Murder by Mistake Page 6

Given the broken relationship between Lucan and Veronica, and the drip-drip of invective he had been guilty of for months before he disappeared, we must assume that Lucan was talking about his wife. In other words, when his children were old enough to grasp it, Bill Shand Kydd was to tell them how deranged and difficult Veronica was. She was taking prescribed drugs, she had public rows in the Clermont Club, refused to accept psychiatric help and, from Lucan’s perspective, was an unfit mother for his children. A more reasonable man, of course, might have been referring to himself. His friends had noticed in the weeks after he lost the custody case that he had become morose, introverted. His sole topic of conversation was almost always Veronica and how she, a geriatric judge, a dodgy lawyer, and a complicit psychiatrist had conspired to ruin his life.

  Whatever the ins and outs of this surprisingly tortuous case, whatever questions remain unanswered and anomalies exist, there is, in the end, only one scenario that truly makes sense. It makes sense because it contains the one piece of information that Veronica Lucan was not allowed to give at the inquest.

  Let us go back to the night of November 7, 1974. John Lucan had borrowed a nondescript car to transport the body of his wife to the south coast, where he could use a boat he already had or hire one to dump it, suitably weighted down, in the English Channel. For all his powerful build and “action man” image—he drove power boats, went fox hunting and shot grouse—he was not mentally cut out for killing. However, killing Veronica seemed the only way out of his dilemma. If she “disappeared” (surprising no one, after the stories he had put around about her) he would get his house back and, more importantly, the children. His financial worries would not vanish overnight, but it would be a clean start surrounded by people who loved him.

  He must behave as usual, having selected the night he knew was the nanny’s night off, so he had the meeting with Michael Hicks-Beach and made the dinner booking at the Clermont for later. By that time, Veronica’s body would have been in the trunk of his car and he would have turned up at the restaurant, full of relief and bonhomie and they’d all have had a joke about the fact that he’d forgotten to include himself at the table.

  In the meantime, Sandra Rivett would have come back to Number 46 and assumed that Veronica had gone to bed. The next morning, she would realize the woman was missing, and by the time Lucan and the police were informed, the 7th Earl of Lucan could well be dropping a heavy bundle over the side of his boat off the south coast.

  Veronica would be missed, of course, but judging by the way Lucan’s family and friends closed ranks around his memory and cold-shouldered her, she would not be missed for long.

  Did he go to the Clermont Club shortly before 9 PM? Unlikely—I think this was a plain, old-fashioned mistake by the doorman, Billy Egson, who got his days mixed up. By 9 PM, Lucan was in the basement of Number 46 in the darkness. He was wearing gloves and carrying a lead pipe, his badly chosen murder weapon. He knew Veronica was small and not very strong. On TV, it looks so easy, doesn’t it? A hard whack to the back of the head and it’s all over. The weight of the lead and the momentum of his blow would crack her skull like an egg.

  He psyched himself up. He hated her. All the problems he faced—his debts, the strange looks he’d had to endure from friends and acquaintances—it was all because of Veronica. As he heard her flick the light switch at the top of the basement stairs, he was ready for her. In fact, he was so furious that as she reached the bottom stair he lashed out, hitting her in the face with his fist. The tray she was carrying flew out of her hand and the crockery smashed. Before she hit the floor, he smashed the pipe down on her skull, then hit her again and again, the red mist of his fury dimming his vision. In the near darkness, he couldn’t see the sprays of blood arcing over the walls, the ceiling, and his own clothes. He couldn’t see, until it was too late, that he had just killed the wrong woman.

  In a blind panic, he lifted her up and pushed the body, grotesquely folded over on itself, into the mailbag he’d brought to take Veronica away. He may or may not have realized that Sandra’s blood was already seeping through it, and he left the ghastly mess in the corner, trying to stay rational, trying to decide what to do.

  He climbed the stairs, dithering in the darkened hallway. Then he heard footsteps on the stairs coming down from the second floor. Veronica. He ducked behind the drape that partitioned the cloakroom and waited. He still had the pipe in his hand, smeared with Sandra’s hair, brains and blood, and he launched himself at Veronica, intending to finish the job he’d come to do. All rational thought must have left him by now—how he would clean up the mess he had created in the basement, how he could explain the disappearance of Veronica and the nanny. For now, he just wanted to kill his wife.

  There was a problem. They struggled on the top of the basement stairs and he probably lost his footing. The lead pipe was badly bent out of shape and it wasn’t doing the same damage it had done to Sandra. Veronica screamed at the first blow, so he rammed his gloved fingers into her mouth to shut her up. Mustn’t wake the children. He snarled at her, “Shut up,” and closed his hand around her throat.

  Perhaps it was that, the sound of his voice, which was the moment. It was somehow, oddly, such a touch of reality in a scene that was otherwise totally unreal and totally awful. They struggled for a while longer, and then she grabbed his testicles and they both sank down, exhausted physically and emotionally.

  Even now, with all that had happened in the last few seconds, in such pain she thought her neck had been broken, shocked and pouring blood, Veronica asked, “Where’s Sandra?” A rather feeble voice told her the nanny had gone out. Veronica knew this was nonsense and told him so—Sandra would never just leave without telling her she was going.

  “She’s dead,” said Lucan. “She’s down in the basement. But don’t look. It’s a ghastly mess.”

  Many books on the case leave it at that before Lucan took Veronica up to the bedroom to clean her up, but the damning indictment is clear enough from the version she gave to Roy Ranson. He told Veronica he had killed the nanny. Veronica’s pulverized brain must have gone into overdrive. There was no reason at all for Lucan to have killed Sandra—he rather liked her, in fact. He had mistaken Sandra for Veronica in the darkness and still had the means, motive and opportunity to kill her too, to finish the job he’d started. They talked as he frog-marched her up the stairs. There was a way out of this. If he would just take care of her head wounds, stanch the blood, they could calm down and decide rationally what to do about Sandra. He asked her if she had any Tuinal—sleeping tablets—around. Was he trying to find a pain killer for her, or even now was he coming up with a very belated Plan B to effect her “suicide”?

  Again, it was not rational. The headlines in the press the next day would have been laughable—“Countess of Lucan, 5 feet 2 inches, batters nanny to death with lead pipe and takes overdose.”

  Frances had already seen them, mummy dazed, crying and bleeding. She could not understand what had happened or what daddy was doing there at all. She’d been sent to bed. John went into the bathroom to wet some towels for Veronica’s head wounds, still no doubt trying to work out what the hell he could do now.

  When he came back to the bedroom, Veronica was gone and he knew his choices now were infinitely fewer.

  “Veronica? Veronica, where are you?”

  On my way to the help and sanity of the outside world. And to tell that world all about you.

  www.crimescape.com

  Epilogue: “I’ve got my father on the line again.”

  All the places are still there. The Plumbers Arms in Lower Belgrave St. is open for business and does a very nice pint. The murder house at Number 46 is there too, with a thick thatch of passion flowers over the infamous window where Lord Lucan saw a fight. Rumor has it that later owners had the place exorcised to remove the angry, bewildered ghost of Sandra Rivett and the evil that exuded from her killer, which had somehow seeped into the brickwork. 5 Eaton Row is a sad little place, run-dow
n and rather desolate, like the reclusive Veronica Lucan, who still lives there.

  5 Eaton Row

  Home of Veronica Lucan

  72A Elizabeth St. still stands, large and imposing, as befits a house where an earl intended to live with his children. The Clermont Club is still there, in fabled Berkeley Square, its frontage as exclusive as ever. Ironically, the only building that has altered its purpose and appearance is Gerald Road’s police station. It closed down in 1993 as part of the ever-developing reorganization of the Metropolitan Police—only the curious bollard of a “bobby” is there to remind passersby of its 85-year existence. The people have moved on.

  ‘Bobby’ bollard outside old Gerald Rd. Station

  In September 1975, Dominick Elwes, the “joker” of the Clermont set, who had been sent by Lucan’s friends to visit Veronica in the hospital, killed himself. He was accused by various members of the set of selling private photographs of a friend to the Sunday Times newspaper. He hadn’t, but it made no difference. Elwes, always a manic-depressive, went to pieces in the face of their ostracism and took his life in a morass of self-pity. He felt very close to Lucan and told a Daily Express reporter he felt sure that his friend was still alive—“Why, oh why doesn’t he get in touch with any of us?” His memorial service hit the headlines when John Aspinall made a less-than-complimentary speech and was smashed in the jaw by Elwes’ cousin, an international rugby player—“And that’s what I think of your bloody speech, Aspinall!” An enterprising photographer took a snapshot of it.

  Two months later, racing driver legend Graham Hill, who may have smuggled Lucan out of England in his private plane, crashed his Piper Aztec light aircraft in foggy conditions near a golf course in North London. He did not survive.

  One by one, the Lucan set dwindled. Susan Maxwell-Scott died in September 2004, taking, as the London paper the Evening Standard said, “her secrets to the grave with her.” John Aspinall, always the least likeable of the friends, died of cancer four years earlier.

  Michael Stoop, whose Corsair Lucan borrowed on November 7, remained a backgammon and chess master for the rest of his life, regularly taking on famous players like Omar Sharif. He died in April 2010, aged 87.

  What of the family? After Veronica recovered, she tried to carry on as normal, with the children living with her, but in 1977, she had a nervous breakdown. George, when he reached 14 and was boarding at his father’s old school, Eton, stated officially that he wanted to live permanently with the Shand Kydds, which, of course, had been Lucan’s wish all along.

  It was not until 1992 that Lucan’s financial affairs were at last sorted out. His estate was valued at a measly £14,709 ($24,800 at the exchange rate of the time, value today approximately $40,000). Seven years later, the High Court ruled that Lucan was officially dead, but the ruling was complicated. Only in Britain could there be a situation where a man can be declared dead to all intents and purposes, but his son and heir was not allowed to claim his father’s title and inheritance because there was no actual death certificate!

  Veronica Lucan, occasionally calling herself “Dowager” Lady Lucan today, never remarried and largely avoids the world. She occasionally gave interviews to journalists and crime writers, but all that stopped in 2003 when she set up a website with the title “Setting the record straight.” In it, along with unpublished family photographs, she attempted to answer the sort of questions that journalists asked or to correct errors she had found in books. The website is rather sad—her breakdown is a conspiracy; her children have abandoned her; the “dream of paranoia” has become reality.

  The Lucan children are all academically brilliant and highly successful. Frances, who has the clearest memories of November 7, 1974, went to St. Swithun’s School, Winchester, like her mother and then to Bristol University. Today she is a successful lawyer and keeps out of the limelight. Camilla, only three at the time, also went to St. Swithun’s, then to Balliol College, Oxford, and is also a lawyer. She is married to Michael Block, QC (Queen’s Counsel), and the couple has four children.

  From time to time, there is a flurry of interest in the Lucan case—a new book, a new sighting or odd knee-jerk reaction from the police to use new techniques such as DNA testing on the old bones of the case. The children are then duly pestered for their views. When Barry Halpin was put forward as a possible Lucan in 2003, Frances said, “That isn’t my father. He has been dead for decades.” Camilla has told reporters, “Any desire I may have had to ascertain the truth about the events of November 1974 has long since dwindled.”

  The same cannot be said of George, mercifully asleep as a 7-year-old boy on the night in question. Like his father, he went to Eton; unlike his father, he went to Trinity Hall College, Cambridge. Then, like his father, he went into a London merchant bank. Not actually able to sit in the House of Lords, George Bingham can nevertheless call himself the 8th Earl of Lucan. When Duncan Maclaughlin’s book on Barry Halpin was published, George said to the Daily Telegraph, “I get a little tired when former Scotland Yard detectives at the end of their careers get commissions to write books which happen to send them to sunny destinations around the world.”

  George remains convinced that his father did not kill Sandra Rivett. The media, he says, say his father was “a racist, snob, gambler, coward, dimwit and murderer. And yet I can’t find a single person who ever knew the man who was prepared to say anything but that he was the most wonderful company, incredibly generous and the nicest person to be with.” Clearly George had not spoken with his mother on the subject!

  On the question of Lucan’s survival, George has a dry sense of humor. “Oh, it’s just another letter from daddy,” or “God, I’ve got my father on the line again.” “Last I heard he was in Botswana. But it was a very bad line, so I can’t be sure.”

  So now there is a new mystery to deal with—not only whether Lucan killed Sandra Rivett, but where is he now? If he is alive, he would be 77. Perhaps Lady Lucan is right—“My husband died on November 8, 1974”—and his body lies with his boat at the bottom of the sea. Perhaps he shot himself, overcome with a sense of shame at having besmirched the honor of the Lucans. Perhaps his friends—and he had many—conspired to bury him secretly and took some old-fashioned schoolboy vow of silence.

  On the other hand, perhaps he actually was sighted around the world. Perhaps…

  …Perhaps, my Lord, if you are reading this, you might like to do what you told Susan Maxwell-Scott you’d do 37 years ago and come back to London to “sort things out.” You’ve been “lying doggo” for long enough.

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  Photo Credits/Index

  All photographs, drawings and sketches are the work of M. J. Trow and/or Eloise Campbell unless otherwise attributed

  Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

  The Plumbers Arms

  Murder Scene

  The Lucan House

  Plan of the basement

  House where Lord Lucan lived

  Old St. George’s Hospital

  Former Gerald Rd. Police Station

  Lucan family coat of arms

  Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

  Clermont Club

  The Priory Hospital

  Map of Key Sites

  Lord Lucan route after murder

  Lord Lucan

  Dominick Elwes

  Nanny Sandra Rivett

  Sketch of Veronica Lucan

  Imaginative sketch of Lord Lucan

  5 Eaton Row

  “Bobby” bollard

  Sources

  Ruddick, James, Lord Lucan: What Really Happened (London: Headline, 1994)

  Marnham, Patrick, Trail of Havoc (London: Penguin, 1987)

  Maclaughlin, Duncan, Dead Lucky: Lord Lucan, the Final Truth (London: John Blake Publishing, 2003)

  Moore, Sally, Lucan; Not Guilty (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1987)

  Ranson, Roy, Looking for Lucan (London: Smith Gryphon Ltd., 1994)

  Murder Caseboo
k—The Lord Lucan Mystery (London: Marshall Cavendish, 1990)

  www.ladylucan.co.uk

  www.lordlucan.com