Arsenic & White Wine

"The devil is active in Chatellerault, in Chinon and in Domfront, but above all he is active in Loudun." So said Rabelais four centuries ago; at least, that's what the people of Loudun say he said. Some people suspect that Loudun, a town of 5,313 in western France, is still a little proud of its reputation for casual wickedness. "I think," said a bookseller of Loudun last week, "it is because of our fine white wines. One can drink liters, like water, but suddenly it hits like a coup de fusil and even the old feel young."

Stranger in the House. One of the few citizens of Loudun who seemed beyond suspicion of any intrigue was slim, soft-spoken Marie Besnard, a matron of 53, who owned six houses in the town, the local White Horse inn, and a number of thriving stud farms. Marie had acquired property the easy way through the deaths of a succession of relatives and her purse strings were always loosened when M. le Cure came to call with a worthy charity in mind. Marie, said the people of Loudun, was "the only woman in town who could go to communion without first going to confession."

Even Loudun's glib gossips found their tongues slow to wag when, soon after the war, the unassailable Marie Besnard was apparently attracted by a handsome German hired hand and. ex-prisoner of war 30 years her junior. Marie's husband, Leon Besnard, began spending more & more time in the town's bistros and complaining bitterly that he was no longer master in his own home.

Three years ago Leon died. Local doctors certified his death as natural, but the gossip grew. After complaints by Marie's neighbors, the Ministry of the Interior finally decided to examine what was left of husband Leon.

Evidence in the Graveyard. Last May, while widowed Marie leaned and sobbed on the arm of a nun at the graveside, and all of Loudun watched, Leon Besnard's body was disinterred, turned over to a laboratory in Marseille. Within a few days Loudun heard the shocking news. Leon had died of a massive dose of arsenic. In the Palais de Justice in Poitiers, a grim little juge d'instruction asked Marie Besnard how the poison got into her husband. She had no idea; but at least one neighbor seemed to remember that Marie had once suggested arsenic as an easy substitute for divorce.*

Judge Pierre Roger then ordered the bodies of Marie's first husband and other relatives exhumed and analyzed. One by one, as the weeks went by, the reports came in: Auguste Antigny, first husband of Marie Besnard, died 1927, overdose of arsenic; Madame Leconte, a cousin, died 1939, arsenic; Madame Rivet, a friend, died 1939, arsenic; Marcellin Besnard, a father-in-law, died 1940, arsenic; Marie Louise Davailland, a sister-in-law, died 1940, arsenic; Monsieur Rivet, died 1941, arsenic; Alice Bodin, a sister-in-law, died 1941, arsenic; Marie Louise Besnard, a mother-in-law, died 1941, arsenic; Pauline and Marie Lalleron, aged cousins, died 1945, arsenic. "UN AUTRE POUR MARIE!" proclaimed newspapers in big black headlines all over France as each body was reported.

Last week Judge Roger made an official announcement. "We have dug up 13 bodies ... in 12 of the 13, death was caused by arsenic poisoning. One of these cases is covered by the statute of limitations, so let us call it eleven. Anyway, we have the rough picture."

Outside the gloomy Pierre-Levee prison in Poitiers, where Marie Besnard awaited trial, her dapper attorney Henry de Cluzeau offered what was perhaps the only possible defense. "In this country of good wines and fine living," said he, "one might possibly conceive of one murder, two murders, even three murders. But eleven murders? Preposterous!"

* Not a new idea in France. During the 17th Century one of the principal sources of income for France's alchemists was the sale of arsenic, or "succession powder," as it was happily known, to ambitious members of the upper classes. In the 1670s Paris was so beset by an epidemic of poisonings that a special court, the Chambre Ardente, was set up to handle this type of crime. One of its most fabulous accused was the glamorous and charitably-minded Marquise de Brinvilliers (a "much courted little woman," according to one source, "with a fascinating air of childlike innocence"), who, assisted by a lover, poisoned her father and her two brothers for the sake of the family fortune. The good Marquise always assured herself of success by trying her poisons first on the local poor who came to seek her. charity, and on the sick, whom she regularly visited.

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