Read The Valentino Affair for Free Online Page A

once again, protesting that she had not so testified. But Justice Manning overruled him and Weeks continued. “Don’t you think it strange that all these things have gone from your mind?”
    “I think it very strange.” 64 She half smiled.
    “Then from August 3, 1917, from about a quarter to 9 o’clock until August 13 you have no recollection of a single, solitary thing you did within that period?”
    “No—except that someone was hurting me.”
    “And the hurting was [caused by] the doctors?”
    “Yes.”
    “And you want the court and jury to understand that?”
    “Yes.” 65
    Under further questioning, Blanca admitted that despite a string of ongoing medical ailments dating from her childhood, she had not needed to consult a doctor since the previous winter. Without pausing for breath Weeks abruptly changed tack. “This is not the first time you have be in a courtroom, is it?”
    Blanca admitted that it was not, and he asked if she had attended the Carman trial. “Yes, one afternoon I drove Mrs. Degener over to the trial.”
    “Did you hear any of the proceedings?”
    “Yes. I heard that black thing testify.”
    Justice Manning looked up sharply. “Did you say you heard a ‘black thing testify’?” 66
    “Yes.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “A nigger.” 67
    Even in those less enlightened times, Blanca’s crude racism sent a shock wave of revulsion through the court, as Justice Manning made plain. “Is that the term you apply to the colored race down in your country?”
    “No. We don’t have any down there.” 68 A little curl of the lip accompanied this remark.
    It was an ugly moment, the worst of Blanca’s time on the stand, and Weeks, shrewdly, chose this time to close. In truth, though, his cross-examination had been tepid. The district attorney had seemed as much in awe of Blanca as every other male who came within her orbit, treating her with a feathery touch that made a mockery of his judicial obligations. Certainly he made Uterhart’s task that much easier as he attempted to coax some damage limitation from Blanca. On redirect he brought out that she had spent just half an hour at the Carman trial, although he skated around the racial slur, knowing that nothing could undo that kind of blunder, and hurriedly moved on to other events. He got Blanca to explain how, on the morning of the shooting, she had phoned Constable Thorne and asked him to come to the house because, on the previous day, she thought she heard someone walking about the property. This had heightened her nervousness and explained why she carried the gun on the night in question. She admitted carrying the gun frequently and having practiced with a target in Chile and on the beach at Huntington. But when Uterhart tried to revive the issue of the expensive ring, Justice Manning cut him off. “In a case as serious as this I shall not bother my head about trumpery like a ring.” 69
    And then it was over. Uterhart said he had no further questions, and Blanca bowed graciously to the jury and left the stand at 3:20 p.m. Uterhart led her to his table, where she almost fell into Mrs. Seaman’s arms. Along the way she did manage a quick peek back at the judge and smiled. A member of the public gallery, a woman in a cerise hat, was heard to whisper to her neighbor: “She’ll get off all right. Look how pretty she is.” 70 And this summed up the general view. Although Weeks had landed some telling blows—in particular exposing the uglier side of Blanca’s nature—there had been no knockout punch.
    When the defense continued, Constable Thorne was recalled to corroborate Blanca’s claim that she had seen someone prowling around her Roslyn home. He was followed by Ethel O’Neill (née Whitesides), the nurse employed by Blanca at South Bethlehem in 1913. She talked so faintly, her voice muffled by an ever present handkerchief, that the judge repeatedly asked her to speak up. Her evidence chiefly concerned Jack’s infrequent visits