Murder by Mistake

by M. J. Trow

  Murder by Mistake

  M. J. Trow

  Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

  passport photo

  Copyright

  Murder by Mistake

  Copyright © 2012 by M. J. Trow

  Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2012 by RosettaBooks, LLC.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Electronic edition published 2012 by RosettaBooks, LLC, New York.

  ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795324512

  Contents

  eForeword by Marilyn Bardsley

  Prologue: Murderous London

  Chapter 1: The Night in Question

  Chapter 2: “Gone for a Couple of Hours”

  Chapter 3: Lord Look-On

  Chapter 4: Lucky

  Chapter 5: Veronica

  Chapter 6: End of a Fairy Tale

  Chapter 7: The Midnight Run

  Chapter 8: Lord Lucan, in the Basement, with a Lead Pipe

  Chapter 9: Friends

  Chapter 10: Sandra

  Chapter 11: Countdown to Murder

  Chapter 12: Inquest

  Chapter 13: Looking for Lucky

  Chapter 14: The Unanswered Questions

  Chapter 15: Worst-Case Scenarios

  Chapter 16: The Dream of Paranoia

  Epilogue: “I’ve got my father on the line again.”

  Photo Credits/Index

  Sources

  eForeword by Marilyn Bardsley

  For some reason, Hollywood missed the sensational 1974 story of the murder that drove the handsome 7th earl of Lucan from his luxurious homes and private clubs to some unknown but widely speculated offshore haunt where British justice would never find him. His warped, narcissistic sense of entitlement snuffed out the life of a lovely young woman and mother, seriously injured his wife, psychologically damaged his three children, and made life hell for his family and friends.

  Crimescape is fortunate to have this uniquely British story told by the uniquely talented British author M.J. Trow. He is the creator of three highly acclaimed detective novel series: the 16-book Lestrade series, which is based on the police detective in the Sherlock Holmes stories; the 18-book Peter Maxwell series, which features “Mad Max,” a teacher in the flawed British educational system who pits himself against the bureaucracy to solve mysteries; and his newest, the Kit Marlowe series. The second Kit Marlowe novel, Silent Court, was published in 2011, and the third, Witch Hammer, will be published in the spring/fall of 2012. Scorpion’s Nest is currently in production for publication at the end of 2012.

  The Kit Marlowe book, Dark Entry, is the first in an historical mystery series taking place in Cambridge in 1583. About to graduate from Corpus Christi, the young Christopher Marlowe spends his days studying and his nights carousing with old friends. When one of them is discovered lying dead in his King’s College room, mouth open in a silent scream, Marlowe refuses to accept the official verdict of suicide. Calling on the help of his mentor, Sir Roger Manwood, Justice of the Peace, and the queen’s magus, Dr. John Dee, a poison expert, Marlowe sets out to prove that his friend was murdered.

  M.J. Trow has written 11 nonfiction books, many about historical figures, such as El Cid, Spartacus, Boudicca, and Jack the Ripper. Actress Angelina Jolie is a fan of his Vlad the Impaler: In Search of the Real Dracula.

  www.crimescape.com

  Prologue: Murderous London

  Think of murders in London and you probably conjure up the scum-cobbled alleyways of Whitechapel, Jack London’s Abyss, where the greatest serial killer of all time, Jack the Ripper, plied his trade in 1888. At least five street women from the East End, called “Unfortunates” by the prim Victorian middle class of the day, fell victim to Jack’s knife.

  But murderous London is full of victims. Only yards from the Ripper’s killing ground, gang member George Cornell was shot dead in the bar of the Blind Beggar pub in 1966—the bullet marks are still there. Go west and you won’t find—because it’s been demolished—10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill, where landlord John Christie raped and asphyxiated his targets before stashing their bodies in the garden, under the floorboards, in a kitchen cupboard. That was in the 1940s and 1950s. Go north to Hilldrop Crescent and look in vain for the house—it too has gone—where the “mild-mannered murderer,” American dentist Harvey Hawley Crippen, buried his wife in the cellar of Number 63 in 1910. Actually, he probably didn’t. Recent research indicates that the great pathologist Bernard Spilsbury got it wrong. The remains found in the basement were those of a man. Crippen was hanged anyway.

  If you know where to look, London is full of murder—sudden, horrifying death that shatters the stillness of a summer’s afternoon or punctuates the music of the night. The last place you’d look for it is Belgravia, the eminently respectable part of London sandwiched between Chelsea to the west, Pimlico to the south and Buckingham Palace to the north. It is full of opulent houses in squares and broad streets, property that changes hands for millions. The buildings gleam white in the summer sun, with four or five stories, columns gracing the porticoes and pretty hanging baskets of flowers and window boxes providing splashes of color. These are the “town houses” of the fabulously rich, the success stories of the global market rubbing shoulders with English aristocracy and embedded in all the snobbery that old money can buy.

  When I visited the place to research this book, I saw a young woman letting herself into one of those dazzling white houses. She had just rung the intercom and, while struggling with a stroller and small child, congratulated an older child who had just released the door, “Well, done, darling, for checking it was Mummy at the door and not some horrible monster.”

  No one expects horrible monsters in Belgravia.

  The area has its quiet watering holes, away from the rush and bustle of this fascinating city. One of these is the Plumbers Arms in Lower Belgrave St., built in a terrace in the 1820s for Lord Grosvenor, then as now head of one of the richest families in the world. On a sign outside, a plaque reads, “During the Victorian era, its customers included the servants of the aristocrats and merchant princes of Belgravia. Rigid class distinction was observed in those days, butlers and tradesmen patronised one bar, while grooms and footmen occupied the other.”

  The Plumbers Arms, Belgravia 2011

  Inside, the ceiling is wallpapered dark red and the walls are ochre with years of customers’ smoking, which is now illegal. There is a mix of high wooden bar stools and red mock-leather settees and the usual gleaming optics you’d find in any bar in the world. The two girls who served me my pint weren’t born when the story I’m about to tell you took place. In some ways, it was a story born of the snobbery of Belgravia, of class distinctions, of tradesmen’s entrances, of aristocrats and servants. This pub wasn’t always so quiet, so nondescript, and so missable.

  I am looking more closely at the decor. I see three photographs in frames around the walls. They are of a tall, distinguished looking man with a carefully clipped moustache, a man who, for 37 years, has been hunted by London’s Metropolitan Police for murder. His name is Richard John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan. And he brought bloody murder to Belgravia.

  www.crimescape.com

  Chapter 1: The Night in Question

  Nine people were sitting in the snug of the Plumbers Arms that Thursday. It was November 7, 1974, a cold night, drizzling rain. Far across the city, an IRA bomb went off at Woolwich along the Thames. One person died and 28 were injured, not the first nor the last victims of terrorism. In fact, bombs had
been going off in and around the capital for weeks, and Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s Labour government, serving with the smallest of parliamentary majorities, seemed powerless to prevent it.

  The Plumbers Arms was calmness itself—the usual mid-week crowd keeping themselves warm out of the November cold. The landlord, Arthur Whitehouse, chatted to his customers and poured the drinks.

  All that changed at just before 9:45 PM. The door burst open to Whitehouse’s right and a small, almost bird-like woman staggered across the threshold. It was difficult to tell what color her hair was because it was matted with blood that ran in grotesque rivulets down her face, onto her shoulders and trickled down to the floor. Blood spots appeared on Whitehouse’s floorboards before he had the presence of mind to dash round from behind the bar, catch the falling woman and ease her gently down onto an upholstered banquette seat near the door.

  The woman wasn’t screaming, but she was hysterical, her eyes wild and disoriented, trying to marshal her thoughts, gasp for air, and get help. “I’ve just escaped from a murderer. He’s still in the house. My children, my children.”

  Mrs. Whitehouse rang the police—the time-honored number of 999. “Hello. Emergency. What service do you require?” An ambulance was the answer—and the police.

  They arrived at 10 PM: Two coppers on a routine sweep of quiet, respectable Belgravia on a routine, quiet night. Two coppers from C Division, its headquarters at Gerald Road just around the corner. At the wheel of his police van, Sergeant Donald Baker squealed to a halt outside the pub. His partner, Constable Philip Beddick, dashed in. The injured woman was covered in dish towels, and the Whitehouses and their customers crowded around. An ambulance was on its way, from St. George’s Hospital at nearby Hyde Park Corner, and the woman had enough presence of mind to tell the publican her name. She was Veronica Bingham, the Countess of Lucan, and she lived 30 yards away, at Number 46 Lower Belgrave St.

  No need for the scream of tires or a blazing siren. It was quicker for the police to get there on foot. 46 was on the same side of the street as the pub, the last house before the addresses change to Eaton Square that runs along a T junction. The house was like all the others on the street, with four steps up to the front door and railings to each side. To the right, more steps led down to a half basement. The whole place was in darkness and the front door was locked. Baker tried the basement door—that was locked too.

  Murder Scene

  46 Lower Belgrave St.

  Two burly coppers could probably have shoulder-barged the front door, but they used a credit card and slipped inside. Ahead stretched the hallway, leading to the stairs. Baker flicked the light switch. Nothing. He sent Beddick back to the van for a flashlight.

  Alone in the house, Baker was careful. He had his hardwood nightstick in hand, but he had no idea what he might be facing. One by one, he checked the doors off the hall. All the rooms were empty and in darkness. The only light came from a small cloakroom fronted with a drape. He slid the drape back and saw blood on a washbasin; there was more on a lampshade in the hall, and as his eyes became acclimatized, he saw sprays and splashes over the walls and ceiling.

  Baker doubled back and opened the door to the basement. Again he tried the light switch and again it didn’t work. Slowly, carefully, he edged his way down the stairs, and his feet crunched on broken crockery on the basement floor. Here, thanks to the street light coming in through the venetian blinds, he saw pools of blood and bloody footprints leading to the back door. The door was open and Baker went out into the night, secretly glad of the fresh air. There was a small garden and a high wall all the way around with a wooden trellis above that. No one could have left that way.

  The sergeant retraced his steps and took the stairs to the upper floors. A bedside light was burning in the main bedroom and a bloody towel lay across the pillows. On the next floor, as he clicked open another door, he found a little boy, 7-year-old Lord George Bingham, fast asleep. In the next room, his little sister, 3-year-old Lady Camilla, was sleeping too. Across the room, standing by her own bed, was 10-year-old Lady Frances. She asked Baker if he had seen her mummy and her nanny.

  The Lucan House at 46 Lower Belgrave St.

  When Beddick finally arrived with the flashlight, Baker took it and left the constable with the kids. The sergeant went back to his search, now more properly equipped. In the hall, he saw a lead pipe, about 9 inches long, bent and wrapped in bloody surgical tape. A light bulb lay on a chair in the basement. It had clearly been removed from its socket, and Baker replaced it. The full glare of the basement light told an appalling story. The room was a kitchen, but it was also a murder scene and a charnel house. There was blood everywhere and smashed tea cups, some bits still lying on a tray. In one corner was a canvas US mailbag soaked with dark blood. Baker eased open the top and felt inside. A female arm flopped out, to be remembered, photographed and documented by the crime scene officers later. He didn’t know it yet, but Sergeant Baker could now answer the question little Lady Frances had put to him. He had found the nanny: Sandra Rivett.

  Plan of the basement showing the attack sites on both women

  In 1974, crime scene investigation was not what it is today. DNA evidence was still 11 years in the future, and some of the confusion of what happened that night in Belgravia was undoubtedly caused by careless policemen trampling blood and brain tissue from one part of the Lucan house to another. The Metropolitan Police (the “Met”) were fortunate, however, because the Home Office pathologist routinely called to suspicious deaths was Keith Simpson, a legend in his own lifetime. The man had an awesome reputation stretching back to the 1940s and the Second World War. This was to be one of his last cases, but age had not dimmed the intensity of his scrutiny at all.

  Sandra Rivett, he discovered, was in her late twenties, 5 feet 3 inches tall, with dark hair. She was well-nourished and bore no sign of disease. She was not a virgin and had given birth. Her body had been doubled up in the mailbag after death and there was no sign of sexual assault—almost the first thing a pathologist looks for in the violent death of a young woman. She had bruises on her forearms from trying to parry the powerful blows that had killed her. Three blows had smashed into her face, two bounced off her neck and four had crashed into her scalp. There were marks on her cheek consistent with a punch or slap. Her killer had then grabbed both arms and thrust her into the bag. She had actually choked to death on her own blood. As for the murder weapon, Baker had all but stumbled over it in the hall upstairs—the bandaged lead pipe.

  The first detective on the scene was Sergeant Graham Forsyth from Gerald Road Criminal Investigation Department, but he was one of many, including the divisional surgeon who had been called to give his official verdict that Sandra Rivett’s life was extinct. Forsyth got the basics from Lady Frances. Mummy and daddy didn’t live together any more, but daddy had been at the house that night, together with mummy, who was covered in blood. Daddy lived at 5 Eaton Row.

  The house, now lived in by Veronica Lucan, is in a narrow mews, a side street of converted stables, directly behind Lower Belgrave St. and Forsyth went round there. The place was in darkness and locked, so Forsyth found a ladder, smashed an upstairs window and climbed in. At that stage, he didn’t know that the tenant had sublet the flat to a friend, Greville Howard, but of course, Howard wasn’t home. Neither was the tenant himself; John Lucan, Frances’ father and Veronica’s husband, had vanished into the Belgravia night.

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  Chapter 2: “Gone For a Couple of Hours”

  The Dowager Lady Lucan, John’s mother, was a formidable woman and she brooked no nonsense, especially from the police. When Forsyth got back to the murder house, she was there, doing what she’d always done—sorting things out and defending the family honor, come what may. “I’ve come here to collect the children,” she told him. “My son telephoned me a short while ago and asked me to pick them up and take them back to my flat.” He had also asked her to contact a friend, his brother-in
-law, Bill Shand Kydd.

  She told the sergeant her son’s version of events. He had been shocked and almost incoherent on the phone, but essentially, he had been passing Number 46 and had seen his wife struggling with someone in the basement. He’d gone in, the intruder had got away, and Veronica had blamed him for the attack. The basement scene was “ghastly”; blood was everywhere. Forsyth explained that he needed to talk to Lord Lucan urgently. His mother told the detectives that her son had another flat in nearby Elizabeth St. and that he drove a blue Mercedes. She collected the kids and Constable Beddick went back to her flat in St. John’s Wood to the north with them all, in case Lucan should call his mother again.

  Forsyth rang his boss, Chief Inspector David Gerring, shortly after 11 PM. The man was in bed, but calls like this came at all hours. He told his wife he’d be “gone for a couple of hours” and drove to pick up his boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Ranson, based at Cannon Row police station. It would be four days before Gerring would get home again.

  As the senior policeman on the case, Ranson immediately took charge of the investigation and would eventually write a book on the subject. He immediately reduced the number of officers in the house to a bare minimum and placed a uniformed man on the front door. He went through the house from top to bottom, noting mentally what Sergeant Baker had first seen nearly three hours earlier.

  Then he and Gerring went to 5 Eaton Row and 72A Elizabeth St., Lucan’s current home. A suit was on the bed in Elizabeth St., still on its hanger and ready for wear. There was also a driving license, checkbook and about £80 ($187—all money is calculated at the exchange rate in 1974) in cash. Ranson left officers at both addresses, in case Lucan should return. His next port of call was to see the still-living victim; other people were taking care of the dead one.