A MYSTERIOUS DEATH
Accident or murder? The curious case of Albert’s untimely demise
On the morning of 17 February 1934, Albert was driven to Marches-les-darmes in Ardennes by his valet. The king wanted to tackle a cliff there in preparation for a climbing expedition in the Alps he had planned for later that year. The car was stopped and the valet told to wait as the king set off in the direction of the cliff face. It was the last time anyone would see him alive.
The valet waited all day for the king to return, but when it started to get dark and there was still no sign of him, he called on a nearby aristocrat Baron Edmond Carton de Wiart for assistance, and a search was mounted by local police.
At around 2.00am, one of the searchers got his foot caught in a rope. Flashlights frantically scoured the darkness and the king’s body was found. The other end of the rope still about his waist, and he was bent double at the foot of “a great pinnacle in a little crevasse”. There was a massive gash down the left side of his head. He’d apparently fallen 20 metres down a cliff face.
His body was driven to a royal château about 80 kilometres away, before being transferred to Brussels where he was later buried. No autopsy was performed and no official cause of death was entered on his death certificate.
Over a million people are said to have attended his funeral, but even before it was over wild rumours began circulating that the king had been murdered. Some claimed he was pushed off the top of the cliff by the cuckolded husband of a secret lover claimed some, while others insisted the French Secret Service had assassinated him. With the Germans gearing up for another war, the French could ill-afford to have the man who’d once tried to broker a secret peace deal with the Kaiser on the Belgian throne. Despite the mysterious circumstances surrounding Albert’s death, no evidence for either theory has ever come to light.