The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery (37 page)

Jacko,

It struck me that the whole of that uncomfortable afternoon of yesterday should be a complete washout in the minds of the three people besides yourself who took part in it. Consequently your mother has not breathed one word (nor ever will) about it to a soul on earth. Your father I will see before he sees anyone else. I don’t, of course, know what decision has been arrived at – but should there be any difficulty about your getting out, I not only wish to shield your mother from any suspicion of having meddled with it, even amongst her most intimate friends, but also to save you from having to accuse her of anything of the kind. This is I believe sound.

As to your mother, she assures me that nothing she has ever said to anyone could possibly explain what has happened.

Forgive me for writing in this way.

Remember that no one has any suspicion of what occurred yesterday.

His letter was as cruel as it was deceitful. The one hope John had of contesting the doctor’s verdict was to accuse his mother of having influenced it. Knowing that he was desperate to get out to France, Charlie was seeking to stall the only means he had of getting there. His message was clear: he was not to risk his mother’s reputation: his loyalty to her must take precedence over his duty to his country.

Intentionally, he had forced John into a corner. There was a further subtext to the carefully calculated wording of his letter. By assuring him that no one had ‘any suspicion of what occurred’, he was trying to convince him that, if he were to accept the doctor’s diagnosis, the story would never get out. Knowing John mistrusted his parents’ discretion, in swearing Violet and Henry to secrecy, Charlie was hoping to persuade John that it was safe for him to duck out of the war.

John’s reply to Charlie’s letter is missing from the Muniment Rooms at Belvoir. But shortly after receiving it, showing great courage and in defiance of Charlie’s ensnarement, he confided in General Stuart Wortley.

It was then that the general decided to take the matter into his own hands.

Early the next morning – Thursday 22 October – the general’s chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce turned off Piccadilly into Arlington Street. Progressing at a stately pace, it drew up outside number 7.

Stuart Wortley was there to see Dr Vernon-Jones. He had not made an appointment.

Stepping smartly from the car, he cut an impressive figure. Six feet four, and of a slim, muscular frame, he had startlingly blue eyes and was strikingly handsome; the rank badge of a major-general – a crossed sword and baton with a star above – was woven on the epaulettes of his uniform and a double band of twisted gold braid adorned the peak of his cap.
‘A darling of the Gods,’
as
Vanity Fair
gushingly described him, and a hero of the Battle of Omdurman, he was descended from John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute. Following a difficult childhood, when he was forced to leave Eton because his alcoholic father could not pay the bills, his army career had been far from conventional. After failing the exams for Sandhurst, he had worked his way up through the ranks. Famous for his short temper, he was known to be a strict disciplinarian. Controversially, in 1899, he ordered the Italian crew of a ship carrying a cargo of mules to the Boer War to be flogged. The men had treated the mules so badly during the voyage that most of the animals had died. It was after corporal punishment had been abolished in the British Army, and he had only narrowly escaped being court-martialled.

As he mounted the steps to the doctor’s house, the general was not in a good humour. The unscheduled visit to London necessitated losing precious hours out of his morning; with just a week to go before his division embarked for the Front, he had innumerable details to attend to.

The conversation that followed was brief; there was just one question he wanted to ask the doctor. Infuriated by his response, Stuart Wortley left in a hurry, instructing his chauffeur to drive him straight back to Luton. As soon as he got there, he wrote a stern letter to the Duke:

My dear Henry,

I happened to have to go to London today for an hour and saw Dr Vernon-Jones. I put him the question straight – whether he considered Granby was in any real danger owing to his heart, to which he replied ‘No’.

As he was passed fit for active service at Leicester, I see no reason to go against the doctor’s opinion on that occasion.

I am stopping his excessive smoking.

I should be sorry to see a nice smart boy like him ruined by staying at home, eating his heart out, which he would do.

I do not, therefore, intend to take any further steps in the matter.

My medical officers here support my action and do not consider that any grave risks are being run.

Yours very sincerely,

Edward Stuart Wortley

The general’s obduracy wrecked Bethune’s plot. After writing to the Duke, Stuart Wortley told the War Office that John was fit for active service and that he could vouch for his health.

Two days later, John drove up to Belvoir to say goodbye to his mother. Despite the embarrassment she had caused him, after returning to Luton he wrote her a touching letter in which he did his best to console her:

Mother My Dear

I did not say much to you at Belvoir on purpose as everything one says is always more likely to depress one. You must not be depressed as everything will turn out well in the end – and even if I had been in Kitchener’s army I should have had to go out in the end. In fact every more or less able-bodied man will have to go before the war is finished.

I do hope you do not feel too miserable as I hate to think of you having any form of worry – so try to forget all about it, won’t you.

Yet even as John was writing this letter, Violet and General Bethune were already hatching a second plot.

‘
I have started on one project – which may or may not succeed. If it does not then I must try something else
.’

This was the promise Bethune gave Violet when he launched his first attempt to stop John from going out to the Front. ‘One thing and one only will be an insuperable block,’ the general continued, ‘and that will only occur if your son insists on going with the Division. We could do nothing against that, but I must try and devise some means of getting round that.’

In those last weeks in October
, Bethune was privy to secret discussions in progress at the War Office. He knew that while the North Midlands were under orders to embark for France, behind the scenes in Whitehall, the army chiefs were still debating whether or not to send them.

It was part of a wider debate regarding the territorial divisions. Despite the urgent need for reinforcements, a question mark hung over the territorials’ readiness for battle. The problem confronting the military commanders was that the standard of training within the individual divisions was inconsistent. While some brigades were ready, others required further preparation. The talk, therefore, was of breaking up the divisions. Those brigades that were up to standard would go out to France; the remainder would be held back in England.

General Bethune played a central part in these discussions. As the commander in charge of Britain’s 280,000-strong territorial army, it was his job to assess the divisions and to advise the Secretary of State which of them – or which brigades – were ready to go out to the Front.

At the eleventh hour
, five days before the North Midlands were due to embark for France, Lord Kitchener decided to delay their departure by a few weeks. While he held the division in high regard, he was of the view that some of the brigades needed further training.

The reprieve gave Bethune the opportunity to launch his second ‘project’. Far more audacious than his first, it turned on an extravagant abuse of his position.

John, as he had feared,
had
become the ‘insuperable block’; he
was
insisting on ‘going with his Division’. There was nothing Bethune could do to stop him wanting to go, but he could stop the North Midlands from going.
Regardless of their actual readiness
– and they were almost ready, which is why they had been selected as the first of the territorial divisions to be deployed on active service – and solely for the sake of the 28-year-old Marquis, he advised Lord Kitchener to break up the division. Just one of the brigades was of fighting standard, he argued: the other two, including John’s, should be held in reserve in England. Further, as John was ADC to General Stuart Wortley, to make doubly certain there was no question of him getting out to the Front with his general, Bethune urged Kitchener to appoint Stuart Wortley as the commander-in-chief of the reserve brigades.

Kitchener, however, refused to agree to Bethune’s proposal. Violet gave her own rendition of the conversations that took place between them. ‘The interview wasn’t
very happy
,’ she wrote to Charlie after a meeting with Bethune: ‘K of K
so
difficult whenever B tries to take things away from ESW – like bits. K of K says
no
– no – I can’t tell you why, but NO – I want to keep it intact. B argues but
some
bits are SO ready, why not take them and send them out – but NO. His – B’s – idea was to so pull the Division to pieces that Eddy SW would only be left to look after the
Reserve
portions.’

Early in November, Bethune – whom Violet was beginning to think a ‘buffoon’ – admitted defeat. In desperation, he suggested that Henry ask Lord Kitchener to spare the North Midlands. Even Violet, as she confided to Charlie, thought it a ludicrous suggestion:

B says K of K is fond of Dukes! But I said how
can
Henry ask K of K to keep a Division back to please him and me!! B agreed.

In the interim, Violet had in fact been in touch with Lord Kitchener herself. Whether she told Bethune that she had written to the Secretary of State for War, or whether she concealed it from him,
is not clear. But – as it turned out – it was Kitchener’s reply to her letter, rather than Bethune’s manoeuvrings, that determined her course of action in the coming weeks.

Her letter was a last resort, sent in a moment of desperation. Her friends and informants, wary of Kitchener’s dislike for women, had told her that on no account must she approach him herself. But secretly – somewhere alone in the castle – she had written it the weekend that John had come to Belvoir to say goodbye to her.

Violet’s letter has not survived; but Kitchener’s reply was among the gold-dusted letters that she kept separately from the rest of her papers.

At the time the Secretary of State for War was writing, he was grappling with the loss of almost a third of his army in the First Battle of Ypres. It was his arm that pointed on the poster ‘Your Country Needs You’. Yet even he showed signs of falling for Violet’s charms. His letter, which was handwritten, hinted that he was willing to make an exception for John:

War Office,

Whitehall, S.W.

My dear Duchess

General Wortley’s Division is not going abroad yet.

If you feel nervous about your boy would it not be better for him to be ADC to a General on the home defence?

I am afraid Wortley’s Division is the first to go when territorial divisions are sent unless some other Division is better trained, but there is no intention at present of sending territorial divisions as they are not sufficiently trained.

I am rather busy so excuse this scrawl.

Despite its less than bellicose tone, it was not the reply Violet was hoping for. She knew the North Midlands would not be going to the Front for a while. Bethune had told her.
Force majeure
– in the form of an order – was all that could stop John from going out to France. The Secretary of State for War had merely suggested he join the staff of a general on home defence; evidently, he was not going to help her.
He had not offered to find him a position; nor, as she was expecting, had he offered to appoint John to his staff.

Violet, however, was not going to
give up. After seeing Kitchener’s letter, she decided to alter her focus. She had exhausted all means of keeping John back in England but, if he must go, the safest place on the Western Front was General Headquarters. Her goal now was to persuade Field Marshal Sir John French, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in France, to appoint John to the General Staff.

Violet did not know the field marshal personally. But this time – unlike with Lord Kitchener – she had a direct entrée to French.
His closest friend – a ‘sinister’ American
called George Gordon Moore – was in love with her daughter Diana.

Moore – as Violet knew – was a controversial figure.
Aged thirty-five, he was
reputedly worth $5 million.
*
His fortune
, made quickly and at a young age, had come from railroad construction. But where he came from, and why he had moved to England, no one could say. His appearance fuelled the rumours about him. Squat and muscular, he had the face of a gangster.
His olive skin
, and his eyes, which were a dark shade of brown – almost black – pointed, so people said, to his ‘Red Indian’ origins.

But it was Moore’s hold over the 62-year-old field marshal that was the subject of constant speculation.
Their friendship went back
to the autumn of 1912, when they met, sailing from America on the cruise ship
Mauretania
. On their return to London, Moore invited Sir John, who was then ADC to King George V and Chief of the Imperial General Staff, to share a house with him. Ever since, they had been inseparable.

The house they shared – number 94 Lancaster Gate – was in Bayswater.
An elegant six-storey
stuccoed house, it overlooked Hyde Park and was staffed by twelve servants.

‘
Dined with Johnnie French
at 94 Lancaster Gate,’ Sir Henry Wilson, the field marshal’s deputy, noted in his diary in March 1914: ‘An enormous house and what he is doing there, I cannot think.’