The Life and Death of Lord Erroll: The Truth Behind the Happy Valley Murder

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Ramsay-Hill would live to regret his impulsive invitation by the water-splash, for it was thus that Molly Ramsay-Hill was introduced to Joss, the man who would ‘remake her world’. Their affair, which began some time later, was managed very discreetly and, just as Joss had kept his parents in ignorance about his intentions towards Idina, so here no one guessed at the outset that there was anything other than Joss’s habitual flirtation and charm in his conduct with Molly, who was nine years older than he was, the same height as Idina and ‘petite and quite a beauty, Titian-haired with green eyes and a flawlessly pale skin’.

(#litres_trial_promo) In contrast to many women of her age in the colony, whose faces were devoid of any artifice and weatherbeaten, Molly’s face was ‘deadly white as if it had been dipped into a flour bag; she wore dark red lipstick and dark red nail lacquer to match. Everyone thought her terribly exotic.’

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Kiki Preston, who had been part of the American glamour set in Paris, came back to her splendid house Mundui at Naivasha some time in 1926, having been persuaded to stay by a friend who had given her land on the lake. Frédéric called Kiki and Gerry Preston ‘Black Laughter’. The Paris clique was beginning to re-form around the shores of Lake Naivasha and along the Wanjohi Valley.

When Frédéric and Alice came to live in Kenya at the end of 1926, as before, their daughters were left behind in France. At this time the Wanjohi Valley was inhabited by less than a dozen Europeans, including the Hays and the de Janzés. Since their arrival the Hays had held court here and, with Frédéric and Alice, they would form the core of an exclusive set. As with all groups of intimate friends they developed certain rituals and habits which marked them out from others. Idina frequently held hands with Alice in the garden at Slains, illustrating how relaxed they were in their shared passion for Joss, which seemed only to bring them closer together. Alice would often sing for her three friends, accompanying herself on the mandolin.

They would go on safari together. The fact that Joss chose not to hunt, fish or shoot did not prevent Idina from doing so. Joss seemed content to be out in the field. Every evening on safari they would gather by the fire between seven and eight, before bathing and changing for dinner, to devote an hour to composing limericks and storytelling. Each took it in turn to recite to the others. This was Frédéric’s idea. He had moved in literary circles in Paris, keeping company with people like Maurice Barrès, Proust and Anna de Noailles; his standards were high. Frédéric’s creations were the cleverest, Joss’s the funniest, Idina occasionally cheated, and Alice always tried to outwit the men. A typical contribution from Joss ran:

There was a young lady from Nyeri

Whose lusts were considered quite eerie,

On the night that she came,

And we both did the same,

It was fun, until I said, Kwaheri.’

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Rules were strict when it came to the stories. First, a round of ‘cold hands’ at poker was played, to determine who should start. Whoever won must begin with ‘Once upon a time, Kenya was not Kenya but British East Africa …’ and follow with any subject except shooting.

(#litres_trial_promo) Sometimes Idina, in her low throaty voice, would declare Kenya taboo: ‘Let’s be jolly and think of Paris tonight.’ They would all shut out Africa and everyone in it until the Swahili servant interrupted their reveries – ‘Chakula tyari’ – and they would go into the camp tent for dinner.

The foursome also enjoyed jaunts to Nairobi, usually confined to race week four times a year when they would make merry like everyone else, staying at Muthaiga Club. The visits involved a drive of a hundred miles, taking six hours. The de Janzés had a Buick and they would race the Hays to Muthaiga Club, testing the qualities of the Hays’ Hispano-Suiza against the Buick.

(#litres_trial_promo) The de Janzés frequently won, which is perhaps why Joss favoured Buicks later himself.

Fernside and Reliance Motors Ltd, the garage in the ‘tiny dorp’ of Naivasha, looked after the Hay vehicles for Joss all his life. Its European mechanics would lay bets with him on whether he would break his own record time to Nairobi. ‘Bwana Hay was no remittance man, cheerful when he lost, and bills were always paid eventually, if spasmodically.’ Robert Creighton serviced all the Hay engines, including the Hispano-Suiza. Joss was the only man Creighton had ever met to leave a Rolls-Royce in a ditch after it had skidded off the road in the rains and turned over. Joss’s ignorance of car engines left Creighton baffled. ‘How could so intelligent a man learn nothing about motor-car maintenance?’

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The murram road from Naivasha to Nairobi formed easily into corrugations, shaking vehicles mercilessly and making travel for farmers with heavy loads very laborious; the Hay – de Janzé races cannot have been comfortable. It was always a relief to arrive in Nairobi. Alice, ‘in grey slacks and green jumper, and wide-spaced grey eyes’, would calmly defy all the club rules, gliding into Muthaiga Club and daring anyone to stop her bringing in her animals – ‘a tiny monkey, an Airedale and a lion cub’.

(#litres_trial_promo) Even when she was persuaded to leave them in the car, each was brought indoors to her for regular inspection.

By now Nairobi had street lights, so fewer citizens were likely to fall into the open drains at night. Rickshaws plied their trade along Government Road between graceful blue gum trees, lining both sides of the wide thoroughfare between Nairobi Station and the Norfolk Hotel. In the mid-twenties Government House was rebuilt on the orders of Sir Edward Grigg, who was Kenya’s Governor until 1930.

(#litres_trial_promo) Joss, who had barely set foot in the old black and white ‘Tudor’ residence, would frequent this stately new building often in the 1930s. The cost, an astronomical £80,000, would be made much of by taxpayers, who ‘squealed indignantly and spoke of folies de grandeur’.

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Idina, coolly defying the harsh African climate itself, would appear at the Nairobi races in one of Molyneux’s latest innovations, on one occasion a brown hat covered in oiled ostrich feathers.

(#litres_trial_promo) Because Joss liked black and white, he had hit on the idea of Idina wearing unmatching earrings as a pair – one white pearl and one black pearl – a fashion she made her own.

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Joss always paid one visit to his barber Theo Schouten’s whenever up in Nairobi – men tended to visit their barber every three weeks then. His only alternative, meanwhile, was to get Idina to trim his hair. Theo Schouten was a ‘cheerful little man’ who, having been in Nairobi since 1911, was already looked upon as one of the town’s characters, running his Government Road establishment with ‘West End staff’.

(#litres_trial_promo) Schouten’s catered for both sexes in a humble wood and iron building with a corrugated roof and, like the best barbers everywhere, knew everyone and everything that was going on. Joss and Schouten came to know and like one another, and the barber’s was conveniently near to Joss’s and Idina’s lawyer, Walter Shapley of Shapley, Schwartze & Barratt. In London Joss had always used Truefitt & Hill in Bond Street, including their range of lotions known as CAR, and eventually he would persuade Schouten to stock this exclusive range. Joss’s dance partners were always aware of the pleasant scent. Men noticed it too – the distinctive aroma would pervade a changing room shared with Joss before a game of cricket or polo.

(#litres_trial_promo) Later, when Schouten moved to grander premises in the New Stanley Hotel on Delamere Avenue, and Joss was living in Nairobi, the one appointment he never missed was his massage and manicure, so as to garner information, useful gossip, about town.

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The Hays and the de Janzés took their rituals to Muthaiga Club: ‘the squash court ladder was sacrosanct’. They all began at the bottom, playing their betters, climbing rung by rung until each found his place, either to be ‘ousted by or ousting the rung just ahead’.

(#litres_trial_promo) Joss would always reach the top of the ladder, the champion for two seasons. He usually won at poker too, notwithstanding the fancy footwork that was going on with Alice under the table. He went along with that old poker adage – if you can’t spot the mug at your table in half an hour, it’s you! He relished that moment when the atmosphere became taut to breaking point and the game was played out in silence but for the orchestra of insects outside.

(#litres_trial_promo) Joss was of course an excellent bridge player, remembering easily which cards had gone into each trick.

The parties at Muthaiga during race week were notoriously wild. Evenings began with sundowners in the peristyle before dinner, and the celebrations lasted well into the night. According to one who saw it all for himself:

The gayest and most light-hearted community in Africa was to be found amongst the British settlers in Kenya, possibly because the Highlands, where most lived, were 7,000 feet above sea-level and this seemed to stimulate gaiety and exuberance. Many lived and worked on the farms that had developed from a country previously uncultivated and uninhabited bush. This was a community mainly of young people who worked hard and played hard and enjoyed life. The leading Muthaiga Country Club was the scene of many of the evening festivities. These would start very correctly with men and women in full evening dress gravely sipping glasses of sherry before dinner. By the end of the evening the company would probably be playing some riotous game or if an occasion such as New Year’s Eve, dancing round a bonfire in the garden. [On one occasion] six people were placed at the same table in the luncheon tent at the race meeting in Nairobi, who had by chance all been married (to one or the other) before … An air of restraint dominated until one of the men broke the ice, observing that it was quite like an old comrades’ dinner.

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After race week, back to the Wanjohi Valley the Hays and the de Janzés would go, for another month or so of isolation.

While out riding one morning, Frédéric and Alice discovered a lioness with three cubs hiding under some rocks and went regularly to the lair to observe them. Soon afterwards two young Indian princes with an older ADC called at Wanjohi Farm to invite the Hays and the de Janzés to come for dinner at their camp. They accepted gladly and discovered the camp was supplied with every luxury. The hunters displayed their trophies, ‘a greater kudu and two lion skins’. When Frédéric found out where these had been shot, he realised the princes had found their family of lions. ‘But didn’t you see any cubs?’ he asked. No, they had only seen the male and female, who had charged so they shot them both. Next morning Frédéric and Joss rode out to look for the cubs. ‘The poor little brutes had starved for three days, one was already dead, another died that night.’ Frédéric and Joss were angry with the hunters, for they believed that the killing of a female ‘of any of the species’ was a crime.

(#litres_trial_promo) Samson, the surviving cub, remained with the de Janzés, and gradually the dogs, ponies and even Valentino the baboon accepted him. Samson and Frédéric established a deep rapport. When Frederic fell ill with malaria, Samson would sit by his bed like a dog, waiting for his master to regain health.

They all had adventures with wild animals. One insistent elephant wandered up the valley from Laikipia on to Slains, trampling the Hay shamba. Joss would not allow anyone to shoot the animal but, needing a gunshot to scare it off, sent over to a neighbour for help. The neighbour appeared with a large rifle and some servants, and this shooting party succeeded in driving the elephant away, getting within a hundred yards of it, into thick forest. Then it came swiftly down wind, having heard the men, ambushing and knocking the helpful neighbour down with a side slash of its tusk. The man squirmed between the elephant’s front feet as it dug around with its trunk. He then claimed he stuck his fingers in its nostrils and was finally saved by being kicked backwards into a clump of thorns. Dr Henderson of Nakuru treated him for three broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder, ‘all in return for the kindness of loaning his gun’. He was black and blue all over.

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Samson disgraced himself at the first party that the de Janzés gave at Wanjohi Farm. The place was ‘hectic with twenty people staying, in and about the tents in front of their big veranda, and the courtyard at the back … was cluttered with cars’. The African staff loved entertaining and parties, notwithstanding all the additional work. Guests often brought their own cooks with them, who were ‘bringers of news from afar’ for the household staff. Africans are born chefs. The local staple diet is posho – maize meal – hardly varying over the years, and yet they astonished their employers with their diverse repertoire. Idina’s chef whipped up omelettes as light as air, or produced paupiettes of sole or truite meunière for as many guests as was wished, often at short notice. At Wanjohi Farm, every bench, easy chair, camp chair and dining chair had been brought into commission, and, ‘for once the table looked magnificent with a tablecloth and all necessary “adjuncts” in their place’. Samson, ‘much petted and spoiled’, soon got into the party spirit. Frédéric, changing indoors, heard the first crash: ‘I was in my bath … a towel, a leap and I was rescuing the table fittings where Samson tugged determinedly – a sparkle of fun in his eyes. A broken plate, sundry glasses on the floor – he was thoroughly enjoying himself.’

Everyone contributed to their ‘Dutch treat party’, where Joss and Frédéric, ‘mere abstainers’, handed out cocktails. Joss would mix the fashionable drinks of the day expertly, shaking up Manhattans and Martinis. Cocktails and jazz were expressions of modern life which Idina and Alice had brought from Paris. From Naivasha, the two newcomers Major and Mrs Ramsay-Hill had brought along stout and champagne because Molly’s favourite cocktail was Black Velvet, a mixture of champagne and Guinness.

(#litres_trial_promo) Idina’s tipple was gin and orange bitters. During the main course at dinner Molly Ramsay-Hill suddenly leapt to her feet and let out a wild shriek as a servant dropped a bowl of mayonnaise down her back, having tripped over Samson. Now, as Molly retreated to clean herself up, she too almost tripped over Samson’s outstretched paw. Someone leapt forward in time to prevent a heavy fall. ‘The good lady took a lot of pacifying … dinner came to an end without interruption.’