Prince's Enemy

Only two things have kept the incredible theatricalities of L'Affaire Stavisky from becoming a truly great detective story: lack of a conclusion and lack of a suitable villain. The conclusion was as far off as ever last week, but to the great joy of Sunday supplement writers a possible villain was produced, an officer of the Legion of Honor, a lawyer formerly of great influence.

Evidence against him was flimsy, yet if Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes should go before a Senate investigating committee indirectly to charge Tammany District Attorney Thomas C. T. Grain with responsibility for the disappearance of Judge Crater, it would be of more than passing interest. So it was in Paris. Before the Parliamentary committee investigating the Stavisky scandal came the holder of the highest judicial post in France, Judge Theodore Lescouve. First President of the Court of Cassation, to tell what he knew about Stavisky, what he knew in particular about the murder of his colleague Albert Prince (TIME, March 5. et seq.).

Judge Lescouve testified that he had drawn up two reports on Sacha Stavisky's strange success in dodging trial for fraud for eight years. In the second of these reports Judge Lescouve directly charged Chief Prosecutor Georges Pressard of the Seine, lean-faced brother-in-law of onetime Premier Camille Chautemps, with negligence, a report that forced Pressard's removal from office.

Judge Lescouve's report was based in turn on a report of a police inspector named Gripois who pointed out Swindler Stavisky's criminal record in 1930 and handed his report to the murdered Judge Prince. The latter quite properly turned it over to Prosecutor Pressard. Last January Prosecutor Pressard denied that he had ever seen the Gripois report. Continued Judge Lescouve:

"Judge Prince came to me and said, 'I want to see that man Pressard. I know too much about the Stavisky affair and others.' Afterwards he said to me with profound emotion, 'I have just freed my conscience.' He had without knowing it signed his own death warrant.

"Understand gentlemen, I am not accusing M. Pressard of any part in the Prince murder or even making such an insinuation. I am merely drawing the logical conclusion between what Judge Prince said and his death." The son and widow of Judge Albert Prince were far less circumspect. Through their lawyers last week they issued a 10,000-word statement, going all over the same ground and concluding: "After his interview with Judge Lescouve, Judge Prince said to Max Buteau: 'Between Pressard and me, there is hatred to the death.' How is it possible not to place this remark in juxtaposition with Judge Lescouve's declaration before the Parliamentary commission." Never until Stavisky was a breath of scandal attached to the long, unexciting career of Georges Pressard as a criminal lawyer and provincial judge. Called before the investigating commission last week he maintained stoutly that he never knew Stavisky or ever performed any favors for him. "On the death of Judge Prince I have no opinions," said he. "I was very sorry when I heard of it." The Stavisky investigation has already linked the swindler to one famed murder of many years ago, the mysterious death of Jean Galmot, Deputy from French Guiana, in 1928 (TIME, April 2). Indirectly last week it brought to final conclusion another financial scandal that 23 years ago shook France almost as deeply. Henri Rochette was another swindler to hold his own. Starting as a waiter in a French hotel with a $1,000 inheritance, he pyramided strange financial operations until in 1908, aged 29, he was the organizer of a dozen companies, one of which had 60 branches and had sold $24,000,000 worth of securities. The entire structure crashed and investigation showed that, like Stavisky, Henri Rochette had bribed his way through the entire French political system.

Paralleling the Stavisky-rooted murder of Albert Prince, the great Caillaux-Calmette affair grew from Rochette roots. Because Editor Gaston Calmette of Le Figaro waged a bitter campaign against Joseph Caillaux, Minister of Finance, largely for his alleged part in the Rochette scandal, Mme Caillaux walked into Figaro's office and shot Editor Calmette dead.

Henri Rochette was sentenced to two years in prison, which he never served, fleeing to Mexico instead. During the War he turned up in the Verdun trenches, fighting under an assumed name. Later he appeared as a character in the Oustric bank failure. Last month French justice, smarting under charges of laxity in the Stavisky affair, hauled him into court, sentenced him again on his ancient swindle charge. In 15 years Henri Rochette has lost most of his spirit; he wanted only to be left alone. He lost his appeal last week. The original sentence of two years in jail was upheld.

Wildly facing a crescent of judges, Henri Rochette cried:

"If you condemn me there will be blood." Whereupon the judges raised his sentence to three years for contempt of court.

Henri Rochette whipped out a razor sharp knife. Right in the middle of the court room he slashed his throat from ear to ear. Carefully tucked inside Henri Rochette's hat was a note:

"I have postponed my suicide for several weeks to finish correcting the proofs of my book, The Regeneration of France."

Several miles away, at Lieusaint, the body of his brother Gaston Rochette was found, a suicide too, shot through the temple.

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