The Road to Villa Chagrin

Where the Riviera is loud and brash, its less renowned rival Biarritz is reserved and circumspect. Drowsing in the winter sun, discreet Biarritz has its full share of menages `a trois, lurid and perverted personalities, titled lovers and mistresses of high & low degree. But scandal, however it flourishes behind the hedges that screen the big villas, is never to be flaunted in the swank drinking places. Thus it has been ever since the days of Britain's Edward VII, who set the tone for Biarritz and usually remembered to draw the blinds.

So Luscious. Last week a deep distress pervaded the elegant resort. There, rashly in the public eye, was the town's aristocratic Jonsine da Silva Ramos, a young, perpetually smiling Brazilian, lord of 3,460 acres of rich coffee plantation in his native land. He was locked up in nearby Bayonne's jail, called Villa Chagrin, on charge of murdering his lovely wife, the equally patrician Monique, nee Champin.

One begins with Monique Champin's first visit to Biarritz just after the war. She was 16 then, luscious and very fond of the beach. Her family moved in the upper level of France's famous "200." Her father's fortune was solidly founded in Hants Fourneaux, Forges et Acieries de Pompey (iron & steel works). Her mother Margot, nee Pereire, was rated one of the best-dressed women in Paris; after divorcing Champin, Margot had married Edmund Bory, owner of the Colony-Club, a select oasis for select society near the Champs-Elysees.

In Biarritz, Monique first met the Da Silva cousins--tall, handsome Nano, just back from service with the French army,, an ardent cavalier who escorted her to the casinos and the dances and introduced her to his cousin, Jonsine da Silva, who promptly fell in love with her.

So Difficult. Monique just couldn't decide which of the two Brazilians she liked best. Then, on his father's death, Jonsine hurried home to take over his coffee inheritance. Monique decided she loved Nano, for he was close at hand. Then Nano's grandmother died, and he hurried home to take over another coffee plantation. Monique swerved to Jonsine, who had returned to Biarritz. Talking fast while the coast was clear, he persuaded her to marry him.

Jonsine took his bride off to Brazil, there drudged over his coffee estate while his wife pined for Biarritz's less boring round. Nano renewed his suit and the situation grew tense. Twice Monique went home. The first time, husband Jonsine pursued her, persuaded her to come back to Brazil, have a baby and be happy. They had a baby girl, Pamela, but Monique was still not happy. The second time she ran off, Jonsine followed again; this time he promised to stay with her in France.

So Distraught. But Nano, too, popped up in Biarritz, and spent much time with Monique. She became distraught, required larger & larger doses of sleeping pills. Last October she made a decision. She told Jonsine she would leave him for Nano.

Next day the crisis ripened. Jonsine and Monique went to Mass together, then dropped into Sonny's Bar for tomato juice, then lunched at the rambling Villa Fazenda. Monique wrote a letter to Nano telling him she had finally broken with Jonsine. Six hours before it was postmarked, she was dead.

Who mailed it, and how had she died? Later, the servants said Monique and Jonsine dined together that night. About 110'clock they went upstairs. At 2 a.m., as he said later, Jonsine went to his white-tiled bathroom, heard his wife vomiting in her own green-tiled bathroom next door. He ran in. She had collapsed. Jonsine called the family physician, who injected strychnine to counteract the sleeping pills. At 6:30 a.m., Monique, aged 20, died.

An autopsy showed that Monique had died drunk; her husband swore he saw her take no drinks, and the servants said there was nothing to drink in the house. Jonsine suggested she had guzzled a bottle of eau de cologne. Examining Magistrate Max Pech waxed suspicious, wondered if she could have been killed by curare, the poison used by Amazonian Indians on their arrow tips. He sent Monique's body to Paris, where doctors vainly looked for needle marks through which curare, which leaves only faint internal traces, might have been injected.

So Good-Humored. In December Jonsine was arrested in Paris as a material witness. The Da Silva family promptly wired protests to the Pope and the Brazilian ambassador. In all the swank Parisian bars, from the Avenue Matignon to the Rue Pierre-Premier-de-Serbie, "Brazilian" and "anti-Brazilian" factions formed.

This month Jonsine was transferred to the Villa Chagrin at Bayonne, to face Magistrate Pech. Pech charged him with murder, told the press: "If I have taken the decision to bring the charge against Monsieur da Silva despite all the pressure I have been subject to, and despite negative reports by the experts and a public opinion largely favorable to the cause of the Brazilian, it is because I am convinced of his guilt . . . The motive of the crime is clear to me: Madame da Silva Ramos was the mistress of his cousin Hernano da Silva."

Around Biarritz hardly anyone believed Jonsine guilty. In Les Bouchers Restaurant the waitresses fixed up dinner for him, packed it in bicycle saddlebags and wheeled it over to his cell in Villa Chagrin. One of them reported: "He's bearing up well. He's in good humor. It's not nice to see him there. But he'll be out soon."

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