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a success, and the couple’s son was being looked after by the Hensbys while Sandra found work in London. She was bright, funny, vivacious and marvelous with children. When Veronica hired her in September, she took to her at once and they became friends; the Lucan children adored her.
    In November, Sandra was going out with John Hawkins, relief manager at the Plumbers Arms, down the road from Number 46. His usual night off was Thursday, but that was changed in the first week of the month to Wednesday. According to Sandra’s mother, the change was at Sandra’s suggestion because she was unwell with a sore throat. Whatever the reason, with Veronica’s permission, Sandra switched nights.
    It would cost Sandra her life.
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Chapter 11: Countdown to Murder
    Thursday, November 7, 1974. At 4 PM, Sandra Rivett took all three Lucan children to post some letters. At about the same time, John Lucan, wearing a blue suit, went into a chemist’s shop at 9 Lower Belgrave St. and asked the pharmacist to identify a pink-and-green capsule. It was Limbitrol 5, a treatment for people suffering from depression with anxiety. It was not the first time Lucan had turned up with similar questions.
    Forty-five minutes later, while Sandra and the Lucan children were getting ready for the children’s dinner, Lucan rang a friend, Michael Hicks-Beach, who was a literary agent. He was writing an article on gambling for an Oxford University magazine and needed the man’s advice. Hicks-Beach arrived at 72A Elizabeth St. between 6:30 and 7 PM and they chatted about the article. Lucan downed a couple of vodkas, while the agent had two Scotch and sodas. At 8 PM, Lucan drove Hicks-Beach home to Chelsea in West London, in a battered old car, almost certainly Michael Stoop’s Corsair, but half an hour earlier he had phoned the Clermont club to reserve a table for dinner. When the police later followed up on this clue, the Clermont had logged the request at 8:30, and the hour’s discrepancy has never been explained. The people invited to dinner were Greville Howard, a Clermont club friend who sometimes used 5 Eaton Row; a secretary, Sarah Smith-Ryland, and James Tuke, a banker and his wife, Caroline. The table was booked for 11, as the others had a theater engagement that evening. Oddly, the table was booked for four people, not five, as though Lucan had no plans to join them.
    At some point in the early evening, Sandra rang her parents with her plans to spend Christmas with them in their trailer home in Basingstoke. Then she went to her room on the top floor of the house to do some ironing. For the rest of the evening, events were, not unnaturally, a little vague. Sandra had put George and Camilla to bed as usual, probably by 7 PM. Frances had been off school that day because the bus hadn’t turned up and Veronica had let the girl stay home. Shortly after half past eight, Frances and her mother were curled up on Veronica’s bed. The little girl was in her pajamas and Veronica was wearing a brown sweater over a green jumper.
    Around 8:45 PM, Lucan drove up to the door of the Clermont club in the Mercedes. He didn’t get out but wound down the window and called to Billy Egson, the doorman, “Anyone in the club?”
    “No, my Lord,” Egson told him. “None of the usual crowd.”
    “Okay,” said Lucan. “I’ll be back later.”
    At Number 46, Sandra Rivett popped her head around Veronica’s door. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
    “Yes,” said Veronica, “I’d love one.”
    They were probably the last words Sandra Rivett heard.
    The rest, 37 years later, is still a mystery.
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Chapter 12: Inquest
    The days turned into weeks and the weeks into months. They say that if the police cannot crack a murder case in three days, they will never crack it, but in a way that pleased almost nobody, the inquest into Sandra Rivett’s death did it for them.
    Inquests are normally held in Britain within days of a suspicious