第56章 ARSENIC A LA BRETONNE(13)

It were superfluous to embark on analysis of the character of Helene Jegado.Earlier on, in comparing her with Van der Linden and the Zwanziger woman, I have lessened her caliginosity as compared with that of the Leyden poisoner, giving her credit for one less death than her Dutch sister in crime.Having investigated Helene's activities rather more closely, however, I find I have made mention of no less than twenty-eight deaths attributed to Helene, which puts her one up on the Dutchwoman.The only possible point at which I may have gone astray in my calculations is in respect of the deaths at Guern.The accounts I have of Helene's bag there insist on seven, but enumerate only six--namely, her sister Anna, the cure, his father and mother, and two more (unnamed) afterthese.The accounts, nevertheless, insist more than once that between 1833 and 1841 Helene put away twenty-three persons.If she managed only six at Guern, that total should be twenty-two.From 1849 she accounted for Albert Rabot, the infant Ozanne, Perrotte Mace, Rose Tessier, and Rosalie Sarrazin--five.We need no chartered accountant to certify our figures if we make the total twenty-eight.Give her the benefit of the doubt in the case of Albert Rabot, who was ill anyhow when Helene joined the household, and she still ties with Van der Linden with twenty- seven deaths.

There is much concerning Helene Jegado, recorded incidents, that I might have introduced into my account of her activities, and that might have emphasized the outstanding feature of her dingy make-up--that is, her hypocrisy.When Rosalie Sarrazin was fighting for her life, bewailing the fact that she was dying at the age of nineteen, Helene Jegado took a crucifix and made the girl kiss it, saying to her, Here is the Saviour Who died for you! Commend your soul to Him!'' This, with the canting piety of the various answers which she gave in court (and which, let me say, I have transcribed with some reluctance), puts Helene Jegado almost on a level with the sanctimonious Dr Pritchard--perhaps quite on a level with that nauseating villain.

With her twenty-three murders all done without motive, and the five others done for spite--with her twenty-eight murders, only five of which were calculated to bring advantage, and that of the smallest value--it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Helene Jegado was mad.In spite, however, of evidence called in her defence--as, for example, that of Dr Pitois, of Rennes, who was Helene's own doctor, and who said that the woman had a bizarre character, frequently complaining of stomach pains and formications in the head''--in spite of this doctor's hints of monomania in the accused, the jury, with every chance allowed them to find her irresponsible, still saw nothing in her extenuation.And very properly, since the law held the extreme penalty for such as she, Helene went to the scaffold.Her judges might have taken the sentimental view that she was abnormal, though not mad in the common acceptation of the word.Appalled by the secret menace to human life that she had been scared tothink of the ease and the safety in which she had been allowed over twenty odd years to carry agonizing death to so many of her kind, and convinced from the inhuman nature of her practices that she was a lusus naturae, her judges, following sentimental Anglo-Saxon example, might have given her asylum and let her live for years at public expense.But possibly they saw no social or Civic advantage in preserving her, so anti-social as she was.They are a frugal nation, the French.

Having made you sup on horror a la Bretonne, or Continental fashion, I am now to give you a savoury from England.This lest you imagine that France, or the Continent, has a monopoly in wholesale poison.Let me introduce you, as promised earlier, to Mary Ann Cotton aged forty-one, found guilty of and sentenced to death for the murder of a child, Charles Edward Cotton, by giving him arsenic.

Rainton, in Durham, was the place where, in 1832 Mary Ann found mortal existence.At the age of fifteen or sixteen she began to earn her own living as a nursemaid, an occupation which may appear to have given her a distaste for infantile society.At the age of nineteen and at Newcastle she married William Mowbray, a collier, and went with him to live in Cornwall.Here the couple remained for some years.

It was a fruitful marriage.Mary bore William five children in Cornwall, but, unfortunately, four of the children died--suddenly.With the remaining child the pair moved to Mary's native county.They had hardly settled down in their new home when the fifth child also died.It died, curiously enough, of the ailment which had supposedly carried off the other four children--gastric fever.