The Valentino Affair (25 page)

Then, as dusk began to fall, a cablegram brought the announcement that, owing to ill-health, Señora Errázuriz-Vergara had delayed her journey to America, and would not now be departing until Saturday, August 11. It was anticipated that Amalia would be traveling with her.

The next day saw the resumption of the inquest. Uterhart accompanied Suzanne Monteau to the DA’s office in the courthouse, where she gave a deposition, describing her version of events on the night in question. Weeks asked why Blanca seemed in such a hurry that night. “She told the taxi man to drive as fast as he could to The Box, because she said we would be able to get the baby and get back before Mr. De Saulles returned from the club.”
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“Tell what happened when you got to The Box.”
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“When we got to The Box we left the taxi not very far from the house and walked to the front door. We saw his sister on the stairs with the baby.”
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Blanca then said, “I want to see Mr. De Saulles”
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and was directed toward the living room. As she entered the room, Jack stood up and came toward her. Blanca said, “I don’t think it is nice for you to keep the baby so long and not let me know anything about it. I don’t think that is nice.”
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“Blanquita, you can’t have the baby now or ever.”
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Aware of the importance of this evidence—especially in light of rumors that it would form a cornerstone of the defense—Weeks asked if de Saulles had definitely used this phrase. Suzanne swore that this was the case. Then, Suzanne continued, Blanca approached Jack. He didn’t move. “He looked terrible. . . . Oh, my! His eyes were terrible. He looked as if he would jump on her.”

“Did he look as if he would strike her?”

Weeks’s question was astonishing. That a district attorney would ask a leading question so favorable to the defense defied belief.

“Yes.”
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“How far was his wife from him when you noticed this look?”
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About eight feet, said the maid. Mrs. de Saulles approached until she was about two feet away, then stopped. “She took the revolver out and shot him. He didn’t move. He had his face toward her. She shot him in front three times, and then he turned. Nobody said anything. Nobody moved. Everybody was there. She put the gun on a table and said: ‘Now call a policeman.’ We waited a few minutes, and the police came.”
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After the inquest was adjourned, Uterhart declared himself “elated” at Suzanne’s testimony, which he regarded as the “strongest possible evidence for the defense.”
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Weeks, too, was satisfied. He thought that Suzanne’s assertion that Blanca looked “absolutely calm”
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weakened defense claims that hers had been an act of passion.

But public support, at least according to Uterhart, was continuing to build behind the beleaguered young woman, and it was coming from all sectors of society. A US sailor, born in Chile, had visited the attorney’s office and laid five five-dollar gold pieces on the desk. “I want to give this toward Mrs. De Saulles’s defense fund,”
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he was reported as saying. A clerk thanked the man and returned the money, assuring him that no such fund was needed or existed.

Mrs. Seaman also drip-fed details of Blanca’s health to the press. It had improved considerably following the visit of her son, said the sheriff’s wife, and for first the time she had some color in her face. Doctors Wight and Cleghorn, on the other hand, still had concerns about their patient’s health, and that afternoon an X-ray machine was wheeled into the jail. All Wight would say as he left was that his patient was suffering from “great exhaustion.”
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Disappointment, too, played a part. Blanca had heard that Jack Jr. would be making a second visit that day, but as the hours ticked away so did her hopes of seeing her son. At one point she stood forlornly at the second-story window of her neatly furnished room, watching the roads for the auto that would bring Jack Jr. In the streets below, excited onlookers pointed at the window. It was the first time they had seen Blanca, the whiteness of her face accentuated by her dark hair, pulled straight back from her forehead. She quickly withdrew, eluding the press photographers who had set up their bulky cameras at the front entrance in hopes of grabbing more shots of the boy as he entered the jailhouse.

During the afternoon two visitors arrived. One was a fashionably dressed elderly woman, the other a Mr. Cutan, a young Chilean who had known Blanca as a girl in Valparaíso. They stayed for a few minutes only, then drove off together. Half an hour later Cutan returned, alone, bearing a copy of
Town Topics,
which he handed to Blanca.

Blanca’s vigil lasted until 9:00 p.m., ending only when a jailer shook his head and told her that Jack Jr. definitely wasn’t coming.

August 11

In his daily press briefing on Saturday, Uterhart first repeated his claim that Blanca always felt entitled to full custody, only to backtrack hastily when a reporter pointed out that she had agreed to the 7–5 split. “I cannot discuss that,” Uterhart said. “It is too close to the issues of the trial.”
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Grizzled veterans of the crime beat had noticed that any mention of the divorce settlement made Uterhart uneasy. They wondered why.

Weeks also had a couple of tidbits to keep the front-page pot boiling. Although coy about divulging details, he declared that, in his view, the deposition of the taxi driver, James Donner, greatly strengthened the state’s view that Blanca had gone to shoot her ex-husband deliberately. So, what are your chances of getting a guilty verdict? he was asked. He paused. “I think there is no doubt that the murder was premeditated. I think we have a strong case. But I am too old a campaigner to predict a victory,” he replied and then added wryly, “remember, she’s a woman.”
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With Blanca under lock and key and likely to remain so for weeks if not months, the press needed another angle to keep the story running. They found it in the de Saulles family’s finances. According to one newspaper, just before his death, Jack had begun work on a polo field, five hundred by nine hundred feet, at the rear of The Box. Two large sheds had already been erected to stable his eight polo ponies, and the turf was rapidly being readied for play. Estimates put Jack’s outlay at six thousand dollars so far, and the work was far from complete. He also had engaged a firm of landscape architects to prepare a tract of land adjacent to the property of Maurice Heckscher, with a view to building a home there in the near future. Such expenditures, said family friends, made a mockery of claims that Jack relied on Blanca for money.

They also trashed those stories about Blanca being forced to live in relative poverty. She had taken Crossways, they said, because it gave her the space to build an elaborate playground for her son, and the rent for the property was actually $3,500 for the season, not $2,000 as the press had reported. Bearing in mind Uterhart’s claim that Blanca’s annual income was $4,000 a year, plus maintenance of $300 a month, one newspaper quoted sources as saying it would have been “impossible”
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for her to live in the extravagant manner that she did without receiving financial assistance from her family in Chile.

Another paper gleefully reported that details of the sealed divorce decree would “probably figure prominently”
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in the trial. This announcement once again forced Uterhart on the defensive, sparking yet another indignant denial that, in a countersuit allegedly threatened by de Saulles, Blanca’s name had been linked with “a cabaret dancer.”
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Uterhart was far more comfortable relaying details of Blanca’s health and demeanor. Dr. Cleghorn had told him that she had been able to sit up during the day and was feeling “very much better.”
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Cleghorn had added, “Today, for the first time, I feel optimistic about Mrs. De Saulles”—until sounding a cautionary note: “But she is still very ill.”
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August 12

Despite intense public interest, Blanca was exercising caution. When a group of women arrived at the jail, claiming friendship with the prisoner, they were peremptorily turned away, with word that Blanca would see no one except legal counsel and close friends. The women, apparently, returned to the city “much disgruntled.”
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But no such frostiness greeted Suzanne Monteau. Each day she arrived at the jail, bringing not just companionship but regular changes of clothing and “a few delicacies to eat.”
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A rather different kind of visitor showed up on the afternoon of August 12. A large automobile was seen to slowly drive past the jail. Nothing unusual there. Since the shooting practically everyone with a car on Long Island had taken time to visit the jailhouse. Inquisitive reporters routinely scrutinized each car’s occupants, and most were quickly dismissed as non-newsworthy. On this occasion, though, they spotted Major de Saulles in the backseat, his eyes fixed on the window of the second-story room where Blanca was being held. He didn’t stay long. As soon he saw the press pack begin to gather, he barked at the chauffeur, and the car raced off.

Earlier that day, a band of evangelists had held a religious service in the jail directly beneath Blanca’s window. They sang “My Faith Looks Up to Thee.” Blanca showed no interest in them. Nor did she have time for a priest who called to offer spiritual guidance; he was dismissed with word that she had made alternative religious arrangements.

The day’s most significant development, so far as the defense was concerned, came with news that the J. Doll Construction Company of New York had filed in the County Clerk’s office at Mineola a lien for $2,383.51 against John de Saulles and Mrs. Emily Ladenburg, from whom Jack bought The Box. The lien was for nonpayment of work done on the polo field between July 19 and August 7. For the first time, a chink had appeared in the claims that Jack had no need of Blanca’s money. Perhaps in light of this development, District Attorney Weeks announced that he was forgoing his vacation to better prepare the case against Blanca.

August 13

More headaches lay in store for Weeks when it became known that the defense once again had consulted Max D. Steuer. Fortunately for the state, the formidable attorney’s participation was restricted to matters relating to that contentious divorce settlement. But even so, when Steuer spoke, others listened, and he stated that several weeks prior to the divorce hearing the couple had signed a preliminary agreement.

Following the court decree another agreement was made by Mr. and Mrs. De Saulles which modified the court order that prohibited the mother taking her son to Chile during the period of the war. The original stipulation provided that Mrs. De Saulles was to have possession of her son seven months each year and his father was to have him for the other five. But as these periods were divided so that each parent had the boy alternate months, Mrs. De Saulles said she could not take her son to Chile to see her relatives and return in a month.

I suggested that she should have the boy for a continuous period of seven months and the father for five, and a petition to that effect was made to the court. While that was pending I took the matter up with Mr. Fox and former Judge Morgan J. O’Brien. They finally agreed to this arrangement, and I understand that the agreement was put in writing by attorneys for Mr. De Saulles and by Prince & Nathan, who were attorneys of record for Mrs. De Saulles.
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According to Steuer, this agreement was made after the initial hearing and before the referee’s final judgment, yet, for some reason, it was not acted upon. Had both parties signed the agreement, Steuer hinted, this tragedy might have been avoided.