by Paul Spicer
In fact, Morris had good reason for supposing that one of Joss’s lovers might be responsible for the murder. Shortly after Morris’s arrival in Nairobi for the trial, he had received two anonymous letters.
The first note read:
Under separate cover I have written to the Chief Magistrate, Kenya, asking him why the murderer of Joss Erroll, a relative of mine by marriage, was not looked for in the proper quarter. Sir Delves Broughton is not the murderer…(the name of a leading socialite and Nairobi personality was given) murdered him in a fit of jealousy.
The second read:
Have you found out what lady (?) had the privilege of the late Lord Erroll’s affections before he fell in love with Lady Broughton? I think if you put a good detective on the job to find out and follow this lead, you will be pleased….
Lord Erroll would stop his car if such a woman (he knew) signalled that she wanted to speak to him. The rest would be easy…. If she could not have Erroll herself, no one else would.
Think it over—two birds with one stone. I’m sure Sir Delves didn’t do it….
Morris took the notes to the police, but the identity of their mysterious author could not be ascertained. The notes were never seen again. Fortunately, Henry Morris kept records, and these were reprinted in Genius for the Defence, Benjamin Bennett’s biography of Morris, published in 1959.
So who was the mysterious leading socialite and Nairobi personality mentioned in the notes? Joss’s other love interest was Phyllis Filmer, but she was out of the country at the time of his murder, and besides, she could hardly be described as a “leading socialite and Nairobi personality.”
The description fits Alice perfectly. Alice was a central figure in the Nairobi social scene. She was ferociously jealous of Joss’s relations with Diana. She had certainly enjoyed “the privilege of the late Lord Erroll’s affections before he fell in love with Lady Broughton.” Joss would certainly have stopped his car if he had seen her in the road. What’s more, Alice knew that Joss would be driving back to his bungalow from Marula Lane on the night of the murder at around 3:00 A.M., because Dickie Pembroke had told her so. It was thanks to Dickie that Alice also learned that Jock had given his blessing to Diana and Joss’s union that very evening. The idea that Diana might now be free to marry Joss can only have sent Alice into a “fit of jealousy.” Nothing caused Alice more anguish than when the men in her life attempted to reject her. “I always get my own way” “I take what I want and throw it away”: These were the ominous words that Frédéric had used to give voice to Alice’s willful destructiveness in his book Vertical Land. “If she could not have Erroll herself, no one else would,” wrote the author of the anonymous notes.
There is no doubt Alice had the motive and the knowledge. She also had the nerve. In 1927, she had turned her gun on Raymund when he tried to break off their engagement. She had been tried for his attempted murder and found guilty of a crime passionnel. In other words, she was entirely capable of acting on her passionate impulses. She was a brave and competent shot, someone who seldom left home without a revolver. According to Margaret Spicer, Alice had first owned a gun in Chicago when she was eighteen years old, given to her by her mobster boyfriend “for her own protection.” This Colttype weapon was an American pocket revolver—a hammerless .38-caliber automatic that was nickel-plated. Alice bought one very like it in Paris, with its pearl-inlay handle, just prior to shooting Raymund. In Kenya, she kept such a revolver on her bedside table. But what of her alibi, Dickie? It is possible that Dickie slept through Alice’s departure and her return on the night of the murder. Even if he had heard Alice leaving or coming back, he certainly loved her enough to want to protect her. When questioned by the police, he would have been anxious to minimize his association with the Erroll case so that he could be reinstated into the Coldstream Guards as soon as possible. Either he lied to the police for Alice’s sake—and in order to preserve what remained of his already-tarnished reputation—or he was telling the truth and Alice had simply managed to leave and then return without waking him.
That night, Alice could easily have taken her revolver from the bedside table and soundlessly climbed into her car, then sped away. Her route would have been swift and without traffic. Turning left out of Portaluca, she would have driven downhill over the Nairobi River and then past the Catholic church until she reached Ainsworth Bridge and the Da Rajah House, where she and Frédéric had visited the Spicers many times during 1926. At Ainsworth Bridge, Alice would have turned left to pass the Norfolk Hotel before reaching the Ngong Road, which led to the Karen Road and its intersection with Marula Lane. She could have parked her car on the Karen Road at this point and doused her lights to save the battery. She knew that a car being driven by Joss would be coming down this road sometime before or around 3:00 A.M.
Checking her revolver, she would have made sure it was fully loaded. When a pair of half-shaded headlights appeared over the horizon ahead, Alice would have opened the door of her car and walked into the middle of the road, waving her arms as she did so. Joss would immediately have recognized Alice’s slim figure illuminated by the Buick’s headlights. He most likely would have slowed to a full stop, but with the engine still running, his foot on the clutch, and the top gear still engaged. The Buick was right-hand drive, so Joss would have needed to lean across the long front bench seat in order to open the passenger window to speak to Alice. With his foot still on the clutch, the length of his body would have been almost parallel with the seat.
At this point, Alice would have pulled out her pistol and fired. Undeterred by the first miss, she would immediately have pulled the trigger again, letting loose a second bullet; this one met its mark, entering Joss’s neck just below his ear. On the bullet’s impact, Joss would have slipped from his stretched-out position, falling in a crumpled heap under the dashboard, his left foot coming off the clutch. With the engine still ticking over, and with top gear engaged, the car would then have inched forward. The huge torque of the engine could have permitted the Buick to move without stalling, and Alice would have watched the car turning slightly right and going over the embankment into the ditch on the right-hand side of the road, where it came to rest, stopping with the headlights still ablaze and the key still in the ignition.
In this scenario, both Joss’s position under the dashboard and the position of the car with its wheels over the verge are explained. The second pair of wide car tracks found at the scene of the crime, going off in the direction of Nairobi, is also explained: Alice’s car was a DeSoto, which had enormously wide tires. Could the hairpin found in the car have belonged to Alice? And what of the ignition and the headlights? The car was apparently discovered with its lights on but the ignition off. It is my guess that the first constables arrived at the scene—these men played a large part in bungling almost every aspect of the crime scene—and attempted to turn the lights off by switching the key in the ignition to the off position. In fact, the lights were operated independently, but the light switch was broken and could not be operated without pliers. Hence, when the car was later examined, the lights were on and the ignition off. A larger question is why Alice didn’t try to kill herself that night, just as she had attempted to do at the Gare du Nord after shooting Raymund. Did she go as far as to press the gun to her own head on the night of the murder? Did she lose courage, too horrified by what she had already accomplished? Did the thought of the loyal Dickie draw her back to the Portaluca cottage? For whatever reason, after commiting her horrible crime, Alice would have climbed into her car and raced back to bed, where Dickie was waiting. She could not have been absent for more than one and a half hours. As for her revolver, she could easily have disposed of it the following day. Her Muthaiga cottage, her beach house, and Wanjohi Farm were never searched by the police.
If Alice did shoot Lord Erroll, this would certainly help to explain her reactions in the aftermath of Joss’s murder. It would explain her decision to see his dead body on the morning of his death: S
he would have needed to be sure that she had succeeded. This would also explain why she was so completely involved in the outcome of Jock Broughton’s trial. If Jock had been found guilty, he would probably have been hanged, and in all likelihood, Alice would have felt bound to confess in order to save him. No wonder she visited Jock so frequently in his cell, reassuring him that she had perfect faith in his innocence. She knew that he was innocent, because she herself was guilty. If Jock had been convicted, Alice would have had Jock’s death—as well as Joss’s—on her conscience.
Fourteen
A Green Bedroom Full of Flowers
BOTH DURING THE TRIAL AND AFTER THE VERDICT, Alice spent as much time as possible with Dickie Pembroke, leaning on him with increasing devotion. While she remained gripped by every detail of the Erroll case, Dickie could not share her interest. He had been highly uncomfortable about giving evidence in court. After the disgrace of being placed on leave from the Coldstream Guards, he was acutely sensitive when it came to matters of his reputation. It was agonizing for him to have his name associated with the general ignominy surrounding Joss’s murder. Although Dickie loved Alice, his clear priority was to rejoin his regiment in North Africa, where the Third Battalion of the Coldstream Guards was stationed at this time. Even before the start of the trial, he had made his application to HQ in London to be reposted. While Dickie waited to hear whether he would be accepted back into his regiment, the possibility of his departure only served to increase Alice’s attachment to him. As with all the men in her life—Raymund and Joss included—Alice would always experience her greatest passions for those who were attempting to leave her.
In June 1941, with Jock’s trial still in progress, Dickie’s application for transfer was granted and he was asked to travel to Cairo, where he was to be made acting regimental lieutenant colonel. He left on July 24, only a few weeks after Jock’s acquittal. Alice knew there was every possibility Dickie would see action and be killed, and so she put off saying good-bye to him for as long as possible, traveling with him as far as Kampala, Uganda, before bidding him farewell. In Dickie’s luggage was a letter Alice had written to him before his departure from Wanjohi. Poignantly, she had wanted him to have something to open on his arrival in Cairo. Very few of Alice’s letters have been preserved, but the ones she wrote to Dickie during the war were kept. They are immensely revealing of this woman during a period of her life when she was struggling with grief, separation, solitude, uncertainty, depression, and physical illness, not to mention possible culpability in a murder. Despite Alice’s predicament, the letters are marked by tenderness, and a self-knowing humor.
The first letter to Dickie was dated the night before his departure, July 23, 1941. Alice wrote in it that it seemed ridiculous to be writing a letter to someone who was still sitting in front of her. Even so, Alice said she would rather give him something to read when he arrived in Cairo than have him wait weeks for a letter to arrive in the mail. She told him that she’d had a lovely week with him, and that she hoped she could manage to say good-bye the next day in decent fashion. She went on in a less stoical vein: “I can’t imagine the immediate future at all…all of you are gone or going and my self-pity wells up when I realise that I can follow no one.” Alice’s close circle was certainly diminished. Joss was dead. Idina had moved to her coastal house north of Mombasa. Lizzie Lezard had been posted to Cairo. Alice’s closest friend in Kenya, Paula, was absorbed in her marriage to Boy Long. Even Alice’s French maid had been dispatched back to France at the beginning of the war. Alice could count on her neighbor Pat Fisher, her friends Patsy Bowles and Noreen Pearson, and her housekeeper, Flo, for companionship. But she often found herself spending long days alone. Another letter to Dickie, this one undated—but which must have been written soon after his departure—offers more evidence as to her precarious state of mind during this time: “…the fact of you going away in these uncertain times, even for only a short time, as we hope, is pure and absolute pain….”
After Dickie’s departure, Alice’s health certainly took an immediate turn for the worse, and in early September of 1941, she had a hysterectomy. Her regular doctor, William Boyle, performed the operation at a hospital in Nairobi. Since he first attended her in 1932, Dr. Boyle had taken a special interest in Alice, and the two had long since established a flirtatious rapport. Years later, Boyle’s daughter, also named Alice, would recall that her father was “rather in love with Alice de Trafford.” While it would have comforted Alice to know that Dr. Boyle would perform the operation, she remained terrified of the recovery period. In her next letter to Dickie—whom she knew was facing much graver dangers in North Africa—she managed to keep her tone light, at least initially. She spoke of the matron and the nurses, all of whom she knew from previous visits, greeting her warmly. Flo had traveled down to Nairobi with her, a trip that was marred by the fact that they had two punctures and only one spare tire. Alice observed that now that she had arrived at the hospital, her operation was cheerfully referred to as “the op” by the nurses, accompanied by much pillow thumping and towel shaking. But she also wrote of events that had taken place before she left for Nairobi. Immediately before her departure, Alice made the extraordinary decision to put down her beloved dachshund, Minnie. The reason Alice gave Dickie was that her poor dog had begun to panic every time she was put in the car and that recently the hysteria had worsened. Unable to bear Minnie’s distress, Alice gave her pentobarbital, a short-acting barbiturate (often given the trade name Nembutal). Alice could have taken Minnie to a veterinarian, and yet she chose to do this herself. For someone who loved her animals as much as Alice, it seems a desperate act, one that reveals her increasingly morbid state of mind during this time. Her choice of language in the letter was equally chilling. Alice said she “killed” Minnie, and that she felt as if she had “committed a murder.” She went on in an even more sinister vein. She remembered Dickie once counseling her, “Life must go on.” Life need not go on, Alice observed: “In Joss’s case someone decided that, in Minnie’s case I did, and the length of our own lives lies entirely within our own hands (unless someone else gets at us first!).”
Alice buried Minnie in the iris beds at Wanjohi Farm, at the edge of the cut she had made to take the stream water right around the edge of her house and garden. After her operation, Alice returned to Wanjohi to recover. It has been suggested that Alice was suffering from ovarian cancer. However, Patsy Bowles (who was married to Alice’s second doctor) recalls that although her womb was removed, no cancer was discovered. On September 15, 1941, Alice was certainly well enough to attend an all-girls lunch with Patsy and Noreen Pearson, along with another friend, Rosie Delap.
Years later, Patsy would recall Alice’s mysterious words that day: “If you have an obsession or a very deep wish,” Alice informed her friends, “or even two wishes which you dream about and want—they often happen. The first of my wishes has happened. I wonder if the second one will occur?”
If Alice did shoot Lord Erroll, then presumably her first wish had been to commit the murder. Her second wish would also soon come to pass.
After lunch, Alice asked her driver, Arap Ruta, to take her to the small church of St. Paul’s in Kiambu, where Joss was buried. At the far side of the graveyard, she found his headstone, with that of his wife, Mary, close behind. This was not the first time that Alice had visited the grave site: Since Joss’s burial, she had made regular trips to Kiambu to place flowers on his resting place.
In her next letter to Dickie, written two days later, on September 17, she described her visit and how pleased she had been to see new pots of flowers on his grave, which in recent times had been neglected. She also wrote about the difficulties of her recuperation. Although her surgical wound had healed, she remained extremely weak and ill. The matron had told her to expect to feel depressed but not to let that get her down, advice that Alice wryly brushed aside. “What these periods of depression will be like, plus the ones I get anyway, I can’t imagine,” she wr
ote, adding that she felt “desolate beyond words” now that Minnie was gone.
As September progressed, Alice’s forty-second birthday was looming. In frail health and failing spirits, she must have dreaded its arrival. To make matters worse, her neighbor Pat Fisher was hosting a joint birthday party with Phyllis Filmer. Alice had never much cared for Joss’s old flame, and, not surprisingly, she decided to back out of the birthday party at the last moment. Flo Crofton was dispatched to Kipipiri with the excuse that Alice was unwell. After Flo’s departure, Alice took to her bed and ingested a dose of Nembutal, the same barbiturate she had fed to Minnie.
A few days later, on September 27, 1941, Alice sent Flo off to Olkalau, a small town near Wanjohi Farm, to do some shopping and collect mail. She told her African staff not to disturb her. This wasn’t at all unusual, as Alice usually breakfasted in bed and didn’t get up until about 11:00 A.M. Then she went out into her garden and collected armloads of flowers. Back in her bedroom, she decorated her room, placing the flowers on her bed and furniture. Her large bedroom was painted with a mixture of green oil and water paint blended together, an effect that was both peaceful and striking, especially with the added decoration of the flowers. Alice then attached the names of close friends to her furniture, including the large Knole settee brought from France (one of her favorite possessions) and two large African drums, which served as side tables near her substantial bed.