The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse (11 page)

One of the leaders of the new journalism had been the great W. T. Stead, editor of the
Pall Mall Gazette
. Convinced of journalism’s mission to educate and entertain, this visionary Nonconformist from the north-east had shocked the late Victorian public in 1885 with his series of articles, ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’, a controversial exposé of child prostitution. A tour de force of early investigative journalism, ‘The Maiden Tribute
’
revealed, in all-too-graphic detail, the luring and abduction of underage girls to London brothels. The ‘infernal narrative’, in Stead’s own words, shocked its middle-class readership with a hellish vision of a criminal underworld, unscrupulous procuresses, drugs and padded chambers where well-heeled paedophiles could delight in the torture and cries of an ‘immature child’. The serialized newspaper report was a sensation: in London, crowds laid siege to the
Pall Mall Gazette
offices for reprints. With attention-grabbing headlines such as ‘The Violation of Virgins’ and ‘Strapping Girls Down’, ‘The Maiden Tribute’ threw London into a state of panic. It also led to the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, which raised the age of consent for girls from thirteen to sixteen, thus fulfilling the New Journalism’s sense of moral purpose. Stead’s zealotry acquired him as many enemies as it did friends, and he would later find himself jailed for using illegal methods in the course of his investigation. Undeterred, he spent his time ‘inside’ writing an essay on ‘Government by Journalism’.

Heady with idealism and reforming zeal as those early years of the New Journalism had been, the
Star
man knew all too well that things had changed since then. An ominous new publication had appeared on Fleet Street a couple of years back in 1896, undercutting the penny papers with even more sensational headlines for the ludicrous price of a halfpenny. This was the vastly popular
Daily Mail
, founded by the audacious Mr Harmsworth. The prime minister, Lord Salisbury, had described the latest offspring of Fleet Street with the greatest contempt, as ‘written by office boys for office boys’. But the paper of the office boys was now selling better than the journals of the establishment. As more and more newspapers entered the fray, the original mission to educate the masses gave way to a grubby circulation war, where everybody scrambled to print the latest, headline-grabbing shocker.

In this respect, the
Star
was no better than other newspapers, as the
Star
man well knew. The paper had been involved in many a cut-throat battle to drive up circulation figures, not least over the Whitechapel Murders or ‘Jack the Ripper’ case, ten years back. Indeed, the
Star
owed Jack the Ripper a favour. As the drama of the murder spree that was unfolding in London’s East End in 1888 was reported in ghastly detail over successive editions of the then newly established paper, its circulation went up to 232,000 – a record – as the public became convinced there was a dangerous serial killer on the loose. There were even murmurs in Fleet Street that several of the letters taunting the police, supposedly sent by the killer, were in fact hoaxes written by
Star
men to ‘keep up the business’. Not that our
Star
man knew anything – officially – about such hoaxes, of course. What he did know was that the Ripper was the best ‘rummy go’ of the 1880s, and that the Druce case showed very promising signs of being the new runner of the 1890s.

As he wound his way from the bustling pavements of Fleet Street to the more sedate thoroughfares of Holborn, the
Star
man reflected on how all the papers were now fighting over the Druce affair. The
Daily Mail
(which, by its own account, was the first newspaper to have published an interview with Mrs Druce) was currently at loggerheads with the
News of the World
over the accuracy of plans that the
News of the World
had published of tunnels that supposedly existed under the Baker Street Bazaar. The
Mail
claimed that the plans were inaccurate, while the
News of the World
countered that they were based on documents from the Land Registry. Not to be outdone, the
Mail
had proceeded to publish samples of the
duke’s and T. C. Druce’s handwriting, along with an analysis by the handwriting expert George Inglis, which suggested that there were strange parallels between the two hands. It had also published two portraits of Druce and the duke, along with a commentary by ‘one skilled in the science of the head’, who concluded that ‘not only have the general expression and shape of the head and features been found strikingly similar, but the chin, mouth, and the eyes are seen to be almost identical’.

This was the era of the birth of forensic science, when pseudosciences such as phrenology and physiognomy jostled for space in the criminologist’s armoury, along with new and groundbreaking techniques such as fingerprinting. It was the age when the modern detective was born, whole murder cases turning on the ingenious resolution of puzzles involving such apparently mundane objects as a lock of hair or a missing button. In the Druce affair, everybody – journalists, housewives, butlers and laundry maids – had turned into super sleuths, bent on unravelling the mystery of the Highgate vault. Newspaper editors were deluged with suggestions from members of the public as to what might hold the key to the affair. John Hughes of the Analytical Laboratory in Mark Lane pointed out in a letter to the Editor of the
Daily Mail
that, even if Mr Druce’s remains had decomposed in the phosphate of lime in which his body had been wrapped, the presence of mineral constituents, commonly known as ‘bone earth’, would determine the fact of previous mortal remains. A member of the Downlay Golf Club pointed out that there were some illustrious precedents for the exhumation of human bodies. After all, the bodies of Edward the Confessor, Edward I and Henry IV had all been disinterred for purposes ranging from the purloining of a royal ring (that of Edward the Confessor) to ascertaining whether – as in the Druce case – there was a body there at all. The latter exhumation was that of Henry IV, whose coffin was opened up in 1832 to establish whether his body had been buried in Canterbury Cathedral or thrown in the Thames, as had been alleged in certain quarters.

When all was said and done, the
Star
man was of the opinion that the Druce case was actually even better business than the Ripper affair. For while the Ripper had been inconsiderate enough to vanish without trace after his last purported murder in 1888, the Druce case just kept on running and running, turning up new twists and turns in its tortuous path through the courts. First, there had been the granting of the faculty by Chancellor Tristram in March, followed by a series of appeals and every possible attempt to prevent the opening of the grave by Herbert Druce. Then – just when it seemed that Herbert’s resources were exhausted and Mrs Druce was calling in the men with spades to start digging – there was the surprise declaration by the home secretary, a matter of days ago in early December, ordering the London Cemetery Company to desist from permitting the disinterment without his permission, and that of Herbert Druce as the rightful owner of the grave. Quite what or who had persuaded the home secretary to take this belated course of action was, in the
Star
man’s mind, open to question. Was it not whispered that the present Duke of Portland himself was acting, shadow-like, behind the scenes? Nor had the home secretary’s intervention in the proceedings put an end to the sensational revelations. Oh no, far from it. Even now, rumours were circulating in Fleet Street that were quite the most astounding developments to date in this extraordinary affair. Oh yes, old T. C. Druce had kept a skeleton in his closet, all right. It was just not the skeleton that everybody had expected. Now, there was a new twist to rattle the bones of an old story.

At this juncture, the
Star
man was interrupted in his thoughts by his abrupt arrival at his destination, the front door of which loomed suddenly through the mist. Featherstone Buildings gave every appearance of being a once genteel, but now faded Georgian terrace in Holborn, soot-faced as most London buildings were in those days.
*2
There, sure enough, freshly painted on the door of no. 5, was Mrs Druce’s name beneath the firm of ‘Driver and Driver’ on the ground floor. When he knocked at the door of Mrs Druce’s new office – for such this was – it was opened by an old, shifty-looking man who introduced himself as Mr Beaumont of Driver and Driver.

‘Mrs Druce is not in,’ said the old man. ‘She’s living at a secret address nearby, for fear of being pestered to death. But she will be here presently. Would you care to wait inside?’

‘Much obliged,’ replied the
Star
man. Once inside, the old man divulged that he was acting as Mrs Druce’s agent for the selling of bonds in the Druce–Portland case.

‘Ah, yes,’ replied the
Star
man. ‘Mr Plumbly of Queen Victoria Street was her old agent, was he not?’ In fact, as the
Star
man well knew – like all of Fleet Street – Mrs Druce had, on the Wednesday last, stormed out of the offices of
Mr Plumbly in high dudgeon. Quite what the reason was for her falling out with him was unclear. What was only too apparent, on the other hand, was that she was losing many of her old friends as fast as she was making new enemies. In truth, Mrs Druce’s most recent behaviour showed the distinct possibility that her mind was becoming unhinged. Her solicitors, Messrs McArthur & Co., along with her former barrister, Arnold Statham, had both warned her as long ago as August that they would have no choice other than to step down from her case, if she were to float bonds on the market in order to raise funds. Ignoring their advice, she had proceeded to do so, and thus lost their support. At least in Mr Plumbly, however, Mrs Druce had had a vaguely reputable agent to deal with her case. Driver and Driver, a.k.a. Beaumont, however, was another matter. It was immediately apparent to the
Star
man that he was a distinctly shady type, rather like the other queer folk that Mrs Druce had been seen with recently. She had, for instance, been spotted with a dubious pair of company promoters – the brothers known as Thomas and Henry Marlow, who operated on the fringes of the City underworld. Mrs Druce had also been spotted with the notoriously sharp young journalist John Sheridan, who had been plugging her case incessantly in his column in the newspaper
Society
. Sheridan in particular would have been known to the
Star
man as a journalist living on his wits, and on the very edge of legitimacy. He had been given the column on
Society
because the editor of the paper apparently thought highly of him for divulging certain information about the Dreyfus affair, but the
Star
man was sceptical as to how he could have laid hands on such information, or whether there was any truth in it. Whatever the Marlow brothers, Sheridan and these other queer folk were up to with Mrs Druce, it was certainly with the purpose of making money out of it.

‘Bonds selling well?’ asked the
Star
man innocuously.

‘Like hot cakes, sir,’ replied Driver and Driver. ‘Applications coming in from all over the country. Yesterday, I was unable to leave my office because of all the personal callers.’

‘Right,’ replied the
Star
man, glancing around the deserted office.

‘In fact, I’ve an even better case for yer,’ said Driver and Driver hopefully. ‘It beats Mrs Druce’s into fists. A case of a poor woman from the Potteries, who was swindled out of her husband’s wealth. A case with forgery, suicide, murder and a gas explosion in it!’

The
Star
man was about to reply, when Mrs Druce entered the room with a female companion. She was breathless with excitement.

‘I don’t care
that
for McArthur’s,’ she cried, snapping her fingers. ‘I have retained a great firm of parliamentary lawyers – people, mind you, that want £10,000 put down on the table before they will move, you can say that!’

The
Star
man ventured to ask how much Mrs Druce intended to raise by the bonds. ‘I am Mrs Druce of Baker Street,’ the lady replied hotly. ‘And I am going to take up my proper position. I am going to ride in a carriage. I don’t care for their Duchess of Portland. I’ll let them see. I’ve got three witnesses now who saw the lead put into the coffin!’ Hardly pausing to take breath, she went on: ‘Lord Salisbury has promised to take £500 of my bonds, and everybody at his club is on my side – the Prince of Wales is, too!’

The
Star
man was, to say the least, somewhat taken aback by the assertion. So too were Driver and Driver, and Mrs Druce’s lady companion, who tried to calm the overexcited lady as she swept out the office in pursuit of Lord Salisbury at his Club. When she had departed, the old man opined that Lord Salisbury’s investment in the Druce bonds should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt. He would believe it himself, when he ‘saw the cheque’. But people were certainly queuing for the bonds; why, only the other day, an earl had sat in the very chair upon which the
Star
man was perched.

The
Star
man nodded sagely as he bade his goodbyes. Poor Mrs Druce, as everybody knew, had been overtaken by events. Her bonds would not be exchanging hands any time soon for notes, gold, silver or even… dare one whisper it… copper. The story had left her behind and, as had become character-istic of this affair, the newest events were the most sensational yet. Oh yes, the Druce case was quite the best ‘rummy go’ in town…

*1
  
The Elementary Education Act of 1870, commonly known as Forster’s Education Act after the Liberal MP, William Forster, who drafted it, set forth the principle of universal elementary education for children aged five to twelve years old through the establishment of so-called Board Schools.