Practically Perfect by Dale Brawn Read Free Book Online Page B

the victim’s wife. Three days before the murderers’ date with the hangman the federal cabinet rejected their application for clemency. That same day carpenters began constructing the scaffold on which the two condemned prisoners were to die.
    After their verdict was announced, the couple was transported to Montreal. They were held there until the day before their execution, when they were transferred back to Hull. Beaulne spent her time in the Fullum Street Prison for Women. When Lefebvre saw his cell in the infamous Bordeaux Jail, the First World War veteran broke down in tears. Over the next two months, he seemed to have banished from his mind the possibility he might be executed. On August 22, however, he finally realized that the possibility was about to become a reality, and was unable to keep his emotions in check. One thing he was sure about, though: he wanted no part of a last minute visit with Beaulne.
    Reporters were denied access to the execution, but one newsman was able to sneak past guards and into the jail proper. He was discovered just before midnight, when the executions were originally scheduled to be carried out, and escorted from the prison. Just about the time he was ejected, Arthur Ellis, the country’s unofficial chief executioner, was advised by provincial officials that the executions were to be postponed until dawn the next morning. When the day broke, it was pouring in rain, and the sky was full of lightning, making an execution dangerous even for those who were not going to be hanged. The sheriff decided to put things off until 8:00 a.m.
    Neither prisoner knew the order in which they were to be put to death, but officials decided shortly after the couple were sentenced that the honour should go to the tall, lanky woodcutter. Just before Ellis arrived at his cell, Lefebvre composed himself long enough to write a letter to his father, in which he begged forgiveness for the disgrace and heartbreak he brought to his family. But even Lefebvre’s spiritual adviser could do little to calm the condemned man, and after his arms were pinioned behind his back, guards had to carry the prostrate poisoner from his cell to the prison yard. Ellis was distraught and fidgety all morning, and with all this carrying-on he had to make a visible effort to calm himself. By the time Lefebvre reached the huge, red scaffold, however, everything was under control. At exactly the appointed hour, the trap doors were released. To ensure that no one outside the jail, or prisoners inside, could catch a glimpse of what was going on, black curtains surrounded the platform on which Ellis and his victim stood, and boards covered the space between the platform and the pit into which the bodies were to drop.
    A quarter of an hour later Beaulne began her walk to the gallows, straining for a glimpse of her lover. She was much more composed than Lefebvre had been, and required neither spiritual nor physical assistance from anyone. In the hours preceding her execution she wrote a letter to each of her eight children, and to her mother and assorted other relatives. The effort seemed to calm her, and when her death walk began she showed no emotion, and seemed oblivious to the noise made by the hundreds of people who milled around in front of the jail, awaiting news of the executions.
    Although the body of Philibert was claimed by his father an hour after it was removed from the gallows, no one wanted the corpse of Beaulne. That was something not anticipated by the provincial government, as it had made no arrangements for her burial. The longer the woman’s body lay in the Hull jail, the more anxious prison officials became, and it was hours before they received word that she was to be buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave in Hull’s Notre Dame cemetery. The only official told to attend was the sheriff.
    Newspapers across Canada reported the double execution, but made little other comment. That was not the case with a paper in Salt