The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery

by Bailey, Catherine

  One other factor persuaded her to jettison the all-important criterion of an ancient lineage, and this was the collapse of the Duke of Marlborough’s marriage to Consuelo.

  Their recent separation was the talk of London. Consuelo, it was reported, had not wanted to marry the Duke; Alva, her socially ambitious mother – famous for her remark to her daughter, ‘I do the thinking, you do as you are told’ – had apparently forced her into the marriage. As she stood at the altar, Consuelo, it was whispered, had wept behind her veil. The Duke had never loved her: almost from the start he had been hopelessly in love with raven-haired Gladys Deacon, the daughter of a murderer. Secretly, he had continued to see her throughout his marriage. Now Gladys was a regular visitor to Blenheim. Her carriage, paid for by the Vanderbilt millions, was a familiar sight on the long drive up to the palace.

  It was the Duke’s enviable temerity, rather than the loveless marriage, that had caused a sharp intake of breath in the gilded drawing rooms which Violet frequented. Consuelo’s dowry was non-refundable: cynically, the Duke had used his illustrious title to pocket $2.5 million worth of Vanderbilt railway stock while carrying on his amorous activities as usual.

  His behaviour was an object lesson to Violet. No matter if John was ‘peculiar’ and his marriage failed to last: come what may, if she could only find an American heiress and persuade him to marry her, the mere exchange of vows would secure the future of the Belvoir estate.

  In the spring of 1908, as John entered his final term at Trinity College, Cambridge, Violet’s search began in earnest.

  After carefully scrutinizing the lists of American debutantes in London, and after making enquiries via her new friend, Mrs Whitelaw Reid, the wife of the US ambassador, she selected her target: Miss Margaretta Drexel, the daughter of Anthony J. Drexel II.

  Margaretta Drexel was the wealthiest of all the American heiresses in London for the season. Her grandfather, worth a reputed $40 million, was the Philadelphia-born merchant banker, Anthony J. Drexel I. Beautiful, with a curvaceous figure and tresses of auburn-coloured hair, Margaretta was also the most celebrated: ‘Those who supply the matrimonial gossip of Europe,’ one newspaper reported, ‘have already married her off to the son of the German Emperor, the son of the King of Greece, several Dukes, and a few French Counts.’ Writing to her from America, her best friend remarked, ‘I’ve stopped reading fiction, I just read about you.’

  The Drexels had arrived in style, renting 22 Grosvenor Square in Mayfair, complete with Holbeins, Romneys and Chippendale furniture. They were to spend August grouse shooting at Dalgross Castle in Inverness-shire; they had also taken a house at Windsor for the Ascot Races, and at Cowes for the Regatta. There, moored in the harbour, Mr Drexel’s 300-foot yacht waited, having sailed across the Atlantic manned by a 68-strong crew. The yacht was named after Margaretta.

  No sooner had Violet selected her future daughter-in-law than a rumour circulated that Margaretta had received a proposal of marriage: ‘Miss Dresel [sic] is going to be engaged to Reginald Fellowes! I go on hoping it is not true,’ she wrote to a friend from Belvoir: ‘I wish we had had a really good look at her – like having her here for a week to see if she is really the darling I think her. Jack Gilliat who has adored her – afar – says she is just a perfect darling, but not happy. Rather hating being dragged about to balls and parties to please her mother – and very lonely and sad. She is never allowed to leave her mother’s side – that is the way the correct Americans treat their daughters when they first come out. I can’t see a better daughter-in-law! I hunt about and it’s the only one so far that has beauty and gentle sweetness and music.’

  And, of course, money.

  Some days later, Violet learned that ‘Miss Dresel’, whom she had yet to meet, wasn’t in fact engaged to be married. Springing into action, she invited Mrs Whitelaw Reid to tea and asked her to engineer an invitation for John, and her daughters Letty and Diana, to stay with the Drexels for Ascot Week.

  The invitation duly secured, John, however, turned it down. Refusing to be thwarted, Violet approached the long-suffering Charlie. Disguising the fact that it was she who had wheedled the invitation in the first place, and pretending that her motive had nothing to do with the ‘idea’ that John should marry ‘Miss Dresel’, she begged her brother to persuade him to go:

  Darling C – Your help! Listen – the 2 girls go to a house for Ascot the Dresels [sic] have taken for the week. John was asked to take them. I should love him to go!! Simply love him to – not because of the ‘idea’ I have talked to you lightly and laughingly about – because that is so far in the future to be thought of improbably – but because, as he will never be an idler and will never get too fond of society, I believe a little is just the very thing for him now.

  If ‘Foreign Embassies’ are to be worked for he must be seeing a little more of people and society or else it will be too difficult and distasteful to him. Whatever in his character he gets from me would make him, if he had everything in his own hands, shun everyone and be a recluse! and that must be guarded against.

  In this case I would like him to go – as a kind of protection to his sisters! I could give him this reason – a chaperone to them.

  It is the week of 17th June – 18th – and he can get away on the Friday or not, it would depend on how he felt. He might like it by then and want to go to a cricket match, or to Windsor, or something. If there is a ball at Windsor it is a nice thing for him to do. Oh, I do want it so. I want to do it the cleverest way I can and if clothes are wanted I will provide money with greatest ease.

  He was asked by word of mouth by Mrs Dresel [sic] but he said NO on plea ‘of not able to leave Cambridge’, I believe. But she is wanting men so it’s quite easy for me to arrange it, and the Dresel [sic] boy will be there and so all is made easy for John.

  I wish his dress coat could be made better.

  I go to Belvoir this afternoon late, girls go earlier. I return earlyish Monday. Do help me about John – but don’t let him think it is anything to do with the girl. I mean that my real true object now is to get him not to shun people and to go to look. Everything about ‘Races’ is made so easy by motors and so the hours spent there are short and he could always leave a day sooner.

  Loving VR

  Charlie persuaded John to go, but whether Margaretta appealed to him – or he to her – the letters at Belvoir do not relate. In any event, the following summer, she married Guy Finch-Hatton, the heir to the 13th Earl of Winchilsea.

  The material dating from the period before John left for Rome was revealing. But I couldn’t understand why John had put up with his parents’ interference and their constant sniping. On every point of contention – even small things – he appears to have caved in. After first refusing the Drexels’ invitation to Ascot, he had agreed to go; at his father’s instigation, he had abandoned his ambition to become a dealer in ceramics, and settled instead for a career as a diplomat. John hadn’t wanted to go to Rome: it was Henry, via his friendship with the ambassador, Sir Rennell Rodd, who had found him the job and forced him to accept it.

  So why hadn’t John stood up to his father? The rigid social mores of the time may have demanded a measure of acquiescence, but not complete subjugation. Particularly when, judging from the note he wrote to Charlie soon after arriving at the embassy, he hated himself for having given in.

  30

  The British Embassy

  Rome

  27 January 1909

  Old Boy,

  Here I am. Arrived at 7.30. My first impression is just about as bad as can be, but I hope it will improve. The whole of Rome is covered in snow and bloody cold.

  I had a very comfortable journey, empty carriage the whole way.

  The life here as far as I can judge at present is the very worst for me (bloody fool as I am) but I shall be able to form a better opinion later.

  Will write again when I am in a position to know if I am standing or sitting.

  Jack

&
nbsp; Things did not improve. Two days later, he was seething with resentment. His ‘job’ was superfluous; there was very little for him to do. He was embarrassed that his father had pulled strings to foist him on the staff at the embassy; equally, it was humiliating to feel that he was there under sufferance.

  ‘My God, this place is a caution,’ he told Charlie. ‘At present this is my day’:

  I have to get up at 7. Breakfast at 8.30 alone with the Rodds who don’t want me at breakfast, but have not the pluck to say so.

  Then I am not supposed to go to the room of work till 10, so from 9 to 10 I sit in my bedroom. Then at 10 I go to the work room, where I say good morning to the three secretaries, then silence. They never talk or give me more than ½ hour’s work all the morning. So I sit there for 2½ hours doing nothing (dreadful). They leave the room at 1.15. Then comes lunch at 1.30 with the Rodds. I never know if they want me or not. Then, after lunch, I wait about outside the work room to see if the other men come in again. But they have never come in after lunch yet. When I think it is safe to leave, I go out to see something such as the Forum which I already simply hate the sight of.

  Then home about 4 to 5, where I wait in my bedroom to see if the Rodds want me in to tea. If they don’t I go without it. I wait up in my room till about 7.30, and if the Rodds dine in, I dine too. If they dine out, I go to the Grand Hotel where I dine alone.

  I am trying to look at this in a funny light but at present my imagination will not go as far.

  Goodbye, old boy

  Yours truly, Jack

  Not a word of this, old boy, to anyone.

  By ‘anyone’, he meant his parents.

  ‘It makes my heart ache, old boy, to think of you alone at the Grand Hotel,’ Charlie replied. ‘I can picture the whole scene, even to the seat and the liqueur table. I have read your letter many times. I think your present worries will, to a great extent, pass off quickly. I see them as no more than the extraordinary miserable experience of first joining the Army. I arrived at my Battalion in the south of Ireland, for all purposes as far as you are, into a nest full of people I did not know and cared for still less, all intent on their own affairs, leaving me absolutely stranded, high and dry, with nothing but discomfort, nervousness and home sickness to look forward to each morning. I think most fellows go through something of this kind, but it doesn’t last, thank the Lord, and as a fact, recovery is extremely quick. You will be at your ease very soon, and able to arrange for yourself the best sort of life that the circumstances will permit. I rather wonder Lady R hasn’t tumbled to the unease of the meals. If she doesn’t I should rather be inclined to ask her in confidence what she prefers. I can see the tiresomeness of it.’

  ‘I quite understand what you say about recovering oneself after a time,’ John replied, ‘but I don’t suppose your life consisted of paying and receiving calls, tea parties, luncheon parties and dinner parties from morning till late at night, which is what the job comes to.’

  ‘Bloody fool as I am.’ His anger at being there appeared to be eating away at him. The impression I had was of a petulant, unhappy and rather helpless man. He was twenty-two years old; his life was his own, and yet he seemed incapable of taking charge of it. Was he just pathetic? Or was something holding him back?

  Three weeks into the job, he was still miserable: ‘No new news. But most disagreeable at present,’ he wrote to Charlie: ‘I had to go to a ball on Saturday night, which was too dreadful for words – hundreds of people, none of which I knew. All yesterday I had to try and make myself pleasant to about a dozen dreadful old Italian women. All like the very worst kind of Billingsgate fishwives. I don’t think I ever saw such nasty old hags as this Roman-English society is composed of. I think by the end of this week I shall be able to form a very good idea of what this existence will be like – I must confess that at present I put it down as just as bad as it could be. Love to Togs.’

  John was writing to Charlie on 15 February. It was at the end of that week that the row over the resettlement agreement erupted.

  Only on 18 February, a month after the document was couriered to John for signature, did Henry discover that he was contesting it.

  In doing so, John was defying his father for the first time. ‘I’m damned if I’m going to give in, so help me God,’ he told Charlie before he caught the train to Rome.

  ‘I will warn you of every move that occurs,’ Charlie promised him.

  The first ‘move’ came on 19 February when the Duke’s footman appeared on the doorstep of Charlie’s house in Chelsea. The footman had come all the way from Belvoir to deliver the letter that Violet had written that morning.

  Clearly rattled, the minute he read it, Charlie fired off a letter to John.

  31

  97 Cadogan Gardens

  Friday, Feb 19 1909

  Jacko,

  I have just received the most astonishing letter from your mother. I do not write this in cipher, as I have not time before the post goes, and I don’t want to miss it. Besides, as you will see, it is no use keeping this letter so please destroy at once.

  Your mother says that your father ‘opened his heart out’ to her yesterday upon the subject of you – he apparently has taken it very much to heart that you should have done anything in the matter. He said it was an unheard of thing in the annals of Father and Son that there would ever be 2 lawyers and that it was therefore unfriendly of you to start with, considering that he had always been an indulgent and kind father to you, and so on and so on (evidently making your mother extremely sad).

  Then comes a good deal about the pity of you not having confided in her, then that she intends to write to you ‘when she has seen Dowling’ [Henry’s lawyer].

  That is all, but it is a letter of the greatest excitement and full of injustice, etc. I really believe the matter in this way – that Dowling has invariably put the case to your father in the worst way – that your father, with some justice, imagined you were doing the whole thing underhand, and that your mother has been convinced by your father.

  I believe that you would do well to put that matter right at once, and it seems to me there will not be much difficulty, as you have many strong points to bring forward, i.e. the gibberish of the document originally sent to you; the rudeness of Dowling in answering your questions; your waiting always for your father to speak to you at Belvoir. A good letter could easily be made out for you to write to him. I think this is imperative as he may really have been put up to all sorts of suspicion of you by Dowling.

  You must not show that you have heard from me at all about it. I imagine your mother intends to write you a letter which will give you all the needful excuse for writing to your father, so don’t do anything until you hear from her.

  What a bombshell – your father believes I know nothing at all.

  Yrs, Charlie

  DESTROY

  Clearly worried, at midnight, Charlie writes a second letter. Again he urges John to placate his father by writing him a ‘friendly’ letter: ‘Remind him that you came and told him in his bedroom in London what you were doing and asked his permission to send particulars to the man, and he did not seem to object … I should like to know by wire, whether you mean to send the letter … Wire in cipher, of course.’

  Three days later, John answers. He appears relaxed; contrary to his uncle’s instructions, he had not bothered to encrypt his telegram:

  Just received your letter. Yes, it is a bombshell but not really I think so bad as it looks. I have wired my man [Wilson, his lawyer] to be careful not to give information to anyone – in case she [Violet] might go there herself.

  But then suddenly his position alters. Overnight, his lack of concern switches to alarm. Someone has evidently alerted him to the Duke’s motive in seeking to alter the agreement. John knows that his father wants to sell the heirlooms to settle his debts. The records at Belvoir do not reveal the source of his information, but, straightaway, he encrypts a letter to Charlie. It is at this point that he
tells him that the Duke is about ‘to try and frighten him’:

  23 Feb 1909

  British Embassy Rome

  Old Boy – just a line to let you know what I think of the 24906 35427 11411 53702 66892 27490 47232 21131 54324 to 89231 79619 23604 83705 72630 79967 83244 69631 50011 is 54123 92141 77117 38519 72432 14041 60903 to the 14066/ 50215/ 12001/ 20039 77129/ 21115/ 61232/ 72603/ 19731. 83220 69699 65906 82915 70444 61291 23615 and so 50000 53741 47314 54330 83309 86154 and 53131 78042 40319 62731

  [Old Boy – just a line to let you know what I think of the affair.

  The **** Duke of Rutland is now beginning to understand the position he is in with respect to the children’s* portions and so he is going to try and frighten me.]

  Decrypted, the note remains as cryptic as the code it is written in. Yet Charlie clearly understood his meaning. Panicking, he arranges to see Violet. ‘I hope you understand and approve of my taking her into confidence,’ he tells John:

  I do it for reasons which I think are sound:-

  That it is the only means I have of learning what goes on behind the scenes (I remaining, as always, absolutely incognito).

  That she has an influence on your father which might just possibly be the means of solution.

  On 25 February – a day when the Duke is at Belvoir – Violet and Charlie meet at the family’s townhouse in Piccadilly. Aware of John’s encrypted note, Charlie presses his sister for an insight into her husband’s state of mind. As soon as the meeting is over, he reports back to John.

  His letter does not tell us how the Duke is proposing to ‘frighten’ him, but he is anxious to impress upon his nephew exactly what his father thinks of him.

  ‘It appears that this talk your father had with your mother was even more serious than I first reported,’ he begins: