The poisoner Derues [cont.]

"Portrait from nature...engraved by X......"
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Trial and Conviction


The Inquiry

For a moment Desrues must haved believed that he was safe.  It had been necessary that Mme de Lamotte was alive; a lawyer in Lyon had seen her; as had the proprietor of the hotel. At midnight he began the journey back to Paris as fast as possible, arriving in Paris at four in the afternoon on the 11th.  His absence had lasted only six days but, as it turned out,   he had not been quick enough. The situation had already begun to unravel.

M.Lamotte himself  in Paris, had  gone first to the lieutenant of police Lenoir, then, on 3rd March, lodged a formal complaint with Hubert Mutel, commissaire at the Châtelet. On 5th Mutel began to make enquiries.  He learned that Derues had departed for Lyon.  On 6th the commissaire, accompanied by the inspector Le Houx, arrived at eight in the evening in the rue Beaubourg to interrogate Mme Derues. She answered very straightforwardly, believing her husband had gone to Versailles.  Seals were placed on the apartment and various papers carried off;  also discovered were clothes belonging to Mme de Lamotte and shirts, handkerchiefs and slippers  belonging to her son. 

The affair had already attracted some attention; Derues's story that Madame de Lamotte had absconding with a lover did the rounds in Paris. Some thought she and Derues were in cahouts.  Mutel's personal notes on the case are preserved in the dossier in the Archives. He soon unravelled the inconsistencies in Mme Derue's deposition.   He suspected fraud, or coercion, but did not at first consider the possibility of murder. He noticed that Mme Derues name was falsified on her marriage contract.   Four days later, however, having learned of Mme de Lamotte's illness and her son's stomach pains, he he  become convinced  that an assassination had taken place.  The police were soon emptying the cesspit and making enquiries at the laundry in search of bloodstained linen.

The discovery of the first body

There is no record in the dossier of how the police were led to cellar in the rue de la Mortellerie.  Contemporaries, including the well-informed Hardy, were convinced Mme Masson had recognised Desrues and informed the police.  

On Friday 18th April, at three thirty,  Mutel, with inspector Le Houx and several other police agents descended by torchlight into the pitch-black cellar, a sort of vaulted space under a staircase.  Here they discovered a wooden spade, stray traces of hay and disturbed ground.  They began to dig and soon came upon a putrifying corpse shrouded in damp linen with a sack over its head.  The advanced state of decomposition made identification uncertain. The procureur du roi was immediately informed and an autopsy ordered.

At eleven at night, Desrues himself was brought by coach and taken down  down to see the corpse.  He  remained completely impassive and denied categorically that he recognised Mme de Lamotte or her clothing.

In the cellar in the rue de la Mortellerie: Derues claims not to recognise the body of Mme de Lamotte, even though it has been identified by his wife.
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The doctors, one of whom was the famous surgeon Nicolas Pierre de Leurye, now arrived to investigate the body, which had been carried to the ground floor room of a neighbouring house.   Despite the decomposition, they claimed to be able to discern signs of poisoning.  The earrings the woman  was wearing were removed, which Lamotte later identified as his wife's. The servant Jeanne Barque and Bertin positively identified the corpse, as did  Derues's wife who was brought from the For-l'Évêque prison.  The latter testified that Mme  Lamotte had been ill but that she herself had never interfered with any medicines.  She reacted with horror at the suggestion that she had helped her husband dispose of the corpse.  Desrues was confronted by these witnesses.  At first he joked that "like Mme de Lamotte the nose is a bit pointed",  but he finally admitted that it was her.   

When interrogated the next day, Desrues had a new story.  He now claimed  that he had found Mme de Lamotte dead, and disposed of the body surreptitiously because he feared he would be accused of assassination. He had also wanted to safeguard the  purchase of the Buisson-Souef.  He still denied that he had poisoned her.  He now also admitted that the son, who was apparently consumed by venereal disease, had died on the way to Versailles. He further testified that he had prevailed upon a woman he had met by chance  to impersonate Mme de la Motte before the lawyer in  Lyon.

The discovery of the second body  

Meanwhile the whole of Paris was abuzz with speculation.  The day of the discovery of Mme de Lamotte's corpse was a fête day - Joseph II had arrived the day before and was travelling to Versailles. The Journal de Paris appraised its readers of events:  according to Metra’s , Correspondance secrète, four hundred people gathered in the Bois de Bologne where it was rumoured the son was buried.  On 22nd April  huge crowds turned out to follow the funeral procession  to the parish church of Saint-Gervais.

On 23rd April the investigating  magistrates arrived at the Cemetery of Saint-Louis in Versailles, having left the Grand Châtelet at six that morning with the Derues, his wife and Donon, the master of the pension.  With the aid of the cooper Pequet, it soon proved possible to pinpoint the grave and exhume the body of the young Lamotte.  A massive crowd turned out to watch the proceedings.  This time the corpse, of a tall thin young man, was well-preserved, even mummified.  Derues and his wife, were led in handcuffs before the open coffin. Derues again maintained that he did not recognise the body, despite the positive identification of Pequet and Donon.  At the murmur of the crowd,  Derues turned towards them and, indicating the gens de justice, started to speak: "All these  present are honest men. You must believe them".  Then he stopped, his legs trembled and he fainted away.

Shortly afterwards, he revived and was interrogated in a nearly ballroom on the rue Saint-Honoré.  He now had some difficulty in replying, but persisted in denying any poisonings. At this point Mme Derues decided to make a deposition in order to save herself.  She now admitted meeting Derues in the road with his trunk, depositing it in an attic and using it to send china to Villeneuve.  She also agreed that she had had suspicions, that she had lied to Lamotte - but the degree of her culpability remains impossible to judge.

The Cemetery of St Louis in Versailles, 23rd April 1777: Derues and his wife do not recognise the body of the young Lamotte, and feign illness. 
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The inquiry now approached its conclusion; the two doctors, who had now performed an autopsy on the Versailles body,  formally declared the cause of death to be poisoning.   Both bodies showed "intestinal disorder" and inflammation. Subsequently, there would be some worries that the medical findings were inconclusive, especially since no incriminating substances were ever found. However, the circumstantial evidence was pretty compelling.  Both victims had similar symptoms. . Both had grown worse after remedies or hot chocolate administered by Derues.  

On 25th April Monsieur Pourra, the notary from Lyon,  arrived in Paris to confront Derues.  He did not recognise him, but observed that he was the same height as the woman who had visited him, and had a similar nose.  It seemed likely, but was never incontrovertibly established, that his mysterious visitor was indeed Derues in disguise. 



Judgment

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The hearing concluded on 28th April and on 30th April, after only one day of deliberations, the magistrates of the Châtelet  condemned Derues to death. Even on the sellette, he still denied everything.  He had taken Mme de Lamotte in out of charity. Nor had he poisoned the boy. He  immediately appealed his sentence to the Parlement of Paris.

On Monday 5th May, at four in the morning, Derues was taken to the Palais for the final  judgement.  He was held in the Chambre de l'Edit where curious onlookers were admitted in groups of six   By nine o'clock the visitors were so numerous that no more were allowed to enter. In the meantime the Tournelle sat behind closed doors to consider its verdict.  Derues, apparently serene, engaged in conversation with those who filed past.  He reminded  one onlooker that he had come to see him and not the painting on the wall.  Observers were amazed by Derues's ironic tone:   Mercier, who had seen him in prison in the Châtelet, had already been astonished by "his cool intrepidness and the tranquil courage of his hypocrisy"

The review of the trial took more than seven hours and confirmed the judgment of the Châtelet. The arrêt of the Parlement, which included a full extract from the deliberations was placarded at all the crossroads  of Paris.  Derues was condemned to be broken on the wheel, his remains burned and the ashes "cast to the winds".