White Mischief (20 page)

People in Kenya are still discussing the crime as if it were yesterday. [The virus] … will continue to affect authors and journalists who come into contact with it. The bad taste is not theirs, but arises from Happy Valley itself, whose denizens never let consideration for their children prevent them from doing exactly as they pleased.

But that was not the end of it. Connolly had pointed the finger at Gwladys Delamere as the author of the anonymous letters placed in Broughton’s box at the Muthaiga Club. Her daughter, Mrs. Rose Hodson, came to her mother’s defence at the Press Council, and said of our article, “Far from being a serious enquiry into the mystery, it is principally a salacious rehash of an old scandal.” Yet salacious rehash would surely have been more easily dismissible as yellow press tittle-tattle than our serious enquiry.
Connolly’s study of Gwladys as the possible author of the letters was the result of some deep armchair reflection and was, in my opinion, an inspired piece of literary deduction—speculation, of course, but based on real evidence which he produced at greater length in his defence.

The underlying complaint against us was that we had dared to “rake up the past”—an old stick with which journalists and biographers are often beaten in the hope that they will feel a sense of professional shame—and that in this case, although old families were involved, we weren’t prevented from doing so by some unwritten law of propriety. The attitude is a familiar one, especially from a prominent family with a notorious episode in its history. At these moments, its members will often assume a right of veto where none exists, and where the story has for years been in the public domain.

The problem is that mystery and scandal in high places are always good copy—a truth surrounded with hypocrisy—and since they supply history with its best thrillers and its most revealing asides, they will always be kept alive. For my part I agree with the conclusion of Mark Amory, editor of the
Letters of Evelyn Waugh:

Deciding what would cause unacceptable pain or embarrassment can only be a matter of personal judgement, but I have taken the harsh view that the feelings of the children must be largely ignored; they must learn to live with the behaviour of their parents.
*

Connolly and I were, in the end, exonerated from all the charges against us, except that of bad taste in including the photograph of Erroll. Connolly was wounded by the criticism and said that he hadn’t wanted the picture, but to me it added enormous power to the story and gave a stark reminder of the horror of the moment when Erroll was killed.

*
Cyril Connolly,
Enemies of Promise
(Routledge, 1938).

*
Weidenfeld & Nieolson. 1980.

11

ACUMEN AND INTUITION

As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which
disentangles
. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talent into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of
acumen
which appears to the ordinary apprehension praeternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition.

E
DGAR
A
LLAN
P
OE

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

If there was a thin man inside Connolly begging to be let out, there was a detective inside him too, who had been locked away for some time.

In real life Connolly was perfectly, almost comically cast in the role of a fictional detective of the cerebral school, a Holmes or a Poirot or a C. Auguste Dupin. “Although no philosophic hedonist could be more deeply attached to his favourite armchair,” wrote Quennell, describing Connolly, “ever and again his armchair becomes miraculously jet-propelled. Sweeping over his contemporaries’ heads, it leaves them gaping far behind.”

Like Holmes with his cocaine, Connolly had his own distinguishing passions and weaknesses, but he also had the vast general knowledge with its unexpected areas of specialisation common to that school. And as a literary critic, he relied entirely on his powers of deduction and analysis. Thus Inspector Connolly,
bon vivant
and bibliophile, could linger in his hothouse, studying his precious carnivorous plants, while the station hacks rushed about mesmerised by physical clues, destroying, as often as not, the really important evidence. No matter. Connolly already possessed the solution.

So, while I searched for surviving witnesses, sent off telexes to faraway stringers, collected documents, raked through old newspapers and society magazines, and immersed myself in the story, Connolly resumed his detective work with an exhaustive study of
Debrett’s Peerage
and the Eton school list of 1918. His aversion to the study of titles was over. He took on the manner of a St. Just in his methodical manner of collecting details on his contemporaries and on characters even remotely connected with the central cast. For example:

D.B’s servants. Fifteen + Wilks.
Alfred
The Personal Boy. Takes tea to DB at 7 a.m. Does not go into study. Began work on 16th December. Goes to Nyeri with DB and (hired) driver on 27th.
Abdullah bin Ahmed
Head boy, employed 6 months (May) obtained from club. Gets petrol from the dhobi
3 or 4 days
before E’s death. No previous bonfires made.
Mohamed bin Sudi
. Houseboy for 4 months (study etc). Saw DB place revolvers in study. Found 3 cartridges on floor.
Olei s/o Migoya
. Shamba boy, had worked for Dr. Geilinger who also used pit to burn rubbish. 3 shamba boys were gathering rubbish, collecting it for 3 days.
Omari bin Junta
DB’s telephone boy. Same work as Mohamed. Who was Mohamed? Was he the missing Somali?

Then there was the following exhaustive record of the marriages and liaisons of some of the characters:

Connolly alerted his friends. He resurrected the gossip network of the 1930s, and with the generous expense accounts
of the period, many lunches were arranged. He began to call me, very early in the morning from Eastbourne, for lengthy discussions on strategy. If my own mental print-outs of
Debrett’s
faltered during these early calls, he could be sharp and impatient as his mind raced on. I remember him snapping one morning, “You must get your
card index
in order.” Yet if I had fresh gossip for the files, or new evidence of any sort, his mood would instantly change.

The sheer volume and detail of Connolly’s notes still surprise me each time I open the notebooks or examine the unpaid invoices, railway menus and errata slips on which he worked at the puzzles in his fluent, almost miniature handwriting. At one point he attacked the complete cast of characters in his exasperation: The notes illustrate the anguish Connolly felt at the intractability of the puzzle:

What a Set!

Shit E

Crook DB

Drunk JC

Villain (sadist) J. Carberry

????? Soames

Murderer Alice de Trafford (Husband in prison)

Gig. Lizzie L.

Drunk Portman

Dotty Gwladys Del.

Only nice people Pembroke, Paula Long

Casualties

The earliest entries include extracts from Connolly’s diaries of 1967 and 1968, which already contained some
valuable leads. On his trips to Nairobi he usually stayed with Jack Block, the urbane proprietor of Kenya’s best hotels, and his wife, Doria, at their house at Muthaiga. The Blocks were among the few people in Kenya who knew who Connolly was. Pam Scott, with whom he also stayed at Rongai, introduced him throughout his stay as “John O’Connor.” As a result Connolly sulked at her meals—he had also hurt his back—and Pam Scott became exasperated with his silence. “He was like a stuffed pillow propped up against a chair,” she told me later. “He might as well not have been there.” Sir Michael Blundell, leader of a white settlers’ delegation at the Lancaster House Conference on independence in 1960, was under the impression that Connolly was the Editor of
The Times
.

With the Blocks Connolly met Lazarus Kaplan, known locally as “Kappie,” Broughton’s former solicitor, and a friend of Jack Block’s called Prince Windishgraetz. The latter told Connolly that Dr. Joseph Gregory, the G.P. who had given evidence in Broughton’s defence, had claimed that Broughton had confessed the murder to him while he was in jail, but that Broughton had decided to deny it vigorously as soon as he saw the court and realised that he might have a chance. Gregory had a remarkable memory for the idiosyncrasies of his patients; he was also known for his fanciful Irish imagination.

There was an obvious flaw to the Gregory story, at least as Prince Windishgraetz had reported it: why would Broughton go to the great expense of hiring Morris, if he was prepared to plead guilty? But Windishgraetz had touched on other local beliefs which Connolly had recorded. It was thought at the time that Broughton had been very short of money; whatever was left was in trust, and he couldn’t touch it. According to Windishgraetz, before Broughton left England for Kenya, he had met a hard-up English officer and persuaded him for £1,000 to cut some family portraits from their frames and make off with them, for which Broughton claimed the insurance.

The ruse was successful, and Broughton then suggested that the officer “steal” some family pearls, for which he would also claim the insurance. The officer at first refused. Broughton told him that the pearls would be left in the glove compartment of his car outside a restaurant, and he could please himself. The officer changed his mind, and again Broughton collected the insurance. Windishgraetz described Broughton to Connolly as a man who thought himself above the law; he was bored and now thought he could commit the perfect murder. Jack Block added to this by saying that Lee Harragin, the son of the former Attorney-General who prosecuted the case, had told him that Broughton had gone up to his father after the case and said, “Bad luck, old boy, you knew I did it, and I knew I did it, but you couldn’t prove it.”

Block said that Broughton was acquitted because Scotland Yard, to whom the spent bullet found in the car had been sent, had said that it was not fired from one of Broughton’s registered guns, but later had wired to say that they had made a mistake. By then it was too late. Broughton had been acquitted.

Block also told Connolly of a local rumour that pointed to Alice de Janzé as a suspect. A contemporary and neighbour of Alice, Mrs. Eileen Leslie-Melville, had agreed to look after Alice’s house while she went away for a few days, some months after the murder. In her absence her houseboy came to Mrs. Leslie Melville and produced a revolver which, he said, he had found by a bridge, under a pile of stones on Alice’s land. Mrs. Leslie Melville took the gun and said nothing. It lay around in her house for several years afterwards. Quentin Crewe had heard this story, too, from her son, Jock Leslie Melville, and had reported it in his column.

Connolly met Kaplan, Broughton’s solicitor, on the day after these conversations. Kaplan immediately corrected two of the rumours: Broughton had indeed approached Harragin in the courtroom after the trial, but
what he said to him had nothing to do with the case. Kaplan would not divulge what it was. He added that no bullet had been sent to Scotland Yard, but Churchill, the ballistics expert, was asked if a Colt could be “broken.” (Soames had said in evidence, and it was crucial for Broughton, “I think it was a gun that broke, but I am not sure”—describing the weapon that Broughton had used in the shooting practice on his farm. It was believed that in all Colts the cylinder swung out from the frame sideways.) Although the Colt company had sent a wire to say that all Colts had five grooves and a left-hand rifling in the barrel, this particular question had never been put to them. Churchill had replied by cable that there
were
such Colts which broke for re-loading, but the telegram was not produced in court. There was no proof of authorship and it was rejected as inadmissible.