Maritime Murder by Steve Vernon

sorry about something. Again, he talked with that Poulin woman in the yard. She took his clothes from him and threw them into the loft. He dove into a stream and scrubbed himself so hard I thought he was trying to remove something from his very soul.” The afternoon wore on.
    â€œAt four in the afternoon,” Delina continued, “that Poulin woman began to cook the supper. ‘Aren’t you the least bit worried about your husband?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you know where he is?’”
    Finally, Angèle spoke. “He is in the clearing,” she said. “Perhaps he has fallen asleep.” And then she went back to her cooking.
    â€œI followed the path to the clearing,” Delina went on. “I found him in the dirt. His head was broken in as if by a blow from an axe blade. I ran like a crazy goose back to the cabin and I got my brother. The two of us, we dragged old Poulin’s body back home on a small cart.”
    â€œI am not the one,” Olivier kept saying over and over to Delina. “I am not the one who killed her husband. I am not the one.”

The Inquest
    Authorities were summoned to the scene of the crime, and the official inquest was held three days later. The coroner determined that Xavier Poulin had been killed with an axe. However, the medical examiner could not determine if he had merely tripped, fallen, and inadvertently stove his own head in, or if it had been done by someone else. “Given Xavier Poulin’s state of advanced leprosy, and the numbness in the hands and joints that such a condition could bring,” he said, “it is quite possible that he died by unexpected accident.”
    On the fourth day following the discovery of the body, Olivier Gallien walked into the crowded confines of the town magistrate’s office and confessed his guilt. “I did the deed,” Gallien admitted. “I followed Xavier into the woods, and I beat him with a club and my fists, not with an axe. I hurt the man,” Gallien went on. “But I did not kill him.”
    Magistrate J. C. Blackhole cautioned Olivier not to say anything more in the presence of witnesses.
    â€œI do not care,” Gallien went on. “I would not have done it, save for the goading of that woman, Angèle.”
    Constable Alphonse Landry was summoned, and Olivier Gallien was arrested and secured in the Bathurst jailhouse.
    â€œI did it,” Gallien further confessed to Landry. “I followed Xavier into the woods and hit him with a stick. I beat him and walked away, not having the heart to kill a sixty-year-old man. When I left, he was still alive.”
    â€œAre you sure of that?” Landry asked.
    â€œDead men do not crawl,” Gallien stated. “When I left him, he was still crawling face down in the dirt.”
    Police were sent to Gallien’s cabin, where they arrested Angèle for the killing of her husband. “She did it,” one of the policemen later reported. “Olivier left him for dead, but when he returned to the cabin that Poulin woman must have slipped out into the woods and finished him with his own axe.”
    But could they prove it?

The Trial
    It was decided that Angèle and Olivier would stand trial separately for their parts in the murder of Xavier Poulin. The trials were held at the Bathurst courthouse on the morning of September 3 , 1 874 . Mr. Justice J. W. Weldon served as judge for both cases. Lawyer J. S. Barbrie served as defence for both Angèle and Olivier. Crown Prosecutor F. W. Morrison served as the prosecutor for both cases.
    Olivier Gallien’s trial was swift. Based upon his confession and the testimony of several witnesses, including his sister Delina, Olivier was declared guilty. The jury, after deliberating for a scant twenty minutes, made a strong recommendation for mercy based upon the fact that Gallien had both confessed and said that he was truly sorry.
    Olivier Gallien was also brought