by Paul Spicer
Certainly the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald must have seen the newspaper reports. At the time, he was hard at work on his novel Tender Is the Night, which would finally be published, after many redraftings, in 1934. In the novel, an American acquaintance of Dick and Nicole Diver, a woman named Maria Wallis, is depicted shooting an Englishman on a railway platform in Paris. She “plunged a frantic hand into her purse; then the sound of two revolver shots cracked the narrow air of the platform.” The train stops and the man is carried away on a stretcher while the police take the woman away. Dick is at the station seeing a friend to the train and races to find out what has happened. He reports back to his group that Maria Wallis just shot an Englishman. Although Fitzgerald changed the setting of the shooting from the Gare du Nord to the Gare Saint-Lazare, Maria Wallis is unmistakably Alice: “The young woman with the helmet-like hair.” The murder weapon, like Alice’s, is “très petit, vraie perle—un jouet!”
The French police soon pressed charges against the countess, with the district police commissioner preparing a tentative indictment accusing her of attempted homicide. The task of formally bringing these charges against her was assigned to the prosecution. All charges were deferred, however, until the two principals of the shooting either succumbed to their wounds or recovered. Alice spent nearly six weeks at Lariboisière Hospital recovering enough to be transferred to the hospital ward of the all-women’s prison, Saint-Lazare. The French authorities had already tried to interview her on several occasions. The first time, her sole response was, “I decline to give the reason for my act. It is my secret.” However, as the police started to interrogate her more thoroughly, she was forced to seek legal advice. In April, she made the following statement: “I was determined to die in his arms, and when the whistle blew, I suddenly changed my mind and resolved to take him with me into the Great Beyond. Slowly, very slowly, I loosened my grasp around his neck, placed the revolver between our two bodies and, as the train started, fired twice—into his chest and into my own body.”
Alice’s use of the phrase “Great Beyond” is significant. Death was the ultimate gesture for Alice, the one aspect of her existence over which she could have complete control. She had been brought up in the Presbyterian faith and so she would have been taught that when a person dies, his soul goes to be with God, where it waits for the final judgment. After the final judgment, souls are restored to bodies, eternal rewards and punishments are handed out, and everything and everyone is “refreshed and restored.” In other words, in heaven, Alice would finally be reunited with Raymund and with her long-departed mother. The existence of an afterlife was a credo to which Alice passionately subscribed. Ever since her adolescent suicide attempt, she had continued to wish to “escape this world.” According to her friends and acquaintances, she frequently made use of expressions such as the “other side” or “the Great Beyond.”
For now, Alice found herself far from heaven. After her arrest, she was imprisoned in a cell in Saint-Lazare Prison on charges of attempted murder. The cell had hosted several notorious female criminals in the past, including Marguerite Steinheil, the former mistress of French president Félix Fauré. In 1908, Steinheil was arrested and taken to Saint-Lazare, where she was held for a year while she awaited trial for the double murder of her husband and stepmother. She tried to pin the blame on a gang of intruders and members of her household staff—stories that the judge called a “tissue of lies.” She was eventually acquitted. Another notorious inhabitant of the same cell was Henriette Caillaux, the second wife of the finance minister of France, Joseph Caillaux. She was imprisoned for shooting the editor of the French newspaper Le Figaro after he published a letter about her husband that portrayed the minister in an unflattering light. Although Henriette admitted her crime, her lawyers pleaded that she was the victim of “uncontrollable feminine emotions” and that the shooting was in fact a “crime passionnel.” The jury also acquitted her. Alice’s other famous predecessor at Saint-Lazare was Mata Hari (born Gertrud Margarette Zelle), the Dutch-born exotic dancer who was arrested as a double agent by the French in 1917 and convicted of treason, possibly on trumped-up charges. She had agreed to spy for France, but her employees had lost faith in her and accused her of working for the Germans. Unlike Steinheil and Caillaux, she was eventually sentenced to death by firing squad. Alice’s fate remained in the balance.
As the weeks slipped away, her attorneys worked furiously to secure her release. On May 19, 1927, after nearly six weeks in the prison ward, Alice was temporarily released, on the proviso that she would remain in secluded convalescence until she was sufficiently healthy to appear in court. It was true that Alice had been badly wounded and her lacerated stomach needed constant care. Despite everything that had come to pass, the obvious place for her convalescence remained her husband’s country residence, the Château de Parfondeval. In official terms, Alice was still married. What’s more, she had been the love of Frédéric’s life for six years and she was still in close contact with his family. Parfondeval offered countryside peace, the attentions of the kindly Moya, and those of her favorite manservant, Edward, both of whom had a soothing effect on Alice’s health and nerves. Although Alice claimed she did not fear death, there is no doubt she was terrified of imprisonment should she be convicted of attempted murder (or murder, should Raymund die).
During the nine months of convalescence before her court hearing, Alice rested at Parfondeval and wrote a number of letters to her friends and relatives. Despite the de Janzés’ generosity in looking after Alice during this time, they felt the “scandale” deeply, and at Parfondeval, she was made only too aware of her estrangement. During this dismal period of her life, she also visited her apartment in Paris to collect clothes and books. Meanwhile, the gossip about Alice continued to circulate in Chicago, New York, and London, and she soon found out that her imprisonment had isolated her almost completely. Although she received correspondence from her father, her stepmother, Louise, and close friends such as Paula de Casa Maury, other members of her acquaintance were evidently keen to put distance between themselves and the notorious countess. Joss visited London for his grandfather’s funeral in July, but there is no evidence that he made contact with Alice at that time, and besides, by the end of 1927, he was already hatching plans to marry Mary Ramsay-Hill. Alice heard from Margaret Spicer that Margaret was planning a visit to London via Paris in December 1927 and wondered if they could meet. They never did.
Alice did, however, exchange multiple letters with Raymund. Although his wounds were still causing him considerable pain, he had emerged from his coma and was well enough now to order his nurses about, barking at them to appear at his bedside “at the double.” Contrary to popular expectation, he was not about to cut Alice out of his life. In fact, her dramatic act seems to have piqued his vanity. On May 19, 1927, he even went so far as to tell the New York Times that a reconciliation with Alice was in the cards, although this may have had something to do with wishing to appear noble in the eyes of the public.
And what of Frédéric? It seems he remained generous and loyal throughout the scandal. Although many would have recommended he keep his distance from Alice, he did the reverse, agreeing that his family home was the best place for her recovery. By now, he had begun work on Vertical Land, his book of pen portraits of Africa—which would be published the following year—in which the female characters were directly inspired by his relationship with Alice. Like many who have been spurned, Frédéric evidently continued to remain attached to his lost love, at least in the pages of his notebook. Alice makes her first appearance in the book as Anna-Christine Mason, a cousin of the narrator, Bob, who has just arrived in Kenya by boat. Like Alice, Anna has wide-set gray eyes, wavy hair, and a distinctive voice. Frédéric wrote:
…her arms are marvellous, from the orange tinted nails to the shoulders, not a trace of colour, not marble, not white ivory; perhaps of some old ivory held for generations in long Chinese fingers. On one finger an opium smoker
’s ring of green jade, no other ornament. As the ordered cocktail comes, she takes off her hat, revealing deep grey eyes set wide apart, long black lashes and eyebrows so minute and regular they might have been painted on.
“Pale moon face” of the old Chinese ballads. The dark red lips nearly maroon, the wavy shingled hair—a marvellous work of nature, a more marvellous work of art; and that on board a ship after three weeks at sea!
I am stunned and during luncheon can only mumble and be very British while she talks vividly now in English, now in French.
Later in the evening I take her off, the whole ship’s company seems to man decks to see her go; I’m getting back my footing and we talk in the Customs house, and we talk in the taxi, and we talk in the hotel, she sitting on the edge of a bed, while my boy unpacks her things.
I go away to change, my mind whirling with the charm of this child of eighteen. It does not seem possible. She knows everyone—about everything, she seems to have been every where, and her voice, that flat voice, without tone or pitch, like voices heard in Islam’s bazaars, reciting verses of the Koran. It worms into your mind, fascinates your senses, envelops, numbs one! What is natural? What is art? What is training?
As we start out for Tudor House, across the island, for dinner, she insists, and we take bathing suits just in case.
The hibiscus, the jasmine, the Bougainville [sic] trail over head. Light fishes served on brown and grey dishes. Pawpaws and mangoes on the table.
Her stories of India bazaars and Hill stations way up in the Himalayas, and…dinner is over.
Her amber fragrance goes to my head, all my British training and self repose has fled. I am throbbing in heart and mind.
Down to the beach and into the rippleless creek, the moon throwing flashes of blue fire into our wakes as we swim.
Suddenly I miss her, no longer at my side; and turning, startled, see her emerge, naked, silver on the shining beach. Madness! I rush in to be told in that cold flat voice that the night is for night hawks, and, as there is no one there to see, I should not have to worry.
She lies on the sand beautiful as some goddess, silver statue of some Athenian athlete, all length and suppleness, and yet as cold as white marble, frozen in some Nordic garden.
At last we go home; she tells me with a wandering smile to sleep well and have no dreams.
Frédéric’s subsequent description of Anna-Christine’s willfulness is particularly revealing of Alice’s petulant temperament:
Today there was a clash of wills, and I lost as I am now doomed to lose for ever; I was reserving seats on the train and she wouldn’t “be put in with some maybe bathed but certainly not washed female.” She insisted in travelling in a big compartment with me. I battled my best, but was undone.
After the conflict, in soothing tones, one hand on my feverish hand: “Bob, it’s no use; I always get my own way. I always take what I want and throw it away when I like; don’t forget this ever, I hate repetition.”
We are now in the train. Dinner at the wayside station amused her; the lights are out, and through the panes of glass shadow landscapes dwindle by.
There is a certain humour in it all; what a defeat Aunt Anna-Belle is in for. At that moment soft lips touch mine, but cold! Arms stretch above my head round my shoulders.
Those pure arms I saw in that first meeting, that silver body of the beach.
“I take what I want and throw it away.” When shall I be thrown? Thrown by a child!
Frédéric was writing from harsh personal experience. “I always get my own way.” “I take what I want and throw it away.” Such exclamations could have been taken directly from Alice’s lips. Whatever his opinion of Alice, Frédéric evidently remained fascinated by his exotic and dangerous former wife.
Nolwen and Paola were now in the legal custody of their father, who continued to do his best to protect them from their mother’s growing notoriety. The girls were living in the apartment in rue Spontini with their Portuguese nanny, the crocodile, the monkey, and the oversized lion cub, but because of the animals, the nanny was threatening to leave. Her name was Denise de Milo-Viana, and years later Paola would remember her as “horrible.” Denise told Frédéric that if he wanted her to stay, the animals had to go. Frédéric duly removed the crocodile and transported the monkey to Parfondeval, where he was placed in the care of Alice’s butler. The lion was donated to the Jardin d’Acclimatation, the children’s park in the Bois de Boulogne. While Alice convalesced at Parfondeval, Aunt Tattie took Nolwen and Paola to the Riviera, where Alice briefly visited them in Nice. She spent only a short time there before returning to Normandy. Alice’s lawyers had warned Moya that Alice must convalesce and be seen to do so, as this was the special condition of the court.
Now that it was certain that both parties in the shooting had recovered, the date was set for Alice’s official indictment. Nine months after the events at the Gare du Nord, on December 23, 1927, in the twelfth chamber of the Police Correctionnelle, Alice was charged with “wounding and causing bodily harm” to Raymund de Trafford. According to the newspaper Le Figaro, she came to the courtroom that day “a thin little woman in a grey suit. Big, shiny, feverish eyes; high cheekbones; great charm and style,” and with “the guilty look of a naughty girl.” In a photograph of Alice taken that day, she is certainly as beautiful as ever, if extraordinarily pale, looking up at her lawyer—the well-known advocate René Mettetal—with an expression that lies somewhere between fear and defiance. She is wearing a dark cloche hat that masks almost completely her bobbed hair. There are pearls around her neck, and in her white-gloved hands she holds a black fur stole. Her dress is to the knee, revealing her legs in their elegant white stockings. In the courtroom, she had attracted a crowd. Paris-Soir reported that, “There were many women in the 12th Chamber where M. Fredin (the most Parisian of Judges) is presiding. All that is fair enough; is this not a beautiful love story?—one of those stories which novelists put together in moving phrases.”
The following description of the court proceedings is a composite taken from the newspaper pages of Paris-Soir, Le Petit Parisien, Le Journal, and L’Echo de Paris for December 24, 1927.
Alice answered the examiner with a yes or a no mostly, speaking French with an American accent. The judges had heard about the circumstances leading up to the shooting but were eager to learn more.
“You have abandoned your husband and children for Monsieur Raymund de Trafford?”
“Yes.”
“Your children?”
“It’s so hard to explain; but I only thought of myself.”
“You don’t seem to realize the serious situation in which you find yourself.”
“Oh yes.”
The examiner, Monsieur Fredin, wondered about the two of them buying the gun together.
“It was I who asked Monsieur de Trafford to accompany me to the gunsmith shop. I told him I had to run an errand for my husband.”
The judge could not stop himself from asking, “And Monsieur de Trafford believed you? In his place, in the situation in which you both found yourselves, I would not have been very comfortable at all.”
Alice smiled sadly and added, “He had no reason to doubt me. He knew I did not want him to go. I was suffering, but I was sure that he was leaving me—in spite of what he wanted, because he couldn’t do otherwise.”
The next question: “If you didn’t want him to leave, why did you buy a revolver?”
She replied, “But it was to kill me, not him.”
“But you shot Monsieur de Trafford while you were kissing him.”
“Not quite. I was holding my gun when he kissed me. I don’t know what went on in my head. I saw, like a drowning woman, all the memories of my life. I wanted to kill myself, but at the last moment in a sort of trance, I fired on him!” Alice was speaking in French: “Alors, vraiment. Je ne sais pas ce qui c’est passé dans ma tête. J’ai vu comme une femme se noie, dénier tous les souvenirs de ma vie.”
Monsieu
r Fredin looked exasperated. “Then I don’t understand,” he said.
“I was unhappy. I wanted to kill myself,” Alice emphasized.
Here in the French court, in front of the jury and a packed courtroom, Alice admitted that she had often wanted to kill herself.
“Yes,” replied the judge. “There are some extenuating circumstances in your favor. Monsieur de Trafford had promised to marry you. He did not keep his word. I would also present you, elsewhere, as a gentle person, an excellent mother….”
Meanwhile, Raymund, who was not called as a witness in the trial but had insisted on appearing, was permitted to speak. He was described in the Tribunal Gazette as “tall, strong and speaking bad French.” He delivered his testimony rather coldly and flatly. “I am responsible,” he insisted. He hardly glanced at Alice, who, in turn, stared unblinkingly at the man she had come so close to killing.
Raymund went on to explain to the court: “I had asked Madame de Janzé to become my wife; she wanted to. But my family didn’t want her to.”
Raymund then recalled what had taken place at the gun shop.
“And what did you think?” he was asked about Alice’s purchase of the revolver.
“Nothing. I was in another part of the shop.”
His memory of the crime itself was confused.
“Madame de Janzé approached me and asked me if I really wanted to leave. I replied yes. Then I saw the revolver in her hand. I seized it at the handle. She had already fired.”