by Andrew Rose
By the summer of 1923, evidence shows that Marguerite had already made up her mind to rid herself of this tiresome, jealous, unfaithful and sometimes abusive husband. Ali had made up to her younger sister and was now planning to divorce Marguerite and marry another woman. England would have been the venue of choice. Egypt, Ali’s home turf, was impossible. Paris knew too much about the lifestyle of the ‘little French lady’. In England, Marguerite had valuable aristocratic connections and, well aware of the social calendar, very likely knew that the Prince of Wales would be in London for the Season. The veiled hint of blackmail, which had so worried the Prince in 1918, could easily be revived. Those foolish wartime letters deposited with Maître Assouad in Cairo would be Marguerite’s trump cards. And, with great prudence, she seems to have ensured that one or two examples were in the safekeeping of a Paris friend.
Matters came to a head in the early hours of 10 July 1923. From what we know about Marguerite’s tough, combative character, her avarice, her failure to manage Ali, his growing exasperation with her (as exemplified in his attempt to prevent Marguerite getting possession of the Paris jewellery), it was now or never. This was no crime passionnel. The risks to Marguerite were enormous, but so was the prize of fabulous wealth. With her domestic affairs in crisis (and, it must be allowed, suffering the torments of haemorrhoids, aggravated by the hot, sticky night), she finally decided to kill Ali Fahmy. With respect to the great Agatha Christie and her school of detective fiction, murder – even premeditated murder – is not always a neat and tidy affair. The rawness of human emotion, of hatred, anger and greed, may play a part in the killing process. With risk already calculated, the final decision to kill may be only a matter of moments.
When Ali left the apartment to call in his wife’s lapdog, Marguerite simply went back to her room, picked up her pistol, already loaded as was her custom. Having fired once out of the window to check that it was working, she ran back into the corridor and shot her husband dead. The idea that Marguerite, a pistol-packer for nine years, did not know how the firearm worked is laughable.
The flawed decision to protect Marguerite’s character from exposure indicates beyond doubt that the judge, a recent appointment and relatively inexperienced, had been suborned by the DPP (a strong and highly reactionary character) on the Prince’s behalf. In this most sensitive of trials, the prosecution gave Marguerite an easy run, ignoring vital cross-examination material. The defence, extraordinarily, supplied important evidence for the Crown.505 Potentially damaging witnesses were simply not called. The judge prevented the exposure of Marguerite’s background in circumstances where her character should have been brought out. If the jury had known about her true background, her defence would have lacked credibility. She risked being convicted of murder, with its mandatory death sentence.
The family of Ali Fahmy benefited from the legal assistance of Cecil Whiteley, an experienced KC, who held a ‘watching brief ’ on their behalf. Whiteley would have told his clients that the judge’s ruling about character was wrong in principle. The family were aware that the judge’s decision had been motivated by the need to protect the reputation of the Prince of Wales, for Marguerite was not quite the ‘petite French lady’ she pretended to be …506
All in all, the Royal Household and the DPP had done a very neat job.
25
‘Mon Bébé!’
Within two weeks of the verdict, the story about Marguerite and her Prince found its way into one of the most scandalous gossip sheets in France. The Cri de Paris alleged that Marguerite, as ‘Maggie Meller’, had ‘old and deeply rooted relations with one of the British princes’. Although the piece did not directly name the Prince of Wales, readers were given a broad hint the identity of her lover. ‘These relations,’ it was said, ‘were the main factor contributing to her acquittal.’
The story was quickly taken up in Egypt, where opinion was still smarting from Marshall Hall’s xenophobic closing speech. On 4 October, El Sabat (The Sabbath) added an even more sensational rider: ‘The relations between Maggie Meller and the English prince appear to have been of a more intimate nature than could be imagined. It is said that the daughter of Maggie Meller is not a stranger to the Prince and that she lives in England and is being brought up at his expense.’ The newspaper mooted that ‘British Justice’ would find itself in a critical position, with a public ‘who take the utmost care to see that British Jurisdiction [sic] is always out of the reach of outside influence, whatever its origins may be’.
The article was based on ‘a telegram received by the “[Al] Ahram” from London’. Owen Tweedy, at the British High Commission, noted drily, ‘Prince Mohammed Ali [pretender to the Egyptian throne] will tell all his friends this story which will certainly be believed.’507 Though allegations about Raymonde and her schooling are without foundation, there is substance in comments about ‘outside influence’ affecting the due process of Marguerite’s trial. Whatever the source of Al Ahram’s information, however, there would be no debate in England about the role of the Prince in the verdict. No hint of the affair would appear in the British press.
A word in the right ear, nothing on paper, could be sufficient to prevent publication of any gossip thought undesirable. Documentary evidence of a request to spike a particular story at this time is rare, though examples exist which show that people close to the royal family felt free to approach editors in sensitive cases.508 Marshall Hall, too, enjoyed a cosy relationship with Rex Blumenfeld, editor of the Sunday Express, asking him to keep his reporters from speculating about the size of his fee, following an unsuccessful defence in a murder trial.509 In Marguerite’s case, however, it should be remembered how effectively the Royal Household, represented by Godfrey Thomas and Alan Lascelles, managed to confine knowledge of the affair to a very small circle of people. Even Curzon, the Foreign Secretary, knew nothing until a few days before the start of the trial. Strange as it may seem, the story may simply not have been picked up by British newshounds.
Despite the discreet reportage of evidence in the Fahmy trial carried in the more respectable French press and Marguerite’s coy published account of her life in Le Petit Parisien, the International Sunday Herald and the New York Times, titillating news of the allegations made against Ali in court had seeped out into the wider world.
Marguerite’s whiter-than-white memoir provoked grim laughter in Paris. On 25 October 1923, a fairly well-researched article appeared in Le Dechainé, a satirical weekly. The revelations, titled Quelques Dètails Nouveaux Sur La Vie De Maggie Meller (A few new details about the life of Maggie Meller), was accompanied by two photographs, one showing her standing, with Raymonde, alongside her expensive chauffeur-driven limousine; the other, in her ‘costume de travail [working clothes]’, showed Marguerite lying invitingly on a sofa and dressed in little more than a slip. Le Dechainé promised its readers that Marguerite would be shown ‘comme une prostituée haut de gamme [as a top-ranking prostitute]’. Marguerite would later claim that the photograph was doctored, a forgery with her face inserted on to the body of a fille légère (flighty girl).
Although in her memoirs Maggie had castigated Ali Fahmy for usurping the title of ‘Prince’,510 she had taken the horsewhip to a maid, ‘Mademoiselle Lucienne Dusunneaux’, who on her first day at work had unwittingly addressed Marguerite simply as ‘Madame’, rather than ‘Madame la Princesse’. Lucienne, subsequently sacked, turned whistleblower and described a prolonged ordeal at Marguerite’s hands. Lucienne admitted, however, that she had put up with the abuse because she was well paid. Marguerite, she claimed, had sometimes dressed in her maid’s clothes, to be beaten and abused by male customers, before walloping the clients herself. ‘C’était des scènes inimaginables’ (‘There were unimaginable scenes’), added a shocked Mlle Dusunneaux, not embarrassed in the least to tell Le Dechainé’s readers how Marguerite had once asked her what she felt while being walloped. ‘It’s easy,’ said the maid. ‘You take my place and I’ll take yours’ – a pert re
ply that provoked yet another beating with Marguerite’s cravache (horsewhip).
The maid’s story may not have lost in the telling, though a measure of sadomasochism was clearly part of Marguerite’s menu du jour. The article was on firmer ground in alleging that Marguerite had murdered Ali for gain. The allegations in Le Dechainé contain inaccuracies, but the story contains credible elements and stands up reasonably well. The article claimed that Marguerite had decided to kill Ali after discovering his relationship with another woman, named as ‘Jacqueline Wolt’. Marguerite had discovered that Ali intended to divorce her, which meant that she would lose out financially.
At the maison de rendezvous, the journal alleged, she had conspired with Sonia de Thèval and Ginette Folway to do away with Ali. In fact, Marguerite could take care of herself and needed no help from the Paris madame and her cotery at 20 rue Bizet to perfect her ‘programme’ against Ali. Rather more accurately, however, Ginette – described picturesquely as ‘marchande d’amour ’ (‘seller of love’) – was revealed to have been the lover of a French MP, M. Mandel, as well as M. Pereire, member of the enormously rich banking dynasty and director of the Banque Transatlantique.
Le Dechainé noted that the publicity surrounding the case had done Marguerite no harm. She had received many proposals of marriage, but instead had chosen to go back to General Mehmet Sharif pasha, her protector in wartime Egypt. She was spending time with him at 20 avenue de Messine in the 16th and the couple had been seen recently at the opening of Les Acacias, a new nightclub, ‘ou se pressaient toutes les notabilités du monde, du demi-monde, de la politique et du Boulevard’ (‘where they were surrounded by celebrities of every backround, people from the world of politics and from Society’).511
Although by 1923 Marguerite had ceased to make herself available in maisons de rendezvous,512 the paper nevertheless peddled some prurient allegations about lesbian activity involving Marguerite, Sonia and Ginette. After this, Le Dechainé got into its stride with a clear reference to royal involvement in the affair: ‘Le Prince de Galles, de son côté, ne pouvait refuser d’influencer les Juges en reconnaissance des heures qu’il avait passé dans les bras de la meutrière.’ (‘The Prince of Wales, for his part, could not refuse to influence the court, in view of the hours he had spent in the arms of the murderess.’)
In loose translation, the article suggested that Marguerite knew before the trial started that she was on to a winner. The tone is scurrilous, relying in part on the allegations of a maid who had been dismissed by Marguerite, but the kernel of the story is consistent with a belief, well beyond the offices of Le Dechainé, that the British Royal Household had interfered in the trial, perverting the course of justice to protect the Prince and, by doing so, had saved Marguerite’s neck from the gallows.
Worse came the next day. Cupidon, a French erotic fortnightly edited by Lionel d’Autrec (pseudonym of the anarchist Maurice Vandamme), discussed Le Mémoire de Maggie Meller, publishing its review under a weighty heading, de sodomia feominarum – a Latin phrase resembling some obscure Papal Bull from the depths of the Middle Ages.
Though Marguerite had undoubtedly been acquitted after showing the hotel doctor son derrière outragé (her outraged behind), she should not take Parisians for fools. Over the years, she had entertained Egyptians and Japanese men at maisons de rendezvous, clients who had very special sexual predilections. There was a pointed reference to marcher dans la voie tracée par les princes [walking in the way traced by princes]. Thought this probably alluded to Ali as ‘Prince’ Fahmy, the use of the plural when coupled with the explicit reference to the Prince of Wales in the recent issue of Le Dechainé, may have been a deliberate ploy.
Meanwhile, the Prince was safely out of the way in Canada. Once upon a time he would write as many as three letters a day to Fredie, but now things had cooled there would be gaps of ten days or more in his correspondence. On 27 September, he wrote from ‘E P Ranch, Perisko, Alberta’, where he was immured in the wholly masculine company of ‘G’ Trotter, Godfrey Thomas, ‘Fruity’ Metcalfe, the ranch manager, and an official from the Duchy of Cornwall. Wistfully calling up old memories, the Prince wrote, ‘Darling, I dreamt about you last night … a queer dream & rather confused (but a bit naughty – in fact very!!).’513
The Prince returned to England on 21 October. In petulant mood, he wrote angrily to Fredie from Plas Newydd, as the guest of Lord Anglesey, complaining that he would have to represent the King at the funeral of Andrew Bonar Law, the former Prime Minister. ‘… Bonner [sic] Law’s funeral on Monday … means that I can’t hunt with the Quorn.’ At the service, this grown man of 29 behaved like a spoilt boy. ‘I found myself next to the Prince of Wales,’ wrote Curzon to his wife, ‘He fidgeted & looked about … never once turned a glance to the grave & showed himself profoundly bored with the whole performance.’514
Through her lawyer, Maître Assouad, Marguerite had told journalists in London that she would never return to Egypt. However, on 20 October 1923 Marguerite boarded the SS Esperia at Naples, bound for Alexandria, where she arrived two days later. Once his client was safely in Cairo, the Maître announced to an astonished world that Marguerite was pregnant by her late husband, the happy event to occur the following April. This declaration did not sit comfortably with Marguerite’s claim that Ali practised anal intercourse and, as will be seen, attempts to record the ‘birth’ of a phantom baby led to farcical court proceedings in Paris, involving Marguerite and a certain Cassab bey.
This was not the only piece of extraordinary news that month. Marguerite’s 16-year-old daughter, Raymonde Laurent, wrote a well-publicised letter to a friend in Cairo, informing one and all of her intention to embrace Islam. She had privately sworn to become a Muslim if her mother were acquitted of the murder charge and regarded the verdict as no less than ‘a miracle of the Moslem faith’.
The reason for these bizarre developments is not hard to divine. There had been much gossip in the newspapers about the diminution of Ali’s fortune by reason of his gross extravagance, but once the dust had settled it had become apparent that he had left an estate valued at some £2.5 million and no will. Marguerite’s chances of inheriting all or part of this vast sum were considerably hindered by the fact that it was she who had killed him. A Muslim court would demand more than a ‘Not Guilty’ verdict: she would have to satisfy them of her complete innocence in the matter. Failing that, the estate would be divided, half between Ali’s three surviving sisters and the other half to his closest male relative, a paternal uncle, who worked in Ali’s office at Cairo and used to complain that he was badly paid.
Much to Marguerite’s chagrin, the administrator appointed to superintend Ali’s estate was his brother-in-law, Dr Assim Said, who was not well disposed towards her. Marguerite’s lawyer began an action in the Egyptian probate court, the Meglis Hesbi, to have Dr Said replaced as administrator by someone less hostile to her interest. The case drifted on into the New Year, was twice adjourned in January and again the following month, when Marguerite, now back in Paris, was invited to appear before them. Events in Paris involving the bogus baby were to overshadow the decision of the Egyptian court.
In the meantime, another startling development was reported by a French newspaper, which claimed during November that Marguerite was to be married to Said Enani. Said issued an angry denial to the London correspondent of Al-Ahram, saying that he was minded to consult his lawyers about the rumour. He did not have very much time in which to do so: early in January 1924, he died of pneumonia, a complication of encaphalitis lethargica [‘sleepy sickness’] in Paris.
Back in York House, the partying continued. In mid-December, the Prince had enjoyed a ‘queer evening’ with Jean Norton (Beaverbrook’s mistress) and two other lady friends, spending time at the Embassy Club with ‘Duddie’ (Fredie’s estranged husband) and ‘Ali’ (Mackintosh). ‘A- has gone to Paris for a few days. I guess something big is going to happen…’515
Early in the New Year, the Prince made
his first visit to Paris since February 1919. Accompanied by Godfrey Thomas and the ubiquitous ‘Fruity’, he installed himself at the Meurice yet again as the ‘Earl of Chester’. The visit was supposed to be unofficial, but his arrival at the Gare du Nord made front-page news, accompanied by photographs of le Prince Charmant, elegantly attired, already regarded as the apogee of style.
From his first night, 9 January 1924, as if making up for lost time, the Prince showed himself determined to make the most of what Paris could offer. That Monday, he took a party to Ciro’s at 6 rue Daunou, near the Opera, where the company dined and danced into the small hours. Although the Prince was officially attended by his Private Secretary, the official press release did not name ‘Fruity’. The party was guarded by the Prince’s Special Branch detective,516 Sergeant Albert Canning, 37, ‘the giant of Scotland Yard’, a police officer whose ability and discretion had greatly impressed the Prince.517
Though the visit was supposed to be incognito, the French press scented glamour in the Prince’s return to Paris. He was adorablement jeune (adorably young) and exactement comme son grand-père (exactly like his grandfather), Edward VII, who had been enormously popular in France.518
The hedonistic Prince could not completely escape public duties. On Tuesday 10 January, he inspected the damage caused by a recent flood of the River Seine and duly called on President Millerand at the Élysée Palace. That night, ‘very much incognito’, he attended un théâtre des boulevards.519 Next day, after lunching with his old friend Jacques de Breteuil, he dined at the British Embassy, guest of Lord Crewe. ‘We tried to make [the evening] an amusing one for him,’ wrote Crewe to Lord Stamfordham, ‘and … finished up with a dance at which all the available good looks were collected.’ Crewe felt ‘very glad indeed that the Prince has broken the ice of coming here after the war … whenever he comes over again in a quiet way, he will not find himself bothered by too much public attention & will be able to interest & amuse himself in his own way’.520