The Hypocrisy of Justice in the Belle Epoque

Chapter 1. The Steinheil Affair: Sex, Sin, and Murder

Chapter 1 THE STEINHEIL AFFAIR Sex, Sin, and Murder Qui culpae ignoscit uni, suadet pluribus. Syrus, Sententiae, No. 578 I The Steinheil affair began on a stormy night in May,1908, with all the trappings of a lurid detective novel: a beautiful woman gagged and bound to her bed, disguises and wigs, a watchdog mysteriously absent , the pendulum ofthe clockstopped, and two corpses, those ofthe noted painter Adolphe Steinheil and his mother-in-law,Mme Emilie Japy. Steinheil's wife, Marguerite, was the woman found tied and gagged, alone ableto tellthe tale ofa night ofterror. Tell a taleshe did, until she trapped herself in a web of lies and transfixed a fascinated public. The truth seemed impossible to find, and everyoneconnected with the case stepped onto a slope ofconjectureand hypothesis. Abizarre double murdercame to be transformedintoa celebrated "affair" that passed judgment not merelyon MmeSteinheil but on theFrench judicial process as well.1 i. Accounts of the Steinheil affair have been invariably controversial, semihistorical, or both. Meg Steinheil's contribution is My Memoirs (London, 1912), ghosted by freelance journalist Roger de Chateleux. Itis a tissue of many lies but also some truth and must be used with extreme care. The press of the period, notably Le Figaro, L'Echo de Paris, and LeMatin, took great interest in the case and gave it much space. Where Le Figaro is cited alone in the notes, it should be understood that similarinformation was published in most of the Parisiandaily newspapers on the same day. Eventhe semiofficial Gazette des Tribunaux, Journal dejurisprudence et des debits judiciaires emphasized the Steinheil affair. Itisfair to conclude that the journalists wereas confused as anyone else about the factsand contributed to the confusion by becoming participantsin the investigation and publishing the most outrageous rumors. The sensational aspects of Meg Steinheil's life have attracteda numberof popular writers, all of whom neglect to one 16 The Hypocrisy of Justice in the Belle Epoque Jeanne Marguerite Japy, always known as Meg, was born on April 16, 1869, at Beaumont in the department of Belfort to a wealthy and conservative Protestant family. With her two sisters, Julie and Mimi, and her brother,Julien, she spent the comfortablechildhood ofabourgeoise learning to playthe piano and gracefully to ride horses. Butthere were tensionsin the family. TheJapyshad traditionally been hardware manufacturers, and Meg's father, EdouardJapy, had for a timemanaged one of the family factories in nearby Montbeliard. After retiring to the country, he became an alcoholic, watchinghis wealth slipslowly away. His marriage had been a disappointment. As a young man, against the wishes of his family, he had wed a pretty teenaged girl, Emilie Rau, whose parents owned the modest Lion RougeInn outside Montbeliard. After a fewyears had passed, the lovein the relationship had gone, but the stigma of mesalliance remained. Megwas her father's favoritechild, but in 1888 when she was nineteen , she also failed him. She had grown tall and beautiful, her oval face and plump lips alluring, her darkdeeply set eyes mysterious and accentuated by the copper chestnut color of her hair, her figure stunning . At the same time, she retained a pouty innocence, a look she would lose only in middle age. There were manysuitors, and she fell in love with a handsome lieutenant, Robert Scheffer. He was a friend of her brother, and both were stationed with the Thirty-fifth Infantry at Belfort. Scheffer had every romantic virtue but no money. Meg's father became apoplectic when he learned that the initial interest had by the late fall of 1888 turned into a love affair. Rememberingthe reaction of his parents to his own marriage and the increasingly precarious state of the Japy finances, he forbade his daughter to enter into this mesalliance and for her sins sent her into quasi exile to the home degree oranother the elementsofscholarship: Armand Lanoux, "La Mysterieuse affaire Steinheil,"in GilbertGuilleminault(ed.), URoman vraidela Troisieme Rtpublique: LaBelle Epoque (Paris, 1957), 267-305, a convenient summationof his "L"Affaire de Mme Steinheil " in Paris-Pressc-L'lntransigeant, December20-28,1955;Ren£ Floriot, Deuxfemmes en cour d'assises: Madame Steinheil et Madame Caillaux (Paris, 1966);Rayner Heppenstall, A LittlePattern of French Crime (London, 1969); RolandE. Schacht, Madame Steinheil: Drama in Elf Bildem (Berlin, 1933); Ernest Dudley, The Scarlett Widow (London, 1960); Michel Chrestien, L'Affaire Steinheil (Paris, 1958); and Ren6 Tavemier, Madame Steinheil, ange ou demon: FavoritedelaRepubliaue (Paris, 1976). Thereis a crypticreconstruction of the night of the crimeby France's most famouscriminologist, Edmond Locard, in his Le Crimeet...