John Paul Beattie was the night porter at the famous Savoy Hotel and at 2.30 am, on the morning of Tuesday 10 July 1923, he was taking luggage up to room 50 on the fourth-floor Savoy Court.
As Beattie approached suite number 41, the door opened and the occupant, Prince Ali Hamel Bey, came out, pointing up at his face. ‘Look at my face. Look what she has done,’ cried the Prince. Beattie saw that there was indeed a mark, albeit very slight, on Bey’s left cheek. Even as Beattie stood before the Prince, that gentleman’s wife, Madam Marie Fahmy, followed her husband out of the suite and stood framed in the doorway. She too began to talk and point to her face but since she was speaking in French, Beattie had no idea what she was saying. The Prince listened to what his wife was saying and then asked Beattie to call for the night manager. Beattie did as he had been asked, and then went on his way to room 50.
As Beattie approached room 50 with the luggage, three loud reports rang out. Certain that those reports had been shots, Beattie dropped the luggage and dashed back towards suite 41. As he arrived there, Beattie saw that the Prince was now lying against a wall, in the corridor, outside room 42, bleeding badly from his head. As for his wife, Madam Fahmy, she stood before her husband and, as Beattie watched, dropped a revolver on the floor. Beattie immediately picked up the weapon and, for safety’s sake, placed it inside a luggage lift, some three yards away. Even as he did so, Madam Fahmy followed and Beattie then caught hold of her. She said something to him, again in French, but after a few seconds she managed to say the one word ‘cloak’ and pointed back inside her suite. Beattie took this to mean that Madam Fahmy wanted her cloak, so he briefly went inside the suite, found the cloak, and then gave it to the shocked woman. Beattie then rang down for the manager, Mr Marini.
Arthur Marini, the night manager, soon arrived at the scene of the shooting. Madam Fahmy was still talking but fortunately, Marini did speak French. She said to him, ‘What shall I do? I have shot him.’ Taking charge, Marini then told Beattie to telephone the police at the Bow Street station, and also to call for an ambulance, the hotel’s general manager and the hotel’s doctor. Marini then gently escorted Madam Fahmy back into her suite, to await their arrival. During this time, Madam Fahmy continued to speak, in French, saying, ‘What will they do with me? We were quarrelling over my divorce that was to take place shortly in Paris. You see, I have all my tickets ready and I was leaving for Paris tomorrow. What will my children do?’
It was clear that Madam Fahmy had shot her husband. When he died from his injuries, at 3.25 am that same morning, she was charged with wilful murder.
Madam Fahmy appeared at the Old Bailey, on 10 September 1923, before Mr Justice Swift, to answer that charge. The trial lasted until 15 September, during which time the case for the prosecution was led by Mr Percival Clarke, assisted by Mr Eustace Fulton. Madam Fahmy was defended by the redoubtable Sir Edward Marshall Hall who was assisted by Sir Henry Curtis Bennett, and Mr Rowland Oliver.
During the early part of the trial, some of the personal history of Madam Fahmy was detailed. She had been born Marie Marguerite Alibert, in Paris, on 9 December 1890. When she was still only sixteen, on 21 January 1907, Marie had given birth to a daughter, whom she named Raymonde. In March 1919, she had married a man named Charles Laurent, in Venice, but the relationship was not a happy one and they had divorced, in Paris, on 30 March 1920.
Marie continued to live in that city and it was there, on 8 May 1922, that she had met Prince Ali Hamel Bey, who was in Paris on holiday. There appeared to be an instant attraction between the two and a romance soon developed. They became lovers and travelled to Italy, Deauville, and Biarritz. An engagement was announced and, in December 1922, they married in Cairo, afterwards living in the Prince’s palace on the banks of the River Nile. Initially, the age difference between the two did not seem to matter. By now, of course, Marie was thirty-two, whilst the Prince was only twenty-three but, in due course, the relationship began to grow more and more strained. There were a large number of arguments, some of them quite violent and Marie began to sleep with a revolver beneath her pillow. On 18 May 1923, the couple had returned to Paris where they stayed at the Hotel Majestic. Then, on 1 July, they had travelled to London with their staff, and taken rooms at the Savoy.
One of the early witnesses was Said Enamy, who had been the Prince’s secretary for some five years. He had been one of the staff members, who had travelled to London with the couple and he had been given room 127.
Said testified that on the afternoon of 9 July 1923, he had taken lunch with Madam Fahmy and the Prince. During the meal, they had been throwing insults at each other and at one stage Madam Fahmy had told her husband that she intended to leave him, adding that he would pay dearly for it. After lunch, Said had retired to his room for a time, but later that day he had accompanied Madam Fahmy on a shopping trip. They returned to the hotel at around 5.00 pm.
That evening, Said, Madam Fahmy and the Prince had all gone to Daly’s Theatre, on Cranbourne Street, where they saw a performance of The Merry Widow, after which they had returned to the Savoy, where they all had supper together. After this, they adjourned to the ballroom but Madam Fahmy had refused to dance with her husband, though she had danced with Said.
At 1.30 am, on 10 July, Said had escorted Madam Fahmy to the lift so that she could go up to her suite. He then returned to the Prince and the two men spoke about the problems he was having with the marriage. It was 2.00 am by the time the Prince bade his secretary goodnight, and retired to his room. Less than an hour later, the telephone rang in Said’s room. It was Madam Fahmy and she said, in French, ‘I have shot Ali. Come down immediately.’ Said had then gone to the suite where he had found his master lying in the corridor, bleeding badly from a wound in his head.
Sergeant George Hall was one of the first police officers on the scene and he told the court that when he arrived, the Prince was lying on his right side, on the floor in the corridor, outside the suite. The Prince was wearing a light, white, night-shirt, a dressing gown and slippers. Soon afterwards, Dr Gordon arrived and he joined Sergeant Hall in Suite 41 where Madame Fahmy spoke to them. Sergeant Hall did not speak French but Dr Gordon did and he translated. Apparently, Madam Fahmy admitted that she had shot her husband and, as a porter handed a revolver over to Hall, she went on to say, ‘That is the weapon I did it with.’
Sergeant Hall made a quick search of the bedroom but could find no traces of blood, which indicated that the Prince had been shot in the corridor outside. Madam Fahmy then asked him if she might be permitted to change, since she was still wearing an evening dress. Permission was granted and, soon afterwards, she was escorted to Bow Street police station, for formal interview.
Dr Edward Francis Strathearn Gordon told the court that he had been attending Madam Fahmy for a week prior to the shooting. She had complained to him about suffering from haemorrhoids and, in all, he had seen her six or seven times. On her last visit to his surgery, on 9 July, Dr Gordon had arranged for her to see a specialist and the result of that consultation was that she was due to go into a nursing home, for an operation, on 10 July. Of course, the death of her husband meant that she was unable to keep that appointment.
After the shooting, Dr Gordon had been called out to the hotel. Later still, he went with her to the police station and continued to act as interpreter. It was at Bow Street that she explained that, after seeing him on 9 July, and agreeing to the operation, she had returned to the hotel and told her husband what had transpired. He had told her that she was not to have any operation in London. An argument developed during which she said that she would leave him, whereupon he threatened to kill her if she did. He also threatened to smash her head in with a bottle.
During the early hours of 10 July, when the Prince had come up to the suite, he had advanced towards her, in the bedroom, in a threatening manner, and she had run to the bed and snatched up her revolver, for protection. She turned and fired one shot out of the open window, in order to frighten him, but he continued to advance upon her. She tried to escape and they ran out into the corridor where she pointed the gun at him and fired several times. He fell down, and at first she thought he was shamming, until she saw the blood.
Dr Gordon had also performed the post-mortem on the dead Prince and now detailed the wounds he had found. The first wound was a small, circular wound on the left temple and this was described as an entrance wound. Next, there was a two-inch-wide wound behind the right ear, which Dr Gordon described as an exit wound.
The third wound was slightly larger than the second, and positioned below the lobule of the left ear. This too, was an exit wound. Next, there was a small circular wound on the left arm. Another small wound lay on the inner side of the left arm, with a sixth at the same level in the thoracic wall. The seventh, and final wound was in the back, on the left side, one and a half inches below the lower angle of the scapula.
In effect, Madam Fahmy’s defence was two-fold. The first was that her husband was abusive to her, and that there had been a number of heated arguments between them during their stormy marriage. The second line of defence was that he had demanded that she perform unnatural sexual acts; that is that throughout their marriage, he had insisted on anal sex, and that this had been the direct cause of the haemorrhoids.
Part of her testimony was backed up by two witnesses. Aimee Pain was Madam Fahmy’s personal maid. She had started working for her in October 1922. She said that she was a witness to many arguments between the couple and she had seen the Prince assault her mistress many times.
Ellen Dryland was a chambermaid at the Savoy. She testified that, on either 5 July, or 6 July, whilst cleaning the suite, she had found a revolver beneath the bolster of the bed. She had put the weapon into the drawer of a small bedside table, for safety. After the shooting, once the scene had been released by the police, Ellen had cleaned the room and found a spent cartridge case, near the open window, by that same bedside table. It seemed that Madam Fahmy had been telling the truth when she referred to firing a warning shot out of the hotel window.
There were, however, two other witnesses, whose testimony appeared to show that this was a premeditated act of murder. Mahmoud Abdul Fath, was a close friend of both the Prince and Madam Fahmy and she had spoken freely to him about her marital problems. During one conversation she had confessed that she hated Ali and had a plan, or programme, which she was going to put into action in London. Though she never actually said what the plan was, Fath believed that she intended to kill her husband.
Fanny Luis ran a dress shop in Cairo and Madam Fahmy was a regular customer. Again she spoke openly about her marriage and told Fanny that Ali constantly wished to engage in an unnatural vice. Yet again, Madam Fahmy said that she had a plan, which would free her, and which she intended to carry out once they were in Europe.
The time came for Madam Fahmy to take the stand herself. Sir Edward Marshall Hall, concentrating on the so-called debauched life the Prince had led, guided his client carefully through the indignities which she said she had been forced to suffer. Surprisingly, the prosecution was then not allowed to cross-examine her, as to whether she too had led an immoral life. Had they been allowed to, the jury might well have heard of her illegitimate daughter, and the fact that there was evidence that Marie had then become a prostitute and also had lesbian tendencies.
The jury took less than an hour to decide that, not only was Marie Fahmy not guilty of murder, but she was not guilty of manslaughter either. She had killed in self-defence and was therefore a free woman.
Marie returned to Paris after the trial, where she discovered that she had no claim to her dead husband’s fortune. A few years later, she tried to claim that she had been pregnant at the time she shot her husband, had borne a son, and he was therefore entitled to his father’s estate. The claim was dismissed out of hand and Marie became something of a recluse, treated as a laughing stock by society. She never married again and died alone, in Paris, on 2 January 1971. She was eighty years of age.