hand, when mentioning Pauline, he
spoke with nostalgic affection.“It
reminded me,’’ Pauline said, “of all I
had tried to forget. I could not put Felix
out of my mind now. I had to see him
again.’’
“Why did you murder the man?’’
Inspector Poirier asked her.
“It was an accident,’’ she answered.
She went to Paris the second time, on
March 15th, she said, because she now
realised how badly she needed Felix.
She wanted to tell him how much she
regretted all her past wildness and
unfaithfulness. And if she could not
win him back she was determined to kill
herself before his eyes, she explained.
“Felix was cold,’’ Pauline said. “He
would only talk to me through the door.
He talked about his fiancée, Monique.
He told me he and I were through
forever. I realised then that he had
betrayed me.’’
Pauline went on, “So I waited, I
watched and waited for a chance to see
him alone.’’O
n the 17th, as she sat in the tavern
across the street from his apartment
building, she saw him go in alone to his
apartment. She followed. She entered
the building and, avoiding the lift, crept
noiselessly up the stairs. She rang his
bell. Felix, no doubt expecting one of
his friends, opened the door. He seemed
annoyed to see her. She went in and sat
down. Felix sat on a chair across from
her. He asked her what she wanted of
him.
“I wanted to see you, to ask you what
you intend to do – about us,’’ she told
him.
“How many times must I repeat it?’’
he answered. “It is all finished between
us.’’
“Then you don’t love me any more,’’
Pauline sighed.
“No,’’ he said bluntly.
“Then, there is only one way – ’’
“And then you shot him,’’ Inspector
Dubois finished.
“No. I was going to shoot myself. The
gun went off when he tried to take it
away from me. It was an accident.’’
“The last shot hit him in the back of
the neck,’’ Inspector Poirier pointed out.
“It was a coup de grace. You wanted
to make sure that he was dead.’’
“That shot caught him as he was
going down,’’ she said.
And she stuck firmly to that version of
the dreadful event.
“You killed him out of jealousy,’’
Poirier declared.
“I killed him because he betrayed
me!’’ Her voice rose as she explained
that when she visited Felix in Paris that
first time, on March 8th, he had sworn
her eternal allegiance and had made love
to her.
“But when I tried to see him again,’’
she repeated, “he would only talk to me
through the door. I realised then that he
had double-crossed me.’’
How the papers, the public, the jurorsPauline who faced the court. She did
not plead the crime of passion, that still
might have set her free.
Nor did she try to keep up the fiction
of an accident. She admitted deliberate,
premeditated murder, thus asking for
the death penalty.
She said that after Felix left her she
realised that, as he had said, only he
could save her from her own vices. Iif
she could not be saved she wanted to
die and take with her the only man who
could have given her life some meaning.
“She is a desperate woman,’’ her
attorney Paul Baudet declared, rejecting
the suggestion of the prosecution that
her suicide attempts were merely
simulated.
He referred to her as “a pathetic
creature who cannot face the
humiliation of disclosing before a jury
of six men and one woman and a
courtroom full of curious spectators
the most intimate details of an agitated,
confused private life.’’
Before her last suicide attempt in
prison she had, Baudet said, written him
a letter, “the most moving document I
have ever read.’’ He did not, however,
quote from the letter.R
ené Floriot, attorney for the Bailly
family, stated, “The life of Felix
Bailly followed the pattern of all boys
who are good and who fall prey to
perverse women. For two years he knew
no peace. Baffled, ridiculed, humiliated,
deceived, his passion forced him back
to this woman, who accepted his pleas
triumphantly. But as soon as his back is
turned she laughs at him, glories in her
power over him and turns to another
lover.’’
Prosecutor Lindon shook before
Pauline her red-bound diary. With true
Gallic frenzy, he shouted, “She is a
monster, a personality from hell, a kind
of hyena!
“Her own words convict her as a
woman of unspeakable depravity. I don’t
hesitate to call her the most perverse
woman I have encountered in my
career.’’
A single witness testified in Pauline’s
favour. This was Jeanne Labousse –
the Jeanne L. of the diary – a pretty
brunette of 23. She said she had met
Felix in Paris and their talk drifted to
Pauline.
He said a few nice words about
Pauline, which Jeanne reported to her.
“I must have exaggerated a bit,’’
Jeanne admitted. “Or Pauline put more
meaning into my words. I did not know
that she was still in love with Felix.’’
Prosecutor Lindon asked for the
guillotine, but the jury proved to be
more merciful. They were satisfied with
a life sentence for the “personality from
hell,’’ who thus once again cheated
death.
On September 19th, 1963, during
an unguarded moment, Pauline
Dubuisson committed suicide in
her prison cell.would lap up this story – a French
crime passionel. The best criminal
lawyers would battle for the privilege of
defending her, free of charge. The police
foresaw Pauline going free, triumphant,
and receiving 50,000 marriage
proposals.
Pauline very nearly did outwit justice,
but not in the way they had anticipated.
On the night before her trial,
scheduled for October 27th, 1953, she
rubbed a tiny splinter of glass against
her wrist until it finally pierced a vein.
Then she stretched out on her bed and
let the blood drip into a bowl. When the
prison matron found her she was dying.
A bloodstained letter explained why
she tried again to kill herself: “I will not
submit myself to justice and become a
spectacle before a crowd that reminds
me of the howling mobs of the French
Revolution,’’ she wrote.
“I think my family is damned – and
me too. I never brought anything but
evil to those I loved.’’ But once again
Pauline had fumbled a suicide, as surely
as she had succeeded in murdering.
Blood transfusions saved her life.
And now she faced “the howling
mobs’’ at her trial on November 19th
and 20th, 1953. Only this was a newMonique Lombard, the
never-to-be bride of Felix