Authors: Steven Levingston
Inside the Moulin Rouge was a cavernous hall softly illuminated by gas jets shaded pink and white and by electric lightbulbs colored cream and rose and shaped like tulips. On all sides of the immense dance floor stood refreshment tables where patrons sipped cherry brandy, champagne, and absinthe. National flags from around the world ringed the room.
The evening began with variety shows on several stages: trained seals and caterwauling female singers in pink tights. Outside was a large garden, presided over by a two-story-tall stucco elephant saved from the International Exposition, where patrons wandered past fountains and flowery nooks and watched bare-breasted women riding donkeys in a ring. Singers, dancing girls, and vaudevillians performed on a small stage. Climbing the spiral stairs inside the elephant’s leg brought you to the creature’s roomy belly, where young girls in Arab dress swayed and wriggled in what was described as
“supersalacious entertainment” for gentlemen only.
Then back inside the club at 10:30 p.m., with the throng numbering perhaps two thousand,
“the overcrowded, overheated, over-perfumed hall was ringing with laughter and conversation,” as one writer put it, when a drum roll announced the start of the chief entertainment of the night. “The quadrillistes would run in and take their places, and from then to twelve-thirty, to the loudest music ever blared out in Paris, the big show was on.” These were the famed cancan dancers who performed their high-kicking steps at eye level, titillating customers with peeks at their bloomers beneath the ruffles of their petticoats.
The Moulin Rouge satisfied an unhinged abandon among Parisians,
the wild liberation of souls in need of release. Tapping into that public mood, Goron aimed to unleash a frenzy over the Gouffé case by displaying the two macabre trunks at the morgue. To build anticipation he courted the press. He gave interviews, described preparations, explained his hopes for the exhibit. He enlisted the press as his partner in whipping up enthusiasm.
“It was necessary,” he conceded, “to stir up a lot of noise.”
Finally, on Friday, November 22, readers of
Le Figaro
learned that the trunks would go on display the following morning at nine. The two pieces were to be placed just inside the morgue’s entrance near a large window to capture the best possible light.
By the expected opening time, some three hundred Parisians were in line, bundled in their overcoats against the chill. By noon, the doors still hadn’t opened and the crowd had swollen to a thousand. As the hours dragged on, the grumbling intensified along quai de l’Archevêché, not far from Notre Dame. When rumors spread that the attraction had been canceled, the horde grew restless. Police were called in. At 3:00 p.m. word filtered out that, despite earlier promises, the trunks were only then being installed. At 4:00 p.m., guards were posted at the entrance and at last visitors were waved inside, ten at a time.
As spectators filed into the hall, exclamations were heard, some sincere, others jocular.
“Many women were very pale and very happy at the same time from the emotion of seeing the sinister package,”
Le Petit Journal
wrote.
Each trunk had a label. The one on the original read:
“This trunk transported the body of M. Gouffé of Paris to Tour-de-Millery (Rhône). It was broken into about twenty pieces and was discovered in the bush about ten kilometers from the corpse. It has been rebuilt.” The posting on the replica read: “This trunk was made with materials resembling those of the authentic trunk, displayed opposite. It is fairly certain that before departing Paris the trunk that transported the corpse was in the condition of the specimen found here.”
Another placard instructed anyone with information relating to the corpses to visit the morgue office where a Sûreté inspector was stationed or to contact Goron himself at Sûreté headquarters, 36, quai des Orfèvres.
The crowd kept coming until the doors closed at 6:00 p.m. In
L’Écho de Paris
, the show garnered a rave review:
“There was last night at the morgue a grand premiere—a sensational premiere. For the first time, the trunk that transported Gouffé’s cadaver was exhibited in this lugubrious monument.”
So stirring was the first day that the papers predicted a deluge of visitors for Sunday—
“a veritable traffic jam,” as one put it.
But what was to be gained from the crowds, and who among the public would break the case?
Le Petit Journal
laid out the quest:
“Amid the innumerable curious who file in front of the trunk, will we find one who can reveal anything meaningful about its origin? A secondhand goods dealer—will he remember having sold it? And when? Can he give a physical description of the buyer? Does a coachman remember having loaded it onto his coach? A neighbor, would he have seen it being brought into a home that he can name? One must hope. One can only support the magistrates for trying everything to discover the authors of this mysterious crime.”
By Monday, the papers estimated that twenty-five thousand people had swarmed through the morgue. On Tuesday, the figure climbed to fifty thousand. But so far, not a single useful lead came to light. To jog people’s memories, the Gouffé family offered five hundred francs to anyone, particularly coachmen, who recognized the trunk. That brought a caravan of coachmen into Goron’s office claiming they’d carted the crate to the train station.
“It took an interrogation of just a few minutes to convince me that all these drivers were influenced by the suggestion of the promised gift and that none of them had any useful information to give,” Goron recalled. “It’s necessary to have spent time as a detective to appreciate the extraordinary number of true practical jokers, crazies, idiots, and blackmailers that fill a great city like Paris.”
Still, coachmen were suddenly important personages—deemed the best bet to deliver a golden nugget. So they earned priority entrance at the morgue. If you showed up driving a coach, you were escorted to the front of the long line to make your way right in, while those who had waited for hours jeered.
Each evening, as the autumn darkness fell, gas jets were lighted inside the morgue, casting shadows over the gloomy scene.
“Illuminated
by a reddish light, the trunk … seemed to take on a tragic aspect,” wrote a reporter for
Le Petit Journal.
He imagined Gouffé’s body, its arms and legs crushed into the coffin, and, perhaps speaking for himself, reported: “More than one of the curious left with the shivers.”
And the crowds kept coming. The line formed at eight in the morning and by nine it stretched to the Pont Notre-Dame. Inside, spectators strolled through the hall gazing at the trunks as if window-shopping at the grand department stores; in place of price tags were the placards outlining the merchandise’s morbid history. Visitors went home with mini-trunks as souvenirs, and in the cafés the French raised their glasses in a rousing toast to
la malle sanglante
—the bloody trunk.
“They are people given to psychical epidemics, historical mass convulsions,” the young Freud observed in a letter home, “and they haven’t changed since Victor Hugo wrote
Notre Dame.
”
Moving slowly through the exhibit hall, the voyeurs each had a wide-eyed look at the trunks; some were respectful, others crude. Tourists added the morgue to their itinerary. British elites rolled up in fancy carriages and,
“as common mortals,”
L’Écho de Paris
explained, “these curious exotics had to get in line and wait their turns.”
And the days rolled on. The sensation never cooled, and yet no one came forward. The newspapers rang similar notes.
Le Gil Blas
, November 27: “No news from the morgue.”
L’Écho de Paris
, December 3: “In the eight days the trunk has been on display … no new information has arrived.”
And the bloody trunk kept its secrets.
In the meantime, the public devoured any tidbit on the suspects. A concierge remembered an encounter with Eyraud in the days before Gouffé disappeared. Eyraud was distraught, he said, his frock buttoned up to his neck—which was unusual for him because he liked to show off his fancy clothing and jewels.
On seeing him, the concierge had said,
“You look unhappy, Monsieur Eyraud.”
“I’m ruined,” Eyraud replied. “I don’t have a sou. I’ve barely had a scrap of bread in three days.”
“Don’t let misfortune beat you down,” the concierge sympathized.
And suddenly Eyraud flew into a rage. “I’ll take vengeance on those who ruined me! You’ll see. I’m going to remake my fortune in America.”
Stories like this one, true or not, added currency to the impression that Eyraud had fled across the Atlantic to America or points south.
More reliable was Eyraud’s wife, the distraught Louise-Laure. She told reporters she had prepared a valise for her husband around the time of the murder, packing it with twelve shirts and other items for a trip he said he would be taking to South America.
“That he has abandoned us,” she told
Le Figaro
, “to go live in a strange country with the one whom he has made his mistress! I must admit it alas!” But she still refused to believe her husband could have been involved in a murder. He was a loving father, she insisted: “He adored his daughter and certainly he will write to her, if he isn’t dead.”
Then, in late November, the procession in front of the trunk finally shook loose an important lead: A cabinetmaker named Paul Cathrin who studied the piece carefully came forward to say that without doubt it was made in England. Cathrin, who had spent several years in London, said the trunk’s dimensions were based on the English yard, not the French meter, and the original nails used in its construction were found only across the Channel.
Then came this: A man named Liénard, who knew Gabrielle in Lille, said she stayed with him in Paris for two days—and she had a large trunk that was identical to the one at the morgue. Brigadier Soudais was dispatched to Liénard’s apartment. He measured the space where the trunk had rested on the floor—and the dimensions were a match.
Goron wasn’t satisfied by the measurements alone. He ordered Inspector Jaume to take the trunk from the morgue to Liénard’s apartment and place it in the exact spot where it had sat. A perfect fit: the trunk scratched the wall again right where it had done so earlier and left scratches on the floor identical to previous ones.
There was more to Liénard’s story: When Gabrielle arrived at his apartment, she told him she’d bought the trunk in London before
abandoning her lover there because he beat her. She returned to Paris on July 14 for the celebration of Bastille Day.
So Gabrielle could now be placed in Paris about two weeks before Gouffé disappeared, and she had a large trunk that she bought in London matching the one at the morgue.
Next with some news was a Frenchman living in London, Georges Chéron, who kept up with life in Paris through the French papers. Chéron was a regular reader of
Le Petit Journal
, whose recent flood of stories about Michel Eyraud and Gabrielle Bompard had reminded him of an experience he’d had several months earlier. Chéron described it in a letter to Monsieur Berthe, a business associate of the Gouffé family whose name had appeared in one of the newspapers. Reading the letter, Berthe realized its importance and passed it on to Chief Goron, who in turn informed Paul Dopffer, the investigating magistrate.
The letter’s circuitous route into the right hands exposed the tensions that existed among investigators—not to mention the haughtiness and pettiness rife within the hierarchy of the French justice system. As the lead justice official, Dopffer expected to be the first contacted with fresh news pertinent to the investigation. He was miffed not only that the letter was not originally addressed to him but that its arrival on his desk seemed something of an afterthought by everyone in the chain. Jaume took Dopffer to task for his snit. Did he plan to arrest Chéron for addressing his letter to the wrong party? Was he planning to retaliate against poor Monsieur Berthe for the crime of receiving a letter?
“The magistrates, like the agents of the Sûreté, are overworked, nervous, and irritable,” the inspector noted in his diary.
The letter contained some explosive new evidence. Having read about Eyraud and Gabrielle in the newspaper, Chéron wrote:
“I am nearly certain I had these two persons as lodgers.”
Chéron rented out furnished rooms in his small house at 151 Gower Street. When Marie-Alexandrine Vespres, a thirty-year-old Frenchwoman also living in London, told him her uncle was looking for lodgings he was most happy to take him in. This man, a Monsieur Michel, arrived in late June with a small trunk and two handbags. Chéron was not particularly pleased by his lodger, whom he described
as a braggart with a penchant for bawdiness. Michel presented himself as a businessman who was familiar with Parisian café and boulevard life. He spoke decent English, explaining that after French his best languages were Spanish and Portuguese, for he’d lived in South America and traveled extensively in Argentina. He had a heavy mustache and balding head which he sometimes hid under a wig that he parted in the middle. He told Chéron he was married with one daughter. When he laughed, Chéron noticed the gold rim of a false tooth.
Several days later, on July 7, a tiny young woman showed up at the Chéron home wearing a hooded overcoat and a black veil. She had no bags, no money, nothing except a piece of paper on which was scrawled the address 151 Gower Street. She informed Chéron that this was where she was told to meet Monsieur Michel. As she didn’t have money for the coachman, Chéron’s wife covered the fare for her. The young woman waited in the kitchen, and when Monsieur Michel returned the Chérons noticed how coolly he greeted her—no one could miss the tension between them. A few days later, however, Michel and the woman went to a department store on Oxford Street, where he bought her a new wardrobe.
Monsieur Michel rarely stayed with the young woman at the house on Gower Street; he told Madame Chéron that a friend of his wife’s had offered him a room in her home and he was obliged to avail himself of it. He explained that the young woman lodging with them was waiting to reach legal age so she could claim a considerable fortune from her father in Lille, who was a wealthy merchant of used metals. They could sense that the young woman was afraid of Michel. On at least one occasion she pointed out to Madame Chéron patches of her blackened flesh where he had beaten her. When Madame Chéron cautioned her to stay away from him, the woman seemed helpless, pointing out: “
He is capable of anything.”