Murder Among the Colonials

...Murder Among the Colonials White Mischief By James Fox Random House 299 pp $15 95 Reviewed by Tom Graves Contributor, "Playboy," "Southern Exposure" This account of murder and decadence among aristocratic ne'er-do-wells in Kenya has plenty of elements bound to appeal to Anglophile tastes—scandal, old money, infidelity, and blue blood spilled It focuses on a January 1941 shooting in Nairobi that has become local legend The victim was Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll, hereditary High Constable of Scotland, who had been exiled to Kenya to save his family further humiliation and expense A failure at Eton and later the cause of much more embarrassment in England, Lord Erroll was one of the British patricians who wound up in Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries Many of them had millions of pounds sterling at their disposal and set up vast estates that rivaled the grandest manors of their peers back home In Kenya these wealthy expatriates, whose morality was largely unham-pcicd by the Victorian standards that prevailed in Britain, had little to occupy themselves except philandering, consuming great quantities of spurts at the Muthaiga Country Club, and engaging in "veranda" farming (about which few of them knew anything) "During race weeks," says Fox, "the Club really came alive The drinking started soon after midday with pink gms before lunch, followed by gin fizzes in the shade at teatime, cocktails (Bronxes, White Ladies, Trinities) for sundowners, whiskey and champagne until lights out "At the nightly balls, the guests might have been dressing for royalty, and women were required to wear a different dress each night Later on, as impromptu Rugby games took over, the ballroom furniture would be wrecked mdisplaysof unashamed public schooli-gamsm " They were a snobbish lot (Eton is mentioned at every turn of page) whose passion for genealogy was matched only by their ardent pursuit of pleasure One such hedomst was Lord Erroll's first wife, Idina She "was only happy, according to the survivors of her house parties—and it was held as truth at Government House where she was on the blacklist—if all her guests had swapped partners, wives, or husbands by nightfall, or certainly by the time the weekend or the invitation was over She would organize, from time to time, after-dinner games of 'blowing the feather across a sheet held out by the guests around a table It was a frantic game that was designed to create near-hystena, when the feather landed all eyes would be on Idina, who, like a high priestess presiding over a sacred ritual, would divine and then announce who was to sleep with whom " Lord Erroll himself was a champion ladvkiller, by all accounts good looking and possessing a manner that immediately disarmed women Enter Sir John Henry Delves Brough-ton, a much older Etonian who had been a ladies' man in his vouth Pnde-ful, vain, eccentric, he was wounded to the core when his wife of 27 years left him and returned to England Brough-ton, then in his 60s, began to court a young blond hotsy-totsy, Lady Diana Caldwell She was an elegant head-turner and agold digger with a fondness for jewelry, especially pearls, that was the talk of Nairobi Eventually he proposed, offering a generous marital pact that practically guaranteed her unfaithfulness If she chose to leave him he was to pay her 5,000 pounds per annum for seven years Sharing his bed was not part of the bargain, apparently She once cruelly told a friend in the presence of her husband, "I'm not sharing a room with that dirty old man I insist on having a room to myself " Within months of the marriage, Diana met and fell in love (for the first time, she claimed) with the notorious Lord Erroll As the affair warmed up, Erroll was seen more and more frequently in her company, often with the cuckolded Broughton smilingly in tow Watching his wife and Erroll on the dance floor every night, Broughton displayed little chagrin Indeed, despite the widespread awareness of the adultery, Erroll and Broughton behaved like two old chums Winning over husbands while chasing their wives was a routine Erroll had exploited repeatedly Not that it always worked —he was rumored to have been thrashed with a rhino whip by one irate spouse Yet he plainly enjoyed the precarious verbal tiptoeing needed to achieve his successes Broughton, for his part, appeared to take the blatant dalliance in stride, resignedly accepting his young wife's attraction to other men When Erroll and Diana finally told Broughton about their love outnght, he was by turns shaken and congratulatory' That night he argued with Diana over the ownership of a string of pearls, but later offered the newly declared couple a very warm toast at a celebratory dinner The next morning, two Africans driving a milk truck spotted a Buick cocked awkwardly otf the shoulder ot a dirt road Upon inspection thev found Erroll dead trom a gunshot wound m the head, kneeling in a praying position on the floorboard Powder burns about his head indicated he had been slain \\ ith a pre-W orld W ar 1 bullet Fingers immediately pointed at Broughton As Fox unfolds the tale, though, everyone in Erroll's set had a grudge against him Broughton was arrested and tried, and a jury acquitted him owing to a lack of sufficient evidence He was perfectly composed during the ordeal, and never gave his jailers or fellow prisoners (he was held without bail) any hint that he might be guilty —an occurrence criminologists find almost unheard of in a culprit (The subconscious, it seems, has a knack for betraying a murderer ) After Broughton's acquittal, no one else was charged The mystery of Erroll's death became an obsession for British writer/critic Cynl Connolly, who devoted years of sporadic research to it In 1969, the London Sunday Times magazine commissioned Connolly and a young James Fox to do a lengthy article on the case and the Kenyan oligarchy that played such an important role in the events The two writers uncovered a hornet's nest of leads, but the hurry of a Christmas deadline forced them to abandon many promising clues Their effort did not expose the true murderer, it merely presented the story as an interesting enigma Connolly died in 1974, and the puzzle still nagged at James Fox, who doggedly resumed his sleuthing in the late '70s In the first section of White Mischief Fox sets the stage, painting a telling portrait of the squires who cavorted in Kenya's "Happy Valley...

...he shows us why the very rich are different The second part of the book is a concise, methodical breakdown of the crime's aftermath and a minute examination of all the suspects and their motives Alice de Trafford, for example, wasapossibility At Erroll's funeral she "put the small branch of a small tree on Erroll's body, she kissed him on the hps, pulled the sheet back, smeared it with her vaginal juices and said, 'Now you're mine forever ' " Unless you are a diehard fan of murder novels (I confess, I am not), accustomed to deducing information, the endless particulars of White Mischief begin to boggle the mind One almost needs a set of charts and graphs (Fox provides some) to keep up Nevertheless, toward the end the reader almost begs to know whodunit The denouement, however, is a terrible letdown After scavenging through these dark corners, we discover that Broughton actually did confess The day following the shooting, he went for a walk with Juanita Carberry, the 15-year-old daughter of Diana's close fnend, June As the two looked over horses, he broke down and admitted everything to the teenager Until Fox interviewed her, she had held her tongue Miss Carberry surmised that Broughton hid in the back seat of Erroll's Buick and slew him from behind The crowning point of White Mischief is an interview with Lady Diana Following the scandal, she had been shunned by Kenyan high society Not one to be kept down, she made a slow but very successful comeback with first one marriage, then another to Tom De-lamere, a member of one of the most respected colonial families She now lives in Kenya and is treated like royalty According to Fox she still loves jewelry When the author first met her she was affable, but sternly opposed to any prying into the death of her lover With each succeeding conversation, though, she opened up a little more until she shared everything she knew in detail She was convinced that Broughton did the deed, and spoke at length of his bizarre habits and her reasons for marrying him Throughout these domgs, Fox evokes little of Africa One barely gets a feel for the land, the people other than the colonials, or the wildlife Moreover, Fox' staccato bursts of storytelling suggest he has not escaped the influence of his days as a writer on the Sunday Times magazine staff One hopes that poor Lord Erroll can rest easy, now that we know all we would care to of his private life and his unfortunate, colorful demise Still, the outcome is frustrating Lovers of mysteries can suffer no worse disappointment than finding out in the final moments of a harrowing page turner that the butler—or the wronged husband-did it after all...