An invitation from an old friend to spend a month’s holiday in a villa on the Côte d’Azur was a tempting offer. In the austerity Britain of 1952, it was irresistible. The Festival of Britain, held the previous year in commemoration of the centenary of the Great Exhibition of 1851, was a joyful event that helped many forget the deprivations and dreariness of the immediate postwar years; but it soon served as a reminder of Britain’s dismal decline since the heyday of the Victorian age. The hangover was painful. Postwar rationing, which was even more severe than it had been during the war, remained in full force until 21 February 1952.1 Rationing did not finally end until midnight on 4 July 1954 when restrictions on the sale of meat and bacon were lifted. The general election in October 1951 had brought Winston Churchill and the Conservatives to power, even though they received more than a million fewer popular votes, but the prime minister was a spent force. His government, which concentrated on foreign affairs within the context of an intensifying Cold War, was unable to find a way out of the economic crisis.
Sir Jack Drummond, who received the holiday offer, had an additional incentive to escape to sunlit southern France. He had suffered a mild stroke at the beginning of the year and needed a long rest from his duties as director of research at the Boots Pure Drug Company in Nottingham. He had many fond memories of visiting France and had spent an enjoyable week in Paris with his wife the year before, as well as a visit to Hyères on the Côte d’Azur. He eagerly seized the opportunity offered by Professor Guy Marrian—his former student, old friend, and colleague—who, as he had done for several years, had rented a modest little house in Villefranche-sur-Mer between Nice and Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat for the month of August. Drummond agreed to share the rent. His ten-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, on whom he doted, was thrilled with the prospect and made him promise that they would camp out on occasion during their holiday. She thought up all manner of places to visit, so many indeed that her father jokingly remarked that it would take a great deal longer than a month to visit all of them.2
Foreign travel was exceedingly difficult for the British during the immediate postwar years. Precious few could afford it, and those who could were hampered by strict currency regulations. The Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer Richard Austen (R. A. “Rab”) Butler increased the allowance to £25 in sterling, or the equivalent in foreign currency. This amount worked out at less than £1 per day for a month’s holiday—hardly enough to travel in much comfort. Any excess was liable to be seized by customs and forfeited.3 The maximum amount the Drummond family would have been allowed was equivalent to about 75,000 francs, but like many others they had stowed away some additional funds, in this case about £50. This left them with about £125 for an entire month, hardly a princely sum for a family of three.4
Many travelers found it prudent to travel with camping equipment in case funds ran low, so Sir Jack was readily complied with his daughter’s wish to sleep in the open air should a suitable opportunity arise. He had recently bought a Hillman Minx station wagon with sufficient space for camping equipment. With its 1265cc four-cylinder side valve engine, capable of a maximum speed of 73 miles per hour, it was a respectable mid-range vehicle costing about £700, one third of which was tax. He bought a couple of camp beds for himself and his wife Anne. Elizabeth was small enough to sleep in the back of the car when the back seat was folded down. They also had a small khaki-colored tent.
Armed with a route to Villefranche provided by the Automobile Association in collaboration with the French Tourist Office, the Drummonds set off from Nottingham at the end of July. The journey began inauspiciously as a stormy crossing from Dover to Dunkirk caused a seven-hour delay. They drove along the straight roads of Picardy, through the vineyards of Champagne and the valleys of Lorraine. With little Elizabeth’s having a passionate interest in Joan of Arc, their first visit was to the cathedral at Reims before visiting her birthplace at Domrémy-la-Pucelle. Elizabeth wrote a postcard to her maternal grandmother, Mrs. Wilbraham, from Domrémy, showing the room in which the Saint was born:
I am having a lovely time. This is the birthplace of Joan of Arc. On the boat we were daylayed [sic] for seven hours and had to sleep the night in the car. I was 4th in exams with 71.1% present [sic].
Tons, Cwts, Lbs, ozs of love
Elizabeth
With Anne doing most of the driving, they then continued south through Burgundy, where Jack the wine lover must have cast a longing eye at the signposts pointing the way to the great vineyards at Gevrey-Chambertin, Vougeot, Vosne-Romanée, Nuits-Saint-Georges, Beaune, Pommard, and Mâcon. These vintages had been virtually unobtainable in wartime Britain. Passing through the Beaujolais, the family turned east to Aix-les-Bains, a small spa in Savoy on the shores of the Lac du Bourget. They arrived on 30 July and stayed at one of the better hotels.
The following day they drove on to Digne-les-Bains, a modest little town that is the departmental capital of the Basses-Alpes.5 They stayed at the Grand Hotel, which despite its imposing name, was described by the Guide Michelin as being of “modest comfort.” Having not made any reservations, with characteristic English suspicions of the French as congenitally disingenuous and out to swindle the hapless foreigner, they insisted on a “cheap” room.6 They put the car in the garage and only brought in a small amount of luggage. They left the hotel at about seven o’clock, with Elizabeth asking for the key in halting French. They returned an hour and a half later.
Quite what they did during this hour and a half remains a mystery. Although this typical British family would have been immediately noticeable in a small, sleepy Provençal town, no one appears to have seen them. Presumably they went to find something to eat, but subsequent police inquiries at all the cafés and restaurants drew a blank.
The following day, 1 August, Elizabeth saw an advertisement for a humorous entertainment involving clowns and daring young men who ran in front of young bulls.7 It was to be held the following Monday, 4 August, as part of Digne’s annual Lavender Festival, which lasted from 1 to 4 August. Jack was sympathetic to his daughter’s pleading. At the prompting of the hotel receptionist, Jeanine Roland, he went to Louis Chauvin’s radio store and reserved three tickets.8 The decision to return to Digne for this event involved a real sacrifice by Elizabeth’s parents. They had been on the road for six days and were now in the dog days of August. That they were prepared to return to Digne and sit for hours in the blazing sun after only two days’ rest on the coast, all for a rather mediocre event, is testament to their willingness to indulge their daughter. She had already persuaded her parents to take her to Reims and Domrémy-la-Pucelle; now she could boast to the Marrians that she had once again managed to get her way. It was a victory with fatal consequences.
The Drummonds left Digne at 10:30 a.m. on 1 August and headed for Villefranche. They did not arrive at their destination until 5:00 p.m. It is impossible to reconstruct the route they took, but that is of little consequence. That it took six and a half hours to drive nearly 103 miles is hardly surprising. The roads were poor, the route circuitous, and the landscape magnificent. They drove through the harsh, rocky landscape of northern Provence, with its barren mountains and ruined hilltop villages, to enter the luminous Riviera ablaze with the brilliant colors of bougainvillea, hibiscus, and oleander. A leisurely lunch, frequent stops, and difficulty in finding the house are adequate explanations.
The Drummonds spent two pleasant days in Villefranche with Phyllis and Guy Marrian and their two daughters, Valerie and Jacqueline, although the tiny bungalow set in a gloomy hollow with the hackneyed name of Le Beau Cyprès must have been something of a disappointment. Anne Drummond wrote a postcard to her mother from the Côte, notifying her of the address and telling her to add the name of the district—Vallon de la Murta—an appellation that she found entertainingly macabre. She thereby confused the word for myrtle with that for death (mort). Elizabeth played tennis with the Marrian girls, who were considerably older, and they went to the beach together. Jack stayed in the house and worked on a paper, the subject of which remains unknown. He had not published in any academic journals since he had resigned his professorship at London University in 1945 to join Boots Pure Drug Company; so it can be assumed that the paper was some internal document. His papers were later handed over to the British consul in Marseille, but there is no record of their subsequent whereabouts.
Their return visit to Digne on 4 August began at 6:30 am. For whatever reason, the Drummonds left their passports behind in Villefranche, along with Jack’s driver’s license and the contraband £50. They had already spent £20, almost half of which on gas. Given that they had paid their share of the rent in advance, they still had sufficient funds for the remainder of the holiday. They took eight £5 travelers’ checks along, but they would have been of little use without proper means of identification. Since the banks were closed on Monday, they borrowed a “significant amount” of money from the Marrians to tide them over.9 They took the road that Napoleon Bonaparte had followed on his return from Elba. Upon landing with eight hundred men at Golfe-Juan on 1 March 1815, the emperor and his men took eight days to wind their way through the barren mountains of Provence, trudging through Grasse and Digne, before reaching the valley of the Durance River. With the Hillman, the Drummonds would only need a few hours. Their start was therefore exceptionally early for a relatively short trip to attend an event that began late in the afternoon. They were unlikely to have moved as slowly as they had done three days before, and they had already seen all that was to be seen in the town. They were first sighted in Digne when they had lunch at 12:30 p.m. in La Taverne, whose proprietor Edmond Bizot was also chairman of the Lavender Festival Committee.
Earlier that morning they paid a visit to the beautiful hilltop village of Lurs. Founded under Charlemagne, it had been the site of the summer residence of the bishops of Sisteron. It is a picturesque, fortified medieval village, with a Romanesque church and a château. By 1952 it was partly ruined, with a population of about fifty, but was in the process of being restored, thanks to the efforts of the internationally renowned typographer Maximilien Vox. Jean Giono, a distinguished local author, had introduced Vox to the region, and they had just started organizing the Lure International Meetings, which are held annually in the village to discuss every aspect of book production.10 Lurs is today—in large part because of its unsurpassed views of the Durance River, the hills of the Pays de Forcalquier, and the mountains of Montagne de Lure—a highly desirable address.
Francis Perrin, the village postman, noticed a green station wagon with Great Britain (GB) number plates driving down the hill from Lurs between 11:30 and 11:45 a.m. on 4 August. A man was driving. A little girl with shoulder-length, dark brown hair was sitting at the back. No one else in the village remembered seeing the car. The proprietor of the café suggested that perhaps the family had not driven all the way up to the village, because the Hillman was not a suitable car to tackle the only approach road, which was unpaved, steep, and badly rutted. The postman’s brother, Aimé, claimed that he had seen a car with a GB plate on the main road between 10:00 a.m. and noon on either 3 or 4 August, but he was unable to give any more precise details. It was the first British car that he had seen that year.
The strange thing about the Drummonds’ possible visit to Lurs is that they would have had to drive some 25 miles past Digne to get there. Driving from the southeast, it is impossible to see the village, which is hidden behind by a steep hillside. Furthermore, the access road is extremely difficult to find, even today. In 1952 there would have been no compelling reason to make such a detour. One possible explanation was that they were looking for the nearby monastery of Ganagobie, which is mentioned in Jack Drummond’s copy of the Guide Michelin. It is a beautiful Romanesque church with some fascinating mosaics, but at that time it was virtually a ruin. Accessing it, up the steep hillside, would have been exceedingly difficult by car.11
Valerie Marrian later provided a more likely explanation for the detour. She said Jack Drummond had told her that they intended to return to Villefranche via Aix-en-Provence because the road was not so tortuous, and Anne was going to do the driving. There is no reason to doubt this statement, although the Drummonds had clearly underestimated the distance. They had agreed to meet the Marrians for a midday lunch at La Trinquette in Villefranche the following day. They would have had to set out from Lurs at a very early hour to arrive on time. Nevertheless, it seemed probable that having reached Digne in good time, the Drummonds then drove on to find a suitable spot to spend the night when the Perrin brothers saw them in the neighborhood of Lurs. Having found an appropriate spot, the family returned to Digne.
After lunch the Drummonds picked up the tickets for the charlotade (comic bullfight) from the Grand Hotel’s reception desk and then went to the Bar du Soleil, where they waited until four o’clock for the spectacle to begin. Several witnesses noted that “the English” took a lively interest in the proceedings, but they left some twenty minutes before the end, at about 5:40 p.m., possibly because of the crippling heat or maybe because they wanted to avoid the rush to the exits.
Rose, the wife of the patron (owner) of La Taverne, claimed to have seen the Drummonds’ car parked outside her establishment between 6:30 and 7:00 p.m. Elizabeth was reportedly playing with a dog while waiting for her parents. This testimony, however, contradicts that of a gendarme who later gave a detailed account of a curious encounter involving the Drummonds.
Émile Marque was a gendarme from Valensole, a town about 31 miles away, who had been detached to Digne for the festival.12 He was on road patrol and had taken up position outside the Hotel L’Ermitage, which was situated a little outside the town on the main road to Nice. It hardly merited its four stars, but its restaurant was described as one of the best in the region. At about 6:15 p.m., Marque saw a gray-green station wagon with a GB plate entering the hotel’s courtyard parking lot. Three people got out: a man, a woman, and a child. They went inside the hotel and stayed there for about an hour. When they drove out onto the main road, they stopped beside the gendarme. The man, who was at the wheel, asked in French for the directions toward Château-Arnoux. He said a few words in English to the woman, who was seated to his left, and Marque thought that he heard the word “Lurs” mentioned.
Marque said the man appeared to be about fifty years of age. He had a small mustache. His hair was sparse, and he was somewhat overweight. He was wearing a black jacket. The woman was smaller, hardly reaching his shoulder. She had an oval-shaped face, and her hair was dark brown. The little girl had short hair, but he could not remember what she was wearing. After the gendarme gave them directions, they drove back toward Digne.
About an hour later a car with right-hand drive, coming from the direction of Nice, pulled up outside the hotel. It was a small, box-shaped brown car, looking like a cross between a Renault 4CV and a Peugeot 203. It appeared to be an older model. A man and a woman were inside. The man got out and with a strong English accent asked the gendarme where they could get something to eat. He also asked whether an English car had passed by recently. Marque told them that he had indeed seen one and that it had driven off in the direction of Château-Arnoux. He also said that they could eat at the hotel. He saw the car drive into the parking lot, where both people got out. The man went into the hotel, while the woman remained standing by the car. The man emerged from the hotel about a quarter of an hour later in an agitated state. Both jumped into the car and drove off at considerable speed in the direction of Digne.
The man was about five feet nine, slim, around thirty years old, and bareheaded with pomaded hair. He was dressed in a white shirt and white trousers. The woman was about six inches shorter and dressed in black. She was thin, with short curly light brown hair. The car had a GB plate at the back on the left-hand side.
There are a number of problems with this story. Jack Drummond spoke no French and was not driving. He had left his license at Villefranche. It is somewhat curious that he had asked the way to Château-Arnoux, which would have been a slight detour had he been heading for Lurs. It is an attractive little town, but there is little there of particular interest, apart from a sixteenth-century château. Besides, it was also getting late. Although there was large chemical factory at nearby Saint-Auban, it would not have been of any professional interest to Sir Jack as it did not have a research laboratory and only produced standard chemicals.13 It is unlikely that he would have wanted to pay it a visit the following day because that would have meant canceling the lunchtime appointment with the Marrians, and he almost certainly would have informed them that evening of any such change of plan. Marque’s testimony implies that the Drummonds dined at the hotel, but we know from the postmortems that their stomachs were empty. The mysterious “woman in black” appears at various points in the narrative, but she was probably Anne Drummond, who had black clothing in her bag and had changed her dress before settling in for the night.
Rather than setting off to Château-Arnoux or Lurs, the Drummonds indeed drove back to Digne and parked the car outside the Grand Hotel. The precise time of their arrival is uncertain. It is highly probable that Gendarme Marque, who testified months afterward, may have thought that the Drummonds arrived later than in actual fact. In any case, two reliable witnesses saw their Hillman outside the hotel sometime between 6:30 and 7:15 p.m. There is no indication why the family went back to the hotel. Was it to see if by chance there was a room available, to leave a message, or to make a telephone call?
They had obviously abandoned any possible idea of going to Château-Arnoux. Leaving Digne at about 7:30 p.m., they drove directly toward Lurs. About 9 miles from Digne, at the village of Malijai, they were noticed by a motorcyclist, who was extremely irritated because their car was driving so slowly. The Drummonds pulled up outside a small store, where Jack bought a bottle of Vichy water. Then they drove to Les Mées with its spectacular rock formations on the banks of the Durance. Known as the “Penitents,” the sandstone columns that stand 164 feet high are said to be the petrified remains of monks from the Lure Mountain. Saint Donat had turned them into rocks for their having dallied with the beautiful Saracen maidens whom the local baron had brought back from the Crusades.14 The formations would have looked particularly splendid with the setting sun casting deep shadows and giving them a warm glow.
Having crossed the Durance at Les Mées, they drove a few miles along what was then the main road to Manosque and Aix-en-Provence before stopping on the side of the road to set up camp, thus granting Elizabeth her special wish. It was, after all, not such a great hardship. The moon was full, and August is the month of falling stars, offering an extraordinary spectacle. Jack Drummond was a doting father, who found it hard to resist his daughter’s every wish. Both father and mother were, by the standards of the day, elderly parents who could be excused for giving way. Besides, why shouldn’t Elizabeth’s wishes be taken into consideration? The Drummonds were determined that this trip should not be a typical nightmare family holiday, in which a child is treated as a tiresome impediment and a needless expense, with her wishes utterly ignored. Jack had inquired at the Grand Hotel whether a room was available for the night of 4 August but had been told that Digne was fully booked because of the festival. It would thus only have been possible to see the charlotade if they spent the night afterward, and they had come all the way from England fully prepared for such an eventuality. The Marrians’ daughter Valerie told the police that the Drummonds had said that they would camp on the side of the road and that they were fully equipped to do so. As it was swelteringly hot during the day and the nights were still very warm, however, they had left their tent behind in Villefranche.
The spot where the Drummonds chose to spend the night was far from picturesque. It was on the then main road from Digne to Manosque and Forcalquier.15 They parked on a level turnout covered with gravel that was used for vehicles doing repair work on the road and to deposit gravel and sand. It was one of the few places along the road where it was possible to park a car, and it had the additional advantage of offering relatively easy access to the river. Although the Durance River ran nearby, it was hidden from view by a clump of dwarf oak trees.
It was still light when they arrived, but the sun would have already fallen behind the steep hill on the other side of the road. A short distance away was a shabby yellow farmhouse, hidden from the road by a high wall in which was set the dilapidated remains of a door. Behind it was a flight of steps leading down to a courtyard, in which the farmer’s family would sit on wooden benches to drink their homemade pastis and wine and occasionally welcome a neighbor or family member. Between the Drummond’s campsite and the farmhouse were rows of vines and apricot trees interspersed with alfalfa. Not far was a stone bridge that crossed a railway line, and on the other side a steep slope led down to the Durance. What seemed from a distance to be an attractive riverbank along an inviting river was viscous black clay strewn with huge jagged rocks, uprooted trees, and sundry detritus, including the rotting remains of a sheep. It was not at all the place for a leisurely evening stroll. The river branches into several streams, some of which have impressive currents, and a number of stagnant pools of some depth. It was hardly an inviting place for a young girl looking to take a dip. Perhaps the Drummonds had deliberately chosen the spot, thinking that a nearby farm and a busy road offered them a greater degree of security than an idyllic and remote spot in the country.
The farmhouse, situated a few hundred yards farther down the road, was known as the Grand’ Terre. It was a desolate property from which an elderly peasant, Gaston Dominici, managed to scratch a living. He lived there with his wife, Marie; his son Gustave; his daughter-in-law, Yvette; and his grandson Alain, who was ten months old. Relations between Gustave and his father had never been good, but they had recently reached the breaking point. They lived under the same roof but maintained separate households. They rarely spoke to one another except to quarrel. Things had grown even worse since April of last year, when Gustave announced his intention to set up on his own as a tenant farmer. Gaston had flown into a towering rage, denouncing him as a useless layabout who had proved himself inept in his attempt to run the Grand’ Terre and who would be totally incapable of setting up on his own.
Gustave deeply resented that he was the only one of the nine Dominici children who had been compelled to stay at home. There had been no jobs available during the war and no possibility of finding an apprenticeship. Now he was thirty-three years old with a young wife, infant son, and a baby on the way, working for his board and lodging but with virtually no income. The sale of apricots brought in 72,000 francs that year, and the bank had advanced 65,000 francs in anticipation of the wheat harvest.16 Precious little of this money ended up in Gustave’s pocket. In short he was trapped by his seventy-five-year-old father, who needed him to run the farm but whom he loathed and feared. Gaston’s death would be the only way of escaping from his tyrannical hold over Gustave.
Although there was a major fete in Digne, on the farm the fourth of August passed as usual. Gaston got up sometime between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. to take his goats to pasture. He came back to the house for his midday meal, changed his boots for slippers, ate his lunch, and took his habitual siesta in an armchair. By 4:30 p.m. the heat had subsided sufficiently for him to venture out once more. As he led his goats out again, he noticed that a field of alfalfa, which was being watered, was in danger of flooding. He went back to the farmhouse and asked his daughter-in-law, Yvette, to turn off the water. The sluice gate was about 330 feet away from the house and about 98 feet higher. For whatever reason, possibly because she was pregnant, Yvette refused. Gaston then ordered his wife to do it for her. She replied with unaccustomed forcefulness: “Do it yourself!” Gaston raged at such insubordination, pointing out that he could not leave his goats alone because they would start nibbling at his barley. With great reluctance and after a significant pause, Marie went and turned off the water.
Meanwhile, Gaston went to the bridge across the railway, only a short distance from the farmhouse, to see the extent of the damage. Mud, shrubs, and undergrowth had slipped down the slope and had reached the gravel bed of the railway. He was therefore concerned that the landslide might continue during the night and block the railway so that the first train, scheduled for 6:45 a.m., would be unable to pass. He would then be faced with a hefty fine.17
Gaston was furious that his son was not at hand to deal with this awkward situation. He was away that day, helping his wife’s maternal uncle with the threshing on his nearby farm. Gaston continued to graze his goats, while keeping an eye on the landslide, and returned to the house at about 7:30 p.m. On his way back across the bridge and along the path that led to the main road, he noticed the Drummonds’ Hillman parked on the side of the road, a few yards to his right. Given Gaston’s difficult dialect and the parents’ poor French, it is unlikely that they exchange any words between them.
Gustave returned to the Grand’ Terre soon after eight o’clock. He went almost at once to make sure that the railway line was free from any obstruction so that the last train of the day, scheduled at nine o’clock, could pass. On the way he also noticed the Hillman parked in the turnout.
Having seen that for the moment the track was free, Gustave had a quick supper. Then he went on his motorcycle to Peyruis, about 2 miles down the road in the direction of Digne, and reported the flooding incident to Faustin Roure, who was in charge of a gang of platelayers working for the French state railway Société nationale des chemins de fer français (SNCF). Roure and his wife, Rose, invited Gustave in for a drink just as the nine o’clock train passed through the station. He assured Gustave that he and his team from the Lurs railway station, situated 547 yards away from the Grand’ Terre, would come and look at the landslide early the next morning and make sure that it was free from any obstruction.
On his way home, Gustave passed La Serre, a farmhouse on the edge of the road where his sister Germaine lived with her husband, Roger Perrin, and their sixteen-year-old son, Roger. Known as Zézé, he was Gustave’s much loved nephew. Zézé later testified that Gustave honked his horn “as usual” as he rode past the farm. Gustave returned home shortly after nine o’clock.
Meanwhile, Anne and Elizabeth Drummond had taken a canvas bucket to the farmhouse and asked for water. Yvette filled it up at the outdoor pump. Elizabeth was well prepared for this task. Her last bit of homework for her French class at her boarding school before the end of term involved translating from French the following passage:
The girl gave the white hen to her mother.
Do you have any fine butter, Madame?
There is no milk in my bottle.
Please give me some.18
Elizabeth was considered reasonably proficient in French and had recently recited Jean de la Fontaine’s fable “Le Corbeau et le Renard” to the satisfaction of her French teacher, Miss Hancock.
Jack Drummond spread out a tablecloth, and the family nibbled at some biscuits and cake. They placed the two camp beds parallel, hidden from the road by the car, and prepared a bed for Elizabeth in the back of the Hillman. A rug was hung over it to provide an added degree of privacy and some shade from the bright moonlight and the headlights of passing cars. The sun set that day at 7:55 p.m., but it did not get fully dark until 10:00 p.m. The moon rose at 8:21 p.m., and it would be full the following night. A full moon with clear, starlit skies in Provence in August is an impressive sight, providing unexpected visibility, deep shadows, and haunting luminosity. It would reach its zenith at 11:53 p.m. and set at 4:35 a.m.
Elizabeth and her father changed into pajamas, but her mother, who had not brought any nightclothes with her, simply changed into another dress without removing her under garments. Exhausted after a hectic day, they went early to bed and were soon asleep.