The Dominici Affair
Page 2
French society underwent a fundamental transformation between 1945 and 1973, when the oil crisis put an end to an unprecedented period of economic growth, which averaged an annual rate of 5.9 percent. In fewer than thirty years, the country had undergone a transformation from an essentially agricultural to an industrial and even postindustrial society. French farmers had done relatively well in the immediate postwar years as food shortages drove up prices, but with the economic recovery, the steady drop in agricultural prices relative to industrial prices resumed, a trend that had begun as early as 1870, when grains and meat from the Americas began to flood European markets. This “scissors crisis” was partly offset by the subsidies granted by the Common Agricultural Policy, which came into force in 1962. This program relieved successive French governments from the burden of propping up a moribund sector of the economy. They could now concentrate on supporting industry against fierce competition, especially from Germany’s “economic miracle.” None of this did anything to help smallholders such as Gaston Dominici. Funds were concentrated on the large-scale sugar beet and grain producers in the north. Nothing was left over for subsistence farmers. They had no capital for mechanization and modernization and no possibility of entering southern France’s already glutted markets for wine, olive oil, and fruit. The likes of Gaston Dominici were doomed to extinction.
Whereas at the beginning of this period 40 percent of the population was classified as farmers and peasants, now France is an industrial society with only 8 percent working on the land. The flight from the land caused serious problems of overcrowding in urban areas, one that was further exacerbated after France’s defeat in Algeria resulted in the influx of European colonists (pied-noirs). Some of their forebears had originated as peasant farmers in France who, unable to make a living at home, had exploited the possibilities afforded by cheap land and labor in the colonies. These issues were compounded by the integration of Algerians loyal to France (Harkis). Mounting social tensions, racism, and inequality between the rich and the poor strained France’s generous version of the welfare state to the limit, while entrenched interests rendered any fundamental reform extremely difficult.
Postwar France was growing economically at an amazing rate, but it faced a series of shattering defeats. The euphoria of liberation hardly outweighed the humiliation of defeat in 1940. Gaston Dominici’s trial occurred in the same year that France was defeated in Indochina and that Algeria began its revolt, which also led to a shattering loss that left the country on the brink of civil war. The badly bungled Suez crisis in 1956 was a further embarrassment, and the Battle of Algiers that year marked a further escalation of the Algerian War. Charles de Gaulle’s efforts to restore France’s prestige failed to paper over the cracks in a society that had undergone fundamental changes and had not yet adjusted to a new reality both at home and abroad. Small wonder then that many hankered after the mythical good old days, thereby discounting many of the benefits of a consumer society and a rising standard of living for most.
In such an atmosphere it is hardly surprising that there was nostalgia for a past when many imagined life was simpler and less stressful, values were secure, and people were authentic. There arose a romantic vision of rural France, where pride in a peasant ancestry was the mark of being a true citizen of la France profonde (deep France). Both the Right and the Left saw a growing sentimental attachment to the rustic as part of a quest for a genuine, natural, and real sense of community. The harshness, brutality, superstition, and prejudice of rural life as depicted by Honoré de Balzac, Émile Zola, and Émile Guillaumin were forgotten. A new image gradually formed of the simple rural worker who embodied inestimable human values that were reflected in a robust civil society but had been lost amid the anomie of the modern world. A distorted version of the history of the French Revolution led to the claim that the peasants were the true heirs of the republic, thanks to the redistribution of landed property, making them more than any others truly French and genuinely republican.
Gaston Dominici, the man condemned for murdering the Drummonds, was first seen as a vicious, sadistic monster; however, over the years he has been transformed in the popular imagination into an honorable, hardworking peasant and the victim of an international conspiracy. In popular culture he has been presented as a sturdy symbol of a bygone age and an archetypical Frenchman as reincarnated by Jean Gabin in Claude Bernard-Aubert’s 1973 movie L’affaire Dominici. The world of the Dominicis as portrayed in this film is alien and slightly threatening, but it is far removed from the reactionary, stiff, malicious, avaricious, hypocritical, and baleful portrayal of peasant life in Jacques Becker’s 1943 classic movie Groupi mains sales, which he made in opposition to Vichy’s attempts to emphasize the eternal values of peasant life. This extraordinary metamorphosis from fiend to innocent peasant, caught in an international conspiracy and wrongfully convicted by an intimidating legal system, is largely due to the transformation of postwar France from an essentially rural to a postindustrial society and the gradual romanticization of rural life.
1
A Fatal Journey
An invitation from an old friend to spend a month’s holiday in a villa on the Côte d’Azur was a tempting offer. In the austerity Britain of 1952, it was irresistible. The Festival of Britain, held the previous year in commemoration of the centenary of the Great Exhibition of 1851, was a joyful event that helped many forget the deprivations and dreariness of the immediate postwar years; but it soon served as a reminder of Britain’s dismal decline since the heyday of the Victorian age. The hangover was painful. Postwar rationing, which was even more severe than it had been during the war, remained in full force until 21 February 1952.1 Rationing did not finally end until midnight on 4 July 1954 when restrictions on the sale of meat and bacon were lifted. The general election in October 1951 had brought Winston Churchill and the Conservatives to power, even though they received more than a million fewer popular votes, but the prime minister was a spent force. His government, which concentrated on foreign affairs within the context of an intensifying Cold War, was unable to find a way out of the economic crisis.
Sir Jack Drummond, who received the holiday offer, had an additional incentive to escape to sunlit southern France. He had suffered a mild stroke at the beginning of the year and needed a long rest from his duties as director of research at the Boots Pure Drug Company in Nottingham. He had many fond memories of visiting France and had spent an enjoyable week in Paris with his wife the year before, as well as a visit to Hyères on the Côte d’Azur. He eagerly seized the opportunity offered by Professor Guy Marrian—his former student, old friend, and colleague—who, as he had done for several years, had rented a modest little house in Villefranche-sur-Mer between Nice and Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat for the month of August. Drummond agreed to share the rent. His ten-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, on whom he doted, was thrilled with the prospect and made him promise that they would camp out on occasion during their holiday. She thought up all manner of places to visit, so many indeed that her father jokingly remarked that it would take a great deal longer than a month to visit all of them.2
Foreign travel was exceedingly difficult for the British during the immediate postwar years. Precious few could afford it, and those who could were hampered by strict currency regulations. The Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer Richard Austen (R. A. “Rab”) Butler increased the allowance to £25 in sterling, or the equivalent in foreign currency. This amount worked out at less than £1 per day for a month’s holiday—hardly enough to travel in much comfort. Any excess was liable to be seized by customs and forfeited.3 The maximum amount the Drummond family would have been allowed was equivalent to about 75,000 francs, but like many others they had stowed away some additional funds, in this case about £50. This left them with about £125 for an entire month, hardly a princely sum for a family of three.4
Many travelers found it prudent to travel with camping equipment in case funds ran low, so Sir Jack was readily complied with his
daughter’s wish to sleep in the open air should a suitable opportunity arise. He had recently bought a Hillman Minx station wagon with sufficient space for camping equipment. With its 1265cc four-cylinder side valve engine, capable of a maximum speed of 73 miles per hour, it was a respectable mid-range vehicle costing about £700, one third of which was tax. He bought a couple of camp beds for himself and his wife Anne. Elizabeth was small enough to sleep in the back of the car when the back seat was folded down. They also had a small khaki-colored tent.
Armed with a route to Villefranche provided by the Automobile Association in collaboration with the French Tourist Office, the Drummonds set off from Nottingham at the end of July. The journey began inauspiciously as a stormy crossing from Dover to Dunkirk caused a seven-hour delay. They drove along the straight roads of Picardy, through the vineyards of Champagne and the valleys of Lorraine. With little Elizabeth’s having a passionate interest in Joan of Arc, their first visit was to the cathedral at Reims before visiting her birthplace at Domrémy-la-Pucelle. Elizabeth wrote a postcard to her maternal grandmother, Mrs. Wilbraham, from Domrémy, showing the room in which the Saint was born:
I am having a lovely time. This is the birthplace of Joan of Arc. On the boat we were daylayed [sic] for seven hours and had to sleep the night in the car. I was 4th in exams with 71.1% present [sic].
Tons, Cwts, Lbs, ozs of love
Elizabeth
With Anne doing most of the driving, they then continued south through Burgundy, where Jack the wine lover must have cast a longing eye at the signposts pointing the way to the great vineyards at Gevrey-Chambertin, Vougeot, Vosne-Romanée, Nuits-Saint-Georges, Beaune, Pommard, and Mâcon. These vintages had been virtually unobtainable in wartime Britain. Passing through the Beaujolais, the family turned east to Aix-les-Bains, a small spa in Savoy on the shores of the Lac du Bourget. They arrived on 30 July and stayed at one of the better hotels.
The following day they drove on to Digne-les-Bains, a modest little town that is the departmental capital of the Basses-Alpes.5 They stayed at the Grand Hotel, which despite its imposing name, was described by the Guide Michelin as being of “modest comfort.” Having not made any reservations, with characteristic English suspicions of the French as congenitally disingenuous and out to swindle the hapless foreigner, they insisted on a “cheap” room.6 They put the car in the garage and only brought in a small amount of luggage. They left the hotel at about seven o’clock, with Elizabeth asking for the key in halting French. They returned an hour and a half later.
Quite what they did during this hour and a half remains a mystery. Although this typical British family would have been immediately noticeable in a small, sleepy Provençal town, no one appears to have seen them. Presumably they went to find something to eat, but subsequent police inquiries at all the cafés and restaurants drew a blank.
The following day, 1 August, Elizabeth saw an advertisement for a humorous entertainment involving clowns and daring young men who ran in front of young bulls.7 It was to be held the following Monday, 4 August, as part of Digne’s annual Lavender Festival, which lasted from 1 to 4 August. Jack was sympathetic to his daughter’s pleading. At the prompting of the hotel receptionist, Jeanine Roland, he went to Louis Chauvin’s radio store and reserved three tickets.8 The decision to return to Digne for this event involved a real sacrifice by Elizabeth’s parents. They had been on the road for six days and were now in the dog days of August. That they were prepared to return to Digne and sit for hours in the blazing sun after only two days’ rest on the coast, all for a rather mediocre event, is testament to their willingness to indulge their daughter. She had already persuaded her parents to take her to Reims and Domrémy-la-Pucelle; now she could boast to the Marrians that she had once again managed to get her way. It was a victory with fatal consequences.
The Drummonds left Digne at 10:30 a.m. on 1 August and headed for Villefranche. They did not arrive at their destination until 5:00 p.m. It is impossible to reconstruct the route they took, but that is of little consequence. That it took six and a half hours to drive nearly 103 miles is hardly surprising. The roads were poor, the route circuitous, and the landscape magnificent. They drove through the harsh, rocky landscape of northern Provence, with its barren mountains and ruined hilltop villages, to enter the luminous Riviera ablaze with the brilliant colors of bougainvillea, hibiscus, and oleander. A leisurely lunch, frequent stops, and difficulty in finding the house are adequate explanations.
The Drummonds spent two pleasant days in Villefranche with Phyllis and Guy Marrian and their two daughters, Valerie and Jacqueline, although the tiny bungalow set in a gloomy hollow with the hackneyed name of Le Beau Cyprès must have been something of a disappointment. Anne Drummond wrote a postcard to her mother from the Côte, notifying her of the address and telling her to add the name of the district—Vallon de la Murta—an appellation that she found entertainingly macabre. She thereby confused the word for myrtle with that for death (mort). Elizabeth played tennis with the Marrian girls, who were considerably older, and they went to the beach together. Jack stayed in the house and worked on a paper, the subject of which remains unknown. He had not published in any academic journals since he had resigned his professorship at London University in 1945 to join Boots Pure Drug Company; so it can be assumed that the paper was some internal document. His papers were later handed over to the British consul in Marseille, but there is no record of their subsequent whereabouts.
Their return visit to Digne on 4 August began at 6:30 am. For whatever reason, the Drummonds left their passports behind in Villefranche, along with Jack’s driver’s license and the contraband £50. They had already spent £20, almost half of which on gas. Given that they had paid their share of the rent in advance, they still had sufficient funds for the remainder of the holiday. They took eight £5 travelers’ checks along, but they would have been of little use without proper means of identification. Since the banks were closed on Monday, they borrowed a “significant amount” of money from the Marrians to tide them over.9 They took the road that Napoleon Bonaparte had followed on his return from Elba. Upon landing with eight hundred men at Golfe-Juan on 1 March 1815, the emperor and his men took eight days to wind their way through the barren mountains of Provence, trudging through Grasse and Digne, before reaching the valley of the Durance River. With the Hillman, the Drummonds would only need a few hours. Their start was therefore exceptionally early for a relatively short trip to attend an event that began late in the afternoon. They were unlikely to have moved as slowly as they had done three days before, and they had already seen all that was to be seen in the town. They were first sighted in Digne when they had lunch at 12:30 p.m. in La Taverne, whose proprietor Edmond Bizot was also chairman of the Lavender Festival Committee.
Earlier that morning they paid a visit to the beautiful hilltop village of Lurs. Founded under Charlemagne, it had been the site of the summer residence of the bishops of Sisteron. It is a picturesque, fortified medieval village, with a Romanesque church and a château. By 1952 it was partly ruined, with a population of about fifty, but was in the process of being restored, thanks to the efforts of the internationally renowned typographer Maximilien Vox. Jean Giono, a distinguished local author, had introduced Vox to the region, and they had just started organizing the Lure International Meetings, which are held annually in the village to discuss every aspect of book production.10 Lurs is today—in large part because of its unsurpassed views of the Durance River, the hills of the Pays de Forcalquier, and the mountains of Montagne de Lure—a highly desirable address.
Francis Perrin, the village postman, noticed a green station wagon with Great Britain (GB) number plates driving down the hill from Lurs between 11:30 and 11:45 a.m. on 4 August. A man was driving. A little girl with shoulder-length, dark brown hair was sitting at the back. No one else in the village remembered seeing the car. The proprietor of the café suggested that perhaps the family had not driven all the way up to the village, because the Hill
man was not a suitable car to tackle the only approach road, which was unpaved, steep, and badly rutted. The postman’s brother, Aimé, claimed that he had seen a car with a GB plate on the main road between 10:00 a.m. and noon on either 3 or 4 August, but he was unable to give any more precise details. It was the first British car that he had seen that year.
The strange thing about the Drummonds’ possible visit to Lurs is that they would have had to drive some 25 miles past Digne to get there. Driving from the southeast, it is impossible to see the village, which is hidden behind by a steep hillside. Furthermore, the access road is extremely difficult to find, even today. In 1952 there would have been no compelling reason to make such a detour. One possible explanation was that they were looking for the nearby monastery of Ganagobie, which is mentioned in Jack Drummond’s copy of the Guide Michelin. It is a beautiful Romanesque church with some fascinating mosaics, but at that time it was virtually a ruin. Accessing it, up the steep hillside, would have been exceedingly difficult by car.11
Valerie Marrian later provided a more likely explanation for the detour. She said Jack Drummond had told her that they intended to return to Villefranche via Aix-en-Provence because the road was not so tortuous, and Anne was going to do the driving. There is no reason to doubt this statement, although the Drummonds had clearly underestimated the distance. They had agreed to meet the Marrians for a midday lunch at La Trinquette in Villefranche the following day. They would have had to set out from Lurs at a very early hour to arrive on time. Nevertheless, it seemed probable that having reached Digne in good time, the Drummonds then drove on to find a suitable spot to spend the night when the Perrin brothers saw them in the neighborhood of Lurs. Having found an appropriate spot, the family returned to Digne.