Each morning, whenever she opens the kitchen door onto her flower-filled patio, Teresa Marshall de Paoli is forced to relive her trauma all over again.
For it was here that, just over a year ago, the elegant 90-year-old found the body of Michael Brudenell-Bruce, 8th Marquess of Ailesbury and her beloved partner for 37 happy years. He was bleeding from the back of his head.
After her initial shock, Teresa assumed the 98-year-old aristocrat had tripped. But when paramedics arrived at the scene, they called the police as they believed the incident was ‘suspicious’. For two days the house was deemed a crime scene.
The shock left Teresa struggling to eat as she attempted to come to terms with not only the loss of the man who had been by her side for nearly four decades, but also the circumstances of his death and – most painfully of all – question marks over whether she’d played any part in it.
‘I miss him terribly, and I still do,’ she says. ‘The grief has been overwhelming at times.’
Yet it is not only confronting the terrible manner of Lord Ailesbury’s death in May last year that has left Teresa reeling.
For her grief has been compounded by what she describes as ‘sheer mental cruelty’ on the part of two of her late partner’s children, whom she claims have ‘tormented’ her by levelling a number of accusations against her – most damningly, that she helped Michael take his own life.
‘Even at Michael’s funeral one of the grandchildren was walking round saying I pushed him out of a window,’ she says. ‘Members of the family wanted a verdict of assisted suicide. That way they could challenge Michael’s will because, as with all these things, it is about money.
Each morning, whenever she opens the kitchen door onto her flower-filled patio, Teresa Marshall de Paoli (pictured) is forced to relive her trauma all over again
‘It has been so utterly awful that there have been moments when I have felt completely hopeless. I have been diagnosed with PTSD, and I am not too proud to admit that there are times when I have thought about taking my own life. But I could not allow the lies that have been spread about me to stand uncorrected.’
It is the reason Teresa is talking today in her first interview since an inquest into Michael’s death, in which the coroner ruled he had taken his own life because, in the early stages of dementia, he was determined not to be a burden on his loved ones.
Poignantly, his own mother, Joan Houlton Salter, the Countess of Cardigan, had died after falling from a seventh-floor Savoy Hotel window ‘while of unsound mind’ in 1937 when he was 11.
That history had repeated itself in this way has been a bittersweet pill to swallow.
‘I didn’t want to believe he was ready to leave me, although I have had to accept it,’ Teresa says now.
But Michael’s death was not only a personal tragedy – it also laid bare the toxic dynamics at the heart of this family.
The Marquessate of Ailesbury was created in the 19th century, while the Brudenell lineage dates back to medieval times. The family is custodian of the 4,500-acre Savernake Forest, in Wiltshire, and, until its £11.5million sale in 2014, owners of the estate’s Palladian mansion, Tottenham House.
Yet in recent years the Brudenell name has been thrust into the headlines for more prosaic reasons after a devastating series of family fallouts.
Prior to his death, the late Marquess had been estranged from his son David – now the 9th Marquess – for some 50 years, while David is in turn estranged from his son, Thomas Brudenell-Bruce.
For it was here that, just over a year ago, the elegant 90-year-old found the body of Michael Brudenell-Bruce, 8th Marquess of Ailesbury and her beloved partner for 37 happy years (pictured)
Thomas, 43, and his 40-year-old sister Catherine, better known as the singer Bo Bruce, are also estranged from each other.
‘The saddest thing of all is that these fights are all about money,’ says Teresa, a former fashion model who was introduced to Lord Ailesbury through mutual friends, 40 years ago. ‘Money has torn the family apart.’
Little wonder that when we meet at the cosy cottage-style terrace in west London that she shared with Lord Ailesbury, packed with photos and mementos of their time together, Teresa seems fragile, though she looks much younger than her 90 years.
‘Of course there were ups and downs from time to time,’ she says of her long relationship with Michael. ‘But he was happy here. And he was happy with me.’
While they never wed, the couple’s relationship certainly outlived many marriages. They had no children, but his first two marriages produced five: the current Marquess – David – and his sisters Lady Sylvia and Lady Carina from his first marriage, and Lady Louise and Lady Kathryn from his second.
When Teresa was introduced to Lord Ailesbury, he was working as a stockbroker, and still married to his third wife. ‘It took them a terribly long time to get divorced, which is one of the reasons we didn’t get married,’ she says.
Nonetheless, she insists Michael was happy for Teresa to refer to herself on occasion as the Marchioness, a title that has become the subject of more yet rancour.
In the wake of his father’s death the current Marquess has accused Teresa of being an ‘imposter’ who has ‘passed herself off as a marchioness’, using the title to book tables at The Ritz and opening a bank account under that name.
Teresa aged 19 with actor Errol Flynn (right) and his son Sean (left)
‘It’s utterly ridiculous,’ Teresa sighs. ‘I don’t go round calling myself a Marchioness. I have no interest in having a title.’
Certainly, while not from the aristocracy, Teresa has her own rich history. Raised in Warwickshire by an Italian mother and British father, the then striking strawberry-blonde moved to London at 16 and quickly found work as a fashion model, for a time even hosting her own magazine-style television show, getting to know Tommy Steele.
She socialised with Frank Sinatra, was briefly wooed by Errol Flynn – whom she turned down – and enjoyed a string of high-profile romantic partners, among them newsreader Reginald Bosanquet (to whom she was engaged), Hollywood star Stewart Granger and TV personality Alan Whicker, whom she dated for four years.
Yet she never settled down. ‘Most girls back then wanted to get married and have children, but I didn’t, and I suppose I was ahead of my time in that way,’ she says.
She describes her relationship with Michael as one in which she was ‘part lover, part mother’.
‘I was very good for Michael,’ she says. ‘He was a very special man, but he was not a sophisticated man. He was naturally scruffy, had no airs and graces, and was happier eating fish and chips on his lap then he was going to a grand dinner. I helped bring him out of himself.’
The couple settled initially at Teresa’s west London home, before moving to a farmhouse on the Savernake Estate, the custodianship of which Michael handed over to David in 1987, declaring he had ‘no interest’ in country affairs.
While father and son were estranged before Teresa came into the picture – in part because Brudenell-Bruce junior believed his father had improperly removed assets from the trust that owns the family estate, a suggestion Teresa refutes – the situation was not improved by David’s objection to his father’s partner.
‘He had never met me, but I heard he had been telling people I lied about my age and about being Italian,’ she says. ‘It was utter nonsense.’
Michael Brudenell-bruce Viscount Savernake, now 8th Marquess Of Ailesbury
Nonetheless, she enjoyed close-knit relationships with Michael’s daughters, particularly with Lady Kathryn and Lady Carina, who now lives on the Caribbean island of Tortola.
Teresa also had equally cordial relationships with Lady Sylvia and Lady Louise, with the latter asking her to decorate the church for her 1995 wedding.
‘I was there for them all,’ she says. ‘They have been like daughters to me, particularly Kathryn.’
Seventeen years ago, the couple moved back to Teresa’s Shepherd’s Bush cottage. Four years ago, Lord Ailesbury was diagnosed with dementia, although Teresa insists he remained sharp in many ways.
‘It was very low-level,’ she says. ‘He was forgetful, but overall he did very well; he still loved reading his books and magazines.’ He was also regularly visited by his grandson Thomas – David’s son.
For the briefest of times, it looked like a form of rapprochement between Lord Ailesbury and his heir may be on the cards, after Lady Sylvia indicated David’s ten‑year-old daughter from his second marriage had asked to meet her paternal grandfather. ‘She said David’s wife would bring the little girl, and David wouldn’t come,’ Teresa recalls.
In fact, when Teresa opened the front door a few weeks later, it was David on the doorstep with his daughter. ‘It felt like an ambush,’ she says.
Teresa now believes the true purpose was to gather information about the couple’s lives. ‘There was no interaction at all between Michael and David and no discussion of any further meeting.’
Either way, within days of the visit, Teresa says she and Michael found themselves on the receiving end of visits from more than two dozen health workers coming to ‘check’ on the couple.
Teresa recalls sharing a late lunch with Michael in the garden before she left him reading a magazine around 5.30pm
‘It was incredibly distressing, to the extent that I had to get Thomas to intervene,’ she says. ‘He telephoned the local council saying this was harassment.’
She later learned that Lady Louise’s husband had written to health authorities expressing concern that Michael was not being properly looked after and the house wasn’t safe. ‘It was just the most awful, cynical thing to do,’ she says. ‘Louise and I had always got on until relatively recently, when she distanced herself.’
Then, on the afternoon of May 12 last year, tragedy struck.
Teresa recalls sharing a late lunch with Michael in the garden before she left him reading a magazine around 5.30pm. ‘It was a perfectly ordinary day,’ she says. ‘Nothing was untoward.’
But when, around 7pm, she went back into the kitchen to prepare dinner, she found him lying on his back, dead, in the courtyard.
Her eyes fill with tears as she describes the way their home suddenly filled with police. ‘I wasn’t allowed to hold Michael’s hand or say goodbye,’ she says.
Yet worse was to come: while police quickly said the death ‘was not being treated as suspicious’, and as Teresa digested the distressing news that there would still need to be an inquest, the new Marquess gave an interview in which he levelled a number of distressing accusations at her.
He stated that she had prevented him from visiting his father’s coffin when his body was moved to Wiltshire in preparation for his funeral at St Katharine’s church on the Savernake estate.
He also expressed concern about the ‘high level of spending’ from his father’s bank accounts and the fact that Michael’s will had been re-written two years before his death. ‘I feel people with dementia should not be making financial decisions,’ he said.
Today, Teresa vehemently rebuffs all his accusations.
Rejecting any suggestion of foul play, the coroner recorded a verdict of suicide, describing Teresa as a ‘credible witness’ and Michael as a ‘remarkable man’
‘The idea that I prevented him viewing his father’s dead body is ridiculous,’ she says. ‘In fact, David’s legal manoeuvrings after his father’s death delayed the burial for so long that the body had become badly decomposed and no one could visit.’
As for the will, she points out that with the majority of the family’s wealth kept in trusts, her late partner’s personal assets were minimal. She has been bequeathed all his personal possessions and 20 per cent of his assets. ‘And believe you me, that doesn’t amount to very much,’ she says now.
But the family has continued to squabble about money, the divisions of which were laid bare at Michael’s inquest, in March.
Teresa was accompanied by Thomas, who expressed his support for his honorary grandmother and his concern that ‘various family members were taking advantage of him [his grandfather]’.
Lady Carina, too, made a point of writing a character reference about her stepmother in which she played tribute to her warmth, kindness and obvious care for her father. ‘I live thousands of miles away and always had total belief that he was safe and happy with Teresa,’ she wrote.
Meanwhile, David seated himself alongside Lady Louise, whose barrister suggested to the court that there should be a narrative conclusion of assisted suicide, meaning that someone helped Michael to take his own life.
The inquest had heard evidence from one of the police officers who attended the scene, who said that Brudenell-Bruce was found with two belts wrapped around his arms, which Teresa describes as ‘the biggest mystery’ as they were not there when she found him.
Rejecting any suggestion of foul play, the coroner recorded a verdict of suicide, describing Teresa as a ‘credible witness’ and Michael as a ‘remarkable man’.
As we have seen, it has done nothing to end the terrible divisions in this family. ‘I am an old lady who has lost so many friends and loved ones and now this,’ she says: ‘It has been utterly horrible, just mental cruelty and bullying of an elderly woman. Michael would be turning in his grave.’
