Marguerite Steinheil

Marguerite Jeanne “Meg” Steinheil , born Japy (April 16th 1869 - July 17th 1954) is famous to have been in the center of a politico-sentimental news item and a famous legal affair.

Origin

Born with Beaucourt (Territory of Belfort) in a rich person industrial family, it is the girl of Edouard Japy, industrial protesting become Rentier. His/her mother is a girl of landlord. Child, it studies the piano and the violin; it makes its beginnings in the world in 1886 while taking part in balls of garrison. It éprend of a young officer, connection at which his/her father puts a term.

In 1889, it leaves to Bayonne in her older sister to change the ideas; she meets there the painter Adolphe Steinheil, nephew of the painter Meissonier. She will find it later in Biarritz, where it carries out frescos for the cathedral.

The July 9th 1890, it marries Adolphe Steinheil with the Protestant temple of Beaucourt. It will have of him a girl, Marthe. But soon the disagreement settles within the couple, which avoids the divorce but lives without intimacy.

It in addition becomes an important figure of Parisian life, its living room is attended by the good company (Gounod, Lesseps, Massenet, Coppée, Zola, Loti).

Presidential mistress

In 1897, it is presented, in Chamonix, the president Felix Faure, who entrusts an official order to Adolphe Steinheil. So Felix Faure will often go Impasse Ronsin, in Paris, with the Villa where resides the Steinheil couple.

Soon, Marguerite becomes the mistress of Felix Faure and regularly joined it in the “ blue living room ” of the Elys3ee palace.

The February 16th 1899, Felix Faure calls Marguerite on the telephone and asks him to pass to see it in end of the afternoon. A few moments after its arrival, the servants hear a ring éperdu and run: lengthened on a couch, the president rail while Marguerite Steinheil readjusts her clothing in disorder. Felix Faure dies a few hours later. Officially, its death is due has a Brain hemorrhage. But one knows this exchange between the priest and the orderly: " Is the President informed still his? " , " Not, Mister the abbot, one made it slip by the door of dérobée."

Society woman

After the death of Felix Faure, Marguerite Steinheil becomes the mistress various personalities.

According to its " Mémoires" , her husband and it would have received the visit of a mysterious German visitor, which would have repurchased one after the other the pearls of a collar that Felix Faure (the " would have offered to him; collar présidentiel") and the manuscript of the Mémoires defunct president would have claimed.

In February 1908, it becomes acquainted with an industrialist, Borderel, originating in the Ardennes, from which it becomes the mistress.

April 7th, 1908, Adolphe Steinheil exposes fabrics in his workshop, attracting All-Paris which ravels in front of last works of the painter.

The Steinheil business

The May 30th 1908, Mrs Japy, mother of Marguerite, comes to spend a few days in his/her daughter to Bellevue. Initially envisaged the evening, the departure at the last minute is deferred the following day.

The following day May 31st, at 6 o'clock in the morning, the servant Rémy Couillard goes down from his room, located under the roofs and discovers all the doors of the first stage open: traversing the rooms, he discovers successively Mrs Japy then Adolphe Steinheil, dead.

Mrs Japy died of an heart attack, Adolphe Steinheil was strangled; Marguerite is muzzled and bound with a bed: she will explain to the police officers to be attached by four people (three men and a woman) out of black clothes. One thought that they sought secret documents having belonged to president Faure, undoubtedly in connection with the business Dreyfus.

The police services suspect Marguerite first of all, but fault of tangible proofs, the business is classified. It is Marguerite Steinheil itself which will start again the investigation while slipping into a pocket of Rémy Couillard, her servant, a pearl which she affirmed to be herself made fly by her four attackers. Uncovered, she seeks to make show Alexandre Wolf, the son of her controlling, but this one has an alibi… During the investigation, it does not cease varying in its versions, unceasingly showing a person in the place of another.

November 4th 1908, the examining magistrate, Mr. Leydet, orders that it is arrested and imprisoned with the prison of Lazare Saint. It will be deprived of the business to the profit of a new judge, Mr. André.

Lawsuit

The lawsuit opens on November 3rd 1909: the Court of Assizes of Paris is chaired by president M. de Vallès; Marguerite is defended by Maître Antony Aubin, lawyer, assisted of Landowski Master. The counterparts of Marguerite Steinheil will fuse during all the lawsuit:

- " I lied to protect my life from woman ".

- " Until 1905, you met your lovers with the hotel ? " - " I had this delicacy ! "

During the lawsuit, very mediatized, one will learn that Marguerite Steinheil had admirors enormously, among whom the king Sisowath from the Kampuchea. The opposition will seek to make this deal a political lawsuit and one will show in the passing Mrs. Steinheil to have poisoned Felix Faure, on behalf of the " trade union juif" , because the President had stated himself hostile with the revision of the lawsuit Dreyfus. The November 14th 1909, after a pleading of its lawyer having lasted more than 7 hours, it will be discharged although the judge qualified his web of lies speech “”.

Assumption on the murderer?

If it is acquired today that it cannot be the loophole of her husband and his mother, one still wonders about the identity of this murderer: according to certain historians, it would be probably about a large-duke of Russia, the business having been choked for reason of State.

A lady

After the lawsuit, it will live with London under the name of Mrs. de Serignac. She writes her memories in 1912 and, the June 26th 1917, wife Robert Brooke Campbell Scarlett, 6th Baron Abinger (death in 1927) and will become Lady Abinger.

She will die in her turn on July 18th, 1954 in a convalescent home in Hove, county of Sussex.

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