Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in London's West End

by Geoffrey Howse

  Some accounts say that following his last visit to his mother, saying he would be in touch again the following day, Grayson caught the train to London where he joined some New Zealand officers for drinks in the bar of the Georgian Restaurant. What seems to be generally agreed, in most accounts surrounding Grayson’s disappearance, is that one September evening in 1920, he walked into the bar of the Georgian Restaurant, met some friends and ordered whiskies. At about six o’clock, after putting his half-empty glass down and picking up his walking stick, he said:

  Don’t let anyone drink my whisky. I shall be back in a few minutes.

  Then he walked out into Chandos Place and into the Strand. He didn’t return to finish his drink and he was never seen again. Donald McCormick claims that while Grayson was at the Georgian Restaurant, a message came for him, telling him that his luggage had been delivered in error to the Queen’s Hotel, Leicester Square. David Clark comments that he thinks it odd that Grayson’s luggage should have been delivered anywhere in London, other than to his apartment. Clark writes:

  It is Hilda Porter who is able to provide us with the last substantiated sighting of Victor Grayson. She recalls that one mid-morning in late September 1920 – she does not remember the precise date and of course had no reason to do so – two strangers came and asked for Grayson. They sent up a visiting card and he invited them to his rooms. They stayed there most of the day, sending out for some drinks. Towards evening, the two men descended in the rickety lift and called a taxi. A few minutes later, Victor appeared carrying two very large suitcases. When he came out of the lift, he put down the cases, ascended the few stairs and went to the manageress’s office. He told her, “I am having to go away for a while. I’ll be in touch shortly. ”With these few words he rejoined the two men and went out to the taxi. That was the last she saw of Victor Grayson. The departure worried Hilda Porter, so after a while she inquired of the hall porter if he knew who the two men were but he had never seen them before. Half-an-hour or so later she went up to Grayson’s room only to find all his personal effects missing – he had obviously taken them. Hoping against hope that he would return, she kept his rooms vacant for some time, but she was never to hear from him again.

  Bury Street, St James’s, Victor Grayson’s last known place of residence, seen here August 2005. Georgian House, where Grayson had a luxury suite, is above and to the left of the Tryon Gallery. Author’s collection

  Hilda Porter could not remember Grayson having received any injuries. His sister said:

  We know that he left the hotel in which he was staying and never returned for his clothes. When I went to the hotel to see him the manageress told me Victor had taken his stick from the stand saying that he was going for a short walk. He was seen later with two Anzac officers, drinking in a nearby hotel. He left with two men and was never seen again.

  In newspaper reports and other accounts of the last known hours of Victor Grayson there are various inconsistencies. Some mention two hotels, one in which he was staying, the other, the Georgian, in which he was on the evening he was last seen. However, the name of the actual hotel in which he was supposedly staying was never mentioned by name. There is however, some significance in the Queen’s Hotel, Leicester Square, where his luggage was taken by mistake, tenuous though the link is. It was this very hotel that Maundy Gregory used during the Great War, during his days in counter-espionage.

  A more recent report of Grayson’s supposed last drink was in a letter published in the Daily Mirror 3 March 1967, written by Miss Vicky Scrivener, of Watling Gardens, London NW2. She wrote:

  I was intrigued to read about the Victor Grayson mystery in Live Letters because, you see, our family believes that one of our relatives was connected with the M.P.’s disappearance. At the time Grayson vanished people who were in the hotel with him claimed that a mysteriously veiled woman put her head round the door and beckoned to him. Grayson went out to her and was never seen again. My father told me that this mysterious woman was thought to be his aunt, a Suffragette who was friendly with Grayson. She vanished about the same time, never to be heard of again.

  In the 1921 annual report of the Unitarian Magazine, published from Owen’s College, Grayson’s name was given as being among those old students who had died that year. However, no reason for this statement was given by the college authorities.

  The site of the Georgian Restaurant, at 43 Chandos Place, seen here in August 2005. The author

  Donald McCormick states in Murder by Perfection published in 1970:

  Information about Victor Grayson in 1919 and 1920 is not easy to come by. Most of the people who knew him are dead, the few who still remember the debonair orator are somewhat hazy in their recollections about events of so long ago. Occasionally during this period there were brief references in the newspapers to Victor Grayson, but rarely more than an odd paragraph or two. The truth was that he had faded from the political scene; he talked of making a comeback, but it never amounted to much more than talk.

  One man was adamant that he saw Grayson on the afternoon of Tuesday 28 September 1920, and if true it may well have been after his ‘disappearance’ from the West End. The man in question was an English painter domiciled in Switzerland and Grayson had actually stayed with him during 1919, and sat for him as a model for a portrait. So presumably he was more than familiar with Grayson’s appearance. George Flemwell was a painter, naturalist and writer. He came to England for a short stay in 1920 and it was he, who, while painting watercolours, on the Middlesex bank of the River Thames, close to Hampton Court Palace insisted that he saw Victor Grayson. Flemwell said he saw a motorized canoe, sailing quite close to the Middlesex bank. This type of vessel was something of a novelty at that time. There were two men in it and he recognized one as Victor Grayson. Too late to call out as the canoe sped by, Flemwell saw the canoe veer off to Ditton Island and he watched as it stopped at the jetty outside a bungalow and the two men got out and went inside. Anxious to see his friend before he returned to Switzerland, Flemwell was rowed across to the island by a ferryman, and he knocked on the door of the bungalow. The woman who answered the door was quite agitated and angrily denied any knowledge of Grayson. Flemwell was pretty nonplussed by this and within a few days returned to Switzerland. It later transpired that the bungalow in question, Vanity Fair, belonged to Maundy Gregory and it was also occupied by his housekeeper, Mrs Edith Rosse, a former actress. Gregory did indeed own a motorized canoe and at that time it was the only one in the area.

  One theory that has been expounded by biographers and commentators alike, on the disappearance of Victor Grayson, is the likelihood of him having being murdered by, or on the instructions of, Maundy Gregory. Some wonder if he was lured to Vanity Fair, Gregory’s waterside bungalow, then killed and his body disposed of in a watery grave and never discovered. Further weight has been added to this when Gregory was suspected of having murdered his housekeeper, Edith Rosse. The theory being that she knew what had happened to Grayson and she was disposed of when she threatened to reveal all.

  There have been many theories expounded by biographers and journalists alike as the likeliest reason for Grayson’s disappearance. There are four principal theories. The first is that Grayson was murdered, and his body hidden away and never discovered. The second, is that he committed suicide. He was certainly subject to bouts of depression and he had been hitting the bottle rather heavily. However, this possibility seems unlikely, as with suicides there is usually a body. The third theory is that he decided to make a clean break from his old life and to take on a new identity. He had told his sister that if ever he disappeared the family were not to worry about him, and that he would get in touch with them under a pen-name. It has been suggested that he might have cemented a relationship with a society lady, who made it a condition that he change his name and sever his links with the past. He never got in touch with his family again, there never were any letters from Victor, using a pen-name. The fourth theory, one that his mother referred
to in 1927, is that he suffered a complete loss of memory and never recovered it.

  Despite many searches, including those made by Scotland Yard, Victor Grayson’s disappearance remains a mystery.

  In December 1920 the New Zealand authorities sent a letter to Grayson to his last known address, asking him to attend a medical examination but they did not receive a reply. He never claimed the disability allowance he was entitled to.

  Other accounts concerning Grayson’s disappearance and/or whereabouts after 1920 include:

  That he was alive in Ireland and had joined the IRA. It is known that Grayson did make several journeys to Ireland. Donald McCormick writes in Murder by Perfection:

  Way back in 1936 I had an interview in Dublin with Frank Ryan, a former I.R.A. leader … In the course of conversation with him the name Victor Grayson was mentioned. At the time interest in Grayson had been revived because of various reports that he had been seen alive, Ireland being one of the countries named as his place of residence.

  “I am quite certain that Grayson is not in Ireland and that he is dead,” declared Ryan emphatically.

  “Why are you so sure?” I asked.

  “First of all,” replied Ryan, “because I knew Grayson. It is true he visited Ireland after the war more than once, but he never once suggested that he wanted to live here, or that he wished to join the Party, as we called it then. He couldn’t have joined us even if he had wished. God bless him, we loved Victor Grayson, but he was a crusader, not a revolutionary. No, Grayson was more interested in gathering evidence against what the British had being doing in Ireland than in wanting to join our cause. He was for us, but not of us, if you follow my meaning.”

  “But you say at the same time that you are convinced he is dead. Why?” I inquired.

  “I am certain he was murdered,” replied Ryan.

  It was claimed that Grayson attended a Labour Party Meeting in Maidstone in 1924. The Labour candidate for Maidstone, Seymour Cocks said, ‘on 23 August 1924, when I was addressing a meeting in the constituency, a man introduced himself as Victor Grayson and said he had been to New Zealand. He gave a Belfast address which since I have lost.’ However, Mr Cocks did not make this matter known until 11 March 1927, when articles appeared in the press about Grayson having disappeared towards the end of 1920.

  Ernest Marklew, who had been elected Labour MP for Colne Valley in 1935, and who had been active during the by-election of 1907, revealed that he had discovered the whereabouts of Victor Grayson. Shortly before his death in 1939, Marklew told veteran Huddersfield Socialist, Jess Townsend, that he had traced Grayson to a furniture shop in London, which he apparently owned. He said Grayson had begged him not to publicize the details as he had turned his back on public life. The thought of the sophisticated Grayson running a furniture shop is difficult to swallow.

  In 1939, Sidney Campion, a one-time Independent Labour Party member, who had met Grayson on several occasions, was working in the Parliamentary Press Gallery for Kemsley Newspapers. In June 1939 he was travelling on the District Line from his home in Wimbledon to his work at the House of Commons. At Sloane Square station a smartly dressed couple boarded the train. He immediately recognized the man as Victor Grayson. Campion said that Grayson looked very prosperous and was wearing morning dress and a top hat. Campion says he was reluctant to approach Grayson and later regretted this. His vivacious female companion, who Campion said looked about twenty years younger than Grayson, was exquisitely dressed. As the couple chatted, the woman at one point referred to her companion as ‘Vic’. As the train pulled into Westminster station, Campion says the man he believed to be Grayson turned to the woman and said, ‘Here’s the old firm’, and the woman said that he must take her in some time. Campion told his colleagues about this sighting and there was some press coverage about the supposed sighting. Campion later claimed that he knew from a ‘reliable’ source, what had happened to Grayson. Refusing to reveal his source, he claimed that Grayson had become disenchanted by Socialism and had converted to the Conservative cause. He had offered his services to the party’s then leader, Andrew Bonar Law, who had accepted his terms and agreed to help create a new identity and start a new life. He met an attractive woman who helped him in his career in the City. According to Campion, Grayson died in 1941, in an air raid in Chelsea. In 1940, Campion left journalism, after he was invited to become Public Relations Officer at the GPO, a position he did not apply for but the position was offered to him by the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. This strange intervention in securing this relatively unimportant post in a time of war, by Churchill himself, seems to throw further weight behind the theory that Victor Grayson was the natural son of one of his own family. Was Campion offered the post as a sweetener, to keep him quiet?

  In 1941, Will Hall, Labour MP for Colne Valley, announced that he had discovered what had happened to Grayson. He claimed that he had gone to Australia and died in poverty. When enquiries were made about this claim, the Australian authorities could find no records to support this.

  Further evidence of Victor Grayson still being alive came from the New Zealand Ministry of Defence, when after checking their records they revealed Grayson’s medals, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal were collected in London on 25 August 1929. Unfortunately the records of who had actually signed for them had not been retained.

  Victor Grayson has never been declared officially dead, nor has anyone proved beyond reasonable doubt that he was alive after the end of 1920, for there are no fully corroborated accounts of him actually being alive after that date. What actually happened to this highly gifted man remains a mystery.

  CHAPTER 13

  Murder at the Savoy Hotel 1923

  After marriage all restraint ceased and he developed from a plausible lover into a ferocious brute with the vilest of vile tempers and a filthy perverted taste.

  During the evening of Monday 9 July 1923, the orchestra leader in the Savoy Grill at the Savoy Hotel, situated in London’s famous thoroughfare the Strand, asked the elegantly dressed, petite and pretty French lady in her native language, as she spoke very little English, if she would care to hear any special piece of music. ‘Thank you very much’, she said in a low voice, ‘My husband is going to kill me in twenty-four hours and I am not in the mood for music.’ The orchestra leader smiled and said, ‘I hope you will still be here tomorrow, madame.’ Just a few yards away, sitting at his usual table was Sir Edward Marshall Hall, KC, unaware that this lady would soon become his client.

  The lady concerned, described by some as a strikingly beautiful Parisienne brunette, was none other than Marie-Marguerite Fahmy, aged thirty-two, wife of Egyptian Prince Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey, described by one commentator as the wastrel heir to a great industrialist, he had no need to work at anything but pleasure. At twenty-three he had an income of £100,000 a year, a palace on the Nile, two yachts, a racing car and four Rolls Royces. It was widely believed he enjoyed a homosexual relationship with his secretary, Said Enani. Prince Fahmy had fallen violently in love with the former Marguerite Laurent, shortly after she had divorced her previous husband. He pursued her to Deauville and after she agreed to become a Moslem, they married on 26 December 1922.

  Front page of the Daily Mirror Tuesday 11 September 1923. The Daily Mirror

  On Tuesday 10 July 1923 the Daily Telegraph reported on one of the worst storms London had experienced in many years, and as the storm raged, it more than adequately served as the effects for the high drama taking place within the Savoy Hotel:

  The outbreak appeared to travel from the direction of Kingston and Richmond. Soon afterwards the storm reached London itself, and broke with all its fury at a time when, luckily, most of the theatre-goers had been able to reach their homes in safety. The lightening was vivid to a degree. For over two hours the sky was illuminated by brilliant, continuous flashes that gave the buildings an eerie appearance, and at least once what seemed to be a gigantic fireball broke into a million fragments of dazzling fiery s
parks. Equally dramatic were the heavy crashes of thunder which grew in a mighty crescendo, intense and majestic, and then into a diminuendo as the storm swept irresistibly over the city. The storm followed a day of almost tropical heat.

  At about two-thirty am, as the storm continued to rage outside, John Beattie, a night-porter, was wheeling a luggage trolley along the corridor at the back of the fourth floor of the Savoy, when Prince Fahmy, dressed in mauve silk pyjamas and green velvet backless slippers, came out of one of the doors of his suite, approached him and said:

  Look at my face! Look what she has done!

  Beattie did as he had been instructed but saw only a slight pink mark on Fahmy’s left cheek. Then the other door of the suite was flung open and Madame Fahmy stepped into the corridor, wearing a low-cut evening gown, fashioned out of shimmering white beads. She began to speak loudly to her husband in French and Beattie was obliged to politely ask the couple to return to their suite so as not to disturb other guests. As Beattie continued to push the trolley down the corridor, he heard a whistle, and believing he was being summoned he turned round and saw Fahmy was snapping his fingers at a small dog, which had apparently ventured out of the suite. Beattie continued on his journey, and as he pushed the trolley round the corner towards the front of the hotel, he heard a loud bang, then another and then a third. The porter ran back to the Fahmys’ suite and when he reached it, he saw Madame Fahmy throwing down a pistol. Prince Fahmy was laying on the floor, bleeding from the head. Madame Fahmy had fired three bullets into her husband, from a Browning .25 automatic pistol, one of a matching pair (His and Hers) that the couple always kept by their bedsides. A few hours later Prince Fahmy died in Charing Cross Hospital and Madame Fahmy was arrested.