Enid Lindeman DEATH BECOMES HER
Perched on the edge of a rocky peninsula known as Cap Ferrat, on the Côte d’Azur, stands a grand villa surrounded by luscious gardens and swimming pools, with views across the Mediterranean to the coastline of Italy. In 2014, La Fiorentina was put on the market for US$525 million and identified by
Forbes magazine as the world’s most expensive private home. Whether it was sold and for how much is shrouded in secrecy, but that is par for the course on the French Riviera where mystery, splendour and excess are expected.
They were also expected of the villa’s most famous owner. Lady Enid Furness, tall and graceful, was a suburban girl from Sydney who, in 1939, either bought the property with £20,000 winnings from a game of Chemin de fer at the nearby Casino de Monte-Carlo, or was given it by her stinking rich husband, Viscount Marmaduke Furness (to apologise for his jealousy and threats to duel with a perceived love rival). Either way, La Fiorentina would become Enid’s home for the next three decades – a place of luxury and indulgence, but also one of death and intrigue, with its silver-haired, turquoise-eyed hostess famed for her beauty and her dead husbands.
Enid was the eldest daughter of a well-to-do family and heir to the Hunter Valley wine
