White Mischief: The Murder of Lord Erroll by Fox James

Author:Fox, James [Fox, James]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781480489196
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-05-05T16:00:00+00:00

12

THE MAYOR OF NAIROBI

Of all the members of the Muthaiga group exposed by the trial, Gwladys Delamere seems to have been the most disliked by the colonial official class for her high-handed manner. They were particularly incensed by the fact that she had clearly lied in court and had produced blatantly biased evidence against Broughton which, given her unpopularity, had had the effect of swaying the jury in his favour. Harwich described her to us as “a formidable old dragon who bossed them all about.” Others, including, it seems, the whole English community in Zanzibar, even believed Gwladys to be the murderess. The debate must have livened up the atmosphere of that sweltering claustrophobic island. It is evocatively recalled by a reader of our article, Margot Irving, who wrote from Ankara in 1970:

I was particularly interested in your article because in 1941 I was living in Zanzibar. My husband. Francis Irving. O.B.E., was Comptroller of Customs and Economic Controller then. Our small European community in Zanzibar had either met the principals concerned or knew a lot about them from hearsay. We read avidly the almost verbatim reportage in the East African Standard.

It was the general opinion among us that Gwladys Delamere had engineered the murder. She knew Joss would be bringing Diana back to Karen House around about 3 a.m. We opined that she hired an African, who crept into the back of Joss’ car while he was inside the house, and who shot Joss at the junction. We never thought D.B. had done it—he was too infirm.

The motive? Sheer possessive jealousy. Gwladys adored Joss. She was his “intermittent mistress.” But when Diana arrived on the scene Gwladys knew she’d met her Waterloo. Rather than let Diana have him, she arranged his murder. “Hell hath no fury …” Of all that hard set of Happy Valley, Gwladys was the hardest of the lot. But none of us thought she had had a secondary motive in causing D.B. to stand trial.

All this was, and is, mere conjecture. However, I thought you might be interested.

Gwladys was certainly keen on Erroll, there, is no shortage of evidence for that; Kaplan, Paula Long and Lady Barwick, who will appear later in this chapter, all mentioned her strong affection for him at the time of the murder. But what of her new dislike for Broughton? She had been the first to entertain him when he arrived and yet, when her old friend was up on a murder charge, she was even prepared to use the witness box to vent her spite on him.

The first discrepancies in her evidence concern the advice she gave to Diana and Erroll on the night of January 12th at the Broughtons’ house at Karen. At first, Gwladys said, she advised Erroll to leave Diana alone, but realised that this was useless. Did she then advise them to elope and “leave a note on the pin cushion”? She denied this, but June said in evidence that she was with Erroll when

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