Foreign News: The Lacaze Labyrinth

Not for 20 years had the French had so intriguing and labyrinthine a scandal as L’Affaire Lacaze (TIME, Feb. 2). At stake was whether handsome and politically influential Jean Lacaze, administrator of the vast Zellidja lead and zinc mines in Morocco, his entrancing sister, Domenica, and her great and good friend, Dr. Maurice Lacour, were involved in an unsuccessful plot to murder Domenica’s adopted son.

Police were curious about the fact that several people closely connected with the Lacazes had died suddenly. Domenica’s first husband, wealthy Art Collector Paul Guillaume, was first thought to have drowned, and then was said to have died of paratyphoid. Jean Walter, her multimillionaire second husband, met sudden death when he was run down by a passing Citroên after alighting from a car in which sat his wife and Dr. Lacour. Inevitably this curiosity turned to the puzzling business of a famous American in Paris, U.S. Millionairess Margaret Thompson Biddle, who spent a night at the opera with Jean and Domenica—and died that night.

Plates of Gold. The daughter of Colonel William Boyce Thompson, who had built his fortune in South African diamonds and Montana copper, Montana-born Maggie Biddle had shared an estate estimated at $85 million on his death in 1930. She divorced a New York banker the following year and married Philadelphia Socialite Anthony J. Drexel Biddle Jr., the dashing soldier who subsequently became U.S. envoy to Norway and Poland (and is now adjutant general of the state of Pennsylvania). They, too, were divorced after the war, but still fond of the diplomatic high life, Maggie Biddle set up a Paris salon just off the fashionable Boulevard St. Germain. The 18th century mansion was beautifully furnished, its walls hung with Renoirs, Utrillos, Constables and Gauguins; its guests dined off silver plates dipped in gold. Some of the guests: Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower, General Alfred Gruenther, Papal Legate Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (now Pope John XXIII), the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands, Cardinal Spellman, Bernard Baruch, and practically every noted French politician, artist or writer.

In a series of gossipy newsletters for U.S. women’s magazines, Maggie Biddle inevitably described all her guests as handsome, intelligent or charming, reserving for those she did not like, such as Pierre Mendes-France, the adjective “controversial.” Maggie took her duties as a reporter so seriously that she would show up at Communist rallies in her chauffeur-driven Bentley.

Pain & Paralysis. This beglamoured life ended dramatically on June 8, 1956. With Norwegian Ambassador Rolf Andvord and her good friends Domenica Walter, Jean Lacaze and Dr. Maurice Lacour, Maggie attended a gala opera performance in honor of visiting King Paul and Queen Frederika of Greece. Her close relationship with Domenica and Jean had business as well as social overtones: through her own Newmont Mining Corp., Maggie owned nearly half the stock in Domenica’s and Jean’s rich Zellidja mines. There were rumors that, dissatisfied with the long-term plans of the Zellidja management, she was planning to sell her shares.

Returning from the opera at 3 a.m., Maggie went to her bedroom, had her maid unzip her dress. Suddenly she felt a pain, and then a paralysis, in her neck and right arm. A doctor was hurriedly summoned, but Maggie Biddle was dead. His diagnosis: cerebral hemorrhage. Without an autopsy, Margaret Thompson Biddie, 59, was laid to rest in Fontainebleau; two U.S. generals, a French marshal, and three ex-Premiers of France attended her funeral. Her gold plate was willed to the White House.

Was there anything unusual about her death? Last week after a ten-day investigation, police declared themselves satisfied that Maggie Biddle’s death had been “completely natural,” announced that an exhumation of her body would not be ordered. Police went back to exploring other aspects of L’Affaire Lacaze.