White Mischief

by James Fox

  It had filtered through to Evelyn, then aged twenty-four, through chance conversations and the mumbled commiserations of his father’s friends on the racecourse and in the City, that things had gone disastrously wrong with the estate. The vast wealth that Delves Broughton had inherited had dwindled to almost nothing in fifteen years.

  Evelyn’s father had cheated the trust by selling around 32,500 acres of Chesire farmland at perhaps £50 an acre. He had pocketed the money—some £1.5 million—instead of channelling it through the estate.

  “My father had a mania that he was hard up,” said Evelyn, “even when there was no justification for it.”

  Broughton had also made consistent, almost compulsive mistakes with his investments—gambling, from the distance of Doddington, on the foreign exchange markets, on the commodity market, and investing in “tin pot gold mines,” according to Evelyn. Betting took its toll as well (Broughton bet heavily on illegal cock-fighting) and Doddington, which had to be full every weekend, was still run on a roaring scale. Only trivial economies were attempted. The Hill Street house was closed down for a few weeks at a time; the staff was moderately cut down at Doddington.

  Evelyn discovered that the trustees of the estate, some of them employees of Broughton himself, had put up no resistance to his father’s activities. So, at the age of twenty-four Evelyn asked his solicitors to challenge them, and confronted his own father. “I told him I’d heard that there was nothing left of my eventual inheritance,” he said, “and asked where the money had gone. My father lost his temper. He came round the desk and chased me from his study with a riding crop.”

  Evelyn then hired his own solicitors, hoping to save what was left. “I tied him up to the extent of the estate in the first year of the war because he’d been a naughty boy. And whatever money there was in the kitty was practically bugger all. It was something like £50,000. All the money from the sale of the land was gone.

  “I’d never thought of it before,” said Sir Evelyn, “but now I see why he left for Kenya and closed down Doddington.”

  When Broughton arrived in Liverpool in November 1942, there was no member of his family, nor even Mrs. Woodhouse to meet him. That was perhaps not surprising in view of the difficulties of wartime travel and the secrecy surrounding shipping timetables. Instead, Broughton was greeted by two detectives from Scotland Yard, who were well informed of his movements. Cheated of his murder conviction, Poppy had sent information ahead that once more put Broughton under criminal suspicion, this time for fraud. But there was, for the moment, no hard case against him, and he was allowed to reach Doddington.

  Nevertheless, the interview had a crushing effect on Broughton’s delicate mental stability, held in balance until now only by the hope of a dignified return. That disappointment explains much of his behaviour in the following three weeks. He returned to Doddington almost in secrecy. The Chester Chronicle reported later that “very few people were aware of his return,” and that he had stayed at the house of the butler, Mr. Martin, on a far side of the park, “where he had been seen out walking.” Doddington, meanwhile, had been turned into a wartime school.

  On November 24th, Broughton telephoned Eustace Bowles, a solicitor from Market Drayton, whom he had known for thirty years. He told him that he had been thrown from a horse (no mention of the fall on the railway embankment); that his back was in plaster; that it was very uncomfortable and that he was shortly to go into hospital to have it removed. Broughton asked, “Can I come over and see you sometime?” Bowles suggested December 6th, a Sunday.

  By now it must have been clear to Broughton that his family knew of the extent to which he had defrauded the estate. He told Mrs. Woodhouse that he would contact them “in good time.” He did visit Vera, who was living with her mother near Wrexham, to try to persuade her to come back to him, but she refused.

  At some point soon after his arrival, Broughton had a chance meeting with an old friend, Alan Horne, a local horse breeder who had known him since the late 1920s, and in the middle of a long conversation, Broughton confessed to the murder. It was the first of two confessions he was to make in this period.

  Tipped off by Quentin Crewe, we discovered that Horne was now living in retirement in Worthing, Sussex, and we met him there, in the Beach Hotel, in May and June of 1969. Slight, wiry, humorous and direct, he was immediately likeable. He was neatly dressed in tweeds, scrubbed and shining—a man obviously more at home in the stable-yard than in retirement in a genteel town on the south coast.

  Horne had brooded for so long on his conversation with Broughton, had felt the burden of it so acutely, that he had written a play about the incident in a laborious longhand, in a red exercise book like a small ledger with a hard cover. Where his conversation with Broughton had been sketchy on facts Horne had used his own imagination. Connolly described the play as “too far fetched and hopelessly wooden, but exciting.”

  As a breeding consultant, Horne had often visited Doddington in the 1930s, but had given up horses in 1941. By 1942 he was a censor in the Security Branch in Liverpool.

  On the day he met Broughton, Horne was travelling to see a friend in Malpas. He described what happened:

  I broke my journey at a small village on the outskirts of Nantwich, Walgerton, I think, and had lunch there. I saw Sir Delves when I came out of the pub. He sat in a car belonging to a friend of his, and his friend got out to visit another friend, leaving Sir Delves in the car.

  As I walked by he put his hand out of the car. He told me his friend would be back in half an hour. We started chatting, chiefly about racing matters, and eventually I touched on the trial. I said I was sorry to hear he’d been involved in all this trouble and strain and I saw it had ended all right. As I say. I was an old friend and we chatted for about an hour. He said. “I didn’t do it, you know.” I said. “I didn’t think you did. Sir Delves.” He began about the affair himself. He went from strength to strength. He needed no prompting from me. He was a distressed man. He was on perpetual edge, nervous, agitated. He used to be a happy-go-lucky fellow in the early days. He was smart, erect, handsome, military bearing, you know. But I think in his latter years, he drank quite a lot.

  I remember he said, “If I tell you a few things. Horne, will you promise not to spill the beans?”

  Broughton told Horne that he had planned the murder with a friend. He wouldn’t mention names and referred to the accomplice as “Derek,” who for reasons of his own, wanted Erroll out of the way. Broughton had allowed himself to be goaded into a plan whereby he would pay for an African, hired by “Derek” for £1,000, to assassinate Erroll. He also agreed to the revolver thefts. Broughton, who had been drinking too much, then regretted the plan, tried to call it off, but was told by “Derek” that the African was now uncontactable. According to Broughton, Erroll was in fact shot one day ahead of schedule.

  The African had hidden in the back of the car in the driveway at Karen, shot Erroll at the junction and disappeared. Broughton then said that when the trial was over and he was brooding about it in Ceylon, he formed the idea that “Derek” had double-crossed him, and had gone ahead with the murder in spite of Broughton’s efforts to stop it. Horne quotes Broughton as saying, “When I returned to Kenya I challenged ‘Derek.’ He flushed angrily and denied it, and there was something sheepish about his manner and reply which I didn’t like.” (It must be remembered that Horne had re-created the conversation from memory.)

  We asked Horne why he thought Broughton had decided to tell him the story. He replied, “We were interested in racing and those connections create some bond which is hard to define—probably because some of them know a lot about each other, something which you don’t find in other walks of life. If you’re a good racing man, you’re a good loser—I can’t explain it.”

  Broughton spent his days taking his favourite walk around the lake at Doddington, talking to anyone on the estate whom he met by chance. He saw Mrs. Woodhouse every day. At his insistence they would read over the transc
ript together again and again while he flattered himself on his courtroom performance.

  Mrs. Woodhouse had moved to Hastings in the mid-1960s and we met her there, in the Queen’s Hotel, on a windy day in late July. We each took notes on her appearance.

  Connolly: Aunt was a well known Cheshire horse woman. One son, now a doctor in Hammersmith. Dark, late middle aged, cosy, sense of humour, nice brown eyes, rubbery smell. Keen on good old days. Tory party. Double whiskies. Suspicious at first (photo in papers) but unbent gradually. Loved crime stories. Hates Labour. Her sharpness!

  Fox: Obviously strapping hunting gal in early days. Gin set. Typical of odd half of Broughton’s entourage. Glasses. Tailored tweeds with sapphire horsey brooch. To a double whisky at tea time, craftily suggested by C. C. she replied, “A damn good idea.”

  Mrs. Woodhouse didn’t come to the point immediately. She described the early days at Doddington, her dislike of Diana; how when he returned Broughton called Diana “a real bitch.” Vera’s wanting to marry Lord Moyne, she said, had been the cause of all his troubles. It was a further shock when his daughter Rosamund, whom he adored—and vice versa—got married. It was then up to Broughton to get a young and beautiful woman. Vera herself had been very beautiful, with green eyes and a wonderful figure. Rosamund would have come out to Kenya for the trial, but he told her she shouldn’t.

  She didn’t think that Rosamund avoided him when he returned. He simply hadn’t let his children know, and she didn’t think that he had even seen Vera.

  Broughton, she said, was very much in love with Diana. He was a most honourable and splendid man, and he couldn’t stand this kind of dishonesty. It had crossed her mind that he might have been impotent, however. She noticed the great interest he took in monkey glands after a neighbour had used them with good results, but she thought that it may simply have been vanity, his declining looks, that concerned him. He was a very bad rider, but he was fit, and it was nonsense about his inability to walk over distances, even at speed.

  He had taken to drink in Kenya with bad results. Until then he had been wary of it because of his brother Brian, who was “a drunken sot.” He used to come up to the house and Broughton would say, “That’s why I never touch a drop.”

  “They were married on April Fool’s Day,” said Mrs. Woodhouse (in fact it was Guy Fawkes’ Day). “And he wrote to me, ‘I hope I’m not the April Fool.’ But of course he was, poor dear.

  “I saw him almost every day after he came back,” she said. “He would come to collect me, driven by his chauffeur. Then we would go back to Doddington for tea or a walk. We had an affinity. Put it like that. We were both lonely.

  “He was terribly worried about the tenant farmers’ and the locals’ opinion of him after the trial. They had placed bets in the pub on the verdict. He was living at the time at Badgers’ Bank … He wanted quiet dinners. He couldn’t stand the pace. I remember, he thought June Carberry a good and loyal friend, but thought Wilks as bad as her mistress, and completely on her side.”

  She and Broughton were discussing the transcript again, two days before he was due to go to Liverpool to have his plaster changed. “We talked a lot and went for walks together,” said Mrs. Woodhouse. “He said to me, ‘You know I did it, Marie.’ I was dumbfounded. I said, ‘You didn’t, Jock.’ He said, ‘I’ve never run so fast in my life.’”

  “You know, we laughed about it. He said he thought he was doing everyone a service, but you know, I think that was boasting a bit. He was trying to boost his morale.”

  Broughton told Mrs. Woodhouse that he had left the house after seeing Mrs. Carberry (official time: 2:10 a.m.) and had walked to the point of the ambush, and had then run back. He told her that the stealing of the pistols was genuine, and the murder was done with a third gun which he had later given to a friend to hide. “He didn’t say any more, and I couldn’t ask him about it in detail,” said Mrs. Woodhouse.

  She had the impression that Broughton was obsessed with the affair of Diana and Joss. He had written to her soon after it began. “He told me that Joss Erroll had already been horsewhipped in Nairobi. I asked him why he hadn’t done that, and he said he wasn’t strong enough, and he wanted it to be final.

  “We laughed about him stoking up the bonfire,” she said. “It was completely out of character.”

  At the end of our meeting, as we stood on the pavement in the breeze, Mrs. Woodhouse said, “Weil, Cheerio, gentlemen.” Connolly and I turned and struggled along the strand—he in a felt hat blowing about the brim—to a bar where we could write up our notes. Later Mrs. Wood-house wrote to say how much she had enjoyed our article.

  Two days after his last conversation with Marie Wood-house, on December 2nd, 1942, Broughton went to the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool:

  He went to the Adelphi without me [Mrs. Woodhouse had told us]:’ We had booked two rooms and were going to a show to cheer him up. Jock was waiting to go into hospital to have his plaster changed to a lighter, more comfortable one. At the last moment I couldn’t go with him because my son, Nick, was very ill and I couldn’t leave him.

  I rang Jock and told him, but he seemed to expect me to go anyway. He was a bit disappointed. He rang me back later and said. “Are you all right. Marie—financially I mean?” I should have known then. I said, “Of course, Jock.” I was always broke. He said he would see me next day. I said, yes, if my son was better. I tried to ring him the next morning, but the manager said Sir Delves Broughton was under treatment and wasn’t to be disturbed. What a fool I was not to have realised what he was doing to himself. I knew he already had a tube of morphia in jail, in case the verdict went against him.

  The Cheshire Chronicle reported what happened in the following three days:

  … Miss Bridget Hayes, head housekeeper at the Adelphi Hotel, said that about 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 2nd. she received a telephone message as to the arrival of Sir Delves.

  THE CORONER: Did he seem a little fastidious?

  MISS HAYES: Just a little. He asked to be kept perfectly quiet. He didn’t want to be disturbed by anybody.

  Q:

  Did you ask him if there was anything he would like or you could do for him and he emphasised that he didn’t want to be disturbed?

  A:

  Yes.

  Witness added that Sir Delves told her his intended arrangements for the weekend. He said he intended going into the Northern Hospital on Sunday morning.

  Q:

  Did he say how in the interim he was to be treated or not treated at all—rather unusual wasn’t it?

  A:

  Yes, he said he didn’t want to be disturbed by anybody.

  Q:

  That was from Wednesday to Sunday. That surprised you?

  A:

  Yes. I asked “What about food?” He replied, “I don’t want any food. I am looking after myself. I am preparing for an operation.”

  Q:

  Then you were not expecting to see him until after Sunday morning, neither at meals nor anything else?

  A:

  That is so.

  Q:

  A reference was made to the question of making his bed?

  A:

  He said not to worry about it.

  Forty-eight hours later, Miss Hayes found Broughton, much too late, bleeding from the nose and ears, and in a coma. She noticed a detail that would belong, more realistically, to a soap opera: a bottle label marked “Medinal” floating in the lavatory.

  Dr. Ray Maudsley, Resident Medical Officer at the Northern Hospital, admitted Broughton at 6:30 p.m. on Friday December 4th. There was a puncture mark on the inside of the left elbow and several other puncture marks, but not into the vein. Broughton had taken fourteen injections of Medinal. He died at 2:25 a.m. on December 5th.

  Mrs. Woodhouse was visited by the Cheshire police, and received an urgent message from Vera asking for a meeting. The question of suicide threatened the life insurance payments, and Mrs. Woodhouse understood that the family wanted to be sure. T
he coroner’s verdict left no question, however, about the cause of death.

  Broughton’s casket was put in the family vault at Broughton parish church. He had sent Mrs. Woodhouse packets of coffee and tea from Kenya—something of a wartime luxury. After his death, they continued to arrive. She found this “rather morbid.”

  He had left two notes, both addressed to his solicitors. The most significant message was to do with the “strain” of the trial, and the fact that he could not face further charges. He ended the note with characteristic pomposity: Moriturus te Saluto. The second note said that, as a result of his back injury, he had blacked out many times on the journey home and since his arrival; that he had lost all sensation on his right side, and was becoming paralysed. He had therefore decided to take his life.

  20

  BLACKMAIL

  Gentlemen; have you ever heard anything so fantastic? Here is a man whose whole life is being ruined; having his wife stolen from him right under his nose; being made a complete fool of before the whole public of Kenya; and when his wife comes home he discusses who shall pay for a bit of jewellery. Do you believe a word of it?

  For ourselves, Broughton’s obsession with this one particular piece of jewellery was certainly not to be dismissed so easily, if only because Broughton always brought up the subject with Diana at the moments of greatest crisis between them. A whiff of insurance frauds had always surrounded Broughton in our minds ever since Connolly had heard the rumour in Nairobi, back in 1967, that Broughton had paid a hard-up officer to steal his pictures.

  Pearls, in some form or other, had an insistent way of coming back into the story again and again, and we felt instinctively that the pearl trail would be a hot one to follow, with its suggestions of accompanying blackmail. Looking for clues, we found an original newsroom memorandum in the cuttings library of the Daily Express in Broughton’s file—a rarity, since memos seldom find their way into the “morgue.” It was written by a newsroom reporter on December 11th, 1942, soon after Broughton’s death.