The Valentino Affair (22 page)

My Dear Blanquita:

As you know, The Box is dedicated to little Jack. He had around him there all his pets, including his pony, dogs, etc. He seems to enjoy these attractions so much and they have kept him outdoors the whole day long.

It appears to me rather hard on the little fellow during these hot days to move him to some place where he will not have the freedom of the country life, such as he is having now at Westbury. Therefore, merely as a suggestion to you, I say that during this coming month of July, which period belongs to you, I will be perfectly willing to step out of the house and not return there until my period comes around again. I will further offer you my servants, which would be, of course, at no cost or expense to you.

Inasmuch as this property is solely for little Jack’s use you need not consider me in the matter in any way, and at the same time I think that with Jack’s interest uppermost in your mind you should put aside any little personal feeling that you might have had and let the boy continue to enjoy the magnificent life that he has been leading and which has kept him in the pink of condition.

Of course, this is all up to you. It is for you to decide, and should you care to take him away, he will be ready at the time appointed by the Court.

Hoping that you are well, and also that you are enjoying the summer, believe me, most sincerely

JOHN L. DE SAULLES
²⁴

It was a decent riposte—as good as the de Saulles family could muster in the circumstances—and demonstrated that Uterhart wasn’t going to have it all his way in the battle for propaganda supremacy. Some newspapers, too, were already beginning to question Uterhart’s strategy, with one saying that “an acquittal would be equivalent to writing into the statute book: ‘A husband’s adultery shall hereafter be punishable by death at the hands of the wife.’ ”
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The next day Blanca collapsed in her cell. When Uterhart arrived at noon, he found her prostrate on the bed, repeatedly muttering, “Why don’t you bring my little Jack to me?”
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Throwing aside the two Spanish novels he had brought as gifts, he shouted for medical assistance. While awaiting medical help to arrive, Uterhart relayed this development to the press corps. He also wanted to issue a clarification: “Mrs. De Saulles never said ‘I’m glad I did it’ after shooting Mr. De Saulles, as reported.”
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This, said Uterhart, had been misreported. Then he began highlighting perceived weaknesses in the prosecution’s case. For instance, the cartridges that had killed de Saulles were the same bullets he had put into the gun when giving it to Blanca two years previously. “A woman who premeditated murder would certainly have used fresh cartridges,” declared Uterhart. “She could not tell whether the old ones were still good or not.”
²⁸
This announcement raised a few sardonic smiles among the gathered newsmen, none of whom could recall any killer being quite so fastidious.

The press was getting itchy. With no sign of the boy at the jail, a swarm of reporters descended on The Box, this time flattening some expensive shrubbery in order to press their noses against the windows. They saw Mrs. August Heckscher, mother of Jack’s cousin and business partner, placing flowers in several vases in the front drawing room. Angrily, she stopped what she was doing and stormed out to the porch, chiding the reporters that such an invasion of privacy was outrageous and ordering them from the property. When one of the pressmen shouted a question about Jack Jr.’s whereabouts, Mrs. Heckscher snapped that she knew where the boy was but that “no one else has any right to know.”
²⁹
At that moment an upstairs window flew open to reveal the grizzled beard and thin white hair of Major de Saulles. In a voice shaking with passion, he shouted down, “I am the boy’s legal guardian. . . . I know where he is. No one else needs to know anything about him.”
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Nursing their discontent, the reporters trudged back to their cars and returned to the jail, to see what, if any, developments had occurred during their absence.

It had been surprisingly quiet. The way Uterhart told it that morning, Blanca had been knocking at death’s door, and yet, for some reason, the requested medical assistance didn’t arrive until 6:00 p.m. And it came in the form of not one, not two, but three doctors. There was County Physician Dr. Guy H. Cleghorn, who normally tended prisoners at the jail and had examined Blanca at the time of her arrest. Alongside him were two physicians from the Long Island College Hospital, J. Sherman Wight and Louis C. Johnson. They examined Blanca and found her to be “thin almost to emaciation,”
³¹
tipping the scales at a scant one hundred pounds. Blanca disclosed details of her medical history, especially the sunstroke she had suffered some years previously, since when her health had been fragile. The doctors were united in their belief that the prisoner should be granted bail.

When Weeks heard this he almost choked with disbelief. “I will oppose any application for bail.”
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Nor did he think that Blanca was “as ill as some persons would have us believe.”
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And he assured the citizens of Long Island that they would get full value for their tax dollars when it came to prosecuting Mrs. de Saulles. “The fact that she is reputed to come from a wealthy family does not entitle her to any more consideration than that accorded to [Dominick] Damasco,”
³⁴
also being held at the Mineola jailhouse.

The doctors’ findings also came as a shock to others at the jail, most of whom were astonished at just how well Blanca had been bearing up during her ordeal. But there was no stopping Uterhart. He trumpeted that the doctors had described his client as “a very sick girl,”
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and that her (as yet undiagnosed) illness resulted more from “her sufferings for several years past”
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than to the shock and reaction from killing her husband. Uterhart’s hyperbole did take something of a hit with Cleghorn’s observation that Blanca was “one of the most remarkably normal women”
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he had ever examined, more composed and calm even than Florence Carman, whom he also had treated. His finding was borne out by Sheriff Seaman. He said he had “never seen so even-tempered a woman as Mrs. De Saulles.”
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The sheriff was obviously smitten. “When I see her I can only think of a tiny bird. I never saw so bird-like a human creature.”
³⁹

Uterhart fought to regain control of the situation, only to falter when queried about his client’s alleged financial distress. He admitted that, yes, she did pay a season’s rent of two thousand dollars for Crossways—approximately half her stated income—but this was beyond her means. Her sole reason for such extravagance was because she felt she had to compete with her husband for little Jack’s affection. Uterhart’s usual ready smile faded notably when another pressman asked if it was true that the unusual custody terms agreed during the divorce resulted from a threat by Jack to file a countersuit, naming “a dancer often in company with Joan Sawyer.”
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Uterhart blustered that the terms of the decree had come as “a great shock and surprise”
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to everyone.

For the first time Blanca had been publicly linked with Rodolfo Guglielmi, and Uterhart was visibly rattled. Earlier, questions about Blanca’s wealth had forced him onto the back foot; now he needed to regroup again to project her as a young, vulnerable girl driven to homicide by the heartless manipulation of a callous husband, not some giddy social butterfly with a fondness for footloose tango dancers. All he could manage was a clutch of letters written by members of the public, wishing Blanca well. One came from a man who claimed to be chargé d’affaires at the American Legation in Chile in 1912, when he met Blanca. “I beg you to consider me at your orders in whatever way I can assist you. I beg you to believe me your faithful and devoted servant, who kisses your feet.”
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Uterhart declined to identify the author of the letter, which was in Spanish, other than to say it was written on stationery from the Princeton Club.

Another, from Mrs. Jennie B. Jones, living in Milwaukee, offered sympathy to Blanca and attacked Jack’s character because of business relations he’d had with her husband.

My Dear Mrs. De Saulles:

In our morning paper I read of the dreadful predicament you are in, and I cannot resist the temptation of writing you. You know how my heart goes out to you in this hour of anguish. I know of no way that I can help you, but if I can I stand willing. I can’t help the tears coming to my eyes when I think of what you must be going through. It was an awful price to pay—he was not worth it. I know you did it from a sense of duty.
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Mrs. Jones claimed to have known de Saulles from several years previously when he was living at Long Beach, where his riotous house parties “were all affairs only whispered about.”
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It was all very titillating and all entirely fictitious. Within twenty-four hours, relatives of Mrs. Jones, including her husband and sister, issued a statement that, while she might have written a letter of sympathy to Blanca, she had never met the dead man and there was “not a particle of truth”
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in claims that she knew details of Jack’s private life.

In releasing this so-called sympathy letter, Uterhart had miscalculated; he fought to regain lost ground by emphasizing Blanca’s plucky stoicism. He said that the first her family knew of her marital discord came when a friend, Dr. Van Schroeders, visited his brother in New York in the months preceding her divorce and met with Blanca. He wrote to Amalia that Jack was “drinking heavily”
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and that it was no longer safe for Blanca to stay with him. Within weeks Amalia had arrived to comfort her ailing sister.

While Uterhart worked the press, Blanca was being moved. It might not have been the hospital ward recommended by her doctors, but she was able to swap an eight-by-twelve-foot cell for a well-ventilated, comfortable room in the sheriff’s private wing. Next door sat a piano that Seaman said Blanca could play if she wished. To celebrate the change, Estella Seaman was dispatched to New York City to buy some fresh apparel for the prisoner.

Suzanne Monteau was also proving her worth. Her daily visits followed a set regime: First she dressed her employer’s hair, and then she attended to her toilette before going outside to face the press. She had been well coached. Her announcements invariably included some mention of her employer’s history of ill-health. Ever since suffering sunstroke four years previously, whenever the weather turned hot Mrs. de Saulles complained of “a queer feeling in the head.”
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And yes, her mistress had been stricken by just such a feeling in the days preceding the shooting.

Later that afternoon, Blanca received another visitor, the Chile-born Mrs. Aida Iglehart, whose husband she had phoned just before the shooting. Details of their conversation, conducted in Spanish, never made it out to the press corps, who were far more interested in an expensive automobile that was slowly passing the jail. As the newspapermen dashed forward to identify the occupants, the female passenger hastily drew a veil over her face, while the man driving turned his face away and floored the gas. Some thought they recognized the two as Caroline Degener and Charles Pettinus. Quite why they wished to see the jailhouse was a mystery. What is certain is that, later that same day, Lyttleton Fox issued a statement on behalf of Major de Saulles:

It is a matter of great regret to me that Mrs. De Saulles, having taken the life of my son, now chooses to heap calumnies upon him. Those calumnies will do no permanent harm, for the whole truth is certain to eventually come out. I know my son as he was and as few fathers can. Thank God, others know as I did and hold his memory green and clean in their hearts. His faults he had in common with many other good men, but very few could justly claim to equal him in his splendor and his fineness. Jack was a man, every inch of him. I deeply resent the campaign of unjust attack that seems planned.

ARTHUR B. DE SAULLES
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The battle lines were being drawn.

Meanwhile, the de Saulles family had postponed Jack’s funeral to allow his brother, Charles, to arrive from Denver. Ever since the body had been moved to Campbell’s Funeral Church, they had been inundated by mourners wishing to pay their last respects. Many were Yale alumni, unified in their condemnation of Blanca. Jack, they insisted, had been a devoted father, extremely careful in his tending of Jack Jr., someone who would not dream of taking his son anywhere inappropriate. While the insults flew back and forth, Justice of the Peace Walter R. Jones announced, out of respect to the family, that the inquest would be delayed until after the funeral.