Cherchez la femme

The 22nd Earl of Erroll, Military Secretary in Kenya in the early part of the second world war, was described by two of his fellow peers of the realm as ‘a stoat — one of the great pouncers of all time’ and ‘a dreadful shit who really needed killing’.

The 22nd Earl of Erroll, Military Secretary in Kenya in the early part of the second world war, was described by two of his fellow peers of the realm as ‘a stoat — one of the great pouncers of all time’ and ‘a dreadful shit who really needed killing’. The deed was duly done one night in 1941: Erroll’s body was found in his Buick on a road outside Nairobi with a bullet in his head, his lover Diana’s husband, the seemingly complaisant cuckold Sir ‘Jock’ Delves Broughton, was tried and acquitted of the murder and, despite years of speculation and gossip, the mystery remains unsolved. We have had books naming Broughton (jealous husband, or agent of MI6) and Diana (because Erroll couldn’t afford, and refused, to marry her) as guilty of the murder. Now Paul Spicer weighs in to assert that Alice de Trafford, an old friend of his mother, was the one who done it.

Born into a wealthy American family, Alice Silverthorne married Count Frédéric de Janzé in Paris. Together, but without their two daughters, they moved to Kenya in 1925, staying for a time with Idina and Joss Hay (as Erroll was called before he inherited the title) at their house which became known as the centre of Happy Valley, notorious for its heady combination of Altitude, Aristocracy, Alcohol and Adultery. Alice’s willowy beauty attracted a number of men, including Erroll, with whom she had an affair which continued at irregular intervals for the next 15 years.