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Tycoon Walter was reportedly unhappy about the influence exercised over his wife by her old friend, Dr. Maurice Lacour, a steel-eyed physician with a psychiatric practice among society women. In June of 1957, while motoring with Dominique and Dr. Lacour, Walter stopped his car on the road, stepped out and was knocked down by a Citroen. By the time he reached a hospital, with Dr. Lacour giving first aid, he was dead of a skull fracture. Walter left a fortune estimated at $142.5 million. His heir was Dominique, who immediately appointed her brother, Jean Lacaze, as administrator of the great Zellidja enterprises in Morocco.
Bulb-Nosed Hero. Some five months after Tycoon Walter's death, opportunity presented itself to a small restaurant owner in Cap d'Antibes. He was Camille Rayon, a tough, bulb-nosed ex-paratrooper. Resistance hero and fanatical Gaullist. Rayon was approached by a general's aide who begged his help in disposing of a salopard (louse) who "compromises the great national work." Who was the salopard? Answer: Paulo Guillaume, now 22, and concluding his military service in Algeria.
Rayon was interested. Two days later, he insists, Dr. Lacour appeared, explained that young Paulo was the shame of the Walter family because he was betraying France by secretly working with the rebel F.L.N. underground in Algeria. Lacour, he declared, offered 5,000,000 francs ($119,000) to have Paulo rubbed out. Rayon agreed, and two weeks later both men met in the bar of the Aletti Hotel in Algiers, where Dr. Lacour pointed out Paulo. Rayon uneasily saw that the boy was wearing battle dress. He told Lacour that ''Algiers did not seem to be the ideal place to knock off a combat lieutenant of the paratroops." Lacour replied that Rayon could kill Paulo after he got out of the army.
For the next several months Rayon promised much, did nothing. Young Paulo, after his discharge, got a steward's job at Paris' Orly Airport, and was content to live simply and anonymously. Rayon, on his trail, said he felt sorry for Paulo, bought him a drink, and told him the truth. The young heir said he was not surprised, and added, "I don't care about their filthy money." But he agreed to disappear for a time.
Closed Drawer. Old Paratrooper Rayon then met Dr. Lacour at a cafe on the Champs-Elysées, told him Paulo had been strangled and thrown into the Seine. Dr. Lacour passed over 4,000,000 francs, later paid 16 million more. Rayon, as fidgety a hero-villain as fiction has ever provided, went home to Antibes, was back in Paris three days later to tell his story to his lawyer, who had him sign a declaration. The lawyer gave it to Examining Magistrate Jacques Batigne, who read it, reflected, and then apparently filed it in his desk drawer, where it lay for a year.
Paulo, emerging from hiding, moved into an apartment in suburban Neuilly that was owned by Jacques Walter, son of his dead stepfather. He was often seen in bistros in the 16th arrondissement with his pretty blonde prostitute girl friend. Marie-Thérèse Goyenetch, 22, nicknamed "Maïté." One day, as Maïté was leaving her small hotel near the Etoile, a man thrust a card into her hand, said: "There's money in it for you." The card bore the telephone number of Jean Lacaze, Dominique's brother.