NOTED MURDER CASE

Grey River Argus, 5 December 1938, Page 12

NOTED MURDER CASE

/‘Living Ghost” Dies A woman who once became —witnout knowing it—the accomplice of a murderer by spending a year as the “living ghost” of his victim, has just died in a cottage near Clermont-Fer-rand, in the South of France. She was Marie Verdier, who sixty years ago figured in what became known a s the “Living Ghost Murder Case.” The murderer was her husband. When she died Marie was a withered, white-haired woman of eighty-six; As a young girl, the daughter of a small farmer, she was known as one of the most beautiful girls in the Auvergne district. She was courted by Jules Verdier, a stranger, apparently of independent means, who came from near Pari s to live in the neighbourhood of Marie’s home. Jules was* handsome, and Marie, meeting him when she called to bring vegetables and eggs to the house he rented outside The village, fell passionately in love with him. Her father readily agreed to the match, and the two were married: Jules Verdier was tender, generous at the outset, but gradually two queer things about him began to worry

Marie. He showed a marked dislike of going out of doors after dark and of the presence of strangers near his home. And he had a number of peculiar whims which he expected his wife to follow. He insisted that Marie should change her hair style, plait her long brown hair in a particular way. He asked her to darken her eyebrows, and ordered a dressmaker to make her dress of an unusual style and colour, quite different from the dresses she usually wore. Jules Verdier’s whims struck Marie as even more eccentric when he told her that she must confine her walks to the spacious garden round the house, must spend long hours sitting reading at a particular window ,and must carry herself in a particular way when she walked. Marie was so devoted to her handsome husband that she obeyed him. But her doubts grew—Specially when Jules began to talk in his sleep, muttering strange references to a “pit” and to a particular district on the outskirts of Paris where she knew he had never liVed. / • ■ . ' • “ Then, one day, as she sat reading at Jules’s chosen window,- . wearing the frock he had designed for her; Marie' saw a stranger." apparently watching her intently' . from a road beyond ithe grounds; When she mentioned the 1 ' stranger to Jules he showed signs of acute , excitement, and she read fear in his eyes. That night she awoke to find her

husband pacing their room® s the ' sweat pouring from his. face ,and his nerve s obviously completely shattered. As Marie stared at him, her eyes wide with, terror, Jules pressed his hands over his face as if to shut out the sight of her, then fell on'his knees by the bed and babbled out an amazing confession. “It is Jeanne—it is Jeanne, my first wife! I—l killed her with a knife, there in Paris—then took her by night and buried her in a pit outside the city. No One guessed—except her brother. He suspected. “To-day what I dreaded has happened—the brother has.'’.traced me here. I was a" fool—l honed that when ho saw you, sitting’ at the window, looking just as she looked, he would believe Jeanne was still living, and go away. < ...' ... “But I have succeeded ,too well! You are too like her—you are Jeanne herself! Her eyes glare from your face compelling me ..to confess!” Terrified, Marie realised the truth—that she had been “made up” by her husband to resemble the .murdered woman, and that Jules’s reason had snapped. She broke from the house, crying for help. The stranger—the murdered woman’s brother—was lurking outside, and Marie sobbed out her story to him. ’ .. ■ Jules Verdier ‘ died in a' criminal asylurq three •: years Mater, but in memory of the love she had borne him Marie kept his‘ name until she died.