The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse by Piu Marie Eatwell

Author:Piu Marie Eatwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liveright

Avory’s cross-examination of Mrs Hamilton had exposed flaws in her account of her family history and the genuineness of her story; to say nothing of the unmitigated disaster of Robert Caldwell’s evidence and the dubious tale told by Miss Robinson, the amanuensis who could neither spell nor recognize her own master’s handwriting. The few minor witnesses left to testify for the prosecution did little to repair the damage done to George Hollamby’s case.

A Mr Marks, a fishmonger from Baker Street, testified to seeing lead put in T. C. Druce’s coffin in December 1864 – he remembered it very particularly, as just beforehand he had been married and returned from his honeymoon. The only difficulty, as Avory was quick to point out, was that – according to his marriage certificate – he had in fact been married after the death and burial of T. C. Druce, in 1865.

A Mr Batt, the duke’s former tailor, testified that a coat produced in court belonged to the 5th Duke of Portland; he failed, however, to demonstrate that it was the same coat as that worn by T. C. Druce in the photographs. There was also the niggling question of how the Druce party could have obtained a coat of the 5th Duke of Portland’s in the first place. On the death of the 5th Duke, his clothes had been inherited by his old valet, John Harrington. How could one of his coats have ended up in the hands of George Hollamby? The 6th Duke of Portland immediately instructed his land agent, Thomas Warner Turner, to make extensive inquiries in order to find out how this could have come about.

After Batt, an engineer called Rudd testified as to the similarity of the large photograph of the bewhiskered, clean-shaven man with a portrait of the 5th Duke that he had seen at Welbeck Abbey; but he did not think the original portrait of the 5th Duke sported such large whiskers as in the photograph. When cross-examined, the only ‘mystery’ surrounding the 5th Duke’s life that Rudd could think of was what he darkly referred to as the existence of a secret ‘lady fraternity’ at Welbeck. This sent a frisson around the courtroom. What could the ‘lady fraternity’ of Welbeck possibly have been? The 5th Duke of Portland, it appeared, had almost as many secrets as T. C. Druce; but leading a double life as a tradesman in Baker Street appeared to be less and less likely to be one of them.

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