| One of the reasons that the Lord Lucan mystery | | | | he's on the run and never to reappear. No time for him |
| exerts such a peculiar fascination is that, for many | | | | to change his clothes; get a passport; grab some |
| people, there is something very enticing about the idea | | | | money. Lucan, quite literally, fled in the clothes he stood |
| of... disappearing off the face of the earth. Men, in | | | | up in. Is there a family man on earth, married with |
| particular, seem to love the dog of abandoning their | | | | children, who hasn't at some stage fantasized about |
| wives, children, jobs, mortgages and all the other bits of | | | | just that. Why else was Britain so in awe of John |
| paraphernalia that we acquire in our lives. And with one | | | | Darwin, the famous Port Seton canoeist who faked |
| single slash, we can be done with this great Gordian | | | | his own death. |
| knot of mundane boredom that binds us to our | | | | We wanted to know all of the details - though I must |
| middle-class lives. | | | | admit, the whole story did rather turn to farce when it |
| Of course we can, if we want to, get a divorce and | | | | became apparent that he'd been spent at least a year |
| leave our jobs and abandon our children... yet the | | | | skulking in a secret apartment. For a few short |
| actual practicalities are always going to be rather | | | | seconds though, we all of us were living the dream. |
| difficult. Going to take a few months to get shot of | | | | We were the man who'd faked his own death and |
| your commitments, and in that time - well, your resolve | | | | gone on to carve out a new life in Panama. John |
| might start to falter. You might start to see your wife | | | | Darwin, of course, was caught. Lucan, however, is of a |
| in a slightly better light; children might not be such a pain; | | | | quite different category altogether. Because there's |
| even the job might not seem so bad. Life, in short, | | | | quite a sporting chance that Lucan is in fact living the |
| might be a bit boring, but not worth abandoning | | | | dream: that not only did he cut loose, but that he made |
| completely. However, there remains that little bit in all of | | | | it out to the other side. |
| us which thinks, just for the briefest of seconds, | | | | And, part of the proof of his success is that, even 35 |
| "Wouldn't it be great to have done with it all?" | | | | years on, none of us have a clue what happened to |
| Lucan didn't just manage to disappear, he did it from a | | | | him. I wonder if, in the next 50-odd years, some new |
| standing start. One moment he's booked in to have | | | | clue will turn up. Or will Lord Lucan become like the |
| dinner with three friends at the Clermont Club; the next, | | | | Marie Celeste and remain a mystery for all time? |