Crimes of Paris_ A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection - Dorothy Hoobler [80]
Bertillon pointed out all the signs he had expected except for the blind insects. “See, there is the sand, the sawdust, the coal; and in a place filled with barrels and bottles of wine, you will have an abundance of the bacilli of alcohol fermentation.” Bertillon insisted that there must be another cellar, and a further search revealed “a tiny, pitch-dark recess, gained by a door under the stairs. Bertillon’s theory was vindicated: at last we stood in the place where the murder had been committed. Blood had splashed on the floor and walls, and the roof was alive with the Anophthalmi [the blind beetles].” 34 After killing Tellier, Cabassou had removed his diamonds and sent Guillaume to sell them, hoping to throw suspicion onto him. If it had not been for Bertillon’s scientific methods and acute observation, Guillaume might well have been convicted. With a note of triumph, Bertillon pointed out to Ashton-Wolfe that jealousy had been at the heart of the case. Cherchez la femme, as he had predicted, had been the key to solving it.
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Accounts like this one, and some whose details are as fantastic as any in fiction, made Bertillon a legend in Paris — even throughout Europe and the Americas. Though he ostensibly shunned publicity, this kind of adulation would turn almost anyone’s head, and at the height of his career, Bertillon made a blunder in the most controversial investigation of his lifetime. It would stain his reputation ever after.
Bertillon was unwise, or unfortunate, enough to enter the Dreyfus case at the very beginning. Once he had given his opinion about the handwriting on the incriminating bordereau — that Captain Dreyfus was the author — he found it impossible to retract it.
Some writers have called Bertillon a “notorious anti-Semite” and suggested that it was bigotry that led him to that rash — and ultimately false — judgment. But there are no other instances in Bertillon’s life where he seems to have demonstrated anti-Semitism, and his brother, Jacques, was married to a Jewish woman. 35 Moreover, at the time Bertillon pronounced his judgment on the handwriting, he may not even have known the name of the person who was alleged to have written the bordereau, or that the suspect was Jewish. All he did know was that high-ranking military officers strongly believed that the writer was guilty. But though Bertillon probably did not act in the beginning out of anti-Semitism, he refused to change his mind as facts emerged to challenge his findings, and he came to speak of “the Jews” as being part of an attempt to undermine French military and governmental authority. 36 As a result, the Dreyfus affair divided the Bertillons, an egalitarian, anticlerical family, with Jacques becoming a passionate Dreyfusard who did not speak to his brother for several years.
What Bertillon was certainly guilty of — and this was quite characteristic of him throughout his career — was obstinately refusing to admit, once he had passed judgment, that he might be wrong. Through several courts-martial and trials over the next five years, Bertillon would be called on to testify. Offered a chance to change his mind by expanding on his earlier warning that a forgery might have been attempted, Bertillon decided that the forger was — Dreyfus himself! His rationale for this startling conclusion became increasingly convoluted. Bertillon posited that Dreyfus had adopted the formation of certain letters from the handwriting of his brother and wife in an attempt to disguise his own script. In support of his convoluted claim, Bertillon produced a schematic chart that made no sense to anyone who saw it. General Auguste Mercier, the minister of war who had staked his reputation on convicting Dreyfus, brought Bertillon to the president of the republic, Jean Casimir-Périer, to explain his reasoning.