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The prostitute visited Jean Lacaze three times, on each occasion in the presence of other witnesses, including his secretary, Madame Iréne Richard. Then, in the tradition of every fictional golden-hearted chippy, she told all to Paulo. Her story: Lacaze had offered her $20,000 to complain to the police that Paulo was living off her earnings. Paulo went to a lawyer, who explained that under French law a legally adopted son cannot be disinherited unless he is shown to be of bad moral or criminal character -if indicted as a pimp, Paulo would lose his right to inherit the mammoth Walter fortune.
Patriotic Effort. Paulo, Maïté and the lawyer rushed to Magistrate Batigne with Maïté's story. At long last, the magistrate pulled Rayon's signed statement from his drawer, put the case in the hands of the
Police Justiciaire. By last week debonair, highly respected Jean Lacaze, complaining that "I am the victim of a blackmail plot," was in Santé Prison. His secretary Madame Richard broke down and confirmed Maïté's story.
France quivered under the implications of the case, looked falteringly at the great interests, domestic and international, which might be affected by a misdirected or careless inheritance of the colossal Walter empire. And what of Dominique and the slippery Dr. Lacour? Both were vacationing at Marrakech in Morocco, 422 miles from the site of the great Zellidja mines. Everybody was talking at sixty to the minute. Jean Lacaze blamed Paulo, cried: "He is the shame of our family." Paulo Guillaume snapped irritably: "The billions don't interest me. What I want is to find my real mother." Preparing to return to Paris this week, Dominique Lacaze Guillaume Walter, still handsome at 53, broke her long silence to say icily: "This affair is a plot against my brother Jean Lacaze by my adopted son Jean-Paul Guillaume."
Stifled Scandals. French newspapers hinted at wider repercussions, at even more extensive political involvements. "The search for truth in this affair," cautioned L'Express, "will require justices with plenty of independence and magistrates with plenty of character and a high sense of duty." The lawyers on one side of the case included the attorney who once represented King Mohammed V of Morocco, and ex-Premier Edgar Faure, whose government had given Morocco its independence. Paris-Presse warned that "other characters" who have played "great roles in our postwar history" might come into the case, warned: "This affair must not serve as a payoff between two opposing political clans. It is imperative to know the truth quickly. Stifled scandals have always deeply hurt the Republic."
Breathless, France awaited the next act of the first major scandal to be tried in De Gaulle's Fifth Republic.