Profumo affair a fellow Murray's Club dancer three years her junior. The two girls left Murray's, and attempted without success to pursue careers as freelance models. Keeler also lived for short periods with various boyfriends, but regularly returned to Ward, who had acquired a house in Wimpole Mews. There she met many of Ward's friends, among them Lord Astor, a long-time patient who was also a political ally of Profumo. She often spent weekends at a riverside cottage that Ward rented on Astor's country estate, Cliveden, in Buckinghamshire. Stephen Ward, born in Hertfordshire in 1912, qualified as an osteopath in the United
Profumo affair in the wake of the Radcliffe inquiry they were, in Wigg's later words, "willing to wound but afraid to strike". They could only hint, by front-page juxtapositions of stories and photographs, that Profumo might be connected to Keeler's disappearance. Despite her absence the judge proceeded with the case; Edgecombe was found guilty on a lesser charge of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life, and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. A few days after the trial, on 21 March, the satirical magazine "Private Eye" printed the most detailed summary so far of the rumours, with the main characters lightly