In any murder inquiry, there are loose ends, questions to which there are no obvious answers. This is doubly true of a case where there is no trial and where neither the victim nor the alleged perpetrator can give evidence. So, what are the unanswered questions in the Lucan case?
1. Unless it was to dispose of his wife’s body in an inconspicuous vehicle, why did John Lucan borrow Michael Stoop’s Corsair? He gave no explanation and Stoop, gentleman to the last, didn’t ask. When the police located Lucan’s Mercedes in Elizabeth St., the engine was cold and the battery flat. Did Lucan merely need another car because his was not drivable? Why not hire one, or do the “ungentlemanly” thing and borrow Stoop’s Mercedes?
2. For a man planning a cold-blooded murder on November 7, Lucan was extraordinarily cool. He invited Michael Hicks-Beach to his flat, entertained him and drove him home (almost certainly in Stoop’s Corsair). Then he drove to the Clermont Club and, according to the timings, drove straight to Lower Belgrave St. to kill his wife.
3. What about the Clermont Club? There are three issues here. First, Lucan apparently made two phone calls to reserve a dinner table. The first was at 7:30, in the presence of Hicks-Beach; was this to help establish an alibi for what was to come? The second was an hour later—why make the call twice? Was this simply a mistake on the part of the Clermont? In Britain, all the clocks in the country go back one hour at the end of October (the actual date varies) to provide more daylight in the mornings. The Clermont famously had no clocks, but are we seriously to believe that the club’s restaurant manager, Andrew Demetrio, did not have a watch?
Second, if the dinner reservation was to establish some sort of alibi, it would not have worked. Lucan ordered dinner for four, not five. In fact when his guests arrived at the Clermont, Greville Howard rang Lucan’s home but got no answer (by that time he was on his way to Uckfield) and they arranged for a fifth chair to be brought pending what they all thought would be Lucan’s imminent arrival.
Third, how are we to explain that Lucan drove up to the club’s entrance in his Mercedes (a car that was supposedly out of action), had a brief chat and drove away again? Once more, this may have been to establish an alibi, but it was an odd thing to do, and the timing—Egson remembered Lucan driving away at just before 9 PM—is impossibly tight. He would have to park the car on Elizabeth St., walk around the corner (actually several hundred yards) to Number 46 Belgrave St., get in and be down in the basement waiting for the woman he took to be his wife, in the unlikely time frame of 10 minutes. Of course, if Egson got the wrong night, then it is all explained and the whole sighting becomes irrelevant.
4. How did Lucan get into Number 46? The simple answer is that he still had a key, but Veronica and Sandra routinely put a safety chain across the front door at night. It is not known whether Lucan knew that or not, but if it had been in place, it is likely that Sandra Rivett would be alive today. Had she or Veronica simply forgotten to use it that night?
5. If we believe Veronica, John Lucan entered the house, removed the light bulb in the basement, and waited. He did not know that Sandra had changed her night off at the last minute, but did know that Veronica was in the habit of making herself a cup of tea at 9 PM. This habit of Veronica’s would be perfect, because she would be on her own, two floors below where the nearest child would be, so the children would not be involved in any way. Veronica told the police that Lucan had killed Sandra by mistake, hitting the wrong woman in the darkness of the basement. True, Veronica and Sandra were the same height, but Sandra was dark-haired, whereas Veronica was blond, and there was some light coming in through the basement window from the street lamp. Sandra had a much fuller figure than Veronica, and Keith Simpson’s inquest evidence made it very clear that she had been hit in the face with a fist or an open-handed slap. In other words, her attacker was facing her rather than bludgeoning her from behind. John Lucan had been married to Veronica for 10 years; they had had three children together. Was it likely that a man, however psyched up to commit murder, could have made a mistake like that?
6. What about the murder weapon? There is little doubt that the lead pipe found in the hall was used on both Sandra and Veronica, and the surgical tape was probably wound around it to give a better grip. But why two pipes? The second one, found in the trunk of the Corsair, was damning evidence of Lucan’s guilt, albeit circumstantial. Why would he need two, and if he did, why not take them both to the crime scene? Perhaps he did, but why then take one (unused) pipe away and leave the damning one (used) for the police to find?
7. What about the US mailbag? If you’re British, have a rummage around your house and find an item like this. If you’re American, dig out that old British Post Office sack you’ve got lying around. It is a very odd item to find 3,000 miles from where you’d expect it to be, and no one at the inquest found this in any way odd. If it was there, handy, in the basement already, we must ask why. If Lucan brought it to carry out Veronica’s body, could he really have assumed that it would do the job? Surely he would have realized that smashing someone’s skull in with a heavy blunt object is going to cause a lot of blood, and carrying a sack dripping blood out of a Belgravia house, even at night, would be a rather giveaway thing to do. Sturdier polyethylene ones were available. Why didn’t Lucan use one of those?
8. If Veronica’s contention that Lucan attacked her is true, why didn’t he finish her off? John Lucan was a foot taller than Veronica and very much stronger. Having realized his mistake in killing Sandra Rivett, why not put that right to the only extent he could by killing Veronica too? The account of her fighting back, even by grabbing his testicles, does not actually make sense. Why, then, having tried to kill her, did he help her upstairs, in full view of Frances, and tend to her wounds?
9. Can we explain Lucan’s behavior after he left Number 46? According to the perceived wisdom, he dashed out of the house almost immediately after Veronica did, leaving Sandra’s body in the mailbag and evidence of the crime(s) all over the place. He then went to Madeleine Floorman’s. Why? Presumably he would have told her the same garbled, semi-coherent story he later told to his mother and Susan Maxwell-Scott, about interrupting a fight in the basement. But why her? She was the mother of one of his children’s friends, and nothing suggests they were any closer than that. Would he trust his children to an acquaintance?
There was no reply at her door, so he called her. Where from? Not from a phone booth, or she would have heard the tell-tale “pip” sounds. Did he call from Elizabeth St. or Eaton Row? Perhaps, but why were no blood traces found there when he had dripped blood (both A and B types) on Madeleine Floorman’s front step? If he now planned to run, why didn’t he take his passport, driver’s license, checkbook and cash? A clean suit was lying on the bed at Elizabeth St. Although he was already on the run, why not change to hide at least some of the blood to avoid suspicion?
Leaving London made sense: Get away from the crime scene as quickly as possible. Perhaps the choice of the Maxwell-Scotts’ was random. There were many other friends Lucan could have called, even at outrageous hours, around the country. Clearly, from what Susan remembered of his conversation, he expected his friend Ian Maxwell-Scott to be at home. He appeared to be wearing the same clothes he had worn when he had entertained Michael Hicks-Beach earlier the previous evening, clothes that should have been bloodstained but weren’t. All Susan Maxwell-Scott saw was a damp patch on one hip. Yet the letters that Lucan then wrote to Ian in her presence still had blood traces on them when Maxwell-Scott took them to the police.
10. What about the timing of the journey? We’ve looked at this one already. Uckfield is only 16 miles from Newhaven where the Corsair was found, but it apparently took Lucan a minimum (and it could have been longer) of three hours to do it. Where was he in that time frame?
No doubt all these questions—and many more—would have been answered had Lucan stood as the accused in the dock in an English courtroom. The fact is he didn’t. Yet, in a curious way, he has been in the dock ever since.
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