reserved for the press, and representatives were there from Reuters, United Press,
International News Service, Shsin Hau Agency, French Press Agency and Tass, among
others.
The circumstances of the murder trial itself would have been sensational enough, but
the personae were so famous that the excited spectators did not know where to look first.
It was like a three-ring circus. In the first row of benches was Philippe Sorel, the star, who,
it was rumored, was a former lover of Noelle Page. Sorel had smashed a camera on the
way into the courtroom and had adamantly refused to speak to the press. He sat in his seat
now, withdrawn and silent, an invisible wall around him. One row in back of Sorel sat
Armand Gautier. The tall, saturnine director was constantly scanning the courtroom as
though mentally making notes for his next picture. Near Gautier sat Israel Katz, the
famous French surgeon and resistance hero.
Two seats away from him sat William Fraser, special assistant to the President of the
United States. Next to Fraser a seat had been reserved and a rumor swept through the
courtroom like wildfire that Constantin Demiris was going to appear.
Everywhere the spectators turned was a familiar face: a politician, a singer, a well-
known sculptor, an internationally famous author. But though the audience in the judicial
circus was filled with celebrities, the main focus of attention was in the center ring.
At one end of the defendant’s box sat Noelle Page, exquisitely beautiful, her honey
skin a bit paler than usual, and dressed as though she had just stepped out of Madame
Chanel’s. There was a regal quality about Noelle, a noble presence that heightened the
drama of what was happening to her. It whetted the excitement of the spectators and
sharpened their blood-lust.
As an American newsweekly expressed it: The emotion that flowed toward Noelle
Page from the crowd that had come to witness her trial was so strong that it became an
almost physical presence in the courtroom. It was not a feeling of sympathy or of enmity, it
was simply a feeling of expectation. The woman being tried for murder by the state was a
superwoman, a goddess on a golden pedestal, who was high above them, and they were
there to watch their idol being brought down to their level and destroyed. The feeling in
the courtroom must have been the same feelings that were in the hearts of the peasants
who watched Marie Antoinette riding to her doom in the tumbrel.
Noelle Page was not the only act in the legal circus. At the other end of the
defendant’s box sat Larry Douglas, filled with a smoldering anger. His handsome face was
pale, and he had lost weight, but those things only served to accentuate his sculptured
features, and many of the women in the courtroom had an urge to take him in their arms
and console him in one way or another. Since Larry had been arrested, he had received
hundreds of letters from women all over the world, dozens of gifts and proposals of
marriage.
The third star of the circus was Napoleon Chotas, a man who was as well known in
Greece as Noelle Page. Napoleon Chotas was acknowledged to be one of the greatest
criminal lawyers in the world. He had defended clients ranging from heads of government