White Mischief

by James Fox

  I found him about midday in the compound of the Trade Winds Hotel, in a Crusoe-like shack shaded by jacarandas, near a hire shop called Mike’s Bikes. He was sitting at a wooden table on the “veranda”—which was no more than the exposed front half of the wooden box in which he lived, and roughly the size of a small ship’s cabin. He was not so old, and there was no trace of senility about him, but he was emaciated, skeletal almost, and marked with severe skin cancer. As I began to talk to him he picked at a plate of fish with a fork, with a deadly lack of interest. I recited the names of the people in whom I was interested. “How the hell do you know all those names?” he asked.

  On the veranda railing was a sign saying “Office,” and on the table itself another that said, “Private.” “They come and think they can sit around,” said Trench. “I don’t get half what I’m owed.” I had been warned not to drink with Trench. It wasn’t that he couldn’t hold his liquor, but he had a serious ulcer which he had neglected—mostly through lack of proper nourishment—and a drinking bout, it was said, might kill him. The conversation began slowly and reluctantly on his part. He was forcing himself to eat the fish. Then he called for a beer, and then another. We proceeded to the hotel bar on the beach, and drank for four hours by the sea. He refused not to drink. He was amazed that I should know so much about the old Happy Valley crowd, even though I told him that I had been working on nothing else for some months. “I must say, you buggers who come out here really know your stuff,” he said, and then having conceded the point, he addressed himself in intimate detail, varying fancy with accuracy, insult with praise, to characters who had died, in some cases, thirty years before. He talked a lot about Carberry, his father’s partner, especially his cruelty to animals, which, he said, was legendary, and which had begun according to Trench when he was four years old. “His mother said to him, ‘Today is Christmas Day and I want you to be especially kind to animals, particularly the cat.’ John came back later and said, ‘I’ve given the cat all the canaries to eat.’”

  “He had one horse called Morning Glory and another called Mafuta,” said Trench, “and he used to race them against each other. He’d put gramophone needles in the bits to see if they would go faster. He’d time the horses, swap the bits, and run them again and again.”

  Dan Trench remembers the tortures inflicted by Carberry on Dan’s sister, Nancy: a toy was sent to her when she was quite small with the message on it, from Carberry “Not to be opened until my arrival.” When he arrived the box was put in the middle of the room, he opened it, and produced a large child’s doll. Then he took out a knife and slit its stomach open. The child wailed and screamed in terror as hundreds of gold sovereigns poured on to the floor. The rule was that all foreign exchange must be declared and Carberry had devised many ingenious ways to circumvent it. When he was finally jailed for eighteen months he called it “the happiest period of my life.”

  Drinking into the evening, Dan Trench and I often wandered off the point. “Hemingway came down here as a sick man, before he died. He couldn’t leave this bar. He was scared as hell. He’d hired a marlin boat for three weeks, and he never once went out.”

  Around five o’clock we got on to Alice de Trafford. “God, there’s only one bloody woman left I know who could come in here and every head would turn,” said Trench.

  Then we left the bar and walked down the sand for a mile, climbed over some jagged rocks, up a steep hill through cactus and trees and there was the ruin of Alice’s coast house, roofless and overgrown, but with traces of her wallpaper and her paint. Dan Trench remembered building her the water tank in the garden: there was never enough water. If Alice had too many guests arriving, she would build on new rooms two or three days in advance. Not a single room in the house was square.

  At some point that day Trench told me about Soames the arms dealer. At the time of the trial, he said, Soames knew that the police were investigating a tip-off that he had been receiving stolen military property. A million rounds of .22 ammunition had been stolen from the Gilgil depot, for example. Trucks, too, had been stolen and stripped down for spare parts, for which farmers would pay high prices. Handsome profits could be made reselling the equipment to countries like the Congo. Nothing was proved. Soames also had a partner at the time. Jack Band, a priest turned dairyman who lived with him at Burgeret, whom Trench knew to be smuggling military equipment and arms to Abyssinia at the time. This fact was officially discovered after the war and when I later checked the story with Poppy, he agreed on its accuracy.

  I could imagine Soames falling in with a murder plan, rehearsing the various possibilities with Broughton on that gloomy drunken weekend, and finally saying to his friend, “Of course, there is one other solution. You could just get rid of him.” After that Soames would have been an accessory to the deed. I could not imagine him doing the deed himself—and his alibi would be too difficult to establish, with all the servants knowing his movements. But if he knew of Broughton’s plan, why did he point out so readily to the police the exact spot where the firing practice had taken place? If Soames didn’t tell them, perhaps the servants would. If there was one houseboy for the whiskies and sodas, one for the generator and so on, there was almost certainly one for revolver practice. There was no activity, it seems, apart from Soames’s violin playing, that wasn’t servant-assisted. Or did Soames know that the discovery of the bullets would be the very detail that would exonerate Broughton? To be sure about Soames, however, one would have to be sure about Broughton’s guilt.

  * Frédéric de Janzé, Vertical Land (Duckworth. 1928).

  14

  MISS WILKS AND THE MISSING HOUR

  Very close to the final copy deadline for our article, almost too late to be of any use, a long telex arrived from Humphrey Tyler in Durban reporting an interview with Dorothy Wilks. He had found her, living with her widowed sister on the sixth floor of another block of flats along the Durban sea-front, and he had talked to her for an hour.

  It was a fascinating document. First it seemed almost miraculous that Wilks could be exhumed from the past to describe the night of the Erroll murder so many years later. At the same time, the material caused us some frustration. Although Tyler had done an excellent job, there were gaps and details that needed checking again with Wilks, questions arising from what she said that would occur only to aficionados as steeped in the evidence as ourselves. There was not time to go back to Wilks, and when I resumed the search ten years later, she had disappeared once again from the Durban sea-front. Nevertheless, she had clarified some important points. What follows is an edited version of Tyler’s own account of their meeting (Wilks referred to her former employers throughout as “Sir Delves” and “Lady Diana”):

  The night of the murder at the Broughton house, Miss Wilks was alone. She wasn’t frightened. She was often there alone. She used to turn all the lights on, and play the piano loudly downstairs. The servants’ rooms were right away from the house, and the dogs were locked in kennels, away from the leopards which used to prowl around the grounds.

  About 1 a.m. Miss Wilks was surprised by a knock. It turned out to be June Carberry’s driver. He said that Mrs. Carberry was returning to the Broughton house after the party. He brought a suitcase of clothes and Miss Wilks led him upstairs to one of the guest rooms, where he laid out Mrs. Carberry’s clothes, and left.

  At about 2 a.m. Sir Delves returned, with Mrs. Carberry. They both went upstairs, followed by Miss Wilks. At the top of the stairs there is a long corridor. Sir Delves and Mrs. Carberry stopped. Mrs. Carberry thanked Sir Delves for a “lovely party.” Sir Delves said, “Goodnight, June darling.” Then he went one way down the corridor to his room, and Mrs. Carberry went the other. “And that was the last that anybody saw of Sir Delves that night,” said Miss Wilks. She herself went to Mrs. Carberry’s room. Mrs. Carberry complained of a fever. Miss Wilks fetched her some quinine tablets and some whisky, then sat and talked to Mrs. Carberry for a while.

  Some time later, perhaps
an hour, another car arrived and there was a knock on the door. Miss Wilks went down to open it. “Lady Diana nearly fell into the room; she must have been leaning on the door when I opened it. She had a face like thunder. Lord Erroll was with her. It was obvious there had been a fight. There was none of the usual lovey-dovey stuff between them.”

  Miss Wilks pointed out a tray of bottles, and suggested Lord Erroll have a whisky, “Why, Wilkie,” said Lord Erroll, “don’t you know I never touch whisky?” Diana complained she was hungry. A tin of biscuits that was usually kept for her was up in Sir Delves’s room. “He hadn’t been sleeping well,” said Miss Wilks, “so I fixed him a Thermos with something warm to drink, and I took up the biscuits. Lady Diana was away, so I had left them in Sir Delves’s room. When Lady Diana said she was hungry, I said I would fetch them down. But she said not to worry. But I wish I had gone. I might have changed the whole trial if I had. I would have been able to tell the court definitely whether Sir Delves was in his room at that time—or not.”

  Miss Wilks mentioned to Diana that June was upstairs and that she had a slight fever. Diana went upstairs to see her. Miss Wilks picked up a jewel box that Diana had brought back with her and dropped on to a table, and took it upstairs to Diana’s room. Diana spent a “few minutes” with June, then went downstairs again. Miss Wilks went to June’s room and sat talking to her. She did not hear Erroll’s car driving away.

  After some time—“perhaps about half an hour”—Diana came upstairs again, and went to June Carberry’s room. Miss Wilks herself retired. She could hear June and Diana talking excitedly. She wondered “when on earth they would stop.” In the end they did stop. She presumes that Diana went to her room, to sleep. She herself then turned in. It was very late. She heard nobody else stirring.

  After the murder was discovered, the police questioned her “but they didn’t get much out of me. I told them I wasn’t a clairvoyant.” She said that she was questioned for hours. At the end of it all, she was very tired. The investigating officer took her aside. He said gently, “Wilkie, off the record, who do you really think murdered Lord Erroll?” “I didn’t think. I just blurted out. I was surprised as anybody. I said, ‘Diana.’”

  “Oh, you should have seen her,” said Miss Wilks of Diana. “She had those special kind of lips. Sensual lips. And those eyes! And her skin! The sun never touched it. I saw her in the bath once, stretched out with £90,000 worth of pearls round her neck. I asked if I should take them off, but she just laughed and said, ‘Leave them be, Wilkie.’ Oh, she had a figure on her. And couldn’t she ride! She was just like one with the horse. Not like Sir Delves. He had a gammy arm, you know, and he always used to fall off.”

  Miss Wilks still swears she doesn’t know for certain who committed the murder, although towards the end of the interview she looked up wistfully and said, “It does look like Sir Delves did it. It can’t hurt him to say that now, can it?” She continued, “He was a fine man. Sir Delves. He wasn’t like the rest of them. Aristocrats? Lords and ladies? Don’t talk to me about aristocrats. I hate their guts. Of course. Sir Delves was an aristocrat as well. But he was different.”

  Did she lie to the police to save Sir Delves? She was quite shocked by the question, and so was her sister. “Oh no,” said Miss Wilks. “We weren’t brought up like that, you know, I would never tell a lie. Of course, under some circumstances I might omit something. But I would never tell a lie.” Then, quite startlingly. Miss Wilks said vehemently, “But June Carberry did. She lied for him. She even perjured herself in court, and I don’t blame her …

  “After the murder, before he was arrested. Sir Delves tried to get me to kill him.” said Miss Wilks. “I haven’t told anybody else that, not even my sister. He called up to me, and asked if I had a minute; and I said, ‘Yes, Sir Delves.’ and he came upstairs, and he had this syringe all ready. He was holding it with the needle pointing up, and he asked me to stick it in his arm. But the needle was broken, and I couldn’t do it. Just as well. Just imagine if I had! He didn’t tell me then that it was poison, but he did tell me later, poor man. It was all so sad, really. I don’t think anything would have happened if he hadn’t married her. He should have just kept her, like he did before.”

  One day after his arrest. Miss Wilks visited Broughton in jail. “He looked happier than I had ever seen him before. He even told me. ‘Wilkie, I’m much happier here than I ever was in Karen.’”

  Wilks was not the only person to whom Broughton communicated feelings of relief, almost of well-being during those weeks of prison routine. And in court he said, “I think I received more genuine kindness and thought both from the prison officials and prisoners than I ever have outside prison.” Wilks’s story of Broughton asking for help with his broken syringe also has the ring of truth. Morphine was very much on Broughton’s mind ever since Soames had provided the Medinal, a week before the murder. He had even arranged for it to be smuggled into the jail in case the verdict went against him.

  Had I been able to interview Wilks myself, I would have asked her whether Broughton appeared to be drunk as he climbed the stairs; whether he needed June to support him; and to confirm or deny that she was “drilled” by members of the Karen household on what she should tell the police. In the end, since there is no question of Wilks lying to protect her former employers so many years later, at least it may be accepted that Erroll and Diana did appear at the door, and that Erroll was not killed on his way to the house at Karen.

  Wilks makes some interesting points: Broughton apparently was not sleeping well, despite the whisky nightcaps; and she disagrees with June’s times. Her information backs up the possibility of June inventing all the times that night, in the knowledge, perhaps, that Wilks would never be able to refute her story. Wilks ultimately gives June an alibi, Broughton no alibi, and Diana a loose alibi, by introducing the “half hour” she spent downstairs.

  Would Wilks not have heard Broughton shuffling along the corridor for his two visits to June’s room—was that what she meant when she said June perjured herself? Or heard the barking of the dog? She appears to have been one of the last in the household to go to sleep, kept awake by Diana and June “talking excitedly.” Were they talking excitedly because they both knew that Broughton had left the house to talk to Erroll? Did the deadline for the article get in the way of the one opportunity we had to prove or disprove Broughton’s story by questioning Wilks more closely?

  The following extracts from Connolly’s notebooks—written after the Wilks text arrived—are added here, not as an elucidation of the mystery, but as an example of the kind of fevered puzzling in which he indulged each time new evidence was introduced:

  JC heard no sound of creaks, doors, keys. The stairs creaked loud enough to be heard over the whole house.

  DB could not have climbed down from the roof. “He slided down the bannisters”—Cressida (Connolly, aged 7).

  DB could only have gone down the stairs when Wilks was getting hot whisky from the kitchen or quinine or hot water bottle—in case she heard him.

  Wilks would not be likely to get bottle from JC’s bathroom as water would not be hot enough at 3 a.m.

  There was a loo downstairs where he could hide if seen.

  Could he have used a rope ladder?

  Coming back—not so easy—but Wilks asleep, Diana retires—only JC awake. Dog hears him? JC invents 2nd call, DB 1st estimates it at 4 a.m.

  The upper storey of the house at Karen.

  Wilks gives D a time when she could have done it too. Is that because she suspected her or vice versa? Wilks covers JC who otherwise might have driven DB in her car.

  JC said she heard D and E talking and laughing—but they were not laughing but quarrelling—therefore she:

  1. Didn’t hear them.

  2. They pretended they were laughing, not quarrelling.

  3. They really were laughing. Wilks was wrong.

  DB simply heard voices. Probably JC wished to hide the quarrel, it was still one of the
better nights.

  “There was a door open when D and E came back” (presumably from D’s statement). He also had his veranda key—so he could have got out noiselessly by this door, perhaps returned by it.

  Why did Wilks (or the others) not mention D bringing the dog back? Wilks especially.

  JC’s evidence covers up for DB, Wilks and Diana

  Wilks’s evidence covers up for JC

  DB’s evidence implicates no one else

  Diana only made a statement

  A door was left open. Anyone could have got in or out of it.

  What do we know of Wilks anyway?

  She says Mrs. C’s chauffeur/butler left—for where? in what? did he come round the next morning?

  One of the most interesting items in the Wilks interview was her description of the arrival of Diana and Erroll—the expression on her face “like thunder.” It supported a popular rumour—a story believed by Diana’s own friends to this day—that she and Erroll had had a terminal row on the night of the murder, after the dinner party. The theory, which varies little from version to version, is based on the idea that Broughton, while pretending to “cut his losses” and behave with scrupulous honour, had in fact reneged on the marriage pact and the promise to pay Diana £5,000 a year.