Grace's health deteriorated, and she suffered from heart disease and high blood pressure. She was diagnosed with cancer in 1955, and died on 13 May 1956.[88] Most dramatically, on 3 October 1952, a lonely and depressed Dorothy fatally stabbed her husband, Colonel Aubrey D. Smith, with a hunting knife while he slept in their Army quarters in Japan. Dorothy, who felt that her husband now regarded her no more than "a clinging handicap to his professional career",[89] had turned to alcohol and drugs.[89]