Keeler was still making the headlines. On 3 February, the News of the World ran a picture of her in a story related to the Edgecombe shooting case. Far from enjoying her celebrity, however, she was beginning to feel overwhelmed by events and had received a threatening phone call from someone with an American accent. She was also all too aware that Gordon knew where she was living again. And so, despite knowing she would be called as a witness in the Edgecombe trial on 14 March, she left in a car for Spain via France with Paul Mann on 8 March.
Cynics might say that, absent from the witness box, Keeler’s story remained untold, and was therefore still for sale by the likes of Paul Mann, and perhaps even more valuable. But it’s not out of character for Keeler to want to get away from the frightening situation she found herself in and simply go ahead and do it without fully thinking through the consequences. She was still, after all, a young girl.
On the same day, the Westminster Confidential newsletter was circulated to its several hundred private subscribers made up of MPs, journalists and embassy staff. The contents alluded to Profumo’s affair with Keeler by mentioning details such as official stationery, a famous actress wife and a Soviet military attaché. Profumo’s position began to look less secure but still he refused to admit his dalliance, even to his closest friends.1
At his trial, Edgecombe was convicted of possessing a firearm and sentenced to seven years but cleared of all other charges because of the failure to produce Keeler as the key witness for the Crown. Unsurprisingly, Keeler made the headlines the next day exactly because of her court absence. The Daily Express took the opportunity to use clever tabloid trickery to link Profumo to her by running a large picture of Keeler the ‘Vanished Old Bailey Witness’ alongside another story about Profumo titled ‘War Minister Shock’ that suggested the war minister had asked to resign for personal reasons. Was the hope that readers would make the connection and link the couple? And would that lead to further questions?
Later, when asked about the front page by Lord Denning, the Daily Express editors maintained the placement was coincidental. But from then on, the investigation into the shooting became tangled up with the morals of the establishment and a potential spy ring thanks in part to press speculation and gossip.
Now it was Rice-Davies’s opportunity to grab some media attention. She sold a story about life with Keeler and Ward, which ran on 16 March, to the Daily Sketch. Profumo was still the name that could not be mentioned for fear of libel, but since Ivanov had fled back to Russia, it was safe to mention the spy in her account alongside her account of the gifts Keeler received from boyfriends. Rice-Davies’s story had now firmly introduced the espionage element of the saga to the public.
Over in Spain, Keeler wasn’t as incognito as she’d hoped. After travelling to Madrid, Keeler was recognised from her picture as the missing model and decided to attend a local police station voluntarily. Keeler then agreed to talk to the Daily Express, whose journalists were keen to know more about Profumo and were happy to get her home safely, without any details leaking to rival titles. But as Keeler soon found out, scandalous stories often just get bigger and bigger.2
And it wasn’t just the tabloid-reading public that was wondering how a missing model was connected to a married MP. Others began to ask why exactly the model went missing, and who it served to have arranged that. Certainly, Keeler’s disappearance had led to rumours that Profumo had engineered her trip away from the headlines. If Keeler didn’t take the stand during the Edgecombe trial, there could be no chance she might mention her affair with the minister. Davenport-Hines says Hobson even asked the war minister if such reports were true, despite it being more likely that tabloid cash might have had a hand in her Spanish trip and the gossip surrounding it.3
With all this speculation, it was prime time for Dudley MP George Wigg, who had been smarting since his tussle in the army debate, to expose the war minister and his failings. Wigg chose the upcoming debate due on 21 March, that was to centre on the imprisoning of the two journalists caught up in the Vassall case. He planned to drop his ‘bombshell’4 and would be supported by Barbara Castle, the MP for Blackburn, who referred to Keeler as a ‘tart’. At first, it looked as if Ben Parkin, Labour MP for Paddington North, might deliver the blow, as he played on the word ‘model’ during a speech on the London sewage system. But this was just a teaser. At 11.00 pm, while the House debated the Consolidated Fund Bill, Wigg stood, and his conversation turned to the matter of rumours. Within a speech lasting just five minutes, he laid down his challenge and asked the Home Secretary to deny those rumours connected to Keeler and Rice-Davies. Although he did not mention Profumo by name, he used Parliamentary Privilege to ensure he was immune from any libel charges.
Forty minutes later, Castle entered the debate, asking if the case of the missing model was of public interest. She asked if it was a question of the ‘perversion of justice’ that was the real issue.5
Later, others wondered if Ward had had something to do with Keeler’s disappearance. He had, after all, once suggested to Paul Mann that Christine should get out of London, and maybe bring forward her plans to visit America. And it was Paul Mann who seemed to encourage Keeler to flee to Europe.6 The negotiations for Keeler to renege on her Pictorial contract, which Ward was party to, may also have included the need for her to disappear from public view. Keeler’s high-profile disappearance would also have played into the hands of Lewis and Wigg as they strove to bring attention to their cause.
During his investigation, Denning commissioned some forensic accounting to check if the bank accounts of Mann, Ward or Astor showed payments in or out that might reveal their involvement in Keeler’s timely trip. Nothing was found, but Knightley and Kennedy do mention that Astor left for an American trip on 27 February, and payments from an American account to a Spanish account would have gone unnoticed.7