Maundy Gregory - Edith Rosse

Edith Rosse

Gregory had been friends with actress Edith Rosse for many years. He leased a house called Vanity Fair to Rosse and her husband in 1920, and moved in with them the following year. After Rosse separated from her husband in 1923, she and Gregory continued to lived under the same roof in a platonic relationship (Gregory was a homosexual). The couple later moved to Abbey Lodge in St John's Wood (it was later converted into recording studios, where the Beatles recorded much of their best work).

In 1932, she turned down his request for a loan, but was persuaded to change her will only a few days before her death. He inherited £18,000. Some suspect Rosse did not die of natural causes, but rather was poisoned by Gregory. After Gregory's fall in the "Honours" Scandal trial, Scotland Yard exhumed Rosse's body to look for postmortem evidence of poison. However, Gregory had seen to it that Rosse's grave was located in very wet ground and was unusually shallow with an unsealed coffin lid It was later alleged that Gregory delayed Rosse's burial until he found a location that frequently flooded because he believed that this would prevent later recovery of evidence. Pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury suspected as much, but was unable to find any useful evidence or trace of poison. The novelist Evelyn Waugh apparently heard of the incident and toyed with the idea of using it in one of his novels. Rosse is buried in All Saints' graveyard by the side of the Thames at Bisham, Berkshire.