The Caillaux Drama

Late on Monday afternoon, March 16, 1914, a rumour fired imaginations, like a train of gunpowder, all over Paris. In newspaper offices, in cafés, in clubs, people asked one another whether they had heard the news and whether the news were true. It seemed incredible. The wife of the Minister of Finance, said rumour, Madame Joseph Caillaux, one of the spoiled children of Paris society, had gone to the office of the Figaro, had waited there an hour or more for the managing editor, Monsieur Gaston Calmette, had been received by him, and had shot him dead in his own office. Nobody believed the story at first. Nobody could believe it. The very possibility of such a happening made it appear impossible. It was known, of course, that for some weeks before the Figaro had been waging an unsparing campaign against the Minister of Finance. It was known that Monsieur Caillaux had been and was infuriated at this campaign, but nobody believed that tragedy had followed. There was a rush to the Figaro office. Paris is a small town compared with London, and the Figaro building in the Rue Drouot is in a more central position in the throbbing news and sensation-loving heart of Paris than is either Piccadilly or Fleet Street in London. Within ten minutes of the first news of the tragedy there was a large crowd gathered in the Rue Drouot, and even those who could not get into the Figaro building soon received confirmation that the drama really had occurred. People had seen a large and luxurious motor-car stationed outside the building. There was nothing at all unusual in this, for the offices of the Figaro are the resort in the afternoon of many people with big motor-cars. What was unusual, and had attracted notice, was the fact that the driver of the car had worn the tricolour cockade which in Paris is worn only by the drivers of cars or carriages belonging to the Ministers. Even this evidence was in no way conclusive, for courtesy permits Ambassadors and Ministers accredited to the French Government by foreign countries to give their servants the red white and blue cockade, and it was thought by many that the car had not belonged to a French Minister at all, but was the property of an Ambassador. Then the story gained precision. A woman, it was said, escorted by police, had come out of the Figaro office and seated herself in the car. The driver, as she entered, had removed his tricolour cockade and driven round the corner to the police-station. The doors of the Figaro office were closed and guarded. A few minutes later all Paris knew the story. In the big grey motor-car in which she had driven to the Rue Drouot that afternoon, Madame Caillaux had been taken in custody to the police-station in the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre. Monsieur Gaston Calmette, the editor of the Figaro, lay dying in his office. His friend, Doctor Reymond, who was with him, gave little hope that his life could be saved, and those of the members of the staff of the paper who could be approached could only murmur confirmation of the same sad news. Later in the evening Monsieur Calmette was taken out to Neuilly to the private hospital of another friend, Professor Hartmann. He died there just before midnight. Madame Caillaux had arrived in her motor-car at No. 26 Rue Drouot at about five o’clock, and had asked for Monsieur Calmette. She was told that Monsieur Calmette was out, but that he would certainly arrive before long. “Then I will wait,” she said.

The customs of a Paris newspaper differ considerably from those of newspapers in London. They are, if I may put it so, more social. In a London newspaper office nearly all the business of the day with the outside world is transacted by express letter, by telegram, or over the telephone. The editor and his collaborators see fewer members of the public in a week in the offices of a London newspaper than the editor and collaborators of a Paris newspaper of the same importance see in an afternoon. The difference in the hours of newspaper work in Paris and in London, the difference in the characteristics of Frenchmen and of Englishmen have a great deal to do with this difference in newspaper methods. To begin with, the London newspaper goes to press much earlier than does the newspaper in Paris, for Paris papers have fewer and later trains to catch, and “copy” is therefore finished much later in Paris. The principal London editors are invariably in their offices at latest at noon every day, and prefer to see their visitors between the hours of twelve and four o’clock. In Paris practically every newspaper editor receives between five and seven in the evening, and it is very rare to find heads of newspaper departments (the business side of course excepted) in their offices before five P.M. In other words the business of the day begins at about five o’clock in a Paris newspaper office, when the business of the evening begins in London and the business of the day is finished, and the real hard work of the night staff hardly begins until ten. The hour at which Madame Caillaux called therefore, to see Monsieur Calmette, was a perfectly normal one. She was told that he would certainly come in before long, and was asked for her name. She did not give it, said that she would wait, and was shown into a waiting-room where curiously enough she sat down directly beneath a large framed portrait of the King of Greece, who met his death at the hands of a murderer not very long ago. Madame Caillaux waited over an hour. We learned, afterwards, that in her muff, during this long period of waiting, she carried the little revolver which she had bought that day, and with which she was presently to shoot Monsieur Calmette to death. She grew impatient at length, made inquiries of one of the men in uniform whose duty it is to announce visitors, and learned that Monsieur Calmette, who had just arrived, was now in his office with his friend Monsieur Paul Bourget, the well-known novelist. “If Madame will give me her card,” said the man. Madame Caillaux took a card from her case, slipped it into an envelope which was on the table by her side, and gave it to the man in uniform, who took it to Monsieur Calmette’s office. Monsieur Calmette and Monsieur Bourget were on the point of leaving the Figaro office together for dinner. Monsieur Calmette showed his friend the visiting card which had just been handed to him. “Surely you will not see her?” Monsieur Bourget said. “Oh yes,” said Monsieur Calmette, “she is a woman, and I must receive her.” Monsieur Bourget left his friend as Madame Caillaux was shown into the room. A few moments afterwards the crack of a revolver startled everybody in the building. The interview had been a very short and tragic one. Madame Caillaux, drawing her revolver from her muff, had emptied all six chambers of it. Gaston Calmette fell up against a bookcase in the room. He was mortally wounded. There was a rush from all the other offices of members of the Figaro staff, the revolver was snatched from the woman’s hand, a member of the staff who happened to be a doctor made a hasty examination, and a friend of M. Calmette’s, Dr. Reymond, was telephoned for immediately. Somebody ran or telephoned for the police, but for a long time Madame Caillaux remained in a passage near the room where her victim lay dying. Before the ambulance was brought on which Monsieur Calmette was carried out into the street he had time to give his keys and pocket-book to one of his collaborators, and to say farewell to them. Madame Caillaux had said very little before she was taken away. When the revolver was snatched from her hand she had said, “There is no more justice in France.” She had also said: “There was no other way of putting a stop to it,” alluding, no doubt, to the campaign in the Figaro against her husband. Then she had given herself into the hands of the police, and the curtain had fallen on this first act of the drama.

M. BOUCARD (THE EXAMINING MAGISTRATE) AND THE DOCTORS LEAVING THE PRIVATE HOSPITAL WHERE M. CALMETTE DIED.