Free The Valentino Affair by Colin Evans Page B

mother-in-law was lying, deliberately withholding money so that she could keep the couple under her financial thumb. His response was astonishing: He booked passage for himself and Blanca on a steamer to Europe, determined to tackle the señora face to face. Ahead of Blanca—pregnant, remember—lay an arduous forty-five-day voyage across the tempestuous South Atlantic in winter. Years later, Blanca credited Jack’s frenzied insistence on this madcap venture with opening the fault lines in their marriage. Nothing had prepared her for this turn of events. In a few short months, she had gone from the giddy delirium of a glittering society wedding in Paris to cowering in front of a violent and vengeful gold digger. Her dismay would have been doubled had she known that, in order to fund the European bailout mission, Jack had plundered her inheritance, going behind her back to sell six thousand dollars worth of her securities without telling her. Only later would she discover that her husband was a serial embezzler, emptying her accounts of every penny he could grab.
    The showdown between Jack and his mother-in-law took place in Paris in mid-July. While Blanca listened, quaking, in an adjoining hotel room, Jack implored the señora to finance the farm purchase. But his entreaties proved no more successful in person than they had by mail. Señora Errázuriz-Vergara stood firm, contemptuous of his grasping avarice, adamant that she didn’t have that kind of spare cash just lying around. He flatly accused her of lying. She told him to get out. After more abuse and arm waving, Jack stormed out of the hotel—alone—and at the Gare du Nord booked passage on the boat-train to London. Blanca remained behind, sobbing in her mother’s arms. We don’t know what passed between mother and daughter, but we safely can assume that the custodian of the Errázuriz-Vergara fortune spelled out some pretty tough ground rules over Jack’s future access to the family’s money. The señora had no intention of allowing this Yanqui marauder to squander the wealth of generations.
    A week in London—always one of his favorite places—cooled Jack’s temper but did nothing to allay his vengeful nature. He returned to Paris and told Blanca that they were leaving immediately. They crossed the channel to England and, on July 28, 1912, boarded the SS Amerika at Southampton. Eight days later they docked at New York. Jack de Saulles would never see his mother-in-law again.

    By now, he didn’t just need to rebuild his marriage, he also needed to throw a veil of secrecy over his humiliation in Paris, which meant acting as normally as possible. Through his network of real estate contacts, he found a rental cottage in the village of Larchmont in Westchester County, just eighteen miles north of Midtown Manhattan. Still, the cottage’s remote location unsettled an edgy husband concerned about his wife’s pregnancy.
    One day while they were in the city, Jack took Blanca into a pawnshop and purchased a black-handled .32 Smith & Wesson revolver. When the gun arrived at their home a few days later—the pawnshop owner delaying shipment because Jack initially didn’t have a license—Jack gave it to Blanca with instructions to keep it by her at all times. Blanca was no stranger to firearms, though; she and her siblings had regularly fired weapons on the family’s estate in Viña del Mar, and, while she suspected that Jack was overreacting, she did promise to keep the gun within easy reach. Then she got on with the business of trying to make her marriage work.
    Despite the ghastly scene in Paris and the insults to her mother’s name and reputation, Blanca held traditional views about wedlock. It was her duty, as she saw it, to support her husband in every venture, even if that meant ostracizing her own family. As she prepared for the birth of her child, solitude might not have been the preferred option, but Blanca always knew how to hide her feelings, and she