White Mischief

by James Fox

  The English critic and crime writer Julian Symons wrote that one of the worst mistakes made by Poppy was not to have traced the typewriter on which the notes were written. Mrs. Rose Hodson, Gwladys’s daughter, in her complaint to the Press Council, wrote that it was absurd to suggest that Gwladys, who was unable to type, would laboriously tap out such notes with one finger. And yet if she had really developed such a feeling of spite against Broughton, it was the perfect way to get at him. And if she was so keen on Erroll it was also a method to make Broughton “sit up” and put a stop to the affair.

  Harwich said that it was generally believed that Gwladys lied in court because she was desperate to prevent her affair with Erroll from being mentioned. He also said that there had been a row between Erroll and Diana on the night of the murder initiated by Gwladys, who had ordered Erroll to give Diana up; a case of jealousy masquerading as sound advice.

  Morris knew of Gwladys’s feelings towards Erroll and said to her in court, “I am going to put it to you that you were vastly interested in Lord Erroll’s happiness or what you conceived to be his happiness?”

  “Not vastly,” replied Gwladys.

  And yet she was keen enough on Erroll to be one of the first arrivals at the mortuary and to ask Bewes for the indentity disc around his neck. The Mayor of Nairobi—no doubt to her embarrassment—was told that she was not allowed to remove his effects without permission from a higher authority than Bewes.

  We had a further hint, after the appearance of our article, suggesting Gwladys as the authoress of the notes. Valerie Ward, later Barwick, but then married to a settler, Roddy Ward, had been a close friend of Gwladys’s two daughters and of Gwladys herself. She told Connolly that late in 1940 she had been a member of the Aga Khan Club for influential Indians, and often used to dress in a sari. She began to receive, in her Muthaiga pigeonhole, type-written letters with messages that said, in effect, “How can a nice, well brought up English girl go about mimicking the Indians?” She did not find them really offensive, but they hurt, she said, because they were unsigned. She consulted a “great friend,” Walter Shapley, a Nairobi solicitor, who discussed the matter with Lord Francis Scott. Shapley sent for Mrs. Ward and told her he was sure that the letters came from Gwladys Delamere.

  “He said that she was in such a peculiar state that it was best to ignore them.” She never spoke to Gwladys again, and “did not regret her death.”

  Supporting Connolly at the Press Council in 1970, she wrote in her affadavit:

  I know that Lady Delamere was greatly attracted to Lord Erroll and enjoyed the attention which he paid to her, but when Lady Broughton arrived in Kenya. Lord Erroll diverted his attention to her.

  It is not unnatural for an older woman to feel jealous of a younger and very attractive woman stealing the attention of her admirer. Lord Erroll. I gather that Sir Delves Broughton received some typewritten letters informing and then reproaching him over the affairs between his wife and Lord Erroll. In my view it is more than likely that the author of those anonymous letters could have been Gwladys, Lady Delamere.

  Gwladys was apparently at home at Soysambu on the night of the murder. She died, of a stroke, in 1943—the result of high blood pressure.

  13

  BULLETS IN THE GARDEN

  At our lunch at the Brighton Metropole, Poppy told us that Jack Soames had been suffering from acute anxiety during the trial—he was “in a terrible state” as he waited for a full ten days to be called as a prosecution witness. His nervousness might have arisen simply from the fear of letting slip evidence that could incriminate his old schoolfriend. So much depended on Soames’s memory of whether Broughton was shooting with a Colt at Nanyuki that day.

  If Broughton did commit the murder, Soames’s evidence provides a peculiarly neat back-up for Broughton’s own story, suggesting a complicity, a conspiracy or even mutual blackmail between the two men. It was to Soames, his one trusted Eton friend, that Broughton went for sympathy about Diana’s affair with Erroll; and it was to Soames, too, that he wrote his “bread and butter” letter with its oddly detailed description of the revolver thefts and its announcement that he would “cut his losses” and go to Ceylon. (It was written the day after the theft occurred, and apparently delivered to Nanyuki two days later.) Then there was their urgent drink together at the Avenue Hotel on January 28th, when Soames already knew that the police intended to search for bullets on his farm in five days’ time. This was just after Broughton and Carberry, who had come to stay in the house at Karen, had been discussing ballistics and comparison microscopes.

  Finally it was Soames’s evidence that had clinched the ballistics argument for Morris. Kaplan described Morris’s hand pressing on Broughton’s shoulder as he asked Soames, “And if Sir Delves tells His Lordship and the Jury that this gun was not a gun that broke [non-Colt] but one in which the cylinder fell out [Colt] you would not dispute that?” and releasing his grip as Soames replied, “I would believe him.”

  If Soames had committed the murder himself or lent Broughton the gun and the ammunition, the ballistics evidence would in no way be contradicted. Of the three live rounds found in the grass by the police, one contained black powder, one contained ordinary powder and the third was left unopened for the court to decide what to do with it. There was, of course, no provable link between these live rounds and either the murder bullets or the spent “Nanyuki” bullets found in the grass. Of the eleven empty .32 cartridge cases found lying about, four had Smith & Wesson markings and four Remington markings—and all eleven bore the mark of an identical firing pin and were thus fired by the same weapon. Therefore either Broughton was lying when he said that he took an unbroken box of fifty rounds to Nanyuki for the target practice, or Soames provided some extra .32 ammunition, possibly the black powder bullets. (The idea, raised in the trial, of previous target practice on the same site can be discounted. Although it did occur on the Soames estate, this particular range was chosen at random, had never been used before, and was only twenty-five feet in length.) Thus the black powder evidence, at least, was equally damaging to both men. Possibly it was Soames’s .32 that they used for the target practice—and for the murder. It was only Broughton and Soames who swore that Broughton had brought his own revolvers to Nanyuki for target practice—a perfectly normal suggestion, apparently, to make to a guest on his way for the weekend. There was, of course, a war on.

  Was it during Broughton’s second visit to Nanyuki to see Soames, a week before the murder, that they hatched the murder plan together and concocted the story of the stolen revolvers? This would assume firstly a knowledge of ballistics and secondly that Broughton intended to use his own gun, the idea of the theft being to draw attention to the misleading firearms certificate. Why, after all, should Broughton write so quickly and in such detail about the theft? Did he write the letter at all? Soames said, “I eventually burned it.” But did he bum it before the murder or afterwards? Had he kept it, it would have been valuable evidence for Broughton. Was it after the meeting at the Avenue Hotel that Soames and Broughton agreed to the story that he had brought his own Colt to the shooting practice on that first weekend?

  HARRAGIN: Did you notice what kind of gun it was to look at?

  SOAMES: I understood it was a Colt, but I could not say.

  At some stage Connolly wrote in his notebook:

  How they did it

  Soames

  Took some of DB’s cartridges at practice or at second visit. Discussed how to eliminate E. then—had motive connected with Alice or some other woman—could have produced native killer (almost only suspect with long experience of them)

  Possibilities:

  1. Did it himself

  2. Provided killer

  3. Framed DB

  considered honest by Kaplan—“almost the only one”

  Soames (Nanyuki) bullets were fired by Soames from a .32 S&W. He only used the .38 to fire one bullet when police came later.

  He had a .38 but used a .32 at
practice, and used same to shoot E.

  The black powder was his.

  Connolly had missed a crucial point, however. Soames claimed that he had practised with a .38, and the police did find five spent .38 cartridges in the grass during their search at Nanyuki, apparently left over from the revolver practice.

  Soames’s evidence concentrates on the revolver theft, the “cutting of losses” by Broughton, his drunkenness, and the planned trip to Ceylon. And yet he was a prosecution witness. Harragin never pressed him. If Morris had been prosecuting, Soames would never have got off so lightly. The exchanges are worth looking at again.

  Q:

  Can you remember what he said in that letter?

  A:

  Yes, he thanked me for having asked him to stay with me and he also said he had had two revolvers stolen, some notes and a cigarette case. He also said that he had fixed up the matter we discussed.

  Q:

  What did you gather from this?

  A:

  I gathered that he had taken my advice … He was going to Ceylon I think.

  The “drunkenness” evidence, the description of Broughton “passing out” at Soames’s house supports Broughton’s story of drunkenness and fatigue on the murder night. It was frequently emphasised by Broughton that this new habit of drinking spirits led to sleep (Broughton: “Since I arrived in this country I have taken to drinking whisky and gin as a night cap,” etc.), and that when the affair started between Diana and Joss, he began drinking to excess. At other moments Broughton let slip that he had been sleeping badly, and that weekend Soames started him on Medinal (“oblivion’s boarding card,” as Connolly described it) to make sure he would sleep (even though he had already passed out). Soames almost went too far, once again, in his testimony:

  Q:

  On the night he arrived at your house on that last visit, what was his condition?

  A:

  He arrived perfectly all right. We had a whisky and soda at six o’clock; turned on the wireless at 6:45: had two more small whiskies and sodas and he passed out completely.

  Q:

  What did you say to him?

  A:

  I was very worried as I did not see how he could get into that condition after three small whiskies and sodas. I said I could not understand how a man could pass out after three whiskies and sodas.

  [Soames seems to have omitted the word “small” as he repeated the sentence, for fear of straining the point. A barrister with whom I once discussed the case said, “In a murder trial a witness will qualify a statement if he thinks it is going to condemn the accused.”]

  Q:

  Did he make any reply?

  A:

  Yes, he said that since the trouble with Lady Broughton and Lord Erroll he had taken to whisky and gin and that always sent him to sleep because he had never drunk spirits before.

  Even Broughton in his own testimony found it necessary to tone down Soames’s descriptions of his excessive drinking.

  Then, when Harragin had asked him, “Do you remember which hand the accused fired with?” Soames had replied, “the right hand”—in other words, the crippled hand. (Broughton agreed with this in his own testimony.)

  “And how did Sir Delves shoot?”

  “Very badly,” said Soames. “He looked like a beginner.”

  Yet Broughton in evidence said that he had been taught in the army to shoot a revolver with either hand, but that he found it easier to shoot with his left hand. His vanity also forced him to disclose the fact that he had shot twenty elephants with a rifle since the accident to his right hand and the onset of arthritis.

  What kind of man was Soames, and why might he have helped Broughton to kill Erroll? Frédéric de Janzé thought him worthy of one of his inimitable anonymous portraits in Vertical Land. He called this one “Just a Bold Bad Man,” and pencilled “Jack Soames” in the margin. It is one of his better attempts:

  As he sits over his port, his slanting green eyes light when he sees one shiver to his tales of goring buffalo or tossing rhino.

  As he walks in the garden moonlight his sensuous mouth tightens when the girl at his side gasps at his tales of debauch and treason.

  His body, an athlete’s, surges around a weird and lurid mind; diseased things attract him in the abstract; rape and murder would be his profession.

  When ’flu breaks out he believes in being scarce. He loves a noise; his spick and span hair licked to perfection; he hunts by profession.

  But all must think that: “Nevil, Nevil, is such a little devil with the girls.”*

  In 1979 I traced Dushka Repton, the beautiful Russian exile who had been a neighbour of Soames in the late 1920s and the 1930s, to a flat in London near the House of Commons, in a block that was alive with armed policemen—on the roof, in the entrance hall, in the corridors. When the small, emerald-like figure came to the door and peered at me, it was clear that she had almost lost her sight. She told me that the security was for the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who lived in a nearby flat. She had taken pity on the policemen and, despite her near blindness, took them down a cake each day, bought on her slow and difficult weekly expeditions to the Army and Navy Stores. She lived alone in the flat, which was dark, with a large sitting room. She felt her way into the kitchen, asked me to pour her a drink of brandy and water, and said, “It is almost painful for me to talk about Kenya. I was so happy there.”

  When we discussed Soames, she said that she had read the description in Vertical Land, and that it was more or less correct. She said that he was extremely handsome, a wonderful dancer, with broad shoulders. “But,” said Mrs. Repton, “he was a compulsive, pathological liar. He told me in great detail how he had been tortured by the Bolsheviks in the Caucasus. I was completely taken in and then, by an odd chance, I discovered that he had never been to the Caucasus.

  “He loved to boast of fanciful things,” she went on, “and of his exploits with women, but a lot of it was talk. He would tell a story about a prostitute who liked to go about crushing little birds in her boots, for example. He had a vivid imagination of horror. He and Carberry were great friends, and well-suited to each other. They loved to sit around talking and planning murder. Carberry even boasted that he had committed two murders, and I wouldn’t be surprised. Poor Gloria, his wife, died a complete alcoholic.”

  But she and her friend Nina Drury, formerly married to Soames, had discussed together whether Soames would have committed murder. “Nina said he would be much too frightened to perform an act of physical cruelty, even though he was at heart a sadist and a voyeur of a very low degree.”

  Like many other men, Soames once took a fancy to Alice de Janzé, at the time of her affair with Erroll in the late 1920s. Soames, according to Mrs. Repton, made a pass at her and she turned away. In irritation he said to her, “You smell of death!”—a cruel reference to Alice’s lingering consumption. But would that be enough to turn him against Erroll, out of jealousy and hurt male pride?

  In Kenya in 1979, searching for clues and characters, I went to Soames’s old house at Bergeret near Nanyuki, thinking that some of his former servants might still live in the area. The house is still there, with its large stone fireplace, occupied now by a white settler who was shortly selling up. The garden was still kept up on an impressive scale, with its enormous lake, surrounded by the nearest African equivalent to an English country park of the eighteenth century. In Soames’s time, I was told, elephant and giraffe would appear from the low scrub at the foothills of the Aberdares almost every evening, and rest in the grass just across the river which flowed past the house, as the guests took their sundowners on the veranda. But the forest has since been cut back here for settlement, and the animals have moved elsewhere.

  I did find Soames’s former Somali servant, the anonymous witness who has already described the routine of Soames’s house parties, living beside Lake Naivasha, working for a young polo-playing businessman. He was an old man, dressed in a red fez and snea
kers, with a dry sense of humour and a somewhat snobbish longing for the standards of the colonial days. He gave a vivid description, translated here from the Swahili, of Soames’s irascibility and unpleasantness:

  Soames was very bad tempered and unreasonable. If he was driving along the murram and a car in front threw up dust as he approached, he would overtake the driver, make him stop and swear at him, telling him he shouldn’t throw dust in his face.

  Often, he would lose his temper with the car itself if it skidded in the mud, or slowed on a hill. He would shout, “Go on, get on you bloody old car,” and slap its side like a horse.

  One day we were at Limuru, going down the escarpment on our way to Nairobi. Everybody’s car was stuck in the mud and Bwana Soames said, “Oh fuck this, I’m not going to get stuck in the mud. I’m going to GO, GO, GO, GO, and if I don’t get through, I’m going to burn the car.” Then he kicked and hammered it, and almost turned it over trying to get it out of the mud. All the other people were stuck. The mud was very bad. I [and another servant] made a track and we got through. We were all wet through and cold, and the colour of Soames’s wife’s hat was running down her face.

  She said. “What about our friends? We’ve got to help them.” Soames said. “Bugger them.” We got as far as Muthaiga. very dirty and wet. We went to No. I cottage. The servants were given money by Mrs. Soames and told to go away and come back tomorrow, but on the way out we met Soames who said, “Where are you going?” We said, “Memsahib gave us the money to go away.” Soames said, “Certainly not. Not until we’ve showered and dressed.”

  On a trip to the Kenya coast the same year, I picked up confirmation of a story that Poppy had mentioned in passing, which might explain Soames’s anxiety at the trial. Soames had left the country soon after the case for an extended holiday, said Poppy, “in case more bullets were dug up in his garden.” There was a suggestion that Soames was involved in illegal arms dealing at the time of the murder. One hot Saturday I drove down the flat coast road, south of Mombasa, past the palm forests and tourist hotels to look for Dan Trench, the son of Maxwell Trench, who had been Carberry’s partner in the distillery at Nyeri. Dan had been in his twenties when the murder took place. I was told he was a senior beachcomber, down on his luck, and a drinker. He lived near the hotel that his family once owned, which now belonged to the Government. He was said to be a bar historian of some accomplishment, whose pedigree as a member of the inner circle of old surviving settler families gave him a certain distinction along the coast. He had become, in other words, a “character.”