It would seem open-and-shut. A family of three from Nottingham in England were slain while on a driving holiday in the south of France – Mum and Dad shot and their 10-year-old daughter beaten. A local farmer was convicted and faced the guillotine. Tragic as it was, that would seem to be that, plus this was 73 years ago. But could it go deeper?
Foremost, Matthews and Smith are puzzled that as the husband was Sir Jack Drummond, a senior advisor to the British government who was a respected and admired household name, why has the family all but faded from memory? The authors believe that the murders should be one of those shared reference points that everyone knows about, at least vaguely.
Whereas, they assert, in Britain a collective amnesia surrounds Drummond while in France there have been numerous books plus major films and hit television shows about what was a cause célèbre. It was a painful episode for the nation and one of the most contested cases in French history. Even more outrageous, they say, is the sexist way in which his wife Anne, a professional woman, has been shoved into the shadows, her attainments over-written.
Why? Was Drummond not all that he seemed? Here was a man feted in Britain and the United States for his contributions to the discovery of vitamins, to UK nutrition in the Second
World War and nutrition in Europe at the end of the war, and yet who at the same time might just have been a murky character, with origins as mysterious as his death.
Alongside his groundbreaking public health work, Matthews and Smith ask whether he was involved in other activities that were rather less well known about, a source of potential embarrassment or discomfort? So who was he? The murders may simply have been a case of a family being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or was there an untold story?
In a thorough biographical section we learn that Drummond was born in 1891 to an unmarried mother but registered as Jack Cecil McQuie, father unknown, then in the same year’s census he became Cecil Drummond. His parentage is a puzzle and he became orphaned, but the child proved to be blessed with an outstanding scientific mind.
He took a first-class degree in chemistry then held a series of research posts. He became a specialist in nutrition and his book with his wife-to-be Anne Wilbraham, “The Englishman’s Food: Five Centuries of English Food” in 1939, was well-reviewed and a bestseller. His expertise led him to Britain’s Ministry of Food in World War Two where he designed the rationing system that would ensure the nation did not starve. Britain wanted no repeat of the First World War experience, which had clearly shown how conflict impacted food supply.
The authors say that rather than be cowed by the huge task he embraced it, furthermore sensing an opportunity to tackle the serial inadequacies of the British diet. The many poor people were malnourished and the system Drummond built actually saw the population emerge from the war nutritionally better off. Millions benefitted. His innovative work earned a knighthood in 1944. He spearheaded post-war European famine relief, including at Belsen.
And so, the family loaded their new dark-green Hillman Estate Car for a continental holiday and took a cross-Channel ferry to Dunkirk on July 28, 1952. Ahead was a long drive to the attractive port town Villefranche-sur-Mer on the French Riviera between Nice and Monaco. A 10-hour trip today with faster cars and better roads, in a Hillman with a top speed of 40 miles per hour (64 kilometres per hour) and on war-damaged roads, it took several days.
And currency restrictions meant that Britons could take only £25 abroad (equivalent to about £600 today). On route nationale M96, along the River Durance valley, on a hot summer night, they parked by the dusty roadside near Lurs village and the parents slept on camp beds by the Hillman, with Elizabeth on the back seat. Just up the road was an old farmhouse, La Grand Terre, home to a peasant farming family, the Dominicis. Gaston, 75, was the patriarch.
At 1am some of them woke to a series of sharp cracks and what sounded like screaming, but they seemingly decided it was a poacher and slept on. The bodies were discovered next morning, the parents by their car and Elizabeth 70-80 metres away, seemingly having run but been caught, her skull fractured. The murder weapon was found nearby, an old rifle.
The authors write that on this beautiful Provence morning and with the arrival of the police, “It was the beginning of a saga that would sear itself into the French psyche, the first bumbling steps in an affair that would become among the most notorious in French judicial history,: l’affaire Dominici”. This troubles Matthews and Smith straightaway because, they assert, too often the names of victims become secondary to those of the perpetrators of monstrous crimes. While most have heard of Jack the Ripper, for instance, few could name any of his victims. Henceforth they hope their book will help instate “The Drummond Affair”.
The police never taped off the crime scene and it was soon overrun by journalists and curious neighbours. A country doctor sullied the picture further with a rudimentary examination of the bodies, sowing confusion and doubt. A sniffer dog was no use. The two branches of French police were natural rivals. The Dominicis not only contradicted and accused each other but also often rebutted their own shaky confessions and testimonies.
The authors dismiss as evidenceless fantasies the theories that sprang up about Drummond having been involved in some sort of wartime activity, even espionage. But complex clues do exist, and the authors follow all the suppositions, saying it is a distinct possibility he was at that particular spot for other than tourism. The family may not have been innocents abroad.
Jack and Anne had worked on academic treatises in Admiralty intelligence. Drummond had travelled widely across Europe. Their parking place by a milestone would suit a rendezvous, also he may have wanted to peek at the large chemical factory a few kilometres away. Why did big pharma press British authorities to seek and return documents from the car?
Matthews and Smith record that post-war Provence was a place of intermittent violence inflicted in the name of revenge and settling old scores. Had Drummond upset the local communists in the war? Soviet assassins? Here, dark secrets were closely guarded.
France was rebuilding, trying to overcome political instability and needed tourism revenue.
The police, judiciary and government were equally on trial. The press demanded progress. Gaston Dominici was charged and went to trial. The authors say the proceedings were confusing and conflicting. The judge was prejudiced against the accused, the procedural issues were questionable, the witnesses utterly unreliable and the Dominicis were tearing themselves apart in public, accusing each other then retracting. It all had a sense of theatre.
Dominici was convicted and sentenced to the guillotine. In Britain the feeling was that if this wasn’t a miscarriage, it was at the very least an abuse of due process. His appeal in February 1955 was dismissed by judges in two hours. But discomfort around the conviction persisted. In 1957 President René Coty commuted the death sentence to life in prison, then President Charles de Gaulle ordered Dominici’s release in July 1960. He died on April 4, 1965, reviled and still officially recognised as the murderer of the three Drummonds. They lie in the cemetery of Forcalaiquier, a small town in Provence, the graves misspelled “Drumond”.
Matthews and Smith name a better candidate as the slayer. They examine all the angles, even while conceding that they can’t be proved. Readers can judge for themselves.
