Alexia (
the first name has been changed
) is cleaning the deserted living room on the 4th floor, when a man, in his sixties, approaches her.
"Has dinner been served?"
" he asks.
The cleaning lady is surprised by the question: all visitors know the unchanging rhythm of the retirement home Les Amarantes, in the center of Tours (Indre-et-Loire).
It's 6:30 p.m., supper has already been dispatched.
At this time, the residents are in bed.
The man makes up for it: he came to see one of his relatives in the early afternoon, May 13, 2019, but found her dozing.
He therefore returns to have a bit of a chat.
He also evokes a story of keys he thinks he left in the resident's room, to which he is heading.
He tries to open the door, finds that it is locked.
For the past few months, the rooms on the 4th floor, reserved for Alzheimer's patients, have been closed at the end of the day to prevent one patient from venturing into that of another.
The man then asks the employee to open the door for him.
She complies, sees the visitor slip into the darkness of the room of Yvette B., 92, then returns to her household.
A strange visitor
A quarter of an hour later, she crosses paths with two colleagues and tells them about this curious individual.
Catherine (the first name has been changed), a nursing assistant, is surprised: “Madame B. has visitors?
This rarely happens.
Puzzled, she heads for the bedroom.
The door is locked.
She knocks.
Five minutes pass, according to him, before the man opens.
Catherine asks him never to lock the doors, he answers with a smirk.
She has just enough time to see the nonagenarian lying in the distance, but cannot make out her face.
It doesn't matter.
Everything seems to be going well, even if the man appears to her "a little strange and embarrassed", she confided to the investigators.
The nurse resumes her occupations.
A few minutes later, the visitor leaves the room, joins the elevator, giving Alexia and Catherine a cordial smile.
"Goodbye and good luck," he says.
It is 7:05 p.m.
The man left, but he left a strange impression on the employees.
Five minutes after her departure, the caregiver returns to the resident's room.
As she approaches, she notices that the retiree has her mouth open and has a grayish complexion.
She no longer moves, no longer breathes.
Madame B. is dead.
Cakes three meters from the bed
On his body, no trace of violence. In contrast, cake crumbs dot his neck and Don's upper torso. Has she choked? From his mouth, employees of the nursing home remove two yellowish and mealy pieces. They quickly make the connection with the package of industrial madeleines placed on a table. But it is three meters from the bed, out of immediate reach of Yvette, who moved with difficulty. The mysterious visitor immediately becomes a suspect. One of the employees yells "it's him, it's him", runs down to try to catch up with him. Too late, the man is already far away.
The autopsy confirms death by suffocation. But is it due to an accident or a murder? The singular behavior of the sixty-year-old and the chronology of events immediately lean the police towards the second hypothesis. Especially since the forensic doctor noted a "hemorrhagic infiltration of the muscle of the neck possibly following a cervical seizure". Would Yvette B. have been forcibly held while the visitor forced her to swallow a cake? The autopsy does not draw any conclusions, but supports the suspicions.
Anyone who ever approached Mrs. B. knew that she had difficulty eating.
She was a quiet woman weighing 39 kg, suffering from "severe cognitive impairment", who had only one tooth.
She ate more or less alone, at the cost of endless efforts.
You had to cut tiny bites or mix your food.
The pieces found in his throat "should have been divided into three before being given to him", assures a person in charge of the retirement home to the police officers.
Even more disturbing, the victim was found lying down with his head slightly elevated.
How could the nonagenarian have brought such a big piece to her mouth, which is more in this position?
A life annuity
Investigators seek to identify the mysterious visitor. An arduous task. Arrived at the nursing home in 2014, Yvette received little. She was an only child and without descendants. Widowed, she had found a companion of the same age as her, who came from time to time. And then there was another fellow, in his sixties, a little pot-bellied, with sparse brown hair. He sometimes spent Sundays.
For the past month, he had been coming a little more often, maybe twice a week. He arrived at snack time, always brought back a Paris-Brest or chocolate éclairs. “Something's going to happen,” a nurse had warned. The man had told her not to worry, that he was still with Yvette and that, anyway, she only ate the cream. Who is this strange character? And is it he who brought the madeleines? To several employees, he introduced himself as a former neighbor. To others, he had explained that Yvette was his grandmother by heart. But no one knows his name. The investigation is slipping.
Peeling through the victim's papers, the police discovered that the lady had two properties: an apartment in Tours and a charming house fifteen kilometers further south, in Montbazon, worth 300,000 euros. Yvette had sold it as a life annuity in 1995 and drew 558 euros in monthly income. A life annuity? The word immediately sharpens the curiosity of investigators. The buyer, Alain J., is summoned to the police station ten days after the facts. Bingo! This father, then aged 60, admits to being the famous visitor. He even admits having brought madeleines that day. The police immediately took him into police custody.
The man tries to remember his day of May 13. When, at the stroke of 6.30 p.m., he entered Yvette's room, he found her lying down. He sat down beside her, gave her a madeleine. He put her in her hand, but she ate it alone, breaking off tiny pieces. At no time did she sit up on her bed. Result: she had crumbs all over her neck. The visitor remembers handing him a second cake. That's when we knocked on the door.
Alain opened.
A caregiver asked him not to lock, he nodded.
He had locked "because he had seen fit to do so", a habit taken as a guard in a residence for seniors.
Then he left the room for ten minutes, to "look at the hallway installations and the evacuation plan."
When he returned, the woman seemed to be sleeping.
He still had a piece of madeleine in his hand, but he did not try to take it away.
He left after taking care to turn off the light.
Confused explanations
To the police, Alain J. recounts having known Yvette during the sale of the house in Montbazon. They had dined together several times, then lost sight of each other. He had reconnected in 2014, when she was placed in a retirement home. Since then, he came regularly to Amarantes. Each time, he brought a pastry. And no member of the nursing home staff had ever warned him, he says. Moreover, on May 13, several employees of the establishment saw him with his package of madeleines in hand without making the slightest remark. If Yvette had choked on him, he would have reacted. This former Paris firefighter knows how to help and speaks with pride of his service record and his keen sense of duty.
But the suspect gets confused in his explanations. He swears not to have come on May 13 at the beginning of the afternoon because he was donating his blood at that time, then reconsiders his words. Forgotten keys? He announces to have found them in the trunk of his motorcycle. Another point intrigued investigators. In the past six months, the respondent has contacted several real estate agencies, seeking to relocate for his retirement. But to sell the house in Montbazon, which he lived in with his wife and had just had an appraisal, the agreement of Yvette B. was necessary. "It's true that she died at the right time," he awkwardly admits.
“My client was not prepared to be placed in police custody, tries to catch up with his lawyer, Me Abed Bendjador. He was shocked to be suspected and got confused a bit. The lawyer especially points to an instruction that he considers biased from the start. “For example, my client is criticized for not having taken his laptop with him during his visit to the nursing home, as if there was a desire to conceal it. But he never hid. When he arrived at the retirement home, he greeted each member of the staff. And all the instruction is like that. The investigators saw the word life, they said to themselves "banco"! But when you dig a bit, you realize that the mobile is not holding. "
Alain has never complained to his entourage about the length of the life annuity contract, contracted in 1995. He has never paid the monthly pension late, has never suffered from financial problems.
Why all of a sudden want to attack his annuitant?
Why attack a 92-year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease?
Especially since Alain could sell the house.
It was enough to get the agreement of the nonagenarian, who would not have lost her pension in the operation.
The lawyer is surprised that the owner of the nursing home was not the subject of an investigation
Placed in pre-trial detention since May 23, 2019, the man continues to proclaim his innocence.
According to his lawyer, he is going through a difficult incarceration, during which he notably witnessed the suicide of his fellow inmate.
And his four requests for release were all refused.
"What danger does my client represent?
"Asks Me Abed Bendjador, while being surprised that no investigation has been carried out concerning the owner of the nursing home, the Korian group, implicated in its management of the coronavirus crisis.
The lawyer also cites the case of this retirement home near Rouen, run by the same company and in which a resident with Alzheimer's disease died in 2016 after scalding herself in the shower for several minutes, without the staff. intervene.
Alain J. will appear next December before the Assize Court of Indre-et-Loire. In front of him, the jurors will have the heavy task of answering this enigma: is the death of Yvonne B. due to an assassination worthy of an Agatha Christie novel, or to a banal accident that has changed into a cruel miscarriage of justice?