Ill Met by Gaslight: Five Edinburgh Murders (14 page)

`On Sunday, 30th April, 1876, when I was in Hanover Street, Madame Chantrelle and a servant came up to me about 4.30 in the morning. They were not fully dressed. Madame told me that her husband had come in and broken into the servant’s bedroom, and threatened herself. He threatened to use violence to her.’

Asked whether Lizzie had said anything about her husband’s treatment of her in general, Sergeant Brass replied, `That it was very cruel. She said she could not put up with it any longer, and that I must take him to the Police Office. She said he had struck her repeatedly and that the language he used to her was very bad and of an obscene kind. She said, also, that his habits were very bad, and that he went about the nighthouses, and that, if he was taken to the Police Office, her friends might take up the case and get a separation for her … When I went to the house the door was opened by the Prisoner. I think he had been drinking. I apprehended him. When I told him that he must come with me to the Police Office he lifted a butter-knife that was on the table. He used obscene language. He threatened his wife more than once then, and on the way to the Police Office he said, “I will do for the bitch yet” … He was convicted in the Police Court and bound over to keep the peace.’

It had been an awkward and ugly scene, even if not without its ridiculous aspects, the butter-knife, for instance, hardly being the most terrible of weapons. To another policeman, Constable McKenzie, who interviewed Lizzie the following day, the poor girl expatiated on the incident. She told him, `that her husband was very drunk on the Saturday night and Sunday morning, and that when the servant went into the room to see that the gas was all right, he threatened to strike her. Madame Chantrelle went into the room to save the servant and he threatened to do the same to her if she interfered…. She was very much afraid of his ill-usage when he returned home at night under the influence of drink.’

The last is the crucial phrase. There can be little doubt that drink contributed to Chantrelle’s violence, releasing the pentup resentment of a man who felt that somehow life had cheated him; that its rewards were less than his talents deserved. Yet this realisation sets the marriage in better perspective - it was unsatisfactory but a good deal less than absolutely intolerable. Since Chantrelle continued able to fulfil his teaching duties, it is likely that the drunkenness and accompanying violence were intermittent. Certainly he maintained a good reputation in some quarters. When he applied for the vacant post of French master at the High School in 1877 he was able to support his application with no fewer than nineteen testimonials from prominent citizens. That he did not succeed in obtaining the position does not prove anything against him; there may simply have been a more obviously suitable candidate. Of course in a city like Edinburgh there were inevitably rumours suggesting that he was not perhaps the most entirely appropriate instructor of the young; even in a school where there were no girls.

Causes for quarrels were not hard to seek. Both Chantrelle and Lizzie were jealous. In his Declaration he stated that she was `extremely’ so. `She would object to my taking my hat off to a pupil, and to all sorts of things. On one occasion I was smoking and sipping my coffee after dinner when she came into the room and looked daggers at me and walked away. She afterwards asked me what I meant looking at “that woman”. I assumed she meant a woman whom I saw at a lodging-house window opposite. She said, “what do you mean by stroking your chin at her?” I told her that I never did this at a woman in my life.’ Lizzie of course had lively reason for her suspicions. She knew from her own experience before marriage that Chantrelle was not likely to allow his desire to be controlled by morality or even prudence. (He of course knew the same was true of her.) She was also aware that he regularly made advances to their servants, and she was quick to accuse him of this, even when evidence was lacking.

One such accusation, according to Chantrelle, rebounded on her. This servant, whose name he could not remember ‘I never do recall the names of servants who have been with us’was dismissed by Lizzie on mere suspicion. She returned the next day, supported by her aunt, whose presence she hoped would lend authority to her narrative, to inform Chantrelle that his wife had been carrying on an intrigue with a young man who lived on the common stair. Chantrelle investigated the matter, and, though unable to prove anything beyond the fact that Lizzie and the young man had chatted together, yet contrived to extract an apology from him.

Of course Chantrelle was jealous - he had a high sense of what was due to him. Moreover he knew Lizzie was beautiful and desirable - had not he desired her himself? He knew she was susceptible; had he not seduced her? He could hardly believe her chaste, nor could he believe that her virtue had grown with experience. He soon detected another liaison. The same servant-girl was his informant. Through her he discovered that a certain young man, who worked in a bank, had given Lizzie ascent bottle, while she had given him a cigar case in return. Incensed by this exchange of presents, Chantrelle set to work. He obtained a cigar case of the same pattern from the same shop, confirming, as he did so, that Lizzie had made a purchase the previous Christmas. After a number of accusations, which elicited only violent denials from Lizzie, Chantrelle confronted her with the cigar case. `She took a good deal of persuadion, and at length confessed to repeated adulterous intercourse’, he declared. Again he obtained an apology, and this time also a solatium of £50, which he claimed to have sent to the hospital in Nantes by way of his aunt. These were the only two affairs he claimed to have detected, and though there is undeniably something offensive in his pose as an injured party, there is nothing incredible in his accusations. Given the character and the circumstances of the marriage, they seem probable enough. Moreover, contemporary mores may be held to some extent to mitigate the offensiveness of Chantrelle’s behaviour. One law for men and another for women was, in the nineteenth century, a given truth, almost unchallenged.

However, Chantrelle did make one other accusation, so gross and scandalous that he did not dare to repeat it in his Declaration; possibly because he could bring nothing to substantiate it. This was a charge of incest. Lizzie had a twin brother, John, to whom she was close, though no more so than twins often are. Chantrelle chose to find something excessive in their relationship. In August 1874 he wrote to John Dyer in the following extraordinary terms.

`Sir, I find that on the 21st ulto, you were in my house for a considerable time, and remained with my wife alone, my elder boy Eugene being carefully kept out of the way on some futile pretext, and not allowed to come in during the time you were there.

My wife, your own sister, having refused at first, denied that you were in the house at all, and having afterwards refused to answer any questions about the way in which you spent your time together, I beg of you to give me full information as to: 1st how and for what purpose you came to be invited to my house in my absence. 2ndly How and in what manner you spent the considerable time that you were there.

I wish to make no insinuations of any kind for the present, what I object to in the meantime, is the mysterious way in which the meeting of you and my wife took place, and the amount of untruths which she has told me with regard to this business, namely giving me deliberately and wilfully, I suppose, the wrong address, when I wished to call on you to have a personal interview.

I shall wait until 12 o’clock p.m., Tuesday the 4th inst, for your answer, which must be categorical, and clear, and full. Failing which, I shall see what further steps to take.

Believe me, I wish to keep this matter between us, if possible; this will depend entirely on you.

Your obedly,

E Chantrelle.’

This was the letter of a man whose balance was at best precarious, whose propensity to suspicion and jealousy was extreme. Yet, taken as we have it in isolation, it may be misleading; that is, not knowing what had preceded it, we may fail to interpret it properly. It is possible that Chantrelle’s suspicions were not entirely absurd; or that there had been some earlier occurrence which had led him to try to impose a ban on his brother-in-law. The first interpretation, that it displays a morbid jealousy, is doubtless more probable; the alternative should not be dismissed as unthinkable. Certainly, this letter, and the accounts of the young man on the stair and the other in the bank, go to suggest that Chantrelle never became indifferent to his wife.

In,fact, such evidence as there iN indicates that relations between them showed some improvement in the last eighteen months of her life. It was as if the Police Court incident had helped to pull him up. It had had an effect on Lizzie too. Her immediate reaction had been that she had had enough. She must get away from this man. Accordingly she had allowed the private detective McDonald (who had told her that he had seen her husband in the brothels) to take her to a solicitor called Charles Hogg. She told Mr Hogg that she wanted a separation from her husband, and assured him, `that there would be no difficulty in getting evidence of adultery and of frequenting brothels’; there, after all, was Mr McDonald to offer it. However, she then came to the heart of the matter; would there be, `any exposure about it’? Mr Hogg had to admit that it was probable there would be some. That was enough. Lizzie shook her head and stated that, `on that ground, for the sake of her friends and family, she would not proceed’.

It had been at best a half-hearted attempt. Her hesitation was natural. She was afraid of losing the children, and, without the assurance of support from her own family, dared not proceed. Possibly her feelings about Chantrelle were still mixed. The most cogent argument was social. As a married woman she had a respectable position, whatever the circumstances of her married life. Separated, her situation would be quite changed. It was not a course she dared embark on without encouragement. Moreover, according to Mrs Dyer, Chantrelle had threatened Lizzie that he would shoot her if she left him. Unfortunately Mrs Dyer could not recall the date of that particular threat, any more than she could remember just when he had said he would blow up her house if Lizzie went to live there. None of this had been enough for Mrs Dyer, who had never gone so far as to consult a professional man about her daughter’s rights, `to have the children if she was separated from her husband when he was ill-treating her’. One cannot escape the conclusion that Mrs Dyer preferred that her daughter should endure suffering so that she might remain respectable. That is, if she believed what Lizzie told her in the first place.

So Lizzie stayed, and matters went a little easier. True, Mary Byrne, their last servant, did not find much to commend in Chantrelle’s behaviour to his wife: `he was not very kind to her. He never went out with her; he was not very attentive … they did not get on very well together … he used bad language to her … I heard him say to her “Go to hell” and “Go to stay with your mother”…. On the other hand she could not `recollect any strong language in George Street after coming up from Portobello’; and she admitted that Christmas 1877 had passed off pleasantly: `Master, mistress and children dined together that day. There was something extra on that day - a pudding and a bottle of champagne. So far as I could see, the family were happy and spent a merry Christmas.’

She was supported in this by the most pathetic evidence offered at the trial, that of the Chantrelles’ oldest child, young Eugene. The boy admitted that he had seen his father strike his mother, and heard him call her bad names, but, after testifying to his father’s invariable kindness and generosity towards himself and his brothers, said, `he was kind to Mamma too. It was a long time before Mamma died that the hard words and the swearing took place. I can’t say how long since he struck her on the head. It was in George Street before we went to Portobello. Papa was kind to Mamma lately. I had nothing to cry for for a good while before Mamma died. We all dined together on Christmas Day. We had a bottle of champagne, and papa and mamma were kind to each other. There was no quarrelling nor were there bad words….’

Such evidence rang with the truthful innocence of pathos, but could still be made to sound sinister. When a couple who have been on notoriously bad terms are then reconciled for no apparent reason, and this reconciliation is soon followed by the death of one of the parties, the experienced reader of detective fiction has no doubt whom the police will first suspect. In a sense, of course, the accused in a murder trial is in a hopeless position, when the circumstances are like this. If he continues on bad terms with his spouse, that is evidence of motive; if he effects a reconciliation, that is mere duplicity, and the motive remains there, working under the surface. Motive never evaporates.

The jury were not to be impressed by this evidence of improved relations. Other aspects of Chantrelle’s condition and circumstances in the autumn of 1877 were calculated to carry more weight with them. First, there was the evidence of his continued heavy drinking and consequent neglect of Lizzie. Mary-Byrne’s account of his alcoholic habits was full and convincing. `He took a good deal to drink. He took whisky and water. He finished about a bottle a day. It was shortly after we came up from Portobello that I noticed he was taking that large amount of liquor. I could notice the effects on him.’ The jury would have little doubt what conclusions to draw from that sort of evidence.

Even more impressive was what they were to learn of Chantrelle’s financial difficulties; these were the real thing, proof positive that he could not be trusted, for he had offended the first law of Victorian wisdom: `whom the Gods love, die rich’. The Lord Advocate summed up the position with succinct distaste in his address to the jury:

`He was not a penniless man; but he was a needy man. He was asking till Christmas time to pay a small balance of a bill for £18. The balance at his banker’s had disappeared. His wife told Mrs Baird that her husband’s teaching was falling off, and that they would probably have to go to London; and she told her mother that they were £200 in debt and had nothing to pay it with.’