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death. They are presided over by a coroner, once a royal official, and the actual decision over the cause of death is made by a jury picked at random. It is not a trial in the full sense of the word, but this particular inquest was so badly handled that it might as well have been.
    The coroner was Gavin Thurston, and the case was heard at the Westminster Coroners’ Court on Horseferry Road, not far from the murder scene itself. Thurston had a good reputation and had handled some high-profile cases including the deaths of Hollywood star Judy Garland and Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein. But he had made mistakes in the past, and this was not his finest hour.
    The court looked like a battlefield with two sides drawn up in a fight to the death. On the one side was Veronica Lucan, her legal team and the police (Sergeant Forsyth was her unofficial bodyguard). An eyewitness described Veronica.
    “She sits staring ahead. She is emotionless, her eyes drawn through lack of sleep… sometimes looking around her defiantly, outstaring those prepared to play the dangerous game of trying to catch her eye.”
    On the other side sat the far more formidable army of Lucan’s family and friends. Christina Shand Kydd, Veronica’s sister, was there, but throughout the proceedings, the two never spoke a word to each other. Sandra Rivett’s family and her ex-husband were there too, but they were at the back, out of the limelight, almost as if someone thought, grudgingly and at the last minute, perhaps they ought to be invited to the inquest on their daughter and ex-wife.
    Roger Rivett was the first witness. He confirmed that Sandra had been 5 feet 2 inches tall, exactly the same height, it would be affirmed later, as Veronica Lucan. The police provided a plan of the Lucan house so that what followed would make sense to the jury. Then Veronica herself took the stand.
    She explained the souring of the relationship with Lucan from the mid-1960s, told the court about Sandra and the changing of the night off and what happened from 9:15 onwards on the night of November 7, when she went down to the basement in search of Sandra. She heard a noise in the hall cloakroom and moved towards the sound. She’d already seen there was no light in the basement, so she knew that Sandra couldn’t be down there. She remembered four blows to her head and that she began screaming. Little Frances’ statement, read out in court to lessen any more trauma to the child, also mentions this scream. Two floors above it sounded muffled, minor, and Frances believed that perhaps the family cat had scratched her mummy. When she called and heard no response, she went back to her bedroom.

    Sketch of Veronica Lucan at Rivet Inquest
    While this was happening, her parents were fighting on the hall floor and the top of the basement stairs. He told her to shut up. “Did you recognize the voice?” the coroner asked. “Yes,” said Veronica. “Who was it?” Thurston asked. “It was my husband.” A conversation then took place between the literally warring husband and wife, which Veronica was not allowed to repeat in court because it might have prejudiced the jury. She then explained how the struggle had stopped and described how she had run from the house while he was in the bathroom fetching towels for her. Frances had seen them arrive in the living room on their way upstairs and later heard her father calling “Veronica, Veronica? Where are you?” She hadn’t seen either of them leave.
    Inevitably, the lawyers for both sides waded in. Technically, an inquest does not have prosecution and defense teams, but anyone can have their counsel present. So Michael Eastham, hired by the Dowager Lady Lucan, tried to paint a hostile picture of Veronica as a warped, bitter woman who so hated her husband that she would say anything about him. The coroner stopped him in his tracks. The police’s counsel then spoke, as did the Rivett family’s lawyer and finally, Brian Coles, who spoke