FRANCE: LAffaire Lacaze

The story might have rolled from Simenon’s prolific typewriter, and it calls for someone like his Inspector Maigret to solve it. The cast includes big-eyed, beautiful Dominique Lacaze, with a hint of mystery about her origins, and the two men of great talent and enormous wealth whom she married -Art Collector Paul Guillaume and Industrialist Jean Walter. There are the nagging riddles of their deaths, the odd behavior of her elegant brother Jean, the mysterious comings and goings of the magnetic Dr. Lacour, the ex-paratrooper willing to murder for money, and the fetching blonde prostitute called Maïté. And, finally, there is the unloved and unloving adopted boy, Jean-Pierre Guillaume, around whom everything seems to revolve. At stake is one of the world’s greatest fortunes.

Wide Hat, Faint Smile. The story began in the exciting Paris of the 1920s, through which moved Dominique Lacaze, gathering admirers of her slim beauty and quick intelligence. In 1925, she married Paul Guillaume, a wealthy art dealer, the friend of Apollinaire, Cocteau, Utrillo, and of André Derain, whose portrait of Dominique shows her in a wide hat, with a faint smile, a withdrawn expression and eyes that a man could drown in. In 1934 Paul Guillaume died under curious circumstances. At first it was reported that he had been lost at sea on a fishing expedition, then that he had wasted away of a disease resembling paratyphoid.

To Dominique he left an estate of 6 billion francs (then $375 million), which was promptly contested by his relatives. Under French law a widow ordinarily has the use of her husband’s fortune while she is alive but cannot bequeath it to anyone save a direct heir. The Guillaumes had been childless in nine years of marriage; yet now the rumor spread that, surprisingly, the beautiful Madame Guillaume was pregnant. Ten months later a baby boy appeared in her household. In 1941 she formally adopted the child, named him Jean-Pierre Guillaume, though he was often called Paulo. The records show only that he was born in Paris on Nov. 30, 1934, of unknown parents.

Corruptible Wealth. By this time, Dominique had another devoted admirer, the architect and industrialist Paul Walter, whose revenues from the vast Zellidja lead and zinc mines in Morocco at one time represented 10% of the entire foreign revenue of France. They were married in 1941. A tall, tough, humorous man, Paul Walter had both ideas and imagination. He gave away millions of francs, endowed hospitals from Paris to Istanbul, established the Zellidja Foundation, which offered tiny cash grants to young students on their pledge to travel widely and live by their wits (TIME, Dec. 1). He also had -with apparent prevision -strong feelings about the corruptibility of wealth, and therefore settled 30 billion francs on each of three children by a former marriage on condition that they would be dropped from his will.

To his new wife, Walter promptly made over some $60 million in stock and art treasures. Perhaps because of his firm ideas about the inheritance of wealth, he did not adopt his wife’s adopted son Paulo, though he gave the boy warmth and affection, in sharp contrast to Dominique’s coldness and indifference.

Tycoon Walter was reportedly unhappy about the influence exercised over his wife by her old friend, Dr. Maurice Lacour, a steel-eyed physician with a psychiatric practice among society women. In June of 1957, while motoring with Dominique and Dr. Lacour, Walter stopped his car on the road, stepped out and was knocked down by a Citroen. By the time he reached a hospital, with Dr. Lacour giving first aid, he was dead of a skull fracture. Walter left a fortune estimated at $142.5 million. His heir was Dominique, who immediately appointed her brother, Jean Lacaze, as administrator of the great Zellidja enterprises in Morocco.

Bulb-Nosed Hero. Some five months after Tycoon Walter’s death, opportunity presented itself to a small restaurant owner in Cap d’Antibes. He was Camille Rayon, a tough, bulb-nosed ex-paratrooper. Resistance hero and fanatical Gaullist. Rayon was approached by a general’s aide who begged his help in disposing of a salopard (louse) who “compromises the great national work.” Who was the salopard? Answer: Paulo Guillaume, now 22, and concluding his military service in Algeria.

Rayon was interested. Two days later, he insists, Dr. Lacour appeared, explained that young Paulo was the shame of the Walter family because he was betraying France by secretly working with the rebel F.L.N. underground in Algeria. Lacour, he declared, offered 5,000,000 francs ($119,000) to have Paulo rubbed out. Rayon agreed, and two weeks later both men met in the bar of the Aletti Hotel in Algiers, where Dr. Lacour pointed out Paulo. Rayon uneasily saw that the boy was wearing battle dress. He told Lacour that ”Algiers did not seem to be the ideal place to knock off a combat lieutenant of the paratroops.” Lacour replied that Rayon could kill Paulo after he got out of the army.

For the next several months Rayon promised much, did nothing. Young Paulo, after his discharge, got a steward’s job at Paris’ Orly Airport, and was content to live simply and anonymously. Rayon, on his trail, said he felt sorry for Paulo, bought him a drink, and told him the truth. The young heir said he was not surprised, and added, “I don’t care about their filthy money.” But he agreed to disappear for a time.

Closed Drawer. Old Paratrooper Rayon then met Dr. Lacour at a cafe on the Champs-Elysées, told him Paulo had been strangled and thrown into the Seine. Dr. Lacour passed over 4,000,000 francs, later paid 16 million more. Rayon, as fidgety a hero-villain as fiction has ever provided, went home to Antibes, was back in Paris three days later to tell his story to his lawyer, who had him sign a declaration. The lawyer gave it to Examining Magistrate Jacques Batigne, who read it, reflected, and then apparently filed it in his desk drawer, where it lay for a year.

Paulo, emerging from hiding, moved into an apartment in suburban Neuilly that was owned by Jacques Walter, son of his dead stepfather. He was often seen in bistros in the 16th arrondissement with his pretty blonde prostitute girl friend. Marie-Thérèse Goyenetch, 22, nicknamed”Maïté.” One day, as Maïté was leaving her small hotel near the Etoile, a man thrust a card into her hand, said: “There’s money in it for you.” The card bore the telephone number of Jean Lacaze, Dominique’s brother.

The prostitute visited Jean Lacaze three times, on each occasion in the presence of other witnesses, including his secretary, Madame Iréne Richard. Then, in the tradition of every fictional golden-hearted chippy, she told all to Paulo. Her story: Lacaze had offered her $20,000 to complain to the police that Paulo was living off her earnings. Paulo went to a lawyer, who explained that under French law a legally adopted son cannot be disinherited unless he is shown to be of bad moral or criminal character -if indicted as a pimp, Paulo would lose his right to inherit the mammoth Walter fortune.

Patriotic Effort. Paulo, Maïté and the lawyer rushed to Magistrate Batigne with Maïté’s story. At long last, the magistrate pulled Rayon’s signed statement from his drawer, put the case in the hands of the

Police Justiciaire. By last week debonair, highly respected Jean Lacaze, complaining that “I am the victim of a blackmail plot,” was in Santé Prison. His secretary Madame Richard broke down and confirmedMaïté’s story.

France quivered under the implications of the case, looked falteringly at the great interests, domestic and international, which might be affected by a misdirected or careless inheritance of the colossal Walter empire. And what of Dominique and the slippery Dr. Lacour? Both were vacationing at Marrakech in Morocco, 422 miles from the site of the great Zellidja mines. Everybody was talking at sixty to the minute. Jean Lacaze blamed Paulo, cried: “He is the shame of our family.” Paulo Guillaume snapped irritably: “The billions don’t interest me. What I want is to find my real mother.” Preparing to return to Paris this week, Dominique Lacaze Guillaume Walter, still handsome at 53, broke her long silence to say icily: “This affair is a plot against my brother Jean Lacaze by my adopted son Jean-Paul Guillaume.”

Stifled Scandals. French newspapers hinted at wider repercussions, at even more extensive political involvements. “The search for truth in this affair,” cautioned L’Express, “will require justices with plenty of independence and magistrates with plenty of character and a high sense of duty.” The lawyers on one side of the case included the attorney who once represented King Mohammed V of Morocco, and ex-Premier Edgar Faure, whose government had given Morocco its independence. Paris-Presse warned that “other characters” who have played “great roles in our postwar history” might come into the case, warned: “This affair must not serve as a payoff between two opposing political clans. It is imperative to know the truth quickly. Stifled scandals have always deeply hurt the Republic.”

Breathless, France awaited the next act of the first major scandal to be tried in De Gaulle’s Fifth Republic.