Murder by Mistake Read Online Free PDF Page B

Star
newspaper—“Friends have loyalty to each other: else they are mere acquaintances… loyalty among friends is, in my opinion, the highest morality in life… I cannot imagine in what way I could have helped Ranson more!”
    That Friday morning, as Ranson and Chief Inspector David Gerring were still waiting for Lucan to turn up, probably in the company of his lawyer, a group of the missing earl’s friends met at John Aspinall’s house in Lyall St., Belgravia, to decide what could and should be done. The meeting was seized on by the left-wing press and dubbed the meeting of the Just Men, in homage to Edgar Wallace’s crime-busting fictional heroes of the 1930s who were themselves above the law. Charles Benson was there, so was Bill Shand Kydd, and, as it would turn out later, the flakiest friend of all, Dominick Elwes. He was all for getting Lucan out of the country—if he hadn’t gone already—on a cargo ship to South America. It is likely that this meeting was not the sinister cabal that the media slavered over—wealthy, privileged men giving the law and morality the finger in order to save one of their own. They really didn’t know where Lucan was or what had happened, although most of them would probably have believed his version had he told it to them.
    Dominick Elwes was sent to St. George’s to check on Veronica, and he went with Hugh Bingham, Lucan’s brother, and sister-in-law Christina Shand Kydd. When Elwes saw Veronica with her open wounds and black eyes, he burst into tears. “Now who’s mad?” Veronica asked them all. “Now who’s the one with paranoia, eh?”

    Dominic Elwes
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    Madeleine Floorman had not contacted the police, assuming it was their job to come to her. Susan Maxwell-Scott hadn’t either, and only when Bill Shand Kydd brought Lucan’s letters with their Uckfield postmarks did the police know about the midnight run.
    On Sunday there was a breakthrough; Michael Stoop’s battered old Corsair—license plate number KYN 135D—was found by the local Sussex police in quiet Norman St. in Newhaven, the Channel port on the south coast. Dried blood was all over the interior and the lead pipe was in the trunk, but there was also a problem. Eyewitnesses were able to pinpoint the approximate time of the car’s arrival between 5:30 and 8:30 AM on Friday morning. The police now knew that Lucan had left the Maxwell-Scotts in Uckfield by 2:30. Yet the car did not appear until 5:30 at the earliest—a time-lag of three hours to cover a journey of only 16 miles. Either Lucan had parked somewhere on the way, weighing his options and drinking from the two bottles of vodka found in the Corsair, or he had tried to sleep the whole nightmare off with the valium pills Susan Maxwell-Scott had given him, or… and the possibilities were even now crowding into Roy Ranson’s mind.
    On the face of it, Lucan, guilty or merely panicked, had dumped the car and caught the cross-Channel ferry that would have taken him to Cherbourg or St. Malo in France. The ferries left every hour, and if Lucan had had time to change his clothes or was as free from blood as Susan Maxwell-Scott maintained, he would have passed unnoticed among the regular cross-Channel foot passengers. He had no passport, but security on the ferries was notoriously lax in those days. Without the all-intrusive CCTV, anyone intending to lose himself in France could probably do so with the minimum of luck. Of course, if Lucan didn’t actually intend to arrive in France at all, but throw himself overboard, that was easier still.
    While the car was towed away to be checked by forensics, Ranson’s team was drafted to Newhaven to knock on doors, check hotels and guest houses and trawl the miles of gorse-covered headland around the town itself. Helicopters were used, including a new gadget that was able to detect bodies hidden in undergrowth using X-ray, infrared and ultraviolet cameras. A body was found quickly, but it belonged to a