Murder by Mistake Read Free Page A

disperse the army of reporters and camera crews that was descending on Gerald Road.

    Former Gerald Road Police Station
    The focus, obviously, was on the missing Earl of Lucan. He had called his mother a second time, at about 12:30 AM, and Constable Beddick was there. Lucan refused to talk to the police then, but told his mother he would be in touch with them later that day. At Gerald Road, the officers on the case opened an unofficial bet on how soon Lucan would turn up.
    Did anybody say “Never”?
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Chapter 3: Lord Look-On
    Most of the books you will read on the Lucan case will tell you that George Bingham, the 3rd Earl of Lucan, caused one of the greatest military disasters in British history, the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War. In fact, he didn’t, but he was part of the chain of command of mind-blowing incompetence that allowed such things to happen. Before the Charge, Lucan’s curious inactivity in the face of the Russians led to his nickname—Lord Look-On. What is in no doubt is that the Lucans, who owned estates in County Mayo, Ireland and Laleham in Middlesex near London, were seriously rich and powerful. The very name was hated in Ireland because the Lucans were absentee landlords, a family who did nothing for their tenants except demand extortionate rents, even when those tenants were starving.

    Lucan family coat of arms
motto translates “Christ is my Hope”
    The importance of all this is not mere historical padding. The pedigree of the Lucans and their place at the top of the aristocratic tree goes to the heart of the murder of Sandra Rivett, whose name would be almost forgotten in the days and months ahead. Lucan’s friends closed around his good name, put up obstacles to the police. They may have got him out of the country and one or more of them may know where he—or his body—is today.
    By the time Richard John Bingham, known in the family as John, was born in a Marylebone, London, nursing home on December 18, 1934, the Lucans were already strapped for cash. The 6th Earl was an army officer with the prestigious Coldstream Guards, but he was also a socialist and would become heavily involved in Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s reforming government after the Second World War. His wife—the formidable Dowager of 1974—was Kaitlin Dawson, the daughter of a naval officer.
    Little John was brought up in the usual round of nannies and nursemaids, living first in Chelsea along the Thames River and then in Belgravia, which would remain his home until his disappearance on the night of November 7. In April 1940, as Britain stood alone against the might of Hitler’s Third Reich, the Lucans used their relative wealth to evacuate their children to total safety. Where most Londoners had to hope their little ones would escape the bombs of the Luftwaffe by sending them to the country, the Lucans sent their children, John, Hugh, Samuel and Jane, to the United States, not yet involved in the war and beyond the range of the German bombers.
    John acquired a taste for the finer things in life at the Westchester home of a wealthy socialite, Marcia Brady Tucker. This world of fabulous riches left its mark on the little boy; money was easy to come by, and money was everything. What happened in 46 Lower Belgrave St on that November night over 40 years later is directly linked to that.
    On his return to England in 1945, John was sent, like generations of aristocratic sons before and since, to the great public (actually, private!) school of Eton. He was no scholar, but he fitted in well. He was a keen sportsman, enjoyed music and history, and was popular and “charming.” In fact, everybody who knew him, except, later on, Veronica Lucan, used that word to describe him. John was a charmer, suave, debonair and a great catch in terms of marriage. He was also a throwback to the earlier generations of Lucans, with an arrogance that fitted the 19th century more than the twentieth. Friends