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

Portland. Since he was born out of wedlock, he would be automatically barred from inheriting any title. Conversely, he had everything to lose if the grave were empty: for if T. C. Druce did indeed ‘fake’ his death in 1864 in order to return to his life as the 5th Duke of Portland, his will – the instrument which bequeathed the Baker Street business to Herbert – would be set aside. It was vital, for Herbert’s interests, that there was a body in that grave; and given the secrets in his father’s life, he was not minded to take a chance on the fact by having it opened.
    For the popular press, on the other hand, Herbert’s stubborn refusal to accede to his sister-in-law’s request, marshalling instead the mighty muscle of the top ranks of the legal profession against her, suggested at best a marked lack of chivalry, and at worst, that he had something to hide. As one contemporary newspaper remarked:
    Public interest is now fully aroused in the mystery of the Highgate vault; and the growing opinion is that exhumation, and nothing but exhumation, can afford a solution of the strange case. The remark heard on every hand is: ‘If Mrs Druce be a deluded lady, why not have this straightway proved by opening the grave and the coffin therein?’
    In the meantime, the occupants of Welbeck Abbey maintained a dignified silence. The 6th Duke of Portland gave not the slightest outward hint that the Cavendish-Bentincks were remotely ruffled at the prospect of being ousted from their ancestral seat by the descendants of a furniture salesman. Indeed, the Duke had no overt reason to comment, as no case had as yet been brought directly against him or the Portland estates. To date, the only proceedings currently on the court lists were Mrs Druce’s application for a faculty for exhumation of the vault in the church court, and her separate proceedings in the civil court to set aside the probate granted on T. C. Druce’s will. Each of these proceedings was being fought with dogged insistence by Herbert Druce. The case so far was therefore (at least, in public) an internecine conflict between rival branches of the Druce family, who either did or did not want T. C. Druce’s grave to be opened.
    Behind the scenes, however, the man who two decades before had anxiously surveyed the ruined splendour of Welbeck as a pale and nervous twenty-two-year-old, was anything but complacent. After all, William the 6th Duke had never even met his eccentric predecessor. No official photo-graphs existed of the mysterious and elusive 5th Duke of Portland. Nobody knew how the ‘burrowing duke’ had passedthe bulk of his time, hidden from view in his underground labyrinth at Welbeck, or shut off from the world behind high walls at Harcourt House.
    For all his lofty public indifference, the 6th Duke was, in private, deeply anxious. So much so that he instructed a leading firm of private investigators to hunt down every piece of information that could conceivably shed light on the 5th Duke’s movements, along with those of T. C. Druce. *1 Furthermore, the 6th Duke’s solicitors actively co-operated and assisted Freshfields. Many and frequent were the letters that passed between the Berners Street offices of Baileys, Shaw & Gillett, the duke’s legal advisors, and those of Herbert Druce’s solicitors in Bank Street (the parties even fell out, on occasion, over who was to pay the investigators’ bills). Documents were exchanged, evidence assessed, anonymous agents were sent to shadow Mrs Druce’s every move. Above all, a common strategy evolved: that of using Herbert Druce as a ‘front’ to obstruct the proceedings as much as possible, in order for both parties to gather evidence to build a case. Surely it could not be so difficult to prove that the 5th Duke and T. C. Druce were in different places at the same time? Or to track down a birth certificate for T. C. Druce? Either of these would wipe out, in one fell swoop, the claim that they were one and