The Valentino Affair (31 page)

THIRTEEN

Amnesia

T
HE
T
RIAL,
D
AY 5

T
HERE HAD BEEN NO LETUP IN THE VOLUME OR VIRULENCE OF THE
threatening letters received at the courthouse, with most taking dead aim at Justice Manning. Proof that these were still being taken seriously came the next morning when the judge arrived at the Mineola railroad station to find two burly court officers waiting to accompany him to court. Despite the drab, drizzly weather, a large crowd had gathered on the courthouse steps long before the doors opened. As they entered the court, everyone—including the press—submitted to a search. When Blanca appeared, she nodded politely to the jury, all of whom nodded back, and took her seat. Because the court was so dark, it was necessary to illuminate the bench with electric light, a garish intrusion that gave Justice Manning the appearance of being the central figure in a stage set.

Today, Weeks intended to play his best cards. The first witness was Marshall Ward. The reporters sharpened their pencils and their scorn. “Pasty-faced,”
¹
one called him; another lampooned him as “a symphony in blue. He wore a blue serge suit, blue polka dot cravat, blue shirt and had a blue-bordered handkerchief displayed at his breast pocket.”
²
After Hadamek’s damaging testimony the previous day, Ward obviously posed problems for the state, but while the “dapper little man”
³
might have looked foppish, he had genuine steel in the way he went about mounting a recovery mission. At Weeks’s urging, Ward presented a lengthy and largely uninterrupted account of the fateful day’s events: lunch with Jack and his father at Sherry’s, then a drive to The Box, where Caroline had just arrived. Aided by diagrams and a plan of the lower floor of the house, Ward pointed out where the furniture stood in the living room. After dinner, he said, the family and guests listened to the phonograph in the living room until Caroline took the child up to bed. While she was gone, a loud knock came at the front door.

“The Major was lying on the couch in the living room. Jack was lying by the wall at his father’s feet, and I was on a stool near. I heard a voice say, ‘I want to see Mr. De Saulles,’ then I looked up and saw Mrs. De Saulles. She had stepped through the door into the living room. Jack and I got up.

“Jack went over and put out his hand and said ‘How are you, Blanquita?’ I went over to the mantelpiece.”
⁴

Ward described the tense confrontation between Jack and Blanca. As it grew more heated, he left his place by the mantelpiece and inched his way toward the piano. “They were standing about three feet apart,” he said. “When Jack said he wouldn’t argue with her, he turned his back upon her, and she said, ‘Then there’s only one thing to do.’ I saw the flash of the gun, and I heard four shots in rapid succession. I saw Jack stagger forward, but I did not see him fall. As soon as I could collect myself I went over to Mrs. De Saulles and seized her arms. She said, ‘It had to be done.’ ”
⁵

Listening to this evidence, Blanca’s eyes blazed angrily, then creased into a sardonic smile as Ward spoke of tending his stricken friend. But her brittle contempt faded as fast as it had appeared, and she lapsed back into her customary stupor.

Ward continued: “I went to the telephone to call a doctor and after that went back to the living room to see what I could do. Then I called up the doctor again to see why he had not come and went out on the porch to watch for the headlights of the automobile.”
⁶
He described seeing Blanca outside the house a short while later, just moments before the ambulance arrived. “I went to the hospital with Mr. De Saulles and stayed there until he died.”
⁷

Thus far Weeks had given Ward his head, and it had been smooth sailing. Now the district attorney had to navigate trickier waters. “Did you see Julius Hadamek at the time of the shooting?” Ward replied that he had not. In its own way this testimony was just as damaging as Hadamek’s had been a day earlier. Now Weeks was hamstrung by two prosecution witnesses, both of whom had, allegedly, run to de Saulles’s assistance, yet neither would admit to having seen the other. Weeks fought hard to paper over the ever-widening cracks. “Was anyone with Mrs. De Saulles?”

“Yes, a woman, her maid, stood by the door.”

Reluctantly, Weeks returned to the subject of the vexatious valet. “When
did
you see Julius Hadamek?”

“I saw him in the hall and living room after the shooting.”
⁸

With this Weeks handed the witness over to the defense.

Uterhart took his time, slowly raising his commanding bulk from the desk before approaching the witness. He soft-pedaled his opening, with a few general questions about the witness’s eighteen-year friendship with the dead man, including how Ward had used Jack’s Manhattan office as his business headquarters and his connection with the New York Cotton Exchange. Then, without pause, he switched smoothly to the night of the shooting. “When Mrs. De Saulles came, you didn’t want to hear what she said, did you?”

“I got up to meet her, but when I heard her mention little Jack I would have left the room if I could: I didn’t want to hear a family quarrel. I could not pass her to get to the door.”

“There was a door by the piano; why didn’t you go out that?”

“I didn’t think of it.”

“But you could have gone out on the porch without brushing past Mrs. De Saulles?”

“Yes, but I didn’t think of it.”

“As a matter of fact, you stayed where you could hear every word of the family quarrel, didn’t you?”

“Not intentionally. I don’t know whether I heard every word or not. I don’t know what I missed.”
⁹

Ward was negotiating the cross-examination like a seasoned campaigner and growing in confidence until, without warning, Uterhart struck like a rattlesnake. Pointing an accusing finger directly at the witness, he shouted, “Have you ever been convicted of a crime?”

Ward shifted uneasily in his seat before muttering a barely audible, “No.”
¹⁰

“Do you swear that?”

“Yes.”
¹¹

“I’ll show you a paper, and possibly I can refresh your memory.”
¹²

Uterhart produced a transcript made from the records of the West Side Police Court in Manhattan, detailing how Ward had been fined ten dollars and costs for intoxication and fighting in a restaurant. He looked up from the document and skewered the witness with a defiant stare. “Weren’t you convicted of using loud and boisterous language and refusing to leave Rector’s while intoxicated?”
¹³

“No, I was convicted for disorderly conduct. I was arrested for fighting at Rector’s.” Ward shifted uncomfortably in his seat, fingering his lips as he spoke.

“And committed to jail because you couldn’t pay your fine of $10?”

“Because I didn’t have any money with me. I was committed until I got the money.”
¹⁴

It was scarcely a capital crime, but, filtered through Uterhart’s hypercritical prism, the minor incident took on a decidedly menacing air. And there was worse to come as Uterhart dug even deeper into Ward’s past. “Have you ever been accused of defrauding a dressmaker named Miss Mary Riley?”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
¹⁵

Uterhart affected surprise and then read out details of a suit brought when Ward worked for the Paul J. Rainey Pier Co. and reportedly sold Miss Riley bonds worth thirty thousand dollars. The charge alleged that Ward, in his desperation to get his hands on the client’s money, used his mother’s name and made false representations.

“Does that refresh your recollection?”

“It does not.”
¹⁶

“Don’t you know that you sued the Rainey company for commission and that their defense was that you had been guilty of fraud in selling the bonds?”

“I know they lost the verdict after the jury was out ten minutes.”

“—and that the Appellate Division reversed the decision?”

“On a point of law, I understood.”
¹⁷

Uterhart sighed and read from the decision of the Appellate Division, which found that, although Ward
had
misrepresented certain facts regarding the bond sale to Miss Riley, other factors obliged them to overturn the lower court’s decision. When he finished, Uterhart turned to the witness and snapped, “That’s all for you, Mr. Marshall Ward.”
¹⁸

None of these revelations had a jot of bearing on the shooting of Jack de Saulles, but they did have a devastating effect on Ward’s credibility, portraying him as a shifty operator, not to be trusted. Ward’s stupidity beggared belief. In first denying and then admitting various offenses that he knew to be in the public record, he had handed the jury a gold-plated reason to disbelieve him. Clearly, this round had gone to Uterhart. As the newspapers made plain. Counsel had given Ward “a very miserable half hour,”
¹⁹
wrote one, while another said that Uterhart had used Ward “very roughly.”
²⁰

Weeks struggled to limit the damage. On redirect, he asked Ward to explain the circumstances of the fight at Rector’s. “The persons at the next table were being very annoying. I remember that we did have a fight and that after we got over to court I was held there for about three quarters of an hour before I could get the money.”
²¹
After this Ward was allowed to leave. He slunk back to his seat, having learned firsthand that the witness stand can be the loneliest place on earth.

Fortunately for Weeks, the next witness was a far more imposing and credible character. Caroline Degener, dressed in deep mourning, swept past Blanca like she didn’t exist as she made her way to the stand. Once seated, she raised her veil to show an angry, dark face and hair slightly tinged with gray. Her eyes were sharp, and her voice displayed a flinty bitterness when she spoke. She gave her answers promptly and concisely and confined herself to exactly what she knew.

On the night in question, at approximately eight o’clock, she had taken her nephew upstairs to put him in his pajamas and ready him for bed. She was coming down the stairs with Jack Jr.—“to say goodnight to his grandfather”
²²
—and was about four steps from the bottom when Blanca entered the hallway. Caroline had halted involuntarily and said, “How do you do, Blanquita?”
²³
She noticed that “Blanquita had her hands in the pockets of her jacket.”
²⁴

“Did you notice how Mrs. De Saulles was dressed?”
²⁵
asked Weeks.

“She was dressed in white and had her hands in the pockets of her sweater.
²⁶
Blanca then said, ‘Good evening, Caroline. I wish to see Mr. De Saulles.’ I called Longer—that was the name I always called him by. She went on into the living room and I heard her say, ‘I want my boy,’ and I heard him say, ‘You can’t have him. It’s my month. That’s all there is to it.’ ”
²⁷

Then she heard the shots. Caroline instinctively dashed toward the living room. At that moment Blanca emerged. “I seized her by the arm and said ‘Blanquita, Blanquita, what have you done?’ She said ‘I’m sorry. It had to be done.’ ”
²⁸

After this, Caroline ran upstairs “to see about the boy. I don’t know how he disappeared. I think he ran up when he heard the shots. . . . I did not see Mrs. De Saulles until twenty minutes later, after I had telephoned for an ambulance and the police.”
²⁹

Weeks asked when the witness next saw Blanca. “I went out on the porch and saw her. She was seated on a bench. I did not speak to her and she did not speak to me. I noticed that there was some dark-complexioned woman with her. This woman came to The Box with her and stood in the hall. I have since learned that this woman was her maid.”
³⁰
At no time, Caroline said, did she speak to Blanca while the latter was waiting for the police to arrive.