The Valentino Affair (38 page)

“When you went to Chile in 1915, didn’t your husband pay your fare?”

“Possibly.”

“Didn’t your husband give you $200 for the Chile trip and send you a $2,000 letter of credit?” When Blanca hesitated, Weeks pressed hard, “Do you not remember?”
⁴⁸

“I wouldn’t deny anything that I don’t remember.”
⁴⁹

Weeks next turned to a ring given to her by August Heckscher, who had been greatly pleased by Jack’s work in finding a purchaser for a Manhattan hotel property. Weeks asked if she had not later returned the ring to the jewelry store—Charlton & Co., on Fifth Avenue—for eight thousand dollars and purchased a still more expensive ring? She said, “When I got the divorce I offered the ring back to Mr. Heckscher, and he refused to accept it.”

“Then you kept it?”

“Yes.”

“And you later turned it in to Charlton’s for a still more expensive ring?”

“Yes.”

“How much did that one cost?”

“Twenty thousand dollars.”
⁵⁰

There was a gasp in court. Uterhart leapt to his feet, shouting that his client was being misled, that there were extenuating circumstances regarding the ring. “I’m mixed up,” said Blanca, looking puzzled.

“We don’t want any mixing up,”
⁵¹
soothed Justice Manning, who then took over the questioning himself. He brought out that the ring she had received from Heckscher was appraised by Charlton’s at forty-five hundred dollars; that she had turned it in with other money to make up ten thousand dollars; that her brother had added another ten thousand dollars; and that they had bought a twenty-thousand-dollar ring for Blanca to wear.

Weeks ambled through some other general financial transactions for a while and then suddenly his tone hardened. “When did you first learn that you had shot your husband?”

Blanca hesitated for some time. “When Dr. Wight told me.”

“When was that?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did he give you any details of the shooting? Did he tell you you shot your husband in the back?”

“I do not remember.”
⁵²

Weeks then took her on to the night of the shooting and the arrival of the taxi driver. “When Donner came did you have the revolver in your pocket?”

Another long pause. “I do not remember. I think it was in the pocket of my coat or sweater.”

“Was it your habit to carry a revolver?”

“When I was alone.”

“You weren’t alone this night, were you? Weren’t you with the maid Suzanne?”

“Yes.” She recalled slipping the revolver into her side pocket when she went upstairs to fetch her hat, prior to the trip

“Do you remember when you were driving across the plains you said to take a shortcut?”

For some reason this question vexed Blanca and she snapped, “Yes, I remember—but not—very specifically.”

“You remember that you had the revolver with you?”

“I must have had.”

“You remember arriving at The Box?”

“Yes.”

“When you went into the house whom did you see first?”

“The baby.”

“Do you recall having the revolver in your pocket when you went into the house?”

“I wasn’t thinking anything about the revolver.”

“I know, but was it in your pocket?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You remember what pocket it was in?”

“N-n-n-no,” she stammered.

Weeks asked if her hands were in her pockets, and Blanca replied that she customarily walked this way.

“You say you saw the baby first at The Box. You didn’t speak to him at all, did you?”

“No.”

“But you spoke to Mrs. Degener, didn’t you?”

“I think I did.”
⁵³

“You made no attempt to take the baby?”

“I don’t think so.”
⁵⁴

Weeks had scored a potent point for the prosecution. If, as she claimed, Blanca came just for the boy, she could have grabbed him then and run. Instead, she went gunning for her ex-husband. “You got into the living room before you saw John De Saulles, didn’t you?”

“I think so.”

“Do you remember his offering you his hand?”

“No.”

“Do you remember his speaking to you . . . his saying that you couldn’t have the boy?”

“No,” followed by, “I couldn’t possibly say.”

“What is the last thing you remember—what part of your husband do you remember seeing?”

A long hush ensued, as though Blanca was struggling to recall. Then she said in a barely audible voice, “His eyes.”

This was the cue for Nixola Greeley-Smith—a columnist for the
Evening World
and one of the four original sob sisters—to hit purple overdrive: “That silence was masterly. I have known nothing in life or on the stage that equaled it in dramatic tension. Without a word, without a gesture, one frail white girl held the courtroom in her slender hand.”
⁵⁵

Uterhart, too, played a strong supporting role. All through Blanca’s testimony he had sighed, rolled his eyes, and pulled faces at appropriate moments, in an attempt to divert the jury’s attention. By the time of the shooting, he had hit full-on sobbing mode, snuffling noisily into a handkerchief that looked far too skimpy for the task in hand. Weeks ignored these interruptions and plowed on. “You remember that he turned his back to you?”

“No.”

“You remember he was shot in the back, don’t you?”

“Was he?” The reply could not have been more offhand.

“I’m asking you, when did you first know you had shot your husband?”

“When Mr. Ward sat here.”

“What! You never knew until Marshall Ward testified in this courtroom? Did you not hear what the doctors said, testifying before Mr. Ward?”

“I paid no attention—I did not see.” She explained that her eyes had not been good that day.

“But isn’t your hearing good?”

“If I am paying attention I can hear. When the doctors were here I was feeling very badly [
sic
].”

“Any pressure on your head?”

The answer was a cautious “No.”

“Were your eyes blurry then?”

“No.”

“Nor your tongue large?”
⁵⁶

She replied that it wasn’t, but that she had never felt worse, despite not having experienced any of the symptoms on the day of the shooting.

“Can’t you recall having heard the five explosions, as you turned that revolver on your husband?”
⁵⁷

“No.”

“You knew you have [
sic
] to press both the trigger and the safety catch to fire it?”

“What do you mean?”
⁵⁸

“You heard Captain Jones testify here?”

“Who is Captain Jones?”

“He is a captain in the New York Police Department.”

“Oh, I remember.”
⁵⁹

There then followed a reiteration of Jones’s testimony that two separate motions were necessary to fire the gun. Blanca merely shrugged.

“You say you are familiar with firearms?” asked Weeks. Blanca admitted having owned the revolver for some considerable time and knowing about the safety catch. “You want to be frank, don’t you, and tell us everything you know?”

“I want to tell everything I know.”
⁶⁰

She claimed to have no recollection of telling Donner to wait outside The Box, or of Seaman or Thorne arriving at The Box, or telling Donner to drive to her home and get his pay, or being taken in the sheriff’s car to the town hall at Hempstead.

“And don’t you remember Constable Thorne testifying that you told him, ‘I shot my husband because he would not give me my boy, and I hope he dies.’?”

“Is Thorne the one with the nasty voice?” she drawled. “I think I remember him.”
⁶¹
When the question was repeated, she now claimed not to remember. Similarly with further questions about the night’s events and also the ten days that followed—it was all a total blank.

“You don’t remember a single shot on the night of August 3?”

“No.”

“But you remember up to the time you walked to the door of The Box?”

“Yes.”

“But nothing after your husband’s words, which you say are still ringing in your ears?”

“No.”

“You remembered that night where Capt. Lydig was in New York, did you not?”

“He always lives at the Ritz, I think.”

“And you knew the telephone number?”
⁶²

Blanca responded with a blank look.

“Did you ever see the inside of the Nassau County Jail?”

“Did I ever see the inside of the Nassau County Jail?” she repeated sarcastically.

“Don’t you remember saying when you came in and saw all the bars that it looks like a zoo?”

“It is a very nice jail.”

“So you do not remember a single thing that happened until August 13?”
⁶³

Uterhart was up once again, protesting that she had not so testified. But Justice Manning overruled him and Weeks continued. “Don’t you think it strange that all these things have gone from your mind?”

“I think it very strange.”
⁶⁴
She half smiled.

“Then from August 3, 1917, from about a quarter to 9 o’clock until August 13 you have no recollection of a single, solitary thing you did within that period?”

“No—except that someone was hurting me.”

“And the hurting was [caused by] the doctors?”

“Yes.”

“And you want the court and jury to understand that?”

“Yes.”
⁶⁵

Under further questioning, Blanca admitted that despite a string of ongoing medical ailments dating from her childhood, she had not needed to consult a doctor since the previous winter. Without pausing for breath Weeks abruptly changed tack. “This is not the first time you have be in a courtroom, is it?”

Blanca admitted that it was not, and he asked if she had attended the Carman trial. “Yes, one afternoon I drove Mrs. Degener over to the trial.”

“Did you hear any of the proceedings?”

“Yes. I heard that black thing testify.”

Justice Manning looked up sharply. “Did you say you heard a ‘black thing testify’?”
⁶⁶

“Yes.”

“What do you mean?”

“A nigger.”
⁶⁷

Even in those less enlightened times, Blanca’s crude racism sent a shock wave of revulsion through the court, as Justice Manning made plain. “Is that the term you apply to the colored race down in your country?”

“No. We don’t have any down there.”
⁶⁸
A little curl of the lip accompanied this remark.

It was an ugly moment, the worst of Blanca’s time on the stand, and Weeks, shrewdly, chose this time to close. In truth, though, his cross-examination had been tepid. The district attorney had seemed as much in awe of Blanca as every other male who came within her orbit, treating her with a feathery touch that made a mockery of his judicial obligations. Certainly he made Uterhart’s task that much easier as he attempted to coax some damage limitation from Blanca. On redirect he brought out that she had spent just half an hour at the Carman trial, although he skated around the racial slur, knowing that nothing could undo that kind of blunder, and hurriedly moved on to other events. He got Blanca to explain how, on the morning of the shooting, she had phoned Constable Thorne and asked him to come to the house because, on the previous day, she thought she heard someone walking about the property. This had heightened her nervousness and explained why she carried the gun on the night in question. She admitted carrying the gun frequently and having practiced with a target in Chile and on the beach at Huntington. But when Uterhart tried to revive the issue of the expensive ring, Justice Manning cut him off. “In a case as serious as this I shall not bother my head about trumpery like a ring.”
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