7th Nov 1974 [sic: the letter was written in the early hours of the 8th]
Dear Bill,
The most ghastly circumstances arose this evening, which I briefly described to my mother. When I interrupted the fight at Lower Belgrave St. and the man left Veronica accused me of having hired him. I took her upstairs and sent Frances up to bed and tried to clean her up. She lay doggo for a bit, and while I was in the bathroom left the house. The circumstantial evidence against me is strong in that V. will say it was all my doing. I also will lie doggo for a bit but I am only concerned about the children. If you can manage it I want them to live with you – Coutts (Trustees) St. Martin’s Lane (Mr Wall) will handle school fees. V. has demonstrated her hatred for me in the past and would do anything to see me accused. For George & Frances to go through life knowing their father had stood in the dock for attempted murder will be too much. When they are old enough to understand, explain to them the dream of paranoia, and look after them.
Yours ever, John
At the inquest, Bill was questioned about the contents of this letter. Proceeding cautiously, Michael Eastham began: ‘Bearing in mind the coroner’s ruling concerning what is admissible evidence, I must ask you to answer just yes or no. Do you understand?’
The reply was a nod.
‘“Veronica has demonstrated her hatred for me in the past…” Do you understand what he means by this?’
‘Yes.’
‘“And would do anything to see me accused…” Do you understand what he means by this?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could you give evidence about it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could you, if asked, give evidence about the paranoia?’
‘Yes.’
That was the end of the questioning. Now, in reference to the letter, Bill says: ‘Of course I know what he meant. He meant Veronica’s paranoia.’
The second letter, written on two sides of a single sheet, read:
Financial matters
There is a sale coming up at Christies Nov 27th which will satisfy bank overdrafts. Please agree reserves with Tom Craig.
Proceeds to go to:-
Lloyds, 6 Pall Mall,
Coutts, 59 Strand,
Nat West, Bloomsbury Branch,
who also hold an
Eq. & Law Life Policy
(P.T.O.)
The other creditors can get lost for the time being.
Lucky
It is clear, from Lucan’s words to his mother – ‘Ring Bill Shand Kydd’ – that Bill was the person he most wanted to speak to that night. He had first tried Mrs Florman, because she lived so near to his children. But the obvious inference is that, before speaking to Kait, he had tried to ring the Shand Kydds’ London home, in Cambridge Square just north of Hyde Park. What has never been said before is that at some point after the events at Lower Belgrave Street, Lucan actually drove to the Shand Kydd flat.
‘That’s what we were told, yes,’ says Lucan’s old friend from Eton. ‘He went there, couldn’t get a response, so he went to the Maxwell-Scott house.’
This information was part of what Susan Maxwell-Scott withheld, and for some time. How much more she did not say is unclear. Certainly she did not offer the police the news that Lucan had been in her house on the night of 7–8 November. ‘I had no reason to,’ she said. It was only when Bill Shand Kydd went straight to the police with Lucan’s letters on the morning of Saturday 9th, and explained to them the significance of the Uckfield postmark, that Susan was obliged to make a statement.
‘She would have been lovely to Lucan,’ says her former nanny. ‘She would have been fond of him. If she was sober she would have been calm – she would have had a sound mind – and she would never have spoken to anybody. She would have known how to evade all questions, with her legal background, she would have known how to avoid questioning.’
Cambridge Square is separated from Belgravia only by a drive up Park Lane; nevertheless the diversion would have delayed Lucan’s journey to Uckfield, taking the arrival time closer to 12.15am, when he rang his mother. Possibly Susan said that he had turned up at 11.30pm to imply that Lucan had driven to her directly. However, his alleged stopover chez Aspinall is highly unlikely; there really wasn’t time. It was later claimed that ‘the person who provided Lucan with a telephone for his first and second calls was saying nothing’.17 The belief in this secret visit died hard. Yet it is well-nigh impossible that Lucan did any such thing. The probability remains that Lucan made the phone calls from his own flat, soon after 10pm. He would have done it as quickly as possible. Then he drove away from Belgravia for good.
It is interesting to note that Stephen Raphael, an old and trusted friend, lived very close to the Shand Kydds, in Southwick Place. But again, the idea that he might have visited Raphael makes little sense. If Lucan had managed to see his friend, or indeed any of his other close circle, why bother to visit the Maxwell-Scotts? He needed a place where he could hole up for a while, use a phone, take stock. He did not need two such places. ‘I suppose he wanted to think, talk it through,’ says Christina. By then it may have occurred to him that going to Susan, the only friend who would definitely be in the country, put him at a safer distance from the murder scene. Nevertheless it was Bill whom he had wanted.
‘It was very, very unfortunate’, says Christina, ‘that John didn’t get hold of us that night. It would have made all the difference, because Bill would never have let him go.’ Eventually Kait did manage to reach Christina on the phone. ‘I got the call, from his mother – and she said the nanny has been murdered. It never ever crossed my mind that John… I thought something else. I mean, I was absolutely astonished when it came over the news or something, the next day, that they were looking for John. Because Kaitilin didn’t say…’
According to her evidence at the inquest, Susan Maxwell-Scott did her best to stop Lucan leaving her house. ‘I tried to persuade him to stay the night. I suggested it was a good idea to stay and then telephone the police in the morning. But after slightly agreeing he said no. He said he must – and he stressed the word must – get back and clear things up. When he said “get back” he did not mention London.’
The coroner then said: ‘Did he ask you if you had any sleeping pills?’
‘Yes he did. He said he was sure he would have difficulty sleeping and he asked if I’d got any tablets. I said I hadn’t. The best I could find was some Valium. There were only four pills left at the bottom. It wasn’t a strong dose. But he took them with some water and then said he had to be getting back.’
‘What time did he leave?’
‘To the best of my recollection, about 1.15am.’
‘What happened then?’
‘I went to bed.’
‘And have you seen him since?’
‘No.’
‘Has your husband?’
‘No.’
Just as the time of Lucan’s arrival at Grants Hill House is uncorroborated, so too is the time that he left (in what Susan described as ‘a dark saloon’). It might never have been known that he was there at all, except that the two letters to Bill Shand Kydd were posted in Uckfield, with stamps provided by Susan.
Lucan also wrote two letters to Michael Stoop. These were sent to Stoop’s club, the St James’s, and received on Monday 11 November. They were unstamped, which would have caused a day’s delay. Lucan had used a Lion Brand writing pad identical to one found in the Corsair. Only one of the letters was produced by Stoop to the police. It was written on the pad’s blotting sheet, and the envelope was missing. It read:
My dear Michael,
I have had a traumatic night of unbelievable coincidence. However I won’t bore you with anything or involve you except to say that when you come across my children, which I hope you will, please tell them that you knew me and that all I cared about was them. The fact that a crooked solicitor and a rotten psychiatrist destroyed me between them will be of no importance to the children. I gave Bill
Shand Kydd an account of what actually happened but judging by my last effort in court no one, let alone a 67 year old judge, would believe – and I no longer care except that my children should be protected.
Yours ever,
John
Stoop picked up his letters at the St James’s Club on the afternoon of the 11th. He then rang Gerald Road police station, and by his account was asked by the duty officer to bring in the letter when he was passing. This was contested at the inquest. In cross-examination Brian Watling said: ‘Is it right that it was you who said you couldn’t take it round, because you had an important meeting to attend?’ Stoop replied: ‘I don’t think so.’ In fact it would be 3am that morning when he took the letter to the station.
Previously, Michael Eastham had questioned Stoop about the missing envelope, first asking if it was handwritten.
‘I don’t really recall. I had several letters at the same time and threw away the envelopes.’
‘If you had looked at the envelope and recognized Lord Lucan’s handwriting, would you have appreciated that it was rather important to keep the envelope?’
‘I was really rather keen to read the letter.’
Returning to the key question, Eastham asked: ‘Are you sure you didn’t look at the postmark? It was rather important to establish where he was.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’
‘And if you told the police the same minute the envelope would still be there in the wastepaper basket, wouldn’t it?’
‘I suppose so, yes.’
‘As far as you are aware, nobody emptied the wastepaper basket in those five minutes?’
‘No.’
In other words, the police should have hotfooted it to the St James’s Club; it is a downright mystery why they did not. If Stoop could be accused of dilatoriness, so too could they. By the time Stoop took the letter in to Gerald Road, the rubbish at the club had been disposed of (if indeed the envelope had ever gone into the wastepaper basket).
Eastham then questioned Stoop about the contents of the letter. Again he emphasized that replies should only be in the form of ‘yes’ or ‘no’. He asked whether the ‘crooked solicitor’ and ‘rotten psychiatrist’ referred to court proceedings about Lucan’s children, and was answered that they did. The same question was put about the reference to the ‘last effort in court’, and the same reply given.
‘“And I no longer care except that my children are protected”… Did you understand that?’
To this Stoop said: ‘I can’t answer that with a simple yes or no.’
‘I know you can’t, but I am in a difficulty. May I put it this way: if I asked you against what or against whom the children had to be protected, could you answer that?’
True to form, the coroner instantly intervened, saying: ‘I warned you about this line of questioning. If you have any questions, please restrict them to the direct evidence.’
Eastham, unable to ask anything further to the point, said that he had no further questions.
It was not until 2004 that James Fox, who had written the article about Lucan for the Sunday Times Magazine published the week before the inquest, revealed that a second letter had been written to Stoop and withheld from the police.
‘Stoop showed it to me’, Fox later wrote, ‘when I interviewed him in early 1975 in his London flat. My scribbled notes record: “smallish paper… no envelope… keys in glove compartment… in Norman Street (or Newham St)… Please forget you ever lent it to me… burn envelope”.’ From this Fox inferred firstly that Lucan himself had driven to Newhaven. ‘His mistake about the proper name of Norman Road sounds like his own.’ It seemed clear that Lucan was anxious for Stoop to recover his car; and even more anxious that nobody should see the postmark on the envelope. In 2004 Fox rang Stoop, then aged eighty-two, and reminded him of the letter. ‘“I think I did show it to you, rather foolishly,” he said. He told me that he hadn’t noticed the envelope, hadn’t even looked at it. Nor had he done what Lucan asked – burn it. “I just chucked the thing in the wastepaper basket as far as I remember.” And the postmark? “I didn’t look, no.” I told him I had decided to write about it. “I just wish you wouldn’t,” he said.’18
The second, natural inference made by James Fox was that Lucan, with his insistence on the destruction of the envelope, ‘was not about to walk into the sea the morning he left the car in Newhaven. He had a plan.’ Unless, of course, Lucan had believed that Stoop could retrieve the car before the police did; and that nobody would ever know he had driven to Newhaven. Clearly he did not mind it being known that he had visited Uckfield. By asking Susan to post the letters to Bill Shand Kydd, he was supplying a definitive clue to the fact that he had been there. This could have been intended as a decoy; although a far better one, if Lucan had been plotting in this way, would have been a postmark that did not point to any of his friends. Alternatively it could have been that Lucan knew he was driving on, to the sea, and that it was better to leave the letters with somebody whom he could trust, rather than sending them from somewhere closer to his final destination, where he hoped to be left undisturbed.
Previously, Fox’s own view had concurred with this. ‘My certainty that Lucan drove the car to Newhaven persuades me to this day that he died near the port and in the sea, and that his body was consumed within forty-eight hours by crabs.’19
Stuart Wheeler says:
Certainly I know what Michael Stoop thought, which is that Lucan got on to a steamer and jumped off, and the reason the body hasn’t been found is that it was cut up by the propellers. I knew Michael quite well. He used to come and stay with me occasionally. And he was absolutely convinced that Lucan was dead. Now whether he had some very good reason for that, I don’t know. As far as I know he never revealed the contents of that letter [the one shown to Fox; or even, just conceivably, a third]. But he was certain that he was dead.
The car was found in Norman Road at 2.40pm on Sunday 10 November, the day before Stoop received Lucan’s letters. Somewhat typically of this investigation, discovery of the Corsair was delayed by the fact that the bulletin had put out the wrong registration number. Stoop had told the police about its loan the previous day. It was found by Sergeant David de Lima, then on patrol duty in Newhaven. Ranson and Gerring drove straight to the quiet street, a homogeneous line of respectable red-brick terraced houses, set some half a mile back from the sea. There, in a large space between a Mini van and a Morris, was the Corsair, a plain-looking English car with its roof-rack and alligator-head bonnet, as ordinary as a Lion Brand writing pad or an evening spent watching The Six Million Dollar Man.
The police would state that the Corsair had been parked at some unknown point between 5am and 8am on 8 November. Ranson and Gerring’s accounts differ slightly: Ranson described two witnesses, one of whom saw an empty space at 5am, another who saw the car at 8am. Gerring, perhaps seeking greater verisimilitude, wrote of a single witness. ‘I found this chap who lived over the road from where the car was parked, and he had some eye trouble. His doctor had advised him to focus on something when he had a spare moment.’ At 5am the man had ‘focussed on an empty space over the road’. At 8am he looked out of the window, and ‘the Corsair was there’. The convenience of this is remarkable, although there is no reason to doubt that the car was, indeed, left in Norman Road that morning. A couple who lived opposite, and who had presumably thought it an abandoned vehicle, had looked inside. They saw a tax disc on the floor and a ‘dirty’ interior.
If the witnesses were accurate in their timings, and Susan Maxwell-Scott in hers, the question arises of what Lucan did in the four hours or more between leaving Uckfield and arriving in Newhaven. If he himself drove the car there, then the simplest explanation is that he slept for a while somewhere on the road, under the influence of Susan’s valium; clearly other explanations are possible. The distance between Grants Hill House and Norman Road is just seventeen miles. It is a strange journey: along roads that are wide and calm, but not sooth
ing. A sort of world’s end journey. Massive hills rear up ahead, great strong cliffs to the left. Newhaven itself is a grand and shabby muddle, the sense of the sea very powerful. There is a smell of salt, and the sound of gulls scratches the air. Like all ports, it is discomfiting: but also ordinary, dull, grey. A very great distance from the glittering Clermont, or from the ancestral consolations of the churchyard at Laleham.
Practically speaking, the car was not parked conveniently for somebody looking to escape or end their life in the water; one would have to walk through the town to reach it. What was the significance of where it was left? The only certainty is that it is an enigma, like so much in this case. If the position of the car was a blind, then it was not a particularly good one, because its half-mile distance from the sea aroused instant suspicion. Furthermore, if a Machiavellian plotter had suggested using the Corsair as a decoy, then they should also have had the wit to clean the blood that was inside it; although that, of course, may not have been a priority.
Or was the position of the car not significant at all? Was it simpler than that: a person driving in the dark, somewhat drunk and disorientated, through a town that is cut in half by the river Ouse and not the easiest place to negotiate, had turned off a main road into the first residential street where the car would be kept safe for its owner.
Before towing the Corsair to the Forensic Science Laboratory in Lambeth, the police broke into it (if Lucan had indeed left keys in the glove compartment, it seems odd that it was found locked). In the boot were two bottles of vodka. There was also, it would later be reported, a length of piping. At the inquest, a doctor from the Metropolitan Police laboratory described this piping as almost twice the size of the piece found at Lower Belgrave Street, being sixteen inches long and some four pounds in weight. Both lengths were corroded, perhaps part of an old plumbing system, and both bore traces of blue paint from a hacksaw blade. ‘They may have been cut from the same length,’ said the doctor. ‘But it is highly unlikely that the bit found at number 46 was ever joined on to the bit found in the car.’
A Different Class of Murder Page 27