The story might have rolled from Simenon's prolific typewriter, and it calls for someone like his Inspector Maigret to solve it. The cast includes big-eyed, beautiful Dominique Lacaze, with a hint of mystery about her origins, and the two men of great talent and enormous wealth whom she married -Art Collector Paul Guillaume and Industrialist Jean Walter. There are the nagging riddles of their deaths, the odd behavior of her elegant brother Jean, the mysterious comings and goings of the magnetic Dr. Lacour, the ex-paratrooper willing to murder for money, and the fetching blonde prostitute called Maïté. And, finally, there is the unloved and unloving adopted boy, Jean-Pierre Guillaume, around whom everything seems to revolve. At stake is one of the world's greatest fortunes.
Wide Hat, Faint Smile. The story began in the exciting Paris of the 1920s, through which moved Dominique Lacaze, gathering admirers of her slim beauty and quick intelligence. In 1925, she married Paul Guillaume, a wealthy art dealer, the friend of Apollinaire, Cocteau, Utrillo, and of André Derain, whose portrait of Dominique shows her in a wide hat, with a faint smile, a withdrawn expression and eyes that a man could drown in. In 1934 Paul Guillaume died under curious circumstances. At first it was reported that he had been lost at sea on a fishing expedition, then that he had wasted away of a disease resembling paratyphoid.
To Dominique he left an estate of 6 billion francs (then $375 million), which was promptly contested by his relatives. Under French law a widow ordinarily has the use of her husband's fortune while she is alive but cannot bequeath it to anyone save a direct heir. The Guillaumes had been childless in nine years of marriage; yet now the rumor spread that, surprisingly, the beautiful Madame Guillaume was pregnant. Ten months later a baby boy appeared in her household. In 1941 she formally adopted the child, named him Jean-Pierre Guillaume, though he was often called Paulo. The records show only that he was born in Paris on Nov. 30, 1934, of unknown parents.
Corruptible Wealth. By this time, Dominique had another devoted admirer, the architect and industrialist Paul Walter, whose revenues from the vast Zellidja lead and zinc mines in Morocco at one time represented 10% of the entire foreign revenue of France. They were married in 1941. A tall, tough, humorous man, Paul Walter had both ideas and imagination. He gave away millions of francs, endowed hospitals from Paris to Istanbul, established the Zellidja Foundation, which offered tiny cash grants to young students on their pledge to travel widely and live by their wits (TIME, Dec. 1). He also had -with apparent prevision -strong feelings about the corruptibility of wealth, and therefore settled 30 billion francs on each of three children by a former marriage on condition that they would be dropped from his will.
To his new wife, Walter promptly made over some $60 million in stock and art treasures. Perhaps because of his firm ideas about the inheritance of wealth, he did not adopt his wife's adopted son Paulo, though he gave the boy warmth and affection, in sharp contrast to Dominique's coldness and indifference.