The Ghosts of Happy Valley Read online

  The Ghosts of Happy Valley

  For Solomon

  Contents

  Chronology of Some Significant Historical Events

  Map

  I Clouds, Smoke and Mirrors

  1 An Unexpected Escort into the Centre of Scandal

  2 Destination Unknown

  3 A Night at Clouds

  4 Thoughts, Words and Misty Memories

  5 The Search for Slains

  6 Slains Unearthed

  7 Soccer After Suicide

  8 Recollections and Dreams of Alice

  II Monkey Business and Murder

  9 Into the Heart of the Valley

  10 The First and the Cursed

  11 House of Terror

  12 The Bones of Alice

  13 Monkey Man and More Mischief

  14 Tales of Torture and Many Cups of Tea

  15 The House with the Golden Door

  16 From Caves to Grandeur

  17 Times of Change

  18 Murder Beneath the Mountain

  19 Finding Fergusson’s

  III Politics, Bullets and Broken Hearts

  20 The Bolter’s Love, Loss and Pain

  21 The Temptress and Murderous Thoughts

  22 An Unbroken Spirit

  23 The Valley They Called Happy

  24 The Secret Garden of Happy Valley

  25 A Picnic Under the Chandelier

  26 Polo and Terrorism

  27 An Italian Legacy

  28 Exit Happy Valley, Enter Diana and the Rest of the Entourage

  29 Many Motives for Murder

  Conclusions at Clouds

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgements

  Index

  List of Illustrations

  Copyright

  Chronology of Some Significant Historical Events

  1844

  Missionary Ludwig Krapf arrives in Mombasa, establishing first mission station at Rabai

  1870

  Birth of 3rd Baron Delamere, Hugh Cholmondeley, in England

  1871

  Stanley finds Livingstone at Ujiji

  1883

  Birth of Sir Jock Delves Broughton in England. Explorer Joseph Thomson arrives in Rift Valley

  1888

  Birth of Gilbert Colville in England

  1890

  Anglo-German agreement: partitioning of East Africa

  1893

  Birth of Lady Idina Sackville in England

  1895

  Interior (west of Mombasa) declared the British East Africa Protectorate in June

  1896

  Start of inland railway in Mombasa

  1897

  3rd Baron Delamere arrives in Kenya on foot from Berbera

  1899

  Railway reaches mile 327 (now Nairobi) and halts before ascent into highlands

  1900

  Birth of Alice Silverthorne

  1901

  Birth of future Earl of Erroll, Josslyn Hay, in Scotland

  1902

  British government extends protectorate boundaries into Uganda

  1903

  Railway reaches Lake Victoria. Delamere buys land at Njoro

  1904

  South African settlers arrive

  1906

  Geoffrey Buxton arrives in Happy Valley

  1907

  Slavery abolished. Gilbert Colville comes to Kenya

  1913

  Birth of Diana Caldwell. Idina Sackville marries Euan Wallace

  1914

  Birth of Idina’s son David. Start of First World War

  1915

  Birth of Idina’s son Gerald

  1918

  Armistice, end of First World War

  1919

  Idina divorces Wallace, marries Charles Gordon and comes to Kenya in April

  1920

  Inland protectorate becomes colony

  1922

  Alice Silverthorne marries Comte Frédéric de Janzé in Chicago. Kikuyu Central Association begins. Police break up political gathering led by Harry Thuku near Norfolk Hotel on 16 March

  1923

  Idina divorces Gordon and in September gets engaged to Josslyn Hay in Venice, and marries him on 22 September in London. Alice de Janzé’s first daughter born in Paris

  1924

  Idina and Josslyn Hay arrive in Kenya and build Slains. Alice’s second daughter born in Paris

  1925

  Alice and Frédéric de Janzé invited to Kenya by Hays, arrive in December. Ramsay-Hills arrive and buy farm in Naivasha

  1926

  Birth of Diana, Idina and Josslyn Hay’s daughter in January. De Janzés buy Wanjohi Farm in June. Hay having an affair with Mary Ramsay-Hill. Raymond de Trafford arrives and starts affair with Alice de Janzé

  1927

  Alice de Janzé shoots Raymond de Trafford and herself in Paris in March. Alice divorces Frédéric in June. Alice tried and acquitted on 23 December

  1928

  Alice returns to Kenya in January, but is deported in March. Josslyn Hay’s father dies on 20 February. Jossyn Hay, now 22nd Earl of Erroll, runs off with Mary Ramsay-Hill to England in March. 3rd Baron Delamere marries Gladys Markham. Edward, Prince of Wales, and Henry, Duke of Gloucester, come to Kenya on safari. Both have affairs with Beryl Markham

  1929

  Wall Street Crash, start of Great Depression. Slains up for auction in January and in June Idina and Erroll divorce. Jomo Kenyatta goes to London to promote the Kikuyu case. End of year Beryl Markham banished by Queen Mary

  1930

  Erroll marries Mary Ramsay-Hill in February and returns to Kenya that month on ship with Edward, Prince of Wales, and Beryl Markham. Idina marries Donald Haldeman, buys and builds Clouds, returns to Kenya

  1932

  Alice de Janzé marries Raymond de Trafford. Royal Commission, Carter Land Commission appointed for Kenyan native land grievances. Oswald Mosley sets up British Union of Fascists

  1934

  Erroll joins British Union of Fascists. Idina leaves Haldeman in March, returns to Kenya in July with new boyfriend, pilot Chris Langlands

  1936

  Beryl Markham becomes first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from England. Edward VIII abdicates

  1937

  Erroll attends coronation of George VI

  1939

  Idina marries Vincent Soltau in March. Hitler invades Poland on 1 September, start of Second World War. Death of Mary, Countess of Erroll

  1940

  Soltau is posted to Cairo in mid-year. Diana and Jock Broughton married in England on 5 November, arrive in Kenya on 12 November

  1941

  Erroll murdered on 24 January. Euan Wallace dies on 8 February in England of stomach cancer. Trial of Broughton begins on 26 May followed by acquittal. Suicide of Alice de Trafford on 27 September

  1942

  Suicide of Broughton on 5 December in Liverpool

  1943

  Idina’s son Gerald (Gee) confirmed missing. Diana Broughton marries Gilbert Colville

  1944

  Idina’s son David killed in Medina in August

  1945

  Idina Soltau moves to Mombasa with boyfriend James Bird. End of Second World War in May

  1948

  Duke of Gloucester due to arrive to give Nairobi city status, prompting Kikuyu oath-taking ceremony at Kiambaa

  1950

  Kikuyu underground movement banned

  1951

  Start of Mau Mau

  1952

  State of Emergency declared, Jomo Kenyatta arrested. HRH Princess Elizabeth visits Treetops Hotel in Aberdare forest and becomes queen on death of her father

  1953

  Charles Fergusson and Rich
ard Bingley murdered on New Year’s Day

  1954

  Mau Mau burn down Treetops Hotel

  1955

  Idina dies in October. Diana divorces Colville and marries Tom Delamere

  1963

  Jomo Kenyatta addresses white settlers in Nakuru on 12 August. Kenya becomes independent at midnight on 12 December

  1978

  Jomo Kenyatta dies, Daniel Arap Moi becomes president

  1987

  Diana Delamere dies

  1992

  Start of multi-party politics

  2002

  Mwai Kibaki elected president of Kenya

  I

  Clouds, Smoke and Mirrors

  1

  An Unexpected Escort into the Centre of Scandal

  My mother and several other women artists were painting flamingos beside Lake Elmenteita the day I first met Solomon. It was a hot afternoon in January 2000, and they’d all gathered for tea on the veranda of my cottage in the heart of Kenya’s Rift Valley.

  Solomon jumped up to open the gate, barely waiting for me to emerge from my Land Rover before shaking my hand with vigour. I looked curiously at this dark, tall man with his white teeth, black piercing eyes and slightly unkempt appearance. He seemed unfazed to be the odd one out at the tea party. The only man and the only black person, Solomon was dressed in a faded red jogging suit and worn canvas shoes, topped by a leather visor hand-painted with leaves and lizards. His surname, Gitau, is a Kikuyu name, but Solomon bears little resemblance to these characteristically short, light-skinned African people.

  I’d heard a bit about Solomon from my mother: he’s an activist in the area they used to call Happy Valley. Back in colonial days, various shady characters had made a name for themselves in this highland valley, but today it’s the name of Solomon Gitau which is spoken with hushed cadences of scandal. His outspoken defence of the area’s last remaining colobus monkeys and their vanishing forest habitat had incurred the wrath of his neighbours and the local authorities, especially when he interfered with a lucrative illegal poaching operation. He was called ‘monkey man’, branded mad by most of his neighbours. I knew that despite having no regular income, he battled to replant trees in the area lying between the Rift Valley and the Aberdare Mountains, while also providing a voice for the wild forest creatures. He’d been brutally tortured by the authorities because of his outspoken determination, repeatedly threatened and sabotaged, yet had continued undeterred, starting up conservation groups throughout the area and beyond, somehow maintaining his optimistic determination to succeed in saving a largely forgotten area’s natural heritage. Today if occasional visitors drive through Happy Valley, it’s usually en route to the Aberdare National Park, where most of the remaining wildlife fled as the area’s human population grew massively after Kenya’s independence.

  A year previously Solomon had written his life story by hand and given it to my mother to edit, as he finds writing in English difficult. I’d glanced at the old exercise book with its grubby newspaper cover without much interest, but once I had opened it and read a few paragraphs, I had immediately felt compelled to finish the strangely gripping autobiography. Solomon was born in the heart of Happy Valley – just before the last of the white settlers left – and his story is extraordinary.

  It’s surprising that Kenya’s table-like range of volcanic mountains are still commonly called by their British colonial name, the Aberdares, even though after independence they were officially renamed the Nyandarua Range. These mountains rise to 13,120 feet, while close by, a little further west, is the smaller, hunched-looking Kipipiri mountain, rising to 10,987 feet. Happy Valley is the high green valley tucked between the two, spreading out to encompass the surrounding area to the north and west. Now it is densely populated by African farmers, most of whom were born long after the departure of the hedonistic clique of white colonials who lived there for a mere handful of decades.

  The British East Africa Protectorate, part of which became the Kenya Colony, attracted plenty of aristocratic, adventurous and rebellious white settlers in the first decades of the twentieth century. A handful of them, Happy Valley’s wife-swapping set, used the space and freedom of Kenya’s breathtaking landscapes to behave with wild abandon, tarring their fellow settlers with the dubious reputation associated with one particularly promiscuous clique. This circle’s transitory zenith of the 1920s and 1930s, with their sex, drugs and finally the murder mystery concerning the death of an earl in 1941, is framed enticingly by the surrounding century of dramatically colourful history, which also perhaps contributes to the continued seduction of world attention by this attractive former colony straddling the equator. There’s the land question too. Kenya’s Kikuyu tribe, feeling robbed of their country’s best land, initiated and fought a guerrilla war in the 1950s. Known as Mau Mau, it made the headlines daily in Britain. The Kikuyu are the largest tribe in Kenya, albeit only one of forty-plus in the country. Kenya’s first and third presidents were Kikuyu, and as it happens today’s Happy Valley is populated by Kikuyu.

  An indefinable mystique hangs about that dissolute clique of white settlers who tarnished the name of Happy Valley between the wars, their salacious antics supposedly taking priority over farming. But as Elspeth Huxley, that seasoned writer on Kenya, pointed out in her book Forks and Hope:

  Gin-soaked as they were, they enhanced rather than damaged the natural charms of their valley by leaving the native trees alone and creating gardens of outstanding beauty, by paddocking green pastures for butter-yellow Guernseys, stocking streams with trout and building attractive, rambling, creeper-festooned bungalows of local timbers with shingle roofs.

  Besides, decadent behaviour wasn’t totally restricted to Happy Valley. Aristocrats and royals from all over the world were joining in the fun. Edward, Prince of Wales, and his brother Henry, Duke of Gloucester, came to Kenya on hunting safaris in 1928 and 1930, their conquests not restricted to the animal kingdom. Dashing pilot and racehorse trainer Beryl Markham, the first woman to fly solo from England to America, probably scores best here. Her many lovers included Lord Erroll, professional hunter Baron Bror Blixen (married to Karen of Out of Africa fame) and the Hon. Denys Finch Hatton (also the lover of Karen Blixen, and an inspiration for her book). Tall, blonde and beautiful, Beryl – already on her second marriage after a bohemian upbringing in Kenya – managed to have affairs with the Prince and Duke simultaneously, eventually being paid off by Buckingham Palace to stay out of the way for life!

  But it’s on Happy Valley that interest still focuses. Scandal in Kenya had taken on a new dimension in 1923. It was in that year Lady Idina Hay arrived to settle in the area: she was twice divorced and eight years older than her latest husband, the attractive and aristocratic Hon. Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll. Idina was destined to become Happy Valley’s Mistress of Ceremonies, while her third husband’s penchant for sexual variety was no inhibitor. Add in Alice de Janzé, spoilt American heiress married to a French count, plus a few other moneyed undesirables, and here the real Happy Valley stories begin.

  Happy Valley’s heyday was brief, although it outlasted Idina’s third marriage. In 1939, at the start of the Second World War, Josslyn Hay, now Lord Erroll – his second wife Mary, Countess of Erroll, having died from a lifestyle of excessive drink and drugs – was busy conducting his affair with another married woman, Phyllis Filmer. The affair terminated with the arrival in Kenya of the newly married Sir Jock and Diana Broughton at the end of 1940. They rented a house in Nairobi’s leafy suburb of Karen, named in honour of Baroness Karen Blixen after she left Kenya in 1931.

  Sir Jock Delves Broughton was thirty years older than his striking blonde wife. They had a written agreement that he would not hold her back if she met somebody else – which she immediately did. Diana fell madly and very publicly in love with Erroll – and he seemed to return her feelings. Idina, Phyllis and that other notorious flame of Erroll’s, Alice de Trafford, formerly de Janzé, united in their dislike of
Diana.

  Two months later, in the pale light of dawn, some passing Africans found Erroll dead, with a bullet in his brain, tucked in the foetal position in the footwell of his Buick – which had almost toppled into a roadside murram pit, about a mile from the Broughton home.

  After wining and dining at Nairobi’s most popular colonial meeting place, Muthaiga Club, with Diana, her husband and a friend, Erroll had taken Diana dancing, had a quick romp with her at his Muthaiga house, and finally dropped her home in the small hours of the morning. Muthaiga is a suburb on the opposite side of Nairobi to Karen, but in the dead of night there wouldn’t have been any traffic. Erroll had evidently begun driving back to Muthaiga when somebody had intercepted him. Or had his killer been hiding in the back of his car? Or perhaps he was shot at Broughton’s house, then his body driven away by the murderer or an accomplice?

  Sir Jock was arrested and charged with Erroll’s murder, leading to the longest trial central Africa had ever known – three weeks. The world was at war, which made the headlines from the colony doubly embarrassing. Meanwhile, police evidence was patchy and poorly handled. In retrospect, this too was suspicious.

  In preparation, Diana flew to South Africa to meet the ballistics expert and get herself an entirely new wardrobe – something eye-catching and different for every day of the trial. In Muthaiga Club, the atmosphere was charged with apprehension – would her cuckolded husband be the first white man to hang in Kenya?