On his return to Digne 16 November, Gaston was incarcerated in the Saint-Charles prison across the street from his birthplace. He was allowed to have as much of his wine as he wished, but his request to have his dog stay with him was denied. He offered his hand to the policeman who led him to his cell, but it was refused. In amazement he muttered: “Why refuse to shake hands? I am going to Elba!”1 On the following day his legal team assembled, clearly indicating that it was already in place and ready to act. Unfortunately Émile Pollak was involved in a serious motor accident one week later that put him out of action for a while and left him less energetic than he might otherwise have been.
Back at the Grand’ Terre the Dominici clan was divided into two factions. Clovis and his sister Germaine Perrin stood up for Zézé, while the rest of the family, under the histrionic leadership of Yvette, united against Clovis for his denunciation of Gaston and accused young Zézé of being a deceitful little liar. The weak-willed Gustave, shattered by his father’s harsh accusations, submitted meekly to his wife’s direction. He told any journalist willing to listen that one day the truth would come out, and everyone would be amazed.2 He continued to repeat this remark until his death in 1996. His prophecy was never fulfilled.
Examining Magistrate Roger Périès took a few days’ holiday on the Côte d’Azur before scrutinizing the dossier to decide whether the case should be forwarded to the court of appeal in Aix-en-Provence, where it would be examined by the prosecutor’s office. A number of loose ends needed to be tied up. The precise charges had to be made clear, it had to be determined whether there were any accomplices to the crime, and the inconsistencies and contradictions in the confessions had to be clarified. In short, his task was to go beyond the police investigation and complete a full judicial inquiry.
To this end Périès began by cross-examining Clovis once again on 24 November. He gave yet another slightly modified version of his father’s confession. This time he said that he could not remember exactly why his parents had been quarreling, but both of them were in such a towering rage that he had said that if they did not stop at once he would not sleep in the house any more. Thereupon they had calmed down, and his mother stalked off to bed. Gaston continued to hurl imprecations at his wife and said, “I’m not scared of anyone. I’ve bumped off three of ’em. I’ll bump off another if necessary.”3 Clovis had assumed that he meant the three English people and asked his father, “Is it you?” His father had replied, “Yes, but don’t tell anyone.”
Périès then asked why Clovis had lied about the carbine. He replied that he had initially tried to cover up as much as possible. He had told Gustave not to say anything either about having heard screams after the shots were fired or about having seen that the little girl was still alive. He had simply wanted to keep his brother out of trouble as initially he had believed that his brother Gustave was guilty, until his father confessed. Then his own obligation to keep silent was even harder, because when his brother was in prison, he had learned that his father was the murderer. He was naturally anxious to protect his family for as long as possible, but for how long?
Périès suspected that on 5 August 1952 Clovis might have helped Gustave rearrange the murder site from 7:00 and 7:15 a.m., between the time that Jean Ricard had walked by to catch the bus to Marseille and the arrival of the gendarmes. But Clovis had never been under suspicion, and not even his father in his wildest moments had ever accused him of the crime.
Périès next managed to glean some additional information from Gustave about the murder weapon. He said that he and Yvette had tidied up the shed in January 1951 shortly after his brother Aimé had married and left the Grand’ Terre. At that time Gustave had not seen the carbine, but he spotted it sometime later and had noticed that it had been patched up. He had seen the two magazines but not any loose cartridges. He had never held it in his hands. He assumed that his father had previously kept it hidden in his bedroom, but true to form his mother, Marie, claimed that she had never seen it.4 Clovis confirmed this story, saying that he had first seen the carbine sometime after Aimé had left home. He had taken a close look at it but, unlike his brother, had only seen one magazine. A slight problem with this account is that Joseph Chauve, the tinker from Marseille who testified that he had sold the Duralumin band used to bind the hand guard to the barrel, did not set up business in the area until 1952. Perhaps Gustave and Clovis had mistaken the date or maybe the repairs on the M1 had not yet been completed.
Paul Maillet also had further revelations to make. He had told a journalist from Paris, who had introduced himself as an official of the Ministry of Information, that on his release from prison Gustave had told him that he had “taken part in every phase of the drama.” When questioned by Commissioner Edmond Sébeille, Maillet said that he had asked Gustave where he was when he heard the screams on the night of the shootings.5 Gustave had then pointed in the direction of the alfalfa field. (Gustave, however, had said that he had not seen anything because the campsite was not visible from his bedroom window and that he had not left the house.) Maillet also stated that a truck driver named Gauthier had told him that the M1 belonged to Gustave. Gauthier refused to confirm this statement, saying that he was already ostracized for suggesting that he knew the provenance of the murder weapon. The commissioner did not seem to think that this piece of evidence was of any interest and did not bother to pursue it. If what Maillet had said was true, the question arises as to what Gustave was doing outside at the time of the murders. Did he just happen to go and look at the landslide at exactly the same time as the murders? Was his account of first having met his father around four o’clock in the morning a fabrication?
At Périès’s request, Sébeille went to Brillane on 7 December and questioned Émile Escudier, the grocer to whom Paul Maillet had confided the previous year. He assured the commissioner that Maillet had told him that Gustave had seen that Elizabeth was still alive and that he had persuaded him to tell the police. He also confirmed that Maillet had said that he had important additional information that he did not wish to divulge at that moment.6
Neither Périès nor Sébeille bothered to question Paul Maillet again until ten days later, so he had plenty of time to think things over and mend bridges with Gustave. Périès decided to question Gustave first. He insisted that he had not heard his father get up until four o’clock in the morning. He said that he had heard the screams but that he had seen nothing because he had stayed in his bedroom. Gustave stuck to his story when confronted with Paul Maillet, vigorously denying that he had ever said that he was in the alfalfa field at the time of the shootings.7 Maillet was nervously anxious and eager to leave because his wife was in labor. He told the waiting journalists that he was going to call his son Edmond—“like Sébeille.”
Maillet having left, Gustave continued with his story. He now claimed that Gaston’s dog, Mirza, had barked ceaselessly. This had kept him awake. In this new version of events, he said he had heard his father’s footsteps in the yard at about two o’clock. He went downstairs and found him standing near the well, considerably agitated, and without his cane. Gaston had said, “I’ve thrown it away.” Gustave imagined that he was referring to the carbine. Next Gustave went “in a state of panic” to have a look at Elizabeth. He noticed that she was still moving. He then went to the campsite but did not touch anything. When he got back to the farmhouse, his father had gone inside and the light was on in the kitchen. Gustave then went upstairs to tell Yvette what had happened. He did not go downstairs again until five o’clock. He insisted that he had not messed around among the Drummond’s possessions and that he had not looked for the cartridges, but he had gone to the shed and noticed that the carbine and the two magazines were missing. He concluded his statement by saying that Clovis had often told him of his suspicions about Paul Maillet.
Périès then sent for Clovis, who acknowledged that he had initially suspected Paul Maillet because on the morning of 5 August he had arrived late for work. Clovis admitted to having recognized the carbine and had gone immediately to the shed, where he noticed that it was missing. He had told Gustave, who then said that he knew it had already been removed. Until that moment the two brothers had maintained that they had first confided in one another at Christmastime in 1952.
The following day Périès made a surprise visit to the Grand’ Terre and asked Yvette to give her account of what Gustave had done during the night of the murders. She took some time to collect her thoughts before answering. She began by saying that it was “all too hard” and that for the last year she had been extremely tense and on edge. She insisted that she had always told the truth. Then she said she had heard the screams when the shots were fired, but they had not been very distinct because the dogs were barking. They kept barking for a long time. At about 1:30 she had given the baby a bottle. When the dogs started barking again, Gustave got up. She could not remember whether Gustave had switched on the bedside light when he got up. She did not hear any footsteps outside or anyone talking, but when Gustave went back to bed some ten or fifteen minutes later, he said he had found his father in the yard. Gaston had appeared to be completely done in, as if he were drunk. Gustave, who was extremely agitated, told his wife that his father had admitted to having killed someone. Yvette was terribly shocked. Gustave said, “I ask myself why he went down there. Why did he do that?”
Neither was able to sleep again, although Yvette dozed off once or twice. She said that she heard her father-in-law going downstairs, but she could not say exactly when. It must have been before five o’clock because at that time she heard the goats’ bells as he took his herd out to pasture.
Yvette stated categorically that Gustave had not told her that he had gone to the scene of the crime after he had spoken to his father. They got up at about five o’clock. Gustave went to tend his animals and then looked at the campsite. When he came back, he said that he had seen the little girl lying with a bloodstained face on the slope beyond the bridge. Yvette thought that he had not mentioned that the girl had moved until much later. She was unable to say how many times Gustave had returned to the scene of the crime.
She never told her mother-in-law what Gustave had said, and she always avoided talking about it with her father-in-law. She was not absolutely certain, but she thought Gustave had told her after she had returned from the market at Oraison on 5 August, the morning of the murders, that his father had used the American carbine. Although Gustave had said that the weapon was kept on a shelf in the shed, she had never seen it there. In response to a direct question, she said she could not remember when she had learned that Clovis knew who the murderer was. She added that her husband had not told her in detail what his father had told him in the yard, about an hour after the crime. He did not seem to know why his father had killed the English family.8
Yvette’s testimony was devastating for Gaston Dominici. It was a coherent account that confirmed the denunciations of his two sons Gustave and Clovis. She soon denied, however, that she had ever made or signed this statement. When confronted with the duly signed document, she claimed that she had made it under duress, with Périès threatening to arrest Gustave as an accomplice if she did not do so. This assertion is quite contrary to Périès’s nature and is absolutely out of the question. Furthermore, Yvette did not need a threat to realize that her husband was in a singularly precarious situation and that the slightest slip on her part could well land him in the most serious trouble. She had every reason to protect Gustave. She may not have had much affection for the man, but he was the father of her children and ran the farm. Were he to be charged with murder and probably guillotined, she would have been left fully dependent on her father-in-law.
Périès then showed Gustave his wife’s signed statement. He said that it was perfectly correct and that he had gone back to bed between 2:30 and 2:45 a.m. He had not told Yvette that he had been to the scene of the crime, and he did not want to tell her that he had seen the child move.
Marie was briefly questioned. She only repeated that she had heard nothing, seen nothing, and knew nothing.
Both Périès and Yvette had gotten what they wanted. She had managed to protect her husband while Périès had obtained valuable testimony that strengthened his case against Gaston Dominici. The examining magistrate was hesitant to pursue questioning Gustave, because that could well mean suspending the preparation of the case for trial. The res judicata before the magistrate’s court was final, so any new elements could only be introduced by reopening the case against Gaston. The public in France and Britain, fueled by the popular press in both countries, demanded that the case be solved after such a painfully lengthy investigation; thus, prolonging the case was the last thing that either Périès or Sébeille wanted.
At this point the public prosecutor in Digne waxed poetic about the context in which the crime had taken place. He portentously announced to the press:
Here we have poultry thieves, fights among drunks, poachers whom we consider to be monsters and who are treated without reason or pity. It is the country that demands that. A sun-scorched land, meagre pastures, lavender water distilleries where the alchemist’s fire burns. This is not rich soil, where everything grows easily, but a hard country: avaricious, charred and arid. Everything that grows in our poor communes has a particular taste and power: our thin red wine, our stunted wheat and our rare, short hay. Everything burns, everything is strongly scented and everything exudes passion: men, animals, and plants. It is under this sky, the purest in France, during these crystalline nights teeming with stars, across which travels an enormous moon, that the most primitive instincts demand satisfaction.9
In Jean Giono’s novel The Hussar on the Roof (1955), set in Basses-Alpes, Pauline says, “We have fallen among monsters!” Angelo replies, “No, we have fallen among something worse than that—decent people who have ceased to fear the gendarmes.” Here was another Provence, far removed from the quaint tourists’ idyll: dark, violent, passionate, and brutal, with charmingly stereotypical characters transformed into vicious psychopaths, pathological liars, and mean-spirited bumpkins. The horrors that lay behind the picturesque facade titillated Parisian newspaper readers and reaffirmed their vision of Provence as a primitive backwater that hardly could be considered part of civilized France.
Périès could not resist questioning Gustave again after Christmas.10 He altered his story once again. This time he admitted that he had gone to the campsite around 2:00 a.m., but he denied having met his father in the yard. Consequently, there was no question of Gaston’s having admitted committing the triple murder to his son that night. He repeated that the carbine was kept in the shed and that there were two magazines. Gustave now tried to pretend that it was Clovis who had first denounced their father, but after further grilling he had to admit that he had been pressured by the family to say so.
On 30 December Gaston was taken to the law courts, where he was confronted by his sons Gustave and Clovis. A crowd of journalists were waiting for him. He appeared to be relaxed and cheerful. He now told Périès that he had first got up at 4:00 a.m. to take his goats out to pasture and had returned at about 8:00 a.m. It was then that Yvette told him of “the drama.” Faustin Roure, who had returned to the Grand’ Terre at the same time, had witnessed this exchange between Gaston and his daughter-in-law.11 Gaston now claimed that the police had made him confess, saying if Gustave took the rap he would have his head sliced off, whereas he as an old man would merely get a prison sentence. He claimed to have been so exhausted that he had confessed rather than face the ordeal of further questioning the next day. He declared he had been so ridiculed during the reconstitution of the crime that he had tried to kill himself. When asked about his sons’ accusations, he muttered: “Let ’em come!”
Gustave was the first to confront his father. With his denunciation having been read out aloud, he was asked whether it was true. After a long silence, he emphatically denied it. Then, addressing his father, he said, “He only had to tell the truth.” Quite what he meant by this remains a mystery. The truth would be his undoing if he were guilty. If his father were innocent, where was this “truth” that could absolve him?
Gaston’s lawyers asked that Gustave be questioned once more about what he had done during that fatal night. Périès refused without giving any reason for his demurral.
Pollak then asked Gustave why he had denounced his father. He replied that he had been forced to do so by the police. Asked why he had now retracted his statement, he gave yet another of his enigmatic replies: “Because there are some witnesses who bear me out.” Neither the examining magistrate nor Gaston’s lawyers pursued this point. Gaston beamed with delight at his son’s retraction, but his mood changed abruptly when Clovis was brought into the room.
Clovis stuck to his story of a drunken Gaston’s row with Marie and his confession that he had “bumped off” the Drummonds. He had no answer when asked whether Gaston had told him what had led him to shoot the Drummonds. When he was reminded that he had given a different answer on previous occasions, he admitted that he had been told that Sir Jack had tried to wrench the gun from Gaston and that it had gone off by mistake. Asked about his father’s remark that he had killed three people and would kill a fourth if need be, Clovis said that he assumed that his mother, Marie, was the next one on the list.
Gaston went into a towering rage and denounced his son as a “fucking bastard,” a Judas, a bandit, a base liar, and a “Bazaine,” adding that “if there had been a weapon at the Grand’ Terre, it was you who brought it!”12 Clovis, who was all too familiar with such treatment by his father, muttered, “You’ve made us suffer far too long!” The defense lawyers took this as evidence that revenge for past injustices was Clovis’s motive for concocting an accusation against his father. Clovis was now sent home, while Gustave and his father remained at the law courts although kept apart. Having been given something to eat, Gaston was taken back to prison. He appeared to be in good cheer, remarking to one of the warders, “Young man, I’ll be back on my farm in the spring!” It is difficult to see quite what were the grounds for such optimism.
In the afternoon Gustave was questioned by Sébeille, but no record was kept—a fact that the defense team took as evidence of intimidation. Périès took over at six o’clock, and Gustave collapsed, claiming that he had been incapable of denouncing his father face to face. He asked that he not have to go through such an ordeal ever again. Périès, imagining that Gustave was in a cooperative mood, tried to get him to admit that he was outside at the time of the crime and that he had seen his father. Gustave flatly denied that he had been in the alfalfa field during the shootings. Getting nowhere and possibly attempting to mollify him, Périès offered Gustave a taxi to take him home.
Despite having reverted to his original denunciation of his father and repeating it on numerous occasions, Gustave proclaimed his father’s innocence on every possible subsequent occasion. On 19 January he posted a letter, written on 10 January, to his father, who had been moved to Les Baumettes prison in Marseille for psychiatric evaluation:
Dear Dad,
please excuse me, but I am suffering terribly. I think of you more than ever and I promise you to be strong and to tell the truth, even in the face of threats. The truth must come to light.
Périès pointed out on 4 February that Gustave hereby admitted that he had previously not told the truth and that he had been subjected to unspecified threats. Did they come from within the family, or were they from the police?13
Gustave replied that the purpose of the letter was to tell his father how sorry he was that he had falsely accused him. He now told Périès that he knew absolutely nothing about the circumstances of the crime. Also, he claimed that his father had never told him that he had murdered the Drummond family. He stated categorically that he had seen the carbine for the very first time on 6 August 1952, when Commissioner Sébeille showed it to him.
He now gave yet another version of the night of 4–5 August 1952. He had gone to bed at eleven o’clock but had woken up half an hour later when a motorcycle stopped at the farmhouse. Then he fell asleep again, only to be woken by several shots. He heard screams in the distance, and the dogs began to bark. He realized that the shots did not come from a hunter but were from either a revolver or an army weapon. He and Yvette speculated as to what might have happened, and he was unable to get back to sleep. He heard nothing inside the house until his father got up at four o’clock, but he had heard a couple of cars pass by the farm about a quarter of an hour after the shooting. There were others, but much later.
Gustave said he got up at about five o’clock, drank a cup of coffee, gave the horse some fodder, and then went to look at the landslide. He had not been able to decide on which side of the Grand’ Terre the shots had been fired. Was it toward Peyruis or in the direction of the Lurs railway station? Then he thought perhaps the English family had been attacked. To settle his curiosity, he went to the campsite but did not see anything unusual. There was a bit of a mess around the car, but that was all. It was only after he had crossed the bridge across the railway that he saw the little girl. Her arm moved. He then went back to have another look at the campsite. Just as he reached the main road, a motorcycle passed. Then he decided to go back to the farmhouse, walking along the side of the road. At that moment Olivier appeared, and he flagged him down.
Disregarding the fact that Gustave could not have seen Elizabeth’s body without walking deliberately across the path and peering down the slope toward the river, Périès asked him to elaborate on the accusations he had made in his letter dated 10 January to his father about the threats the police had made to him. He reassured Périès that the examining magistrate had always treated him correctly and that he was merely complaining about the way the police had treated him on 12 and 13 November 1953, during the reconstruction of the crime scene and his father’s arrest. He had only told the same story to Périès that the police had extracted from him by extreme measures. Gustave had failed to share that detail because he was frightened of being sent to prison were he to contradict himself. He ended on a pitiable note by telling Périès that he had always treated him “like a brother.”
Gustave thus retracted all his previous statements doubtless for fear of his father, as well as due to intense pressure from his wife and the Dominici clan. He had reverted to his original story. His strategy, whether conscious or not, was to introduce some fresh piece of evidence that might lead to further confusion. During this session he had suggested that a revolver might have been fired that night and that two cars had passed by shortly after the shootings. This was something that he had previously specifically denied. Such tactics were frustrating both for the police and Gaston’s defense team. As Pollak said despairingly, “Amidst this hodgepodge of lies, contradictions, retractions and telling silences concocted by the clan, which accumulated during the months of enquiry, there were precious few grains of truth.”14
With Gustave having retracted his accusations against his father, Périès decided to go ahead and confront him that same day with Clovis, who doggedly stuck to his story. Périès began this tense session by telling Clovis that his brother, contrary to his previous statements, now claimed to know absolutely nothing about the crime perpetrated against the Drummond family. He now insisted that his father had never admitted to the murders and that he had never known about the existence of an American carbine at the Grand’ Terre.
Clovis replied that part of the Dominici family was taking Gustave for a ride. Having himself received a death threat from his brother Gaston, Clovis was hardly surprised that Gustave had changed his tune. He repeated his statement that when he had told him that the carbine was no longer in the shed, Gustave had said that he had already noticed that it was missing. Clovis had then asked him whether he had used it to commit the crime. Gustave replied that he had not.
Questioned on this point, Gustave confirmed what his brother had said, whereupon Périès pointed out that only moments earlier he had denied knowing about the carbine before 6 August 1952. Gustave was trapped. He had to admit that he had seen the weapon in the shed, as he had shown to the police on 16 November, but asserted that he had only seen it once, shortly after his brother Aimé married and left the family home.15 Then Périès reminded Gustave that in a previous statement he had said that he had first seen the weapon in early 1952 but that Aimé was married in December 1950. Gustave was unable to explain this discrepancy. In reply to another question he said that he had no doubt that Clovis suspected him of the murders. Clovis interjected that when he had asked him whether he was involved in the shootings, Gustave had replied that their father had acted alone and had confessed to Gustave in the early morning of 5 August as he was setting out to take his goats to pasture. Clovis claimed that he had not taken any notice of this, because he could not imagine that the old man could possibly have committed such a terrible crime. However, at heart he still believed that Gustave was guilty. His suspicions did not dissipate until his father told him that he indeed had shot all three of the Drummonds.
Gustave now felt obliged to retract the statements he had made earlier to the effect that his father had never spoken to him of his guilt. He stated that he should have told Clovis that his father had admitted to the crime “that very day.” It was not until the conversation at Saint-Pons, shortly after he was released from prison, that he had heard that their father had made a similar admission to Clovis. When Périès asked why he had lied earlier that day, Gustave simply shrugged his shoulders.
Périès was an exceptionally self-effacing and tolerant man, but he was rapidly losing patience with Gustave and decided to talk to him alone. After Clovis left the room, Périès gave Gustave an unaccustomedly harsh dressing down: “Your behaviour in this affair has been absolutely unacceptable. Even if the contradictions and denials might possibly be considered admissible before 15 November last, they certainly are not now that your father has admitted that he murdered the Drummond family.”16 He pointed out that on 13 November Gustave had stated that his father had admitted to the crime, but at first he had denied having ever seen the carbine. He had said the opposite the next day and then retracted once again by stating that he had only seen the gun once or twice shortly before 5 August 1952. On 5 December 1953 he had claimed that his father had confessed to the crime at four o’clock in the morning of 5 August 1953. After a confrontation with Paul Maillet on 17 December, he had changed his story, saying that his father’s confession was made at two o’clock in the morning. This point he confirmed on 28 December, only to retract it two days later when confronted by his father. Later that same day he had taken it all back once more, claiming that he was frightened of accusing his father to his face. Today he had started by saying he knew nothing of the circumstances surrounding the crime and that his father had never confessed to him. As soon as Clovis entered the room, however, he went back to the original version of his story.
Gustave replied that since his father’s arrest his family had continuously harassed him. His brothers, sisters, and sisters-in-law simply refused to believe that his father could have possibly committed such a crime, and they took him to task for having denounced him to the police. He had repeatedly told them that his father had confessed to him at two o’clock in the morning of 5 August 1952, about an hour after the shootings. They simply did not believe him. Gustave said that he was desperate and did not know what to do. He had written to his father only to cheer him up. Gaston was, after all, his father. He had worked all his life for the family. For this reason Gustave was incapable of repeating what his father had said that morning in his presence.
Périès decided to get back to the question of the carbine. He pointed out that when questioned at the law courts in Digne on 15 November 1953, Gustave had stated that it had been at the Grand’ Terre ever since some American troops passed by during the war. Gustave claimed that this was simply speculation on his part since he was away from home at the time on a mission with the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans Français. He repeated that he had only seen it once, and that was shortly after Aimé’s marriage in December 1950, when they cleaned the shed after his departure from the Grand’ Terre. No other member of the Dominici clan, apart from Clovis, had known of its existence. Gustave had never dared ask his father about the weapon for fear of getting yet another brutal tongue-lashing. Clovis had said that there was one magazine, but he had seen two. When Périès asked Gustave which of his family members had dictated the letter he had written to his father, he adamantly replied that it was all on his own initiative. Exhausted after this long and frustrating encounter, Périès let Gustave go home.
Lucien Tardieu questioned Aimé Dominici. Although he remembered having seen the Americans visit the farm, he stated he had never seen the weapon.
Gustave was again cross-examined on 23 February. Périès suggested that Gustave had told his family that he had only denounced his father after he had heard that Clovis had already done so.17 Gustave eagerly took up this suggestion, saying that he had first heard of his father’s guilt from Clovis. Périès pointed out that shortly after Gaston’s arrest, Gustave had testified that Gaston had confessed to him at two o’clock in the morning of 5 August 1952 and that he had told the entire family about it. Gustave, repeating what he had said less than three weeks previously, replied that a few days after his release from prison in November 1952, he had told his family what his father had said. No one believed him. His father claimed that he was innocent, and Gustave’s sisters all told him to stop accusing him. Gustave claimed to have asked himself whether his father could have possibly committed such a terrible crime and whether Gaston’s confession was perhaps all a vivid fantasy induced by his drunken state. Gustave’s testimony on this point, as in many other instances, varied widely. Sometimes his father was represented as calm and collected, at other times he was highly nervous and agitated, and now he was drunk. Périès asked why Gustave continued to accuse Gaston although he repeatedly insisted on his innocence. He did not reply directly; instead, he referred to the carbine, which all the rest of the Dominici clan claimed never to have seen. In yet another version of the story, he now maintained that when he had seen it in the shed some three to six months before the crime, he had asked himself how it could have got there but that he never asked anyone about it.
With Gaston in prison, the Grand’ Terre was run by Yvette’s father, François Barth. Quite why this was necessary is not immediately apparent. On the one hand, Gustave was admittedly something of a caricature figure—a feebleminded, mendacious, and pigheaded peasant with a blank expression and an oafish smile who was completely under the influence of a strong-willed and attractive wife. On the other hand, as the Grand’ Terre was a very small farm, there was not much to do during the winter months. Barth was every bit the authoritarian Gaston was. He was not only a militant communist with connections throughout the area but also a man of integrity and a competent administrator. It was said that the party faithful frequently held meetings at the farm, but nothing is known of what transpired.18
Clovis had written to Barth at the end of January, asking him to do what he could to persuade Gustave not to withdraw his denunciation of his father. He should blame “the old scoundrel” for all “the wrongs he has made us suffer.” It is indeed surprising that Clovis should have written such a letter to Barth, who was one of the most outspoken champions of Gaston’s innocence. When Périès questioned him on this score on 4 February, Clovis replied that he feared that Yvette and his sisters, by asserting that Gaston was innocent, were pointing the finger at Gustave whether they realized it or not. Clovis insisted that Gustave would be absolutely incapable of committing such a crime, and he wanted to warn Barth that he was putting his son-in-law in serious danger.19 Périès reminded Clovis that Gustave had spoken to him of his father’s guilt a couple of days after the murders, and Clovis made the astonishing reply that he had forgotten “that detail.” Périès was scandalized by this inappropriate remark, which Clovis tried to explain away by saying that at that time he had imagined that Gustave had committed the crime. The examining magistrate did not ask why that although he had once suspected his brother, he now thought Gustave was temperamentally incapable of perpetrating such a violent crime.
Clovis said that he had written the letter to Barth at his wife’s prompting but that he was entirely responsible for its contents. He had signed it and taken it to the post office. Périès did not ask why he had written to Barth rather than going to talk to him. After all he was Yvette’s father, lived only a few miles away, and was a fellow member of the Communist Party.
Gaston’s daughter Clotilde Araman was the next person Périès questioned.20 She staunchly upheld her father’s innocence. She had written a letter to Gaston dated 25 November that ended with this enigmatic phrase: “You have already arrested an assassin and are definitely about to arrest a second, but unfortunately for you that would bring you too many laurels.” Périès asked her what she meant by this. She replied that it was a reference to the role Gaston had played in arresting the bandit, Luigi Gualdi, in 1923.21 Périès then asked her whether Gaston was in a position to secure the arrest of the Drummonds’ murderer. She replied, “If he had been able to do so.” She went on to say that her sister Germaine Perrin and her brother Clovis were plotting against their father out of sheer spite.
Making little sense of Clotilde’s perplexing answers, Périès decided to ask Gaston about the letter he had written in response to his daughter. He began by asking what he meant when he wrote: “Misfortunes always come from the same direction.” Gaston leaned forward and, almost whispering, replied, “I’ve been thinking. I have the impression that my grandson Roger [Zézé] Perrin might be the assassin. He’s a con artist.”22
Périès, who was unable to get Gaston to say anything further on the subject, decided to question Zézé Perrin.23 He was no more able to make sense of young Perrin’s web of lies, contradictions, and trickery than had Sébeille and the police beforehand. However, no one felt that Zézé’s almost pathological inability to tell the truth was due to his involvement in the crime.
During his earlier questioning of Clovis regarding his letter to Barth, Périès had told him that his father had said that the carbine belonged to him and that he had perhaps lent it to Zézé Perrin.24 Clovis denied this categorically, and Périès never returned to this line of questioning.
On 9 February, at the request of Gaston Dominici’s defense team, Périès had ordered an examination of all the weapons that the Dominici family possessed to compare the oil used in them with that in the M1. Clovis’s and the Perrins’ weapons were requisitioned along with those at the Grand’ Terre. Maillet’s guns were not deemed to be of interest. The report from the police laboratory delivered on 9 March showed that there was no similarity between the oils used in the M1 and Roger Perrin’s two 16-gauge shotguns, but two of Clovis’s three weapons had traces of a similar type.
Armed with this information, Périès went to visit Clovis, who said that he only used olive oil of his own making to lubricate his guns. According to Périès’s notes, Clovis had used oil from the 1953 harvest on his guns, but there was none left. Périès took a sample of the 1954 oil with him. (Clearly there is a mistake here in the record. Olive oil is pressed in the autumn, but these tests were made in February or March.) The experts had difficulty in analyzing the oil in the Rock-Ola, because it had been in the water for several hours. It was therefore not possible to say with absolute certainty whether it was identical with what Clovis used. The prosecution did not pursue the matter, possibly because it might well have weakened their case against Gaston. But the defense team also did not see fit to refer to this piece of evidence. Clovis had not been at the Grand’ Terre the night of the murders and was never a suspect.
Périès visited Gaston in his cell at Les Baumettes on 21 April for a final interrogation. He found Gaston calm and collected. He was confident that he would be acquitted and that he would soon return to the Grand’ Terre in glory, just as his hero Napoleon had returned from Elba. He understandably brushed aside the examining magistrate’s reference to an incident in 1897 when he had hit a neighbor viciously over the head, leaving him bedridden for days, and another fight he had had with neighbors in 1925.
The dossier was formally closed on 27 April 1954 and sent to the chamber of indictment at the court of appeal in Aix-en-Provence, which was to decide whether the case should go to trial in an assize court before a jury.
Three jurists from the court of appeal presided over a hearing in private at which both the prosecution and the defense presented their arguments. Émile Pollak, who led the defense team, realized he had little chance of securing a dismissal at this stage. He felt his only hope was to convince a jury of his client’s innocence. Nevertheless, he made a desperate attempt to get the case dismissed on procedural grounds. In his submission to the court, he argued that the law of 8 December 1897 required that a suspect be indicted as soon as the charges against him were sufficient. Once indicted the accused had the right to have an attorney present when being questioned. Gaston Dominici should therefore have been indicted before the reconstruction of the crime on 16 November so that he would then have benefited from legal advice during the reenactment of the crime.
At the court of appeal Gaston’s case was handled by the specialist lawyer André Mayer, who argued along lines suggested by Pollak. He insisted that since the reconstruction added nothing new, the indictment should have been made against Gaston beforehand. He also pointed out that when Gaston was interrogated for the last time, no one mentioned to him that the dossier had been given to his lawyers. In addition, there was no evidence that the clerk of the court had formally notified the defense team of the writ of committal. The appeal judge, Maurice Patin, was a distinguished expert in penal law known for his passionate defense of civil liberties. He conceded these last two points but insisted that Périès’s delay in indicting Gaston was due to caution rather than a deliberate attempt to deny the suspect of his rights.
The court ruled that Périès was guilty of a minor infraction of the 1897 law and therefore set aside Gaston’s final confession and the writ of committal. These two instruments were sent to the court in Grenoble for revision. The net result of this action was a further postponement of the trial. This reversion to a higher court gave Gaston a brief respite from prison. He traveled to the Dauphiné capital at public expense. It was a welcome change of scenery.25 Shortly after his return to prison in Digne, he was informed that his trial had been set for 17 November 1954.