THE GEORGE & DRAGON
BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
OCTOBER 2001
Over the years, rumors placed the Duchess in London and Rome and Paris. A few spotted her at the Hotel Splendide in Cannes. Renowned priest Abbé Mugnier reported she was not traveling but instead holed up in a dilapidated estate in Chacombe-at-Banbury, an Oxfordshire hamlet.
According to reports, the priest visited his old friend once a year, on Christmas Day. If he tried more often, Gladys shooed him away with warning shots or a vicious pack of snapping geese. Sometimes she leaned out a window and dumped a bucket of water on his head.
The world was skeptical of Mugnier’s reports from the Grange but the doubting always struck this writer as bizarre. Here was a religious man, a fellow known as “le confesseur des duchesses,” the confessor of duchesses. Surely he would know of which he spoke. When I tracked down his fifty-seven cahiers de moleskine at the Diocèse de Paris, I found the proof I sought.
—J. Casper Augustine Seton,
The Missing Duchess: A Biography
“It wasn’t the most auspicious welcome,” Gus said, draining the last of his cider. “To be greeted by century-old nude breasts. And a gun.”
Annie tried not to blush.
Half of her wanted to chastise this dirty old man for mentioning boobs while the other half was sniggling like a thirteen-year-old boy. She felt at times old-fashioned and hopelessly juvenile, as if she could’ve been born in 1879 or 1979. Maybe that’s what happened when you grew up on a farm and were raised by someone like Laurel, who was about as nonworldly as a person could get. It was a marvel Eric found anything in common with her at all.
“Have I offended you?” Gus asked. “My apologies. I can be a real duffer. Comes with age. Though I don’t know what my excuse was before.”
As he fidgeted, Annie thought she could hear his bones creak.
“Not offended!” she chirped. “And frankly I’d be more put off by the gun. So that was her, I presume? The duchess? No offense, but how scary could she have been? She was, what, ninety years old by the time Pru answered the newspaper ad?”
“Ninety-one. Alas, my dear, we have not established the identity of the screaming harpy. It was the woman rumored to be the duchess, but whether she actually was the duchess remains to be seen.”
“What do you mean, ‘remains to be seen’? You’ve read the book, right?”
“Yes. It’s been a while, but I’ve read it.”
“Look, I know we’re playing this coy game. No spoilers and all that. But let’s be honest, we already know it’s the duchess.”
She turned the book to face Gus.
“Read this part,” she said and ran her finger below the words. “‘Amongst the writings found.’ Start there.”
Amongst the writings found in Abbé Mugnier’s journals were detailed descriptions of his visits to the Grange. In his diaries he also had a receipt from the Royal Oak, a pub not far from the Grange itself.
Oddly, few believed the claims of l’abbé, when he was alive and especially after he died. The man was probably a pettifogger, they decided, mooching off the privileged and prestigious as he did.
Plus, what would the Duchess of Marlborough, this most illustrious creature, want with the hovel he described? She once lived at Blenheim for Christ’s sake, where her blue eyes were painted on the portico ceilings and winged sphinxes with her face marked garden paths.
At Blenheim she entertained the likes of King George and Queen Mary if you’re one for royalty, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford if you’re partial to film. How could Gladys Deacon leave this grandeur to live alone? Her only guest an aged priest, her only companions a cavalcade of forever-breeding spaniels?
Annie clapped the book shut.
“Basically this … priest to the stars,” she said, “confirmed the duchess lived at the Grange. And the author agreed. Where’s the big mystery?”
“Well, if you can’t trust a writer, then whom can you?” Gus said, a sparkle playing at the corners of his gray eyes. “Writers are never fib-tellers or fabricators of any sort.”
“You’re really going to string this out for me, aren’t you?” Annie said, smiling in return.
“What do these paragraphs tell us?” he asked. “An old man claimed to see her, once a year, on Christmas. Odd date, given the duchess hated the holiday. And the author?” He snorted. “Well, here’s a piece of advice, something you should’ve learned at primary school. Don’t believe everything you read.”
“That’s the damned truth,” she grumbled. “So the woman at the Grange. She was crazy? Demented? Violent? All of the above?”
“All, some, or none of the above,” Gus said. “Depending on who you’d ask. Walking around naked and wielding firearms does not typically lead to a reputation for sanity. On the other hand, some thought it was a ruse, that she pretended to be crazy in order to keep people away.”
“Like with the angry geese.”
“Yes. Or the powerful weed killer she used to spray ‘fuck you’ in her front lawn.”
“Not for nothing, but this woman, if she was ‘the duchess.’” Annie rolled her eyes and held up air quotes.
“Let’s call her Mrs. Spencer. She would’ve preferred it.”
“Works for me. Well, this Mrs. Spencer was a real piece of work. Maybe even, how do I put this elegantly?”
“A bit of a bitch?” he said with a wink. “You’re going to have to get that blushing under control if you plan to sit around pubs with the likes of me. But you are correct. Mrs. Spencer and the duchess were both described using a host of unflattering terms, such as sociopathic, ruinous, and out for blood. Of course Pru, our American assistant, knew none of this.”
“You have to feel for the old broad,” Annie said. “The woman was alone for decades. That’d make anyone nutty. Why’d the family wait so long to hire someone?”
“Mrs. Spencer didn’t want anyone else to live at the Grange. Her niece Edith tried to intervene dozens of times over the years, a promise to her mother that she’d look after Auntie. But just as the old woman shooed away priests with gunshots and cold water, she used decidedly less pleasant tactics with people not of the cloth.”
“‘Fuck you’ in the lawn,” Annie guessed.
“Precisely. Bows and poisoned arrows, too. Unfortunately, over time, Mrs. Spencer’s behavior grew more erratic. Perhaps she was becoming increasingly senile, or suffering from lack of attention. Whatever the case, third-party complaints about her increased. Phone calls were placed overseas. The family could no longer ignore the situation.”
“Something had to be done,” Annie said. “Still. It’s pretty remarkable that she was living independently at ninety-plus years.”
“If she truly was independent,” Gus said. “Because of course there was Tom.”
“Tom? Who the heck is Tom?” She opened the book and flicked through some pages. “I don’t see any Tom in here. I thought she lived alone?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Tomasz was a displaced Polish man. He’d been with Mrs. Spencer since 1951 or so the story went. A handyman, she claimed. The only loyal man in her entire wretched life.”
“So what happened to him?”
“No one knew. Was he alive? Dead? Had he even existed in the first place? Because though townspeople had heard his name, took for granted rumors of his existence, no one reported seeing him after 1955, though he’d lived at the Grange some twenty years by the time Pru showed up.”
“Did anyone recall meeting him? Ever?”
“A few people,” Gus said with a shrug. “In the early fifties. After that, nothing, although Mrs. Spencer referred to him often. To would-be visitors she’d screech ‘Watch out! Tom will get you!’ Or ‘Don’t go near the barn! Tom is in there!’ Tom was almost always ‘in the barn.’ A queer place for the handyman of a falling-down estate.”
“Why didn’t anyone check?” she asked. “Sneak a look?”
Gus tossed his head back and laughed, deep and low and from his gut. She felt her face redden and burn.
“It seems a simple enough solution,” she sniffed. “I don’t know why you find it so hilarious.”
“Sure. Simple enough if you don’t mind a bullet to the arse.”
“But it’s a big property, right? Why wouldn’t someone prowl around? See what was up?”
“A brilliant idea. That is, aside from the aforementioned bullets, the barbed wire, a herd of wild boars, a few poisoned spears, as well as about a dozen other hazards. Other than that, a winning plot!”
“I get it, the estate was impenetrable.”
“Mostly. Plus everyone was anxious about what state he’d be in, this Tom, in the barn for twenty years or more.”
“What did they imagine?” she asked. “A dead body? A live, withered one chained to a wall?”
“Yes and yes.”
“I assume Pru didn’t know about him. Or any of the other threats.”
“No, she did not,” Gus said. “It’s why Edith Junior settled on the diaphanous young American. She’d tried to hire a half-dozen staid British-governess types but they all sussed out the situation and declined the post. The family was lucky, really. Pru had no experience but was the exact right person for the job.”