Crimes of Paris_ A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection - Dorothy Hoobler [49]
Marsh published a paper on his device in 1836, and Orfila saw its potential immediately. Meanwhile, Orfila had improved on his earlier method of charring the sample with nitric acid to remove “animal matter.” He also showed that traces of natural arsenic appeared only in the bones and therefore did not interfere with testing of body organs. In addition he realized that the ground where a body was buried might contain arsenic, which should be taken into account in cases of exhumation in determining whether arsenic poisoning had been the cause of death.
Orfila’s work earned him enormous respect, and he was named dean of the Medical School of Paris in 1831. (One of his colleagues there was Marie-Guillaume-Alphonse Devergie, the first man to use a microscope in practical forensic pathology.) For his part, Orfila would make history as the first expert to use the science of toxicology to convict a person of murder.
Marie Lafarge developed delusions of grandeur at an early age. Born Marie Capelle in 1816, she was the daughter of one of Napoleon’s favorite officers. Her maternal grandmother was a natural daughter of Philippe-Égalité, duc d’Orléans, whose legitimate son Philippe, the so-called Citizen King, had ruled France when Marie was a teenager. Though she could claim a noble lineage, Marie never became securely established in the aristocratic society that she aspired to. After the deaths of her parents when she was a teenager, she was shuffled between two aunts.
Still, Marie was educated in fine schools in Paris, where she learned the proper etiquette and made friends of high social standing. She grew to be a striking young woman, tall and slender, with a porcelain complexion and jet black hair. Despite her intelligence, Marie lived in a fantasy world of ideal love, turning down one proposal of marriage by saying it was impossible for her to marry a “commoner.”
When Marie was twenty-four, one of her aunts decided it was time to marry her off and placed her name with the De Foy Matrimonial Agency in Paris, which specialized in pairing well-born men and women. She got a response. The man, Charles Joseph Pouch Lafarge, claimed to be a wealthy ironmaster with a huge estate, Le Glandier, in Corrèze in southwestern France. He provided drawings showing a beautiful château that looked out over a splendid landscape. Marie fantasized herself as the mistress of her own private realm.
When she met Lafarge, reality began to set in. He was a large, crude twenty-eight-year-old man with little education and no culture. What Marie did not know was that he was a bit of a fraud as well. He had misrepresented his wealth, hoping for a woman with a large dowry to invest in his iron business, and Marie’s dowry of 100,000 francs looked very good to him.
Marie tried to back out of the arrangement, but her aunt insisted. In August 1839, within two weeks of their first meeting, the two were married. Marie set out for Le Glandier with her new husband and her servant Clémentine. On the trip to the estate, Charles’s manners offended Marie. He ate noisily with his hands, ignoring napkins and licking his fingers. When she tried to engage him in conversation, he exclaimed, “For God’s sake, stop talking!” 17
As Marie reached the château, she experienced another shock. Le Glandier was a seedy, dilapidated wreck. Inside, conditions were even worse. Rats scampered over the floor, and the smell of decay and animal excrement attacked Marie’s refined nose. She was so horrified that she locked herself in her room with Clémentine and refused to see anyone. She sent her maid with a letter to Charles, begging him to let her leave, promising he could keep the dowry and her possessions and even agreeing to take