White Mischief

by James Fox

  Memo Re: Sir Delves Broughton

  The Manchester office tell us that they have heard this story from a local man for what it is worth.

  It is to the effect that Sir Delves Broughton who died in Liverpool the other day and whose inquest will be held on Monday. December 14th, was concerned with the Doddington Park robbery a few years ago. At the time of the robbery three pictures were missing, supposed to be valuable.

  The pictures were never recovered and the insurance company were not quite happy about the whole thing, but paid up apparently to Sir Delves Broughton.

  It is now suggested that since the murder case of the Earl of Erroll in Nairobi—Sir Delves Broughton was acquitted—someone in Nairobi has told the police that Sir Delves Broughton was very “sticky” to newspapers about the whole affair.

  It is also suggested that when Sir Delves Broughton returned to Liverpool recently Scotland Yard were interested about the picture robbery and were on his track. It is not known whether Yard men interviewed him or not but his death is believed to be suicide. It is expected that some kind of white-washing verdict will be made at the inquest on Monday.

  It was time for another lunch with Poppy at the Metropole Hotel, Brighton. Now he told us that the insurance company which had paid out to Broughton for the stolen pictures from Doddington and the pearls missing from Miss Caldwell’s car had been alerted by the press reports of the Nairobi trial, particularly by the squabbles between Jock and Diana about pearls. But the insurance company’s enquiries came to nothing: they found themselves pursuing, instead, the Erroll pearls. This, however, alerted Poppy. His informers in the Karen house reported continuous arguments on the subject. He had also seen a letter from Broughton to Diana, threatening to implicate her in a fraud unless she came back to him and returned with him to England on the next boat. Diana was wondering what to do about Broughton’s threats, so Poppy was expecting a visit. But it was not Diana who came to see him. It was Hugh Dickinson.

  Dickinson told Poppy that he had “something to get off his chest.” At the end of the interview, he signed the following statement

  In the June before the War. Sir Delves Broughton came to me in London and said he wanted to talk over with me a proposition he had in mind. He said that the then Diana Caldwell must in no circumstances know of the proposition he was about to make to me. He suggested I should take the pearls which she was wearing and that he had bought for approx. £6.000, as an investment and which he had lent to her and which he had insured for approx. £12,000. The reason he gave for this was that he was hard up and she was also the same and that he thought I was a likely person to try and help as he knew I was extremely fond of her. I told him I’d think the matter over, as I could not possibly give an answer at once. He approached me later and again I stalled him. Later on he said that he knew we were all going in a party to the South of France and he thought that would be a golden opportunity. I said I would if a suitable opportunity occurred, but would make no promises.

  In the South of France I was staying at Juan les Pins and she and X [Mark Pilkington] were staying at the Carlton in Cannes. The three of us together, with about half a dozen other people, had drinks in the Carlton before going to have dinner at a restaurant about 20 miles away. She and X were staying the night at another hotel, and so her luggage was put into the car while we were standing around waiting. When it had all been put in we motored in either two or three cars to dinner. In the middle of dinner, which was rather hilarious. I got up and walked out and removed her dressing case from X’s car to mine and then returned to finish the meal. After dinner all dispersed and I drove down to a quiet place on the sea shore, opened the dressing case, put the pearls in my pocket and threw the rest into the sea. The next day I buried them and they stayed there until the day before I left to come to England, where I buried them again until I got in touch with DB. He told me to buy a deed box. put them in it and deliver the box to him at his solicitors, and, to avoid curiosity, to say when I handed them over, “Here’s the box you said you would keep for me.” I did this, but do not know the name of the solicitors. After a short lapse, he came to me and said that he had some pictures which he wanted removed from Doddington as they were extremely well-insured and he told me that if I refused to do this, he would ask his solicitors to ask Scotland Yard to investigate the box which I had left there, and I felt compelled to fall in with his wishes.

  He told me to come to Doddington and he would show me what pictures he wanted removed, which I think were three in number, but I could not swear to this. It might have been four. He told me that I should need some collapsible step ladders which I could get at Gamages, a large bag to put the pictures in and a glass cutter to cut the glass from the lavatory window, and to hire a car from a London firm. He told me to go up and do it on a certain Sunday towards the end of October 1939 as he would be away that night, staying in an hotel in Liverpool. I went up on the appointed day and at about 11 o’clock at night started operations. I drove the car to about 100 yards from the house and parked it under a tree and tried to cut the glass in the window which he had indicated to me, but failed to do so.

  I then walked round to the front of the house to have a look around and happened to notice that a window on the first floor was open about a couple of inches. It was a bright moonlight night, I climbed the drain pipe and got into the window and walked through the house, opened the front door and brought in the step ladder, bag etc. I cut the pictures out of the frames, and, two of them being too large to get into the bag, I cut them into smaller bits. I then returned to the car and drove away. When I had driven for about an hour, I stopped the car at a lonely spot and, as Broughton had suggested, tried to burn the pictures with the help of some petrol. I failed to do this. I then returned the pictures to the bag and motored on again for some time until I came to a small river which ran right up against the road. I fastened the pictures to the step ladder and, with the aid of it, sank them. I then drove back to London.

  That was the end so far as I was concerned, with the exception that later on I had some conversation with him when he told me that the insurance company was being rather awkward about it, but that he thought it would be all right. I was never offered and would not have thought of accepting any consideration for what I had done, except that he gave me back the pearls with which he had been blackmailing me. I did not know what to do with them and did not want to put them into my bank as my financial position was bad and I thought they might be curious. So I asked Diana Caldwell if she would put in her bank for me a box with some private papers, telling her the reason I did not want them put in my bank. This she did. I think in her name, but I could not be positive.

  I was told after I had removed the pictures that the firm which had done the valuation of them was bogus. Broughton told me that the reason he was having trouble with the insurance company about payment was that he had recently increased the insurance enormously and the insurance company was unable to find the firm which had carried out the valuation, as it had turned out to be bogus.

  Dickinson told Poppy that he had “never had such a hot time going through Customs”; that among the jewellery thrown into the sea was a jade brooch, a gold and platinum bracelet watch, and three blue stone bracelets. Among the pictures he destroyed were two Romney portraits of members of the Broughton family.

  Miss Caldwell had received a cheque from the insurance company for £12,730 10.v. od. The pearls had ended up without her knowledge in her own deposit box. No wonder Broughton would continually bring up the subject of jewellery with Diana. But the idea was macabre in the extreme, and revealing of his true nature beneath the calm, patrician exterior. Diana in this scenario would live the rest of her life with a man she despised, under the everlasting threat of blackmail.

  It is also clear what took place in Grogan’s office between Broughton and Dickinson, when Broughton demanded that Dickinson persuade Diana to come back to him. In his confession to Horne, did he intend “Derek” to mean
Dickinson, in revenge for Dickinson having resisted the blackmail and informed on him to Scotland Yard? Dickinson told Poppy that if Broughton were going to blackmail him, he would bring Broughton down as well.

  Thirteen years later, when I telephoned Dickinson, I was shocked to hear the frailness in his voice. The sporty confidence that I remembered from the meeting with Connolly had disappeared. He told me that his wife was in hospital, her thigh broken in a mugging attack, and that he had undergone open heart surgery. The last ten years had been painful and sad. He immediately agreed to see me and I suggested the Ritz.

  His face was handsome, a little anaemic and he had acquired the charm and attentive politeness that often comes with old age. We tried to order drinks from a young Hispanic waiter with a sycophantic grin. Dickinson said, “I’ll have a dry martini.” This simple request was misunderstood—a frustrating wrangle began about methods and ingredients. Dickinson stared after the waiter and said, “What an extraordinary man.” The Ritz had declined. Dickinson had recently found it impossible to fill the basin in the washroom: there were no plugs. “At the Ritz,” he said. “The chap regretted it. He said they couldn’t have plugs because people took them.”

  We began by correcting some biographical details, and quickly cleared up the confusion about his alibi. He had been transferred to Nairobi Hospital with his poisoned foot—that was how he had been able to see Broughton and Diana at the end of January. He also said that any inside knowledge of the murder itself, reported by Dickinson to his friends and relations, had been pure speculation.

  I found Dickinson moving, sad, very dignified and I nearly abandoned the idea of showing him his confession, which he hadn’t seen since the day he signed it forty years before, and which he must have thought was buried for ever. But he was also relaxed, resigned, and the past seemed to be something he enjoyed talking about. So I told him that I thought Broughton had tried to blackmail him; that I had brought with me his confession made to Poppy. He flushed just a little and there was silence between us. Then, with the same polite composure, he said, “He was trying to. He was being a bit awkward. That [the confession] was to try to cut the ground from under his feet.”

  I gave him the document, which he read slowly, his hands shaking at the edges of the pages. He dropped a page on to the floor. Halfway through he said, “It comes to life now. How did you get this?” He read on and said, “It would certainly add flavour to your book.”

  A second round of drinks was ordered. Dickinson continued reading slowly and with great concentration. He looked up and said, “Good Heavens, I’m going to be famous or, rather, notorious.” When he had finished reading, he said, “I shall never forget that night as long as I live. It was absolutely fantastic.” He then described the evening much as he had in the confession, adding, it may be said, some picturesque details.

  “You have no idea how tough canvas is. You think it’s paper thin, delicate. But I had to chop and chop and chop. So I cut these beastly things out—each of them about that size”—Dickinson pointed to the rococo mirror in the cocktail bar—“and I walked out of the front door like a gentleman, found a quiet field and tried to burn them. All the petrol burned away, but the canvas just wouldn’t burn. I was so exhausted that I fell asleep driving to London and ran off the road. But Godfrey Davis didn’t seem to mind.”

  I asked if he was forced to steal the pictures because Broughton had blackmailed him for his part in the pearl robbery. “Yes, Broughton was doing all the batting at the time,” he said. “For me it was just rather an adventure and a challenge.” But finally Dickinson refused to help Broughton: “After the trial he wanted Diana to come slinking back. That’s why he tried to blackmail us both. I said, ‘To hell with it, she’ll do what she wants.’” (Diana later made it clear to me that she herself was not in a position to be blackmailed by Broughton.)

  When Dickinson returned to England, on a troopship, he was taken off ahead of all the other passengers, by Scotland Yard detectives. He was never charged: “As soon as they know you’re making no financial gain out of it, they lose interest in you,” he said. Instead, Dickinson cooperated with the insurance assessors. Broughton, to whom he had eventually returned the pearls, had intimated that he had hidden them in a tree trunk at Doddington. Dickinson and the assessor spent some days walking over the estate looking for them. They never found them, although Sir Evelyn Broughton remembers that the pearls were eventually found by an estate worker and returned to the insurance company.

  Dickinson talked, finally, of Diana. He seemed apprehensive about her; he was perhaps still under her spell. Their relationship had always been platonic, he said, but they were very close and he would do anything for her. Diana’s maid in Duke Street, before the war, had once called him a “fetch and carry man.” Diana had taken great exception to this and Dickinson said, laughing, “It’s not something I liked being called.” But Diana, he said, wanted jewels and titles and “I didn’t want to step out of my league.” They had not spoken for twenty years. “I was devoted to her,” he said, “still am in a funny way.”

  21

  WHITE ROYALTY

  Dreamy days at the Muthaiga Club—the last stage of the quest in 1979. The crackling of insects in the room, ants from nowhere suddenly collecting on dead bugs outside the metal window, the rain dripping down on the banana leaves. The sensual thrill of returning to familiar pleasures, the sour smell of woodsmoke, bright red earth, metallic guitar rumbas wheezing from the taxi radio.

  The pleasure of all bedrooms in good British colonial clubs—and Muthaiga is a fine example—is their enormous size and their spartan airiness. The doorways into these spaces are on an equally grand scale. There is also spare Indian-made custom furniture, circa 1930, an isolated washbasin along one wall, a water decanter, a hard floor of green or brown linoleum, and a luxurious bathroom, where the thundering of hot water echoes against the cream walls.

  Bachelors are often billeted in the Military Wing—the cheapest sleeping arrangements available—but I was directed to more luxurious quarters, in a room that was reached along a communal balcony. The Club rules in my desk drawer were unchanged (members bringing their own liquor will be charged; no snakes to be brought into the Club; members upright after midnight in the public rooms still to be charged, by the hour), and there was the vital stationery: the bar chits coloured white, the others green and pink for every category of need. There were many servants to make the long journey, chit in hand, from the rooms to the bar and back. Was this the room in which Portman was staying and where Broughton changed into evening dress on the night of the toast; Portman, flushed with the martinis and the thundering hot water?

  Tea is brought at 6:30 a.m., unless members leave special instructions, in the sturdy, pale blue tea sets of the civilisation anglaise. The tea is always extra strong and this is the moment for reverie and luxury, for the sensation of the early tropical light in the short rains, the sweet smell of vegetation, the coolness, the calls of the nightjars, the unbroken sound of sweeping in the yard outside and on the balcony. It allows a two-hour break before muster in the dining room for the great Swahili breakfast of pawpaw and “bacon na mayai,” the Daily Nation and the East African Standard. Time to speculate on images of the Buick 6 at the junction of the Karen and Ngong roads.

  In the members’ study I reviewed the complaints book:

  4:30 a.m. woken by native sweeping leaves. 5:15 a.m. woken by tramping of watchman putting out lights. 5:30 a.m. woken by trundling of some handcart behind bedrooms. For some 30 years this native (or his ancestors) has been sweeping leaves before daylight. Is this necessary?

  Another: I like the military wing. It is peaceful. One is spared the shrill cries emanating from the rooms of married members engaged in beating their wives into submission.

  At midday, the light shines off the trees as bright as crystal. In the Club secretary’s office, a servant had come to complain to the Club manager—a former Kenya District Commissioner—that he had been insu
lted. When the servant was originally accused of taking cream from the dining room, the manager had said, “I suppose you’ve drunk it.” The manager now said, “If you can’t see it’s a joke, if you can’t take a joke, I’ve really got no time for you.” The manager refused to apologise, and the Club servant refused to leave until his sense of honour was restored, which seemed an unlikely prospect.

  At a dinner party in Nairobi to which I’m invited, the table is set with a large arrangement of bougainvillaea petals in a Waterford bowl, silver candlesticks on a polished Queen Anne table made by a local joiner. Persian rugs; sherry with the soup; piri-piri juice; pigeon and partridge; fried bananas and claret.

  Topics: Different species of flame trees—Nandi and Abyssinian. Only Nandi in Kenya when Elspeth Huxley arrived. Criticism of greed and waste of new Kikuyu nou-veau-riche farmers. Defence, up to a point, of the venality of Kenyatta; of his obtaining a large acreage near Nakuru for which he neither paid nor compensated the owners, because he had thus stabilised a warring tribal area.

  Everybody has their version of the Erroll murder. There is reverence and admiration for Diana Delamere. A woman says, “God she’s clever, Diana.” Speculation follows on her value; the total acreage she now owns, and the settlement left by her husband, Tom Delamere. From now on, this is all we talk about until 2 a.m.

  “You should see her at the fishing competitions at Malindi. All alone, jewels from head to foot, walking down the pier to her marlin boat. She almost always comes back with a fish—and marlin are hard to catch now off the coast.”

  First man: “Well, she’s got class. More than you could have said for Wallis Simpson.”