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.’
