The Dominici Affair

by Martin Kitchen

  By this time Sébeille, frustrated at every turn, was rapidly heading for a nervous breakdown. His nights were sleepless. He was virtually unable to speak. Priding himself on his unique ability to read the peasant mind, he had been confident that he would solve the case before going on leave on 14 August. He decided to postpone his plans, determined to make some major breakthrough beforehand, but it did not happen. The communist press was jubilant. The man whom with biting irony they dubbed the “Maigret of Marseille” or “our very own Sherlock Holmes” had failed to cast any suspicion on the “honest Dominici family,” and his boast that he knew who the assassin was had proven empty.11

  Sébeille refused to hand over the case to another but agreed that Commissioner Fernand Constant should take over while he joined his family in the Aveyron. He remained on holiday throughout the month of September. On his return his superior suggested that he should hand the case over to Commissioner Constant, but Sébeille protested vigorously and remained formally in charge. He stayed at his desk in Marseille, where he perused the dossier, while Constant continued the investigation in Lurs. The two men had very different approaches to police work that stemmed partly from their backgrounds. Sébeille was from Marseille and showed little understanding of the peasant mentality, despite his extravagant claims to the contrary. Constant, who was from the small town of Manosque, was a typical Provençal and fully familiar with the milieu. Sébeille charged in head first, engaging all concerned in lengthy questioning. Constant played his cards close to his chest, listened carefully, never got involved in relentless questioning, and, unlike his colleague, kept the journalists at a distance. Sébeille with his cigarette holder, Lacoste shirts, and marked Marseille accent was jovial and familiar. Constant, who spoke without a local accent, never smiled, and never unbuttoned his jacket, exuded an air of cultivated restraint.

  Constant’s approach soon proved fruitful. The Dominicis’ neighbor, Paul Maillet, who worked with Clovis on the railway and was also secretary of the local Communist Party cell, told Constant that Gustave had said that the little girl was still alive when he discovered her in the early morning of 5 August. Maillet had always been shocked that Gustave had never sought help for Elizabeth. In early September he had gone to the Grand’ Terre and had a chat with Gustave. He was dumbfounded when Gustave admitted that he had seen Elizabeth move that morning. He was also given another piece of important information on that occasion that, for the moment, he had decided to keep secret. Shortly afterward Maillet, while taking an aperitif in his kitchen, confided in Émile Escudier, who had a grocery store in La Brillane, that Gustave had seen Elizabeth Drummond move in the early hours of the morning. It was Escudier who had persuaded Maillet to give this information to the gendarmes.

  The gendarmes did not question Gustave on this score until the early hours of 15 October. He was then taken to Digne for further questioning, along with his brother Clovis and Paul Maillet. After a lengthy interview, Gustave admitted that because he had heard a moaning sound while he was crossing the bridge over the railway, he had looked and discovered Elizabeth’s body and had seen her left arm move. He also stated that he had told both his mother and Yvette what he had seen. Clovis confessed that he had advised his brother to keep mum. The gendarmes were appalled that none of them had thought either of seeking help or of informing the girl’s parents. At two o’clock in the morning on 16 October they placed Gustave in police custody.

  The following day Sébeille arrived from Marseille and went immediately with Constant to the Grand’ Terre, where Sébeille questioned Gaston and Yvette while Constant dealt with Marie. All three stuck to their stories, with the two women denying that Gustave had told them that Elizabeth was still alive. Constant had already consulted the two doctors who had conducted the postmortem and Dr. Dragon, who first inspected the bodies at the murder site. They all insisted that had Elizabeth been attacked at the same time as her parents, she could not possibly have lived until five thirty in the morning. This meant that Gustave must have gotten up during the night shortly after she had been hit on the head. Uncomfortably aware of this contradiction, Sébeille made no mention of it in his account of the case. Subsequent advances in neuroscience have proved that she could well have still been alive, even if she had been attacked at the same time as her parents.

  Examining Magistrate Roger Périès charged Gustave with failing to give assistance to a person in danger.12 Périès also ordered that Gustave be kept in the Digne jail pending his trial, doubtless in the hope that the shock of incarceration would prompt him to be somewhat more garrulous. Gustave’s lawyer, Émile Pollak, assisted by a colleague from Marseille, Pierre Charrier, was unsuccessful in his attempt to secure his client’s release from prison. Périès was sympathetic, but Public Prosecutor Sabatier launched an appeal against any such decision. The appeal was upheld by the court in Aix-en-Provence.

  Gustave, whom the communist paper La Marseillaise described as a hostage, remained stubbornly silent. On Gustave’s arrest Yvette left the Grand’ Terre and went to stay with her parents, François and Louise Barth, at their nearby farm.13 Rumors began to spread that Gustave and Yvette’s marriage was on the rocks and that she was terrified of her husband. But her explanation for the move was fully convincing. She was in an advanced stage of her pregnancy, and unlike the Dominicis, her father had a car ready for a quick dash to the hospital. She also did not particularly relish the idea of staying alone with her quarrelsome parents-in-law. Clovis went to live at the Grand’ Terre and gave his father a hand during Gustave’s absence. It was a generous move because relations between father and son were very strained since Gaston had accused Clovis’s wife, Rose, of being a slut. Yvette went every day to visit her husband, but Gaston stayed at home, claiming that if he went to see his son in prison it would only make them both cry.

  Gustave’s trial was held on 12 November 1952. When the examining magistrate asked why he had kept quiet about Elizabeth’s having shown signs of life, he replied that Clovis had warned him not to say anything so as not to get involved in the inquiry. Dr. Paul Jouve, a distinguished surgeon, confirmed the opinion of the postmortem team by suggesting that there might have been a time difference between the attacks on Elizabeth and her parents. He also stated that even if help had been available, she would not have survived. The examining magistrate argued that Elizabeth had shown signs of life after she had been seen by Gustave. He cited Dr. Dragon’s statement, that she had been lying on her back with her arms stretched out, whereas Gustave had described her as lying with her left hand on her stomach. Here once again confusion and conjecture resulted from sloppy police work at the murder site as photographs of Elizabeth show her in both positions.14

  Gustave’s defense team of Pollak and Charrier argued that the law under which he was charged had been inserted into the French code by the Vichy government to force the French to assist any Germans who had been wounded by the Resistance; therefore, the law was no longer pertinent. Furthermore, they asked why Aristide Panayotou had not been charged under the same law. Neither argument impressed the court. According to the Times this case was the first time that section 63 of the criminal code had been applied.15

  Sentencing was set for a week later, and Gustave was denied a temporary release from jail. He could well have received a three-year sentence for this offense but was given the singularly lenient punishment of two months for “behavior contrary to fraternal charity.” Since he had already spent thirty-five days in protective custody, he only had to spend one month in prison. His connections with the FTPF and the Communist Party doubtless played a significant part in persuading the court prudently to opt for clemency, as it was relatively soon after the war, the Resistance was still surrounded by a nimbus of patriotic glory, and the Communist Party was still a powerful political force despite its grimly Stalinist leadership under Maurice Thorez. It was a dramatic scene. Gustave burst into tears and fell into his father’s arms. Yvette, on the verge of collapse, flung her arms around him an
d moaned that he would die. When the magistrate asked whether he had anything to say, Gustave muttered “Merci,” presumably in gratitude that he had managed to get off so lightly and would not be absent from the Grand’ Terre when his father needed his assistance.

  Meanwhile, there had been intensive investigations of various claims, rumors, and scraps of evidence. One of the most persistent stories concerned the existence of a second Hillman, which a number of people claimed to have seen, giving rise to the theory that the Drummonds had been killed by mistake.16 On 3 October Adrien Queyrel, a miller from Les Mées, told Commissioner Constant that he and his cousin Paul Gilles had trapped crayfish in a stream near Peyruis on 1 August. When they arrived between 8:15 and 8:45 p.m., they spotted a British Hillman with a man who appeared to be in his fifties, a younger woman, and a little girl about ten years old. The family hastily packed up their belongings, including a tent, and sped off. The woman wished the bemused cousins “good night.” These people could not possibly have been the Drummonds, however, because they were in Villefranche with the Marrians.

  Apparently Constant immediately notified the Sûreté Nationale (National Police) in Paris, which wrote on the same day to Scotland Yard and asked it to trace a vehicle similar to the Drummond’s Hillman that had been seen in the area with a man, woman, and young girl. The French stressed, “It is believed that these people were being sought by the murderer and that he killed the Drummond family in error.”17 A reporter from Paris Match, who had heard the theory of a “second Hillman” from Professor Marrian, had already alerted the Sûreté; and Marrian had independently informed Scotland Yard. Interpol also asked the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to find the second car. Scotland Yard immediately began a meticulous search for any such vehicle. Rootes Group, the manufacturers of the Hillman, reported that it had supplied the domestic market with fifteen hundred Hillman Minx station wagons of the same year and model as the Drummonds’. The license plate numbers of all these cars were found, and the constabularies throughout Great Britain were ordered to interview all the owners. At the same time the police checked the records of all British ports servicing ferries to the Continent and listed all vehicles leaving the country between 1 July and 5 August and those arriving between 5 August and 5 September, as well as the name of the driver, nationality, registration number, chassis number, and the number of passengers, respectively. The Automobile Association reported that four similar cars were traveling on the Continent during this period. The police in Lancashire, Blackpool, Cheshire, and Aberdeen went off to interview the surprised owners, but all had cast-iron alibis.

  Jack Shedley of Westcliff-on-Sea received a visit from the Southend police and much to his alarm was asked whether he had any reason to fear for his life. He had imagined that the visit was to inquire about the accident he had had in his Hillman Minx coupe at the Gorges d’Ollioules northwest of Toulon on 7 August. As far as he was concerned, the theory that the Drummonds had been mistaken for him and “killed by mistake” was baseless. He could prove that he was in Alassio, Italy, at the time of the murders.

  Cecil McIntyre, his wife, son, and his son’s girlfriend had been traveling in France in a Hillman saloon, but they had run out of money and had to go home before they reached Provence. Carlo Plezner, the Austrian-born principal of the Rudolf Steiner School in Blairs, Kincardineshire, had a Hillman estate car and had been traveling in France at the time but nowhere near Lurs. Frederick Catling of Belfast had traveled down the road from Lyon to Cannes in a Hillman Minx estate car, but he was back in England on 30 July. George Henry Kennard from Warwick told the police that he had a mist green Austin A40 Countryman and had been in the vicinity at the time. He had not seen any similar vehicle in the area. Among those questioned was the thriller writer Eric Ambler, whose wife had driven to Cap Ferrat with Edgar Wallace’s daughter, Mrs. Patricia Frere of the Albany in Piccadilly, London. They were unable to shine any light on the matter. The Daily Express also appealed to its readers for information on the “second Hillman.”18 Various people came forward, but no valuable information was gleaned. Sundry other motorists received surprise visits from their local constabulary, but despite this intense search, no trace of a second Hillman was found. The theory can thus safely be discounted.

  The French police, meanwhile, followed up another lead involving a Triumph sports car, whose GB plate began with the letters KJ, that was seen in the vicinity of the crime. KJ was a Maidstone designation. The local police began their inquiries and discovered a number of vehicles with KJ plates, including an Austin 7, a Standard 9, a Ford two-ton truck, and a Singer saloon. None of this was in any way helpful. Then a Triumph sports car with the number plate KJ9944 was found in a garage in Lyon. It belonged to a Canadian by the name of George K. Johnston. When interviewed by the police, he could prove that he was nowhere near Lurs at the time of the crime. Robert Corne, a baker at Saint-Sorlin-en-Bugey in the Ain, reported that he had seen two Canadians at the beginning of August. They had an army rifle on the front seat of their car that they had tried to conceal. This tip led nowhere, and Johnston and his companion were clearly not implicated. The communist L’Humanité placed great emphasis on the story of the Triumph sports car to take the pressure off the Dominicis. The paper added a nice touch to the story by saying that the car had been driven away by one Peter Martin, accompanied by a “ravishing young girl.” They were most alarmed to find the vehicle surrounded by the police.19

  The Sûreté Nationale then suggested the rumors that a British car had followed the Drummonds indicated some personal motive might be behind the crime, and it asked the CID to investigate the private lives of the Drummonds with this in mind. Norman Henry Burton, a waiter in the Chilton Court Restaurant in Baker Street, had seen photos of Lady Drummond in the press and already told Hampstead police that she had regularly met a man of about forty-five in the restaurant over the last couple of years. He claimed that they appeared to be having an affair. Hampstead police passed this information on to the CID, and a chief inspector contacted the Nottingham constabulary with the following note: “This is a very delicate matter, but the information cannot be disregarded.” The Nottingham police made inquiries and concluded that Lady Drummond was not the type of woman to have such a relationship. The Drummonds were a devoted family, with Anne frequently accompanying her husband on his many visits to London, where they liked to dine in Soho. The photos in the newspapers were taken many years ago, so it would have been impossible to recognize her from them. Assistant Commissioner Howe of Scotland Yard therefore wrote back to Biget at Sûreté Nationale: “My Dear Friend, I can assure you that the family had a most excellent reputation in every way and we are certain from our enquiries that there was never any scandal nor could they possibly have been the victims of an act of vengeance.”20

  Yet despite this exhaustive investigation, rumors of another British station wagon with a man, woman, and little girl persisted. Barthélémy Borgna, Jérôme Cicheddu, Roger Gaze, and Francis Perrin all testified that they had seen such a vehicle. Borgna, Cicheddu, and Gaze said that the car was gray; Perrin said it was green. They all claimed that the girl, unlike Elizabeth Drummond, was wearing a red dress. There may very well have been another British station wagon similar to the Drummonds’ Hillman in the area with a man, woman, and young girl on board, but since this was obviously not a contract killing or a planned murder, its existence was beside the point.

  Sébeille visited the Grand’ Terre while Gustave was locked away. He pointed out to Gaston that Marie, Yvette, and Clovis all knew that Elizabeth had shown signs of life that morning, yet he persisted in saying that he had heard nothing. Gaston flew into a terrible rage at the insinuation, waving his cane at his wife, yelling that “the old bitch” and “sardine” knew all about it and had told him nothing. She continued to feed the pigs with apparent indifference toward such familiar abuse. Sébeille asked him what he would have done, had he known. With a sly grin and a dismissive shrug, he coolly replied that he would
have ordered Gustave to tell the police.

  By this time the Grand’ Terre presented a bizarre spectacle. The murder site was knee-deep in cigarette butts, waste paper, sardine tins, and empty bottles. Up to five hundred vehicles per day stopped to have a look at this macabre scene. Strange figures with wands and pendulums ambled trancelike through the detritus. With more than ten thousand visitors to the site, a businessman offered a substantial sum for the Grand’ Terre with the intent of turning it into a hotel.

  Sébeille left Lurs, sorrowfully announcing that the affair was not over but simply in “a period of hibernation.” He remained in Marseille from mid-November until the end of December. Assisted by Inspector Ranchin he worked his way through piles of transcripts of hundreds of interviews, hoping to pick up a lead. He also discussed the case with his father, an experienced police officer, who, as noted previously, had specialized in rural crime. Robert Sébeille became so familiar with the case that it soon looked as if he were in charge and his son was merely his assistant. Sébeille senior reinforced his son’s conviction that the answer to the crime lay in the Grand’ Terre.

  At first Robert thought of Paul Maillet, the passionate poacher who possessed a number of military firearms, but after his denunciation of Gustave, Sébeille was convinced that he was in no way involved. For Sébeille the key was why Elizabeth had not run in the direction of the farm. It suggested that she recognized her assassin, a point that was strengthened by the Dominicis’ adamant denial that any of the Drummonds had come to the farm to ask for water. The Dominicis’ claim to have been deaf and blind to the brutal murders committed only a few yards from their home was blatantly absurd. Sébeille senior felt that little could be obtained from either Marie or Yvette. Both seemed to have been well instructed as to what to say and would not alter their stories. Marie would continue to deny that she had heard or seen anything. Yvette, who appeared to be the most intelligent of the Dominicis, would be very difficult to break. Gustave, however, was a somewhat pathetic figure. He was weak willed, passive, unable to break free from his dominating father, and subservient to his wife. He might well be privy to the crime and certainly showed signs of trying to cover up something, but he was unlikely to have played a leading role.