title: Trail of Havoc: In the Steps of Lord Lucan
author: Patrick Marnham
description: British barrister, journalist, editor and TV scriptwriter, Marnham (Fantastic Invasion: Dispatches from Contemporary Africa et al.) here recreates events before and after a badly wounded Veronica Lucan fled her Belgravia home in London. Her flight to a pub seeking help triggered a notorious 1974 murder investigation. She claimed that her husband John Bingham, Lord Lucan, had tried to kill her and had murdered their children's nanny, Sandra Rivett. This was the first stop on the "trail of havoc," which the author investigates, exposing members of Lucan's circle (the "elite" to whom no law applies). Marnham's account sheds light on various influential people and their efforts to vindicate Lord Lucan (who vanished after that fatal November night). When the author covered the case for the magazine Private Eye, he detected signs of corruption in the office of the prime minister and in the operations of the titled suspect's friends, including moneyed James Goldsmith, who sued the magazine for libel. In the final chapters, Marnham presents his own convincing explanation of the murder, which had tragic repercussions for everyone involved. Photos. <br />Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  PART I: VENTURE OUT
  
  
  OF SULCARKEEP
  
  
  I
  
  
  SIEGE PERILOUS
  
  
  a The rain was a slantwise curfain across the dingy street, washing soot from
  city walls, the taste of it
  
  
  | metallic on the lips of the tall, thin man who walked with a loping stride
  close to the buildings, watching the
  
  
  | mouths of doorways, the gaps of alleys with a narrow-
  
  
  \ eyed intentness.
  
  
  "I Simon Tregarth had left the railroad station two—or was it three hours ago?
  He had no reason to mark the passing of time any longer. It had ceased to have
  any
  
  
  ^ meaning, and he had no destination. As the hunted, the runner, the hider—no,
  he was not in hiding. He walked in the open, alert, ready, his shoulders as
  straight, his head as erect as ever.
  
  
  In those first frantic days when he had retained a wisp of hope, when he had
  used every scrap of animal cunning, every trick and dodge he had learned, when
  he had twisted and back-trailed, and befogged his tracks, then he had been
  governed by hours and minute