The Lurs affair attracted the attention of a number of experts who offered their assistance to the police. Scotland Yard was bombarded with notes from psychics who were anxious to help the investigation. Ella Squire had a vision of a man in a Tyrolean hat. Lady Knollys had a nice chat with the Drummonds, who told her that Gaston Dominici had protected them from the murderer, “who had been following them around.” A. L. dreamed that it was the old farmer. The “Bournemouth Tramp” asserted that it was the work of the “Secret Stalin Society.” Mino de Miribel, the premier medium of France, knew that Gaston killed the parents, while Gustave murdered Elizabeth. H. J. Smith, a somewhat predisposed clairvoyant, thought that the murderer was a black American, but unfortunately he did not have time to pursue the case because he was after a Jew in Lowestoft who was rigging the slot machines at a funfair.1
One dowser claimed that the murderer was a poacher who had crossed the Durance, shot a fox, and dumped it in the well before killing the Drummonds. The gendarmes were skeptical but decided to examine the well. Gaston asked them what they were doing. When they told him, he said, “So you’re looking for the fox my son killed a few days ago?” Gendarme Rebeaudo went down the well and recovered the putrefied carcass of a fox. Gustave said he had killed it with number 6 shot. An autopsy proved him to be correct.2
Only one of these practitioners of the occult was of any use to the police. According to the police reports, one Jean-Claude Coudouing and his assistant Gaston Beucherie, specialists in “astro-rhabdomancy” from the Institut des Hautes Etudes d’Astrologie, 42 Rue des Marais in Paris, visited the Grand Terre on 1 September. A policeman asked them to look for bullets. They took off with their pendulums and within an hour came back with a bullet that they had found on the slope down by the railway. Commissioner Constant announced to the press later that day that the bullet that had nicked Elizabeth’s ear as she ran away had been found, but he did not say where or by whom. That he could so confidently assert, without any forensic investigation, that it was indeed the bullet in question is a further example of the astonishingly wild assumptions made by the police that are characteristic of the case.
The bullet was sent to Professor Ollivier at the police laboratory in Marseille. His report was submitted on 4 September, showing that the bullet had indeed been fired from the presumed murder weapon, so Constant avoided any embarrassment. It was a useful piece of evidence but not one that threw decisive light on the affair, beyond showing up the exceptionally slapdash police work in the preliminary investigation of the murder site. Almost four years after the murders, two gendarmes patrolling the road near the Grand’ Terre found an American cartridge that could well have come from the murder weapon as well.3 The police do not seem to have been embarrassed, however, that the shoddiness of their initial investigation of the murder site was thereby revealed.
Since Sébeille considered Gustave to be the prime suspect, he decided to reconstruct the scene when Gustave had stopped Olivier in the early morning of 5 August and had asked him to inform the gendarmes that he had found a body. Both men stuck to their original versions of events. Olivier insisted that Gustave had emerged from behind the Hillman and was standing in front of the hood. Gustave claimed that he had been standing behind the mulberry tree about 16 yards from the car and that he was about to return to the farmhouse. He flatly denied having been at the scene of the crime.
The police were waiting for Gustave on 3 September when he returned to the Grand’ Terre on his bicycle. He had been out hunting. A fox and a rabbit were tied to the carrier behind the saddle.4 According to a report in Le Monde, the police had been hampered in their work by a group of locals; thus, they had taken Gustave to the gendarmerie in Forcalquier for further questioning. Sébeille, who was suffering from nervous exhaustion and lack of sleep, let his colleague Fernand Constant and Commissioner Noël Mével, the deputy head of the judicial police in Marseille, conduct the cross-examination; but they were equally unable to get Gustave to change his story. The gendarmes took a break for lunch at one o’clock, and while seated at a table at a nearby inn, they were accosted by Yvette Dominici, who demanded that her husband be released. Captain Albert, the head of the Forcalquier gendarmerie, led her away and questioned her until six o’clock to no effect.
Gustave was questioned throughout the afternoon. He finally admitted that he had seen two camp beds: one was on the left-hand side of the Hillman covered by a blanket; the other, across the road, was turned over. He insisted that he had not gone to take a closer look and that he had not seen the bodies. The gendarmes, finding this scarcely credible, decided to detain him overnight and continue their questioning the next day.
The next morning, as Gustave began to show signs of breaking down, the gendarmes received a telephone call from Sabatier’s superior, Orsatelli, the public prosecutor in Aix-en-Provence, who called for Gustave’s immediate release on the grounds that grilling a simple witness for hours on end was unacceptable. Examining Magistrate Roger Périès and Deputy Pubic Prosecutor Louis Sabatier, both from the district court in Digne, had gone to Forcalquier the evening of 3 September to see whether the gendarmes had managed to glean any information from Gustave. Out of courtesy they had informed their superior, Orsatelli, who was resting nearby at Castellane and recuperating from an accident. He evidently decided that for the moment nothing more could be gained from Gustave and that it was pointless to continue holding him for questioning. Furthermore, it was problematic under French law to hold a simple witness so long for questioning. Gustave was driven back to the Grand’ Terre, where a tearful Yvette flung herself into his arms.
Gustave complained to the press that he had been mistreated by the police during this grueling cross-examination. Commissioner Constant, fixing him with his piercing blue eyes, had reportedly said, “You are an assassin. We’re going to arrest you and your wife. As for your kid, he’ll be handed over to Public Assistance. If you don’t want that to happen, you’ll have to talk. Tell us what you know.” Gustave told the press Olivier’s statement that he had appeared from behind the Hillman was a fabrication. Gustave repeated that he had been standing on the main road about 15 yards away. He also flatly denied having seen the bodies of Jack and Anne Drummond.5
The press now presented Gustave as a victim, his name unjustly synonymous with “false witness.” The entire community of Lurs, feeling that it was under suspicion, rallied around Gustave and denounced the policemen from distant Marseille for their ignorance of local customs and mentalities. From Manosque the famous Provençal novelist Jean Giono magisterially announced that contrary to Sébeille’s conviction, the assassin was not from the immediate locality but had come from far, far away. With astonishing disregard for his own denunciation of the bestiality displayed in the settling of wartime accounts, he boldly proclaimed that a Provençal peasant would never commit such a dreadful crime and certainly not a peasant from a close-knit community such as Lurs.6
A letter appeared under Gustave’s name in the communist newspaper Ce Soir, founded after the liberation by the writer Louis Aragon. It read:
I am neither a murderer nor a coward, indifferent to the fate of respectable people who were struck down in a mad fury, when I could have gone to their help. Nor am I so lacking in all moral sense that I would protect a monster from the wrath of all decent people. I have therefore decided to seek redress without regard for the rank of those who have done me this unpardonable wrong, whatever their functions or motives . . . my attitude has been above criticism since the tragic events of which we all know. . . . My one misfortune is to have notified the local police. . . . My conscience and my courage have upheld me throughout. I ask no more than the attainment of my aim, that justice shall restore my honor and my peace of mind in the eyes of all.7
This was clearly not written by the barely literate Gustave but was probably the work of his lawyer, Émile Pollak. This prominent Marseille lawyer and Communist Party member had shown a lively interest in the case from the outset.8
Sébeille racked his brains to find a possible motive for the crime. Persistent rumors claimed that Sir Jack Drummond had parachuted into France during the war with a large sum of money and that he had come back to collect the rest. Extensive inquiries revealed that there had been such drops in southern France; however, not only were they miles away in the Aveyron but also the British Special Operation Executive officer who acted as the liaison was Lt. Col. Sir Walter Stansfield, known as “Commander Hubert Choeur.”9 Another preposterous rumor suggested that Lady Drummond had played a prominent part in the murder of Adm. François Darlan, the head of the Vichy French armed forces, in December 1942.10
It was further suggested that a meeting of former members of the Resistance, all of them members of the Communist Party, had taken place on 4 August at the Grand’ Terre, where it was decided that the troublesome foreigners should be removed. One whimsical suggestion was that the meeting was part of a communist conspiracy to smuggle weapons to the Algerian Liberation Front. But this made no sense at all. Jack had not been in contact with the Resistance during the war. There was no evidence that a meeting had ever taken place on 4 August at the Grand’ Terre. If this murder was a contract killing, it would have hardly been done with a broken old weapon by someone who did not even know how to use it.
Moreover, that the murder was the consequence of a family feud was out of the question. There was no evidence whatsoever of a crime of passion. It was also obviously not the work of a sadistic or sexual maniac. All those in the region who were suspected on either count had been questioned, and their alibis were found to be watertight. Was it perhaps an act of villainy committed by a chance passerby intent on theft but who ran away before robbing his victims because of heavy traffic? This scenario was highly unlikely but still possible. Was the murderer perhaps a poacher who came across the campers by chance? Sébeille’s team interviewed all the local casual laborers, tramps, poachers, snail collectors, and jailbirds, as well as a deserter from the Foreign Legion, but all to no avail.
Some days previously Commissioner Constant had told the reporters that they now knew the appearance of the assassin but didn’t know his name. His statement seemingly implied that the murderer was not someone from the Grand’ Terre, an impression that was strengthened by the testimony of Henri Chastel, a truck driver from Orpierre in the Hautes-Alpes. He told the police that he had driven past the Grand’ Terre at ten minutes before midnight. He saw a man leaning over the Hillman, peering inside. The man was 5 foot 11, about forty years of age, and sturdily built with tousled hair. Chastel’s testimony was confirmed by Lucien and Georges Duc, truck drivers from La Roche-de-Rame.
The Duc brothers had been driving their truck to the Cavaillon market during the night of the crime. They passed the Grand’ Terre about half an hour after Chastel had. They saw a man standing near the Hillman at about one o’clock. They gave a similar description and noted that he had a full head of hair and wore a shirt with rolled-up sleeves. Standing motionless in the headlights, he appeared to be trying to conceal something in his left hand. Lucien had remarked to his brother Georges the man had an ugly face, and Lucien didn’t want to stop if the man wanted a ride.
Could this man have been Gustave? Or was it one of the local road menders, a lonely bachelor whose rotten teeth and equine visage matched the description given by Duc? The poor man, who was obviously mentally defective, was subjected to a lengthy grilling, but his alibi was perfect. Anonymous letters also accused Gustave Dominici, but their author was never found. Sébeille finally concluded Gustave was psychologically incapable of such a crime. Sébeille’s suspicions fell instead on the quick-tempered, violent, and egotistical Gaston, but they were not shared by his colleagues in the judicial police. Commissioner Georges Harzic agreed with Giono, saying that a simple peasant from the Basses-Alpes could not possibly have committed such a monstrous crime. Examining Magistrate Périès, who was familiar with incidents of violent crime in the region, was more sympathetic toward the commissioner’s hunch.
Meanwhile, Henri Conil from Peyruis claimed to have seen a shadow behind the Hillman at 2:15 a.m. Far more significant was the testimony of a Marceau Blanc from Sisteron. He was driving his delivery truck past the Grand’ Terre at about 4:00 a.m. when he saw a camp bed 3 or 4 yards in front of the Hillman. He thought this extremely odd. An hour and a half later another witness claimed to have seen a camp bed on the other side of the road from the Hillman. He also noticed that a blanket covered the windows of the Hillman. By the time the police arrived, it had been removed.
The press, both in France and England, soon began to lose interest in the case. There were other more pressing issues to address such as the vexing question of German rearmament, which met with fierce opposition in France, and the war in Indochina. The British press made much of Anthony Eden’s marriage to Churchill’s niece, Anne Clarissa Spencer-Churchill, a colorful character with a wide range of friends from all walks of life. The marriage at Caxton Hall attracted a crowd almost as large as that at the marriage of Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Wilding a few months earlier. There were some acid comments from predictable sources about Eden’s divorce and remarriage to a Roman Catholic.
By this time Sébeille, frustrated at every turn, was rapidly heading for a nervous breakdown. His nights were sleepless. He was virtually unable to speak. Priding himself on his unique ability to read the peasant mind, he had been confident that he would solve the case before going on leave on 14 August. He decided to postpone his plans, determined to make some major breakthrough beforehand, but it did not happen. The communist press was jubilant. The man whom with biting irony they dubbed the “Maigret of Marseille” or “our very own Sherlock Holmes” had failed to cast any suspicion on the “honest Dominici family,” and his boast that he knew who the assassin was had proven empty.11
Sébeille refused to hand over the case to another but agreed that Commissioner Fernand Constant should take over while he joined his family in the Aveyron. He remained on holiday throughout the month of September. On his return his superior suggested that he should hand the case over to Commissioner Constant, but Sébeille protested vigorously and remained formally in charge. He stayed at his desk in Marseille, where he perused the dossier, while Constant continued the investigation in Lurs. The two men had very different approaches to police work that stemmed partly from their backgrounds. Sébeille was from Marseille and showed little understanding of the peasant mentality, despite his extravagant claims to the contrary. Constant, who was from the small town of Manosque, was a typical Provençal and fully familiar with the milieu. Sébeille charged in head first, engaging all concerned in lengthy questioning. Constant played his cards close to his chest, listened carefully, never got involved in relentless questioning, and, unlike his colleague, kept the journalists at a distance. Sébeille with his cigarette holder, Lacoste shirts, and marked Marseille accent was jovial and familiar. Constant, who spoke without a local accent, never smiled, and never unbuttoned his jacket, exuded an air of cultivated restraint.
Constant’s approach soon proved fruitful. The Dominicis’ neighbor, Paul Maillet, who worked with Clovis on the railway and was also secretary of the local Communist Party cell, told Constant that Gustave had said that the little girl was still alive when he discovered her in the early morning of 5 August. Maillet had always been shocked that Gustave had never sought help for Elizabeth. In early September he had gone to the Grand’ Terre and had a chat with Gustave. He was dumbfounded when Gustave admitted that he had seen Elizabeth move that morning. He was also given another piece of important information on that occasion that, for the moment, he had decided to keep secret. Shortly afterward Maillet, while taking an aperitif in his kitchen, confided in Émile Escudier, who had a grocery store in La Brillane, that Gustave had seen Elizabeth Drummond move in the early hours of the morning. It was Escudier who had persuaded Maillet to give this information to the gendarmes.
The gendarmes did not question Gustave on this score until the early hours of 15 October. He was then taken to Digne for further questioning, along with his brother Clovis and Paul Maillet. After a lengthy interview, Gustave admitted that because he had heard a moaning sound while he was crossing the bridge over the railway, he had looked and discovered Elizabeth’s body and had seen her left arm move. He also stated that he had told both his mother and Yvette what he had seen. Clovis confessed that he had advised his brother to keep mum. The gendarmes were appalled that none of them had thought either of seeking help or of informing the girl’s parents. At two o’clock in the morning on 16 October they placed Gustave in police custody.
The following day Sébeille arrived from Marseille and went immediately with Constant to the Grand’ Terre, where Sébeille questioned Gaston and Yvette while Constant dealt with Marie. All three stuck to their stories, with the two women denying that Gustave had told them that Elizabeth was still alive. Constant had already consulted the two doctors who had conducted the postmortem and Dr. Dragon, who first inspected the bodies at the murder site. They all insisted that had Elizabeth been attacked at the same time as her parents, she could not possibly have lived until five thirty in the morning. This meant that Gustave must have gotten up during the night shortly after she had been hit on the head. Uncomfortably aware of this contradiction, Sébeille made no mention of it in his account of the case. Subsequent advances in neuroscience have proved that she could well have still been alive, even if she had been attacked at the same time as her parents.
Examining Magistrate Roger Périès charged Gustave with failing to give assistance to a person in danger.12 Périès also ordered that Gustave be kept in the Digne jail pending his trial, doubtless in the hope that the shock of incarceration would prompt him to be somewhat more garrulous. Gustave’s lawyer, Émile Pollak, assisted by a colleague from Marseille, Pierre Charrier, was unsuccessful in his attempt to secure his client’s release from prison. Périès was sympathetic, but Public Prosecutor Sabatier launched an appeal against any such decision. The appeal was upheld by the court in Aix-en-Provence.
Gustave, whom the communist paper La Marseillaise described as a hostage, remained stubbornly silent. On Gustave’s arrest Yvette left the Grand’ Terre and went to stay with her parents, François and Louise Barth, at their nearby farm.13 Rumors began to spread that Gustave and Yvette’s marriage was on the rocks and that she was terrified of her husband. But her explanation for the move was fully convincing. She was in an advanced stage of her pregnancy, and unlike the Dominicis, her father had a car ready for a quick dash to the hospital. She also did not particularly relish the idea of staying alone with her quarrelsome parents-in-law. Clovis went to live at the Grand’ Terre and gave his father a hand during Gustave’s absence. It was a generous move because relations between father and son were very strained since Gaston had accused Clovis’s wife, Rose, of being a slut. Yvette went every day to visit her husband, but Gaston stayed at home, claiming that if he went to see his son in prison it would only make them both cry.
Gustave’s trial was held on 12 November 1952. When the examining magistrate asked why he had kept quiet about Elizabeth’s having shown signs of life, he replied that Clovis had warned him not to say anything so as not to get involved in the inquiry. Dr. Paul Jouve, a distinguished surgeon, confirmed the opinion of the postmortem team by suggesting that there might have been a time difference between the attacks on Elizabeth and her parents. He also stated that even if help had been available, she would not have survived. The examining magistrate argued that Elizabeth had shown signs of life after she had been seen by Gustave. He cited Dr. Dragon’s statement, that she had been lying on her back with her arms stretched out, whereas Gustave had described her as lying with her left hand on her stomach. Here once again confusion and conjecture resulted from sloppy police work at the murder site as photographs of Elizabeth show her in both positions.14
Gustave’s defense team of Pollak and Charrier argued that the law under which he was charged had been inserted into the French code by the Vichy government to force the French to assist any Germans who had been wounded by the Resistance; therefore, the law was no longer pertinent. Furthermore, they asked why Aristide Panayotou had not been charged under the same law. Neither argument impressed the court. According to the Times this case was the first time that section 63 of the criminal code had been applied.15
Sentencing was set for a week later, and Gustave was denied a temporary release from jail. He could well have received a three-year sentence for this offense but was given the singularly lenient punishment of two months for “behavior contrary to fraternal charity.” Since he had already spent thirty-five days in protective custody, he only had to spend one month in prison. His connections with the FTPF and the Communist Party doubtless played a significant part in persuading the court prudently to opt for clemency, as it was relatively soon after the war, the Resistance was still surrounded by a nimbus of patriotic glory, and the Communist Party was still a powerful political force despite its grimly Stalinist leadership under Maurice Thorez. It was a dramatic scene. Gustave burst into tears and fell into his father’s arms. Yvette, on the verge of collapse, flung her arms around him and moaned that he would die. When the magistrate asked whether he had anything to say, Gustave muttered “Merci,” presumably in gratitude that he had managed to get off so lightly and would not be absent from the Grand’ Terre when his father needed his assistance.
Meanwhile, there had been intensive investigations of various claims, rumors, and scraps of evidence. One of the most persistent stories concerned the existence of a second Hillman, which a number of people claimed to have seen, giving rise to the theory that the Drummonds had been killed by mistake.16 On 3 October Adrien Queyrel, a miller from Les Mées, told Commissioner Constant that he and his cousin Paul Gilles had trapped crayfish in a stream near Peyruis on 1 August. When they arrived between 8:15 and 8:45 p.m., they spotted a British Hillman with a man who appeared to be in his fifties, a younger woman, and a little girl about ten years old. The family hastily packed up their belongings, including a tent, and sped off. The woman wished the bemused cousins “good night.” These people could not possibly have been the Drummonds, however, because they were in Villefranche with the Marrians.
Apparently Constant immediately notified the Sûreté Nationale (National Police) in Paris, which wrote on the same day to Scotland Yard and asked it to trace a vehicle similar to the Drummond’s Hillman that had been seen in the area with a man, woman, and young girl. The French stressed, “It is believed that these people were being sought by the murderer and that he killed the Drummond family in error.”17 A reporter from Paris Match, who had heard the theory of a “second Hillman” from Professor Marrian, had already alerted the Sûreté; and Marrian had independently informed Scotland Yard. Interpol also asked the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to find the second car. Scotland Yard immediately began a meticulous search for any such vehicle. Rootes Group, the manufacturers of the Hillman, reported that it had supplied the domestic market with fifteen hundred Hillman Minx station wagons of the same year and model as the Drummonds’. The license plate numbers of all these cars were found, and the constabularies throughout Great Britain were ordered to interview all the owners. At the same time the police checked the records of all British ports servicing ferries to the Continent and listed all vehicles leaving the country between 1 July and 5 August and those arriving between 5 August and 5 September, as well as the name of the driver, nationality, registration number, chassis number, and the number of passengers, respectively. The Automobile Association reported that four similar cars were traveling on the Continent during this period. The police in Lancashire, Blackpool, Cheshire, and Aberdeen went off to interview the surprised owners, but all had cast-iron alibis.
Jack Shedley of Westcliff-on-Sea received a visit from the Southend police and much to his alarm was asked whether he had any reason to fear for his life. He had imagined that the visit was to inquire about the accident he had had in his Hillman Minx coupe at the Gorges d’Ollioules northwest of Toulon on 7 August. As far as he was concerned, the theory that the Drummonds had been mistaken for him and “killed by mistake” was baseless. He could prove that he was in Alassio, Italy, at the time of the murders.
Cecil McIntyre, his wife, son, and his son’s girlfriend had been traveling in France in a Hillman saloon, but they had run out of money and had to go home before they reached Provence. Carlo Plezner, the Austrian-born principal of the Rudolf Steiner School in Blairs, Kincardineshire, had a Hillman estate car and had been traveling in France at the time but nowhere near Lurs. Frederick Catling of Belfast had traveled down the road from Lyon to Cannes in a Hillman Minx estate car, but he was back in England on 30 July. George Henry Kennard from Warwick told the police that he had a mist green Austin A40 Countryman and had been in the vicinity at the time. He had not seen any similar vehicle in the area. Among those questioned was the thriller writer Eric Ambler, whose wife had driven to Cap Ferrat with Edgar Wallace’s daughter, Mrs. Patricia Frere of the Albany in Piccadilly, London. They were unable to shine any light on the matter. The Daily Express also appealed to its readers for information on the “second Hillman.”18 Various people came forward, but no valuable information was gleaned. Sundry other motorists received surprise visits from their local constabulary, but despite this intense search, no trace of a second Hillman was found. The theory can thus safely be discounted.
The French police, meanwhile, followed up another lead involving a Triumph sports car, whose GB plate began with the letters KJ, that was seen in the vicinity of the crime. KJ was a Maidstone designation. The local police began their inquiries and discovered a number of vehicles with KJ plates, including an Austin 7, a Standard 9, a Ford two-ton truck, and a Singer saloon. None of this was in any way helpful. Then a Triumph sports car with the number plate KJ9944 was found in a garage in Lyon. It belonged to a Canadian by the name of George K. Johnston. When interviewed by the police, he could prove that he was nowhere near Lurs at the time of the crime. Robert Corne, a baker at Saint-Sorlin-en-Bugey in the Ain, reported that he had seen two Canadians at the beginning of August. They had an army rifle on the front seat of their car that they had tried to conceal. This tip led nowhere, and Johnston and his companion were clearly not implicated. The communist L’Humanité placed great emphasis on the story of the Triumph sports car to take the pressure off the Dominicis. The paper added a nice touch to the story by saying that the car had been driven away by one Peter Martin, accompanied by a “ravishing young girl.” They were most alarmed to find the vehicle surrounded by the police.19
The Sûreté Nationale then suggested the rumors that a British car had followed the Drummonds indicated some personal motive might be behind the crime, and it asked the CID to investigate the private lives of the Drummonds with this in mind. Norman Henry Burton, a waiter in the Chilton Court Restaurant in Baker Street, had seen photos of Lady Drummond in the press and already told Hampstead police that she had regularly met a man of about forty-five in the restaurant over the last couple of years. He claimed that they appeared to be having an affair. Hampstead police passed this information on to the CID, and a chief inspector contacted the Nottingham constabulary with the following note: “This is a very delicate matter, but the information cannot be disregarded.” The Nottingham police made inquiries and concluded that Lady Drummond was not the type of woman to have such a relationship. The Drummonds were a devoted family, with Anne frequently accompanying her husband on his many visits to London, where they liked to dine in Soho. The photos in the newspapers were taken many years ago, so it would have been impossible to recognize her from them. Assistant Commissioner Howe of Scotland Yard therefore wrote back to Biget at Sûreté Nationale: “My Dear Friend, I can assure you that the family had a most excellent reputation in every way and we are certain from our enquiries that there was never any scandal nor could they possibly have been the victims of an act of vengeance.”20
Yet despite this exhaustive investigation, rumors of another British station wagon with a man, woman, and little girl persisted. Barthélémy Borgna, Jérôme Cicheddu, Roger Gaze, and Francis Perrin all testified that they had seen such a vehicle. Borgna, Cicheddu, and Gaze said that the car was gray; Perrin said it was green. They all claimed that the girl, unlike Elizabeth Drummond, was wearing a red dress. There may very well have been another British station wagon similar to the Drummonds’ Hillman in the area with a man, woman, and young girl on board, but since this was obviously not a contract killing or a planned murder, its existence was beside the point.
Sébeille visited the Grand’ Terre while Gustave was locked away. He pointed out to Gaston that Marie, Yvette, and Clovis all knew that Elizabeth had shown signs of life that morning, yet he persisted in saying that he had heard nothing. Gaston flew into a terrible rage at the insinuation, waving his cane at his wife, yelling that “the old bitch” and “sardine” knew all about it and had told him nothing. She continued to feed the pigs with apparent indifference toward such familiar abuse. Sébeille asked him what he would have done, had he known. With a sly grin and a dismissive shrug, he coolly replied that he would have ordered Gustave to tell the police.
By this time the Grand’ Terre presented a bizarre spectacle. The murder site was knee-deep in cigarette butts, waste paper, sardine tins, and empty bottles. Up to five hundred vehicles per day stopped to have a look at this macabre scene. Strange figures with wands and pendulums ambled trancelike through the detritus. With more than ten thousand visitors to the site, a businessman offered a substantial sum for the Grand’ Terre with the intent of turning it into a hotel.
Sébeille left Lurs, sorrowfully announcing that the affair was not over but simply in “a period of hibernation.” He remained in Marseille from mid-November until the end of December. Assisted by Inspector Ranchin he worked his way through piles of transcripts of hundreds of interviews, hoping to pick up a lead. He also discussed the case with his father, an experienced police officer, who, as noted previously, had specialized in rural crime. Robert Sébeille became so familiar with the case that it soon looked as if he were in charge and his son was merely his assistant. Sébeille senior reinforced his son’s conviction that the answer to the crime lay in the Grand’ Terre.
At first Robert thought of Paul Maillet, the passionate poacher who possessed a number of military firearms, but after his denunciation of Gustave, Sébeille was convinced that he was in no way involved. For Sébeille the key was why Elizabeth had not run in the direction of the farm. It suggested that she recognized her assassin, a point that was strengthened by the Dominicis’ adamant denial that any of the Drummonds had come to the farm to ask for water. The Dominicis’ claim to have been deaf and blind to the brutal murders committed only a few yards from their home was blatantly absurd. Sébeille senior felt that little could be obtained from either Marie or Yvette. Both seemed to have been well instructed as to what to say and would not alter their stories. Marie would continue to deny that she had heard or seen anything. Yvette, who appeared to be the most intelligent of the Dominicis, would be very difficult to break. Gustave, however, was a somewhat pathetic figure. He was weak willed, passive, unable to break free from his dominating father, and subservient to his wife. He might well be privy to the crime and certainly showed signs of trying to cover up something, but he was unlikely to have played a leading role.
Thus, Robert Sébeille’s suspicions concentrated on Gaston, the violent-tempered patriarch, who had shown a complete lack of interest in the crowd of gendarmes, officials, and onlookers who were already at the campsite when he returned with his goats to the Grand’ Terre on the morning of 5 August. He had always tried to intervene whenever the commissioner had discussed the affair with Gustave. He had the cheek to treat a police officer with defiant disdain, and his protestations of the total innocence of his entire clan merely strengthened the suspicion that he had a great deal to hide. Sébeille considered Gaston to be the prime suspect. His son Edmond dutifully agreed.
Robert also strongly suspected Zézé Perrin, the “smiling liar,” as Edmond had called him. Robert argued that Zézé appeared to be totally relaxed, ready to answer any questions, always with a smile. He appeared to be immature, irresponsible, stupid, and incapable of understanding the consequences of his actions—a moral cretin. Robert felt that he might very well have been involved in the murders. Edmond did not agree with his father on this point, and they argued the pros and cons of Zézé’s involvement in the crime at great length, without reaching a conclusion.
Sébeille senior ruled out Clovis Dominici as a suspect. He did not live at the Grand’ Terre and was at home that night. His reaction at the sight of the murder weapon was further evidence in his favor. Whereas Gaston and Gustave had shown total indifference when shown the carbine, Clovis had been genuinely shocked—an indication that he knew that something terrible had happened that directly involved his family.
The question of a motive remained. Robert Sébeille felt it was a senseless crime, of a type not unknown in peasant circles. He did not attach much importance to the fact that the campsite had been ransacked, attributing it to a deliberate attempt to mislead the police investigation into looking for some ingenious motive.
Upon his release on 16 December, Gustave announced to the press that he had no idea why he had been treated so harshly and added that he felt it grossly unfair that he should be made to pay for others’ crimes. No one bothered to inquire who these others might be. On his return to the Grand’ Terre, the clan gathered to celebrate his return to the fold in great style. Yvette, who had left the Grand’ Terre to stay with her parents, came home to welcome him. Clovis was still staying at the Grand’ Terre. His sister Augusta Caillat, who was part of the welcoming party, went on the offensive. She told the press that her brother was fada (nuts) and an idiot who was quite incapable of defending himself. She claimed that if the police had “knocked on the right door” instead of harassing the Dominici clan, then they would have solved the crime long ago. No one pursued the question of where this mysterious portal might be found. In his frustration Gaston Dominici reportedly said to his grandson Zézé: “What arseholes [couillons] those English were! Why didn’t they get themselves killed somewhere else?”21
The Dominicis, who had hitherto maintained a solid front behind a wall of silence, began to show signs of discord. The stonehearted clan was beginning to fall apart. Money was the cause. At a gathering of the clan, Gustave’s father-in-law, François Barth, proposed that the family should share the cost of the trial in equal parts. There was full agreement among those present, but when Germaine Perrin, one of the daughters, heard what had been decided, she flatly refused to pay her share. The rest of the family resented this attitude, but later, when Germaine’s son Zézé became implicated in the case, the family rift became acute.
More serious was the rupture between the Maillets and the Dominicis. The two families had been linked for more than fifty years as they moved from Brunet to Ganagobie and then to Lurs. Paul Maillet and Clovis Dominici worked together and were comrades in the Communist Party. Paul was equally friendly with Gustave. Paul had a strong dislike for Gaston, who had always been patronizing toward his father and boasting of his success as owner of the Grand’ Terre, while the older Maillet was a poverty-stricken sharecropper, now living in penniless retirement. Paul had been genuinely horrified when he learned of Gustave’s failure to seek help for Elizabeth, to the point that he denounced his friend and saw him sent to jail. He had told the court that “dishonor hovers over honor,” but for the moment he still withheld another damaging piece of evidence, which would dramatically change the direction of the investigation.
Paul Maillet had become something of an embarrassment to the Communist Party. The police had a hold on him because of his possession of illegal weapons and for stealing electricity from the grid. He had denounced Gustave, even though the local party was trying to defend the Dominicis and win support among the French peasantry. He was overly talkative and sought attention. Gustave had served in the FTPF under Roger Autheville, who was now the party’s departmental secretary in the Basses-Alpes. Autheville was anxious to protect his former comrade, but he was concerned that the press might use the discovery of Maillet’s cache of arms to suggest that the party was planning an armed uprising. It was therefore decided to dismiss him from his post as party secretary in Lurs. Maillet was suspended at the end of September and dismissed two months later. Clovis Dominici took his place as the party’s candidate in the local election and was duly appointed to the municipal council. Autheville, in turn, would soon receive the party’s opprobrium. He was dismissed as the party’s departmental secretary in 1953 and thrown out of the party the following year. He was charged with being too compliant with the police, with lacking vigilance, and with having sold photographs and information to two popular magazines.22
Dismissal was a bitter blow for Paul Maillet. He had been banished from the tightly knit circle of the Communist Party and even experienced an attempt on his life. Returning to his farm one evening, he was knocked off his motorcycle by a wire that had been stretched across his path. Fortunately he was going slowly enough that he did not suffer serious injury, but it was a painful reminder of his ostracism. The Dominicis mounted a concerted campaign against him and spread the rumor that he was the owner of the murder weapon. Gaston’s daughter Augusta Caillat nicknamed Paul Maillet “Sébeille.” People in the village gave him the finger. He was ostracized at work. His children were tormented and his wife fell ill. One day Gaston Dominici came up to him and without saying a word pointed his cane at him like a rifle and made a gesture as if he were pulling the trigger. Maillet also received a number of anonymous threatening letters warning him to keep his mouth shut.
The campaign against Paul Maillet further convinced Sébeille and Constant that the answer lay somewhere in the Grand’ Terre. Their suspicions were strengthened by some fresh evidence. First, while Gustave was locked up in Digne, a woman from Marseille told Constant that she had seen an extremely sinister-looking man at the far end of a shed at the Grand’ Terre. Then Yvette’s fifteen-year old brother, Jacky Barth, had heard her say something about giving someone some money; otherwise, they would get into serious difficulties. It was also reported that Yvette had said someone called Jo had spent the night at the farm, and cash had changed hands.
Further information reached Constant that someone had seen Clovis Dominici and Jacky Barth talking to someone called Jo, who was somewhat strangely dressed in overalls and a raincoat, near the Grand’ Terre’s shed at about five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon in early September. Marie Dominici was said to have been very perturbed about this man and had insisted that he be given money, or he would cause the family a great deal of grief. The description of this mysterious Jo, although very vague, roughly matched that of Marcel Chaillan, an agricultural laborer in Brillane who worked on a farm close to that of Yvette’s parents, the Barths. He was known to have occasionally slept overnight in the shed.
Émile Pollak had visited the Grand’ Terre on 8 September at Gustave’s behest to discuss the possibility of taking legal action against certain newspapers. He had arrived with Pierre Charrier, a lawyer from Marseille and a Communist Party activist, who was interested to see the scene of such a notorious crime. Also in the party were Pollak’s mistress Nelly Leroy and their six-year-old daughter. While the two men examined the murder site, the little girl saw Gaston with his goats, herding them into the shed. She asked her mother whether she could go and have a closer look. Her mother took her daughter in her arms, because her leg was in a cast, and walked toward the shed. They were stopped by an agitated Jacky Barth, who said they should go not go into the shed because the goats were covered with fleas. There was some talk on this occasion of another man present who had terrible teeth and a face distorted in a rictus.
In what Constant labeled “Opération Bergerie” along with Sébeille and Examining Magistrate Roger Périès, a series of interviews were conducted to discover what had really happened. Gaston confirmed that he had seen Pollak, the little girl, and her mother, as well as another lawyer. Mother and child had peeped into the shed, but no one else was there. Gaston said that he neither knew a man named Jo nor anyone with frightening dentition. Marie Dominici said that Yvette had been there as well as her young brother Jacky Barth. According to her version of the story, Pollak had shown the goats to his daughter, not her mother. She could not remember having seen Charrier and professed not to know anyone by the name of Jo. Yvette’s father, François Barth, had also been at the Grand’ Terre that day. He confirmed the story that the mother had shown the goats to the little girl, but he claimed not to have seen the two men they had encountered. He too knew of no Jo and could not think of anyone with alarming teeth. Yvette stated that no outsider had been hired to work on the farm, even when Gustave was in jail. Gustave was equally unforthcoming. The only additional information he offered was that Francis Perrin, the local postman and his sister Germaine’s brother-in-law, had also been there.
Francis Perrin had a much clearer recollection of that Monday. He claimed that a journalist had also been present. This was confirmed by Charrier, who said it was Lucien Grimaud, a reporter from La Marseillaise. Charrier also said that Francis’s father had passed by and that someone had come to borrow a spray. No one asked Francis any questions about either Jo or the teeth. Francis’s father, Louis Perrin, said that he had stopped off on his way home at the Grand’ Terre, where he had seen Nelly Leroy and her daughter by the shed talking to Jacky. Predictably, he knew of no one called Jo, but when asked about the teeth, he pulled back his lips to reveal a startling array of metal teeth and a decayed stump.
On 12 November, the day of Gustave’s trial, it was the turn of Nelly Leroy. Apart from the Dominicis, she could only remember having seen Jacky, but on further questioning she admitted that she might have seen a man with metal teeth near the shed. She had not heard Marie Dominici say anything about paying off Jo to get him out of the way.
A few days later Périès questioned Yvette again. This time she remembered that Louis Perrin had been present and expressed surprise that the police were “looking for him.” Périès interviewed Gustave in jail but got nothing more out of him. Gustave professed that he did not know that Francis Perrin and Pierre Charrier had been at the Grand’ Terre that day.
Marcel Chaillan—a man with a grim appearance and a bizarre set of teeth and, as noted earlier, who was known to have occasionally slept in the shed at the Grand’ Terre—was also submitted to intense questioning. He lived in a house belonging to his brother Louis and shared it with his nephew Fernand, a disabled veteran. Louis lived in a hotel in La Brillane, which he owned. The police thoroughly searched both places. Fernand testified that on the night of 4–5 August his uncle Marcel had dined as usual at his father’s hotel and slept that night in the house. He testified that it would have been impossible for Marcel to have left the house without being heard. Sébeille was inclined to believe Marcel’s brother and nephew. Constant, however, felt that Marcel Chaillan was singularly taciturn, even by the standards of the locals, and that he might well have something more to say. Poor Marcel was known in the neighborhood as dim witted, and the press heavily criticized Sébeille for persisting in questioning this hapless man until he eventually realized that he was on the wrong track.
Some also chuckled when Sébeille announced that the murderer was a local man, about 5 foot 9. He asked Gustave’s father-in-law, François Barth, to provide him with a list of possible suspects. With 1,200 males in the Lurs community, it was estimated that about 350 men would fit the description, but Gustave Dominici, Paul Maillet, and Marcel Chaillan would have to be omitted from the list. Certain newspapers denounced Sébeille’s team from another angle, accusing them of leading a witch hunt against men “whose sole crime was to have risked their lives in the struggle against the occupying power.”23
The mysterious Jo was never identified. Possibly he never existed. Why was it that the mention of his name caused such a kerfuffle among the Dominicis? Who was the woman from Marseille who first told the police about him? Was he perhaps an imaginary figure planted by Pollak to lead the gendarmes on a wild goose chase? Was he involved in some illicit operation, such as distilling without a license—still a common practice in the region? Was Jo the code name of one of Gustave’s comrades in the Resistance? Was he the person some witnesses saw near the scene of the crime during the night of 4–5 August? What hold could he have had over the Dominicis? Many such questions were asked. None found an answer. “Jo” disappeared from the dossier.
Commissioner Sébeille did not officially return to his duties until the end of January 1953. He was vexed by the vicious attacks by the communist press and annoyed that Constant had managed to wring a confession out of Paul Maillet that had sent Gustave, once his principal suspect, to jail. All the more determined to solve the crime, Sébeille decided that a drastic change in tactics was necessary. Bullying and intimidation had only caused a virtually impenetrable wall of silence in a remarkable display of peasant solidarity. Taking a leaf out of Constant’s book, he realized that more could be gained by listening, cajoling, and slowly accumulating minute pieces of evidence until the moment came to strike. Above all, the press, with whom he had been far too open, had to be kept in the dark. Stealth must take the place of bravado. The nagging problem was that this case appeared to him to be a motiveless crime of exceptional barbarity, the outcome of some unfathomable peasant drama.
Sébeille went first to the Grand’ Terre. Gaston acted somewhat surprised to see him, grunting that he had assumed that he had dropped the case. Gustave appeared to be a changed man. He had lost weight. His relationship with Yvette seemed to be strained. He no longer smiled. Whenever Clovis visited the farm, the atmosphere was charged with tension.
The commissioner dropped in at the Grand’ Terre virtually every day. At first Gaston greeted him civilly, offering a glass of wine, which Sébeille consistently refused. Then he became increasingly irritated, to the point of complaining to the mayor of Peyruis that he was being subjected to police harassment. Getting nowhere with this tactic, the commissioner decided to pursue another tack.
Forgetting his fresh resolve to go softly, Sébeille went to see Paul Maillet shortly after his return to Lurs. He reminded him of the deal they had made on discovering Maillet’s Sten guns. Why then did he pass on the information about Gustave’s confession that Elizabeth Drummond was still alive to Constant and not to him as principal investigator? This was petty minded of the commissioner. After all, Constant was on the scene at Lurs, while he was far away, desk bound in Marseille. Maillet’s offense was compounded in Sébeille’s eyes, moreover, when he heard that Maillet had given even more important information to a couple of gendarmes from Forcalquier, making it seem that the case was slipping out of the hands of the “Maigret of Marseille.”
Paul Maillet now claimed that sometime between the end of August and the beginning of September he had gone to the Grand’ Terre to buy some potatoes. While Yvette went to fetch them, Gustave had suddenly cried out, “If you had seen it—if you had heard those terrible screams—I didn’t know what to do!” Maillet asked him where he was at the time. Gustave replied, “Over there,” pointing in the direction of the field of alfalfa.24 Yvette came back with the potatoes immediately after this exchange, so there was no time to pursue the matter any further. Maillet was somewhat distressed to find that Yvette had charged him for 24 pounds of potatoes but had only given him 13 pounds. Gustave refused to discuss his confession during subsequent conversations with Paul.
From this moment Sébeille’s suspicion that Gaston was the murderer and that Gustave was probably merely a witness was confirmed. Since the scene of the crime was not visible from Gustave and Yvette’s bedroom window, he could have heard but not have seen the murders. Therefore, if Maillet was telling the truth, then Gustave’s statement that he did not leave the house that night was obviously false.25
The investigation dragged on for months. A series of false leads were pursued. Anonymous letters piled up. The press was full of wild speculations. Criticism of the police grew ever shriller. The people of Lurs remained obdurately silent and uncooperative. The Dominicis were questioned over and over again, but they stuck to their stories. Sébeille’s investigation seemed to have ground to a standstill.
Then, at the beginning of July 1953, Sébeille was granted a rogatory commission; in other words, he was given the same rights and powers as the examining magistrate when questioning witnesses. Shortly afterward he was invited to a ceremony by a friend, a primary school teacher from Martigues, who was to receive the Légion d’honneur. At the reception he was introduced to Minister of Justice Léon Martinaud-Déplat, who was also a member of the Chamber of Deputies for the Bouches-du-Rhône.26 The minister asked Sébeille how the investigation was progressing. Sébeille could not have given a very encouraging reply. He had precious little to show after almost a year. Having been singularly lax in collecting material evidence, much to the disgust of British commentators, he had had come to rely almost exclusively on oral testimony. But here he had met with mulish reticence. The minister gave him every encouragement, however, telling him that he should not have listened to Orsatelli, who had ordered him to stop cross-examining Gustave in September 1952. Martinaud-Déplat also assured Sébeille that he would give him every support. That a minister should get so closely involved in a case that was not his direct responsibility is perhaps surprising, but Martinaud-Déplat was a hard-line conservative who was determined to fight the Communist Party at every turn. The party’s close involvement with the Dominici affair was reason enough to arouse his suspicions and his interest.
This meeting marked the beginning of the final stage of the investigation, but it was not apparent for several months. Zézé Perrin; his mother, Germaine; Yvette; Gustave; and Gaston Dominici were questioned again and at length in May, but precious little new was revealed. The exception was that Zézé stated that Anne Drummond and her daughter had come to the Grand’ Terre to ask for water. Further, Gaston, Marie, and Yvette were there when they arrived. Yvette had filled up the Drummond’s bucket at the pump. Anne could speak no French, but Elizabeth had managed quite well. Yvette confirmed this story, mentioning that the Drummonds had a canvas bucket and that Gaston had shown his goats to Elizabeth.
Asked when he had first heard of the crime, Zézé replied that Faustin Roure had stopped at La Serre at about 7:00 a.m. on his way back from the Grand’ Terre, where he had been to check the landslide, but Roure denied that he had told Zézé about the murders. Zézé claimed that he went to the Grand’ Terre, looked at the dead bodies, and was told that Gaston had gotten up at 3:00 a.m. and Gustave at 3:45 a.m. He claimed that Gustave, having discovered Elizabeth’s body, had told Yvette and had then gone to look at the campsite. He also stated that his grandfather had said that when he heard the shots in the night, he thought that the campers might have been attacked.
Germaine Perrin confirmed her son’s statement that Anne and Elizabeth had gone to the farm to get water. Thus, it was reasonable to assume that Elizabeth had seen Gaston. It was also highly likely that Gustave had been at the murder site several times during the night, long before the time he initially claimed to have gotten out of bed.
In mid-May Jean Ricard, the man who had been camping at Ganagobie and had passed by the Grand’ Terre at about 7:00 a.m. on 5 August, was questioned by Sébeille in Marseille. He added some important details. Even though he was on foot, he claimed not to have seen the overturned camp bed by the gorse bushes on the other side of the road from the Hillman. Nor did he notice the trail of blood across the road. He said that his eyes were fixed on the car and the “incredible mess” at the campsite. Not seeing anyone around, he went and peeped inside the car. He noticed nothing out of the ordinary. He saw an empty camp bed placed parallel to the car, and lying on the ground alongside it was a “human form” covered in a blanket, with the head facing away from the farmhouse. The person was lying on his or her back, fully covered except for the feet, which were pointing in the air. Ricard thought it an odd way to be sleeping, but being anxious not to miss the bus, he went back to the road and caught the bus about 100 yards beyond the Grand’ Terre. Amazingly the gendarmes did not bother to question the bus driver, nor did they track down any of the other passengers. Ricard said that he saw no one at the farm, but Yvette said that she had seen someone with a rucksack walking along the road. He had turned around frequently and then took the bus.
Sébeille had met Ricard the previous August, at the beginning of his investigations, when he had gone to Ganagobie to talk to Father Lorenzi. He had asked Ricard a few questions but incredibly had neither taken any notes nor interrogated him in any detail even though he was clearly a key witness. Even more extraordinary Sébeille did not see fit to question him again for nine months.27 Ricard’s evidence was critical. He had found Anne lying on her back, with her uncovered feet in the air, parallel to the Hillman. The police had found her lying face down among the tall grass, fully covered, and at some distance and an angle to the car. There was a seat from the Hillman pressed against her left leg and a khaki-colored blanket under her legs. This difference clearly indicated that the body had been moved between about 7:00 a.m. when Ricard saw it and 7:15 a.m. when the two gendarmes arrived.
To make absolutely sure on this point, Sébeille returned to Lurs a few days after seeing Ricard to check Faustin Roure’s testimony. It will be remembered that Roure had visited the Grand’ Terre on the morning of the crime to look at the landslide on the railway line. He repeated the testimony that he had seen Anne’s body lying beside the Hillman, but he was unable to say which way it was lying because it had been fully covered by a blanket.
Sébeille concluded from these two testimonies that the body had been moved twice. The first time was in the roughly fifteen minutes between when Roure’s party left to go to work and Ricard’s arrival at the scene of the crime, when the feet were uncovered.28 Next, after Ricard left, the body had been turned over and moved into the tall grass before the gendarmes arrived about fifteen minutes later.
On 9 July Sébeille once again questioned Zézé Perrin, with whom he had not spoken since early May. He brazenly admitted that although no one had asked him to do so, he had lied to both the judicial police and the gendarmerie, but his new version of events was equally implausible. He now claimed to have gone to the Grand’ Terre on the morning of 5 August on a bicycle belonging to his cousin Gilbert, Clovis Dominici’s son. He had parked it beside Gustave’s bicycle, which was propped against the mulberry tree. When asked why no one had seen it, he gave the unsatisfactory answer that he had moved it into the shade at 11:00 a.m. (A gendarme noted that the spot indicated by Zézé would have been in full sunlight an hour later.) He also now claimed that Gustave Dominici had sounded the horn of his motorbike as he passed the Perrins’ farm at about 8:30 the evening of 4 August. His mother, Germaine, had left the farm on her moped at 9:00 p.m. to go to La Cassine, near Peyruis, where her husband was a tenant farmer. Zézé then claimed that Gustave had returned to La Serre, having met Germaine on the way, and told him about the landslide.
Sébeille suspected that Zézé might have then gone with Gustave to the Grand’ Terre, but this he hotly denied. He insisted that he had stayed home alone and gone to bed at 9:15 p.m.
Sébeille interviewed Germaine Perrin the next day. She confirmed that she and her son had had dinner together, but she denied having met Gustave as she rode toward Peyruis. She added that had Gustave gone to La Serre, he would probably have taken Zézé with him to the Grand’ Terre as the two were very close and the boy had often slept overnight at his grandfather’s farm. It might therefore have been possible that Zézé Perrin had been at the Grand’ Terre during that fatal night in August.
The Dominicis’ attorney, Pollak, meanwhile protested vigorously that Sébeille had no need for rogatory authority, because no new evidence of any consequence had been produced for several months. Indeed, the investigation seemed to be getting nowhere. In fact, Sébeille and Examining Magistrate Périès were planning their final assault but felt they needed time for further thought and reflection. Their reasons for delaying action beggar belief. They decided that the idyllic summer in Provence should not be disturbed by an intensified police investigation. The roads would be packed by traffic, the beautiful hilltop villages teeming with happy tourists. The crops would be harvested under the blazing sun. It would be far too hot to think straight, and the bistros would be awash with pastis. Then came the wine harvest, which should not be interrupted by anything other than an act of God. Clearly then it would be inappropriate and unpatriotic not to wait until after the celebration of Armistice Day on 11 November. Regardless that they had not found such compelling reasons for taking time out during the previous summer, Périès and Sébeille decided to suspend the inquiry until 12 November. Then they were determined to attack in full force, break down the Dominicis, get a confession, and secure a conviction.
By this time the investigation was no longer a subject of much interest in the newspapers. So many issues of great import were taking place: the disastrous defeats in Indochina, the armistice in Korea, the trial of those involved in the June 1944 massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane, the spectacular act of parricide with an ax on Îsle Saint-Louis in Paris, the death of Stalin, the conquest of Mount Everest, and the coronation Queen Elizabeth II.
In the Dominici family, life seemed to be getting back to normal. Gustave’s wife, Yvette, gave birth to her second child in May. There was a wedding in the family. In September Gaston took part in the opening ceremony of the road to the abbey at Ganagobie. He was politely but reservedly greeted by most of the local dignitaries, but the prefect of the Basses-Alpes refused to shake his hand.
The inquiry’s final dramatic stage began on 12 November 1953 with another visit to the crime scene. At 6:00 a.m. the gendarmerie closed the road past the Grand’ Terre by the order of Commandant Bernier from Digne and Captain Albert from Forcalquier. Commissioner Sébeille arrived forty minutes later. At 7:00 a.m. the Hillman was taken from a garage in Peyruis and parked where it had been on that fatal night in August the previous year. The camper Ricard and the SNCF workers—Roure, Boyer, and Clovis—were brought to the scene of the crime. The motorcyclist Olivier and Dr. Dragon arrived shortly afterward.
Despite the roadblocks, a large crowd of locals had collected. Some thirty journalists and an equal number of press photographers were present. Film crews from Les actualités V and Fox Movietone were on hand to record the proceedings. A peanut vendor did a brisk trade.
The arrival of the police prompted a violent reaction from the inhabitants of the Grand’ Terre. The normally passive Gustave broke into a furious rage. Yvette, by now a mother of two and already pregnant with a third, threw herself onto her bed and began to sob bitterly. The habitually mute old Marie hissed through her toothless mouth: “Why take it out on us? Why don’t you ask that motorcyclist? One day I’ll kill him!” Only Gaston remained calm and collected.29
The first question addressed was the position of Lady Drummond’s body. Boyer, Roure, and Ricard said that she lay parallel to the car, on her back, about 2 yards away. As they had previously stated, Roure insisted that the blanket covered the feet, while Ricard was adamant that the feet were uncovered. Clovis first said that the body was lying face down, diagonal to the car, at some distance; but then he changed his testimony to concur with that of Boyer and Roure. Gustave insisted that he had found the body in the position as his brother had first stated. Faced with this obvious contradiction, he finally admitted that he had moved Anne’s body.
Gustave was then ordered to stand where he had flagged down Olivier in the early morning of 5 August. Gustave stood slightly more than 50 yards from the car and on the edge of the main road. Olivier was then ordered to drive past. Once again he flatly denied that Gustave had been standing there, insisting that he had emerged from behind the Hillman.
At 10:00 a.m. the road was reopened for traffic, and Gustave was taken to the law courts in Digne along with his brother Clovis. They left behind a hysterical Yvette, a weeping mother, and a raging Gaston. Roure, Olivier, Ricard, Paul Maillet, Zézé Perrin, and his mother, Germaine, were also taken to Digne, while Gaston, Marie, and Yvette Dominici remained under police surveillance at the Grand’ Terre.
Sébeille first questioned Gustave alone in the library at the Digne courthouse. Gustave was seated, while Sébeille walked back and forth, firing questions at him. After a few moments Maillet was brought into the room. He calmly repeated what Gustave had told him: Gustave had seen the murders and had heard screams. At first Gustave denied this, then he admitted to having heard some cries but only for a very short time. He flatly denied having seen anything and insisted that he had not gotten out of bed.
Gustave was then confronted with Zézé Perrin, who also stuck to his story. He had been told not only that Anne and her daughter had come to the Grand’ Terre and asked for water but also that Gustave had gotten up at 3:00 a.m., had seen Elizabeth’s body, had then told Yvette, and afterward went to look at the campsite. Gustave admitted that his wife had told him that the Drummonds had come to the farm when he was not there. He had been working for Yvette’s uncle, Jeannot Girard, and returned to the Grand’ Terre at about 8:00 p.m. He was now prepared to admit that he got up at about 4:00 a.m. and not at 5:30 a.m., as he had previously stated. It was then that he had seen Elizabeth, who was still breathing but with great difficulty. She was lying on her back with her arms outstretched. Although he had then seen the Drummonds’ bodies, he had not gone to the campsite until 5:45 a.m. and now claimed that he had not touched them. He insisted that Anne’s body was perpendicular to the car. Sébeille then asked what he had done between about 4:30 a.m. and 5:50 a.m., when he stopped Olivier and told him to inform the gendarmerie. Gustave claimed to have looked after his livestock.
By this time Gustave was beginning to fall apart. Red in the face, trembling, and scarcely able to talk, he finally admitted that he had gone back to the campsite “to get a better idea of what had happened.” When asked why he had not told the truth before and why he had not sought to help the little girl, he mumbled something about being afraid of getting involved in what was clearly a very nasty business.
Gustave’s interrogation by Sébeille lasted until 7:00 p.m. Meanwhile, the examining magistrate Périès questioned Ricard, Roure, and Olivier. All three stuck to their original versions of the story.
Gustave’s grilling resumed at 8:30 p.m. Sébeille immediately went on the attack, insisting that Ricard, Roure, and his brother Clovis had all testified that Anne was lying on her back with her feet in the direction of the Grand’ Terre and that she must have therefore been moved between 7:00 a.m. and 7:15 a.m. Gustave was trapped. After repeatedly spluttering that he knew nothing, he finally broke down. He said that after Clovis and Ricard had left for work, he had taken Anne by the ankles and turned her over, dragging her to where the gendarmes had found her. He claimed that he had done so to ascertain whether she was still alive. Finding this explanation totally implausible, the commissioner decided to call it a day and resume questioning in the morning. It was now a few minutes before midnight, but Gustave claimed that two inspectors continued to grill him until the early morning. In fact, he spent a sleepless night in an armchair in the library, with two gendarmes keeping a close eye on him.
Gustave’s cross-examination resumed next morning at seven thirty, while Périès ordered the gendarmes to bring Yvette, Germaine, and Zézé to Digne for questioning. Although claiming not in any way to be superstitious, Sébeille could not help noticing that it was Friday the thirteenth. For whom was it to prove an unlucky day? Yvette flatly denied that any of the Drummonds had visited the farm on the evening of 4 August. She refused to change her testimony even when she was told Gustave had admitted that she had said they had been there. Germaine and Zézé stuck to their original testimony. Yvette also remained adamant.
Oddly Sébeille did not keep a record of his examination of Gustave, which lasted until 10:00 a.m. He told Gustave that it was unthinkable that he had taken such risks moving Anne’s body, simply to make sure that she was dead. Gustave then said he had done it to see whether there were any cartridges or bullets that had come from the farm. He said that he could not find any and therefore assumed that there was no connection between the Grand’ Terre and the murders.
Périès took over from the commissioner at 11:00 a.m. From the minutes of this meeting, we learn that Gustave merely repeated what he had earlier said to Sébeille.30 He claimed never to have seen the murder weapon. Gustave also told Périès that after he was released from prison in December 1952, his brother-in-law Jacky Barth had told him that Gaston had found four cartridges at the murder scene. Périès, however, did not even see fit to mention this revelation either to Sébeille or to the gendarmes.
Getting no further, Périès decided to hand back the interrogation to Sébeille. The commissioner realized that he was on the point of getting a confession. He began to feel a certain pity for Gustave, who appeared to him like a cornered beast, waiting for the deathblow. Within minutes Gustave broke down in tears. Resting his head on the commissioner’s shoulder, he blubbered that his father had admitted to him at 4:00 a.m. on 5 August that he had committed the crime.
Sébeille went to get Périès at 4:30 p.m. They returned to the library with the clerk of the court. Gustave made a full confession, punctuated only by his sobs and the remorseless hammering of the typewriter as the clerk took down his statement. He testified that he had heard his father get up at about 1:00 a.m. Thinking this very strange, Gustave also got up to find out what he was doing. Assuming that Gaston had gone to have a look at the landslide, Gustave walked toward the bridge. When he reached the edge of the orchard, he heard the shots. He had then gone back to bed. When his father got up in the early morning of 5 August to tend his goats, Gustave got up earlier than usual to ask him whether he had heard the shots during the night. Gaston said that he had, adding that he had fired them. Gustave said that after being awoken by the shots he had been unable to go back to sleep. He had heard no further sounds in the house until he heard his father’s footsteps at four o’clock. The implication here was that having fired the shots shortly after one o’clock, Gaston must have stayed outside for about three hours; otherwise, the sleepless Gustave would have heard him entering the house.
Gustave asked his father if he had gone mad. Gaston replied in the negative. When he asked him what had happened, Gaston merely said that he had met the English people who had come to the farmhouse the previous evening, then he left with his goats. On further questioning Gustave said that his father had gone hunting that night and had walked along the road in the direction of Peyruis. He stated that the carbine belonged to his father. Gaston told him that he had come across a man near the campsite and opened fire. He admitted to having killed the entire family. When asked what sort of a weapon he had used, he replied that it was a carbine that he had kept hidden. Upon further questioning, Gustave stated that his father had said that he had shot the man first, but he had not said how he had killed the little girl. Gustave also said that his brother Clovis knew what had happened, but they had not talked about it because their father had ordered them to keep absolutely silent. When Périès suggested that his earlier testimony of having crossed the bridge to look at the landslide was clearly false, Gustave admitted that his father had said that he had killed the little girl on the slope leading down to the river.
Gustave claimed that his first concern was with the little girl and that it was for this reason that he went to see her first. When he heard her groaning, he realized she was still alive. He did not go close to her but went back to the campsite, where he saw the bodies of her parents. He then went back to the Grand’ Terre, where Yvette and his mother were in the courtyard. He told them what he had seen and that Elizabeth was still alive. By this time it was between 4:30 and 4:45 a.m., when day was dawning.
He then tended to his animals and returned to the campsite when the light was better to see if anything was lying about that belonged to his father. He noticed some cartridges behind the Hillman, but he did not bother to pick them up. At that time Olivier had passed by on his motorcycle. Gustave could not remember why he had moved Lady Drummond’s body.
He told Périès that he had tried to get some further details from his father, but Gaston had told him that he did not wish to say anything more about it. When asked about the attitude of his father toward him when he returned from serving his prison sentence in Digne, Gustave said that he could not care less how many months he spent in jail. Later he had told Clovis everything that had happened.
At the end of this cross-examination, Gustave begged Périès not to let either the press or his family know that he had denounced his father. But Périès gave no such assurance. He was only interested in hearing Clovis’s testimony, which he hoped would strengthen the case against Gaston. Clovis was brought to the law courts at Digne at 6:30 that evening. As in the case of his brother, he was first questioned by Sébeille rather than by the examining magistrate, going against the more usual procedure. He was dumbfounded when he heard of Gustave’s confession, at first refusing to believe it, but he soon began to change his tune. Gustave was then brought into the room. He was a shadow of his former self. His eyes were bloodshot, his face tense. Leaning on his brother’s shoulder, he admitted that he had said that their father was the assassin. The two brothers fell into one another’s arms, sobbing like small children. Fifteen months of bottled up emotions were suddenly released.
Clovis was then questioned alone and at length. He confirmed Gustave’s confession by stating that while he was staying at the Grand’ Terre during his brother’s time in prison, his father had admitted to the crime. He could not remember the exact date but claimed that the remark had been made after dinner, at about nine or ten o’clock at night. Gaston and Marie were having one of their all-too-familiar arguments, and Clovis told them to be quiet and stop squabbling. A drunken Gaston flew into a terrible rage, threatening his son with his fist and yelling, “N’ai fa péta très, n’en ferai péta un autre!” (I’ve already killed three, and could kill another!) He then continued to yell, “I’m afraid of no one!” When Clovis asked him whether he was talking about the campers, he replied, “I killed the English!”31
Clovis tried to get some further details from his father, but all Gaston said was that he had gotten up at one o’clock to look at the landslide and made the curious remark that if it had been any worse there would not have been three dead but twenty or thirty in a serious train accident. He had taken his rifle with him. When questioned about the rifle, Clovis said that Gaston had used the word “carbine,” but he had assumed that his father was referring to the Gras rifle, which he used when hunting wild boar.32 He did not ask his father why he had taken a rifle with him, even though it was only a few hundred yards from the farmhouse to the site of the landslide. His father claimed that he had gone to have a look at the campsite and had a row with the Englishman. When it came to blows, Gaston had used his weapon. He then said, “I killed all three of them.”33
Clovis did not question his father about the little girl, admitting that he was scared of his father. Although he was almost fifty years old, his father yelled at him as if he were a worthless little boy. Clovis therefore had no idea whether Gaston had killed Elizabeth at the campsite or at the site where her body had been found. All Gaston said was that he had killed the man and the woman. Clovis did not ask him what he had done with the rifle. He claimed never to have seen the gun before it was fished out of the river on 6 August. He attributed his violent reaction when Sébeille showed him the murder weapon a few days later to his thoughts about the atrocious nature of the crime.
At this point Périès observed that Clovis had just stated that he thought that his father was referring to the Gras rifle, even though he had been shown the M1 on two occasions. Clovis admitted that he had been somewhat confused and said that what he meant was that at the time of the crime he had not known that his father owned another rifle. Périès did not bother to follow up this line of questioning and asked what Gaston had said after having admitted to the murders. Clovis said that he had told him to keep his mouth shut and tell no one. He added that he was amazed that his father showed no signs of emotion or regret. When asked whether he had told Gustave about this confession, Clovis replied that he had told him about it later, after Gustave had finished his prison sentence, while they were chopping wood together at Saint-Pons. Gustave had admitted that he already knew.
Possibly worried what Gustave would tell Sébeille, Clovis blurted out that he would now tell the whole truth. He admitted that he recognized the carbine when Sébeille showed it to him as the one that was kept on a shelf in the shed. He said that on the evening of 5 August he had gone to check if the gun was still there. Seeing that it was missing, he was convinced that it was the murder weapon, but he had imagined that it was Gustave who had used it. He could not imagine that an old man like his father could possibly have committed such a dreadful crime. He had asked Gustave whether he had noticed that the weapon was missing. Gustave had said that he had. When Clovis asked point blank whether he had used it, he replied that he had not. Clovis found this difficult to believe and suspected his brother until the moment that his father confessed to the crime. When shown the murder weapon, Clovis stated categorically that it was his father’s gun and that it was kept on a shelf in the shed. There could be no doubt about its identification, because the hand guard was attached to the barrel by wire and a Duralumin collar.
Périès now ordered that Gaston Dominici be brought to Digne. Meanwhile, in quite an extraordinary deviation from normal police procedure, Sébeille allowed Gustave and Clovis to sit together in a room at the law courts without a witness. Clovis had asked if they could stay there and avoid being questioned by the horde of journalists waiting outside the law courts. They also had grim forebodings about the reaction of the Dominici clan to their confessions. They stayed in Digne until the next morning.