White Mischief (29 page)

Carnarvon was neatly dressed in twill trousers, a greenish tweed jacket, and immaculately polished brown golfing shoes with studded soles. His speech delivery was part Willie Whitelaw (emphasis and bluster) and part Earl Mountbatten (rolling stentorian).

“Vera’s grand-daughter,” he said. “I can’t get over it. Now. You’ll have anything you want. You just have to ask.” He faced the drinks tray. “Are you married and blissfully happy with lots of children?”

“No, I’m divorced,” said Lady Reay.

“All right, darling.”

“Darling Vera,” he continued. “Now. Ask me anything you like. Most glamorous woman of her day. Quite, quite lovely. She was always being mistaken for Gladys Cooper, which I think gave her an enormous kick as she was very fond of people admiring her. I don’t know any woman in the world who doesn’t like being admired.”

“Did you ever have an affair with her?”

“No. No. Certainly not. Never laid a hand on her. I find it damned hard to credit, but darling Vera, I don’t think she willingly went to bed with anybody.

“Her interests were shooting with a rifle (probably used a shotgun too, but certainly a rifle). And there you are. And if you said to Vera, I’d like you to come with me to the source of the Mekong Delta, one thing and another. Where’s that? Timbuktu or something. Will there be crocodiles? Yes, darling, guaranteed. Will we have to sleep under mosquito nets? And I’d say Oh, I haven’t asked. Oh, yes I’m sure we will. Is it civilised? No. Not civilised at all. I’d love to go. I’m just giving you a picture.”

Tessa Reay said that her grandmother had travelled to places which were then very remote: Burma and the Philippines, and had eaten human flesh. “Oh, I’ve no doubt,” said Lord Carnarvon.

“I wouldn’t have thought she was in love with Lord Moyne,” he said. “My guess is that Vera said to herself, ‘Here’s Walter. I must be as nice as possible.’ I cannot
and do not believe that Vera was the sort of person who fell in love. I’ve never seen the slightest sign of her being unfaithful or anything else. I think she was one of those ladies who didn’t ever want to hurt anybody’s feelings; don’t think she would ever consciously do so. I think she said to herself, ‘I like the fleshpots, who doesn’t? Well, there it is. Walter’s mad about me and I’m not going to quarrel with him or anyone else.’ But I find it very hard to believe that she surrendered herself willingly to anybody. Darling Vera. I don’t think sex interested her.

“Jock in my opinion was a
weak
man,” Lord Carnarvon continued. “He was
not
in any way a
brave
man.” He leaned forward to emphasise the point, clearly resisting the word “coward.” “I probably knew him better than anybody,” he continued. “He faked a sunstroke in 1914 as he feared going to France. He was basically a dishonest person and rather vain.

“And when Vera wanted to go off with Lord Moyne, he would say, ‘I hope you have fun. God bless you. See you when you get back.’ That’s not to say his feelings weren’t hurt. He was too weak to say no—a
mari complaisant
.

“Vera probably said to herself, ‘I’m no longer amused by Jock,’ who wasn’t a very amusing man—didn’t tell funny stories or anything else. Hardly ever spoke. He was a very ordinary chap, neatly dressed, trim moustache. Perfectly nice. (The best-dressed men of the time were me, number one, Broughton, Jock Buchanan Jardine, Hugo Londesborough and Burghie Westmorland.) Jock was perhaps a little vain and I think damn stupid, if you ask me.

“Hate being horrible about anybody and never am, but I think he was. Not much grey matter.

“Do you want to know what Jock was most interested in? Going to the loo every day in the morning. There. You’ve got it straight from the horse’s mouth.”

I suggested that Broughton had run out of money by the time he went to Kenya, or that at least he was hard
up. “He
was,”
said Carnarvon. “Up at Doddington he’d lived high, wide and handsome. He’d betted and lost. And what’s more, what he did was very dishonest. He’d rather make £10 crookedly than £100 straight. He, unbeknownst to Vera and the children, sold property and pictures which did not belong to him, which he’d no right to sell. Yoh, yes. Yes. Only weak men succumb to temptations to do dishonest things. That is a fact. I mean a man, poor devil, he’s starving, he snatches a bun out of a stall. I can understand that. But Jock was never starving. I can imagine he would be very shy coming back to England, because he knew perfectly well that he’d done something which, if found out, he was liable to go to prison for. I’m certain he appreciated that.”

Why, asked Tessa Reay, had her grandfather taken such risks to maintain such extravagance? “Because once you do something, my dear, you get accustomed to it,” he said. “It’s very difficult to give it up. Only strong men are able to do that. He was not a strong man and I’m certain that he was determined that what he’d got used to he was going to do for the rest of his days.”

Our trio moved into lunch, across the great space of the dining room. Lord Carnarvon faced one of Van Dyck’s monumental portraits of Charles I mounted on a horse. “Erroll? Knew him,” said Lord Carnarvon. “Stoat.” Stoat? “One of the greatest stoats of his generation—one of the great pouncers of all time.

“He was a
coureur par excellence.” Coureur?
“Runner after. He certainly was.
Had
been very attractive.
Got
rather bloated in Kenya.”

We lunched on ravioli, Highclere lamb with new potatoes, and strawberries. “Gorellas,” said Lord Carnarvon. “G-O-R-E-L-L-A-S. Dutch. They come from Holland. They’re better than Cambridge. Not so juicy, but they’re good fruiters.

“Erroll was double-crossing Diana with Alice de Trafford,” he continued. “That affair wasn’t over at all. I
don’t think Jock Broughton had the guts to kill anybody. He could no more have shot Erroll with that hand than he could have shot an elephant. Damn bad shot. Incapable of lifting any weight. He couldn’t have held an army revolver.”

But why did he take up with a woman so much younger than himself—one who was not particularly well accepted by his friends? Was he in love with Diana …?

“He was a weak man, therefore I would have said he liked pretty women.

“He was not a great performer. He’d take a girl a box of chocolates to her bedroom and claim the rest; whether or not Diana was pretty at the time, never appealed to me, but that’s neither here nor there.
HA!

“There’s no possible way of knowing,” Lord Carnarvon went on, “because what’s one man’s meat is another man’s poison. I mean, to me,
hands
are very important things,
nails
are very important things. After all, hands caress the man. Therefore to be touched by anybody who bites their nails—ooghaargh—puts me off. Oh no, darling, don’t look at your nails. They’re not bitten. Ridiculous.

“It’s one of the first things I look at. I am a person who pays great attention to hands. Lot of people don’t. I’ve known
endless
men who pop it in, go to bed with a woman or anything else, who’ve got hideous hands. Think nothing of it. And so on.
Everybody
is different.

“I myself pay great attention to hands, and I pay a great deal of attention to legs too. If people have got hideous legs, fat legs, I mean to say—poor devils—they can’t help it. They didn’t make themselves like that. There again, I, Carnarvon, have always been
put off
.”

“What happens,” asked Tessa Reay. “to a woman when she loses her looks?”

“ZERO,”
replied Lord Carnarvon.

We were now clearly straying away from our subject. But is this how Broughton and his contemporaries talked?

“I have in my time known perfectly beautiful women, not a brain in their head, dumb as anything and I’ve said, ‘I’m going to give you a barrelling
and
I’m going to enjoy it.”

“My first wife was quite,
quite
beautiful. Then Tilly [Losch, the actress—Lord Carnarvon’s second wife] was very beautiful. She had a very rare thing. She had green eyes with yellow, amber pupils. Now you only see that once in a lifetime. And she had naturally dark, I think it’s called ‘Titian,’ hair. Can’t say she had the greatest legs—she’s dead now—then she had been a dancer. Imperial Ballet in Vienna. Develops the calf and thigh muscles. Take lots, tuck in. Take lots of cream. Anything you want. Arrive sober and leave drunk. That’s what I always say to my guests.”

After lunch he showed us into an enormous drawing room lined with leather-bound books, densely furnished with more magnificent objects. I asked about the origins of a piece of furniture. Was it French? Italian? “Can’t tell you how I got hold of it,” he said. “All here when I arrived.” He pointed out a chair and table on which he claimed Napoleon had signed his abdication at Elba. “See those scratches on the arm? Said to have been made by his finger-nails. In frustration. Soft wood at the time.” The room in which we stood had been badly damaged by fire some years earlier. The plaster rosettes on the ceiling—“macaroons” as Lord Carnarvon called them—needed replacing. He was abroad when the builder cabled him with the estimate: £150 per macaroon. “I cabled back,” snapped Lord Carnarvon,
“NO MACAROONS.”

Lord Carnarvon then sold a copy of
No Regrets
to Tessa Reay for £5.95, inscribed it and disappeared. He was gone a long time and I heard Tessa Reay calling out in some distant passage, “Lord Carnarvon? Lord Carnarvon? Where
are
you?” He returned to see us off on our journey back to London.

17

PALACES AND APPEARANCES

The most rewarding part of our investigation into the mysterious temperament of Delves Broughton began with the moment of his acquittal. He had reacted slowly to the verdict. The judge was already thanking the jury, exonerating them from further duty, when Broughton was seen to blush, to light up with pleasure and excitement, and then, on his way out of the courtroom, to say to Harragin, according to one version of that ill-heard remark, “I’m afraid I’ve slipped through your fingers.” In anticipation of the verdict, Diana and Kaplan had arranged a party for Broughton in Kaplan’s house. A guest remembers its end of term flavour and the roars of nostalgic laughter when June Carberry raised her brandy glass and said, “It doesn’t look too good for the old boy today.”

Broughton described the acclamation and attention he received, and his own euphoria, in a circular that he mailed off to his friends in England a few days later, attaching a fulsome letter of congratulation from Morris. (On his return to Johannesburg, Morris was asked who he thought the murderer might be and had replied, “Good Heavens, I forgot to ask.”) Broughton made a hundred copies of each document. His purpose was clearly to diminish the air of scandal surrounding the case; to brush the whole
episode aside as an annoying interruption in his life; to project it now as an amusing story for his friends:

I only wish I could tell you the inner history, but it would be censored, so it is of no use.

It was a ridiculous case and I was a victim of unfortunate circumstances … I was in Gaol from March 6 until July 1st, and was never worried or depressed and kept absolutely fit all the time. Being on remand I could have my food and drink sent in and as much to smoke or read as I liked, but no drink [sic], which did not affect me in the least. I had lots of visitors and always walked for two hours each day and I have never felt better than when in Gaol.

I got a fellow prisoner to clean out my cell etc. and had no discomfort except the small, whitewashed cell 10 x 8. I had a very comfortable bed and never had one sleepless night.

I read a lot and played games a lot.

Much of the Trial was frightfully boring, especially the evidence and cross-examination on ballistics.

I went into the box one Thursday and came out the following Thursday, actually five days in the box. three and a half of which I was subject to cross-examination by the Attorney General.

They never made me contradict myself or shook me in the least; I thought most of the questions futile, they were all easy to parry, but [it] makes one use one’s brain and you have to be alert.

In this country they do not lock up the Jury till they retire to consider their verdict and that was the only time I felt any strain whatsoever, to my eternal shame. I own that I did then, and could not sit down for long on end, and kept walking up and down for three hours and twenty-five minutes.

When the verdict was announced at 9:15 p.m., in a crowded Court there was a sigh of relief from all the audience, the Court being packed; some clapping.

It took me ten minutes to come to and realise I was a free man: but I had a big group of people to shake hands with, headed by most of the Police.

I had practically the whole country solidly behind me from the start. I drove with some friends to a house where Diana was waiting for me. I would not let her come into Court the last day. She. poor dear, has had a much worse time than I have.

We then proceeded to make whoopee and had a very late night.

I never felt better or happier in my life than I did the next day. Neither my health nor my nerves were affected and I have, except for the wait for the Jury’s verdict, never felt any strain.

The wicked part is that it has cost me £5,000 which I have not got and of course, as the Crown can do no wrong. I can recover nothing.

I got the best Counsel in Africa—Morris of Johannesburg.

I took the definite view that when your life is in danger, you cannot afford to worry about expense, also there was the obligation to clear my name for the sake of my family.

All the prison officials were kindness itself. There is more charity in prison, than in most places outside.

So ends what would have been, except for the war, an historic trial, but. I believe that Jocelyn Erroll (the 22nd Earl) Hereditary High Constable of Scotland, who walked immediately behind the King and Queen and in front of all the other Peers, including Dukes on official occasions in Scotland, was the first Earl to be murdered since Bosworth.
*
the boyfriend of Mary. Queen of Scots, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.