Murder by Mistake by M.J. Trow

inaccessible jungles of Goa, India. The man known as Jungle Barry was dead by the time Maclaughlin got there (in 2002), but when he showed photographs of Lucan to people who had known Barry, they all swore they were one and the same man. The book is well-written, and Maclaughlin worked hard and honestly to prove his case, comparing photographs, dates and places. He came to the conclusion that Jungle Barry, a backgammon player of formidable talent and with an ear for music, was indeed Lucky Lucan. His body had been cremated, so there was no possibility of knowing for sure.
    When
Dead Lucky—Lord Lucan: The Final Truth
was published and serialized in a British newspaper, a radio celebrity and musician called Mike Harding spoiled the party. Jungle Barry was Barry Halpin, a Liverpool banjo player who had gone to Goa in a quest for spiritual enlightenment in the 1970s and had never come back.
    Rather like Lord Lucan.
    www.crimescape.com

Chapter 14: The Unanswered Questions
    In any murder inquiry, there are loose ends, questions to which there are no obvious answers. This is doubly true of a case where there is no trial and where neither the victim nor the alleged perpetrator can give evidence. So, what are the unanswered questions in the Lucan case?
    1.  Unless it was to dispose of his wife’s body in an inconspicuous vehicle, why did John Lucan borrow Michael Stoop’s Corsair? He gave no explanation and Stoop, gentleman to the last, didn’t ask. When the police located Lucan’s Mercedes in Elizabeth St., the engine was cold and the battery flat. Did Lucan merely need another car because his was not drivable? Why not hire one, or do the “ungentlemanly” thing and borrow Stoop’s Mercedes?
    2.  For a man planning a cold-blooded murder on November 7, Lucan was extraordinarily cool. He invited Michael Hicks-Beach to his flat, entertained him and drove him home (almost certainly in Stoop’s Corsair). Then he drove to the Clermont Club and, according to the timings, drove straight to Lower Belgrave St. to kill his wife.
    3.  What about the Clermont Club? There are three issues here. First, Lucan apparently made two phone calls to reserve a dinner table. The first was at 7:30, in the presence of Hicks-Beach; was this to help establish an alibi for what was to come? The second was an hour later—why make the call twice? Was this simply a mistake on the part of the Clermont? In Britain, all the clocks in the country go back one hour at the end of October (the actual date varies) to provide more daylight in the mornings. The Clermont famously had no clocks, but are we seriously to believe that the club’s restaurant manager, Andrew Demetrio, did not have a watch?
    Second, if the dinner reservation was to establish some sort of alibi, it would not have worked. Lucan ordered dinner for four, not five. In fact when his guests arrived at the Clermont, Greville Howard rang Lucan’s home but got no answer (by that time he was on his way to Uckfield) and they arranged for a fifth chair to be brought pending what they all thought would be Lucan’s imminent arrival.
    Third, how are we to explain that Lucan drove up to the club’s entrance in his Mercedes (a car that was supposedly out of action), had a brief chat and drove away again? Once more, this may have been to establish an alibi, but it was an odd thing to do, and the timing—Egson remembered Lucan driving away at just before 9 PM—is impossibly tight. He would have to park the car on Elizabeth St., walk around the corner (actually several hundred yards) to Number 46 Belgrave St., get in and be down in the basement waiting for the woman he took to be his wife, in the unlikely time frame of 10 minutes. Of course, if Egson got the wrong night, then it is all explained and the whole sighting becomes irrelevant.
    4.  How did Lucan get into Number 46? The simple answer is that he still had a key, but Veronica and Sandra routinely put a safety chain across the front door