Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Manky listener discretion advised. In the
Speaker 1: early eighteen hundreds, the specter of arsenic poisoning was everywhere.
Speaker 1: Arsenic was scary, and for good reason. It was a
Speaker 1: deadly poison that could odorlessly be dissolved into food or drink,
Speaker 1: and it was something with a number of legitimate uses
Speaker 1: like rat poison, agriculture, even some medical treatments, which meant
Speaker 1: that arsenic was widely available in apothecaries. But something else
Speaker 1: made arsenic uniquely frightening among the bourgeois salon class. Arsenic
Speaker 1: was available from apothecaries, but it was only permitted to
Speaker 1: be sold to quote, well known people, which meant it
Speaker 1: wasn't being sold to quote indigence prostitutes, beggars, or visibly
Speaker 1: destitute people end quote. Arsenic was being used for murder, then,
Speaker 1: by the type of person that society didn't perceive to
Speaker 1: be a murderer. It's little wonder that the poison was
Speaker 1: sometimes referred to by the morbid little nickname inheritance powder.
Speaker 1: Another thing that made arsenic terrifying was there was no
Speaker 1: real way of testing for it, it killed someone with
Speaker 1: vague symptoms that could be ascribed to a number of
Speaker 1: fairly common diseases, and even as late as the eighteen thirties,
Speaker 1: evidence that something contained arsenic could be as inexact as
Speaker 1: whether it emitted a garlic like smell when burned. People
Speaker 1: were getting away with murder, and what made it scary?
Speaker 1: Those people getting away with murder could look like anyone,
Speaker 1: the nice young man with wealthy parents, the pretty widow
Speaker 1: who always said hello to you at the apothecary. That
Speaker 1: was the problem that faced Scottish chemist James Marsh when
Speaker 1: he was trying to identify arsenic in the case of
Speaker 1: a man named John Bottle, who was accused of killing
Speaker 1: his grandfather by stirring arsenic into his coffee. The procedure
Speaker 1: Marsh was using to try to find arsenic in the
Speaker 1: coffee and the grandfather's remains was using a hydrogen sulfide
Speaker 1: to bubble through the material, and if the material contained arsenic,
Speaker 1: it would produce yellow arsinius sulfide, which could be reduced
Speaker 1: into a yellow precipitate. But the method was more reliable
Speaker 1: with liquid than it was with organic man and though
Speaker 1: Marsh was able to identify arsenic in the coffee that
Speaker 1: Bottle's grandfather had drank. Marsh couldn't find arsenic in the
Speaker 1: dead body's stomach, but even Marsh's coffee evidence was fairly insignificant.
Speaker 1: In court, that yellow precipitate was inexact, and it decomposed
Speaker 1: fairly quickly. The jury declared John Buddle innocent. It frustrated
Speaker 1: James Marsh, and then it made him furious years later
Speaker 1: when John Buddle confessed that he actually did kill his
Speaker 1: grandfather with arsenic in his coffee, and so Marsh was
Speaker 1: determined to make a better test, to find a way
Speaker 1: so that arsenic poisoners could be held accountable to justice
Speaker 1: with actual evidence. In eighteen thirty six, James Marsh created
Speaker 1: the Marsh Test. I'm not a chemist, so forgive me
Speaker 1: if I get any details wrong, but this is my
Speaker 1: incredibly basic understanding of how the Marsh test works. If
Speaker 1: arsenic is combined with hydrogen, it creates arsine gas, and
Speaker 1: so a sample that possibly contains arsenic is combined with
Speaker 1: zinc and sulfuric acid to make hydrogen, and then if
Speaker 1: arsenic is present, the arsine gas is led through a
Speaker 1: heated glass tube which then decomposes into shiny arsenic metal.
Speaker 1: That arsenic metal is collected on a thin porcelain plate,
Speaker 1: and even the tiniest trace of arsenic becomes visible. The
Speaker 1: Marsh test was nothing short of a breakthrough. The Pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: Journal wrote that arsenic poisoning, that quote most excurrable of crimes,
Speaker 1: was happily banished from the world. Marsh was honored by
Speaker 1: the Society of Arts with their award of the quote
Speaker 1: large Gold Medal capital L, capital G, capital M, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure is a lovely and incredibly high honor, but
Speaker 1: does read to modern eyes as being awarded a large
Speaker 1: gold star. In eighteen thirty seven, the Marsh Test was
Speaker 1: translated into French and made its way onto the continent,
Speaker 1: But it wouldn't be until eighteen forty and the notorious
Speaker 1: case of a woman named Marie LeFarge where it would
Speaker 1: be put to the well test in its most public
Speaker 1: and famous application. Marie Lafarge was a glamorous woman with
Speaker 1: raven hair who was raised in all of the right
Speaker 1: social circles in Paris, and she was accused of slipping
Speaker 1: arsenic into her husband's food. Her trial surely would have
Speaker 1: been a public spectacle no matter what. But for the
Speaker 1: first time in France, the Marsh test would be used
Speaker 1: and used publicly to determine scientifically whether Marie's husband, Charles,
Speaker 1: had had arsenic in his body when he died. Modern
Speaker 1: forensic toxicology was being invented in real time. In eighteen
Speaker 1: forty one, an English magazine wrote, we confess to having
Speaker 1: been singularly interested in the trial of Madame LeFarge for
Speaker 1: the murder of her husband as a romance of real life.
Speaker 1: It strongly exemplified the adage that truth is stranger than fiction.
Speaker 1: For certainly, no living dramatist could have invented such a plot,
Speaker 1: or such characters, or such scenes as has occurred in
Speaker 1: its progress. No extravagant German tale ever presented a wilder
Speaker 1: mixture of the revolting, the horrible and the ludicrous. It
Speaker 1: resembled one of our own terrific melodramas end quote. In short,
Speaker 1: a perfect episode of noble blood. The Marsh Test offered
Speaker 1: the public a shiny new thrill, the promise that justice
Speaker 1: could be scientifically exact. But even today, with nearly two
Speaker 1: centuries of scientific advancement since the trial of Madame LeFarge
Speaker 1: court cases aren't simple matters of science, and finding the
Speaker 1: truth in Marie Lefarge's guilt or her innocence was a
Speaker 1: matter far more complicated than a chemical reaction. Chemistry might
Speaker 1: be scientific, but plenty of other evidence is a matter
Speaker 1: of who you choose to believe. Justice is sometimes a
Speaker 1: matter of perspective, a matter of a story that someone
Speaker 1: tells you, I'm Danish warts and this is noble blood.
Speaker 1: Marie LeFarge was born into the privileges of upper class
Speaker 1: nineteenth century French society. Her grandmother was a baroness and
Speaker 1: an illegitimate daughter of Louis Philippe, the Duke of Orleons.
Speaker 1: Marie LeFarge had an aunt married to a Prussian diplomat,
Speaker 1: and another married to the Secretary General of the Bank
Speaker 1: of France. Her father was a military officer said to
Speaker 1: be a favorite of Napoleon. All in all, Marie was
Speaker 1: on the path to a perfectly respectable life, rubbing elbows
Speaker 1: with the well healed and well connected. But then a
Speaker 1: twist of fate, like the beginning of a tragic fairy tale.
Speaker 1: Marie's father died in a hunting accident, and her mother
Speaker 1: died a few years later when Marie was eighteen, which
Speaker 1: led her to being sent off to live under the
Speaker 1: supervision of one of her aunts. Though Marie went to
Speaker 1: the right schools and socialized in the right circles, she
Speaker 1: was all too aware that she was something of a
Speaker 1: poor relation.
Speaker 2: I have not.
Speaker 1: She watched as one of her closest friends, a woman
Speaker 1: also named Marie, married a viscount and became the Viscontesse
Speaker 1: de lu Tout, while Marie LeFarge remained unmarried. Her dowry
Speaker 1: was ninety thousand francs, which all things considered, was very respectable,
Speaker 1: but was nothing compared to the heiresses in Marie's social circles,
Speaker 1: especially because, as Marie remarked of herself, she was no
Speaker 1: great beauty. She was considered average, with an average dowry
Speaker 1: that made her feel downright mediocre compared to her friends.
Speaker 1: Marie visited her friend, the Viscomtess, at her beautiful new
Speaker 1: chateau and thought, how easy it must be. The Viscomtesse
Speaker 1: had a drawer of diamond necklaces that she treated so
Speaker 1: casually she wouldn't even notice if they went missing. Marie,
Speaker 1: at age twenty three, was already aware that she was
Speaker 1: becoming a burden to her family. Marie's uncle, eager to
Speaker 1: make a match for her, came home one day and
Speaker 1: announced that he had found her a husband, the son
Speaker 1: of a postmaster.
Speaker 2: Marie recoiled.
Speaker 1: She knew it was a marriage of convenience, but the
Speaker 1: job was just so common. Was that all her aunt
Speaker 1: and uncle thought of her. In her memoir, Marie writes
Speaker 1: a little heartbreakingly of the disillusionment in realizing her aunt
Speaker 1: actually did not harbor the maternal feelings for her that
Speaker 1: she had so hoped for the postmaster's son. May marriage
Speaker 1: fell through, but soon enough Marie's uncle had another match,
Speaker 1: the owner of an iron forge. This time, both Marie
Speaker 1: and her aunt burst out laughing, where are you discovering
Speaker 1: this mine of husbands? Marie asked her uncle jokingly. Her
Speaker 1: uncle's face was stony. He had met the iron master
Speaker 1: through a mutual friend, a rich merchant. Marie's uncle's reaction
Speaker 1: told her everything she needed to know. Her options were limited.
Speaker 1: The iron master's name was Charles Lafarge. He was twenty
Speaker 1: eight years old. Marie was told that he owned one
Speaker 1: of the finest estates in the region of Limoisson, a
Speaker 1: grand manner known as Le Glandier, and that in addition
Speaker 1: to the large income he brought in from his iron works,
Speaker 1: he had two hundred thousand francs in land and capital.
Speaker 1: For a marriage of convenience, Marie could do a lot worse,
Speaker 1: and so it was arranged for Marie and Charles LeFarge
Speaker 1: to meet at a private concert, where Marie's uncle would
Speaker 1: introduce Charles as a friend in the interest of social decorum.
Speaker 1: Charles didn't make a very good first impression, as Marie
Speaker 1: wrote in her memoir Monsieur LeFarge was extremely ugly. His
Speaker 1: form and features were the most business looking conceivable. He
Speaker 1: spoke to me a good deal, but the noisy harmony
Speaker 1: of the orchestra drowned.
Speaker 2: Out his words.
Speaker 1: But still he was wealthy, and they said that his house,
Speaker 1: Laglandier was a lovely place to live, in a large
Speaker 1: park with wonderful views. And so Marie and Charles were
Speaker 1: married in a small ceremony, and Marie set off with
Speaker 1: her new husband on a journey to return to his
Speaker 1: home and to Marie's new life. It didn't take long
Speaker 1: for any optimism Marie might have felt about her new
Speaker 1: marriage to dissolve the journey back to Limissant would take
Speaker 1: a few days by carriage, and they had stopped at
Speaker 1: an inn for the night. Marie was taking a bath
Speaker 1: when her husband knocked hard on her door. Wait ten minutes,
Speaker 1: Marie shouted, and I'll be dressed. Charles replied, it is
Speaker 1: precisely because you are undressed that I want to come in.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Do you take me for a fool or think I
Speaker 1: am to be driven off forever by your damned Parisian modesty.
Speaker 1: Marie was stunned, not by the marital act, which she
Speaker 1: understood would take place eventually, but by the brutishness.
Speaker 2: Of her new husband.
Speaker 1: Now Marie's maid spoke up, Surely, monsieur will be polite
Speaker 1: the first day, The maid said, open the door. Charles said,
Speaker 1: or I will break it open. Marie refused, and, according
Speaker 1: to her memoir, Charles responded with a storm of obscene
Speaker 1: imprecations that I should shudder to write, before departing in
Speaker 1: a furious mood without making good on that threat to
Speaker 1: break the door down. But now Marie understood what sort
Speaker 1: of man her husband was. He wasn't the gentleman she
Speaker 1: had dreamed of. This was a rough man from the
Speaker 1: country who resented her wealthy Parisian upbringing, and their marriage
Speaker 1: was going to be a challenging one. The next morning,
Speaker 1: Charles Lafarge greeted Marie more kindly, almost apologetically. He asked
Speaker 1: how she was feeling, and, as Marie wrote, he embraced
Speaker 1: me and became kind and attentive as before. Still Marie
Speaker 1: couldn't shake her unpleasant feeling, the misery she sensed was
Speaker 1: awaiting her in a marriage she was now trapped in.
Speaker 1: I was unable to eat at dinner, she wrote, and
Speaker 1: having taken a cup of tea, I spent an hour
Speaker 1: in a balcony, feeling the horrors of the abyss yawning
Speaker 1: at my feet, but dreading the thoughts of coolly measuring
Speaker 1: its depth. Even Marie couldn't have predicted what would be
Speaker 1: waiting for her at La Glandier when she finally arrived.
Speaker 1: Perhaps the reason Charles had been so aggressive at the
Speaker 1: inn was because he knew that if there was a
Speaker 1: chance he was going to get to enjoy his wife, Carnalie,
Speaker 1: it was going to be before they made it back
Speaker 1: to his estate. When the couple finally made it back,
Speaker 1: things would go from merely unpleasant to abysmal. That abyss
Speaker 1: Marie imagined was no longer just at her feet, It
Speaker 1: was about to swallow her whole. The town outside Laglandier
Speaker 1: was squalid, small and miserable, with dirty, narrow streets populated
Speaker 1: by suspicious and cruel faces. La Glandier itself was worse.
Speaker 1: Charles Lafarge was not a wealthy iron master with a
Speaker 1: sizeable property and generous income. He was broke and heavily
Speaker 1: in debt, and his estate was a crumbling ruin, dripping
Speaker 1: with damp and mold walls, wheezing with the cold, and
Speaker 1: squeaking with rats. And Marie was met upon their arrival
Speaker 1: with a scene out of a Gothic horror novel, where
Speaker 1: she was welcomed into the crumbling estate by her new
Speaker 1: mother in law and sister in law, both of whom
Speaker 1: viewed Charles's new bride with skepticism verging on derision. Who
Speaker 1: was this young privileged Parisian society girl who deigned to
Speaker 1: come out to their country home and judge them? Close
Speaker 1: to tears, Marie made some excuse to retire to her
Speaker 1: room with her maid, and she found that her bedroom
Speaker 1: was threadbare, barely furnished. When she asked for an inkstand
Speaker 1: so that she might write a letter, she was given
Speaker 1: a broken sweetmeat jar with gray water swirling inside. She
Speaker 1: had been tricked, deceived, and was now legally married and
Speaker 1: stuck here for the rest of her life. In this
Speaker 1: miserable place. Le Glandier was built on the ruins of
Speaker 1: a former monastery, and Marie's mother in law would tell
Speaker 1: Marie that once she had forgotten to make the sign
Speaker 1: of the Cross in front of her daughter's cradle, and
Speaker 1: the devil himself had overturned the baby's basinet and left
Speaker 1: long blue scars the mark of his black nails on
Speaker 1: the baby's neck. But Marie didn't need to be told
Speaker 1: that this place was haunted. She coul it, and the
Speaker 1: fact that you would need to spend a single night here,
Speaker 1: let alone the rest of her life, was almost beyond comprehension.
Speaker 1: The thought of writing to her friends in Paris, of
Speaker 1: telling them about her terrible deception, was humiliation. And even
Speaker 1: if she did write them, she was one hundred leagues
Speaker 1: away from Paris, from help from people who cared about her.
Speaker 1: Marie was all alone, the new lady of a house
Speaker 1: that came with a collection of in laws who resented
Speaker 1: her supposed city heirs, and with a brutish husband who
Speaker 1: was getting impatient to consummate their marriage. Marie articulated her
Speaker 1: despair in her memoir, saying, quote, the gray color of
Speaker 1: the heavens darkening as night approached, added to the indignation
Speaker 1: which filled me at the deceit. I suffered from the
Speaker 1: greater and more repugnant fear of the nocturnal tete, a
Speaker 1: tete which I dreaded so much and could no longer shun.
Speaker 1: I have never known hatred, But when my heart is wounded,
Speaker 1: I am powerless to master my indignation. At that moment,
Speaker 1: I should have sickened. If Monsieur LeFarge had kissed my
Speaker 1: hand in his arms, I should have perished, with her
Speaker 1: maid guarding the door and using the broken jar as
Speaker 1: an inkwell. Marie frantically wrote a note to her new husband,
Speaker 1: begging him to release her from the marriage. Get two
Speaker 1: horses ready, I will ride to Bordeaux and then take
Speaker 1: the ship to Smyrna. I will leave you all my possessions.
Speaker 1: May God turn them to your advantage. Let no one
Speaker 1: know I have ever existed. I will take arsenic, I
Speaker 1: have some spare me be the guardian angel of a
Speaker 1: poor orphan girl, or if you choose, slay me and
Speaker 1: say I have killed myself. To his credit, it seems
Speaker 1: that Charles responded pretty well to the distraught young woman
Speaker 1: dericading herself in her room and threatening suicide. He read
Speaker 1: the note Marie shoved beneath the door without anger or defensiveness,
Speaker 1: and when Marie was well enough to come out, he
Speaker 1: kissed her hand and began weeping himself. He told Marie,
Speaker 1: unfortunately he could not release her from the marriage, one
Speaker 1: because he needed her dowry, and two because she actually
Speaker 1: wasn't permitted to dispose of her own dowry without the
Speaker 1: permission of her family. But wait a few days, he promised.
Speaker 1: Please let me show you how much I adore you,
Speaker 1: and in the meantime live here merely as my sister,
Speaker 1: without sharing a bed until I can prove my love
Speaker 1: and make you happy. Charles apologized profusely for the state
Speaker 1: of the house and assured Marie that he would do
Speaker 1: everything in his power to begin to repair Le Glandier
Speaker 1: until it became a place up to her standards. From
Speaker 1: that point on, while I don't think Marie fell madly
Speaker 1: in love with Charles, but things started to get much better.
Speaker 1: The two seemed to get along. Marie began using her
Speaker 1: money and her connections to help Charles get ahead in business.
Speaker 1: She had some money that she invested in the Forge,
Speaker 1: and she put Charles in touch with some of her
Speaker 1: contacts who might be able to get him loans. And
Speaker 1: though things remained frosty with Marie's mother in law, Marie
Speaker 1: and Charles began to have a pretty decent marital relationship.
Speaker 1: In a letter to a friend, Murray wrote, I have
Speaker 1: accepted my position, although it is difficult. But with a
Speaker 1: little strength of mind, with patience and my husband's love,
Speaker 1: I may grow contended. Charles adores me, and I cannot
Speaker 1: but be touched by the caresses lavished on me. Again,
Speaker 1: it's worth remembering she is writing that in a letter
Speaker 1: to a friend, her pride had already been wounded by
Speaker 1: the fact that she was sent away to endure the
Speaker 1: situation in the first place, and her letter might be
Speaker 1: read as the nineteenth century equivalent of carefully curating photos
Speaker 1: to post on Instagram so that your life looks more
Speaker 1: enviable to your friends than it actually is, But according
Speaker 1: to Marie and the way she writes in her memoir,
Speaker 1: her relationship with Charles continued to develop from a genuine
Speaker 1: friendship to a slowly blossoming romance, to the point that
Speaker 1: in autumn, when Charles was taking a business trip to
Speaker 1: Paris to try to make arrangements for loans, Marie thought
Speaker 1: it would be romantic to send along a miniature.
Speaker 2: Portrait of herself.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty funny section in Marie's memoir. The portrait
Speaker 1: comes back and Marie is horrified at how ugly it looks,
Speaker 1: and her mother in law and their housekeeper, Mademoiselle Braun,
Speaker 1: do an incredibly passive, aggressive, classic mean girl move. What
Speaker 1: a perfect like this? She really captured you. In the
Speaker 1: memoir quote, Madame Lafarge, mother in law, was so enthusiastic
Speaker 1: at the sight of my portrait, and Mademoiselle Brun regarded
Speaker 1: it near and at distance with a smile of such
Speaker 1: proud satisfaction that I believed, with a sigh, that my
Speaker 1: vanity had deluded me, and that I was quite as
Speaker 1: ugly as my picture. In the package to Paris, Marie
Speaker 1: also included some small local chestnuts and some little cakes.
Speaker 1: Baked by Charles's mother, quote whose reputation for pastry was colossal,
Speaker 1: and who was not accustomed to concede to anyone the
Speaker 1: grand work of making side dishes. I imagine it's the
Speaker 1: same type of situation as your mother in law being
Speaker 1: famous for making pie. So it would be an insult
Speaker 1: come Thanksgiving for anyone else to Deiane make dessert. And
Speaker 1: so the package with the portrait, the chestnuts and the
Speaker 1: little cakes was tied with cording and sent to Paris,
Speaker 1: along with the note Marie sent telling her husband that
Speaker 1: it might be romantic if he ate a cake at
Speaker 1: midnight in Paris and she ate a cake at midnight
Speaker 1: in La Glandier, so that even though they were distant,
Speaker 1: they would both be eating cake at.
Speaker 2: The same time.
Speaker 1: A sweet thought. Two days earlier, Marie had written to
Speaker 1: an apothecary, I am devoured by rats. I have tried
Speaker 1: plaster and nux vomica to rid myself of them, but
Speaker 1: they do know good will you, and can you let
Speaker 1: me have a little You can rely upon my prudence,
Speaker 1: It is to put in a closet where I keep
Speaker 1: my linen. Charles received his care package in Paris, but
Speaker 1: here is where some unverified sources spend a slightly different story.
Speaker 1: The problem with this particular podcast episode is that the
Speaker 1: Lfarge case had become such a media sensation that magazines
Speaker 1: and newspapers wrote about it with a, let's say, tabloid
Speaker 1: esque sense of abandon and so sometimes we get contemporary
Speaker 1: sources making conflicting claims, and sometimes aspects of the case
Speaker 1: are adopted into the story, repeated over and over again
Speaker 1: without ever having been really verified, or at least verified
Speaker 1: in a way that I can trace in the first place.
Speaker 1: And so one of those aspects of the story is
Speaker 1: that when Charles received his care package, it wasn't secured
Speaker 1: with cords the way it had.
Speaker 2: Been when it was sent off.
Speaker 1: It was tied with ropes, and there weren't a number
Speaker 1: of small cakes inside, but rather one large cake. Well,
Speaker 1: no matter, Charles thought. He cut himself a slice and
Speaker 1: went about his evening. It wasn't long though, before Charles
Speaker 1: became incredibly ill, too sick to leave his bed. A
Speaker 1: doctor saw him in Paris and said that based on
Speaker 1: his symptoms, he was suffering from cholera. Eventually, in January
Speaker 1: of eighteen forty, Charles was well enough to come back
Speaker 1: home to La Glandier, where he would be cared for
Speaker 1: by his mother, his sister, the housekeeper Mademoiselle Broun Marie,
Speaker 1: and a cousin named Emma. The family doctor was brought
Speaker 1: around at once, and he corroborated what the doctor in
Speaker 1: Paris had thought cholera. What Charles needed was bed rest,
Speaker 1: lots of good food, and good sleep. Marie was at
Speaker 1: her husband's bedside every day, and he often complained about
Speaker 1: the scurrying of rats in the walls, in the floors,
Speaker 1: in the ceilings, making noise that made it hard for
Speaker 1: him to sleep. The bit of arsenic that she had
Speaker 1: bought the month prior hadn't worked, evidently, and the rats
Speaker 1: had expanded their territory, making their way into Marie's closet
Speaker 1: and chewing at her linen's. Marie asked her husband's clerk,
Speaker 1: a Monsieur Denis, to go to the apothecary with a
Speaker 1: note Marie wrote, and bring home rat traps and arsenic.
Speaker 1: Marie showed what Deni had brought back to her husband.
Speaker 1: Surely this amount of arsenic will take.
Speaker 2: Care of the rats, she said.
Speaker 1: Charles agreed, but try as the women around Charles Lafarge did.
Speaker 1: The Ironmaster's condition did not improve. One morning, Mademoiselle Brun
Speaker 1: noticed Marie stirring something into Charles's chicken broth. Before Marie
Speaker 1: could feed it to Charles, Brun stole the bowl and
Speaker 1: secretly hid it until the doctor came by. See, Brun said,
Speaker 1: showing the chicken broth to the doctor, there were white
Speaker 1: flecks undissolved on the surface. Doesn't this look like arsenic?
Speaker 1: The doctor shrugged. He said it looked like a bit
Speaker 1: of sealing plaster had fallen into the bowl, and to
Speaker 1: be fair, that was the type of thing that happened
Speaker 1: at Le Glandier. But Brun's suspicions weren't abated, and neither
Speaker 1: were the suspicions of Marie's mother and sister in law.
Speaker 1: They were convinced it was arsenic, and they tried, in
Speaker 1: their unscientific ways to prove it. They boiled samples of
Speaker 1: the food over small flames and leaned in close to
Speaker 1: see if they could smell garlic.
Speaker 2: Do you smell that? They asked each other. Garlic right.
Speaker 1: They kept Marie away from Charles and from his food,
Speaker 1: closing doors if she passed by, and avoiding her glances.
Speaker 1: When Charles's condition was still not improved, the family called
Speaker 1: yet another doctor to Laglandier to examine him. The doctor
Speaker 1: was Enroot, but he arrived too late. Just a few
Speaker 1: hours after the doctor was called, Charles died. It was Emma,
Speaker 1: the cousin, the only one in the family still loyal
Speaker 1: to Marie at all, who approached her with a pale
Speaker 1: face and trembling voice. Marie, she said, they say you
Speaker 1: have poisoned him. They say you have killed Charles to
Speaker 1: wed another. Marie was aghast, at least according to her memoir,
Speaker 1: she was genuinely shocked by the accusation. Emma continued, they
Speaker 1: say you put arsenic into his chicken broth, that they
Speaker 1: saw white powder floating in his soup. Marie blinked. She
Speaker 1: had put something in his soup, gum arabic. She kept
Speaker 1: it in this small malachite box here.
Speaker 2: See.
Speaker 1: She herself took it often. It was good for you.
Speaker 1: But it was too late for explanations. Charles's family was
Speaker 1: convinced that Marie was a murderer, and the local magistrate
Speaker 1: was summoned. The Justice of the peace was a man
Speaker 1: named Moran, and he arrived to le Glandier on January fifteenth.
Speaker 1: He listened patiently to Charles's family as they told him
Speaker 1: how Marie had poisoned her husband, and Maran accepted the
Speaker 1: samples of soup and various drinks that Charles's family had
Speaker 1: set aside, convinced Marie had tampered with them. A gardener
Speaker 1: pointed out the various spots around the house that Marie
Speaker 1: had set up arsenic paste to poison the rats. Rats
Speaker 1: haven't touched it, he said, shrugging. Maybe she used the
Speaker 1: real arsenic for something else. The Justice of the Peace
Speaker 1: had his men searched the house. They took Marie's letters
Speaker 1: and her malekite box of powder that she claimed was
Speaker 1: gum Arabic. They questioned the servants, and that was how.
Speaker 1: Under interrogation, one of the servants told the men that
Speaker 1: he had buried a stash of arsenic in the garden.
Speaker 1: Marie told him to the servant, said, the Justice of
Speaker 1: the Peace dug and just as the servant boy had said,
Speaker 1: there was a bag of arsenic hidden away, presumably so
Speaker 1: the magistrates wouldn't have been able to find it. The
Speaker 1: alleged murder of Charles LeFarge by his rich Parisian wife
Speaker 1: made the newspapers, and when the Vicomte de Leotteau read them,
Speaker 1: he turned to his wife. Wasn't this the woman you
Speaker 1: were friends with, the woman we had visit our home.
Speaker 1: Come to think of it, wasn't it right after sure
Speaker 1: she visited that your diamonds went missing. The viscomtesse concurred, yes,
Speaker 1: that was her old friend, Marie, and yes her diamond
Speaker 1: had gone missing, but she hadn't thought to accuse her friend,
Speaker 1: even though, yes, her friend was poorer than they were
Speaker 1: and did probably covet her diamonds. The Vicomte wrote to
Speaker 1: the Justice of the Peace and had him search Marie's
Speaker 1: room at La Glandier. Sure enough, there they were the
Speaker 1: exact diamond that had gone missing from the vicomtesse. So
Speaker 1: Marie LeFarge wasn't just a murderess, but a thief as well.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, the local experts in Brieve attempted to
Speaker 1: analyze the food samples and Charles's stomach for arsenic They
Speaker 1: had never heard of the marsh test, but they knew
Speaker 1: the old fashioned method, and though there were a few
Speaker 1: minor snaphoos with the equipment, they identified the distinct yellow
Speaker 1: precipitate as it formed. They knew what that yellow precipitate meant, arsenic.
Speaker 1: A lot of arsenic in the chicken broth, and in
Speaker 1: Marie's small box and in Charles LaFarge's digestive track. Crowds
Speaker 1: of people were already gathered outside the prison where Marie
Speaker 1: LeFarge would be kept before her trial. They jeered and
Speaker 1: shouted at her as she was escorted from her carriage
Speaker 1: and into the prison. Marie LeFarge stepped over the threshold
Speaker 1: and the door was bolted behind her with a loud,
Speaker 1: echoing thud. That's the end of part one of the
Speaker 1: story of Marie LeFarge. Next week we'll get into her trial,
Speaker 1: but keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear
Speaker 1: a little bit about how the legacy of Murray LeFarge
Speaker 1: inspired literature. Earlier this summer, on August fourth, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: there was a final jeopardy question that stumped all three
Speaker 1: very smart contestants. It was a really hard one, even
Speaker 1: in a category nineteenth century literature characters that I would
Speaker 1: have thought I would have nailed the question, or rather,
Speaker 1: the answer was this character from an eighteen fifty nine
Speaker 1: novel symbolizes the fates who, in mythology, spin the web
Speaker 1: of life, measure it and cut it off, give up.
Speaker 1: The correct response was who is Madame Defarge, the villainess
Speaker 1: from Charles Dickens's Tale of Two Cities. In the book,
Speaker 1: Madame Defarge is an ardent supporter of the radical Jacobeans
Speaker 1: and the reign of terror during the French Revolution, And
Speaker 1: as the noblemen and women are going to their deaths
Speaker 1: at the guillotine, Madame Defarge is there placidly knitting. Hence
Speaker 1: the web of life fates symbolism connection. But to me,
Speaker 1: the name Defarge seems an echo of another famous woman
Speaker 1: from the middle of the nineteenth century, Marie Lafarge, a
Speaker 1: woman who Charles Dickens certainly would have been very familiar with,
Speaker 1: A woman who became famous in tabloids and newspapers for
Speaker 1: the question of whether she was a murderous a woman
Speaker 1: who controlled life and death in her hands with the
Speaker 1: flick of her wrist and the sprinkle of powder. The
Speaker 1: fictional Madame Defarge, I want to say, did absolutely take
Speaker 1: things a little far. But if you've read a Tale
Speaker 1: of Two Cities, I think you can agree that misguided
Speaker 1: and vengeful as she was, she did have a pretty
Speaker 1: good reason to want revenge in the first place. Come
Speaker 1: back next week for the conclusion of Madame Lefarge's episode.
Speaker 1: Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and
Speaker 1: Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is created and hosted
Speaker 1: by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by
Speaker 1: Hannah Johnston, hannah's Wick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman.
Speaker 1: The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and
Speaker 1: rima il Kaali, with supervising producer Josh Thane and executive
Speaker 1: producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.