John Savage’s will-and-death scheme turned an apparently plausible suicide and a legally witnessed will into the cover for a carefully staged fraud. Roger Bassington-ffrench and Moira Nicholson exploited Savage’s attraction to her alias, Mrs Templeton, and his fear of cancer; Roger impersonated him during the will’s signing while the real Savage was kept out of sight. The scheme brought Moira a fortune, but its apparent respectability could not withstand the questions raised by Alan Carstairs.

The apparent story

When Mr Spragge recounts the affair to Frankie Derwent, the publicly available facts seem to describe a wealthy man acting on his own despair. John Savage, a very rich man without close relatives, met Mrs Templeton while travelling from the United States to England in November of the previous year. He accepted her invitation to stay at her cottage in Chipping Somerton and, according to the account, came increasingly under her influence. Frankie privately associates Mrs Templeton with the Caymans, but the full connection is revealed only later.

The account centres on Savage’s fear that he had cancer. He consulted a distinguished specialist in London, who testified at the inquest that Savage did not have the disease and had been told so. Mr Spragge nevertheless speculates that a doctor’s grave manner or discussion of expensive treatment might have strengthened Savage’s conviction that something was seriously wrong. That is speculation, not established medical fact; the crucial point in the apparent account is that Savage returned to Chipping Somerton believing himself doomed despite the specialist’s reassurance.

In severe distress, Savage summoned a solicitor, signed a will, and entrusted it to him for safekeeping. That evening he took a large overdose of chloral and left a letter explaining that he preferred a quick death to a long and painful one. The will left £700,000 free of legacy duty to Mrs Templeton and the remainder to specified charities. A jury returned the sympathetic verdict of suicide while of unsound mind, but Mr Spragge distinguishes that finding from Savage’s capacity when making the will: the solicitor considered him sane, and his distant Australian cousins had little apparent basis for claiming that undue influence had displaced the wishes of close family.

The staged signing and death

Later testimony from Rose Chudleigh, who had worked as the cook at the Templetons’ cottage, unsettles the ordinary account. She recalled being summoned with Albert to the best bedroom, which Mrs Templeton had vacated for the male guest. A solicitor, Mr Elford, was there, and the sick-looking gentleman in bed had returned from London and gone straight to bed. Rose had never seen him before. She and Albert signed their names beside the gentleman’s, adding their occupations and addresses; Rose remembered being reassured that there was nothing to fear because a lawyer was present.

Rose’s testimony also supplies a revealing contrast in timing. Gladys Evans, the house-parlourmaid, had said that the gentleman looked well the previous night; by the signing, Rose thought he looked almost like a corpse. He had gone to London early, before the household was up. The next morning, after shutting himself away and refusing visitors, he was found dead with a letter propped beside the bed and addressed to the coroner. Rose’s account does not itself establish that the man who signed the will was an impostor, but it places an unfamiliar, apparently gravely ill man at the centre of the ceremony and helps Frankie and Bobby Jones reinterpret the evidence.

Frankie reasons that the witnesses were selected to make impersonation possible. A cook would rarely see the household’s guest, whereas a parlourmaid who served at dinner and brought coffee might recognize him. She concludes that Roger Bassington-ffrench signed as Savage before a solicitor who did not know the real man, with Rose and the elderly Albert as witnesses who likewise could not reliably identify him. Her further reconstruction is that the real Savage arrived, was drugged and hidden—perhaps in the attic—for roughly twelve hours, and was then returned to bed and given chloral. This is Frankie’s deduction from the clues, rather than a detail established by Rose’s recollection alone.

The conspirators’ account

Roger Bassington-ffrench’s later explanation confirms the central deception and places it within a broader criminal plan. Moira Nicholson travelled under different names because of the complications of the drug business; as Mrs Templeton, she met Savage and targeted his wealth. Roger says that Leo Cayman played the role of the indifferent husband, helping induce Savage to visit Tudor Cottage more than once. On the third visit, their plan was ready. Moira obtained the money and appeared to go abroad, while in reality returning to Staverley and the Grange.

Roger’s account also clarifies the manufactured cancer story. He says he impersonated Savage when dealing with the doctor, making a display of illness and fear that would support the false belief that Savage was dying. The supposed medical crisis made the will and subsequent death appear consistent with one another: the beneficiary seemed to be a woman who had influenced a frightened, wealthy man, while the charitable remainder lent the disposition an air of respectability. That appearance had helped the scheme pass without anyone initially challenging the signature or asking whether Savage would have made such a will.

Exposure and consequences

Alan Carstairs’s doubts threaten the fraud because they arise from his knowledge of Savage rather than from a technical objection alone. After learning of the death and will, he finds the story implausible: he does not believe Savage had been preoccupied with death or particularly afraid of cancer, and the gift to a woman plus the charitable remainder seems unlike the hard-headed businessman he knew. The charitable provision, Roger admits, was his idea, chosen because it made the will look respectable rather than suspicious. Savage had also written to Carstairs aboard ship, mentioning Mrs Templeton and enclosing her photograph, giving Carstairs a lead into the affair.

When Carstairs begins investigating, Roger recognizes the danger that he might connect Mrs Templeton with Moira Nicholson and uncover what Rose or Gladys Evans knew. Roger says that he followed Carstairs into the mist and killed him with a sudden push. He then removed the photograph of Moira and other identifying material from the body and planted a photograph of one of the gang, causing Carstairs to be misidentified. Thus the will-and-death scheme does not end with Savage’s apparent suicide: its concealment generates another murder and a false identification, extending the original fraud into the larger investigation.