The Valentino Affair (39 page)

And then it was over. Uterhart said he had no further questions, and Blanca bowed graciously to the jury and left the stand at 3:20 p.m. Uterhart led her to his table, where she almost fell into Mrs. Seaman’s arms. Along the way she did manage a quick peek back at the judge and smiled. A member of the public gallery, a woman in a cerise hat, was heard to whisper to her neighbor: “She’ll get off all right. Look how pretty she is.”
⁷⁰
And this summed up the general view. Although Weeks had landed some telling blows—in particular exposing the uglier side of Blanca’s nature—there had been no knockout punch.

When the defense continued, Constable Thorne was recalled to corroborate Blanca’s claim that she had seen someone prowling around her Roslyn home. He was followed by Ethel O’Neill (née Whitesides), the nurse employed by Blanca at South Bethlehem in 1913. She talked so faintly, her voice muffled by an ever present handkerchief, that the judge repeatedly asked her to speak up. Her evidence chiefly concerned Jack’s infrequent visits to Blanca, and included that heartbreaking incident when Blanca had waited hours for her husband at the railroad station, only to return home alone. She said she had left Blanca in 1913 and didn’t see her again until 1916, in Westbury, at which time she noted a great change in her appearance, due, she suspected, to Blanca’s tormented domestic life. This transformation was even more apparent the next time she saw Blanca, in September 1917, in the Mineola jailhouse. “I did not know her; I went right past her. She was so white.”

“Mrs. De Saulles was always more or less pale, wasn’t she?” Weeks asked.

“Not when I first went there.”
⁷¹

After Ethel left the stand, Uterhart read out a deposition from Felipe Cortez, who had been unable to attend the trial, confirming the circumstances of the auto accident in Chile. Cortez said he had been driving, and in the passenger seat had been Miss Marie Errázuriz, a cousin of Blanca’s. “Mrs. De Saulles was sitting at Miss Errázuriz’s feet, holding on to a strap with her right hand. I was going to the club to get some cigarettes. I was going very fast, and suddenly a man on a bicycle came into the path of my car, so I had to stop it suddenly to keep from killing the man. I saw Blanquita fall to the road. I rushed to her. Her head and face were all bloody. Next day I noticed her eyes were all blind black, her face spotted and her chin was cut.”
⁷²
(Earlier, Blanca had angrily refuted Weeks’s claim that on the night of the accident she had gone to a ball with a bandage on her head.)

Two nurses then took the stand to describe the debilitating effect that marriage had inflicted upon Blanca. One, Miss Isabelle Flaherty, who tended Blanca when Jack Jr. was born, confirmed that at Larchmont in August 1913, Blanca had been the picture of health. “She had color in her cheeks all the time and was extremely pretty.”
⁷³
Thereafter, her health had gone into freefall.

A third nurse, Maude Cowan of Glengarry, Canada, who took care of Jack Jr. at the Hotel Gotham for five weeks in 1916, testified to her employer’s generosity. She had only asked for twenty-eight dollars a week, but Blanca had insisted on paying her thirty-five as “there was a terrible responsibility in taking care of the little boy.”
⁷⁴
She said that each day the boy was taken away at 3:00 p.m. by his father, and was in “a disagreeable mood”
⁷⁵
when he came back. Often he was returned late and his clothes were dirty. He told her that “Boobie” (Mrs. Mooney), the nurse at the father’s home in Westbury, asked him not to be nice to Miss Cowan. Weeks had just two questions.

“The boy went out with his father and came back somewhat dirty?”

“Yes.”

“The fact is, isn’t it, that the boy didn’t like you and did like Boobie?”
⁷⁶

The nurse flushed and did not reply.

After testily warning the lawyers that he might hold a night session the next day, Justice Manning adjourned court until 10:00 a.m. the following morning.

The reporters rushed off to file their copy. That evening or next morning their words would be devoured by millions across America. And no one was paying closer attention or was more anxious about the outcome than a certain aspiring actor in Los Angeles—Rodolfo Guglielmi. According to a highly colored account by Mae Murray, her young friend was utterly distraught. “Through the ten days of the trial he was like a trapped animal. He would come and sit with me beside a burning candle and whisper prayers . . . the prayers of a boy’s heart for a mother, the prayers of a man for a woman, a lover begging that a life be spared, asking forgiveness.”
⁷⁷

All hyperbole aside, Rodolfo had been extremely fortunate. Blanca had survived her ordeal on the witness stand and not once had his name been dragged into evidence. But there was still time for it all to blow up in his face. And there was still that nagging self-doubt, weighing his desire to help Blanca against a personal craving for anonymity. It was a paradox that would tear him apart for the rest of his life.

SIXTEEN

The Medical Evidence

T
HE
T
RIAL,
D
AY 8

I
N COURT THE NEXT MORNING THE PUBLIC GALLERY WAS BUZZING.
W
HEN
Amalia and Guillermo took their customary positions one row behind the defendant, their mother was nowhere to be seen, sparking rumors that the stinging humiliation of the previous day had opened an unbridgeable family gulf between mother and daughter. If true, it certainly did not register on Blanca’s face. Her sphinxlike imperturbability remained resolutely intact as Uterhart called his first witness of the day, D. Stewart Iglehart. The executive strode assertively to the stand.

Uterhart began: “Do you remember a telephone call you got from her [Blanca] on the night of August 3?”

“Yes, she was very much worried because the boy had not been returned to her, and she had been afraid some accident had befallen him. She had just learned that he was at The Box, and was going to be put to bed, and that his father was going to the club for dinner and would not be back until 9 o’clock.” Iglehart’s easy fluency on the stand required little prompting from counsel and he continued smoothly. “She asked me to go with her to get the boy and I said I would be glad to do her any service I could, but that I thought this was too delicate a matter for me to intervene. I did ask her to stop and have dinner with us on the way over, but she said she was in a great hurry and would get a taxi and go right over.”
¹

Although brief, Iglehart’s testimony was crucial to the defense. After all, Uterhart argued, was it really probable that someone with murder in mind would telephone a friend and ask for a ride to the place where she intended to shoot her ex-husband? It was a valid point and one that obviously impressed the jury, to judge from their approving nods.

The next witness caused a genuine stir in court. At long last the public was going to hear from a member of Blanca’s family. Amalia, dressed in deep mourning, with a large black picture hat and a close-fitting black dress topped with a high, flaring collar that opened low at the front, oozed confidence as she walked to the witness stand without any hint of embarrassment. Like her sister, she had an obvious English accent as she told how Blanca, when aged eight, had suffered a serious head injury. “I was chasing Blanca through a corridor and as I came close to her she tripped and fell and struck her head on the andirons at the fireplace. . . . I called the nurse, who picked her up unconscious and took her upstairs. She was in bed for several weeks and at times was delirious.”
²

“How long was she unconscious?” asked Uterhart.

“About two or three hours.”
³

“Was she attended by a doctor?”

“Yes. He is dead now.”
⁴

“Did you notice any change in her after the accident?”

“Yes, she couldn’t keep up with us in games and play as well.”

“What did she complain of afterward?”

“Her head pained her, and I could feel a hole in the top of her head.”
⁵

Uterhart then took Amalia forward several years to Paris. “Do you remember some trouble that took place there?”

“Yes . . . De Saulles asked mother to give him a large estate in Chile, and she told him she couldn’t. She told him she would give him part of the land at Viña del Mar if he would build on it and settle down. He also asked her to give him complete control of the property and she refused. There was a scene and he was rude to mother.”
⁶

Uterhart next asked Amalia to describe her sister’s appearance upon her return to Chile in 1915, after leaving her husband. “She was emaciated and thin. I was shocked when I saw her.”
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It was during that visit, said Amalia, that Blanca was involved in the automobile accident, sustaining injuries that left the upper part of her face blue for several days. “How long was she in bed?”

“Five or six days.”
⁸

Amalia next saw Blanca in August 1916, when she visited her in New York while the divorce was pending. “She was so ashy white that I could hardly recognize her. She also complained of pains in the head.”
⁹
After a family discussion, the two sisters and their brother concluded that a trip to Scotland might improve Blanca’s health, but that wish failed to materialize. Constant worry about her domestic plight kept Blanca frail and emotional, a state of affairs that only worsened when she returned to New York and had to get used to the notion of shared custody. “Blanca used to worry a great deal because the boy would return at 8 or 9 o’clock instead of 6,” said Amalia. “It made his supper late, and he would come home and misbehave and say that ‘Boobie’ told him to be bad. He would behave all right, be bright and cheerful, when suddenly he would say, ‘I forgot. Boobie told me I had to be bad,’ and then he wouldn’t talk to his mother.”

“Do you remember one time when he wouldn’t eat his supper?”

“He became almost hysterical and was kicking in the elevator when we took him upstairs. He said Boobie was downstairs and he had to go down and eat with her. We gave him toast and he wouldn’t eat it, and said Boobie was waiting for him and was going to take him away forever.”

“What was the effect of this on Mrs. De Saulles?”

“It caused her extreme mental anguish.”
¹⁰
After Weeks’s objection to this characterization of Blanca’s mental state, the answer was amended to, “It affected her very much.” According to Amalia, Jack Jr. also spoke of visiting barrooms with his father, particularly the Plaza, where the men were “all drinking.”
¹¹
Such reports, said Amalia, only exacerbated Blanca’s condition, giving her severe headaches.

“Was there any connection between these headaches and the behavior of the child?”

“Yes, they were always much worse after he came back in a temper.”
¹²

The court stirred as Uterhart picked up the .32 Smith & Wesson and approached the witness. Amalia identified the revolver as the one Jack had bought for Blanca because “she was so much alone.”
¹³

“Is it customary for a lady to carry a revolver in Chile?”

“Yes.”
¹⁴

Amalia took the revolver from Uterhart and was soon handling it like a regular Annie Oakley. Unlike the prosecution, she maintained that only one hand movement was required to fire the gun, not two. “As you press the trigger, the palm of the hand automatically presses and releases the safety catch and the weapon is discharged.”
¹⁵
In demonstrating this she nonchalantly pointed the revolver at the wall; then once more, this time holding it so that it pointed directly toward Weeks, much to his discomfort.

“Please point that gun the other way,” Weeks pleaded. “I know it’s not loaded, but—”
¹⁶
A burst of laughter reverberated around the court as Amalia lowered the gun, then said that Blanca always carried a revolver when in Chile, because the roads were so lonely.

On cross-examination, Weeks queried Amalia’s credentials as a gun expert. She just shrugged. “I’ve carried one nearly all my life.”

“Did you ever hear of Captain Jones?”
¹⁷