White Mischief (17 page)

Morris was of course taking a calculated risk in putting his client into the witness box. Many a prosecution case in criminal history has been defeated by a good defence counsel, only to be lost in the end by a slip of the tongue from the accused, who has elected to give evidence. In his defence, Broughton claimed that he had honoured the pact, and this entirely explained the ease with which he conceded to Erroll. Broughton said he realised that it was all over when he saw Diana lying in bed with June Carberry wearing Erroll’s pearls.

Why had he stayed away from the dinner on the 18th?
Broughton replied that he was “very upset.” Diana had told him that if she couldn’t get a divorce soon, she would wait a lifetime, or a number of years, he forgot which. He explained, “I had always visualised the possibility of my wife falling in love with somebody else, but it had come sooner than I expected. It was silly really because a woman may fall in love with somebody else in two months or ten years. I have always been devoted to my wife. I am devoted to her still. I realised that she had all her young life to live while I haven’t and therefore the only thing to do was to cut my losses and go away to Ceylon. I was going there for three months and I had hoped that when I came back to Kenya she might be no longer in love with him and would want to come back to me. I certainly had not abandoned hope of that.” He told Diana, he said, that he hoped she would stay on at Karen for appearances’ sake, until he went away, “as nobody knew anything about it, as far as I know.”

Morris had asked him, “… As an old racing man you realised that Lord Erroll had the advantage in the weights, and you were leaving the course to him?”

“Yes,” replied Broughton, falling in with the jargon, “eighteen pounds.”

Harragin put it another way: “You realised that in ten years’ time you would be sixty-seven and she thirty-seven?”

“That is not very young for a woman.”

“It is rather old for a man.”

“It depends on the man.”

“But a man with 40 per cent disability?”

“From which he has completely recovered.”

Earlier on the 18th, he had intimated to Mrs. Carberry, as they walked in the garden of Erroll’s house, that he would commit suicide.

Why, after his suspicions were aroused, was it necessary to have lunch with Erroll every day?

“Why not?” replied Broughton. “You cannot stop a thing like that in a small community like Muthaiga. How could I avoid it? My wife and I went to Muthaiga Club every day. Unless I had told him I did not want to see him, how could I stop him? We all lunched at the Club every day.”

Why had he invited Erroll to stay the night, when he already knew what was happening between Diana and Joss? If Diana asked him, would he object?

“She could ask whom she liked,” said Broughton. “I should not have tried to stop her in any event. I see no point in it. We met every day at the Club and I cannot see it makes any difference if a man comes to stay the night. It would be extremely bad strategy. In my experience of life if you try and stop a woman doing anything she wants to do it all the more. With a young wife the only thing to do is to keep her amused.”

Harragin then asked about Broughton’s jealousy, reminding him in effect that he had been cuckolded two months after his marriage.

As to the financial part of the pact, was it not galling for Broughton that his wife and her lover would be provided for, for some years, at his expense? Broughton replied that he never imagined that Diana would actually exercise her legal rights to the £5,000 a year.

And what of the champagne toast on the night of the murder?

Broughton said, “It was a very intimate party between the three principals and a very great friend of the three principals and I think on those occasions you say things you would never dream of saying at any other time.”

Later, in re-examination, Broughton replied to Morris, “I accepted the situation and I thought it showed my entire resignation to the situation. I think I had in mind that it was the most extreme gesture I could make.”

Later on the evening of the final dinner, after more champagne and liqueur brandy, on top of the champagne cocktails, Broughton described himself as “very drunk,” and said he remembered little of what happened. He did remember complaining to June Carberry and saying about Diana, “We have only been married three months and look what she does to me.” But he did not recall saying that he wouldn’t give her the £5,000.

Having decided to hand Diana over to Enroll, why did Broughton insist on her being back at Karen by 3 a.m., considering that she had only spent five nights there since January 1st?

Broughton answered, “I was still fond of her and she was still my wife, and likely to remain my wife for some years and old habits are rather difficult to get out of. I was always worried about her staying up too late.”

Harragin could never shake him: “You do not agree that it would be quite ridiculous for a man to be seen
carrying a lady’s handkerchief in his two hands, the one admittedly quivering, and saying he wished to put that on the corpse?”

“I went to the police station and had a handkerchief in my pocket and I don’t think I produced the handkerchief till one of the police officers told me he would place it on Lord Erroll’s body as I could not get into the mortuary.”

“And do you not think it was an equally ridiculous request from a policeman’s point of view?”

“Not if a man had any sentiment. I suppose I ought to have realised that policemen are not sentimental.”

“What was your reaction to the news of Erroll’s death?” Harragin asked later.

“I was dumbfounded.”

“Wasn’t it a very satisfactory solution to your domestic troubles?”

“Not at all; no solution.”

“What do you mean by no solution?”

“I do not think the average man would have relished resuming married life with one who had been madly in love with another man and was still.”

The bonfire, so hastily lit by Broughton was, he said, a habit from his childhood days at Doddington. Asked what enjoyment he got out of it, Broughton replied, “You might just as well ask what pleasure there is in eating and drinking.”

Harragin then fired his last shot: “Did you say at dinner one night to your wife when she was going off to the Claremont Club, ‘Shall I throw the champagne in your face, or would you rather I threw the bottle at your head?’ And did she try to soothe you down by saying, ‘There, there, try and eat something’?”

Broughton replied, “I think somebody has been pulling your leg.” The mild, the unreproachful, the perfect response.

Broughton emerged quite unscathed. The most telling point against him was his lapse of memory whenever he was asked anything too near the bone. He forgot that he had not gone to France in 1914 (when the sunstroke kept him back). He forgot innumerable conversations or disagreements. He forgot that he had rebooked the passage to Ceylon on the day of the murder, directly after his visit to the mortuary with Diana’s handkerchief. He had no recollection of visiting June Carberry twice at 2:10 and 3:30 a.m. (June’s estimated times), or of the barking of Diana’s dog, though he did remember voices downstairs and Erroll’s car driving away.

Finally, what of the reported theft of Broughton’s revolvers? Why did he bring them downstairs and put them on the mantelpiece, when his intention, apparently, was to put them in the safe?

Why did he change the description of the stolen items three times in minor detail (a five-shilling note, two five shilling notes, a ten-shilling note and a pound note, etc.)? Was he becoming confused with his own story, forgetting the all-important detail?

The robbery itself presents a quandary. If Broughton intended to use his own gun, why, three days before the murder, would he invent the theft, thus announcing to the police that he had possessed two guns and forcing him to show them his firearms certificate? Was the answer that because other people in the house knew that he had two guns, Broughton would have had to explain the disappearance of one of them—the murder weapon? If it was as simple as that, it seemed a clumsy and suspicious move.

Or was it a masterstroke of deviousness, because Broughton knew that the firearms certificate was false and
could never match the murder weapon? He had to arrange the “theft” to put the certificate in the hands of the police, who would conclude that it could not have been Broughton’s gun that did the deed. The problem here is that Broughton would have thrown the gun away anyway, to ensure that the murder bullet would not be traceable to a particular gun.

Broughton couldn’t have known in advance about the discovery of the Nanyuki bullets. Did he know enough about ballistics to realise that the murder bullet that he did fire would clearly be seen not to have come from the registered Colt—thus letting him off? At one point, to explain his detailed conversations with friends and policemen about guns and ballistics after the murder, Broughton said, “I have done a great deal of rifle shooting all my life. I had always heard you could identify bullets fired out of the same gun.” Even so, it seems an impossibly sophisticated act of premeditation. Or was the revolver theft a genuine coincidence? If Broughton had a third gun—the one used at Nanyuki—why would he have to dispose of the others?

In his autobiography, Morris made the following summary of his case for the defence: