MME. STEINHEIL'S CONFESSION.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LV, Issue 13877, 1 February 1909, Page 7

MME. STEINHEIL'S CONFESSION.

Second Phase. — Mmc Steinheil a week ago denounced Remy Couillard as the suspected murderer. She found in his pocket-book a pearl which had been missing from the house since the murder. Remy protested his innocence. Then came the bombshell. An expert jeweller swore that the pearl had been given to him by Mmc Steinheil on June 12 last, thirteen days after the murder. It was in a ring, the mounting of which she wanted changed. He made it up into a second ring, keeping the old setting as part payment. The jeweller's sworn evidence was precise and detailed. Mme. Steinheil was unable to rebut it.

Two journalists next appeared on the scene as detectives — M. Hutin, of the Echo de Paris, and M de Labruyere, of the Matin. After Mmc Steinheil returned home from the office of the examining magistrate they were allowed to see her, and, having been plied by them with adroit questions, she finally made a clean breast of it. According to their account of a conversation which lasted from half-past nine until midnight had struck, the widow of the murdered painter admitted the innocence of Remy Couillard, confessed that she had inserted the pearl in his pocketbook, and stated that the murderer was Alexandre Wolff, a son of her trusted servant, Mariette.

Just before four o'clock in the morning three women slipped out of the house. There was no cab to be had, and on foot, and almost running, Mmc Steinheil, Mile Marthe Steinheil, her daughter, and her old servant, Mariette Wollf, made their way to the office of M. Hamard, the chief of the detective department.

M. Hamard was asleep, but he got up immediately and received them. "1 have come," said Mme. Steinheil, "to confess that I hid the pearl."

The interview of the three women with France's great detective lasted about an hour. When it was over the three were locked in another room, and M. Hamard told the journalists that he would have Alexandre Wollf arrested in an hour or two.

Wollf strongly denied his guilt, and offered to prove an alibi. After he had been questioned by the magistrate he and his mother were confronted with Mmc Steinheil, and there was another harrowing scene.

When M. Hamard grimly pointed out that Wollf s movements could be accounted for up to a period after the time of the murder — which is believed to have been shortly after midnight — Mine. Steinheil became still more pale, if possible, and murmured, "I think lie is the man."