White Mischief

Just before 3am on January 24th, 1941, when Britain was preoccupied with surviving the Blitz, the body of Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll, was discovered lying on the floor of his Buick at a road intersection some miles outside Nairobi, with a bullet in his head.

A leading figure in Kenya's colonial community, the Earl had recently been appointed Military Secretary, but he was primarily a seducer of other men's wives. Sir Henry Delves Broughton, whose wife was Erroll's current conquest, had an obvious motive for the murder. However, no one was ever convicted, and the question of who killed him became a classic mystery, a scandal, and a cause célèbre.

A Fascinating Investigation

Among those who became fascinated with the Erroll case was Cyril Connolly, who joined forces with James Fox for a major investigation of the case in 1969 for the Sunday Times magazine.

• After Connolly's death, James Fox inherited the obsession and a commitment to continue pursuing the story.
• Fox's investigation led him both to England and Kenya in the late 1970s.

One day, on a veranda overlooking the Indian Ocean, Fox came across a piece of evidence that seemed to bring all the fragments and pieces together. It convinced him that he finally saw a complete picture...