The Woman Before Wallis: Prince Edward, the Parisian Courtesan, and the Perfect Murder

by Andrew Rose

  On the last day of his short visit, the Prince rode with ‘Fruity’ in the Bois de Boulogne, before going on a stag hunt in the forest of Villers-Cotterêts to the north of Paris, a messy affair that sometimes ended with hounds devouring the exhausted prey. ‘I believe the Prince enjoyed his hunt very much, though it was as unlike Melton [Mowbray] as possible,’ wrote Lord Crewe.521 Not a wit exhausted, the Prince was reported to have visited, for a second night, that ‘theâtre des boulevards’,522 most probably the Folies Bergère. In a letter to his wife, Alexandra ‘Baba’ Curzon (daughter of the Marquess), ‘Fruity’ described how, during their stay, he and the Prince ‘went staghunting [and] to the Folies Bergère’, as well as dining at the British Embassy.523

  With their track record in the pursuit of pleasure, it is scarcely conceivable that the Prince and ‘Fruity’, two veteran roustabouts, would have gone out for an evening without female company. ‘Fruity’, for his part, had no qualms about using whores to service his bachelor needs. Later that year, he ‘contrived to leave his wallet, containing several letters from the Prince, in the flat of a New York prostitute’.524 In Paris, a remarkable, wholly extraordinary, reunion of the Prince and Marguerite, the two wartime lovers, may have taken place, perhaps during that first month of 1924.

  The managing director of the Ritz Hotel was Claude Auzello (originally from Nice), who, in 1922, had married the former Blanche Rubinstein of New York. Blanche had travelled across the Atlantic with the silent film star Pearl White, and Pearl had featured in several film shorts, shown under such gripping titles as The Exploits of Elaine and The Perils of Pauline (most famously seen tied to a railroad track as an engine thunders towards her).

  The Ritz had long been Marguerite’s favourite hotel in Paris and it is not surprising that a friendship developed between Marguerite and Blanche, two young women who had already seen a great deal of the world. Blanche’s account of her friendship with Marguerite, posthumously ghosted by her nephew, Samuel Marx (Hollywood script writer and producer of Lassie Come Home), is an affectionate memoir, sloppily written with events and dates all mixed up, but the amount of credible background detail in the text suggests that Blanche knew Marguerite quite well.

  Blanche claimed that Marguerite asked her to make up a party with the Prince. That evening, the story went,‘The Prince’s personal equerry was along to make the foursome complete.’ In an attempt to avoid gossip, Blanche was be a front, a ‘mustache’ [nowadays a ‘beard’].’

  The quartet was said to have ventured out into ‘Paris night life a few more times’, but Marx tantalisingly provides no dates for these occasions. Blanche did not arrive in France until around 1922 and the Prince did not visit Paris between February 1919 and January 1924, so Blanche’s first encounter could not have taken place before 1924.

  Blanche’s recollections of partying with the Prince in Paris may be merely a recycled episode from Marguerite’s past. From one viewpoint, it seems unlikely that the Prince would have taken the enormous risk of going back to Marguerite, in view of the strenuous efforts made by the ‘handpicked team’ at York House to recover his letters and keep his name out of a sensational and sordid trial.

  On the other hand, although Marguerite had used the letters for purposes of blackmail, she had not attempted to sell them in the years between 1918 and 1923, given their enormous value, particularly in the American market. Furthermore, the correspondence had been returned, presumably destroyed by the Prince. Marguerite had kept her side of the bargain by not revealing, during the course of the trial and the subsequent mediafest, all that she knew about the Prince and his ways. There had been no ‘kiss and tell’. The Prince, for his part, would remember the intensely physical relationship, the ‘crazy physical attraction’, enjoyed with ‘mon bébé’, still an attractive woman who could provide him with sexual adventures well beyond what was available from the well-bred ladies in England.

  Today, people prominent in the media – ‘celebs’, politicians, American Bible-belt preachers, even members of the British royal family – seem strangely impelled to indulge in bizarre sexual adventures, risking exposure and ridicule, high-octane activity possibly fuelled by the very fact of celebrity itself.

  In late January 1924, after the Prince’s Paris visit, Marguerite took Raymonde – now a very sophisticated and self-possessed 17-year-old – to watch the 1924 Winter Olympics, staying at the Palace Hotel, Chamonix. A French reporter noticed Marguerite’s silhouette (the outline of her figure), accompanied by her daughter, a vision brève et blonde (slight and fair), which evoked looks of sympathy from other hotel guests.525 Marguerite may not have relished the reference. She would become increasingly jealous of her daughter’s looks, rivalry that would eventually produce a complete rupture of the relationship.

  Three months later, the Prince made his next visit to Paris in very different circumstances. An enthusiastic, but not the best ‘seat’, the Prince was prone to falling off his horse while hunting or riding in point-to-points. On 8 February 1924, the Prince was exercising one of his hunters at Billington Manor, near Leighton Buzzard, prior to going out with the Whaddon Chase. He was thrown, pitched on to his right shoulder, and broke his collarbone. The local GP, one Dr Square, appropriately dressed ‘in hunting kit’, attended the stricken Prince.526

  Notwithstanding this injury, the reckless Prince was back in the saddle just over a month later, riding in the Army point-to-point at Arborfield Cross, near Wokingham, on 15 March. This time, his horse ‘pecked’ (stumbled) and fell, throwing the Prince, who suffered concussion and bruising to his face. Obviously dazed, the Prince was carted off on a stretcher, to the delight of the paparazzi.527

  Out of action for some weeks, the Prince decided to visit Biarritz, accompanied by the pleasure-loving ‘G’ Trotter, where he stayed at the Hotel Helianthe, meeting his old friend the Duke of Westminster. On Monday 14 April, the Prince and Trotter (but not, it seems, ‘Fruity’) arrived in Paris, where his usual apartment at the Hotel Meurice had been reserved. The trauma of his riding accident overcome, the Prince was seen to be looking ‘quite well and apparently quite recovered from his fall’.528

  Meanwhile, Marguerite’s campaign to win her share of Ali’s fortune proceeded apace. In April, however, her plans came to a temporary halt, in circumstances that bear distinct resemblance to a Feydeau farce. Hiding behind a tapestry in the entrance hall of a clinic at 82 rue Dareau (only some 300 yards from Marguerite’s birthplace), on the evening of 9 April 1923, was Commissioner Michet of the Paris police, normally stationed across the Seine in La Muette, a district of the 16th arrondissement.

  Marguerite had called him in to hear a short conversation between herself and a marvellously shady character, Yusuf Cassab bey, a Syrian moneylender and carpet merchant, normally resident in Cairo. Stepping from his place of concealment, the Commissioner arrested Cassab on charges of attempted fraud and hauled him off to prison. Cassab had, in effect, been ‘shopped’ by Marguerite.

  Cassab, who in the past had sold carpets to Ali Fahmy, told his story to the juge d’instruction (investigating magistrate) three days later. The whole matter revolved round finding an ‘enfant du miracle’ (‘miraculous child’) for Marguerite, who was not pregnant, and never had been. Under Muslim law, a posthumous son could inherit a proportion of his father’s estate, variously stated as a quarter or a half. A generous two-year period, it seems, was allowed for any such claim to be made. If evidence could be produced to show that Marguerite had borne a son, she would become, indirectly, a substantial beneficiary. The problem, of course, was that she was not pregnant. So the child would have to be a fiction, recorded in the documents as having died shortly after its birth.

  Enter Cassab bey. On 15 October 1923, Cassab met Maître Assouad, surely not by chance, in the Café de la Paix in Paris. Cassab agreed that Marguerite’s chances of getting her hands on the money were slim. The wily merchant told Assouad that he had an idea that would annoy the Fahmy family, and had a meeting with Marguerite t
o discuss his plan. Shortly afterwards, she left Paris for Cairo, where the pregnancy was announced, much to the discomfiture of Ali’s family, who immediately stated that they would contest her claim.

  Cassab, too, returned to Egypt, where he approached a friend with medical connections in Paris, one Dr Kamel. On 11 January 1924, Cassab telegraphed to Marguerite: ‘Je m’embarque. Je serai le mercredi 27 à Paris. J’ai des sérieuses propositions à vous presenter.’ (‘I’m on my way. I shall be in Paris on Wednesday the 27th. I have some important proposals to put to you.’) On arriving in Paris, he went to see her. Marguerite had moved from her apartment in the avenue Henri-Martin, possibly to escape the attentions of the press, and was now living at an equally plush address in the rue Georges-Ville. According to Cassab, Marguerite told him that she had cleared his plan with her lawyers, but that she had not so far been able to find a doctor willing to certify the birth of the phantom child.

  Cassab introduced Marguerite some weeks later to Dr Kamel at Claridge’s Hotel. Kamel had found someone willing to provide a false certificate for 200,000 francs (£2,500), half payable on signing the contract, and the balance paid when the birth certificate was handed over. Before this meeting, however, Cassab had received a disturbing letter from his son in Cairo, telling of a visit of a member of the Fahmy family, who were already deeply suspicious about Marguerite’s ‘pregnancy’ and the ‘shameful things’ going on in Paris.

  The family had evidence that damned Marguerite on three counts: first, a certificate that showed that she had undergone an ovariotomy; second, a declaration from Holloway that she was not pregnant during her imprisonment there; and, third, testimony about her private life in Paris. If, said the family representative, Marguerite was willing to withdraw her declaration of pregnancy, the family would pay her £15,000 in settlement of her claim against the estate.

  When Cassab showed Marguerite his son’s letter, her temper got the better of her, not for the first time. She had never had an ovariotomy, she declared angrily, merely an operation to remove her appendix (presumably the operation she had in 1918, just before the break-up with the Prince of Wales). Headstrong as ever, Marguerite brushed aside the settlement offer and told Cassab that she was going into the clinic the following Friday, probably 4 April. In court, Cassab tried to make out that he had no idea where the clinic was and had paid a M. Finance, a ‘marchand de cotton hydrophile’ (cotton-wool salesman) some 250 francs for the information. The clinic at 82 rue Dareau was run by Madame Champeau, a professional midwife, married to a doctor.

  At 11.05 a.m. on 9 April, the curtain rose on the last act of this long-running comedy. A domestic servant, employed at the clinic, called at the Registry of Births at the town hall of the 14th arrondissement, to announce that a boy had been born at the clinic on the 7th. Probably to the knowledge of Madame Champeau, the doctor officially appointed to verify births had already left with the day’s list and the pink form that was an essential document of record. In his absence, the registrar’s clerk made an informal note of the claim.

  Forty minutes later, a Mme Renée Masdurand, midwife at the Champeau clinic, hurried into the town hall, claiming that, as a matter of great urgency, the birth of the child should be formally recorded, because it had taken place on the 9th, not the 7th. ‘We don’t have the official doctor available’, she was told. ‘Give me the pink form,’ insisted the midwife, ‘Madame Champeau … is going to see the doctor. She’ll show him the child and return the form.’

  The clerk reluctantly handed one of the precious forms to Mme Masdurand, telling her to return it before the office closed that afternoon. ‘I’ll bring it back at 5 o’clock,’ promised the midwife, but it was not returned and, in the event, was never signed by the doctor. The reported birth was a hoax. Plainly, an attempt had been made to hoodwink the Registry, a plot that came to nothing, as Le Canard Enchaîné suggested, because Marguerite, who had suddenly realised that she was in danger of being found out, and thus risked prosecution, decided to shop Cassab that very evening.

  The hearing of Marguerite’s allegation of attempted fraud against Cassab ran to some five days. He claimed that he had been entrapped by Marguerite, who had originated the plot and was in it up to her ears. Marguerite, on the other hand, said that Cassab was himself part of a campaign by the Fahmy family to persecute her: this does not explain how her lawyer came to announce a bogus pregnancy the previous October, and Marguerite, of all people, had most to gain from the subterfuge. Putting on a brave face, she attended the hearing swathed in mink and generously exonerated Mme Champeau, wife and mother, from complicity in the affair. ‘That woman has five children,’ said Marguerite, ‘and is most certainly a victim of the machinations of Cassab bey…’

  When Madame Champeau came to give evidence, she told of being pestered, almost threatened, by Cassab to take part in the deception, but she had refused any involvement. She admitted sending her staff to the town hall, but it was merely to report the births of two other children, a month earlier, on 5 and 10 March. She had never asked 30,000 francs (£575) for the false certificate, as Cassab had claimed.

  It was all quite absurd. The Paris press gleefully recounted the attempts of the principal conspirators, Cassab, Marguerite and the ‘doctoresse’, Mme Champeau, to extricate themselves from the mess. ‘L’AFFAIRE CASSAB BEY OU LES MÉLI-MÉLOS DE LA RUE DAREAU ’ (‘THE CASSAB BEY AFFAIR OR THE MIX-UPS IN THE RUE DAREAU’) headlined Le Figaro, while Le Canard Enchaîné, under the heading ‘NOUVELLE INNOCENCE DE MADAME FAHMY ’ (‘NEW INNOCENCE OF MADAME FAHMY’), mercilessly sent up Marguerite for a second time. She had been photographed sporting a mink coat and superb pearl necklace. ‘Toute de monde souvient de Mme Fahmy bey qui, pour avoir simplement tué son mari, eut, à Londres, à subir toutes sorters des désagréments.’ (‘Everybody remembers Madame Fahmy bey, who, for simply having killed her husband, had to undergo all sorts of unpleasant things in London.’)

  Le Canard wittily suggested that Marguerite had realised that the scheme was ‘une infahmie’, before turning in the unfortunate Cassab to the police. ‘Elle veut bien tuer ses maris tant qu’on voudra, mais dire un mensonge, ça jamais!’ (‘She’s willing to kill as many husbands as you like, but tell a fib – never!’)529

  M. Barnaud, the investigating magistrate, decided that there was insufficient evidence against Cassab, who was released at the end of April and immediately returned to Cairo, undertaking not to communicate with Marguerite again.

  Marguerite had been shown up as a less than honest participant in a ludicrous plot and, by declaring a pregnancy, albeit a false one, she had also undermined the allegations about Ali’s sexual preferences made so robustly by her defence at the trial. Marguerite, once the envy of the demi-monde, was now the butt of jokes.

  Two weeks earlier, the Prince had spent the first evening of his April visit to Paris at the gala opening night of the new Embassy Club, or Le Jardin de ma Soeur, at 17 rue Caumartin, not far from the Opera. Among the glitterati were the Maharajah of Kapurthala (Marguerite’s old friend from Deauville and Tut-Ankh-Amun days), Lady Cunard, Prince Thurn und Taxis, ‘the Prince of Persia’, Ahmad Shah, with an enormous contingent of Americans

  * * *

  The company was entertained by the swarthily handsome Maurice Mouvet and his American partner, Leonora Hughes, an internationally famous dancing duo, who had also performed at the sister Embassy Club in London, where Leonora’s sexually charged ‘shimmy shake’ was a great attraction. Marguerite, though she loved dancing, ‘did not care for such eccentric dances such as the Shimmy’. She preferred to dance in the English fashion (whatever that may have meant), which she found ‘very correct’.530

  Though the Prince’s Paris stay in April 1924 began respectably enough, bad habits quickly reasserted themselves. Later that night and on two further nights of this Holy Week, the future Supreme Governor of the Church of England went late night clubbing to Jed Kiley’s raffish Montmartre establishment. There appears to be no record of other so
cial activities during Tuesday and Wednesday, except for lunch with Lord Crewe at the British Embassy. Maundy Thursday found him an invitee at a private dinner given by the Marquis and Marquise de Polignac (an American, the former Nina Crosby) in the intimacy of Henri’s Restaurant in the place Gaillon. Coco Chanel was to be among the guests. The Marquis was managing director of the Pommery champagne company.

  An episode related by Coco Chanel serves as a good example of how the Prince could get what he wanted, even if it meant compromising a close friendship. Coco had recently become the mistress of the Prince’s close friend, the Duke of Westminster, who had arrived in Paris only the day before and was staying at Malmaison.531 Bendor was, it appears, attracted to Coco because she was ‘petite, olive-complexioned, sexy, witty and brainy with an acid tongue’,532 qualities that she shared with Marguerite.

  Coco seems to have implied she and the Prince had a fling before dinner, a story that – given the royal form in that department – seems entirely plausible. Later Coco and the Prince, accompanied by ‘G’ Trotter, went to ‘a night club’ but, perverse as ever, Coco declared that she would rather have gone home to bed.533 In truth, she was looking forward to seeing Bendor again for the first time since Christmas. The little Prince of Wales could not compete with the mighty Duke.

  The next day, Good Friday, brought an emotional, as well as a physical, hangover from that three-day binge. Coco may not have been the only physical entanglement to upset the neurotic Prince. Marguerite was in town, in the process of extricating herself from involvement in the fake baby plot. If (despite all that had happened) the Prince had decided to risk another liaison with Marguerite, a discreet physical encounter – in the privacy of her apartment – is just possible.