The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse (20 page)

The first witness for the prosecution was then called. This was the grave, elderly gentleman Robert Caldwell, who had told the secretary Amanda Gibson of his time spent treating the 5th Duke for his ‘bulbous nose’, and how he had been referred to the 5th Duke on the recommendation of the renowned medical man Sir Morell Mackenzie. Caldwell repeated his evidence in court in much the same terms as he had told his story to Amanda. Shown a number of photographs, he identified a large photograph of a clean-shaven man with large side whiskers as the 5th Duke of Portland, and two smaller photographs of a man with a bushy beard also as the duke, only this time posing as T. C. Druce in disguise.

It was now the turn of Horace Avory to cross-examine the witness. Even without the lawyer’s garb of wig and gown – this being a mere magistrates’ court – the stern face and skeletal figure of the future ‘hanging judge’ caused a hush of expectation as he rose to his feet.

‘Mr Caldwell.’ Avory’s voice was low, but keen as a knife. ‘Are you known in America as the “great American affidavit-maker?”’

The courtroom was suddenly very quiet.

‘Certainly not!’ replied the witness, highly affronted.

‘They do not think much of your affidavits there?’

‘I have only made two in my life!’ exclaimed Caldwell.

‘That is, one in this case and the other in the affairs of a Mr Stewart?’

‘Yes.’

‘You think that the one in this case is the most important? The most to come out of it?’ Avory asked coldly.

‘I do not understand.’ The witness looked baffled, but an uneasy glint came into his eye. He shuffled and looked down at his feet.

A further barrage of questions from Avory revealed that Robert Caldwell had, just four years before, attempted to sell an affidavit he had sworn to the
New York Herald
for the colossal sum of $10,000. The affidavit claimed that a New York judge, Henry Hilton, had embezzled money from the widow of an American millionaire, Alexander Stewart, by forging her late husband’s will. Remarkably, the lurid drama of the tale Caldwell had told in this first affidavit included another case of the theft and exhumation of a corpse – this time the body of the millionaire Stewart, which Judge Hilton had allegedly dug up and reburied in a cellar. The story in Caldwell’s affidavit had some basis in truth, as the Stewart case had indeed been the subject of notorious wrangling in the New York courts. Alexander Turney Stewart was an Ulster-born entrepreneur who had settled in the United States in the 1820s, and made an immense fortune from running some of the world’s first department stores. His death provoked a flurry of litigation on the part of various branches of his family, including allegations of fraud against his close friend and the executor of his will, Judge Henry Hilton. However, there was no doubt that the more outlandish claims in Caldwell’s affidavit could only have been a fabrication. The information about his attempts to sell his version of the Stewart story to newspapers in the United States had been obtained by an agent of the 6th Duke of Portland, and passed on by the Duke’s solicitors to those acting on behalf of Herbert Druce.

‘They say of you over there,’ Horace Avory began quoting from an American newspaper headline that he brandished before the court, “Mr Caldwell deals only with men who are dead.” Have you noticed that peculiarity about your affidavits?’

‘No, Sir!’ The reply was unconvincing.

Next, Avory confronted Caldwell with the proposition that he was in fact in Ireland, employed as an accounts clerk in Londonderry for a man called Mr Christy, during the period from 1863 until 1871. This was the very time that he had claimed, in his sworn testimony, to be treating the duke for rhinophyma at Welbeck. Worse, Avory asked Caldwell whether it was not the case that he had been discharged from Christy’s in disgrace, for embezzling his employer’s money. Was this not the real reason why he had left for New York in such haste in 1871?

For a moment, the witness seemed to be hunting for a response to the allegations thrown at him. ‘I know what you are driving at!’ he exclaimed at last. ‘I had a brother who was for some years with Christy. It is a case of mistaken identity.’

‘Was he a twin?’ Avory asked sarcastically.

‘Not that I know of,’ the witness replied.

Caldwell proceeded to explain that his brother was named William and he Robert, and that because neither of them liked their first names, they exchanged them. It was his brother, not he, who had embezzled Christy. The deed of assignment fraudulently conveying his employer’s property that was shown to him by Avory was signed ‘Robert Caldwell’ by his brother, not himself, as they had changed names. However, the story of a
doppelgänger
, or double, who had supposedly committed the various crimes of which Caldwell stood accused by Avory, became harder and harder to maintain as the cross-examination continued. Especially when Avory called out for a gentleman named Mr Ballantine to stand up in court. Mr Ballantine – a tall, burly man with an Irish lilt – rose to his feet and confirmed that the man in the witness box was indeed Robert Caldwell, whom he recalled from his days as an accounts clerk in Christy’s at Londonderry. Yet Caldwell doggedly persisted with his increasingly dubious story of a fraternal alter ego.

‘My brother wrote like me, talked like me, and looked like me!’ he said, flustered.

‘Was he as truthful as you, or more so?’ Avory shot back. The question raised raucous laughter from those assembled in the courtroom.

‘I am truthful!’ cried the witness.

All was now lost for Caldwell, however; whatever credibility his story might once have had was in tatters. It only remained for Avory to twist the knife.

‘You say that in 1855 you consulted Sir Morell Mackenzie. Are you aware that Sir Morell Mackenzie was then only seventeen or eighteen years of age?’

‘I do not mean to say I saw Sir Morell Mackenzie then,’ Caldwell replied hastily. He went on to explain that he was given a recommendation to Sir Morell in 1857, but carried it about with him for several years, before presenting it. The courtroom tittered. Caldwell, however, obstinately stuck to his story that he had treated the 5th Duke for a bulbous nose in the 1860s, and that he visited him both at Welbeck and the Baker Street Bazaar. He distinctly remembered the underground picture gallery and ballroom at Welbeck. He had also had dinner and stayed overnight at the Baker Street Bazaar, as the guest of the duke (disguised as Druce) and his family.

‘And suppose those underground rooms, picture gallery and ballroom were never constructed until 1872, your whole story must be untrue?’

‘Well, I am not to suppose anything at all; but I do not accept it as a fact,’ the witness replied.

‘And if there was no bedroom, kitchen nor dining room at the Baker Street Bazaar, your story must be untrue?’

There was a long pause. Finally, the reply came: ‘I should say so.’

But Avory was not yet finished. Next, he confronted Caldwell with the fact that there was a tombstone erected in a Londonderry cemetery to a child of his called Caroline. Caldwell attempted to assert that this child was also that of his brother William, despite the inscription on the tombstone, which stated: ‘Sacred to the memory of Caroline Matilda, the dearly-beloved child of Matilda and Robert Caldwell, who died 18 June, 1867, aged seven months.’ Eventually, however, he was obliged to admit that the child was his own. The ruse of the ‘twin brother’ had finally been shattered.

‘Now we have got it, definitely!’ Plowden exclaimed.

Horace Avory smiled to himself. It was the answer for which he had been waiting. The Acid Drop had his first victim.

*

The second witness for the prosecution was Miss Mary Robinson – the lady from New Zealand, whose diary had been so shockingly pillaged from her handbag in a London street. She told essentially the same story that she had related earlier, to Amanda Gibson. She had been born, she said, on a negro plantation in Virginia, the daughter of wealthy plantation owners. She had been sent to England for safety during the American Civil War. She had known T. C. Druce in the 1860s, through her aunt at Tunbridge Wells. Mr Druce frequently talked to her about his country estate. She became on intimate terms with him, and he frequently joined in with their family events. In the summer of 1862, she said, Druce had attended a children’s party with her in Rochester, where there were private theatricals. They had performed
Little Red Riding Hood
, and Mr Druce played the grandmother. He wore a nightdress, with a grandmother’s cap tied with strings. She also told the story of how she became T. C. Druce’s/the 5th Duke’s amanuensis or ‘outside correspondent’, through the mediation of the writer Charles Dickens. She had met Dickens, she said, when he was on a tour of Boston. For several years she had acted as a ‘go-between’ for the duke at Welbeck, accepting letters on his behalf which were
addressed to her under the pseudonym ‘Madame Tussaud’.

When it came to Horace Avory’s turn to cross-examine Miss Robinson, he remarked contemptuously that he had some doubt whether he ought to cross-examine the witness at all; but lest any wrong inference might be drawn, he would put a few questions. He turned first to the alleged appearance of T. C. Druce/the duke at the children’s party in 1862, expressing a certain dry surprise at the spectacle of the 5th Duke of Portland dressed up as the grandmother in
Little Red Riding Hood
.

‘Supposing Mr Druce was being operated on by the surgeon Sir William Fergusson at that time, he could not be the man who was at the children’s party?’

‘You only say suppose,’ the witness replied coolly. But she had got her dates fatally wrong.

‘Did he look like a man who had been seriously ill?’ probed Avory.

‘He did not do anything particular at the party,’ came the witness’s stonewalling response.

Avory then dealt with the issue of Miss Robinson’s alleged relationship with Charles Dickens. Dickens, it appeared, was – according to his authorized biography – in Liverpool in May 1868. If this was the case, how was it to be reconciled with Miss Robinson’s story of meeting him in Boston at that time? No reply was forthcoming.

‘Are you aware’, continued Avory, ‘that it has been publicly proclaimed by the Dickens family that Mr Dickens had nothing to do with the duke?’

‘When?’ For the first time, Miss Robinson’s confidence seemed to falter.

‘A few days ago.’

The novelist’s family, in fact, had been scandalized that the sacrosanct name of Charles Dickens was being dragged into the ignominious battle over the Druce case. Dickens’ sister-in-law, Georgina Hogarth, had informed Freshfields that Dickens was acquainted with T. C. Druce as a superior tradesman and considered him a man of ability, but was never a friend of his. Mr Druce, she said, used to personally serve Mr Dickens when he went to Baker Street.

The cross-examination was beginning to have a strange effect on Miss Robinson. Appearing faint, she declared that she could not collect her thoughts, and that her memory was going. She sat still with her eyes closed.

‘I cannot tell you anything now, I feel very unwell,’ she murmured.

The hearing was therefore adjourned.

When the cross-examination resumed, things continued to go badly for Miss Robinson. Presented with letters written by T. C. Druce and the 5th Duke, she was unable – somewhat oddly for Druce’s/the duke’s amanuensis of eleven years – positively to identify any of them. She also seemed to think that ‘Madame Tussaud’, the name under which the Duke’s letters were supposedly addressed to her, was normally spelled with a single ‘s’ as ‘Madame Tusaud’.

As the days of the court hearing went by and the witness evidence continued to unfold, the features of George Hollamby began to register increasing anxiety; while a glimmer of hope lit up the face of the 6th Duke of Portland.

*

Mrs Margaret Jane Louisa Hamilton – or the ‘Veiled Lady’, as Freshfields called her – was the last of the prosecution’s key witnesses to give evidence in court. She, of all the witnesses, was the one whom Freshfields had most feared. Despite being tailed almost constantly by private detectives, she had hardly put a foot wrong. Her evidence had withstood formal cross-examination before Sir Francis Jeune in 1898, by the eminent Bargrave Deane, QC. It had also withstood informal cross-examination in chambers almost ten years later, by the equally eminent barrister, Thomas Edward Crispe, KC, before whom she had been brought by prospective investors in the Druce case. Crispe had marvelled at the coherence of Mrs Hamilton’s story, and concluded that she was an ‘honest witness.’ (In fact, Crispe had been so convinced by her evidence that he bought shares in G. H. Druce, Ltd, himself. He was at that moment watching the proceedings in Marylebone Police Court on behalf of the company’s shareholders.) Mrs Hamilton now repeated to the court the same story she had told Amanda Gibson – of her aristocratic upbringing and of her father Robert Lennox Stuart’s close friendship with the 5th Duke. Could Mrs Hamilton stand up to an assault by Horace Avory?

When Avory rose to open his cross-examination, it was to confront Mrs Hamilton with a certificate of baptism showing that she was not the daughter of an aristocratic cousin of the Cavendish-Bentincks by the name of Robert Lennox Stuart, as she claimed, but rather the daughter of Robert and Isabella Atkinson of Westmorland. Mrs Hamilton’s response was immediate and fluent. She accepted that she had been brought up by the Atkinsons, but she insisted that they were not her parents. Her father was indeed Robert Lennox Stuart, a close friend of the 5th Duke. A chink, however, had appeared for the first time in the armour of the Veiled Lady.

Mrs Hamilton had stated in her evidence that she had seen a photograph of T. C. Druce in 1844, before being introduced to him by her father at the Baker Street Bazaar. Her father, she claimed, had told her all about the duke’s double life as T. C. Druce. Avory proceeded to show Mrs Hamilton the same photographs that Robert Caldwell had been shown, asking her which it was that she had seen prior to recognizing T. C. Druce in Baker Street. Mrs Hamilton confidently picked one of the photographs: a small one of T. C. Druce with full beard, sitting down at a table. She was sure, she said, that this was the photograph of Druce that she had seen, in 1844.