Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe—Drake family relationship

Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe was related to the Drake family as the aunt of Hugo Drake and the niece’s aunt, Rowena Drake; Rowena was Hugo’s wife and first cousin. Their closeness was both familial and practical: after her health failed, Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe returned from living abroad to be near them and bought Quarry House. The established family bond also shaped the expected destination of her fortune, making the later appearance of a codicil favouring Olga Seminoff a sharp disruption of the old arrangement.

Family and Household Ties

Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe came to live near her nephew and niece when her health deteriorated. Her wealth gave her freedom to choose a house on her own terms: she bought Quarry House, not because it was considered an attractive property, but because its disused quarry offered possibilities. She paid to have the quarry transformed into a garden. Her enthusiasm for gardening persisted despite heart trouble and medical advice not to overexert herself, placing her personal interests alongside the family setting in which she had chosen to settle.

Rowena Drake’s position within the family was unusually close in more than one sense. She was Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s niece and Hugo’s wife, while also being Hugo’s first cousin. Thus the inheritance arrangement did not simply favour a nephew and a separate in-law: it provided jointly for two relatives who were both closely connected to the older woman and to one another.

The Established Inheritance

Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe had made several wills, and the recurring pattern was consistent. She might alter charitable bequests or leave particular souvenirs to old servants, but the bulk of her fortune went to Hugo and Rowena. If either spouse died before her, the other was to receive the money. The solicitors described this as her fundamental testamentary disposition over many years, a pattern against which any sudden alteration could be measured.

That established plan gave the Drakes a clear expectation of inheritance, but the evidence does not present it as an immediate quarrel between relatives. Instead, its significance emerges when a document surfaced shortly before Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s death that reversed the usual distribution. The contrast between long-standing wills and the new claim made the family relationship a legal question as well as a personal one.

The Codicil and the Changed Beneficiary

The alleged final codicil was said to have been made about three weeks before Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe died. Unlike the earlier wills, it was not drawn up by the family’s usual solicitors. It purported to leave the residue of her considerable fortune to Olga Seminoff in gratitude for devoted service and affection, while reducing the charitable provisions and leaving the old servants without legacies. This was a striking departure from the arrangement that had repeatedly benefited Hugo and Rowena.

The Drakes’ expected inheritance therefore became entangled with suspicion about the document’s origin. The family was said to have considered challenging it on grounds that Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s mind had been disturbed or that she had been subject to undue influence. Handwriting experts, however, found that the codicil produced for probate was a forgery, bearing only a faint resemblance to her writing. Olga had often written personal letters for her employer, who disliked typewriters, and had practised copying her handwriting, sometimes even signing her name. That history made Olga capable of imitating the style, but did not make the forged document convincing to experts. Before the challenge could proceed to court, Olga disappeared.

Witnesses and the Unsettled Record

The investigation further complicated any simple account of what Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe had intended. Harriet Leaman recalled being summoned with a young garden worker, Jim, while Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe was unwell. Olga was sent from the room; Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe then said she was writing her will, wrote several lines, signed, and asked the two workers to write their names and addresses as witnesses. Leaman remembered seeing the writing and signature, although blotting paper covered the upper part of the document.

The codicil submitted for probate, however, was not witnessed by Leaman. Its named witnesses were Mary Doherty, a former servant who had died, and James Jenkins, who had gone to Australia. The distinction leaves two documents in view: the forged codicil presented for probate and the possibility of a genuine codicil witnessed by Leaman and Jim. In relation to the Drakes, that distinction matters because the family’s long-established claim to the estate was challenged by a suspicious document, while the account of a separately witnessed document prevented the inheritance history from resolving into a simple choice between the old family settlement and Olga’s forged claim.