The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery (28 page)

I found the letter as puzzling as the one to Violet. Longshaw, high on the moors in the Peaks, was the Duke’s shooting lodge in Derbyshire. If John was hoping to shoot there on 23 October, he must have obtained leave from the Front almost immediately after the battle. But then why, if he had been in communication with his father earlier that week, had he failed to tell him what had happened at the Redoubt? The Duke had referred to the division’s ‘gallant conduct in a recent engagement’; evidently he had no other information. The North Midlands had suffered close to 3,700 casualties. Surely, at the very least, John would have told his father of their appalling losses? But he hadn’t: he hadn’t even mentioned the battle. The first the Duke had heard of it was via the North Midlands’ commanding officer, General Edward Stuart Wortley.

The last of the four letters explained the omission. It was from the general himself. He was writing to John on 16 October, a few hours after he had ordered the last of the North Midlands’ shattered battalions to withdraw from the trenches beneath the Redoubt.

It took a while for the implications of the letter to sink in:

My Dear John

Very many thanks for all the partridges which you are sending to us – they are most acceptable.

We had a great fight on the 13th, but the task given to us was much too big.

The Division advanced to the attack in successive lines with the greatest gallantry but were mown down by machine guns from many directions. We had a tremendous artillery bombardment but experience has taught us that it has little effect upon deep and narrow trenches. The enemy know that an attack is coming and remain in
dugouts in their trenches until the bombardment is over. They then jump up, get their machine guns in position and rake the advancing infantry. Our losses were very severe. 160 officers and about 3,500 men, but many slightly wounded.

We gained and held the Hohenzollern Redoubt, which was an important advance but at great cost.

However, the Division is very cheery and well. We are now resting for a few days.

Yours ever,

Edward Stuart Wortley

John had not been with them. No wonder he had had nothing to tell his father. As his fellow soldiers were being raked by the enemy’s machine guns, it looked as if he had been shooting partridges in England.

Attached to the general’s letter was a list of the officer casualties in John’s battalion.
He had been one of thirty to embark
for the Front the previous February. On the afternoon of 13 October, twenty of them had been killed or wounded:

Killed:

Capt. R. D. Faire

Capt. F. S. Parr

Lt. T. Whittingham

Lt. R. S. Green

Lt. A. R. Forsall

Lt. R. C. Harvey

2 Lt. G. E. Russell

2 Lt. W. P. Scholes

2 Lt. B. E. Mogridge

2 Lt. F. T. O’Callaghan

2 Lt. F. W. Walker

Wounded
:

Lt.-Col. R. E. Martin

Capt. R. S. Dyer-Bennet

Capt. B. F. Newall

Lt. J. F. Johnson

2 Lt. W. A. Riley

2 Lt. F. C. Blunt

2 Lt. O. H. Cox

Missing (reported wounded)
:

Capt. Corah

2 Lt. J. E. Barken

Somehow, John had managed to escape the battle. Loos had been the centrepiece of a major autumn offensive. The battle – the largest attack by the British Army since the start of the war – had opened on 25 September. In the weeks prior to it, all leave had been cancelled for the 75,000 soldiers assigned to take part.

So why wasn’t John there? When had he left the Front, and what – beyond shooting patridges – was he doing in England?

It was on re-reading the Duke’s letter of 19 October that I realized that the prosaic details regarding John’s hire-car arrangements for the shooting trip to Longshaw were significant: ‘You had better arrange for the hire of a car to bring you back here after shooting, as the cars here will be pretty busy on Saturday,’ he had told John. The Duke was writing from Belvoir; the implication was that John was planning to stay there on the night of the 23rd. Quite possibly, he had stayed there on other occasions when he had been shooting at Longshaw.

Unusually, the castle’s visitors’ book listed the names of family members in residence as well as their guests. Potentially, it offered a means to track John’s movements. If I could pinpoint his visits to the castle that autumn, it ought to be possible to determine roughly when he returned to England from the Front.

The visitors’ books were kept on the top shelf of Case 12 in the Muniment Rooms. They dated back to the 1820s, when the 5th Duke of Rutland had moved into the newly built castle.

The one I was looking for spanned the years 1905–33; it was bound in black leather, with the words ‘Visitors’ Book Belvoir Castle’ inlaid in gold on the cover.

It was the hall porter’s job to compile the visitors’ book. Seated at his desk in the lodge off the Guard Room, he had a clear view of the comings and goings at the castle: he could see the carriages and motors drawing up on the terrace outside. Meticulously, as the Duke’s footmen hurried to and fro with the visitors’ luggage, he had noted the arrivals and departures.

I turned to the first page; the names were entered in black ink in a neat, italic hand:

Leafing through the pages, it was fascinating to see whom Violet and Henry had invited to the many house parties they hosted before the
war. Among the hundreds of names were men or women whose wealth or fame had granted them a passport into what was otherwise an exclusively aristocratic circle. Interspersed between the titles were some of the most celebrated figures of the early twentieth century. In December 1911, at the height of the success of his Peter Pan novels, J. M. Barrie had stayed at the castle. Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, and Madame Nellie Melba – the acknowledged prima donna at Covent Garden – had stayed that year too.

John’s name cropped up frequently among the eclectic mix of guests. The visitors’ book delineated his world, as much as his parents’. Senior politicians and leading figures from the international stage had also been invited. As the tension in Europe increased, it was surprising to see that Counts Benckendorff, Metternich and Mensdorff, the Russian, German and Austrian ambassadors, were frequent guests – often simultaneously. I counted four prime ministers: Lord Rosebery, Arthur Balfour, Herbert Asquith and Andrew Bonar Law. There were other famous figures too: notably Alice Keppel, Edward VII’s mistress, and Prince Yusopov, the future assassin of Grigori Rasputin.

Looking at the pages for the summer of 1914, the entries dwindled and the great house parties came to an end, a grim reminder of the passing of an epoch. After August, the Duke and his family were mostly alone at the castle. Only occasionally did they invite one or two guests.

I skipped through the months that followed to October 1915. I found John’s name halfway down the page: ‘Marquis of Granby 23rd to 28th October’. He
had
stayed at the castle the night he was shooting at Longshaw.

I looked at the previous page. There he was again: Marquis of Granby, 9th–14th October. This was where he had been as his battalion was fighting to capture the Redoubt.

I turned back another page. And another. I could not believe what I was seeing. John had been at the castle for most of the summer. He not only missed the Battle of Loos: his visit in July coincided with the fighting at Hooge, when the Germans attacked the North Midlands trenches with liquid fire.

So when did he return to the Front? Quickly, I skimmed through the entries after 28 October. ‘The Marquis of Granby November 20th to November 22nd’; ‘The Marquis of Granby, December 11th to December 14th’; ‘The Marquis of Granby December 16th to December 22nd’: his name appeared on every page until the following spring. From the frequency of his visits to the castle, it looked as if he was in England from July 1915 until April 1916.

Nine months.
It seemed impossible. It had never occurred to me that John was not where he ought to have been. He had embarked for the Western Front with the 4th Leicesters on 26 February 1915. When he volunteered for the war, he had signed the Imperial Service Obligation. It committed him to ‘active service in any place outside the United Kingdom’ for its duration. Bar injury or illness, the pledge, signed by every territorial soldier, was unbreakable. He should have been with his regiment.

I returned to his war diary.

John had arrived at Belvoir on 14 July. He must have left the Front at some point between 6 and 13 July. His departure accounted for the blank pages, but, now that I was armed with this new information, would the last entries explain why he left?

The week leading up to 6 July filled just one page. The entries were disappointing. John hadn’t even hinted at the fact that he was about to return to England. But then had he known he was leaving? And if he had, was this why he seemed so detached?

Re-examining the curt entries, it was impossible to judge:

July 1st 1915 Thursday

Reninghelst Camp

Poperinghe Road

Usual day
.

July 2nd 1915 Friday

Reninghelst Camp

Poperinghe Road

Usual day. I went after lunch to Ypres Cathedral to get a few more fragments of the frieze of the screen – found a lot more
.

July 3rd 1915 Saturday

Hôtel de la Poste Rouen

Started at 8 alone with the General, and Tanner the chauffeur, to go to Rouen in the Rolls. Got there at one (two punctures) inspected the drafts. Then we went sight seeing. I rogered a woman after dinner in the Maison Stephane – not good.

July 4th 1915 Sunday

Reninghelst Camp

Poperinghe Road

Started at 7am back, arrived 12.20, two punctures. Spent the rest of the day here.

July 5th 1915 Monday

Reninghelst Camp

Poperinghe Road

Usual day – went to tea with Pulteney with GOC
.

This was John’s last entry.

In the course of the next eight days something happened to him which haunted him for the rest of his life. At his instigation – until 14 July, when he arrives at Belvoir – the record is completely blank.

Working from the visitors’ book, and the game books that were kept in the Muniment Rooms, I was able to build a picture, albeit a faint one, of John’s routine once he got to Belvoir.

His days, so it seemed, were spent fishing, shooting and entertaining beautiful debutantes. Nancy Cunard, the bohemian and striking-looking daughter of Emerald Cunard, the legendary Edwardian hostess, stayed at the castle three times while John was there. The Comtesse Jacqueline de Portalès, the granddaughter of the Comte de Portalès – a favourite of the Bourbon King, Louis XVIII – was
invited on numerous occasions; so was Miss Felicity Tree, the daughter of the theatre impresario Sir Beerbohm Tree; and Miss Violet Keppel, the daughter of King Edward VII’s mistress.

The game books for the months of July and August conjured images of an idyllic summer; of picnics by the lake below the castle and grouse-shooting parties up on the Duke’s heather-covered moors in the Peaks. The constant round of sporting activities continued through the winter months. Evidently, John was fit to fight. So why wasn’t he with his battalion in France? In the spring of 1916, his visits to Belvoir became less frequent; after 20 April he was absent from the castle for six months. Was this when he finally returned to the Front?

It was then that I checked the contemporary Army Lists. Updated quarterly throughout the war, they listed the names and regiments of all serving officers and, importantly, the theatre of war to which they were assigned.