DAUDET CASE AGAIN

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 25, 29 December 1925, Page 5

DAUDET CASE AGAIN

SCENES RECONSTRUCTED.

A QUEER LIBEL CASE..

LONDON, Nov. 1

All the world takes interest in the extraordinary death of Phillippe Daudet, son of M. Leon Daudet, two years ago in a taxi cab. M. Daudet’s contention was that lvis son was murdered and his body then placed in the taxi. The case has been revived again by an action brought by M. Daudet against Bajot, the taxi driver, whom he accuses of perjury. M. Daudet told the Court that a waiter from the hotel in Havre where Phillippe Daudet had stayed had brought him the fragments of a letter written by his son, in which he gave a clear indication of his intention to commit suicide, because he had stolen a sum of money from liis parents, M. Daudet declared that he recognised his son’s handwriting, and gave it as his opinion that he had torn up the letter after writing it. The case, which has been going on throughout the week, has, of course, drawn attention on itself, but had also caused extraordinary scenes, when the judges and other officers of the law attempted to reconstruct the case in the street of Paris in which the death occurred, since the French courts retain even more of the old-time dignity of dress and other aids to impress the people with the majesty of the law. The Court drove from the Palace of Justice to the bookseller’s shop in the Boulevard Beaumarchais. M. Daudet alleges that his son was enticed into the basement of this shop and shot, his body and a revolver, with one cartridge discharged, being placed in M. Bajot’s taxi cab, which was waiting in a back street.

Twenty-four pair-horse landaus, driven by antique coachmen, with silk top hats, conveyed judges, jury, counsel and witnesses, all escorted by mounted municipal guards and cyclist police, from the law courts to the scene. Traffic was stopped in the boulevard.

Judge Flory, president of the Assize Court, alighted from his carriage as the troops and police saluted, and the spectators raised their hats to “the Court.” While the crowd looked on from the other side of the boulevard, the hearing of the case was resumed, first in the doorway of the shop of the anarchist bookseller, M. Leflaouter, next in the shop itself, and finally in the basement, where the alleged murder was reconstructed.

In the little shop, filled with books of every sort and size, anarchist tracts, philosophical works and novels, the Court continued the heated verbal duel that had been in progress between M. Daudet and M. Lellaouter at the law courts. M. Daudet affirmed his conviction that his son had been murdered in the basement. M. Leflaouter, a sunken-cheeked man, with a blonde beard, retorted that he did not believe in M. Daudet’s good faith when he pretended that his son had been murdered. There was a dramatic scene in the back room, where the shooting of Phillippe is alleged to have taken could the judges, jury and counsel and witnesses squeeze into the room, where a scene was reconstructed to represent Phillippe being carried mortally wounded into M. Bajot’s cab. Tears streamed down the cheeks of M. Daudet, as in a broken voice, he explained his reasons for his conviction that his son had died a violent death. Again he affirmed that the boy was enticed into a trap by the police and shot by the police inspector, M. Colombo, who, M. Daudet admitted, did not at the time know the identity of' the victim. A strange story !