A Different Class of Murder: The Story of Lord Lucan

by Laura Thompson

Their behaviour was stark staring mad, but they had enjoyed it in their way, just as Lord Bingham had enjoyed standing on the stone steps at Harringay dogs, beneath the warm creamy lights of the stadium, amid the infinite vitality, the jabbering of ‘9/4 the field’, the frenetic clockwork arms of Trevor the tic-tac man.

Never show it: that is the code. As important, or more so, than paying up. There was no surer sign of breeding than to maintain one’s insouciance with the hounds of hell nipping at one’s tailored shoulders.

There are still men in this country like John Aspinall, but most of them were born somewhere in the former Soviet Union.

There was a Baby Belling on the third floor, which Veronica has subsequently stated was ‘disconnected’.

One can hypothesize that, after killing Sandra, her murderer heard Veronica calling for her. He fled into the garden, there shedding some of Sandra’s blood. Then, realizing that he could not quickly escape that way, he went back into the basement and attacked Veronica as she ran away up the stairs. During the assault, Lucan entered the house. The killer ran out through the front door. And Veronica, whose unknown assailant had been replaced in the dark ante-room by the figure of her husband, believed – or decided to believe – that

the man who had attacked her was Lucan himself.

The following year she issued a public warning to Muriel Spark, saying that the concept of Aiding and Abetting was ‘absurd and insensitive’ and that Spark should have spoken to her before writing the book.