The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (5 page)

Some indication of Glaser’s knowledge is given by his book on chemistry, which was published in France in 1663 and subsequently translated into English under the title
The Compleat Chymist.
This gave instructions for procedures such as the purification and calcination of metals and metallic elements like gold, silver, tin, lead and mercury, and also provided information on practical matters such as laboratory equipment and the construction of furnaces and stills. Besides this, the book contained recipes for various outlandish concoctions, which Glaser recommended for medicinal purposes such as a sal volatile prepared from ‘the skull of a man dead of a violent death’. Glaser praised these salts for their ‘very great virtues’, extolling them for the way ‘they penetrate to the places furthest removed from the first digestion and dissolve all viscous and tartarous matters, open all obstructions, heal all fever … preserve from plague and strongly resist all putrefaction’. Other formulations that Glaser considered efficacious included a salt made from the flesh of disembowelled vipers and a solution distilled from the ‘fresh urine of children from eight till twelve years of age’, which he found excellent for alleviating stiffness of the joints and depression.
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As well as advocating the use of these curious preparations, Glaser’s book contained information about how to fabricate well-known poisons such as vitriol, arsenic and corrosive sublimate. The section on arsenic noted that there were three kinds (white; yellow – known as orpiment – and red, or realgar) and that it could be produced in various forms such as oil, liquor or powder. Glaser was well aware that all these substances had to be treated with great caution. He warned his readers that while arsenical preparations were often ‘used outwardly with happy success and some are bold to make use thereof inwardly’, he advised against this, ‘because nature furnisheth us with other remedies enough, less dangerous and more safe’.
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It would be misguided, however, to attach great significance to the fact that Glaser wrote about such matters, for this was hardly arcane knowledge. The poisons that he described had been in use for centuries and were readily available. Their sale was virtually unregulated in France, for though in 1642 a directive had been issued stating that apothecaries should not sell dangerous substances such as antimony, arsenic or sublimate to persons unknown to them or of doubtful honesty, this was laxly enforced. It would therefore have been simple for Sainte-Croix to obtain poisons such as these without recourse to Glaser.

However, Mme de Brinvilliers later claimed that Glaser had developed a unique formula, which was far superior to more readily available poisons and which Sainte-Croix had acquired from him. She was vague about its components, saying that she thought it consisted principally of refined arsenic and essence of toads, but she had been prepared to pay a large sum to buy some for her own use. In a letter she wrote to Sainte-Croix, which was later recovered and used in evidence against her, she declared that she was contemplating killing herself by taking ‘Glaser’s recipe, which you gave me at such a high price’.
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Shortly before going to her execution Mme de Brinvilliers provided more details about Glaser’s researches into poison. She said Sainte-Croix had told her that at some time in the 1650s Glaser had gone to Florence to learn how to make ‘the finest and most subtle poisons’. She maintained that Glaser had brought back from Italy some leaves that resembled those of a senna plant but which, if gathered in the month of March, were highly toxic. Furthermore, Sainte-Croix had led her to believe that Glaser’s visit to Italy had been financed by M. Fouquet. At the time Fouquet had been Louis XIV’s Surintendant of Finance, though he had since been imprisoned for life in the fortress of Pignerol after being arrested in 1661 on charges of malversation and treason. Hearing that he had sponsored Glaser’s trip to Florence, Mme de Brinvilliers said she had assumed that Fouquet had wanted to poison ‘someone who was in the way’. She added that Sainte-Croix had also told her that from his deathbed Glaser had given him information about poisons which were ‘so good and sophisticated that their results were infallible’.
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When all this emerged in the course of Mme de Brinvilliers’s final interrogations it caused terrible consternation. The seventeenth century was a time of phenomenal technological advance when educated people’s understanding of the world was undergoing profound modification. There had been significant discoveries in the fields of physics, mathematics, astronomy and medicine, and it therefore did not seem implausible that comparable advances had been made in toxicology. Understandably, therefore, the possibility that a brilliant and innovative man of science like Glaser might have been using his knowledge for perverted ends aroused intense disquiet.

Poison had of course been in use for centuries but it now seemed conceivable that all existing knowledge about it had been rendered obsolete. This meant that the threat it posed was greatly magnified, for criminals would have no fear of using it if they thought they could do so undetected. It was even possible that poisons had been developed that mimicked the effect of other illnesses. If so, doctors might have certified that people had died from natural causes when in reality they had been murdered. This led to retrospective speculation about deaths of prominent figures that had occurred in recent years but which at the time had aroused no suspicion.

The irony is that there is nothing to indicate that Sainte-Croix and Mme de Brinvilliers really did have access to poisons that were particularly novel or rare. Autopsies were performed on two of Mme de Brinvilliers’s victims precisely because they had exhibited classic symptoms of poisoning. Although at the time it was not possible to reach precise conclusions about what had killed them, a twentieth-century doctor who read the post-mortem results deduced that the poison used had been some form of corrosive sublimate. Apart from the fact that the victims had blackened digestive tubes, one of them was said to have complained that a drink he had been served had a horribly metallic taste, which supports this diagnosis. Mme de Brinvilliers also claimed that milk worked as an effective antidote to the poison she employed, and it is true that the proteins in milk can prevent absorption of mercury-based poisons.
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Sainte-Croix’s assertions that Exili and Christophe Glaser initiated him into mysteries unknown to other practitioners of the art of poison should therefore be treated with caution. It may be that he made these inflated claims to Mme de Brinvilliers simply because he realised that if he convinced her that his skills as a poisoner were unrivalled she would pay more highly for his services.

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Certainly, Sainte-Croix had always been intent on extorting as much money as possible from Mme de Brinvilliers. When he had joined their household in Paris, M. and Mme de Brinvilliers were still a wealthy couple. Even in 1662 their financial position was good enough to enable them to loan cash to an acquaintance. Soon afterwards, however, they started experiencing money problems, brought about, it would seem, through M. de Brinvilliers’s extravagance and incompetence (his wife later described him as ‘not at all capable’). By 1663 his family were so concerned by the way he was wasting his inheritance that they forced him to settle some of his patrimony on his children.
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To prevent him from squandering her own money, Mme de Brinvilliers entered into an arrangement known as a ‘separation of goods’, which prevented a husband who had overspent from having access to his wife’s wealth.

Unfortunately, the money which had been put beyond the reach of M. de Brinvilliers was not protected from the depredations of Sainte-Croix. The latter had sold his commission in the army after moving to Paris and ever since, despite having no visible source of revenue, had lived a life of ‘frightful extravagance’. He gambled extensively, as well as employing two servants and maintaining a carriage for his private use. Much of this was financed by Mme de Brinvilliers, for she later noted bitterly that she had given him a great deal of money. She also relied on Sainte-Croix for financial advice with the predictable result that ‘he completed the ruination of her affairs, which her husband had already done much to advance’.
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Besides resenting her father’s treatment of Sainte-Croix, Mme de Brinvilliers now coveted his wealth and this provided her with an additional motive for murder. In the expectation that she would be a beneficiary of his will, she made methodical arrangements to kill him. In early 1666 she placed in her father’s household a servant named Gascon whom Sainte-Croix had recruited for her and this man began the process of slow poisoning. A few months later Mme de Brinvilliers took control of the affair herself when she accompanied her father to his country estate at Offemont. She later confessed that, while there, she poisoned Dreux d’Aubray ‘with her own hands twenty-eight or thirty times’. Poison was administered in both powdered and fluid form with the result that Dreux d’Aubray became ‘tormented by extraordinary fits of vomiting, inconceivable stomach pains and strange burnings in the entrails’.
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By the time he returned to Paris, Dreux d’Aubray was mortally ill and on 10 September 1666 he died, aged sixty-three. Despite the curious nature of his last illness, foul play was not suspected. His doctors ascribed his death to a recurrence of the gout which had intermittently attacked him in past years. Ironically, one of his colleagues believed that his decline had been exacerbated by his grief at having recently been served a writ by another of his daughters who wanted a larger share of his wealth.
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No one blamed Mme de Brinvilliers for his demise.

It did not take Mme de Brinvilliers and Sainte-Croix long to run through the money that came to her as a result of her father’s death. By 1670 she was again in such financial straits that her carriage was repossessed and she was being harassed by numerous creditors. Her response was to resolve upon the murder of her two brothers. The elder of the two, Antoine, had succeeded his father as Civil Lieutenant of Paris, while the younger was a
Conseiller
in
Parlement.
Both were therefore prosperous men although their sister actually stood to gain little from their deaths. Neither of the two had bequeathed money to her in their wills, although it may be that she had not grasped this. At any rate, since both men had angered her by supporting her father’s stand against Sainte-Croix, she considered she had ample justification for disposing of them.

Once again Sainte-Croix found a man who could be infiltrated into the unsuspecting victims’ household. He was a former servant of Sainte-Croix’s named Jean Hamelin, but known as La Chausée. He had already commended himself to Mme de Brinvilliers because of his aptitude for dressing her hair, but now he revealed talents of an altogether different order. Mme de Brinvilliers arranged for him to enter the service of the younger of her two brothers who, conveniently, was an unmarried man who lived with Antoine d’Aubray and his wife.

Once installed in their house, La Chausée began by targeting the elder brother. An early attempt on Antoine d’Aubray’s life misfired when the latter complained that a drink served to him by La Chausée had a bitter and metallic savour. ‘Your servant’s trying to poison me,’ he complained to his brother, whereupon La Chausée coolly suggested that someone else must have used that glass to take a purgative and removed it from the table.
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In April 1670 La Chausée and his master spent Easter at Antoine d’Aubray’s country estate at Villequoy. During a paschal feast an elaborate raised pie was served, filled with cocks’ crests, sweetbreads and kidneys in a rich cream sauce. Seven people who ate this subsequently fell ill, but the most severely affected was Antoine d’Aubray. After that, he never recovered his health and grew steadily thinner. Besides vomiting frequently, he was tormented by thirst and experienced a burning sensation in his stomach.
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On 17 June 1670 he died.

Having fulfilled the first part of his assignment, La Chausée turned his attention to the surviving brother. At every meal La Chausée assiduously dosed his master, adding liquid poison to his wine and sprinkling it in powdered form on bread and meat dishes. Soon d’Aubray was afflicted by the identical symptoms as his late brother and entered upon a lingering but inexorable decline. In the weeks that preceded his death, La Chausée masqueraded as the most loyal of servants. As d’Aubray’s condition deteriorated his body became ‘so stinking and infected’ that it was unendurable to enter his bedroom and the dying man’s temper grew so atrocious that few people dared approach him. Only La Chausée showed himself ready to brave both the stench and d’Aubray’s rages. With exemplary devotion he nursed the invalid tenderly and frequently changed his horribly soiled bedlinen.
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By September 1670 d’Aubray was so ill that Mme de Brinvilliers was informed she should go to Paris in order to be present when he died. She did so with some irritation, for she wrote from the deathbed that she was having a very disagreeable time. She complained that the house was full of pious people whom she found uncongenial and that she was worn out by the ‘continual cares’ her brother required.
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Much to the relief of his sister, d’Aubray did not last much longer, dying some time in September 1670. By this time suspicions were mounting that neither brother had died of natural causes. Towards the end of his life Antoine d’Aubray had himself voiced fears that he had been poisoned and as a result an autopsy had been carried out. Although in the seventeenth century there were no forensic tests that could establish the presence of poison in a corpse, the results of the post-mortem had given ample cause for concern. The officiating doctor reported that the dead man’s stomach and liver were blackened and gangrenous, and the intestines were so dried out that they were starting to disintegrate. Although he could not absolutely rule out disease, he pronounced that the ‘alteration and corruption of the aforesaid parts’ could only have been caused by ‘poison or by some extraordinarily malign humour’, which had the same effects as poison. He noted that an illness of that sort was extremely rare,
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so when the dead man’s brother followed him to the grave in quick succession after manifesting the same symptoms, the likelihood of poison seemed even greater.