The Valentino Affair (43 page)

“She did not.”
²¹

Wight then fell back on his claim that Blanca’s condition had been caused by hypothyroidism. He compared her mental state with the type of shell shock—much in the news at the time—in which soldiers obey orders and afterward remember nothing of them. In summary Wight thought that Blanca had suffered an “edema or swelling on the night of August 3,”
²²
and that this caused her amnesia. However, having not examined her at the time he couldn’t be sure. He said there was no danger of a relapse into her former lethargy because the thyroid treatment had been successful, a prognosis that brought obvious signs of relief to Blanca as she sat listening.

On cross-examination, Weeks delved further into the X-ray of Blanca’s skull that Wight had taken. “Your plate is a good one, is it, doctor?”

“A very good one.”
²³

“Of course it was,” chipped in Justice Manning dryly. “He made it himself.”
²⁴

“You wouldn’t feel hurt if anyone said your plate was a poor one?”

“He would be wrong,”
²⁵
snapped Wight.

“Doctor,” said Weeks. “Isn’t it possible you were mistaken about that open fracture? Don’t you ever make mistakes?”

“I have been mistaken at times, but not now. In this case I’m absolutely sure.”

“You have been a witness many times in court?”

“A number of times.”

“And you have testified a great many times for clients of Uterhart & Graham, haven’t you?”

“No,” Wight said, adding after a pause, “only five times.”

“That’s all.”
²⁶

Succinct and effective, Weeks’s cross-examination had exposed Wight as Uterhart’s “go-to” expert medical witness, a pliable doctor who could be relied upon to provide any diagnosis that his paymaster requested.

Dr. Smith Ely Jeliffe came next. His answers to the hypothetical question echoed those of Wight, as did his belief that the so-called fracture had contributed to Blanca’s actions on the night in question. Blanca, he said, “was in an automatic state”
²⁷
when she shot her husband. With Jeliffe standing firm and unshakable on this part of his testimony, Weeks changed his line of attack by asking the witness if he considered himself an expert in insanity. Jeliffe replied in the affirmative. Weeks asked, “Dr. Jeliffe, you testified at the trial of Hans Schmidt.
²⁸
Do you remember that after his conviction for murder, he said he had ‘faked’ the experts and wasn’t insane at all?”
²⁹

After a prodigious bout of ducking and dodging, eventually Jeliffe mumbled that he
might
have seen reports to that effect. An angry Justice Manning intervened. “There is no doubt about it; the court so stated on appeal.”
³⁰

More sparring followed. Jeliffe was under the gun and although he admitted being one of the experts whom Schmidt had duped, he angrily denied that his was the deciding voice. And as he became more agitated, reason flew out the window. Suddenly he exploded. “Schmidt was a crazy man, no matter what the jury said. I knew it.”

“What!” said Weeks. “You mean to say that the State of New York executed a crazy man?”

“It did,” retorted Jeliffe. “I know it.”
³¹

After this bizarre outburst, Jeliffe stepped down from the stand and, staring straight ahead, left the courtroom. Although neither he nor Wight had performed well, nor had they been budged from their stated belief that at the time of the shooting, Blanca de Saulles had been unaware of her actions.

In a surprise move, Uterhart recalled garage owner Raymond D. Hamilton to the stand. Hamilton had contacted Uterhart because he wanted to correct his previous statement that the first telephone call was received by him at 7:30 p.m. on the night in question. He now thought that the call came through shortly after the arrival of the 7:11 train from New York. With this evidence, Uterhart hoped to show that Blanca was making all possible haste to reach The Box before Jack returned home; instead, it merely muddied the already murky waters as the garage owner, under cross-examination, became confused over whether the call had succeeded the arrival of the 7:11 train or the train arriving half an hour later.

With the defense winding down, all it needed now, in the opinion of most courtroom observers, was for the imperious Señora Errázuriz-Vergara to make her much anticipated appearance. Sadly, Uterhart advised the court that Blanca’s mother was too ill to testify, an announcement that caused “keen disappointment among the spectators,”
³²
and at 2:30 p.m. the defense rested.

It was now Weeks’s turn to fight back. His first rebuttal witness was Dr. Lewis Gregory Cole, a fifteen-year X-ray specialist and professor of Roentgenology at Cornell Medical College who currently held the rank of major in the army, where he was training X-ray operatives for the military. The major presented a picture of uniformed rectitude as he marched briskly to the stand. Uterhart conceded that Dr. Cole was a qualified witness. “He photographed one of my teeth once, so I guess he’s all right.”
³³

Cole sat patiently while the radiograph of Blanca’s skull was set up beside the witness stand. Weeks asked him to study the plate. “Does the skull of Mrs. De Saulles show any evidence of fracture?”

“It does not.”

“In your opinion, what is that depression at the top of the skull?”
³⁴

“The plate shows neither a depression nor a fracture, where the frontal bone has united with the bone about it.”
³⁵

Cole was scathing about the quality of Wight’s workmanship, describing the X-ray plate as “poor.”
³⁶
Even so, he offered to clear up the confusion about the so-called fracture and invited the jury to take a closer look. As before, jurors who hitherto had shown scant interest in any of the medical testimony eagerly gathered around the projectoscope. Cole pointed to the plate. “You will see, instead of a fracture, the typical saw-toothed edges of bone that have failed to knit together.”
³⁷
All through Cole’s demonstration, Uterhart emitted a series of heavy sighs, interspersed with theatrical dissenting gestures. Weeks glowered across at him.

“I wish you wouldn’t shake your head in the sight of the jury.”

“Pardon me, I did not mean it,”
³⁸
Uterhart replied innocently.

In a heated, at times bad-tempered cross-examination, Uterhart attacked Cole on his interpretation of the indentation. “It is a place where there is no bone, isn’t it?”

“None in infancy.”

“Eventually it heals over, so it forms a perfect curve with the skull, doesn’t it?”

“Not necessarily.”
³⁹

Uterhart then asked if the witness was expecting to be paid for his testimony.

“I don’t know. I came at the State’s call. Dr. Kirby
⁴⁰
called me. No arrangement was made.”

“But you expect to be paid, don’t you?”

“Yes, I presume I shall be.”

“Why are you wearing that uniform today?”

“Because it is an army rule. I have been in the service of the United States since last January, sir.”
⁴¹

When Uterhart persisted in this line of attack, the judge cut him off abruptly. “Let’s have no more questions of this kind. This man has a perfect right to wear his uniform. That is not to be questioned at all.”
⁴²
This was a rare miscalculation by Uterhart. Criticizing the military during times of national emergency was hardly likely to endear him to the jury, and he hurriedly retreated.

Weeks, caught off guard by the comparative brevity of the medical evidence, now asked for a twenty-minute recess in which to prepare his further rebuttal witnesses. During this hiatus angry words were heard at the prosecution table. One of the physicians sat there, outraged by Uterhart’s impertinence, and urged Cole to go across and “smash”
⁴³
the defense counsel. No smashing was done and, instead, Weeks presented a string of rebuttal witnesses to refute defense assertions that Blanca had been
non compos mentis
on the night of the shooting and in the subsequent days.

The first, Mrs. Helen McLaughlin Martin, who lived in Manhattan, told of having known Blanca for three years and visiting her on or about August 6 in the jail. She had asked the prisoner if there was anything she could do, and Blanca requested her to “give my love to the little boy if you see him,”
⁴⁴
and also to remember her to Mrs. Heckscher.

“Did her acts impress you as being rational?”

“They did.”
⁴⁵

Uterhart kept his cross-examination brief, merely getting Mrs. Martin to admit she was a friend of the Heckschers.

Then it was the turn of Caroline Degener. She confirmed that on the night of the shooting, no one passed her on the stairs when she came down with little Jack as Blanca entered the hallway. This directly impugned Suzanne Monteau’s claim that Marshall Ward did not witness the shooting, but instead went upstairs just before it occurred. Caroline also said that prior to the shooting, she had not seen Blanca for more than a year. “When you saw her a year before this did she complain of headaches?” asked Weeks.

“No.”
⁴⁶
And in her opinion, on the night in question, Blanca seemed “quiet and rational,”
⁴⁷
before and after the incident.

A lively interlude was provided by Miss Jean Mallock, a “peppery little governess from London,”
⁴⁸
who told the court that she had been employed by Blanca from December 15, 1916, to July 5, 1917. During that time her employer had never complained of headaches. She also portrayed Blanca as a neglectful mother, who, in early July, shipped Jack Jr. off to Roslyn, ostensibly to escape the heat in the city, while she remained in Manhattan living the high life.

Uterhart gave the witness a skeptical glare. Wasn’t it true, he asked, that she had been fired by Blanca? Grudgingly, Miss Mallock admitted that she had been discharged by Blanca and that she was “angry with both of them.”
⁴⁹

“Isn’t it a fact, that you frequently offered her your own headache remedies?”

“I don’t remember. I may have done so,”
⁵⁰
she said. “I have suffered from intense headaches myself and I have a very fine remedy.”
⁵¹
Under more abrasive questioning, she admitted an initial reluctance to get involved in this sordid case because she had “a grievance against Mrs. De Saulles, and . . . a still larger one against De Saulles.”
⁵²
She volunteered to give the court the reasons for her anger, a tantalizing prospect that caused an expectant rustle in court, only for Justice Manning to decline the offer. Bitter disappointment on the face of the witness was matched only by frustration in the public gallery.

Constable Thorne was then recalled to the stand. He expressed his belief that Blanca acted rationally at the time of her arrest. “I did not think she was insane.”
⁵³
Justice Manning ordered this remark struck out.

After this the court recessed for the day. There was much to mull over. As the trial unfolded, it became apparent that sympathy for Blanca had definitely cooled, both in court and especially in the press. Edith Cornwall, one of the sob sisters, who earlier in the trial had dished up glowing accounts of the defendant, now turned on her savagely, claiming, “It was jealousy that filled the heart of Blanca De Saulles when she drove to The Box that night.”
⁵⁴
Wounded pride, as much as anything else, provided the impulse that sent Jack de Saulles to his death, wrote the acerbic Ms. Cornwall. Blanca had been twice stung by fear and rejection; first, by a husband who preferred other women to her, and then by a fear that her baby was preferring his father’s company to that of herself. “Who can doubt that when Blanca De Saulles shot her husband as he turned from her it was one mad final outburst of jealousy that guided her hand and blinded her eyes?”
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