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.