A Different Class of Murder

by Laura Thompson

  At the 1975 inquest, Kait engaged the services of Michael Eastham QC to represent the interests of the Lucan family. In his first question to Veronica, Eastham said: ‘You entertained feelings of hatred against your husband, didn’t you?’ Her representative vigorously objected. The coroner protested. Gallantry for the woman raised its head. Yet in conference Eastham argued:

  My instructions are as follows. By the beginning of 1973, the lady quite definitely hated her husband. I can prove that. Thereafter there were long litigations, heard in camera, which exacerbated the situation. The Earl only wanted to look after the children, and you will know that a large number of doctors expressed conflict.

  What I would like to have in evidence, was that there was a suggestion made of paranoia, and I would like to have in evidence that the situation deteriorated, as a result of the long and protracted proceedings. It could be made to sound a great deal worse than that.

  The coroner deemed any such evidence inadmissible. ‘Eastham was so frustrated,’ says Christina Shand Kydd, ‘because he just wasn’t allowed to ask anything. Every time he tried to ask a question the coroner stopped him.’

  ‘It was an absolute disgrace, the whole thing,’ says Bill Shand Kydd.

  In March 1973 Veronica employed a new nanny, Stefanja Sawicka, to whom she complained of the violence that Lucan had used during the marriage. ‘Don’t be surprised’, she said, ‘if he kills me one day.’ She also employed a cleaner. On the first day, Veronica told her that she worked too slowly; the cleaner retorted that the house was appallingly dirty and walked out. Miss Sawicka, however, became friendly with Veronica. Although only briefly in residence at Lower Belgrave Street she was, later, of use to the police.

  She was also a witness to Veronica’s acute distress when an ex parte application at the High Court was granted for Lord Lucan to take temporary custody of the children. On the afternoon of 23 March, Miss Sawicka was walking with George and Camilla in Green Park; Lucan approached, showed her the court order, and left with the children. At Frances’s school he did the same thing. The headmistress and Miss Sawicka rang Veronica with the news, which was, in Roy Ranson’s words, her ‘worst fears come true’. She began screaming hysterically, running up and down the stairs of Lower Belgrave Street. In a panic the nanny summoned a doctor. Veronica also insisted that the police be called, but the ‘sympathetic officers’ could do nothing. The children had gone to Lucan’s new home, a five-bedroom flat just eight minutes’ walk away, at 72a Elizabeth Street. He had taken this large property (previously rented by a real James Bond actor, George Lazenby), extremely expensive at £70 a week, in order to accommodate them plus another nanny, Jordanka Kotlarova.

  This action of Lucan’s has been portrayed, unequivocally, as a kidnapping. Veronica, says Ranson, was ‘given no chance to defend herself’; that, of course, is what ex parte means. It is a judgment given after only one side of an argument is heard, and pending a full hearing, for which Veronica’s solicitors then applied. Later it would be said that Lucan’s behaviour was ‘lawless’.4 It was the act of an emotional terrorist: Earl Ferrers again. It was the aristocrat, with his powerful sense of entitlement, of the family line that is his to own and bestow, treating the rights of a mother as legally negligible. According to myth, Lucan’s view was that these rights still were negligible. No upstart wife was going to put her trumped-up cod-feminist ideas between an earl and his desires.

  Yet a man who practised family law at the time, at the highest level, with no connection to the Lucan case, describes the ex parte process rather differently: without prejudice, as it were. The specific reason why Lucan was given temporary custody is unknown, although Veronica later said that two of her doctors provided evidence at the hearing.5 The lawyer, however, provides a general analysis.

  An ex parte is an emergency proceeding. It would have happened if a father was able to go to the court and persuade the court that there were serious grounds that the children be taken away from the mother and given to him. Pretty stringent evidence would be required. It would be most unusual, unless there was very, very strong evidence of serious problems, for very young children to have been removed from their mother and the family home.

  On the night of Sandra Rivett’s murder, Kait Lucan gave a resumé of her son’s family situation to DS Graham Forsyth, the first officer to arrive at Lower Belgrave Street. As recounted at the inquest, her words were: ‘He’s separated. The children were made wards of court and Veronica was told to continue with medical treatment for her mental complaint.’ Kait then explained the nature of this complaint. ‘Manic depressive, not violent, except verbally. In the original court case it was thought she was a danger to the children.’6 Later, Roy Ranson would write that Kait ‘managed simultaneously to slur Veronica’s name and totally distort the reality of the custody case’. The former lawyer offers a very different view. ‘Lucan must have had evidence to convince the judge to make a highly unusual place of safety order. That’s one of the technical terms used: place of safety.’

  There was, however, the damning accusation that Lucan had staged a kidnap. Was that really what he had done? ‘If he’d got a court order, then it wasn’t a snatch. If he had a court order, handing the children to his care, then it’s his job to collect the children.’ The lawyer concedes: ‘It could well have been that he acted before the wife was served with the order. If she had been served, she probably wouldn’t have let the children go out with the nanny. And so therefore perhaps he was jumping the gun a bit… Waiting would have been the wiser thing to do. But we can allow for that.’ It could be said, of course, that an ex parte application is an aggressive act in itself. There is no denying the shock and distress that it caused. Legally, however, it was not a kidnap.

  The date for the full hearing was postponed until July. This gave Veronica time to prepare her own evidence. Towards the end of this period Lucan sent a letter to Marcia Brady Tucker, with whom he had stayed in America during the war. He wrote:

  We do have against us the natural inclination of most judges to award custody to the mother, but I have the best QC in the country working for me, and what is more important he is not a man with a reputation for being too brilliant on behalf of his client, right or wrong. The judges all respect him. The fact that the children have now been with me for the best part of three months – that they are all happy and contented – will also weigh very much with us. Also on my side I have the very strong evidence of my own family, George and Camilla’s headmistresses and, of course, Veronica’s psychiatric record going back to 1962 (before I met her).

  The best result for me would be to be given permanent care and control, with four weeks access for her. The worst result would be the return of the children to her with virtually no access for me. Both these extremes are unlikely, however.

  The QC to whom Lucan referred was James Comyn. ‘Oh, a very senior man,’ says the former lawyer. ‘You’re talking somebody pretty serious. Somebody of that calibre wouldn’t have had anything to do with a snatch.’ Presumably Comyn took the view that, in the circumstances, Lucan had done better not to pre-warn Veronica by serving the order. He also must have believed that Lucan had a decent case; as did almost everybody who knew him, a certainty that has been portrayed as a further example of prejudice against Veronica.

  Comyn was a Dubliner of extraordinary urbane charm, whose family, ironically in the light of Lucan’s family history, had provided a safe house for Eamon de Valera during the Irish Civil War. Later he became a highly regarded judge. As a QC, he defended the Rolling Stone Brian Jones on drug charges and Private Eye against the libel action launched by Sir James Goldsmith. Both he and Michael Eastham would be described, with intense respect, as ‘the last of the great all-round common law silks’. The dedication in James Comyn’s book, Comyn’s Law Without Gravity, reads ‘To the man on the Clapham Omnibus who has stood so much’; he was regarded as a humane spokesman for the underdog who lacked a penetrating voice. It is interesting, therefore, tha
t having taken Lord Lucan’s case in the custody hearing, he later stated his belief that Lucan was innocent of murder.

  As a result of the ex parte application the Lucan children were made wards of court, their interests represented by the Official Solicitor, Norman Turner. Like Comyn, he was a fair and intensely decent man; at the height of the ferocious disputes of the Heath administration, he had intervened to prevent three shop stewards being imprisoned for contempt by the Industrial Relations Court. ‘I am concerned’, he stated with quiet firmness, ‘with the liberty of the individual.’ He was obliged to interview Lucan’s daughter, Frances, before the High Court hearing. What she said to him, which cannot be recorded, was relayed back to Veronica by her own solicitor.

  Christina Shand Kydd, who was called by Mr Turner to give evidence at the hearing, says: ‘The Official Solicitor was very good. And he said beforehand: of course, Mr Justice Rees is renowned for being a woman’s judge. And I know that John was worried about that. His counsel had said we haven’t got a good judge for us.’

  Exactly one hundred years before the Lucan family case, the 1873 Custody of Infants Act had established a presumption of maternal care for children up to the age of fourteen. In its original form, passed in 1839, the act had been more limited: the presumption had applied only to children under seven, and it had most certainly not applied to an adulterous mother, or one named as guilty in a criminal conversation action, as the 2nd Countess of Lucan had been. Nevertheless this act, known as the tender years doctrine, ‘once and for all stripped traditional unlimited patriarchal authority from the father’.7

  In 1925 the divorce court was instructed by law to make the welfare of the children its priority. The tender years doctrine was replaced by the ‘best interests of the child’ rule; yet in practice this has made little difference to the presumption that the mother should have custody. In the past, common sense did suggest that a woman, whose chief ‘job’ was childcare, was better placed to provide it. Clearly this situation has changed over time, for the simple reason that there are now so many working mothers. The primary custody presumption has not changed.

  As early as 1974, a pressure group called Families Need Fathers was arguing that paternal rights were being overlooked by the family courts. In 2003, Fathers4Justice began to put the issue more forcefully: they could have had a field day with the Lucan case. Governments have recognized some of the organization’s concerns. Yet despite equality legislation it is still the case, most usually, that a father must prove a mother unfit before he is given primary custody. A mother can gain custody without having to prove anything against the man.

  The Lucan case was different, in that its terms had already been set by the ex parte. Because Veronica had to rebut the decision that the father should have custody, she did have to prove his unfitness. ‘The once meek Countess’, wrote Ranson, admiringly, ‘was prepared to fight like a tigress for her children.’

  The lawyer, who worked on similar cases at the time of the Lucan hearing, says:

  So I’m putting myself in the position of acting for her. I would look for everything that I could fight with. What would I fight with? I would say that this [the ex parte] was done behind my back. Yes, I had a temporary problem. Yes, I was ill. Mental flu, whatever.

  And why was I in that position? Because of him. He had to leave the house because I couldn’t cope with him. He was violent, and did these unpleasant things to me. I would be dredging all that up. Now this still goes on, and it depends entirely on the parties themselves, whether they wish to go for the jugular. In every part.

  It is very easy to do. If you wish to make something out of it, you can, and then the dirt sticks. The blood flows. Now his ex parte application – the judge only heard one story, but it must have been really, really damaging. So if I was advising her I’d say yes, you had a problem, but you’re better now, and you’re better because he’s gone. And then I would say: he has an unsettled way of life, some suspect friends who will conspire with him, et cetera…

  This, indeed, is very much what happened in court. Lucan’s character was attacked in every which way. His gambling lifestyle was a legitimate target, but then the blows went lower: there were allegations not just of violence, but of deviancy, of le vice anglais, of Lucan demanding that Veronica wear a rubber exercise suit in bed. ‘I don’t know of any proper corroboration of the things she said about John,’ says his sister Jane. The claims leaked out, and were referred to in Muriel Spark’s novel about the Lucan affair, which is entirely on Veronica’s side.8 By definition, of course, such allegations are impossible to prove. What goes on in marital bedrooms is a mystery. In a 1981 interview, Veronica said that after Lucan moved out of Lower Belgrave Street ‘sometimes at night he would phone for me and I would visit him and then return home’;9 this lordly demand, and her apparent acquiescence in it, throws yet more murk into the mix. Later she herself would say that ‘no respectable man would have me because of the embarrassing things about our sex life that came to light when my husband wanted custody.’10 The passive construction of that sentence throws the blame, as ever, on to Lucan. ‘He thought his wife would observe secrecy in the matter of his sexual sadism, but she didn’t,’ wrote Spark. ‘But as he was trying to make her out to be mad, obviously she had a moral right to reveal his mental condition.’ Which is one way of saying that the anti-Veronica rumours floating around the Clermont club were being repaid with interest.

  Whether truly represented or not, Lucan’s sexual predilections would have counted for little had they not been underscored by the other accusations. For him, however, the agony would have been intense: worsened by his innate privacy and pride. It was the criminal conversation action again, with its ferocious exposure of ‘guilty intercourse’. The Times was not present to record proceedings, but Lucan must have feared that they would become known anyway; it is possible that this is what prevented him from starting divorce proceedings. Otherwise that would have been the logical next step. In 1969 a reform act had brought in the concept of ‘intolerable behaviour’: given Veronica’s later allegations this should have been a gift to her, had she actually wanted a divorce (later she would say: ‘I was always negotiating for the marriage to be mended’).11 The 1973 Matrimonial Causes Act introduced the concept of ‘irretrievable breakdown’, intended to make divorce easier and less ugly. ‘It should have made it better for Lucan,’ says the lawyer. ‘But things don’t change overnight, and there was still a mentality that you could spill some dirt to frighten somebody.’

  Alongside the solicitor, Veronica had a psychiatrist to speak against the ex parte. In April 1973 she had stayed at the Priory, this time of her own volition, in order that a doctor from the clinic could prepare a report for the court. ‘I decided if Lord Lucan was going to try to prove me mad, I would prove that I wasn’t.’12 Dr John Flood testified that she was not schizophrenic and therefore did not need to take fluphenazine. With lithium, her condition could be fully controlled: cured, in fact. Therefore, concluded Dr Flood, Veronica was a fit parent. This judgment, made in good faith, is nonetheless regarded as a deeply casual one by the Shand Kydds, who later assumed responsibility for the Lucan children. ‘I just simply do not know how the psychiatrist could have said that,’ says Christina. ‘That she would be fine, basically. None of us could believe that he had said that.’

  In a letter written to Michael Stoop in the early hours of 8 November 1974, Lucan wrote that ‘a crooked solicitor and a rotten psychiatrist destroyed me between them’. This, of course, was his own interpretation. His bitterness was increased by the fact that the expense of their work would be his expense. He was obliged to pay for the privilege of having his own life destroyed. Christina Shand Kydd, who spoke for Veronica at the hearing, nevertheless expressed powerful reservations that were deeply resented by her sister:

  What I said wasn’t not favourable. I was trying to be as favourable to her as I could, but I was in a terrible situation. My evidence, which was really quite strong, was b
asically no, she couldn’t look after the children, until she had some medical help. And after medical help, I was sure she would be fine. I was trying to be kind, but at the same time get through to the judge that this was not a good idea. And my mother said the same thing. With help, yes. Without help, no. And we were just completely ignored. It was a farce, really.

  Zoe Howard was a final witness for Veronica:

  Even I didn’t think she’d win it! But in my brain, at the time, I thought the children need their mother. However she is feeling, whatever. I just thought they were much better with their mother, who’s at home, rather than with John, who’s gambling. So I was happy to do it. I wanted to help, I was fond of Veronica then. I was twenty-two, I didn’t have children, but you think of the mother as looking after them. And then at the same time I never thought she’d win, because of her… whatever she had.

  I saw John in Annabel’s, a few weeks later, and I was quite nervous. But he said hello – we didn’t say very much. But he did smile, he did say hello.

  Against this, on Lucan’s side, were affidavits from Kait and other family members; testimony from friends, from Lilian Jenkins, from the children’s headmistresses; and tape recordings made by Lucan of conversations with his wife. Although Christina and her mother were ostensibly pro-Veronica, what they said was actually very guarded. Given that Lucan was backed by the evidence that had gained him the highly unusual ex parte application, his was, logically, a winning case.