The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse (12 page)

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Featherstone Buildings in Holborn was a charming Georgian terrace that was hit by a 250kg bomb in the London Blitz and completely destroyed. It now houses the rather less lovely Mid City Place.

Standing on a seat at the side of the hall, the better to peer into the curtained sanctuary, is a mad little old woman in a squeezed bonnet, who is always in court, from its sitting to its rising, and always expecting some incomprehensible judgment to be given in her favour. Some say she really is, or was, a party to a suit; but no one knows for certain, because no one cares. She carries some small litter in a reticule which she calls her documents: principally consisting of paper matches and dry lavender.

C
HARLES
D
ICKENS

Bleak House

On the morning of Tuesday, 3 December 1901, a queue of expectant members of the public wound its way along the pavement before the cast-iron gates of the new Law Courts on the Strand. It was a damp, foggy morning, mild for the season, as had been the whole winter so far. As usual for the time of year in London, a damp drizzle saturated with soot and the carburetted hydrogen of coal smoke smothered the streets in a blanket as suffocating as any to be found on the Essex Marshes. The weak sunlight did little to mellow the hard edges of Portland stone that defined the outline of the
new civil court buildings, which rose with Gothic foreboding on the junction of Fleet Street and the Strand.

The buildings were an extravagant affair, flourishing with turrets, pinnacles and pilasters. Her late Majesty the Queen herself – for Victoria had died in March that year – had opened the courtrooms nineteen years earlier, in December 1882. Then, cheering crowds had thronged the pavements of the Strand, and the great entrance hall – an imposing hundred and forty feet high – had been filled to the brim with a bobbing mass of big wigs and scarlet robes. The queen had ascended the daïs and made a speech expressing her satisfaction at the admirable work performed by the architect of the works, the late Mr George Edmund Street, Esq. She had expressed her hope that ‘the uniting together of the various branches of judicature in this Supreme Court will conduce to the more efficient and speedy discharge of justice to my subjects, upon which the chief security of the rights to my Crown, and the liberties of my people, depend’.

Peering into the semi-darkness of the same entrance hall in December 1901, an observer might question whether Her Late Majesty’s hopes had been fulfilled. The courtrooms had a peculiar odour unique to them: a Law Court Particular, different from the London Particular that swirled outside the gates. For one contemporary visitor, it was a sort of ‘amalgamated effluvium’ produced by the ‘reek of stuff gowns, dog-eared papers, mouldy parchment, horse-hair wigs, imperfectly washed spectators, police constables and witnesses’, with a bracing whiff of ammonia from the dung and mud on the pavement in the Strand outside. To this must be added, on days when a sensational trial such as this one was in progress,
the warm scent of Pears soap and the heady waft of Houbigant perfume emitted by fashionable ladies, who flocked like brightly coloured birds to listen, with breathless attention, to the scandalous unfolding of a salacious case.

Victorian ladies were fascinated by court cases, particularly those that centred on women, whether the trial involved a murder, divorce or a dispute over a title. The
Pall Mall Gazette
noted this grisly interest, mockingly observing of the female spectators at the trial of a murderess that: ‘Hour after hour did these ghoulish women, armed with opera glasses, sherry flasks and sandwich boxes, hang with eager curiosity upon every movement and look of their miserable sister.’

The reason for the large crowd that assembled before the Law Courts on this particular day was that it was the start of the long-anticipated hearing of
Druce
v.
Young
. This was the case to set aside the probate on T. C. Druce’s will that had been started by Anna Maria Druce in the civil court, back in 1898. After three long years of protracted legal wrangling, the case was finally up for trial. Anna Maria’s contention was that, as T. C. Druce had not died in 1864, the probate granted on his will was invalid, and should therefore be discounted. The principal defendant in the case was the accountant Alexander Young, an old friend of T. C. Druce and one of the executors of his will. Anna Maria’s application to the church court before Chancellor Tristram for a faculty to open the Druce vault had stalled, halted by the home secretary as long ago as December 1898, as the
Star
man had observed. Anna Maria had hoped that, by issuing these alternative civil proceedings, she might secure the exhumation by a different route.

As the crowds milled round the court building, hoping
for entry, the gates were guarded by a burly policeman with truncheon at the ready. Members of the public lucky enough to gain entry would have been confronted with a pale-faced attendant, lurking in a forest of coats and umbrellas. They would then have followed the passageway that led to the courts of the probate, divorce and admiralty division, leading to a winding staircase that ended with a long, thin corridor linking the warren of panelled courtrooms. Here they would have been confronted by a tide of human flotsam and jetsam: grey-wigged and black-gowned barristers flapping and bobbing amidst a wave of copy clerks, process-servers, solicitors, wealthy merchants and shabby litigants in person. The doors of the courtroom, thrown open at 10 a.m., would have revealed a dark and ill-ventilated, panelled room where seats were arranged, amphitheatre-like, in ascending tiers, from the carved rows in front dedicated to the newly renamed King’s Counsel, to the narrow benches for the clerks at the back.

On this first day of the hearing of
Druce
v.
Young
, an impressive array of bigwigs and stuffed gowns assembled in the rows of seats on the defendant’s side of the courtroom. They were attended by bustling clerks carrying bundles of papers tied with red tape and green ferret, the shiny string used to tie bundles of legal documents. Behind the bearded King’s Counsel, junior barristers whispered to each other and passed notes. Behind them sat the sleek, well-groomed lawyers of the firm of Freshfields, presided over by the venerable senior partner, Edwin Freshfield. One of the canniest solicitors of his generation, Edwin had taken over the helm of the family firm of solicitors, and was personally in charge of the Druce case on behalf of Alexander Young and Herbert
Druce. With his silvery locks and elegant morning dress, a huge pelisse lined with the costliest Russian sable thrown over his shoulders, he called to mind a rich Venetian merchant in an old Renaissance portrait, more than a City lawyer. Beside the men-at-law sat Herbert Druce, pale and drawn. As the eldest son of T. C. Druce he was not an actual defendant in the proceedings, although in practice he stood accused of lying because he had certified his father’s death. He had the fearful look on his face of someone who dreaded the revelation of some new and sordid secret about his family’s past.

In all this hurly burly, one part of the packed courtroom appeared strangely deserted. This was the row of pews on the plaintiff’s side of the court. They were completely empty, save for the figure of one diminutive lady clutching a pile of yellowing papers. It was now getting on for four years since Anna Maria Druce had first brought her application for the Druce vault to be opened before Chancellor Tristram in the London Consistory Court. But she had aged at least two decades in that time. Previously energetic and forceful, she now seemed old and ill. She had been hounded from pillar to post, application after application refused or appealed. After her request for a faculty to open the Druce vault had been called to a halt, she had been forced to pursue the case in the civil court. Now, with the full civil case finally coming up for hearing, she had lost both her barrister and solicitor. Her bond issue had failed, and she was entirely without funds. Dr Forbes Winslow, having testified so convincingly before Chancellor Tristram that the photograph of T. C. Druce shown to the court was that of a man in his asylum known as Dr Harmer, had hastily revised his view, after the wife of someone alleged to be the real Dr Harmer had announced herself to the newspapers, loudly protesting his separate identity. Mrs Druce’s key witness, Mrs Hamilton – the mysterious old lady who had testified to seeing T. C. Druce after his supposed death, and who had made such an impression on the president of the probate division, Sir Francis Jeune – had unaccountably withdrawn from the case. The truth of the matter, although nobody knew it at the time, was that Mrs Hamilton had backed out of the case, owing to pressure exerted by the 6th Duke of Portland’s private investigators.

Anna Maria had called no witnesses. While she had appeared to be in complete possession of her faculties when she originally brought her case in the spring of 1898, she was certainly no longer in possession of them now. Opposing her, Herbert Druce had marshalled a formidable array of the leading lights of the Edwardian Bar: the former attorney general and future law lord Sir Robert Reid KC, and the future judge Mr Bargrave Deane, KC. They were more than a match for a frail and mentally unstable woman.

The fashionable ladies and journalists in the courtroom, however, were not interested in Mrs Druce, except perhaps to titter at her mad and dishevelled appearance. Everybody knew her case to be dead long ago. Instead, all eyes were riveted on two mysterious, anonymous-looking lawyers who sat demurely on the middle benches. For they represented a person who had newly arrived on the scene. This person was, it was said, an ‘Intervener’ or third party that had recently joined the case. He was no other than a new claimant to the Portland millions, who apparently had a prior title to Mrs Druce’s son Sidney. For the story that had been gradually unfolding in the
newspapers over the past two years had alternately shocked and enthralled the public of the English-speaking world. The old man of Baker Street, it was whispered, had led more than one double life; and the latest of his secrets to be revealed had almost certainly killed off Anna Maria Druce’s claim.

‘Silence in court!’

The command of the court usher caused a hush to fall on the palpitating mass of humanity. In came the officers of the court in splendid array, followed by the learned judge in black robes, upon whose entrance everybody rose and bowed their heads. The judge, looking decidedly displeased at the crowded state of his courtroom, bowed curtly to the ranks of the assembled Bar and took his seat.

Mr Justice Barnes was one of the most respected judges of the probate, divorce and admiralty division of the High Court. In just four years’ time, on the retirement of Sir Francis Jeune, he was to be made its president; and he was to be elevated to the peerage, as the 1st Baron Gorell, in 1909. Judge Barnes was one of the breed of lawyers who prefer the purity of legal principle to facts. An Admiralty practitioner of astuteness and skill, he detested criminal work – saying ‘there was no law in it’ – and explained his unrivalled mastery of shipping law by the remark that there was ‘a great sameness and simplicity about it’. No doubt he suffered from the fact that, in his day, the abstract purity of Admiralty work was thrown in with the sordid and fact-heavy fields of probate and divorce; thus compelling this admirer of the sublime charms of bills of lading, when elevated to the bench, to have his mind taxed with the shabby and pitiable human motives of greed, envy, lust and violence. A man of great reserve, Barnes
once confessed to his own son that he did not believe in great intimacy with anybody, thinking it ‘tended to loss of individuality’. With its sheer and unexpurgated messiness, accusations of fraud and illegitimacy, hysterical females, unopened graves and sensational newspaper revelations, the Druce case was exactly the kind that gave Mr Justice Barnes nightmares. He could only pray that it would be thrown out of his court as soon as possible.

The hearing started badly for Mrs Druce, with an argument over who should pay the fees of the Special Jury, which she herself had wished to try the case.

‘Madam, you cannot have a Special Jury unless you can show that you are able to pay for it,’ explained the judge impatiently.

‘My Lord! Do you think I am not worth twelve guineas? I am worth £300,000 a year!’ exclaimed Mrs Druce, to a chorus of titters from the ladies in the public gallery.

‘Are you willing to take your chance?’ demanded the judge of the jurymen, to more laughter. After a general coughing and shuffling of feet, the jury intimated that they were not willing to take a risk on Mrs Druce paying their fees. Heated discussion ensued, resolved only when Sir Robert Reid, KC, acting for Alexander Young, undertook to guarantee the jury’s fees, whereupon the hearing proceeded.

At this point, one of the mysterious lawyers in the middle seats stood up abruptly. Frederick Andrew Inderwick, KC, probate and divorce lawyer, antiquarian and former Liberal MP, was about to lob a hand grenade into the heart of the Druce–Portland case. His astonishing revelation was that T. C. Druce had been married thirty-five years before he met Annie May, to a young woman called Elizabeth Crickmer. Like John Maxwell, the lover of the novelist Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Druce had still been married to his first wife when he set up house with Annie May in the 1840s. Thus the secret of T. C. Druce’s late marriage to Annie May, and the birth of several children to them out of wedlock, was at last publicly revealed. Old T. C. Druce could not have married Annie May earlier than he did because he was – unknown to most of the world, including his own children by his second wife – married already. In fact, the reason Druce finally made an honest woman of Annie May in 1851, was because that was when his first wife died. Like Braddon’s lover, John Maxwell, Druce was at last free to marry again. And it was this stunning revelation which finally scuppered Mrs Druce’s claim: for there had been children, including several sons, from the previous marriage of T. C. Druce to the lady known as Elizabeth Crickmer. If the contention that T. C. Druce was in fact the 5th Duke of Portland were correct, then the descendants of these sons would have a prior claim to that of Mrs Druce’s son to the Portland millions; and indeed, it was one of them that Mr Inderwick represented. This new pretender to the dukedom was, Mr Inderwick stated, on his way to England that very day from Australia, to stake his claim. He had applied for the trial of the matter to be adjourned to enable him to prepare his case, but as his application had been refused by the judge, Mr Inderwick was instructed merely to take a note of the proceedings, with the object of challenging any judgment that might be given.