the dipper he handed her. Then, as she rose to leave,
she turned, surveying his wares carelessly. That waistcoat, she said,
pointing to the garment which had set her pulses racing. It is a pretty
thing. You make it for some gruff some great gentleman. No Nine,
laughed the tailor, shaking his head. No great gentleman comes to this shop.
I make it for a neighbor one hair beechel. Yes it is pretties,
it not, he added, stroking the soft cloth. Almost. I
think too pretty for a man's wear. Twould be better in a lady's coat.
Not jaw Chah, ejaculated Walburgo chokingly, as she stumbled from the astonished
tailor's place. Yes, yes, for a lady's cloak. To be sure,
and she burst into peals of hysterical laughter. Oh sister, dear little
sister, She sobbed as she half walked, half ran along the dusty road
toward Beechell's house. Some one has done you an injury, But Walburgo will
find out. Walburgo will never rest till she has found you. And she
clenched her work worn hands and frenzy. And if they have dared to harm
you, I've got twould be better for them had they never seen the sun.
A few minutes hurried walk brought her to Beechell's door, upon which she
hammered unceremoniously. Beachell himself answered her summons, smiling pleasantly. You wish to
see me, he inquired, politely, Wretch, Walburger cried, my sister,
My little sister, Katherine, What have you done with her? Beachell's
pale features remained politely, inquiring, not the trimmer of a muscle betrayed her
words had touched an uneasy conscience. Catherine, he repeated, as though puzzled,
What Katherine, I know many young ladies by that name, joking with
emotion, while Burger declared herself the sister of the vanished Katherine's Sidle and again
demanded an account of her sister. Beachell heard her through, then repeated his
declaration of innocence. He knew no Katherine's Sidle, he insisted, never remembered
having known a girl by that name. The Fraeuleine was mistaken, she was
excited the heat. Perhaps would not the Fraeuleine enter and take of a cup
of goat's milk. It had a very soothing effect on those affected by the
unseasonable spring heat. So sincere he seemed, and so genuinely anxious to help
her that while Burger's suspicions were almost disarmed, but there was the evidence of
the piece of cloth in the market stall and the new waistcoat at the tailor's.
While Burgo left the Beechell home and sought the unter Suchung's Richter or provincial
magistrate. The police system of Bavaria at that time was decidedly defective. Indeed,
as we understand the term today, there was practically none. Each village
had its constable or police officer, whose duties were more of a supervisory than
a police nature. He seldom, if ever, patrolled the streets, nor
did his authority extend beyond the impounding of misdemeanants. In addition to these purely
local and inefficient officers, there was the gendarmerie or military police, whose duties
were twofold the protection of the government from political offenders and the enforcement of the
magistrates mandates. In this latter duty, which was wholly subordinate to that of
arresting political enemies of the crown, they acted almost as our modern bailiffs or
United States marshals, not attempting action on their own initiative, but waiting till
the direction of the magistrate. A certificate of suspicion from the examining judge was
necessary to set the police machinery in motion, as a warrant from a US
commissioner or a judge is required before lawful search and seizure may be made in
this country. But slow moving and inadequate as the Bavarian engendarmerie of a century
ago was, it possessed the German characteristic of thoroughness, and once a magistrate's
order was hinted them, the officer kept their task till they had some definite
report to make. With painstaking care of the gendarmes interrogated every resident within a
mile of Mutual's home, making voluminous notes of the answers they received. Their
investigation began on May nineteenth, eighteen o eight. By nightfall, they had
taken testimony from every man, woman, and child Beechell's neighborhood, and had
gleaned one fact of prime importance. Several young girls had gone to Beechell's house
to see their fortunes in a glass, and though several neighbors had testified to
this, not one could be found who could say he had seen one of
the girls. Since in the forenoon of May twentieth, two sergeants of police
went to Beechell's house. He was gone to a nearby fair, where goods
of all descriptions, including second hand clothing, were bought and sold. The
officers walked round the house, inspecting the outbuildings, glanced at the garden,
and returned to the doorstep. Lighting their porcelain pipes, they seated themselves in
the shade. Beechell must return some time. Everyone came home, sooner or
later. Life was relatively long, and a day of waiting mattered little Besides
sitting in the shade was vastly preferable to marching over miles of dusty road to
the fair. A nervously energetic Latin or efficient Anglo Saxon policeman would have exhibited
symptoms of hydrophobia at sight of such tactics, but the Germans under stood German
psychology. At nightfall, Beachell returned his pockets clinking with copper and silver.
The proceeds of his day's trading, and the sergeant's matter of factuty placed him
under arrest. There was no haste in the proceedings. Beachell was permitted thirty
six hours in solitary confinement to allow his conscience to begin its work, then
summoned before the examining judge. This official kept the prisoner waiting beside his table
for several minutes while he pretended to be busily examining some papers. At length,
he looked up, staring at Beachell as though he had been some novel
sort of animal. Do you know the reason for your arrest, Andrew Beachell,
he asked at length. Nine Mine here, replied the prisoner, with
a servile bow. So the magistrate raised his eyebrows. You do not very
well, he motioned to a gendarme, and Beachell was conducted back to his
solitary cell. Another day and night elapsed, and Beachell was and led into
the magistrate's presence. Andrew Beachell said, the judge, tell me why you
are arrested. Mynheer, replied Beachell, upon the Holy Cross, I cannot
imagine. Then you must have a few days of rest and quiet to stimulate
your imagination. The magistrate answered there were no such things as writs of habeas
corpus in Bavaria. When a prisoner refused to talk, he was lodged in
solitary confinement until his tongue loosened. Andrew Beachell spent a week more in a
cell during which he heard no voice and saw no human face, even his
food being passed to him through a small opening in the dungeon door, which
permitted him no sight of his jailers. Seven days meditation eroded Beachell's resolution.
The next time he faced the judge, he was ready to talk as before.
The magistrate asked Andrew Beachell, do you know why you're arrested? Yes,
mynheer, answered the prisoner. It is in connection with the disappearance of
Catherine's sidel and Barbara Risinger, but of her supplemented the judge. Yes,
you're a worship faltered Beachel and Barbara Rissinger too. Where are they? What
did you do with them? The magistrate demanded, Oh mine'er, the trembling
wretch protested, I did nothing with them on the holy tree by the beard
of Saint Andrew, my patron. I did them no injury. They came
to me. They pestered me to get them their fortunes. Told I knew
a man, No, your Excellence, I do not know his name,
nor whence he comes. I knew a certain man who can divine the future.
This man, he has but one eye, Your Exaltedness, and is
also plagued with the goiter. This man came to my poor house and showed
these misguided girls their few husbands in the peep show. A peep show,
echoed the judge. What kind of peep show? A crystal ball? Your
nobleness, a crystal ball? Did you not say it was a peep show,
Yes, your honorableness, But time into crystal balls such as Eastern fakiershus
What you know of Eastern Fakier's Andrew Bachel your worship, I have read,
Andrew Bichel interrupted the magistrate. I can read that you are an unconscionable liar.
Back to your cell rogue. You will be questioned anon when you are
ready to tell the truth. Meantime, the gendarmes had not been idle.
Accompanied by a squad of men, a sergeant had searched the Beechell homestead from
roof tree to cellar. In an upper room concealed beneath a heap of trash,
two roomy chests have been discovered. When the padlocks on their lids were
forced. They were found literally crammed with articles of feminine apparel linens, skirts,
jackets, cloaks, leather shoes, stockings, bits of cheap jewelry like
that worn by peasant bells, combs, undergarments. Enough clothing to have outfitted
a small village of middle class peasant girls was recovered from these trunks. Most
important to the prosecution, articles definitely identified as having been worn by Barbarressinger and
Cathasidal were found among the chess contents. The judge ordered a careful inventory made
of these things, and commanded the searchers to continue their work scarcely believing more
evidence would be unearthed. The police proceeded to make a cursory investigation of the
land and outbuildings without bringing anything more to light. But one of them was
suddenly struck with the idea of utilizing a four footed assistant. A hunting dog
was secured and turned loose in the grounds. The animals seemed at fault for
some time, but when one of the officers led him into the dark shed
at the rear of the lot, he betrayed increased interest. Against the shed's
rear wall was stacked a pile of manure, the pungent ammonia gas that gave
off obscuring all other odors which reached the men's noses. But the dog was
not to be thus fooled. He attacked the base of the pile with his
fore paws, dug tentatively a moment, then abruptly seated himself, pointed his
muzzle skyward, and emitted a dismal, long drawn out howl country bread.
The policeman recognized the sound only too often they had heard dogs give vent to
the death cry when members of their master's family had died. Her gott cried
one of the men, while another crossed himself piously. A digging fork was
brought and the police attacked the dung heap. Beneath a litter of straw.
Quite near the surface, the lower half of a woman's body was found.
The clayey soil, and combination with the straw and the manure, which shut
away the air, had completely foiled the murderer's purpose. Instead of decomposing,
the flesh was almost perfectly preserved, though suppontification had taken place to some extent.
Feverishly, now the police dug a torso the arms. Finally, a
severed head were brought to light. Catherine's sidle was found. For several days,
the officers prosecuted their search, each succeeding excavation revealing a fresh vility,
poor, vain little barbera risinger, was taken from the unconsecrated grave where she
laying nearly a year, and the bodies of other girls not reported to the
authorities were brought forth to keep her company. But the most ghastly phase of
this terrible case appeared when surgeons summoned to view the bodies hinded in their reports.
In every case, the women's throats bore evidence of wounds, but in
no instance were these wounds sufficient to have caused immediate death. The opinion of
the doctors was that the women had been dismembered while still alive. The preliminary
evidence secured The examination of Andrew Beech will begin. Under the criminal code then
enforced in Bavaria, there were no rules of evidence as common law lawyers know
them. Every fact germained to the case in hand was to be elicited.
The accused was not permitted to face his accusers, nor was he permitted to
refuse to testify against himself. The Untersuchung's Richter, or examining judge, combined
the duties of prosecuting attorney and police judge, being charged with the double office
of examining into the crime and committing the prisoner. If the evidence weren't at
it to jail to await trial by the central criminal court of the district.
Prisoners might not be tortured into confession, the rack having been formally abolished by
law in eighteen oh six, but they were held in close confinement during the
entire period of their examination, which sometimes lasted for months. The science of
psychoanalysis had not been dreamed of in those days. Yet something closely akin to
it obtained in the Bavarian courts. The examining magistrate would ask the prisoner innumerable
questions, many of them having only the most remote bearing on the case.
Yet at intervals there would be sandwiched in questions of the utmost importance, questions
which, coming amid irrelevant queries, might easily startle the accused into a damaging
admission. All questions and answers were reduced to writing by a notary, and
any unusual length of time taken by the accused in answering a given question,
His demeanor at the propounding of questions calculated to illicit damaging replies, and similar
facts were also noted in the minutes of the examination. Footnote. It is
to this faithful noting of the most minute details in the transcripts of these criminal
examinations that we owe our ability to record practically all the important incidents in trials
held more than a century ago. Editor end footnote. Despite his declared intention
of telling all, Beachell fenced skillfully with the judge for several days, contradicting
himself a dozen times at each session, but inevitably being led to an admission
of his guilt. At length, the magistrate asked him, did you not
pretend to have a magic mirror in your possession? A mirror in which young
women might see their future husbands. Beachell was observed to change color at this,
but stoutly denied it. The judge, unhurried, confident his questions would
bring out the truth, continued at intervals to ask, tell us of your
magic mirror, Andrew beachel Or, why did you pretend to have a magic
mirror? Persistence at last prevailed worn out, with constant questioning his solitary confinement
between court sessions making him a prey to his accusing conscience. Beachell at length
broke down and confessed he had let it be noised about among the peasant girls.
He said that he possessed a magic mirror in which any girl looking would
see her future bridegroom, And to sweeten the bait for the silly fies he
purported catching in his web, he also said he would accept no fee for
a look at this marvelous glass, but she who would see its secrets must
come secretly, otherwise the charm would be broken, and she must come dressed
in her best as she would wish to appear when first beholding her future husband.
His plans succeeded with shameless ease. So fast the girls applied that he
had to turn some away for fear of conflicting engagements. The procedure was the
same in each case. The victim was shown a piece of board about which
a towel had been wrapped. This was the magic mirror. When the wrappings
were removed, Beachell assured his dupe the future eyegroom would stand revealed. But
first he must pronounce an incantation, and the girl must help him with her
own pocket handkerchief. He bandaged her eyes, binding her hands behind her back
with a piece of packing thread. Then, standing before the smiling girl,
he pronounced these words, maiden, behold like bridegroom. His name is death,
So saying, he struck her in the throat with a butcher knife he
had concealed in his sleeve. A basin was ready. He eased the terrified
girl to the floor, placing the vessel where it would catch the blood from
her wound, lest her clothes be stained and so rendered unassailable. For it
was for their clothing and a few tawdry trinkets that he had murdered all these
innocent, credulous girls. When the victim was exhausted, he undressed her,
folded her clothes up neatly, ready to be packed in his treasure chests upstairs,
and proceeded leisurely to dismember and bury her body. The astounded judge asked,
but why did you anatomid them before they were dead? To this,
Speechel made the astonishing reply, Your excellence discumt it was delightful when the tedious
process of collecting all available evidence at length came to an end. The written
report of Beechell's case, comprising several volumes of closely written German script, was
certified to the Central Criminal Court by the examining judge. Wary lawyers with endless
tongues had no opportunity to address the court. Under the Bavarian Criminal Code,
the defendant's legal adviser was allowed to read the transcript of testimony taken before the
examining judge, then to prepare written defense of his client. In this brief.
He might base his defense on either the law or the facts, or
both, and might use as much space as he deemed necessary. But he
might not appear in person before the court. Thus it was that many an
advocate won fame as a criminal practitioner, yet had never seen the judges whose
decision his pleas s wait. Beachell's counsel did the best he could with the
handicap under which he labored, and the Central Criminal Court doubtless read his learned
defense attentively, but the result of the case was foregone. On February fourth,
eighteen o nine, nearly a year after his arrest, Andrew Beechell was
led into court to hear his sentence. It was an impressive scene. The
judges, in their robes of office trimmed with ermine, the royal fur and
token of their right to dispense the King's Justice, sat before a long table
of age darkened oak, raised three steps above the courtroom floor. Behind them,
and before the doors and windows of the hall, stood halberdiers and coats
of green and gold, the sunlight glinting on the polished heads of their weapons.
The official justicer, the Headsman, stood beside the steps leading to the
judge's table. A crowd had gathered to hear sentence pronounced, and broke into
murmurs of suppressed rage. As two stalwart jailers led the prison before the judges.
The clamor of halbert Butts on the floor brought instant silence, for the
halberdiers were not slow to rap for order on the heads of the rabble if
their first admonition to silence went unheeded. Beachell halted before the judge's table,
and the President of the court rose facing him. In one hand, he
held a parchment scroll. Before him. On the table lay a light wand
of dried willow. The prisoner's pale face went a shade whiter as he beheld
this, for well he knew what the wand portended. A pause, the
judge unrolled his parchment and read the sentence that Andrew Beachell of Regendorff be dragged
to the place of execution and be not carried or allowed to walk. That
he there be broken on the wheel from the feet upwards without the previous mercy
stroke, and that his body be afterwards exposed on the wheel as awarding to
evildoers. As he finished, the President picked up the willow wand snapped it
into and cast the pieces at Beachell's feet. This was to signify that as
the wood was separated in two parts, so should the condemned man's soul and
body be severed in the furtherance of the King's justice. Almost insane with terror,
Beashel was dragged from the courtroom, his vain pleas for mercy ringing fainter
and fainter till the closing of his dungeon door shut them off completely. Well
he knew the fate awaiting him. He would be tied against the great cart
wheel, so that he hung like a fly caught in the web of a
giant spider. Then, with a heavy sledgehammer, the brawny executioner would rain
blow after blow upon him, breaking the bones of his legs and arms,
his ribs, finally crushing his skull. In ordinary cases, the headsman would
have given him the blow on the head first, so that the others would
been but savage mutilation of his dead body. But his sentence had expressly provided
that he should be broken on the wheel from the feet upwards. Without the
customary mercy stroke, he would die slowly, horribly. The thought drove him
shrieking against the unyielding door of his cell, striking it with his fists,
Crying aloud for mercy. He who had shown no pity to the girls whose
finery he coveted. Next morning, when they led him out to die,
he gave a great shout of joy as he beheld his executioner, For that
grim official leaned upon the handle of a great sword, not on the hell
of his terrible hammer. The court had reconsidered its decision during the night and
commuted his sentence to death by beheading, saying it is below the dignity of
the state to vie with a criminal and cruelty. This is the third of
a series of unusual articles that Sea Barry Quinn is writing for the Weird Tales.
The fourth will be published in an early issue. End of Section three,
Section four of Weird Crimes by Sea Berry Quinn. This LibriVox recording is
in the public domain, read by Ben Tucker. Number four Schwiantek the Beggar,
the landlord of the Silver Axe, was on the verge of nervous prostration.
Half an hour before a messenger had brought tidings of a great English milord
whose coach had broken down a scant ten miles from the hamlet of Palomija.
Even now, the wealthy foreigner were not all the English fabulously rich and his
servants were making their way as best they could along the forest road, and
the Silver Axe was the first end they would pass on their journey to the
town of Dabko. The winter of eighteen forty eight had been cruel to the
inhabitants of the lord Ship of Harcost in Austrian Galicia. The peasants, who
got their meager living by hewing down the tall fir trees and floating them down
the vistula to market, had been sorely plagued by deep snows and frozen streams.
Disease and lack of fodder had depleted their small supply of livestock, and
the taxes of the landed proprietors of whom they held their hovels and little garden
patches had been heavier than usual. In these circumstances, there had been few
coppers to buy beer and fewer silver pieces to buy wine at the tap room
of the Silver Axe, and the landlord's purse had suffered in consequence. Now,
when May had come to drive away the lingering frosts of winter, and
the menfolk had gone to their summer work of resin collecting, came word of
the wealthy Englander dropped into the Landlord's inn, like the purses of the good
Saint Nicholas, into the lapse of the dowerless maidens. And there was nought
with which to prepare a feast for the unexpected guests. Chickens had perished on
their roosts and the biting winter frosts. One of the pigs had died of
the cholera, and the other had been taken by the Imperial tax collector in
lieu of unforthcoming coin. Only the ducks remained. The ducks. That was
the solution of the problem. The landlord would regal the Englishman with roast duck.
Come come, he called to his bustling hoss Frau, make haste kill.
We are three ducks. We must have them roasted to a turn,
with pickled fish and watercress, and the best of our wine for the rich
Englander. It will be a meal fit for the table of a duke.
Doubtless our guest will reward us with a gold piece. Mayhap two followed such
an agonized squawking as never before was heard in all Ductum, as the landlady,
in her assistance ran a dignified and much scandalized drake to his doom.
But of the slaughtered drake's harem, no sign was to be found. Search
high, search low, No frightened quack gave testimony of a cowering duck hiding
the axe. Time pressed, the Englishman drew nearer with every passing minute,
and only one duck lay waiting to grace the table for the famished foreigner and
his hungry servants. A trembling stable boy ran to tell the landlord. The
landlord tore it his hair and beard, calling freely and impartially on all the
red and black letter saints in the calendar to witness his misfortune. He also
cursed the stable boy who brought him the evil tidings. But most of all,
most horribly, most blasphemously, he cursed the unknown miscreant who had robbed
him of his ducks, and of the prophet he would have made from the
Englishman. What misbegotten descendant of an unvirtuous wild pig would do this thing to
me? The landlord questioned, of the unanswering forest wind, who would still
for me? Do I not attend regularly at Holy Mass and give liberally to
the poor? Do I ever turn beggars from my fire, the landlords ceased
his curses and put on his hat. The rehearsal of his charities had turned
his thoughts upon beggars in general, and from mendicants in general. His thoughts
had turned upon the neighborhood beggar in particular. Scarcely a stone's throw from the
silver axe stood the hut of Schwiantek, the beggar of Polumnia. Summer in
winter, this old man was to be seen squatting at the church door,
his long white beard falling to his knees, as he held forth his wooden
basin and wind and arms and arms for the love of Christ. Kind friends,
give to the needy, and the Lord will reward you arms, arms,
for the love of God. The Landlord cherished no love for Swiantek.
On more than one occasion he had caught him in the act of pilfering from
the silver axes none too plentifully stocked pantry, And on more occasions than one
he had proof he had suspected him of thievery. To be sure, who
would have been more likely to make away with the so precious ducks than this
whining mendicant, who, though strong and hardy as any man his age and
the forest banded circle of Tornau, preferred to eke out an existence on what
he could beguile from the pockets of honest laboring men. The landlord picked up
the stout cudgel and set off for Sciontech's hut. As the rogue stolen my
ducks, he muttered, I'll write the Eighth Commandment on his thievish hide.
With this, he brandished his club menacingly as he neared the beggar's door.
The strong and savory odor of roasting flesh greeted his nostrils as he crept nearer
Sciontech. The beggar, the man who lived without work, was preparing a
meal of meat, while the great English mellow word must go hungry and the
worthy landlord of the silver axe unrewarded villain. The landlord shouted, bursting through
the door, I have caught thee red handed. I will teach thee to
steal ducks from honest men while their guests cool their heels and hunger. Schveontek
stepped back quickly from the fireplace over which he had been bending. At the
same time, stuffing some object about the size of a duck out of sight
beneath his peasant's blouse. In a trice, the furious landlord had him by
his venerable white beard, shaking him as a terrier does a rat. Back
and forth. The innkeeper shook the beggar, berating him as only a man
whose good fortune has been suddenly snatched awake hand. The half roasted piece of
meat which Siantek had all this time clutched to his bosom beneath his loose blouse,
slipped from his grasp and fell, rolling and bumping to the floor.
It was the severed head of a fourteen year old girl. Horror paralyzed,
the innkeeper stared at the grizzly thing, catching his breath in short panting sobs.
Siontek slunk into a corner of the hut. Next instant with an inarticulate
cry of mingled rage and fear. He made it the landlord a butcher knife
brandished in his skinny hand. The knife flashed forward for a stroke, but
the swish of the innkeeper's oaken cudgel was followed by a heavy thud. Spiontek
the beggar sank to the hut's earth and floor without a cry. As fast
as terror spurred messengers could summon them. Gendarmes from Dabikao came to Polumjia and
hustled their prisoner to jail. All along the route. Spihontek cried out like
a trapped forest wolf, flinging himself repeatedly to the earth and attempting suicide by
trying to swallow clods of road, clay and stones. His captors choked these
from his throat with no very gentle hands. Austrian gendarmes were never noted for
tenderness toward their prisoners, and the already proven crime of this felon was not
the sort to inspire them with an extra amount of courtesy. The prisoner was
taken at once before the protocol committing magistrate's court and remanded to prison pending an
investigation. Gendarmes were sent to search his dwelling, while others scoured the forest
country for witnesses. In Austria, as in Germany, courts and prosecutors were
not hampered by refinements of evidence as those in vogue and common law countries.
Everything which had a bearing on the case in hand was eagerly sought and brought
out at trial, regardless of whether it was hearsay or not. Even rumor
was listened to on the odd chance it would throw light on the case,
the judges deciding what should receive consideration and influencing their decision. For this reason,
the agents of justice brought into court a considerable number of witnesses whose stories,
while inadmissible under British or American law, were nevertheless of great interest.
The residence of the lordship of Parkhost in the vicinity of Polomja were for the
most part wretchedly poor. They were woodcutters who tilled small garden patches in the
intervals between their logging work. Each held his house in farmlet by a sort
of valet tenure, that is, he paid no money rental, but was
bound to work a fixed number of days each year for his landlord. The
scheme of payment by labor, while it might at first glance seem the fairest
treatment of people whose stock a cash was always scanty, was really one of
the contributing causes of the peasant's poverty, since the landlords invariably exacted labor from
their tenants at times when the tenant's own crops were ripe for harvesting, or
when the cutting of timber would prove most remunerative. Nevertheless, in spite of
their poverty, the villagers had always a ready hand for those who besought their
charity, and witnesses who had transacted business with Siantec, always to the latter's
advantage, were numerous. One of the first to testify at the hearing was
a peasant woman who some two years before had taken compassion on the old beggar
as he crouched at the church door, and bidden him come to her cottage
for food. He had at first appeared reluctant, asking her if she could
not give him a copper instead, but when she charitably insisted on his sharing
the Sunday meal with her and her good men, he assented. They pressed
such food as they had upon him, but he seemed strangely lacking an appetite.
While he ate a little bread, he turned from the meat pie they
offered with what seemed to her like repugnance. After dinner, when the master
of the house presented the beggar with a pipe of tobacco, he became more
genial, recounting stories of his adventures upon the road and amusing the children with
a few tricks of simple leger Man. One child, a chubby little girl
of nine or ten, attracted the old man's attention. Particularly Cheyantek felt in
his pocket and produced a ring consisting of a piece of colored glass set in
lead foil. This he presented to the child, who ran off, delighted
to show her companions. Is that little maid or daughter? He asked the
housewife, No, she answered, she is an orphan. There was a
widow in this place who died, leaving the child, and I have taken
her into my family. One month more will not matter much, and the
good God will bless us for a charity. Aye aye, agreed Sriethtec.
The orphans and fatherless are ever under his particular care. She's a good little
thing and gives us no rubble. The woman resumed, you go back to
Palomija, tonight I do. The beggar answered then, as the little orphan
ran up to him, Ah, you like the ring, little one.
It is a beautiful thing, is it not. I found it under a
big tree to the left of the churchyard. Who knows there may be dozens
more in the same spot. You must go there after dark has fallen,
and turn around three times, then, says a boy, look among the
tree roots, and you will surely find more rings. Come, screamed the
delighted child to her playmates, Let us go up for rings. Nay,
nay, Shfintech cautioned, you must seek singly, one at a time,
or the charm will not work. The children scampered off to the wood and
Spiontech flung his coat about his stooping shoulders. You may thank me for ridding
you of the children's noise for a time, at least, he laughed,
as he opened the door to leave. He left the cottage, walking rapidly,
not going down the road, but among the somber ever greens, which
reached nearly to the front door. An hour later, the woodcutter's children returned,
out of breath with running. The little orphan girl was not with them.
Vaguely incoherently, as terrified children will, they told how she, braver
than the rest, had gone alone beneath the shadow of the fir tree where
rings were to be found. How she called out the words a boy lustily.
Then, how a startled scream had suddenly checked like the ceasing of a
night bird's cry when the bullet strikes its mark. They told two of a
monstrous form like that of a cloaked and bearded man, half distinguished through the
gloom, and of hurrying footsteps, sounding fainter and still more faintly through the
underbrush. It was a wolf, the woman said, crossing herself piously.
The talk of the cloaked and bearded man she set down to childish imagination.
Several schoolboys told how one of their companions, a boy named Peter, had
loitered behind his fellows one day after school. They saw him leave the path.
They thought they saw him talking with a man wearing a long cloak and
having a white beard. Though they could not be certain of this, one
thing was sure. Peter was never seen again. A wealthy Russian jew told
of the loss of his servant maid, a girl of thirteen. One night,
she left his house on an errand when she failed to return, he
became uneasy and set out to look for her with a lantern. Her footprints
were plainly marked in the light snow. It could be seen where she left
the road, wandering into a copse of fir trees. Here, other footprints,
much larger and heavier joined hers. For a time. The two trails
went on together than at a spot where the trees were so thick no snow
had drifted down upon the brown carpet of pine needles, all trace of the
girl and her companion was lost. At any rate, the girl was never
seen again. The gendarmes sent to search swam Tech's cottage returned with staring eyes
and bated breath in a chest neatly trussed up like a fowl ready for the
spit. They had found the legs and thighs of a half grown girl,
the child whose head s Fhiontek had attempted to hide when discovered by the landlord
of the Silver Axe. Beneath the earthen floor of the hut, they had
found caps in parts of clothing sufficient to account for thirteen children and a young
woman. The witnesses disposed of. Schviontek was summoned before the magistrate for a
time. He stood dumb before the court, not touched with remorse for his
hideous crimes, but paralyzed with fear for himself. With the notes of the
testimony before him, the magistrate commenced interrogating the prisoner, but wordless moans were
the only replies his questions. Evoked. At last, by accident, the
beggar's lips were opened. You must have been insane to commit these acts,
the judge remarked. A crafty look, A gleam of hope came into the
prisoner's little eyes. For innerant though he was, he knew the law forbore
to punish those whose misdeeds were committed while insane. Your excellency has said no
more than the truth, he replied. I was indeed a lunatic when I
transgress so terribly. But now, your Excellency, I am restored. I
pray you let me depart. Hence my reason is returned, and I will
send no more. Tell us first, how you came to do such savage
and unchristian acts, prompted the judge. It is necessary that our records be
complete before we dispose of the case. Disposing of a case was a phrase
capable of more than one interpretation, but dread of punishment and overwhelming hope of
freedom led Siontech to place the most favorable construction on the words. Smiling amiably
at the magistrate, stroking his patriarchal beard as he talked, he related one
of the most amazing criminal histories ever heard in a court of law. Three
years before, during the better winter of eighteen forty six, he had been
hastening through the forest to his cottage and Palomija, just as the sun was
setting. The frosts, which set in early in autumn, had held steady,
and the countryside had suffered greatly. Responses to his wine for alms had
been few and small, and he was near to perishing with cold and hunger.
As he neared the village, he came upon the still glowing embers of
a small Jewish tavern which had burned down that morning, and paused to warm
himself beside the smoldering ruins. Creeping nearer for extra warmth, he noticed the
charred remains of the taverns keeper, who had perished in the flames. The
scent inside of the roasted flesh so worked upon his hunger that he was unable
to resist tearing off a bit of flesh and tasting it. As the horrid
morsel passed his lips, he became to quote his own words as it were
a ravening wolf, rending, tearing, even growling in his throat like a
brute beast. He satisfied his hunger, then stuffed his beggar's pouch with material
for another horrible repast. Suddenly, the enormity of his act struck him,
flinging the pouch with its grizzly load from him. He ran pell mell down
the road until exhaustion compelled him to stop. As he sat upon a wayside
stone regaining his breath, the desire for another meal like the revolting one he
had just completed, began to steal over him like a drunkard's craving for drink.
Battling with his conscience, yet yielding, he retraced his steps, recovered
his pouch, and hastened home. From that night, he had never eaten
any other meat, bread, and vegetables. He had accepted from kindly disposed
peasants who pitied him, but their offers of meat filled him with an almost
uncontrollable revulsion. The little orphan girl, whose disappearance had been testified to by
her foster parents, was his first victim. He had killed and eaten her
as unconcernedly as another peasant would have butchered a calf or pig, freely as
the magistrate questioned him. He admitted murder after cold blooded murder, and case
after case of cannibalism, with a complacency which brought a shudder of horror to
all who watched. He rolled back his sleeves and loosened to the collar of
his blouse that the court might see how sleek and fat he had grown upon
his frightful meals. And now, he concluded, looking expectantly at the magistrate,
I have told you all, your excellency, surely you will let me
go. Inhuman monster, the judge replied, out of your own mouth,
you have condemned yourself. No madman could have told his tale so reasonably.
If there be any justice in the Empire of Austria, you shall die upon
the scaffold, and the public executioner will hang his head in shame that his
duties force him to lay hands on so vile a wretch as you. Screaming
with terror, Spiantek was dragged back to his cell for his terror. Powsied
legs refused to bear his weight. Next morning, when the turnkey of the
jail made his tour of inspection, he found that justice had been cheated.
Spiontech, the beggar had hanged himself to the bars of his prison window.
This is the fourth article of a series that Sea Birry Quinn's writing for Weird
Tales The Faith will appear in an early issue end of section four Section five
of Weird Crimes by Sea Berry Quinn. This LibriVox recordings in the public Domain
read by Ben Tucker. Number five Mary Blandy. Two dirty, unkempt urchins
fought and struggled in the gutterway of Henley. The Elder, a ragamuffin lad
of thirteen or so, bore his antagonists to the kidney stone pavement, pressed
his knee upon the other's chest, and leaned forward, intent upon gouging the
little fellow's eyes with thumb and forefinger. It was a trick he had learned
from the bullies of the waterfront, a trick no decent English lad would stoop
to. But this little alley rat was not a decent English lad. Help
screamed this smaller boy, fighting desperately to keep the sharp, unclean nails of
his enemy from his eyes. There was a clatter of flying iron, ringed
hoofs against the paving flints. A shout of command to the older boy and
a tall, auburn haired girl, slim and straight as a youth, flung
herself from her pony, laying her riding crop mercilessly across the unfair fighters shoulders.
Surprised by the sudden rear attack, the boy loosed his grip on his
opponent's face and turned furiously to defend himself. He might as well have attempted
to beat back the north wind, right, cut left, cut, back
and forth. The girl swung her whip with the speed and skill that marked
the practiced fencer, and the strength that tells of healthy young muscles grown strong
and supple through systematic exercise. Thou chill, thou mean base, violet,
thou Frenchman, She cried, still applying her whip, dost with teeth and
nails like a yowling GiB cat dart, not fit to breathe the air of
England. She cut him again, across his writhing shoulders. Hopelessly worsted in
the combat, the boy drew off a safe distance and made the oldest gestures
of insult. The world knows that of the thumbed nose, y'all go on
tomboy. He mocked from his zone of safety, beyond the cut of her
whip. Tomboy tomboy. Live like a man and die like a man.
Fighting girls and crowing hens. Always come to some badins. You'll die on
the gallows, Mary Blandie, and all your father's money can't save you from
it. Tomboy Tomboy, gallows bird Tomboy. The girl made a threatening gesture,
and he took refuge in flight, but his raucous taunt of tomboy tomboy,
gallowsbird tomboy could be heard long after the pattern of his broken soul brokens
no longer sounded in her ears. She tossed a copper for comfort to the
lad she had rescued, remounted her pony, and rode slowly toward her father's
house. Mary Blandy was the only child of Francis Blandy, a prominent solicitor
of the town of Henley on the Thames, and because her father had wished
a son and been disappointed with a daughter, he had done the next best
thing and had Mary educated more like a young squire than a young noblewoman.
At fourteen, she could ride fence and shoot as well as most boys several
years her senior and better than some, and her proficiency in the classics was
a source of wonderment and no little shame among parents with sons in the neighborhood.
Many of these, piqued by the girl's extraordinary ability, contented themselves with
saying such training and efficiency were unladylike, unfeminine, and entirely disgusting. So
at an early age, Mary Blandy suffered unpopularity among the parents of her boy
acquaintances. In a few years, unpopularity was increased a hundred percent for Mary
the young woman proved herself as apt at all feminine accomplishments as Mary the Girl
had excelled in boyish pastimes. Her father's house became a rendezvous for the elig
young men of the vicinity, and many a womanly woman sat beside her lonesome
fireside, while young professional men and officers from the nearby garrison made the rafters
of the Blandy withdrawing room ring with their song and laughter. Of all the
gay young redcoats who came to court Lawyer Blandy's daughter, the most favored was
Captain William Henry Cranston, an infantry officer brother to Lord Mark, care of
Scotland and possessor of a yearly income of fifteen hundred pounds, a very respectable
fortune in those days. Other suitors gradually drifted away, and in the course
of time the Captain's proposal of marriage was duly made, discussed by the Blandy
family and accepted. Happy in the possession of her gold laced lover, Mary
Blandy went about her preparations for marriage, choosing silks and taffeta's for gowns with
the nice discrimination that marked all her dealings, embroidering silk stockings for wear at
the Grandcourt levies she would attend when her precious sweetheart should at last be promoted
and ordered for duty at London Town. And between whilest dreaming the long,
long, open eyed dreams every girl dreams during her engagement. Then one day
came a letter for lawyer Blandy from the North Scotland. It was signed by
a young woman claiming to be Captain Cranston's wife, and what was more,
the mother of his son. Mister Blandy called his daughter to him, showed
her the letter and told her she must have nothing more to do with the
captain. Shocked as she was, Mary still held faith in her lover,
believing the best of him, as all good women do of the men they
love, declaring there was either some mistake or that the Captain would be able
to make a satisfactory explanation this. He was given an opportunity to do that
very night, and, when confronted with the documentary evidence of his perfidy,
coolly denied any attachment with the letters center. When lawyer Blandy, worldly wise
from forty years practice of a profession which has its tap roots and human frailties,
declared he needed something more than the young officer's bare denial, the captain
asked a few days grace in which to marshal his defense, declaring he too
would produce documentary evidence. Blandy was a just man and acceded to the Captain's
request, but put him on his honor not to see or communicate with Mary
until he showed the promised papers. A few days later, Captain Cranston appeared
at the Blandy residence with a letter bearing a signature identical with the one mister
Blandy had received. This letter, addressed to the Captain, admitted its sender
was neither his wife nor his son's mother, and had no claim whatever upon
Captain William Henry Cranston of His Majesty's Army. The canceled engagement was renewed,
and preparations for the wedding were all most complete when a second letter came for
mister Blandy, imploring him not to let his daughter marry a scoundrel, the
writer of Airred. She had been led into making a denial of her wifehood
by an urgent appeal from Captain Cranston, telling her he had no intention of
marrying Miss Blandy, having become engaged to her merely as a diversion. He
had urged his wife to stulton by herself, because he had no chance of
preferment in the service if it were known he was married, whereas if he
could pass a single a few months longer, he would surely be promoted,
and would then acknowledge her as his wife and bring her to live with him.
With womanly unselfishness, she had agreed to write the letter he sought,
but far from feeling proper gratitude of her sacrifice, the unprincipled rogue had sent
copies of her renunciation to her family, who thereupon turned her out of doors.
She was reduced to starvation, and prayed mister Blandy to release her husband
from his engagement and restore him to her. To prove the truth of her
claims, she enclosed the letter Crenston had written, asking her to sully her
reputation for his sake, and declaring his engagement to marry a mere frivolous pastime.
Such evidence could not be ignored. In spite of fervent protestations of innocence.
Mister Blande sent the Coxcomb Captain about his business and forbade his daughter,
on pain of disinheritance, ever to see him or write to him again.
But the love that laughs at locke Smith's pays even less attention to parental commands,
And though Mary dutifully forbore seeing the Captain, she carried on a continual
clandestine correspondence with him. His earnest disavowals of all wrongdoing, his passionate declarations
that he was the victim of a designing woman who sought to stand between him
and happiness overbore Mary's customary keen judgment. In a short time, she ceased
to think of him as a deceiver, and regarded him as a greatly wronged
man. Once or twice she undertook to plead her lover's cause with her father,
but her advances called forth such outbursts of temper from the indignant old gentleman
that she ceased the attempts. Mary had not inherited her father's auburn hair and
gray eyes without a fair share of his choleric disposition, and in the course
of their arguments she repaid most of his irascible remarks with compound interest, forgetting
that keyholes are as fairly adapted to servants, ears and eyes as to keys.
Her father's adamant attitude and her lack of intimate acquaintances among the neighborhood young
women forbade her telling her troubles to interested listener, and with this safety event
denied her, she poured forth her woes to her companion in Misery, Captain
Cranston. That gentleman was absent on leave from his regiment, visiting relatives in
Scotland, and it may well be supposed his replies were far from urging her
to meet obedience or patient waiting. Yet never did he counsel her to defy
her parent openly nor did he suggest a romantic elopement. Mister Blandey possessed a
considerable fortune and an unrelenting temper. If Mary contracted an unsanctioned marriage, she
would certainly come dowerless to her husband, and that eventuality was far from being
included in Cranston's program. In these circumstances, he had recourse to a stratagem
pretending great elation. He wrote his forlorn sweetheart that he had met a witch
in the highlands of Scotland, a woman able to brew all sorts of potent
drafts. She could concoct potions which begot instant an undying love in the breasts
of those who took them. She could charm birds from their and snakes from
their holes. Best of all, she could prepare a medicine, quite harmless
to the taker, which could mister Blandie but be induced to swallow. It
would instantly turn his aversion to Captain Cranston's marriage with his daughter into a beaming
consent. Mary knew the power of Scottish wishes, were they not beings condemned
for sorcery at every court term, And this particular which Cranston wrote was more
powerful in her magic, both black and white, than any yet condemned to
Haines. Trusting implicitly in her lover's promises, Mary joyfully awaited the coming of
the packet, which should bring her a happy issue out of all her afflictions.
In due time, the drug arrived, marked as had been agreed powders
for polishing Scottish pebbles. It was fine, white, and when applied to
the tongue with a moistened finger, had the faint, tart, sweet taste
of apples. At her first opportunity, Mary mixed a generous portion of the
medicine with her father's mourning rule. Then waited expectantly for an abatement and of
his hatred of Captain Cranston. But instead of becoming complaisant, mister Blande grew
more testy than ever. Fearing the charm had lost some of its potency in
the long trip from Scotland, Mary administered a still stronger dose the following morning.
Shortly afterward, her father took to his bed with violent stomach pains.
For a few days, Mary gave him no more of the powders, and
his health began to mend gradually, but his temper remained as hot as formerly.
Letters from the captain urged her to continue the treatment, and, feeling
sure her lack of success was due to insufficient dosage of the magic powder,
she prepared a larger portion than ever, pouring it into the broth prescribed by
the physician. Almost immediately, mister Blandey became desperately ill. The doctor was
summoned post haste, but declared his skill unavailing. The patient was dying then,
and not till then was Mary's consciousness awakened to the enormity of her actions.
At last, she realized the mysterious powders and her father's illness were cause
and effect. Overcome with horror at the part she had unwittingly played, she
rushed into her father's bedchamber, and, falling to her knees, sobbed.
Oh father, dear dear father, do what you will with me, meet
out any punishment you say fit, but forgive you a foolish love, blind
child. Oh my father, my father, forgive me, forgive me in
spite of the violent pain he suffered. Mister Blandy lay calmly while she told
her story, tears streaming down her cheeks, her words split with sobbing.
At last he put forth his hand, laying it gently on his daughter's bowed
head. My dear, he gasped, I forgive thee freely. Nay more,
I bless thee, and pray God will bless thee. Now go and
say no more of this business, lest thou shouldst let drop some word to
thine own prejudice. Farewell, my child had made God pity, and watch
over thee. As the weeping girl groped her way blindly from the room,
Lawyer Blandie muttered, Oh, the villain, the graceless villain, to come
to my house. He did my table, and in return take away my
life and ruin my daughter. Beside herself with grief and remorse, Mary ran
from the house, seeking solitude in which to weep away some of the anguish
in her heart. At last, feeling she must see her father to employ
his forgiveness once more before he died, she re entered the house and sought
the death chamber. A strange man, roughly dressed and armed with a heavy
bludgeon, stood at the door. As she approached. He smiled malignantly or
tomboy, He announced, zout not into here. Thy devil's work is already
done with a start. Mary recognized the bailiff. The age had altered him.
He still bore a strong resemblance to the gutter urchin she had thrashed years
before for fighting with his nails like a yowling GiB cat. And at his
repetition of the epithet tomboy, she remembered his shouted prophecy in the streets of
Henley, He'll die on the gallows, Mary Blandie. Now he was a
hanger on at the jail, a thief taker servant to the constable Tomboy.
His taunt of years ago came back to her. Gallowsbird Tomboy. She had
been a girl of fourteen when the dirty street Arab had called her that.
Now she leaned weakly against the wall for support, closing her eyes in hopeless
misery. Tomboy, Tomboy, gallowsbird Tomboy. The words seemed beating a rhythm
in her pulses. A hand fell on her shoulder, Mary Blandy, in
the name of our Lord, the King. She was under arrest. Her
trial for parricide was held at Oxford on March third, eighteen fifty two.
Among the witnesses for the Crown were her servants, all of whom testified at
the heated debate she had with her father over Captain Cranston. Not one,
however, could be made to say she had shown any evidence of harboring a
grudge. On the contrary, all the testimony showed that her anger evaporated almost
as soon as it boiled. While and today enjoys what it is perhaps the
best system of criminal procedure in the world, a system under which speedy results
are achieved and few, if any innocent persons suffering justice, she was just
emerging from the dark ages in which to be accused of crime was almost tantamount
to being convicted. When Mary Blandy was called to the bar. Persons accused
of felony or permitted counsel. That is true, but only to a limited
extent. Their lawyers might advise them on matters of law. But though the
Crown was numerously and ably represented by trial lawyers, counsel for the accused might
neither examine witnesses for the defense, cross examined witnesses of the prosecution, nor
advise their clients respecting examination of witnesses or any other matter of fact. This
might not seem so great a hardship at first glance, but when it is
remembered that a trial consists merely of measuring facts developed in evidence by the yardstick
of the law, it will be seen that for one untrained in the law,
to develop a proper legal defense from the testimony of his witnesses, or
to break down the prosecution's case in law by astute cross examination, was almost
an impossibility. Add to this the fact that while the crown's lawyers might address
the court in jury at length, the defendant's counsel might not be heard in
argument, and the hopelessness of the accused plight may be realized to offset the
inability of the defendant to be heard through counsel, The theory that the judge
himself was charged with the protection of the defendant's rites was laid down, but
only too often. In those days, this theory was no more than a
legal fiction, a grim jest at the prisoner's expense. The indictment for murder
covered several parchment sheets and charged that Mary Blandy Spinster, her not having the
fear of God before her eyes, did wickedly, wilfully maliciously, and of
her deliberate and premeditated malice feloniously kill and murder her father. The said Francis
Blandy of the town of Hinley aforsaid against the form of the statute in such
case made and provided, and against the dignity of our Lord the King.
How are you be tried? Mary Blandie, asked the courts clerk, when
he had finished reading the interminable hodgepodge of legal verbiage accusing her of murder by
God and by my country. The girl replied, using the proscribed formula,
which signified she desired trial by jury. Twelve residents of the Vicinity were sworn
well and truly to try, and a true deliverance made between our Lord and
King and Mary Blandie Spinster, and the trial commenced. It lasted eleven consecutive
hours, when all the Crown's witnesses had been examined, no testimony was offered
by the defense, and the Attorney General had harangued the jury, charging Mary
Blandie with the foulest of crimes next to treason known to the law. The
judge nodded to the girl her time to speak had come. Bewildered by the
unfamiliar surroundings, denounced by the very servants of her father's house, and with
not one friendly eye upon her in all that crowded courtroom, experienced girl rose
to plead for her life. An eyewitness of the trial describes her as being
above medium height, erect and proud and bearing, and with calm eyes and
unruffled brow. She was plainly but decently dressed in a gown of dark woolen
stuff with white linen collar and wristbands. Her voice, though low, was
distinct, firm and unhurried, and her wide gray eyes never left the judge's
face as she spoke. Among all the addresses delivered in court since Man first
sat in judgment on Man, Mary Blandy's surely deserves high rank for strength and
simple eloquence. The speech attributed to Robert Emmett had long been held a masterpiece
of forensic oratory, but Emmett was a practiced orator and fired with patriotism.
Mary Blandy had never addressed a public gathering in her life, and was on
the point of exhaustion at the end of eleven hours of denunciation, an ordeal
sufficient to break the spirit of a strong man. My Lord began dropping a
courtesy to the court. It is mortally impossible for me to detail to you
all the hardships I have endured. But worst of all, I have been
aspersed in my character. In the first place, it has been said I
spoke ill of my father that accursed him. That is entirely false. Sometimes
little family affairs have happened, and we did not speak as kindly to each
other as I could have wished. I own I am passionate, my Lord,
and in my passion I may have dropped some hard words. But your
lordship must have noticed what great care has been taken to recollect every word I
have said which could be applied to my disadvantage. These are hardships, my
Lord, such as you yourself must allow to be so. It has been
said too that I endeavored to make my escape. Your Lordship will judge the
difficulties I labored under. I lost my father. I was accused of being
his murderess. I was not allowed to go near him. I was forsaken
by my friends, affronted by them, mob insulted by my servants. Although
I begged to have the liberty to listen at the door when he died,
I was not allowed it. My keys were taken from me, my shoe
buckles and garters too, to prevent my making away with myself, as though
I were a most abandoned creature. What could I do? My Lord?
Was this a condition in which to attempt an escape? When I was arrested
in my home, I was locked up for fifteen hours without a maid to
attend the decencies of my sex. I was sent to jail, and the
high sheriff told me he must put an iron on me. A little later
he came in and said he must put a still heavier iron on my ankles.
Until my day in court arrived, I was chained like a savage beast.
My Lord, newspapers and ballad mongers have made the free with my reputation.
I have been represented as the most abandoned of my sex and prejudiced in
the eyes of the world. I submit myself to your lordship and to the
worthy jury. I do assure you, as I am answered at the Great
Tribunal, where I am some day to appear, I am entirely innocent of
my father's death. I really thought the powder was an innocent, inoffensive thing.
And I gave it to him to procure his love. It has been
mentioned I should say that I have been ruined, my lord, in the
sense the witness is mean. I have not. I am virtuous. But
when a young girl loses her character, is not that her ruin? Is
it not ruining my character to have this vile charge of murder laid upon me?
Whatever may be the events of this trial, my lord, I'm already
ruined, most effectually and beyond the hope of redemption. Carefully and painstakingly,
the judge instructed the jury in the legal definitions of murder in the first degree,
murder in the second degree, manslaughter, and innocence. He seems to
have been a just man who took his duty to conserve the prisoner's legal rights
seriously. The instructions done, the court rose waiting the jury's retirement, but
no movement came from the jury box. The clerk frowned an annoyance. A
bailiff motion to the jury's foreman to retire, but he was answered by a
stubborn shake of the head. Gentleman of the jury exclaimed the clerk, have
you agreed upon a verdict? He is prepared to suggest sarcastically that they retire
and deliberate. When the foreman answered in the negative, he was not given
the opportunity, we have replied the foreman. Prisoner, look on the jury.
Jury. Behold the prisoner, cried the clerk mechanically. Then as Mary
Blande rose and regarded the men who held her faith, the clerk continued,
gentlemen of the jury, how do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty
or not guilty? Guilty? The foreman spoke the words of doom. Gruffly.
Mary Blandy's unpopularity in the neighborhood had paid its final dividend. Your verdict
is that you find the prisoner at the bar guilty of murder in the first
degree, So say all of you, the clerk, in tone, following
the ritual of all criminal trials. Again, the jurors nodded solemnly, bring
me my cap, the judge ordered. An attendant fetched a small black silk
cap, which the judge fitted over his full bottomed judicial wig. No sentence
of death could be pronounced in an English court unless the judge wore this symbol
of mourning. The symbolism of the black cap in English courts was equivalent to
the broken Wand and German tribunals when the death sentence was given. Footnote see
article three of this series, The Magic Mirror Murders end footnote. Briefly,
the court congratulated Mary Blandion having had a fair and impartial trial by a jury
of her peers, and ordered that she be hanged by the neck until death
on the sixth of the following month. As legal form prescribed. He ended
the sentence with the prayer that God would have mercy on her soul. The
girl received her sentence calmly, nor did she waste breath in vain. Please
for mercy. She was not a lawyer's daughter. For nothing. None knew
better than she the inexorable course of British justice. During the thirty three days
of her imprisonment, Mary's conduct was marked by the utmost gentleness. Not once
was she heard to protest against her fate, or to reproach the servants and
former friends on whose testimony she had been condemned. Poor girl, why should
she cling to life? Her father was dead and she condemned in the world's
opinion as his murderess. Her lover had forsaken her in all the world,
she had not a single friend or well wish her. April sixth, the
dawned bright and warm. Mary Blandy arrayed herself in a modish gown of black
bombazine, with a white kerchief about her throat. When the sheriff's men came
to lead her to execution, she wished them a cheerful good morning. Executions
in England in those days were publicly conducted, and the gallows on which criminals
were hanged was not erected in the jail yard for each execution. It was
kept standing in an open field, where its grim shadow was a constant reminder
to evildoers. And this field was nearly a mile from the jail where Mary
Blandy was confined. A carriage was offered her, but she declined, saying
she would enjoy the April sunshine as long as possible. So, accompanied by
the officers and a clergyman, she set out upon her last journey afoot.
Previous to leaving the jail, her wrists had been crossed and bound before her
with black ribbons, a concession to her sex and gentility, and this mode
of tying her hands permitted her to hold a prayer book before her. This
was another courtesy for condemned criminals. Hands were customarily lashed behind their backs with
a rope. The attending clergyman read the office appointed for executions in the Book
of Common Prayer. But Mary Blandy opened her book to the psalter appointed for
the sixth day of the month, and read from Psalm thirty two. Blessed
is he whose unrighteousness is forgiven, and whose sin is covered, I said,
I will confess my sins unto the Lord, and so thust forgave us
the wickedness of my sin. Beneath the gibbet, a step ladder draped in
black bunting had been set up, and on this she mounted two rungs,
saying, gentlemen, I beseech you hang me no high of a decency's sake.
But the knotted noose swinging from the gallows crossbar would not reach her where
she stood, so she climbed to the ladder's top. A puff of wind
caused the ladder to sway slightly, and the poor girl cried out in terror,
falling, raising her helpless bound hands to steady herself. Fear Ye not
tomboy, called a hoarse voice from the group about the gallows. Ye'll fall
clean to hell in a minute. The chief Constable turned and struck her tormentor
such a heavy blow in the mouth that his lips bled. So her old
enemy's last meeting with Mary Blandy was like his first, the occasion of a
beating. When the rope had been adjusted, Mary raised her hands, drew
her kerchief over her face, and stood a moment in silent prayer. Then
she held her prayer book forward. This was the signal agreed upon between her
and the sheriff. Two husky jell attendants heaved the ladder from beneath her,
and Mary Blandy's slender body swung between earth and heaven. It was half an
hour before they cut her down, for her weight was not great enough to
break her neck, and she strangled slowly, while the great crowd of mean
folk gathered to watch the execution stood in hanging jawed amazement to see a woman
fight so long for life. At one o'clock the following morning, she was
carried by torchlight to the family vault at Hinley, and, with the rope
that strangled her still about her slim white throat, buried beside the father for
whose murder, rightly or wrongly, she was hanged. Diligent search was made
for Captain Cranston, but the scoundrel had heard of Mary's arrest, and,
deserting the army, fled to France. For five years, he lived a
fugitive from justice, but the government took legal proceedings to attach the source of
his income. At last, reduced to abject poverty, he died in a
home for the indigent kept by the Church at Boulogne, and was buried in
a nameless grave in foreign soil. This is the fifth article of a series
that Sea Berry Quinn is riding for Weird Tales. The six will appear in
our next issue. It is entitled The Werewolf of Saint Bunol. I describe
some startling things that happened in France under the reign of Charles the Ninth.
Be sure to read this gripping article and the may weird Tales. End of
section five Section six of Weird Crimes by Sea Berry Quinn. This LibriVox recordings
in the public domain, read by Bin Tucker. Number six, The Werewolf
of Saint Bernul. The long European twilight was dying, and darkness crept stealthily
across the fields and pasture lands as three horsemen trotted slowly along the forest road
of Saint Bernol. Two of the riders carried loots slung across their shoulders,
which marked them as trouvaurs ballad singers, while the third rode slightly to the
rear, balancing a portmanteau and his saddle bow, by which token he was
labeled attendant of the other two. All three jangled long swords from their hips,
for France was under the reign of the weak and vacillating Charles the ninth,
and who who would bring his life and property safely to his journey's end
must need travel prepared to defend them. Swoons, swore one of the minstrels,
drawing his scarlet cloak more tightly about his shoulders. But this abominable wood
is colder than the tomb of the blessed Louis. With winter good two moons
away. Methinks this chill in the air hath more o'er the devil's flavor than
of God's good weather. His companion grunted a reply and sunk his chin deeper
in his tippet. The speaker looked right and left at the pale new moonlight
sifting eerily between the tree trunks, and continued, A flagon of the Count's
wine would like me well enough the now? What would a twenty mile ride
and no pro vendeur for the man who based along the way? I'd sing
of Alexander the Greek and the author of the Briton from now till sun up
for a single stoop of wine and a morsel of bread and cheese. Again,
in articulate reply from his mate s death, the conversationally inclined singer went
on, didst Eva see such a lonesome, uncanny place as this accursed bois?
He thinks Monsieur Loupgarou himself would like no better place. For his question.
He flung back his bearded chin with a ringing laugh and began the opening
lines of Bisclavaret in a deep baritone. The poem, one of France's oldest,
dealt with the multitudinous herd not yet made fast and hell, the people
of the Loup Garou or werewolf, who had sold their souls to the devil
in return for the power of transforming themselves in the wolves to kill and devour
their enemies. All Europe trembled at the very name of these men monsters,
but no country was more plagued by them than France. Hush, hush Auri.
The taciturn minstrel suddenly broke his silence as the singer expanded the theme of
his terrible song. Pou Lamoire de la bon Dieux ceased that singing, suppose
a were wolf were in this twenty times damned wood. He glanced fearfully among
the shadows. We should all be torn to bits. Bah. The other
replied, de luke Garu would be lucky if I did not eat him.
Famished as I am, oh la monsieur were a wolf, he cried mockingly,
Come out of the fullest, come out and be eaten by the hungriest
song singer who ever kissed a tavern winch, or drank a gallant of Burgundier
to draft. It was as if his challenge had been waited for. From
a low, clumping bracken beside the road rose such a merrow freezing howl as
no man had heard before, and a huge, gray, shaggy form,
larger than any wolf that ever fought a pack of hounds, launched itself straight
at the astonished Trevor's throat. The horses reared in sudden terror, plunging futilely
to beat off his assailant. Amoi louis amois, froi sois quick for the
love of God, or I perish. But the other singer and the servant
could give no aid. Encumbered by their cloaks and trappings, their horses plunging
and rearing in panic fear, they could but fight desperately to retain their saddles,
and cry supplications to the Virgin help helpe. The attacked man called again,
then with a shout of desperation, he fell from his saddle, The
great gray thing's teeth fastened in his shoulder near the base of his neck.
For a moment, he thrashed among the underbrush, unable to draw his long
sword and powerless to thrust back the creature with his bare hands, and the
struggle his hand brushed against the hanger and his girdle. He dragged the short
cut and thrust blade from its scabbard with frantic haste, and struck once twice
three times at the foul creature, Snarling at his throat, a cry of
rage and pain sounded amid the monster's rowling, and with a deep, angry
bay, it rushed off into the forest depths. Mon Dieu gasped the minstrel
as he regained his saddle. Would the died heeded thy warning, Louis,
never again will I challenge one of those tall as hounds from the devil's kennel
Tomorrow morning, if it please our lady, we see the light of another
day. This matter goes before my Lord Duke, Holy Church and the secular
government must combine to rid the province of these changeling wolves. The three writers
set spurs to their mounts, nor did they slacken rein till safe within the
fortifications of the city of Dol. Next morning, the two singers and their
lackey appeared before the provincial officials and made formal complaint that they had been set
upon and one of them all but killed by a loup garoux or a werewolf
in the forest of Saint Bonol. The officials looked grave when they had heard
the complainants through This was not the first account of werewolf depredations to come before
them. Farmers living in the territory contiguous to the city had brought in accounts
of sheep stolen from the fold at dead of night, of dogs killed as
they watched the flocks, even of little children found dead and horribly mingled along
the roadside and beneath the hedges. Now came these three wayfarers, all of
them veterans of the wars, and two of them men of learning and respect,
to tell of being boldly attacked on the royal road as they journeyed through
the wood. This thing must not be The power of the country must be
raised, and the werewolf for ware wolves responsible for the outrages, sent forthwith
to the fiery Hill, where their master, the Devil, waited the coming
of their forfeited souls. France of fifteen seventy three was in no condition to
police her country districts. The long and devastating wars between Huguenots and Catholics had
made a sort of no man's land of large districts. Charles the Knights,
the king was a man of wax, molded now by this favorite, now
that, and giving no thought to the welfare of his people. Every available
saw that taxation could ring from rich or poor, was spent to gratify or
further the ambitions of the most corrupt and consciousness politician whoever debased a government,
the Queen Mother Catherine de Medici. In these circumstances, the Court Parliament at
Dole might pass as many enactments as it chose, but lacking force with which
to make its mandates effective, its acts were but mere scraps of unavailing paper.
One power still remained to the court. This was a levy on moss,
a general calling to arms of the countryside. Tradesmen and residents of the
towns of those days stood bareheaded when titled swaggerers rode forth, and the agricultural
classes were a little more important to the nobility than the earth they tilled.
For one not holding a patent of nobility to engage in the gentlemanly sport of
hunting was to court immediate and merciless punishment. Game must be preserved for the
nobles to hunt. Though the peasant's stomach went empty and his flocks and herds
were depleted by wolves till poverty crushed him to the ground. Now as a
chance to declare an open season. Give the peasants the thrill of engaging in
the noble pastime of the chase. Read the country of the dreaded werewolves,
and save the sorely needed public funds all at once. Accordingly, the following
proclamation was issued by the Court of Parliament at Dole. According to the advertisement
made to the Sovereign Court of Parliament at Dole, that in the territories of
Apagnier, Salvain or Chapon and the neighboring villages has often been seen and met
for some time past a werewolf, who it is said, has already seized
and carried off several little children, so that they have not been seen since.
And since he has attacked and done injury to divers horsemen in the country,
who kept him off only with great difficulty, in danger to their persons
and lives. The said Court, desiring to prevent any greater danger, has
permitted, and by these presents, does hereby permit all those who are now
abiding and dwelling in said places and others, notwithstanding all and any edicts concerning
the chase, to assembol with pikes, halberts, arquebuses and other weapons,
to chase and to pursue the said werewolf in every place where they may find
him, to seize him, to tie him, or if necessary to kill
him without incurring any pains or penalties of any sort, kind or nature whatsoever
given at the convocation of the said Court on the thirteenth day of the month
of September fifteen seventy three mounted heralds were despatched throughout the territory adjacent to Dole,
and within a few days the court's proclamation was known to every dweller in
the vicinity. Sint Point. Processions were seen issuing from all the villages in
the neighborhood, headed by their parish priests, with sacred statues born before them.
The people sallied forth to hunt down the dreaded Loup Garoux. Solemn high
mass had been sung, the weapons of the huntsmen had been formally laid in
the chancels of their churches and blessed by the cures, and now all the
hunt commenced. Separating into parties of two, the peasants ranged to fields and
woods, seeking everywhere for their accursed prey. It must be admitted that many
of them had no stomach for their task, and would have dropped their weapons
and fled incontinently at the first sight of anything resembling a werewolf. In the
most remote way. Others so far forgot the sacred and official duty with which
they were charged as to devote themselves to the hunting of edible game, and
many a luckless money found its way into the pouches and later to the kettles
of the werewolf hunters. Still others routed forest wolves from their lairs and killed
them. So not a few wolves scalps were brought before the provincial authorities.
But these were all natural wolves, as incapable of assuming human shape as the
peasants were of becoming wolves, And though their deaths doubtless added greatly to the
safety of the neighborhood sheepfolds, they brought the werewolf menace no nearer a termination
than when the Court of Parliament first issued its proclamation. Interest in the hunt
began to slacken. The peasants had their farmlets to attend, and the great
landed proprietors were heartily sick of having their game preservers raided by those supposedly bent
on public service. Except among those who had lost children or sheep, the
loup Garoux became little more than a hazy recollection, and then suddenly, unexpectedly,
he was found on the eighth of November fifteen seventy three, when the
fields were all but bare of vegetation and the last leaves were a reluctantly parting
company with the trees, three laborers, hurrying from their work to their homes
at Chastenoy by a woodland shortcut, heard the screams of a little girl issuing
from a dense tangle of vines and undergrowth, And with the child screams mingled
the baying of a wolf swinging their stout bill hooks, cutting a path for
themselves through the tangled wild wood. The laborers hastened toward the sounds, and
a little clearing they beheld a terrifying sight, backed against a tree, defending
herself with the shep Ritch crook was a ten year old girl bleeding from a
half dozen wounds, while before her was a monstrous creature which never ceased its
infernal baying and howling as it attacked her tooth and nail. As the peasants
ran forward to the child's rescue, the thing fled off into the forest on
all fours, disappearing almost instantly in the darkness. The men would have followed,
but the child demanded all their attention, for Weakened by loss of blood
and exhausted with terror, she fell fainting before they could reach her. The
child was carried home and the workmen reported their adventure to the authorities. Their
astonishment had been too great and the night too dark for them to make accurate
observations, so there was a conflict in their testimony. To affirmed the thing
possessed the body of a wolf, the third swore positively it was a man,
and what was more, to the point, he recognized him. The
clerical authorities cast their vote with the peasants asserting the child's assailant a wolf,
and there the matter rested for a time. On the fourteenth of the month,
the disappearance of a little boy about eight years old was reported. The
child had last been seen within an arrow's flight of the gates of Dole,
yet he had vanished as completely as though swallowed by the earth. Now the
civil authorities decided on action. They were not inclined to discount the werewolf theory
entirely, for to deny the existence of such monsters in those days was treading
dangerously close to the skirts of heresy. But neither were they minded to overlook
any clue which pointed a natural explanation to the mystery. The Frenchman is curiously
logical and direct, even in matters of superstition. Two days after the little
boy's disappearance was reported, as Sargent de Ville set out from Dole, armed
with a writ of attachment and a very businesslike sword, and accompanied by six
stalwart arquebusiers. Guided by the peasant who claimed to have recognized the little girl's
assailant, the party hastened through the forest of Saint Penult to the home of
one Gille Garnier, which stood beside the banks of a woodland tarn, not
far from the village of arnannge Gieur Gargnier. The man they sought was a
somber, ill favored fellow surly in Taciturn. He walked with a pronounced stoop
and a shuffling gait, looking neither to the right nor left, and usually
muttering half crazily to himself. His pale face, repulsive features, and livid
complexion repelled all advances from those who met him, and little was known of
his personal habits. But because of his long, unkempt beard, his filthy
and ragged clothing uncleanliness was next to godliness in those days, and his solitary
life, he was popularly known as the Hermit of Saint Bernul. This title,
however, carried with it no implication of sanctity. Quite the reverse.
Persons with property to lose were wont to lock it up securely when the hermit
was known to be in the vicinity, and many a hen roost owed its
depreciated population to his evening visits. The hermit's hut was as dilapidated as its
tenant. Its crude roof was made of squares of saw laid across rickety rafters,
and its walls of uncemented stones, irregularly piled one upon another, were
encrusted with lichen. The floor was of trodden clay in the rough timber door
hung crazily on hinges of rawhide. The windows were unglazed and stopped against the
weather with aprons of untanned skins. The sergeant deployed four of his half dozen
followers in an enveloping movement about the hut, while accompanied by the remaining two
and his guide, he approached the hut and knocked thunderously on its sagging door
with the hilt of his sword. Hail calls Joe Garnier appeared evilly from window.
I do, the sergeant answered, opening the name of the law.
What sake ye? Here? The hermit parlayed, I seek thee accursed of
God? Where wolf, slave of little children. The officer replied, come
forth and yield ye, or by lady, I'll come in four thee gille
Garnier bared his long yellow teeth in an ugly snarl, and hunched his rounded
shoulders as if to spring upon the messenger of justice. But a second look
at the arquebusier's showed him the futility of resistance. The arquebuse was grandfather to
the flint lock musket of revolutionary days and great great grandfather to the modern rifle.
It was nearly as tall as a man, had a bore larger than
the modern twelve gage shotgun, and was fired by its bearer, thrusting the
glowing fuse or gun match into a touch hole at its breach. Even with
the inferior gunpowder of those days, it had arranged twice that of the strongest
crossbow, and though it was anything but accurate a name, it carried a
charge of leaden slugs and broken nails, which scattered almost over a half acre
lot. If one of the soldiers had opened fire at point blank rains,
gille le Garnier would have been mingled almost beyond human recognition. Gille Garnier thought
it prudent to come out and surrender his arms and legs firmly manacled an iron
paine about his neck, binding him fast to the sergeant's stirrup. The werewolf
of Saint Bonol was brought to Doel. For a time, there was a
controversy whether state or ecclesiastical courts should take jurisdiction. The clerics maintained that the
prisoner had committed his crimes in the form of a wolf, and since he
had sold his soul to the devil in order to become a werewolf, it
was a matter cognizable only in the court's spiritual The civil authorities declared it had
not yet proven that the accused had committed any crime, and so if he
had committed any whether a man or beast, it followed he must be tried
before the temporal courts. The civil lawyers won, and the trial commenced.
Witnesses were summoned to prove the deaths of children and the condition in which their
bodies were found. Shepherds appeared to tell of their missing sheep. The two
minstrels and their servant told of the attack made on them the previous September.
The little maid, rescued by the peasants, identified the prisoner positively as her
assailant, and showed the court the scars left by his teeth and nails.
Then came the examination of the prisoner, in anticipation of his claims to innocence.
A choice collection of racks, thumb screws, leg crushers, and branding
irons was made ready, and the official torturers looked forward to a busy morning.
But the prisoner not only confessed all the crimes charged against him, but
volunteered information concerning a number of others unknown to the court. On the last
day of Michael Muss September twenty ninth, near the wood of Lasserre, while
in the form of wolf, he had attacked and slain with his teeth and
claws, a little girl of ten or twelve years, drawn her into a
thicket and gnawed the flesh from her arms and legs. On the fourteenth day,
after all Saints November fourteenth, also in the form of a wolf,
he had seized a little boy, strangled him, and partially eaten him.
Asked how he could have strangled the child if he were in wolf's form at
the time. He was at first vague in his replies, but finally recollected
that his hands had not been changed, so he still had the use of
his fingers. On the Friday before Saint Bartholomew's Day, he had seized a
boy of twelve or thirteen near the village of Peruse and killed him, but
was prevented from eating him by the approach of some peasants. These men were
found and corroborated the prisoner's statement. Although the little girl whose rescue was the
cause of his arrest declared the prisoner had been in human form when he attacked
her, gille Garnier stoutly maintained he had been in wolf's shape at the time,
and to prove his power to change into a wolf at will, he
suddenly sank to his all fours on the courtroom floor, began capering about in
grotesque imitation of a wolf, and emitted a series of howls, yelps,
and growls. Which perfectly simulated those of a feracious beast of prey. The
court deliberated over his case decided he had imitated wolf calls only to terrify his
victims, but had never actually assumed wolf's form, and consequently voted him guilty
of simple murder, unaccompanied by sorcery. As a murderer, he was punishable
only by the civil authority. Sentence followed hard upon the verdict. On the
tenth day following his arrest, Jille Garnier, the self confessed werewolf of Saint
Bernol, was dragged by ropes attached to his ankles over a rough road for
a distance of nearly a mile, bound to a stake, and burned to
death. Note the reader must be aware that Jills Garnier was the victim of
that form of insanity known as zoomania, where the patient believes himself an animal.
Zoomania, or that branch of it known as a loopomania where the lunatic
imagines himself a wolf, is fortunately relatively uncommon today, yet frequent enough to
be recognized by medico legal authorities. If it be remembered that Jille Garnier was
obviously a man of feeble intellect, and that all France, indeed all Europe
of that day reeked with terror tales concerning the Loup Garou, which tales Guarnier
had heard and implicitly believed since earliest infancy. It can readily be seen how
when his poor wits finally broke down, he came to imagine himself a werewolf.
The fact that he was lucid enough on every subject save this one delusion
stamps his ailment as paranoia or monomania, one of the commonest forms of insanity
among the young and middle aged. The man must have been quite powerless to
restrain himself when seized with one of his attacks, and in any modern court
he would have been committed to an institution without even being brought to trial.
It does not appear that he ate the flesh of his victims because of hunger.
On the contrary, the shocking act must be regarded purely as a symptom
of his derangement. When under the spell of his disease, the lunatic frequently
resorts to the most unlikely diet. The author was once present at an autopsy
performed on a paranoiax body when no less than half a dozen tenpenny nails were
extracted from the unfortunate man's stomach, several of them almost entirely eroded by the
natural hydrochloric acid of that organ. See berry Quinn, end of section six,
Section seven of Weird Crimes by Sea berry Quinn. This LibriVox recordings in
the public domain, read by Ben Tucker. Number seven the human Hyaena Miltonnau.
Again the Prefect of Police beat the polished top of his bureau with a
furious fist and bent a stare of angry incredulity on the Sergeant de Sairatre,
who stood at attention before him. It has happened again to yo, say,
nom de nomme is a policeman, never to sleep again in this accursid
city. Even so, Monsieur le prefet, replied the sergeant imperturbably. Another
of the poor ones has been direct from her blessed rest and dismembered. Ha.
The Prefect fairly thundered, Yes, Monsieur dismembered even thus the others nondin
pitit bon home, exclaimed the Prefect, then, feeling that the name of
a good little man was scarcely a strong enough oath for the occasion, he
added enorm dedieux. He drummed a moment on the polished surface of his desk
with nervous fingers, Regarding his companion thoughtfully, Hebbia, he said, at
last a way must be found to lay the sly one by the heels.
No perfectly, Monsieur agreed. The sergeant has a garb been placed in all
dycimities, not all, monsieur. The city is so unsettled the gendarmes are
solely needed for patrol duty. Yes, yes, I understand, the prefector
interrupted. We must decide upon some other way. Leave me. I will
think this over. Something must be done at once, Pardieu just getting so
no man can sleep peacefully even in his grave. The sergeant saluted, placed
his right foot exactly six inches behind his left, swung round in a perfect
about face, and left the room, closing the door noiselessly behind him Alone.
The Prefect of the Paris Police lighted a long, thin cigar and stared
fixedly at his office wall, blowing clouds of rancid tobacco smoke from his nose.
The Prefect's hands were very full. It was the autumn of eighteen forty
eight, and France was in such turmoil as she had not known since the
days of the Directory. That summer, the people had risen. Louis Philippe,
the last of the Bourbons, had fled to England under the assumed name
of mister Smith, and a second republic had been declared, with La Martine,
the poet historian, as its provisional head. But reactionary plots were thicker
in Paris than maggots and cheese and the gendalmerie, who were kept busy guarding
the life of the infant republic. Taking advantage of the policeman's political preoccupation,
criminals of all sorts and degrees were plying their nefarious trades, often in broad
daylight, and no man's life or property were safe. Now added to this
ordinary run of the mill crime, a new scandal had broken out in the
city and environs of Paris. Several cemeteries within or near the city limits had
been broken into during darkness, and many graves had been rifled. At first,
the depredations had been ascribed to medical students seeking cadavers for anatomical study,
but brief investigations by the police proved this theory unsound. Had body snatchers been
responsible, the bodies would have been carried away. As it was, the
corpses were found lying about the opened graves and broken's tombs in fragments. A
wild beast, I hain't escaped from a circus, people said. But here
again the clue proved groundless. With characteristic thoroughness such as ever distinguishes French police
methods, the officers had visited every circus and zoological collection within twenty miles of
Paris, inquiring if any of them had suffered a loss from their cages.
Once a clue seemed within grasp for a circus owner admitted having lost an animal,
But the missing beast was a panther. Had muss Sieur le proprietor ever
possessed one of those interesting beasts ayena alas monsieur le Propieta was desolated to inform
the gentleman of the police it had never been his good fortune to include such
interesting exhibit of Asia's fauna among his collection. Lions certainly, diegars, but
of course leopards, most assuredly panthers, jaguars, pumas may we but a
hyaena ah no may no. Monsieur the proprietor was grieved and shamed to admit
it. But no such splendid animal as a hyaena had he ever possessed.
The gendarmes shrugged their shoulders and proceeded with their quest. One morning came an
urgent message from the intendant of pere Lachet Cemetery. A most flagrant outrage had
been committed the night before the body of a young matron buried in a five
year concession, had been taken from its coffin and literally hacked to pieces with
the grave diggers spade. The gendarmes went to the cemetery and inured to shocking
sights. Though their profession had made them, their weather beaten faces went gray
as the spectacle of that poor violated woman's body. Blows of brutal strength had
sheared limbs from torso the face was mashed to an unrecognizable mass with the spade's
long handle. The top of the head had been beaten to a bloody softness
with a board wrenched from the coffin's headboard. And beside the grave in the
mud of last night's rain were footprints, long slender footprints, the sort of
tracks a well shot gentleman's boots might leave a clue at last, a clue,
the detectives exclaimed, But like all previous ones, this clue led nowhere.
The soft moist earth held the prints up to the cemetery's very gate,
but the paving flints of the street outside had no testimony to offer. Even
if the miscreant had left tracks of his muddy boots on the stones, the
very rain that had made the footprints visible in the cemetery would have washed away
all traces long before the officers arrived hard Press, though they were by other
duties. The police assigned guards to Pere le Chaise, and the depredation ceased
at Pere Lachaise, But another cemetery less than a mile away was entered,
and the body of a little girl, a child but two years passed her
first communion, was dragged from a three year concession and shamefully maltreated. Journalism
then as now, was avidly on the trail of scandal, and the Paris
press began resting from its political tirades to abuse the police. Republican and Royalist
papers were in harmony on this theme. One and all. They called for
the immediate apprehension of the monster who disturbed the repose of the blessed dead,
or the resignation of an impotent Prefect of police. Yet all efforts were unavailing.
When all cemeteries were under double guard, the human hyena never put in
an appearance. Let the guard be relieved for but a single night, and
some poor woman's body lay unearthed and horribly mingled under next morning's sun. These
things the Prefect of Police thought of as he smoked his accurate cigar in his
cabinet and drummed up on the polished surface of his desk mo blieux. He
muttered, we must seize this, monsieur, this assassin of the sleep of
the dead. We must, we must, we must. But how the
fellow's knowledge of preparations for his apprehension was uncanny. Almost it seemed some unfaithful
member of the police establishment was giving him information. How else explained his absence
from guarded cemeteries, his inevitable raids upon those not protected with gun and bayonet?
Aha have it? The Prefect sat suddenly forward in his chair and rang
for his orderly send for the amorer. He ordered. When his call was
answered, this assassin shall apprehend himself. We will set the top for him,
the planets formed. Now let us work, nom de nom. Why
did I never thought of this before? Rapidly the Prefect sketched his plan for
the criminals apprehend the gunsmith he had summoned, nodding understandably at intervals, Can
you do it? The Prefect ask at linked yes, monsieur, the armorer
answered, I'm quite certain it can be a writings. Hurried preparations took place
in the material department of police headquarters all next day. Before twilight faded into
night. The walls of every cemetery throughout Paris bristled with spring guns so cleverly
arranged that any one attempting to enter the graveyards except through their gates must necessarily
come in contact with concealed wires, which touched never so lightly would discharge the
cocked and doubly loaded muskets. With these automatic sentries on duty before the city's
graves, the Prefect was able to reduce his human guards to one or two
men for each burying ground, leaving some score more gendons for you for patrolling
the troubled city streets. Autumn ripened into winter, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew
of Napoleon the Great, was chosen president of the new Republic by an overwhelming
vote and was triumphantly inaugurated on the twentieth of December, with a relative of
the Little Corporal at its head. The young Republic felt assured of continued existence,
and the Paris police were able to turn their attention from sedition hunting to
thief catching. The palmy days of crime were ended, and the press ceased
its abuse of the police, but the human hyena was still at large.
Almost with the establishment of the spring guns and the cemeteries, his nocturnal raids
ceased, and the Prefect was about to relieve the graveyard guards and dismount the
guns, when on a rainy, dismal night in March eighteen forty nine,
the gendarmes stationed at Saint Parnass Cemetery huddled for shelter beneath the pentus of the
chapel. The rain wind, driven between the leafless branches of the poplar trees,
beat dismally down upon the aged, stained marble tombs and the rough,
unsodden mounds of the ten year concessions. By the further wall of the cemetery.
Beneath their ghastly white wooden signboards, the five and three year concessions seemed
to cower from the storm. These were the graves of the poorer dead.
For in France there were four classes of burials beside those of the potter's field.
First were those rich enough to own their tombs or grave lots in perpetuity.
They slept the long, long sleep of death undisturbed. Next came the
ten year concessionnaires, whose relatives had bought them the right to lie in moderately
deep graves for a decade, after which they would be exhumed and deposited in
a common charnel house, all trace of their identity lost. The five year
concessions graves were scarcely deeper than the height of the coffins they enclosed, and
their repose was limited to half a decade, while the three year concessions placed
nearest the cemetery walls, where merely mounds of earth heaped over coffins resting on
the surface of the ground, destined to be broken down emptied thirty six months
after their tenants burial. Pardieu, one of the gendarmes, swore sinking lower
under his waterproof cape. What a night, and what the place better a
thousand times the battlefield than such a put all the shout of conflict, the
crash of musketrie bang, the report of a discharged rifle cut through his words,
and a streak of yellow red fire tore the rain drenched darkness above the
wall, beyond the three year concessions. Nom de Cooc exclaimed, the startled
chindarm, leaping to his feet and grasping his sable hilt, It does he
the canal has come together. The officers raced across the boggy graves, their
drawn swords glistening dully in the rain. Impeded in their progress by the mud
and darkness, they were in time to see a dark figure in a military
mantle leap the wall and disappear in the gloom. Marks of blood, however,
gave evidence the spring guns bullet had struck its mark, and a scrap
of blue cloth clinging to one of the iron spikes with which the wall was
topped afford it an added clue to the ravisher of the graves, and soda.
The elder of the gendarmes pronounced at last, that is a follower of
that noble profession should sink to such a crime. Next morning, the search
was on in earnest. From barracks to barracks, the gendarmes went inquiring if
any of the military personnel had reported himself suffering from gunshot wounds. Almost immediately
they found their man, and the person of Lieutenant Bertrand, a junior officer
of an infantry regiment stationed in the capital. Not only did this young man
show such a wound as would match the spring guns ball, but his cloak
was ripped by some sharp instrument, and the fragment of cloth in the gendarmes
possession matched the rent. Their circumstantial case was complete. The wounded man was
confined under guard at Val de Gras's hospital till his wound was healed, then
placed on. In England or America, his hearing would have been before the
civil tribunal, for during time of peace in these countries, the civil power
is separate from and superior to the military. But France, though a republic,
was still imbued with continental European ideas of jurisprudence, maintaining one general law
for the citizenry and another or administrative system for the military and official classes.
Consequently, it was not a civil criminal court, but a court martial which
heard Bertrand's case. The judge advocate was relieved of the necessity of proving his
case, for the young lieutenant made a free confession, revealing one of the
most amazing stories ever detailed before a judicial inquiry. He was twenty three years
of age, excellently educated, having been a student at the Theological Cemetery at
Long from early youth until at the age of twenty he had entered the army
with a junior lieutenant's commission. He was a young man of retiring habits,
frank and cheerful to his comrades in arms, and beloved by remember of his
regiment, from the colonel to the newest conscript. Private numbers of his brother
officers testified to his almost feminine delicacy of refinement, and to the fact that
he was at times seized with inexplicable fits of depression and melancholy, none of
which, however, led to sullenness with his superiors or equals, or charliness
with his inferiors. According to his own statement made under oath in February eighteen
forty seven, as he was walking with a friend in the country. He
came to a churchyard, the gate of which stood open. The day before
a woman had been buried, but the sexton had not completed his melancholy task
of filling the grave, having been interrupted by a sudden storm of rain.
Bertrand had noticed the spade and pick lying beside the partially filled grave, and
getting rid of his friend by a ruse, he caught up the spade and
began hurriedly to unearth the coffin. To quote his statement, soon had dragged
the corpse out of the grave and began to hash it with the spade,
without well knowing what I was about. A lebora saw and I laid myself
flat to the ground vantra ater till he was out of sight. Then I
cast the body back into the gaive. I then went away, bathed in
a cold sweat, into a little crove, where I reposed for several hours,
notwithstanding the cold rain which fell. I was in a state of complete
exhaustion. When I arose. My limbs were as broken and my head was
weak. The same prostration and sensation followed each attack. The prisoner had suffered
no further attack during the subsequent four or five months, and had begun to
regard his rural experience as a fit of temporary madness. Indeed, he had
sometimes wondered whether it had not been simply a sort of waking nightmare, and
had actually never occurred at all. In the summer of eighteen forty eight,
his regiment was ordered for duty to Paris, and among the sights he visited
was the cemetery of Pere Lachaise. While walking through the shadowy alleys of this
great metropolis, the irresistible craving to mutilate a corpse swept over him like a
flood. That night, he scaled the cemetery wall, disinterred a body,
and cut it to pieces. Thus was the beginning of the mysterious cases of
ghoulism which had so baffled and puzzled the police of the French capital. At
first, Bertrand stated the morbid fits followed an over indulgence in wine. His
life at the seminary had been most abstemious. But later they came upon him
without exciting cause. The police records failed to disclose so great a number.
Lieutenant Bertrand stated he had unearthed twenty five bodies. Several of them being men.
These last he had gloated over, but never dismembered, this fiendishness being
exercised only upon female corpses. Army physicians, and several eminent civilian practitioners subjected
the young man to such tests as science of that day afforded, and pronounced
him sane. The finding of the court was therefore that he'd be shorn of
his buttons and insignia of rank, and his sword broken in the presence of
his regiment, after which he'd be confined in a disciplinary barracks for the period
of one year, and be dishonorably discharged from the army. The sentence was
carried out. The case of this unfortunate young man presents many interesting questions for
the medical jurist. Taking his early life in training into account and remembering how
he must have lived almost entirely in unworldly surroundings apart from wholesome feminine society,
it is not very difficult to imagine the basis of his original perversion. To
use a good, though much overworked and loosely employed term, he was the
victim of a complex, that is, a series of emotionally accentuated ideas in
a repress state, like Gilles de Laval, the Sire de Retz, whose
case has already been discussed. Footnote see article one of this series Bluebeard,
October twenty three, Weird Tales. This magazine was the first to have the
courage to make public the shocking revelations of the original Bluebeard's trial end footnote.
The celebrated Jack the Ripper, whose crimes mystified the London police a generation ago,
and the infamous Marquis de Sad Lieutenant Bertrand unquestionably suffered from that form of
mental derangement known to modern psychiatrists as algolagnia, coupled perhaps with what is called
coprophilia or a pathological liking for filth, this last being shown by his desire
to associate with interred corpses, his periods of great excitement while indulging his disgusting
mania for the mutilation of dead bodies, and the following periods of profound lassitude
all point plainly to this in the light of modern psychiatry, though these same
symptoms were the cause of some odd speculations by several observers of the case.
The late doctor Saban Baring Gould, a profound student of folklore and anthropology naively
suggested Bertrand to be the victim of demoniacal possession, while Eliot O'Donnell believes or
affects to believe him a werewolf. To substantiate this surprising theory of a young
frenchwoman, one Constance Armande, who was suddenly seized with an uncontrollable desire to
enter a house of mourning, seize the body lying in its open coffin,
and eat portions of it. Two cases of lunacies cited to prove one absurd
superstition. Whatever the facts of Bertrand's case, it is not to be denied
he suffered a great injustice through the sentence of the court martial, since the
crimes he committed were obviously of a pathological origin, and, by his own
statement, committed under the urge of an irresistible impulse. His moral sense told
him he was doing a wrong, but able though he was to distinguish the
criminal nature of his acts, he was unable to resist the dictates of his
mania. Footnote. In these circumstances, a perfect defense of insanity might have
been legally raised. See Clark or any standard work on criminal law. See
very Quinn end footnote. Seaberry Quinn, author of this series of Weird Crimes,
has prepared for you a startling series of noted witchcraft cases. Watch for
them in Weird Tales. End of Section seven. End of Weird Crimes by
Seaberry Quinn,