Having been given the go-ahead, Pierre Carrias reluctantly agreed that as a first step he would ask his distinguished colleague in Marseille Jacques Batigne to interview Gaston Dominici once again in Les Baumettes. Batigne was a controversial jurist who had been involved in a number of widely publicized cases. He was known for being ruthless with the accused and for refusing to entertain any suggestions that the police might have used somewhat rough methods of extracting confessions. In 1957 he would become notorious for his role in covering up the violent methods that the French police used against Algerian detainees in Paris. Such investigations would be boosted by the publication of both Henri Alleg’s book La Question and Pierre Vidal-Naquet’s revelations concerning the army’s use of torture against the National Liberation Front in Algeria.
Batigne’s mission was pointless. He had not been shown the dossier. He had gleaned all he knew about the case from the press. Did he really imagine that he would be able to uncover a truth that had been so skillfully concealed for thirty months in the course of a few short interviews and without detailed background information?
Gaston was in the prison hospital recovering from severe gastrointestinal problems. According to prison rules his lawyers were not allowed to visit him while he was in the prison ward, but Émile Pollak and Pierre Charrier asked for permission to have him examined by Professor Carcassonne, an eminent local physician from the University of Marseille. Both lawyers were convinced that Gaston had been poisoned in an attempt to put an end to the entire case. They therefore appealed to the minister of justice to order an examination of the prison’s food. This request was futile, because there was no possible way of analyzing the food Gaston had eaten in the previous few days, but the minister did give the lawyers special permission to visit their client in the hospital.
They found him much recovered and in relatively good spirits but repeating his conviction that he had been poisoned. He told his lawyers that all he needed was some decent olive oil, and he would soon be well again. The next day he was much better, but the day after he had a severe relapse and developed a high fever. The prison doctor, having consulted with the prison surgeon, agreed that Professor Carcassonne should be allowed to examine their client. It seemed as if an operation was indicated, but once again the old man began to recover. A bulletin was issued indicating that Gaston was suffering from a severe bilious attack due to food poisoning. His recovery was relatively swift, but he had lost a few pounds and look very thin and weak. To dramatize Gaston’s sickness, his lawyers arranged for his daughters Augusta Caillat and Clotilde Araman along with Gustave Dominici and Clément Caillat to come to Marseille. Gaston initially refused to allow any member of the Dominici clan to visit him, other than his granddaughter Marie-Claude and nephew Léon. He claimed the others were content to see him rot in prison.
Carrias still ordered Gustave and Yvette to confront Gaston at Les Baumettes under Batigne’s supervision. The meeting took place during the morning of 8 March. Gaston was much recovered but still weak. Batigne listened to the stories of Gaston, Gustave, and Yvette, but hardly surprising he learned nothing new. Both Gustave and Yvette flatly denied having had the conversation concerning the jewelry that his father claimed to have overheard. Gustave repeated the statement that he had made in court: he knew nothing about the murders until five o’clock in the morning of 5 August. Gaston accused Gustave of wanting to send him to his death and claimed that he was no longer his son. He refused to bid him good-bye. Somewhat surprising, Gustave and Yvette’s lawyer, Raoul Bottaï, said that the meeting had been “infinitely less sensational than might have been expected.” According to him Gaston had made no accusations, and the atmosphere was “very calm, even touching.”1
Carrias, having received a report on this worthless encounter the following day, contacted Director General of the Judicial Police Henry Castaing and asked him to send Charles Chenevier and Charles Gillard to Digne to pursue the matter further. The two commissioners were hardly entranced by the new examining magistrate’s actions. They had learned from the press and not through official channels that Batigne had interviewed the Dominicis. They considered this move would further compromise their investigation.2
Chenevier and Gillard met Carrias for the first time on 16 March 1955. The two commissioners gave the same account of their views on the case that they had previously given to two successive ministers of justice: they argued in favor of a commission of inquiry. Their main point was that there was a strong suspicion that Gustave had been somehow involved. There was evidence that he had been outside at the time of the murders, and the persistent lying of Yvette, Zézé, and Gustave himself only made sense as an attempt to conceal the truth. The commissioners added another piece of information that they had recently acquired. While the case was still in front of the court of appeal, they had undertaken further investigations and had interviewed one Dr. Morin in Nice. He had made a statement to the Nice police in the Dominicis’ defense. He was a hunter who in 1951 had camped at the Grand’ Terre. He had met Gustave, who asked him to move his tent to a different spot nearer to the Grand’ Terre and then invited him to join in some nighttime poaching. Afterward he was invited back the next year to hunt wild boar. Having been treated in a friendly manner by the Dominicis, he was outraged that the press was presenting them as hostile to campers.
Morin had been questioned by Edmond Sébeille and Lucien Tardieu during the initial investigation, but Sébeille had felt that Morin’s memory was so vague that little could be made of his testimony. Chenevier thought that since hunters liked to talk about guns, Morin might have something to say about the Rock-Ola. Much to his surprise, Morin announced that he had probably seen it and that it was kept on a shelf in a shed near the farmhouse.
Morin’s testimony presented certain problems. His recollections of the gun when he had first been shown photographs of the weapon in 1952 were very hazy, but in 1955 he no longer had any doubts. Initially he had said that the weapon was kept in a cellar; later he had said it was in a shed. There were also some discrepancies between his different versions of where this cellar, or shed, was in relation to the farmhouse.
Carrias, who clearly resented the presence of these Parisian luminaries and who felt that the whole idea of a new investigation against an “Unknown” (or “X”) was an insult to the Provençal police, dismissed Chenevier and Gillard with the assurance that he would think the matter over. His stonewalling and his intent on defending the original dossier were widely seen in the press as part of a deliberate cover-up and an attempt to bury the Dominici affair.3 In fact, his hands were tied by the court of appeal in Aix-en-Provence, as it saw no reason to open a new investigation. Carrias had ample justification for his anger at the attitude of the press, whose sensational reporting had seriously compromised the original investigation, the trial, and the subsequent inquiries. He was determined to keep the press at bay, a tactic that was taken as further evidence of a cover-up.
It was not until 15 June that Carrias recalled the two commissioners to Digne to discuss how they should approach a collaborative effort to satisfy the justice minister’s request for a new investigation. Chenevier presented the judge with a detailed dossier of the witnesses he wished to see and the line of questioning he intended to adopt. This amounted to a list of 420 questions.4 To speed up the proceedings he also had appointed two assistants. Trampling on Provençal sensibilities, he announced that he intended to work closely with Capt. Henri Albert, head of the Forcalquier gendarmerie. Chenevier implied that Albert was the only man who, during the original investigation, had shown any signs of professional competence.
Carrias listened in what Chenevier imagined was silent approval, but the next day he haughtily proclaimed that the commissioner’s proposals were unacceptable on the grounds they amounted in effect to a reopening of the entire affair. Furthermore, he was constrained by the criminal section of the court of appeals in Aix-en-Provence that would not permit the granting of full rogatory competence to question whomever he wished. Carrias therefore felt obliged to reconsider the commissioners’ request. He then argued that a verdict had been reached; therefore, the commission should limit itself to the examination of Gaston’s recent statements. Sébeille’s investigation, the trial, and the verdict were not to be put in question. Chenevier argued that such a piecemeal approach would lead to nothing. Carrias played a waiting game, saying that he needed more time to consider this difficult matter.
Gaston Dominici’s nephew Léon refused to abandon the attempt to secure a retrial. As a first step he tried to see what could be done to counter Carrias’s attempts to frustrate the Chenevier inquiry. To this effect he appealed to Marcel Héraud, bâtonnier (primus inter pares) of the Paris bar, who sought the advice of the era’s probably most brilliant and certainly most expensive lawyer in Paris, René Floriot, whose law firm was known as the “Floriot Factory.”5 Héraud arranged for Léon to meet the great man.
Léon waited anxiously in the firm’s minute waiting room with its sumptuous oriental carpets in the Avenue Hoche before being shown into the lawyer’s gigantic office, which was in a vast rotunda with Louis XVI furniture and adorned with the works of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Édouard Manet, and Eugène Delacroix. A statue of the great jurist in a toga was on prominent display. Floriot sat amid this splendor, like the figure of a god in a sacred place of worship. Léon was ensconced in an armchair while a liveried butler offered him his choice of a wide range of drinks.
For the next two hours Floriot paced up and down, a heavily diluted whiskey and soda in his hand, while he listened to Léon’s account of the case. At first he was disinclined to become involved, but finally he agreed to help, provided that Gaston Dominici personally asked him to do so. Héraud met Floriot again briefly that evening at Orly Airport shortly before the latter left for Algiers.
Héraud held a press conference on Monday morning. Such was his confidence in Floriot that he boldly announced that the inquiry would go ahead and that Carrias would give Chenevier and Gillard full rogatory authority. He was somewhat annoyed to find Léon waiting outside the room as the journalists left. He told him that he should always have his lawyers with him on any such occasion. For their part Pollak and Charrier disapproved strongly of Léon’s attempt to get the entire Dominici clan declared innocent, almost certainly because were he successful, rumors of a communist assassination plot would once again circulate.
Léon was not discouraged. During the final two days of his visit to Paris, he published two articles in which he tried to prove that Gustave could not possibly have moved Lady Drummond’s body. The argument revolved on a spurious question of the height of the grass in August. He somehow imagined that if he could prove Gustave was innocent, then he would also exonerate his uncle. By the same token he believed that if he could find the reason why Gustave had obviously lied about his own actions, then he would also be able to explain why Gustave had lied about his father.
Floriot ignored this nonsense but quickly went into action. On his return from Algiers he went to see Chenevier and Gillard and gained access to the dossier. On Monday, 18 July, four days after Léon returned to Provence, Floriot received a scrap of lined paper containing Gaston’s handwritten request that he act on his behalf. His nephew had dictated it to him. Floriot now used his considerable influence behind the scenes to ensure that Chenevier and Gillard were eventually given rogatory power.
Floriot was convinced that Gaston was innocent.6 His main reason for thinking so was that he considered Gaston’s confession a pack of lies. He could not have watched Lady Drummond undressing because she did not undress. Her body was fully clothed. He could not have talked to her because she knew no French and he no English. The wound on Sir Jack’s hand manifestly did not come from a bullet. There was no burning or any trace of powder on the wound. He accepted the dubious argument that the condition of Elizabeth’s feet indicated that she had not run away, so Gaston’s claim that she had was clearly false. Gaston also claimed to have killed her with one blow to the back of the head, but she had received two in the face. He also accepted Gaston’s statement that he had confessed to save his family’s honor.
Héraud traveled to Provence to confront the magistrates on the Aix bench. He emerged from the meeting in a towering rage, complaining that countless objections had been raised to a fresh inquiry. The magistrates announced that they refused to accept Chenevier and Gillard, but they would be prepared to accept almost anyone else. Héraud counterattacked by suggesting that they did not want to have Chenevier and Gillard on the case because they knew things that might compromise them.
A further complication arose on 13 July, when Marcel Héraud went on the attack again and published an article in which he described a visit he had made to a “senior magistrate” in Aix-en-Provence, who was generally considered to be the chief prosecutor Orsatelli. He had expressed his indignation that the minister of justice had seen fit to send two police commissioners to reexamine the Dominici case. This, he claimed, implied the minister’s lack of trust in the court’s proceedings and verdict. The prosecutor’s office, the magistracy, and the courts—all were said to be livid that an examining magistrate had been appointed to investigate complicity in the crime. Carrias had told Héraud that he would accept anyone other than Chenevier and Gillard, to which Héraud replied that public opinion would react unfavorably to such a substitution, because it would seem that the two commissioners knew something that the Provençal authorities did not want revealed.
This ploy was a shocking breech of confidence and of normal practice, but it had an effect. One week later Carrias granted Chenevier and Gillard their rogatory commission but strictly limited it to discovering what Gustave Dominici and Zézé Perrin had done during the night of 4–5 August 1952. The Parisians were furious. All they had achieved after seven months of stonewalling was the right to examine the cases of two witnesses, both of whom were notorious liars. A further complication arose when Gustave and Yvette claimed that Examining Magistrate Roger Périès had changed the records by giving a false account of his questioning of them. This was hardly the basis for a serious investigation of a complex case.
Minister of Justice Robert Schuman had told the Aix magistrates that Chenevier and Gillard were to conduct a fully independent investigation and that they should not have any contact with the police and gendarmes who had been involved in the Dominici case. Should the two policemen decide there was a case for a judicial inquiry, they were to report directly to the ministry. The Aix magistrates had no alternative but to accept these highly unusual conditions. At long last, on 19 July 1955 Pierre Carrias reluctantly granted Chenevier and Gillard permission to collect testimony. The Dominici case could thus be reopened without necessitating an annulment of the sentence, which had simply been suspended.7
A fierce campaign was now fought in the press. On one side were those who argued that there had to be serious reasons to overturn a verdict that had been reached by due process and that Chenevier’s mission was a deliberate insult by arrogant Parisians who questioned the professional competence of their Provençal colleagues. On the other side were those who argued that the whole case had been badly bungled and that the authorities in Digne, Aix-en-Provence, and Marseille were desperately trying to defend a wholly inadequate dossier. There was also increasing suspicion that others were involved in the crime. In such an atmosphere it was difficult to see how Chenevier would be able to achieve much, unless attitudes on both sides changed significantly. The atmosphere had become further charged with Détective’s publication of a series of articles by Marcel Montarron, who had interviewed the seven jurors in the Dominici trial. Although under French law jurors were permitted to ask questions during the trial, they had remained silent throughout. Now they came under fire for having returned a false judgment.8
Marcel-Jean Bernard, a peasant from Saumane, said that he had been disgusted by the number of barefaced lies and had not been persuaded by the arguments of Dominici’s lawyers. He said that he and his fellow jurors were simple men, not lawyers, who were merely asked to answer yes or no. He had some doubts about whether Gaston had killed Elizabeth but none over the other two murders.
Jules Martin farmed at Saint-Tulle, where Gaston’s daughter Augusta Caillat lived. He said that he and his fellow jurors would be relieved if the Parisian policemen could clarify a number of obscure points and bring the guilty to justice.
Marcel Aillaud, a peasant from Villemus, admitted that a number of issues had not been cleared up, but he was convinced that Gaston was involved in the first two murders. If there were accomplices, then he felt it was right to go after them.
Louis Allaincourt, a retired butcher from Château-Arnoux, had been convinced by the photographs taken during the reconstruction of the murders. He also said it would be a relief if any accomplices were found.
Paul Auzet, a peasant from Dombes, lived in a remote spot high in the mountains, where he cultivated lavender and tended his herd of goats. He said that he had been harassed for having been on the jury and announced that he wanted to have nothing to do with the new inquiry.
Télamon Sube, a peasant from Pierrerue, knew Gaston; therefore, he should have been excluded from the jury. He hoped that the full truth would be revealed. He was aware of Gaston’s vile temper and violent disposition and had no doubt that he was guilty. Sube’s sympathy lay with “the Sardine,” whose life with Gaston had been “a Calvary.”9
Jules Vendre, a butcher from Colmar-les-Alpes, washed his hands of the whole affair. He doubted that Chenevier’s inquiry would reveal anything at all because the Dominicis were a bunch of congenital liars.
Feathers were ruffled in July when it was revealed that Orson Welles was making a documentary film on the Dominici affair for his TV series Around the World with Orson Welles. Minister for Industry and Commerce André Morice announced that Welles had not applied for official permission to make his film and was thus liable for prosecution. He would not permit the film to be exported from France without ministerial approval. Marcel Massot, the Gaullist deputy from the Basses-Alpes, had protested vigorously in the name of the local population about the making of the film. Massot had written to the minister in a tone of indignant outrage: “It would be scandalous if the publicity given to this sad affair were prolonged outside France by the cinema or television. . . . I am convinced that you will agree with me that, both from moral considerations and from the point of view of French propaganda, the exportation of such a film should not be tolerated.”10 Orson Welles managed to make his film, but it was a hasty and unsatisfactory collage of interviews with some of the protagonists that sheds precious little light on the affair. The film was a modest success in America but was banned in France.11
Commissioners Chenevier and Gillard were welcomed to Digne by Deputy Prosecutor Louis Pagès’s somewhat ambiguous statement to the press that was published on the eve of their questioning of Gustave and Yvette. It read:
We have now reached an important stage in the development of the new enquiry, to be conducted by the examining magistrate and the police officers. The facts that we have already collected underline the value of the previous work done by Commissioner Sébeille as well as the Examining Magistrate Périès, without whose diligence, perseverance and devotion to duty nothing we have done and shall do could ever have been or be achieved.
Having received the advice of the lawyers and of all those involved in the case, it seemed to us to be important that before we begin the second part of our investigations, we should also hear those involved in the first inquiry, because we are determined not to overlook any of the elucidations that might be provided to whatever questions might be raised. There is a great deal of useful information available on the behavior of various people, which shows once again how conscientiously this drama and its protagonists have been studied.
We in turn shall not fail to learn from them so as to conduct our inquiry and reach a conclusion, the nature of which discretion forbids us to make any prediction.12
This remarkable paean to the work of Sébeille and Périès, the belittling of Chenevier and Gillard, and the implied assertion of Gaston Dominici’s sole guilt was all the more remarkable because Carrias had given Chenevier instructions to maintain strict professional discretion and not to talk to the press. Carrias did not want the whole inquiry to be discussed in an open forum.
Regardless of the attitude of the authorities in Digne and Aix, Chenevier conducted a three-hour grilling of Gustave while his colleague, Gillard, questioned Yvette. Both interviews amounted to little effect beyond establishing beyond all doubt that they were both consummate liars. Nevertheless, Chenevier remained optimistic. Before returning to Paris on 12 August to await the outcome of Gustave and Yvette’s charges against Périès, Chenevier put a bold face on the affair by announcing to the press that he was sure that his investigation would bring “positive results.”13
However, Carrias did not give Chenevier somewhat extended rogatory powers until 1 October. Due procedure required that for Chenevier and Gillard to interrogate Gaston, a magistrate had to act as an intermediary. Jacques Batigne was chosen simply because he had already visited Gaston in Les Baumettes in March. They overlooked the fact that Batigne had been remarkably unsuccessful in obtaining any fresh information and that he had still not bothered to examine the dossier.
Batigne found Gaston no longer dressed in a prison uniform but in his old clothes and his trademark hat. His room look more like a hospital ward than a prison cell. When Batigne commented that he looked well and recovered from his illness, Gaston replied that his impression was a mistaken. After further attempts to humor him, Batigne suddenly said that he had a low opinion of Gustave’s character, whereupon Gaston heartily agreed. In response to a series of questions, Gaston stuck to his story that he had heard Gustave and Yvette discussing the crime. He remained calm when Batigne told him that his colleague in Digne had conducted a series of experiments that indicated that he could not possibly have eavesdropped on his son and daughter-in-law. Gaston simply muttered that they were unaware that he was listening.
When Batigne asked what Gustave and Zézé had done during the night of the murders, Gaston replied he knew nothing. If he knew anything, he would be more than willing to talk. He denied having seen either Gustave or Zézé in the alfalfa field. He had not seen Zézé carrying the child. How could he have seen anything? He was in bed the whole time.
Batigne was staggered. A vast amount of time and trouble had been spent on the case. Two senior police officers had been sent to investigate. Public opinion had been aroused. The law had been set in turmoil. Now the old man had nothing to say.
Chenevier and Gillard went to Les Baumettes the next day, accompanied by Jacques Batigne. The examining magistrate opened the proceedings by saying that the two police officers had come all the way from Paris to hear his statement, but now he had withdrawn it. What did he now have to say? Gaston merely mumbled that he was innocent.
Chenevier did not allow himself to be put off by Gaston’s retraction of all his previous claims. He stuck to a simple line of questioning. At what time had Zézé Perrin come to the Grand’ Terre? Did he sleep at the farmhouse? Had Gaston heard Gustave talk to anyone when he arrived back home after having seen Faustin Roure on 4 August? Did Gustave go alone to investigate the landslide, or did someone go with him? Did Gustave often bring Zézé to sleep at the Grand’ Terre on the several occasions when he was left alone at La Serre? Gaston refused to answer any of these questions. He could not remember anything. He knew nothing. He had seen nothing. He had nothing to say. Chenevier put an end to this pointless exercise by bidding Gaston farewell until they met again.
Among the first witnesses that Chenevier’s team heard was Faustin Roure, who was now living in retirement. Had he told Gustave to go and have a close look at the landslide? Had he stopped off at the Perrins’ farm to get a liter of wine, as Zézé had claimed? Roure could not remember. Chenevier had to tread very carefully for fear of overstepping the boundaries set by Carrias. He could only ask questions concerning the whereabouts of Gustave and Zézé. Little came of this line of questioning. Roure had told Gustave to keep an eye on the landslide, but it was obviously not a major concern. He claimed to have visited La Serre later that morning, but he could not remember whether he had picked up some wine.
An intensive interview with Clovis Dominici, which lasted for two days, was much more fruitful. He repeated that when he was shown the carbine for the first time, he knew that someone from the Grand’ Terre was involved in the murders. He was further convinced when he noticed that the weapon was no longer on the shelf in the shed where it had been hidden. He initially thought that his brother was responsible for Elizabeth’s death, because he could not imagine his old father chasing after a young girl. Furthermore, his father had not gone hunting for a number of years and had no idea how the Rock-Ola worked, whereas he imagined that Gustave had used the gun on several occasions to hunt boar. Clovis had continued to suspect Gustave even after he had pointed a finger at their father, for his brother’s statements about the murders were vague and often contradictory. His suspicions were strengthened when Gustave tried to imply that Paul Maillet was involved in the crime.
It was only when he heard his father’s confession that he realized that he was the murderer. Chenevier asked him whether he had perhaps misunderstood his father’s dialect, but Clovis insisted that there had been no ambiguity whatsoever. When asked why he had not told other members of the family, he replied that Gaston had ordered him to keep his mouth shut, and he had respected his authority. Even though Clovis was convinced that his father was involved, he did not alter his position. Unlike Gustave he had refused to retract when confronted with his father. Chenevier suspected that Clovis was covering up for Gustave, for whom he had considerably more affection than for his overbearing father.
On the second day of interrogation in the police headquarters in Digne, using a small office with the blinds drawn to avoid the telescopic lenses of an army of press photographers, Clovis was confronted with various family members. His sister Augusta Caillat asked him why he had not told other family members of their father’s confession. Clovis replied that it was Gaston’s secret, not his. Marie Dominici, his brother Gaston’s wife, claimed that Clovis had said that it was better for the old man to go to prison rather than a young man like Gustave. Clovis hotly denied ever having made such a statement. She then went on to categorically state that no one from the Grand’ Terre was involved in the crimes. When questioned about her father-in-law’s confession, she simply replied that he was an old man who could easily be manipulated. Her husband, Gaston, the lock keeper on the Manosque Canal at Saint-Auban, had accused Clovis of accepting a million francs from Sébeille during the fateful meeting they held to get Clovis to change his story, but now he flatly denied having said anything of the sort. His brother Gaston claimed that he had spent 200,000 francs ($600) on the case, whereupon Clovis had told him that he was a bloody fool because he had made money out of it. This exchange escalated into yet another family row, which the police found difficult to control.
When tempers calmed down somewhat, Yvette was the next to be questioned. She remained cool and disdainful, purposefully avoiding eye contact with Clovis. She claimed that as they drove in the police car from the Grand’ Terre to Digne on 16 November 1953, Clovis had said that he had learned of his father’s guilt from his confession and not from Gustave on 8 August 1952. Clovis denied this attempt to make him the first to have denounced Gaston. He insisted that Gustave was the first to have heard Gaston’s confession, which had only confirmed the fears Clovis felt when Sébeille had shown him the M1 on 6 August.
Gustave was the last to be questioned that day. When asked how he had been able to show where the carbine was kept, even though he claimed never to have seen the weapon, he replied that Clovis had made a sketch for him. Clovis denied ever having done so. A series of recriminations between the two brothers followed, with policemen strategically placed to separate them should they go after one another. Gustave insisted that he had never told Clovis that their father had confessed to killing the Drummonds. He then claimed that Clovis had told him not to be “a little prick” and to say that the old man had gone hunting badgers that night; otherwise, the police would question them for a week. Clovis accused his brother once again of lying.
It was nearly midnight. Realizing that he was getting nowhere, Chenevier decided to call a halt and continue the next day by interviewing Gustave and Yvette. Gustave got off one defiantly impertinent parting shot by saying that it was up to the commissioner to prove that he was lying.
The next day’s interviews brought nothing new. Chenevier pointed out that it was Gustave’s and not Clovis’ testimony that had led to Gaston’s conviction and that Gaston was well aware of the fact. He further accused Gustave of cowardice when he begged Périès not to tell his father that he had denounced him. Chenevier tried to get Gustave to admit that he had always blamed his father when he himself was under suspicion, but he got nowhere with this line of attack, beyond Gustave’s admission that he had indeed been under suspicion in December 1953. Gustave left police headquarters in Digne and returned to the Grand’ Terre at about 8:00 p.m. on 25 October 1955, having escaped all Chenevier’s attempts to trap him.
Gaston Dominici’s favorite grandchild, Marie-Claude Caillat, a young woman of eighteen, reciprocated his affection. She made the following statement to Chenevier:
On my last visit to Les Baumettes a week ago, my grandfather started to talk about the conversation he had overheard and blamed my mother and I for agreeing that he should die in prison in order to protect Gustave. My mother replied that it was not true and that they were doing everything possible to defend him. My grandfather said it was Gustave who did the deed, but my mother told him that that was not true.14
Marie-Claude repeated this statement in front of her grandfather and in the presence of Judge Batigne, adding several times that Gaston had said Gustave was responsible for the murders.
The Dominici clan rejected out of hand any suggestion that anyone from the Grand’ Terre was in any way involved in the murders. They resolutely maintained that the M1 had never been anywhere near the farmhouse and that Clovis was acting out of spite toward the family, hatred for his father, and hope of personal gain. There was one exception, Marie Dominici’s firstborn, Ida Balmonet. Gaston had accepted her with singularly ill grace as his own, but she had broken with the family and lived far from the Grand’ Terre at a farm belonging to the Benedictine Abbey of Hautecombe in Savoy.15 In 1953, some time before Gaston’s arrest, she had visited the family home. Finding the atmosphere exceptionally tense and oppressive, she began to suspect that something was going on. She stated that having accused his father of the murders in the presence of Périès, Gustave had said upon his return to the Grand’ Terre that Clovis had been the first to denounce their father and had forced him to follow suit. Gustave had lied to the entire family, with the exception of his wife and mother. Ida was Clovis’s only ally within the Dominici clan.
Chenevier and Gillard returned to Les Baumettes with Judge Batigne for a final meeting with Gaston. It was as inconclusive as all the others. Gaston once again denied that he had seen Gustave and Zézé in the alfalfa field during the night of 4–5 August 1952. Chenevier reminded him that he had testified to this effect. Gaston replied that he must have been out of his mind at the time, hastily adding that it could not possibly have been so because he did not get up during the night. He stuck to his preposterous story that he had overheard Gustave and Yvette discussing the jewels. When the commissioner told him that both had denied it, he shrugged his shoulders and said that they were mistaken.
Chenevier tried to break the deadlock by bringing Gustave to the prison, but he could have saved himself the trouble. Both stuck to their versions of the story: Gaston had overheard the conversation; Gustave denied that it had ever taken place.
Clovis was also brought in to see his father. It was the first time they had met since the trial. Clovis stuck to his story that Gaston had confessed to the crime. Gaston growled that he should be ashamed of himself for making such a perfidious accusation. As Clovis was about to leave, he turned to his father, who was sitting on the edge of his bed. His parting words were:
Listen, Papa, I tell you once more for the last time that what I did was not done to harm you. If I had wanted to do that I would have spoken the first time I saw the carbine. I didn’t. You told me that it was you who killed the English people. I wish it weren’t true. So tell Monsieur Batigne it isn’t true, that you lied to me. Tell him you didn’t kill anybody, but don’t say that you didn’t tell me, because you did.16
That was the last time Clovis ever spoke to his father.
Gaston’s final encounter with his grandson Zézé Perrin lacked even an iota of affection or respect. It soon degenerated into a shouting match. Zézé was in an insufferably cocky and flippant mood, taking every possible opportunity to mock his grandfather. He denied having been at the Grand’ Terre on the night of 4–5 August. He claimed not to have been with Gaston when he discovered Elizabeth’s body. He also cheekily inquired why Gaston had led his goats away from the direction of the campsite on the morning of 5 August, when he always took them in the other direction. Gaston yelled at him that he was a little bastard. This outburst merely prompted Zézé to taunt his grandfather by saying that if he had anything against him, he should speak up in front of the examining magistrate.
Gaston’s daughter Augusta Caillat was the last of the Dominicis brought to Les Baumettes. She had always been a stout defender of the old man, but he showed her no gratitude, accusing her instead of wanting him to take the sole blame for the murders so as to protect others. Augusta angrily asked why he had not brought this up during the trial, and Gaston replied that it was because he imagined he would be acquitted. Augusta said that statement was untrue. A few days before the assizes, he had admitted to her that it was going to be extremely tough. Gaston denied having said any such thing.
Chenevier was now in a familiar bind. The Dominicis retracted their stories, invented new ones, and contradicted themselves at every turn. How was it ever possible to reach anything approximating the truth under such circumstances? Since no one had been placed under oath during the trial, he could not charge anyone with perjury, and anyway such charges would have provided grounds for an appeal and a reopening of the case. That was the last thing that anyone wanted after more than three years of hard work.
Three other issues were of considerable interest to the Chenevier commission. A roll of unexposed film was found among the Drummonds’ possessions, and the police had asked Scotland Yard to find out what make of camera the Drummonds owned. They quickly discovered that it was a 35mm Kodak Retina. The Marrians were absolutely certain that the Drummonds had not left it behind in Villefranche. It had not been among the family’s possessions on the campsite. Had it been stolen by the murderer or an accomplice? Did it contain compromising photographs, such as shots of family members of the Grand’ Terre? Or had it simply been mislaid somewhere between Villefranche and Lurs?
Many of the same questions were asked about the family’s missing canvas bucket. Chenevier assumed it had been destroyed as evidence that the Drummonds had visited the farmhouse to get water, as Zézé had consistently claimed and Gustave had confirmed. It is also possible that an item found at the murder site that was described as a “canvas bag” might have been the missing bucket.17 Sébeille had thought it very odd that Yvette had given Zézé Perrin precise details of the bucket when she told him about the Drummonds’ visiting the Grand’ Terre.18
The only other missing item was a cheap watch belonging to Lady Anne, the loss of which seemed to the police to be of little importance. That she had taken it with her to France rested solely on the testimony of her mother, Mrs. Wilbraham, but she had suffered such a state of severe shock on hearing of the murders that she may well have been mistaken.
Even more serious was the question of the trousers left out to dry that the police had seen on the morning of 5 August. César Girolami, Sébeille’s assistant, had been very concerned about this important piece of material evidence, which his superior had completely ignored. Girolami had subsequently been posted to Morocco. At the request of a magistrate in Casablanca, he sent a detailed report on the incident. During Chenevier’s investigation, however, Gustave now claimed that there had never been any trousers hanging out to dry. Yvette admitted that she had washed a pair of her husband’s trousers on 5 August, adding that she had a perfect right to do so. Gaston’s son Aimé, then working as a market gardener at Aygalades, had read about the trousers in the press and had asked Yvette about them. She said that they belonged to her father-in-law and that she had washed them several days before the murders but had forgotten to bring them in when they had dried. This was obviously an untruth, because Inspector Girolami had seen the trousers at about 3:00 p.m. on August 5 and had testified that they were still damp. Had traces of a victim’s blood been found upon them, it would have been powerful evidence for Gaston’s guilt. Why Sébeille had chosen to forget this testimony remains a mystery.
Aimé Dominici’s employer, Madame Bonnafous, who owned the Calarmuso farm at Eygalières, said that on 8 August 1952 Aimé and his young wife, Mauricette, had been called to the Grand’ Terre, where Gustave had told them that he had heard both shots and screams during the night of 4–5 August. Aimé had shared this with Madame Bonnafous on his return to the farm. Aimé and Mauricette, having been well briefed by the clan, now vigorously denied that this had ever happened.
The Chenevier investigation ended with two epic interviews. First, Gillard tried to tackle Yvette at Forcalquier. He was familiar with the case and with his adversary, having been sent as an observer to Gaston’s trial. By now Yvette had three children, and a fourth was on the way. She had lost none of her feisty determination to defend her father-in-law, to remove all suspicion from her husband, and to denounce the traitors within the clan. During thirteen hours of cross-examination, she did not blink an eyelid, make one false move, or fall into Gillard’s carefully prepared traps. At 12:30 a.m. Gillard finally gave up.
Chenevier confronted Gustave in the law courts in Digne. He arrived on the bus at 9:00 a.m. They sparred with one another until 1:00 p.m. and then went to lunch together, taking the 250-franc (73-cent) menu, washed down with a local rosé. They then returned to the fray, with the session lasting until the next morning. During this mammoth session, they sometimes took a break. Standing by the window, quietly smoking, they watched the crowds below. Gillard arrived at 1:15 a.m. to tell his superior that he had lost “the battle of Forcalquier.” By 3:00 a.m. the few remaining onlookers abandoned the scene. At 4:00 a.m. the lights went out, and Gustave was driven back to the Grand’ Terre. As it was already light he took a pitchfork and went to work, without having slept a wink.
Chenevier emerged from the courthouse and told the waiting journalists in an indignant tone that Gustave had accused Périès of being a swindler and a liar. He could do so with impunity because of the technical impossibility of making an investigating magistrate a witness in his own investigation. Only the investigating magistrate in an eventual supplementary inquiry could do that.
Chenevier and Gillard had exhausted their 420 questions and gained precious little. Although familiar with the criminal underworld of the nation’s capital, they had been outfoxed by the wily Provençal peasants, whose mentality they had failed to comprehend. They had not realized that the Dominicis’ tactic was based unwittingly on Churchill’s premise that “in wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” Zézé Perrin was the master of this tactic. He claimed to have bought milk from a man who had died three years before. He frequently withdrew his statements. When asked why he had lied, he simply said that he had no idea. That was the ultimate lie. He knew the reasons full well.
The main question was whether Zézé had spent the night of 4–5 August at the Grand’ Terre. He was known to be childish and beset with all manner of anxieties. Some claimed that he refused to go to the cinema in Peyruis on his own and that he insisted on his mother going with him to the outhouse to make sure no stranger was there. Would he have dared sleep alone in La Serre? Jean Galizzi, his mother’s lover and with whom he was on good terms, said that when he worked at the farm at Pont Bernard belonging to Daniel Garcin, the mayor of Ganagobie, he always spent the night there. That night Garcin had suggested that Galizzi go to La Serre and keep Zézé company, but he had refused, saying he was too tired. Zézé mostly claimed to have slept alone at La Serre on 4 August, but at other times he said that he had gone to his parents’ new farm at La Cassine at 9 p.m. His mother, Germaine, testified that this was so, but she had no means of proving it. Another witness claimed that he had arrived at the Pont Bernard farm late at night. He appeared to be in a state of shock and had to be given a cordial to revive him. Daniel Garcin stated categorically that Zézé had not spent the night of 4–5 August at his farm and that he had not worked on the farm on 4 August. Zézé claimed that he first heard of the crime when Faustin Roure came in the morning of 5 August to La Serre to buy some wine, but Roure had been unable to say with any confidence whether this was so.19
The commissioner and his associates returned to Paris to prepare their report for the minister of justice. They had heard a hundred witnesses, had asked ten thousand questions, and had traveled nine thousand miles. Their report was nine hundred pages long. Although they had gleaned a mass of material, they had precious little in the way of hard facts. On 25 February 1956 Chenevier submitted it to his superior, Director General of the Judicial Police Castaing. His conclusion was that the investigation against “Unknown” should be continued. He suggested that the next phase should begin with a confrontation between Gustave and Périès to establish whether he would continue to denounce as false the record of the interrogation that a respected examining magistrate vouched to be true.
Pierre Carrias took nine months to reply to Chenevier’s request to continue the investigation. He was a man of exceptional probity, open-mindedness, and sound judgment. His reticence was due to his disgust at the role the press had played in the entire affair; to his concerns about Chenevier’s detestation of Sébeille, the reason for which he was unable to discover; and to his concern for due procedure. He also began to have some doubts about the case. He established that Gaston could not possibly have seen Gustave and Zézé in the alfalfa field if he had been standing in the courtyard as he claimed. Carrias was also worried about the lack of a credible motive for the crime. The contradictions in the Dominicis’ testimonies were glaringly obvious. He asked himself why Gaston claimed to have fired only one shot at Lady Drummond and why he said that he had hit Elizabeth just once with the butt of the M1. He was astonished that the essential clue of the trousers left hanging out to dry on the morning of the crime had not been pursued. Furthermore, as he wrote in his reflections on the case: “The shadow of the resistance and the liberation hung over the enquiry.”20 But none of this, nor anything in Chenevier’s report, persuaded him that anything could be gained from another hunt for accomplices. Gustave was obviously a liar, but in the magistrate’s view none of his lies had established any connection with the crime.
Carrias was contemptuous of Chenevier’s approach, accusing him of bias. He charged him for failing to accept Sébeille’s explanation of the photograph showing Gaston pointing to the upper shelf, rather than the lower one, where Gustave and Clovis had clearly shown that the carbine had been placed. Sébeille had said that the police had been obliged to take several pictures. Gaston had grown impatient and had waved his cane too high in the air. Carrias also dismissed the notion that the pool of blood near the sump indicated that Elizabeth had been killed there and then carried to the bank of the Durance. Sir Jack had been shot in the liver and had bled profusely, so he had been virtually drained of blood by the time he collapsed on the other side of the road. Carrias remained convinced that the evidence of the trousers drying in the courtyard was further indication of Gaston’s guilt. He felt that the dossier also served to exculpate Zézé, whose insolent attitude toward his grandfather and Uncle Gustave was evidence that he did not fear any damaging revelation on their part. He suspected that Gustave might have been involved, but the evidence against him was not strong enough to open a further investigation.
The public prosecutor’s office in Digne concluded on 30 October 1956 that there was insufficient evidence that anyone aided Gaston in his crime, so there was no reason to pursue the case.21 On 13 November 1956 Carrias signed a document dismissing the case against “Unknown.”22 This judgment of nonsuit confirmed Gaston’s guilt. The Dominici case was thus closed. Only a confession by a guilty person could now overthrow this final judgment.
The Times summed up this strange case: “It was not merely that the victims were distinguished or that the crime was so senseless and mysterious. There was also the dark background of a region of France where life is still primitive and passions are unchecked.” The article paraphrased Jean Giono, who said of the region: “One of long-settled, much in-bred immigrant stock, living in a primitive world with its harsh simplicities and savage hatreds, incapable of telling the truth, many of these people seem a survival from another age.” It was a region where sons accused fathers, who in turn execrated their sons. Statements were withdrawn, denied, contradicted, or altered, apparently without a second thought. The article ended on an understandable note of puzzlement: “Any ordinary English reader studying the evidence that was published day by day could well be excused for feeling that he would never know where the truth lay.”23
In 1957 President Coty commuted Gaston’s death sentence to life imprisonment. In March 1960 the journalist Jacques Chapus, who had covered the case for France Soir, and a television crew visited Gaston at Les Baumettes to make a film titled “Dominici: To Die in Prison.”24 The program attracted a large audience, which tended to sympathize with the decrepit old peasant. A number of newspapers now argued that he should be released, regardless of whether he was innocent or guilty. On 14 July that year, at eight thirty in the morning, on President de Gaulle’s instructions, Gaston was released from prison.25 Despite widespread public protests against his returning to live in the Basses-Alpes and although French law did not permit a convicted murderer to reside in either the department where the crime was committed or any adjacent department for five years, he was allowed briefly to stay with his favorite daughter, Clotilde Araman, in Montfort, where her husband was now a level-crossing keeper.26 The Times reported that he appeared to be in reasonably good health for an eighty-three-year-old. The writer added, “His cantankerous nature tended to add to the mystery and to give a general atmosphere of dark intrigue.”27
The local people were up in arms when they heard of Gaston’s release and that he was once again living in the Basses-Alpes. They made various attempts to have him banished. Most of his family wanted nothing to do with him. The people in Lurs voted to boycott him. Local councilors intimated that at the next meeting of the Council of the Basses-Alpes they would ask why, contrary to the law, he was allowed to return to the area where he had committed such a terrible crime.28
Poor Clotilde found life with her parents intolerable, because Gaston’s temper was as vile as ever and he still treated his poor wife in an insufferable manner. Clotilde felt obliged to move to a smaller house so that they could no longer live with her. Gaston then moved to a retirement home in Digne, where, prompted by the clairvoyant Reine Ribot, he unsuccessfully launched an appeal against his conviction.
Miss Ribot, who styled herself as a private detective, was one of the most persistent rumormongers, insisting that she had a photograph in her possession showing Sir Jack Drummond giving the secret Maquis sign that involved placing three fingers on a lapel. She clinched her argument by saying that the Maquis in the Basses-Alpes was known as “Drumont,” a French pronunciation of “Drummond.” The lady was a mythomane well known to the Paris police and to the mental health services in the capital. Incorrigible conspiracy theorists took the fact that she was not called as a witness at the trial, even though mention was made of the raincoat she had found at Lurs railway station, as proof that the British government did not want the link between Sir Jack and the Resistance to be so clearly established.29
Gaston died on 4 April 1965. He lies buried in Peyruis. Gaston’s wife, Marie, died on 2 January 1967. Yvette and Gustave divorced in 1967. She was reputed to have been having an affair with a gendarme at the time of the investigation, and Pollak attributed it to the machinations of Captain Albert, who hoped thereby to extract some inside information. Yvette remains a staunchly outspoken champion of her former father-in-law’s innocence and is always ready, for a consideration, to make yet another revelation to a hungry press.