Looking
for Lucks
Taki
New York
Isuppose with the total eradication of crime back in dear old Blighty, Scotland Yard is correct in making a fresh attempt to solve the Lord Lucan murder case 30 years after poor Sandra Rivett was bludgeoned to death. Cops are like athletes. They have to train, and what better way to keep busy than hunting down the elusive Lord Lucan? The fuzz still believes 'Lucky' Lucan is alive, and manpower is being assigned to investigate faraway places such as, say, the Bahamas, South Africa and other sunny spots where a shady character like Lucan may be living.
As some old-time readers may remember, 1 was a good friend of I.ucan. In fact, I lent him rather a large amount of moolah just before the murder, an amount which remains outstanding. James Fox recently wrote in the Sunday Telegraph of one last message Lucky sent to Michael Stoop, another good friend. Talk about a nonstory. Fox had done a hatchet job back then on what he called the `Lucan Set', a non-existent group which the press pounced on at the time. Fox's 'scoop' was a total invention. The set, if there was such a thing, was comprised of John Aspinall and
his friends, namely Jimmy Goldsmith, Charles Benson, Lucky, Greville now Lord Howard and yours truly. We met daily for lunch followed by backgammon, then for dinner and chemin de fer. Lucky was Aspinall's batman, so to speak. He was a house blue (codcword for house player), was broke and was going to pieces over his failure to gain custody of his children. But he never let on and it was outrageous that after the murder people actually believed that Goldsmith or Aspinall would have shielded Lucky from the law. Aspers was never popular with the Fourth Estate because he wouldn't give them the time of day, and journalists were never allowed inside his clubs. Jimmy, too, was a target because of his unconventional lifestyle. Socalled moralists — envious hypocrites, actually — such as Richard Ingrains saw an opportunity to libel all and sundry, and that's how those ghastly stories became 'facts'.
Now I read the whole thing is starting all over again. I suppose cops like to travel on expenses, and hacks like to invent things, and, as there's nothing of interest going on in places like Iraq or America nor a single mugging taking place in London, perhaps it's a good thing, after all. But take it from the poor little Greek boy. Lucan drowned by weighing himself down and scuttling the boat he had bought with Greek money. He had made two trial runs to Newhaven before the murder, one in the company of a friend of his who is very much with us today. He figured that as long as there was no body found his children could never be accused of having a killer as a father. Lucky was a charming man, well read and always pretending to be an upper-class twit, hut his one act of folly proved that he was unhinged and that he was a terrible fool at that.
Over this side of the pond, America's ever-rising prosperity enables the press to indulge more and more in gravitas, as in the recent Nicky Hilton separation. For any of you unaware of Miss Hilton, she's the younger sister of Paris Hilton, the wellknown star of porno videos taken by her numerous boyfriends and sold over the Internet. I am told that the latest, her third, is almost two hours long, which even Casanova would find slightly boring. Nicky Hilton has not as yet gone that way, but she's in the news nevertheless because of separating from her husband of six weeks. As luck would have it, I've known her hubby, Todd Meister, for some time, and he's not that had a fellow, although he has a very dirty mouth in front of the fairer sex. This is considered cool in the Big Bagel. I suppose it's not as bad as murdering one's nanny, but then Meister is not exactly the seventh Earl of Lucan. He is a money manager, but for the moment what he's managing is the publicity over the break-up after only six weeks of a very public marriage lived very much in the public eye. Poor Todd, better luck next time.
As some of you may have surmised, I am not a great admirer of American women — that harshness, those granite glares, those oversized teeth, those shrill voices — but I must admit that when they're good, they're very, very good. By good, of course, 1 mean feminine. The Bagel seems to he full of DSRHs, desperately searching for rich husbands-types, but to my great surprise I met the two ladies I mentioned last week in DC of all places. Amy and Jennifer not only have perfect American figures, but also incredible brains. So what am 1 to do? One feels most alive when recognising beauty, but in this ease, due to age, the regrets I feel do not rank alongside Dante's failure to hook up with Beatrice. As the great Nigel Dempster used to say, stay tuned.
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