Note to Readers

The following story, like all those connected with the seventh Earl of Lucan, is based on hypothesis.

The seventh Earl has been missing since the night of 7th November 1974 when his wife was taken to hospital, severely wounded in her head, and the body of his children’s nanny was found battered, in a mail sack, in his house. He left two ambiguous letters.

Since then he has been wanted on charges of murder and attempted murder, of which he was found guilty by a coroner’s jury. He has not shown up to face trial in the criminal courts.

The seventh Earl was officially declared dead in 1999, his body has never been found, although he has been “sighted” in numerous parts of the world, predominantly central Africa. The story of his presumed years of clandestine wanderings, his nightmare existence since his disappearance, remains a mystery, and I have no doubt would differ factually and in actual feeling from the story I have told. What we know about “Lucky” Lucan, his words, his habits, his attitudes to people and to life, from his friends, photographs and police records, I have absorbed creatively, and metamorphosed into what I have written.

The parallel “story” of a fake stigmatic woman is also based on fact, but it has been fictionalized as well.