23. Guardian, 20 November 1994. The article began: ‘Some of John Aspinall’s best friends are killers. For a start, there are his animals “whom I love more than people”. Balka, the tiger which savaged a keeper to death last week; Zeya, the Siberian tigress who killed two keepers in separate attacks; Bindu, the Indian bull elephant who crushed a keeper to death. And there’s Lord Lucan, the English bull elephant who bludgeoned his children’s nanny to death…’
Aspinall wrote a rather superb letter in reply, published 27 November 1994, in which he stated: ‘There is no such thing as a dumb animal. In your allusion to Lord Lucan as a “dumb human”, I must here take issue and also challenge your assumption that I hero-worshipped him [as the article had suggested]. John Lucan was a good friend of mine. I enjoyed his company and found in him qualities that I admire. By no stretch of the imagination could it be said that I “hero-worshipped” him. The concept is a baseless journalistic conceit and without merit…
‘I don’t know where you got the opening quote of your article that I “love animals more than people”. This is a misconception. I love my animal friends and intimates in the same manner and to the same intensity that I love my human friends. For some mysterious reason, some journalists find that extraordinary. My fortune, such as it is, was built upon the success of my human relationships and then deployed in the protection of wild species.
‘Your writer carefully lists the various tragedies that have afflicted us at Howletts and Port Lympne over the last 35 years. I suppose it is too much to ask of him to juxtapose a credit column. Failing to mention the 400 tigers we have bred and the 50 gorillas, seven black rhinos, 40 snow leopards etc etc merely devalues the human lives that we have lost. It is a crude injustice to Trevor Smith, who was killed by Balkash, to ignore the positive side of his work.’
24. Daily Express, 13 and 15 November 1974.
25. Sunday Times Magazine, 8 June 1975.
26. Later Lord White of Hull, the multi-millionaire financier Gordon White was co-founder of the Hanson Trust conglomerate.
27. Patrick Marnham in the Daily Telegraph, 19 September 2000.
28. Independent, 3 August 1997.
29. Jeremy Scott, Fast and Louche (Profile, 2002).
30. Goldsmith, Annabel: An Unconventional Life.
31. Daily Mail, 27 October 2004. The article stated that Mrs Parks ‘claims to have later received a note from a friend of Susan Maxwell-Scott warning her that what she had seen should remain absolutely confidential. As a teenager she kept her counsel, telling only her mother. But years later, and by then married, she watched Susan Maxwell-Scott on TV talking about Lucan’s disappearance. Mandy was so incensed at what she heard that she rang Scotland Yard. She insisted to police: “What she said was not the whole truth.” To this day, Scotland Yard officers believe that Lucan’s car was taken to Newhaven as a decoy while he himself was spirited off to a new life.’
32. Evening Standard, 10 August 2007.
33. At the 1975 inquest into the murder of Sandra Rivett, Mrs Maxwell-Scott confirmed that she was at home that night with her two youngest children.
34. Garth Gibbs, in an online article headlined ‘Looking for Lucky’.
35. F. Tennyson Jesse, A Pin to See the Peepshow (William Heinemann, 1934), a fictionalized retelling of the Thompson-Bywaters case.
36. In an interview with Sunday Telegraph, 11 October 1998, Bill stated his conviction that Lucan was dead: ‘Some people can act their way through life, taking on other personas. But you have to be extrovert; he was cripplingly introverted.’
37. Daily Mirror, 15 November 1974.
38. Daily Mail, 1 March 1982, reported that Lady Lucan had been admitted to Westminster Hospital after an apparent attempt to kill herself.
39. Ruddick, op. cit.
40. Ibid.
41. Marnham, op. cit.
42. Sunday Times, 20 September 1998.
43. The purchaser had the house exorcised by the Queen’s Chaplain.
44. The interview with Woman’s Own was cited in the Daily Mail, 1 April 1980.
45. Daily Mail, 19 September 1998.
46. As reported in The Times, 5 December 1983.
47. Daily Mail, 22 April 1986.
48. Sunday Times, 20 September 1998.
49. Quoted in the Guardian, 1 November 1999.
50. Daily Mail, 9 November 1984.
51. Sunday Times, 20 September 1998.
52. Ibid.
53. Daily Mail, 19 September 1998.
54. Sunday Telegraph, 31 October 1999.
55. In a television interview with ITV’s GMTV, November 1994.
56. Daily Mail, 12 September 1980.
57. Lady Lucan also painted her husband: her unfinished portrait was pictured in the Daily Express, 20 January 1975, and described as a ‘bold amalgam of blues, reds and slashing yellow’.
58. Sunday Telegraph, 31 October 1999.
59. News of the World, 25 October 1981.
60. Sunday Telegraph, 31 October 1999.
THE INVESTIGATION: SOLUTIONS
1. Ruddick, Lord Lucan: What Really Happened.
2. The Times, 5 December 1964.
3. Notably, by Sally Moore in Lucan: Not Guilty.
4. Ruddick, op. cit.
5. In 1974 my father was working in Hill Street, around the corner from the Clermont, with a business associate who was an acquaintance of Lucan’s. Many years later we discussed the murder, and he recalled that gossip at the time had centred upon the idea that Sandra was the intended victim.
6. In the News of the World, 25 October 1981, Lady Lucan said of Sandra: ‘She had been given one blow on the back of the head, and died instantly.’
7. Lady Lucan half-confirmed this herself, in conversation with James Ruddick, when she described sitting with her husband on the anteroom steps and staring at the front door across the hall. ‘The corridor was very dim. There was only the streetlight coming in through the glass over the door.’
8. To Sally Moore, op. cit.
9. Daily Mirror, 9 August 1998. To the News of the World, 25 October 1981, Lady Lucan said: ‘Perhaps he mistook Sandra for me. But she had a lot of hair, mine is finer. She was the same height but broader-hipped. She used different scent.’
10. The Edgson sighting is cited in James Fox’s Sunday Times Magazine article of 8 June 1975, although no time for it is given. Lucan, wrote Fox, had ‘switched to his Mercedes’ after giving Hicks-Beach a lift home.
11. Both James Ruddick and Patrick Marnham espouse the hitman hypothesis in their books, op. cit. Ruddick suggests that Lucan went to the house himself to ensure that ‘his masterplan was progressing smoothly’, and that he did not ask the hitman to dispose of Lady Lucan’s body because ‘that would have entailed exposing the code of the safe’ (given that her body was to have been concealed inside it). It was Lucan, says Ruddick, who told the hitman to use the lead piping, which was inadequate but had the virtue of being silent. ‘It will be remembered that Lucan was adept at telling people how to conduct their business.’
Marnham’s theory is that Lucan hired a hitman and told him to enter the house through the back door, via the mews at 5 Eaton Row (in fact no access is possible that way). Marnham then suggests that the original hitman was replaced by a deputy, ‘not a specialist’, thus explaining the ineptitude of the crime and the failure to kill Lady Lucan (the badly chosen weapon having been distorted by the attack on Sandra Rivett). Marnham also posits that the plan required Lucan himself to remove the body from Lower Belgrave Street.
12. Quoted in the Sunday Times Magazine, 8 June 1975.
13. Daily Mail, 10 March 2012.
14. John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (Cape, 1969).
15. Moore, Lucan: Not Guilty.
16. Daily Express, 20 January 1975.
17. Sally Moore, who argues for Lucan’s innocence, constructs a theory in which the attack upon his wife began in the basement; Patrick Marnham says that Lady Lucan ‘must either have come into
contact with the man who was covered with Sandra’s blood or herself been into the basement’. He adds carefully: ‘She made no mention, of course, of going into the basement.’
18. News of the World, 8 November 1981. Lady Lucan was referring to the bizarre question as to whether her wounds could have been self-inflicted (see p.222).
19. Ruddick, Lord Lucan: What Really Happened.
20. News of the World, 25 October 1981. Another minor discrepancy arose in this interview when Lady Lucan said that, after making the offer of tea, ‘Sandra gathered up some other cups and went back downstairs’. At the inquest she had said that she did not recall Sandra taking any cups: ‘She may have had them in her own room’.
21. See note 22 (House Blue), p.398.
22. News of the World, 25 October 1981.
23. Daily Mirror, 17 August 2008. In the same interview Veronica said that after the attack ‘she overheard Lord Lucan telephoning his mother, Countess Kaitilin Lucan, telling her about “blood and mess in the basement”.’ This was the first suggestion that the call to Kait had been made from Lower Belgrave Street; which it cannot have been. Kait did not return to her own home that night until around 10pm, some ten minutes after Veronica entered the Plumbers Arms.
24. Daily Telegraph, 20 February 2012.
25. This was the day that Lady Lucan regained custody of her children at the High Court. She had returned to Lower Belgrave Street two days previously.
26. Daily Mail, 10 October 1985.
27. Daily Mail, 4 February 1975. Christabel, it was said, had left her job: ‘She is telling friends that she has had enough and wants to get back to her old life.’
28. Mayerling is the name of the Austrian hunting lodge where in 1889 Crown Prince Rudolf, the drug-addicted heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire, shot his lover Baroness Mary Vetsera before turning the gun on himself.
29. Daily Mirror, 17 August 2008.
30. Daily Mirror, 9 August 1998.
31. Ruddick, Lord Lucan: What Really Happened.
32. News of the World, 25 October 1981.
Acknowledgements
Although, quite understandably, there were people whom I approached who did not want to talk about the Lucan case, those whom I did meet – including several who have never spoken before – could not have been more generous and frank, and I am extremely sensible of this given the difficulty of the subject matter. For legal reasons it has not been possible to reveal all that they told me, but despite restrictions their contributions were invaluable in shaping my thoughts. My deepest gratitude goes to Bill and Christina Shand Kydd: it is impossible to thank them enough. I also greatly enjoyed my time with Dr Jane Griffin, sister to Lord Lucan, whom I met in New York. Victor and Marilyn Lownes, Pierrette Goletto, Graham Forsyth, Daniel Meinertzhagen and Stuart Wheeler were extremely charming and helpful to me, as were Nick and Zoe Peto; I was very sorry to learn of Zoe’s recent death.
I extend additional warm gratitude to the people who, in return for their contributions, wished to remain anonymous. Chief among these was Lord Lucan’s schoolfriend, who has never spoken before about these events and was a delight to meet.
Further help was given by Tim Thomas, Max Hudson, Jenni Day and John Penrose. The Clermont Club extended a kind welcome, and The Print Place in Leighton Buzzard enabled me to send the text when my internet connection died on the day that the book was completed. The staff in the newsroom at the British Library, and before that at Colindale, were marvellous as always.
My thanks to Val Hudson, and to Charlie Viney, who took the proposal to Head of Zeus. I could not have had better publishers, and I am hugely grateful to Anthony Cheetham, my lovely editor Richard Milbank, Amanda Ridout, Becci Sharpe and indeed everybody at Head of Zeus for their support and unceasing kindness. Georgina Capel has been wonderful in helping me through the final stages towards publication. Finally I give love and thanks to my mother and my brother John, who listened with exemplary patience and made many contributions; and to Milo.
Selected Bibliography
Firstly: this is by no means the first book about the Lucan case (such is its fascination) and I should like to acknowledge a huge debt to the other people who have written about it. I am chiefly grateful to Sally Moore, whose Lucan: Not Guilty is a brave, highly readable masterpiece of research. James Ruddick’s Lucan: What Really Happened contains long interviews with Lady Lucan, which were extremely useful to me. Patrick Marnham’s Trail of Havoc is a brilliant book, an immensely stylish portrait of the era, while Norman Lucas’s The Lucan Mystery, written soon after the event, is full of interest. The books by the two policemen who led the investigation, Roy Ranson’s Looking for Lucan and David Gerring’s Lucan Lives, were valuable sources. I am also much indebted to the writings of James Fox: chiefly the famous Sunday Times Magazine article of June 1975, which gave such an incisive picture of Lucan and the Clermont Club, as well as a 2004 piece in The Sunday Telegraph.
Other books that were enormously helpful include:
Barrow, Andrew, Gossip, Hamish Hamilton (1978).
Bassett, Kate, In Two Minds: Jonathan Miller, Oberon Books (2012).
Cannadine, David, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, Yale (1990).
Chenery, J.T., The Law and Practice of Bookmaking, Betting, Gaming and Lotteries, Sweet & Maxwell (1963).
Fallon, Ivan, Billionaire: The Life and Times of James Goldsmith, Hutchinson (1991).
Flanders, Judith, The Invention of Murder, Harper Press (2011).
Foreman, Amanda, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, HarperCollins (1998).
Goldsmith, Annabel, Annabel: An Unconventional Life, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (2004).
Hennessy, Peter, Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties, Allen Lane (2006).
Kynaston, David, Austerity Britain 1945–51, Bloomsbury (2007).
Masters, Brian, The Passion of John Aspinall, Jonathan Cape (1988).
Mosley, Charlotte, ed., The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, Hodder and Stoughton (1996).
Peto, Nick, Peto’s Progress, Long Barn Books (2005).
Sandbrook, Dominic, Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain 1974–1979, Allen Lane (2012).
Scott, Jeremy, Fast and Louche, Profile (2002).
Spanier, David, Easy Money: Inside the Gambler’s Mind, Secker & Warburg (1987).
Spark, Muriel, Aiding and Abetting, Viking (2000).
Stone, Lawrence Road to Divorce: England 1530–1987, Oxford University Press (1990).
Index
‘A6 murder’ (1961) 334
Africa
sightings of Lucan in 42–3
Agnelli, Gianni 99
All Saints’ Church (Laleham) 53
Amis, Kingsley 174
Amis, Martin 48
Anglesey, Earl of 15
Annabel’s (London nightclub) 117, 212
aristocracy 18–19, 64–5, 72
and gambling 98–102
murders committed by 3–6
pseudo- 18, 19
selling of estates 64
Arnold House prep school (London) 80
Aspinall, Jane (John Aspinall’s first wife) 111
Aspinall, John 35, 36, 100, 101, 239–40, 317
arrest and trial 111
background 106
cancer 124
and Clermont Club 26–7, 98, 105–6, 113, 116, 117
dislike of Veronica 27, 152, 168–9, 284
and Elwes 131–2
financial losses 124, 297
and gambling 105, 108–9
and Goldsmith 123–4
and hitman hypothesis 341
and Lucan murder case 132, 283, 284–5, 293–5
mother 117
opening of new casinos in Curzon Street 124
organization of illegal gambling evenings 26, 109–11
personality 107, 124, 353
relationship with Lucan 169
role in Lucan’s alleged escape 35, 240, 284–5, 295–6, 299
; sells Clermont to Playboy Club (1972) 30
Sunday Times article 132
zoos and wildlife conservation 36, 105, 106, 110, 116, 124
Aspinall, Min (née Musker) (John Aspinall’s second wife) 114
Aspinall’s club (Curzon Street) 124
Attlee, Clement 73, 81
Backgammon 112, 115, 120, 151, 154, 172, 209, 278, 322
Baker, Police Sergeant 221, 222, 225, 236, 249
Banstead Hospital (Surrey) 319
Barber, Lynn 294–5
Barney, Elvira 13
Bartlett, Adelaide 7, 14, 380
Beddick, Police Constable 221, 222, 226–7
Bedford, Duke of 64
Belasyse, Elizabeth see Lucan, Elizabeth, Countess of
Belgravia 14, 18, 325
Bellfield, Lord 15
Benn, Tony 121
Benson, Charles 36, 83, 89, 128, 209, 282, 283, 290
Berkeley Square 18
‘best interests of the child’ rule 180
Betjeman, John 118
Betting and Gaming Act (1960) 111
Bevan, John (Lucan’s uncle) 87, 91, 212, 286, 297
Bingham, Camilla (Lucan’s daughter) 149, 166, 272–3, 320, 321
Bingham, Charles see Lucan, 1st Earl of
Bingham, Frances (Lucan’s daughter) 34, 149, 180, 206, 213, 214, 237–8, 242, 273, 319, 335, 336, 343–4, 360
Bingham, George (Lucan’s son) 39–40, 149, 319, 321–2, 331
Bingham, George Charles (1800-88) see Lucan, 3rd Earl of
Bingham, George Charles (1830-1914) see Lucan, 4th Earl of
Bingham, George Charles (1860-1964) see Lucan, 5th Earl of
Bingham, Hugh (Lucan’s brother) 43, 76, 297, 356
Bingham, Jane (Lucan’s sister) see Griffin, Jane
Bingham, Kaitilin (Lucan’s mother) see Lucan, Kaitilin, Dowager Countess of
Bingham, Lavinia see Spencer, Lavinia
Bingham, Richard see Lucan, 2nd Earl of
Bingham, Richard John see Lucan, 7th Earl of
Bingham, Robert de (Bishop of Salisbury) 54, 67
Bingham, Sarah (Sally) (Lucan’s sister) see Gibbs, Sarah (Sally)
Bingham, Violet see Lucan, Violet, Countess of
A Different Class of Murder Page 43