Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 June 1883 — THE MISSING PAPER. [ARTICLE]

THE MISSING PAPER.

One of the moat singular cases which are to be found in the police records of bloody deeds committed in Paris is that of Mme. Boquelaire, who was murdered in her residence, 17 liueDanton, on the night of the 15th of June, 1873. The last that was seen of her alive was at 9 o’clock in the evening by one of her servants, to whom she gave an order concerning his service on the following morning, which indicated that she and M. Jean Beauchamp, her lover, were about retiring. The servant, as he testified at the preliminary examination, saw, as he stood on the threshold of the door leading from the hall into tbe salon, Mme. Boquelaire in her dressing-gown and her toilet arranged for the night; he also M. Jean making a cigarette and reclining, his face toward the door, in an easy chair. Monsieur was frowning and seemed angry, although he said nothing. Evidently he and Madame had been quarreling. The last that was heard of her alive was at 11 o’clock, by her maid, who, having the privilege of absence for. the evening, vras passing through the hall toward the staircase leading up to the servants’ quartexs. Then she was entreating Beauchamp to forgive her. He had evidently accused her of some offense—“perhaps,” said the maid, “of infidelity.” The girl paused and listened for a moment!' Then she heard M. Beauchamp—and “his anger was terrible; his words fierce and threatening,” and then she heard Madame exclaim: “Strike me, coward. 1 have sacrificed everything.—honor, position, friends—for you. Strike me; kill me. You have had everything else from me that I could give; now take the last, and now—mon Dieu!—the most worthless of my possessions—my life. You seek the excuse to be rid of me. You have found a new love. I read it all. Every day’s life for the past three months has been to me turning over a new leaf in the revelations of your nature. I have nothing to live for. Kill me, coward!” Thp maid, trembling and frightened, passed on. She also added in her statement: They have often, but not so violently, quarreled while she had been in their service. Early next morning the servants, three in number, met as usual in the kitchen. The manservant, who was also M. Beauchamp’s valet, named Francois, and the maidservant narrated to each other what they had seen and heard on the previous evening. Francois then, at 9 o’clock, went upstairs and knocked as xxsual at the salon door to receive Monsieur’s orders. There was no sound within. Only the echoes of his tapping on the door. According to his testimony, Madame usually slept late; Monsieurwas always in dressing-gown and slippers and in the salon reading the Moniteur, which was laid at his door, never later than 8. Sometimes he rang for his valet .before 9; sometimes awaited his coming. An hour longer, and then finding no signs of life within, the valet ran out and summoned a sergeant-de-ville, who burst in the door. An appalling spectacle fixed the gaze of the little group gathered on the threshold of that chamber, and held them motionless as if they had been suddenly transformed intq stone images. There, nearly in the center of the floor, in her night robes, Mme. Roquelaire’s body, looking like a mass of congealed blood. The white linen robe, with its lace-Work and embroidery, re* sembled a crimson shroud. The face was mutilated, crushed and almost out of human shape. The terrified maid servant uttered a shriek of horror and fell to the floor unconscious. Even for the moment the sergeant-de-ville, inured as he was to scenes of mfirder, was for an instant awe-stricken by the ghastly sight. Then, recovering liimseli, he started away, and in a half an hour returned with other officers, the Commissaire and a surgeon. Examination showed that the woman had been literally pounded to death with some blunt, heavy weapon, stamped on, and her body and limbs mashed almost into the semblance of pulp. Near this tremendous horror was a blood-stained sqrap of paper. One scrutiny revealed scrawletf upon it, as with a blunt-pointed pencil, these words: “Your life was mine. I have taken what is mine. You are now in the arms of death, a more steadfast lover than you had living; one you cannot betray. Jean.” Over this pencil-scrawl were two finger marks in blood in the form of a cross.

This was all. Nothing was disturbed. Mme.’s apparel was in its usual place; her jewelry, watch and bijouterie where she had placed them when undressing. No weapon was found. There were gory finger-marks on the door and its casing. But M. Beauchamp, what of him ? Search showed that a small traveling valise was missing from his chamber; that he had changed his clothes, taking the discarded suit with him. On going out he had evidently locked the door of the salon and taken the key with him. Specimens of his writing were found, and an expert declared that the pencil-scrawl upon the blood-stained paper very closely resembled his method of writing, changed, of course, by the action of a terrible mental excite; ment upon his nerves. _ There was no doubt in the minds of the oifioials that he, in a fit of ungovernable rage, and possibly crazed by

jealously, had committed the fearful crime, and then, recovering his reason, had songht safety in flight Two of the most expert detectives from the Prefect’s office were soon on his trail. They traced him to Marseilles, thence to Bordeaux, where he took a sudden change of route and went to London. Here he was arrested and brought back to Paris. When informed of the crime of which he was accused he fell into a species of stupor, and for three days was apparently unconscious. Recovering, he alternated from protestations of innocence to bewailing the death, as he asserted, of the only woman he ever loved, and calling upon heaven to pursue with its direst torments her murderer. Gradually he became cooler, and at last was able to make an intelligible statement. It was to this effect: He had quarreled with Mme. Roquelaire .on the evening of her assassination. They had often had similar’ lovers’ disagreements. She had a terrible temper, but her anger seldom lasted beyond the hour. “On this night I had playfully accused her of liking some one else better than myself. “She retorted; words made words, and still in jest I said I would correct her—shaking a large closed fan at her with a pretense of rage. “Finally she grew so violent that I dressed myself, put ou my hat, and, taking out my valise, bade her goodnight, left the house and started upon a trip to Bordeaux, which I had long been contemplating, and intended to come to her immediately upon my return. We had separated in like manner before that. After a day or two we always came together again, and we were devoted to each other.

“I em not a brute; I was her best friend—she loved me and would have died for me. Why, then, should I have have killed her; beaten her to death so cruelly, whom I so often caressed?” M. Beauchamp’s story was not believed. It is not in the creed of the police to believe anything an accused party may assert. Mme. Boquelaire was buried, the house locked up, put under seal, and guarded day and night by a sergeant-de-ville. The servants were subjected to close surveillance in order to retain them as witnesses in the trial of their master. The conviction of Beauchamp was regarded as a foregone conclusion. M. Jean Beauchamp’s antecedents were those of a man with a moderate income; a man little known in society; rarely seen at the theaters or other places of public resort; reticent as to himself or his affairs, and, in fact, by the few with whom he sought occasional companionship, looked upon as a sort of genteel, well-dressed sphinx. In two days the trial of M. Beauchamp approached its conclusion. He had for his advocate one of the shrewdest members of the French bar, and for whose ability the court and the Procureur d’Etat had the greatest respect. The last witness had been heard, the State Counsel had made his first plea, when a messenger entered the courtroom, pushed his way to the counsel for M. Beauchamp and gave him a package, whispered a moment to him and departed. A French advocate is nothing if not dramatic. The advocate arose, opened the packet, took from it a copy of the Monifaytr, unfolded it, and, addressing the Judge, said:

“I think that this trial qan now have but one result—that of' the release of M. Beauchamp. I have but three new witnesses to offer. One is a few lines in this paper, the Moniteur, bearing date J.une 14, 1873, one day before the murder of Mme. Boquelaire. I will read them: “ ‘ Escaped from the private Maison de Sante of Dr. Roguet d’Allaire a patient accepted and registered as Jean Boudinot, insane from jealousy; placed in the asylum by his wife, Mme. Matilde Boudinot, May 11, 1871, as incurably insane and violent; height, five feet ten inches; powerfully built, brown hair, scar on cheek; was clad at time of escape in dark, close suit.’ “This notice,” continued the advocate, “I offer in evidence.” “But what has this to do with the accused or the crime?” asked thfe Procureur. “We shall see. I now call Dr. Allaire.” Dr. Allaire came to the witness chair. He stated that Boudinot,. the escaped lunatic, imagined he had a mission to kill his wife for her infidelity. He had sworn to do it, and he would. “Where is Mme. Boudinot?” “Until to-day I did not know what had become of her. She sent her payments regularly for the custody of her husband, but after the first three months never again visited the asylum. She removed from*the Bue Livatidais, No., 47, where she had resided, and all trace of her'was lost.”

“What sort of woman —I mean whatJ sort of age and appearance ?” “About 25. Here is a photbgraph, in this velvet case, which was left with her husband, and which we took away him, as the sight of it seemed to increase his fury in his intervals of delirium.” The adyocate took it from the doctor and handed it to the Procureur. ' “Compare that with the portrait of Mme. Roquelaire found in the house of M. Beauchamp.” “It is the portrait of Mme. Roquelaire, ” involuntarily exclaimed the Procureur. “Precisely,” said the advocate. “Now, then. I call my third Pierre Rosier, sergeant-de-ville, until this nporning on duty guarding the house of M. Beauchamp,-in which the murder was committed. ” Pierre Rosier stood up and said in answer to the advocate’s question: “For two days the passers-by on the opposite side have reported that the house was haunted. One man told me he had seen a frightful face at the upper windows, which came and disappeared. Yesterday afternoon I informed my relief of these strange reports. With the consent of the Commissaire, we entered the house and searched floor after floor. We reached the cellar, arid were about leaving it when we heard a scratching sound at the rear of the dark underground chamber. Turning our lamps in the direction whence the sound came we saw, huddled up in a comer, a terrible-looking object. It was a man, with a fierce, haggard face. He sprang up, but not so quickly that we did not throw ourselves upon him, .bear him to the ground and secure t»i™ before he could recover from his surprise. We called for assistance and conveyed him to the Commissaire’s office, taking with us. the club, a heavy piece of wood resembling the larger end of a billiard cue. This weapon was covered with dots of blood and fragments of

dried flesh. The man was evidently very nearly famished.” “Who did this man prove to be?” “This morning the Commissaire ascertained that he was Jean Boudinot, the escaped lunatic.” “Did he speak or answer the Commissaire’s interrogations ?” “Yes. He said he had killed his wife and had danced the devil’s jig on her body. The only things we found upon his person was this bit of paper and a bit of pencil, both stained with blood. ” “This piece of paper,? said the advocate, holdmg it up, “exactly fits thd* written paper from which it was torn, found in the blood near the body. This is the pencil. “There remains now but one more statement necessary. That is mine. I promised the accused, my client, not to reveal his secret unless it was absolutely necessary. It is now necessary as the finale of this case. “Mme. Boudinot was Mme. Rflquelaire. After her husband was incarcerated in the Maison de Sante, through his haying several times attempted'her life, she became acquainted with M. Jean Beauchamp. They became intimate, in fact, loved each other devotedly. In order to avoid complications, she removed from her former residence in the Rue de Liovaudais to the house which M. Beauchamp had rented for their joint occupancy. There they lived. There, on the night of the 15th of June, after M. Beauchamp had gone out, she was murdered by the escaped lunatic, her husband, who. by what strange means we shall probably never ascertain, hatl traced her, and. with all the cunning of the crazed, had concealed himself in the house, watched his chance, # and then, springing upon her, beat her, mangled her as she was found; then, with devilish glee, hid himself in the cellar, and afterward betrayed himself by appearing at the windows. This is our case.” M. Beauchamp was released.