Obituary: Lady Lucan was found dead on September 26th

YOU could always spot a thoroughbred. Veronica Duncan knew at once what to look for in a pony or a horse, after all those gymkhanas and point-to-points. And she could spot it in this man: the imposing height, the military moustache, the cavalry twills and tweed cap. This was John, Lord Bingham, ex-Eton and Coldstream Guards, the heir to a fortune and to the title of 7th Earl of Lucan. She was 26, still dreaming of a god, or at least the coup of marrying a peer of the realm. And there he was.

Her sister warned her off. He was a professional gambler, his parents were socialists, and he was said to be queer. Very “not so”. She didn’t care. He drove her round in his green Aston Martin, took her out in his power boat, and after a while simply carried her into his bedroom, thereby putting paid to sisterly warning number three. In a few months, they were married. Within a year she, a middle-class country girl, petite and with no confidence, was the Countess of Lucan, and her husband the most handsome man in the House of Lords.

To be a peeress of the realm was important. It did not imply the high life, though she and John did honeymoon on the Orient Express and take holidays in Gstaad and Monte Carlo. But a good bloodline imposed a code of honourable behaviour and civilised manners. It was fitting that, when she later set up a website, she put her coat of arms at the top. And quite correct, too, given her rank, that she wore a hat at the inquest into the killing of poor Mrs Sandra Rivett, her children’s nanny, who had been battered to death by her husband on November 7th 1974; after which he had turned his fury on her, and then vanished from the face of the Earth.

The story seemed to grip the world from that moment on. She preferred not to speak of it but, when asked, her memory was clear. On that evening, Mrs Rivett had offered to make her a cup of tea. It was not part of her normal duties; but, though they were on formal terms, they also chatted informally. When the tea did not arrive from the basement kitchen, she went in search. On the dark stairs, someone hit her hard on the head four times, then forced three gloved fingers down her throat, snapping “Shut up!” It was her husband.

With measured blows

Of course, she did shut up. She had done that all through their marriage. The point of being married, he said once, was that you did not have to talk to the person. He seldom did, after the first few years, except to say he was displeased with her. The Clermont Club had become his home, where he gambled his fortune away while she sat white with stress in the shadows. Nothing she could say would stop him. When she got depressed he would beat out her mad ideas with ten steady, measured blows on her bare bottom; after which they would have intercourse, and he would kiss the injuries tenderly.

She knew this was weak of her, but she always wanted to placate him, to try to do her best. How great was her relief when she bore him a son! She would also do her best when he was trying to strangle her, and she felt a metal bar beside her clotted with a great deal of her own hair. “Please don’t kill me, John,” she gasped. She did not omit the “please”. As they tried to sort themselves out, politely, in the upstairs bedroom afterwards, and to wash off the blood, she made a dash to the nearest pub and raised the alarm. Meanwhile, he fled.

There was never any doubt in her mind that he was the murderer of Mrs Rivett, and the near-murderer of her. They had been separated for over a year, and he had lost custody of the children, despite telling everyone that she was an unfit mother. He had seized them once (by court order) as they walked with the nanny in Green Park; she was sure he was stalking her, though that might have been the effect of the super-strong pills the doctors forced on her. He tried several times to commit her to the loony bin. That she did manage to refuse.

She also felt sure she had solved the mystery of his disappearance. Though he had behaved badly, he was an honourable man. Indeed, she had always hoped they could be reconciled. When he fled, apparently taking the cross-Channel ferry from Newhaven, he had therefore jumped from the boat in mid-voyage, deliberately onto the propellers, so that his remains would never be found. In that case death duties would not be immediately payable, and the children’s education could be secured.

This thought was some comfort in her old age. She spent it in the mews cottage in Belgravia where he had lived after their separation and from which he had come to kill her. His portrait in his Lords ermine still hung on the wall; the blinds were kept down. Her children were lost to her, finding it more congenial to live with her sister and refusing to think their father guilty. From 1982 they never spoke. When her younger daughter married she watched through the railings in the rain, on her way to buy a cardigan from Marks & Spencer. All her relationships had been cold.

In old age she wrote a memoir and gave a television interview, her voice cool and emphatic. Her account of the night of November 7th 1974 did not vary, except in one particular. She preferred to say that she had cried out, or simply spoken loudly, when she ran bloodied into the pub. She had not let the side down by screaming; or, if so, only with measured breaths.