FORMULA FOR MURDER
THE I.C.I. MYSTERY
CHAPTER ONETHE chimes of Big Ben marked the half hour as the man stepped out into the London fog. ‘Good night, sir,’ called the doorman of the Bath Club. Roscoe Brunner did not reply; he was too preoccupied with his own thoughts and, for once, his natural easy-going politeness deserted him.
In Dover Street, he purchased the evening’s final edition of the London Standard which screamed with headlines concerning the prolonged national coal stoppage. Now in its eleventh month, 1926 was destined to become one of those milestone years which for ever live on in British memory.
Like 1901 and the death of Queen Victoria, the outbreak of war in 1914, and the peace celebrations of 1918, this had been another year which few would ever forget as the ceaseless months of strife and the bitter conflict of the General Strike had brought Britain closer to anarchy than at any time since the Civil War.
Himself a leading industrialist and, until recently, the head of one of the world’s leading chemical companies, Roscoe Brunner felt deeply the struggle between worker and management and yet, for the first time in a long and eminent career, he was helpless, either to intervene or to influence. However, he had other reasons to remember 1926. These were personally far more traumatic and, in common with most everyone else, he would be glad to see the year’s end.
A large black Daimler pulled alongside the kerb, the chauffeur stepping out effortlessly to open the door for Roscoe Brunner who climbed into the back seat. He was greeted by his wife, as affectionately as any man might expect after over a quarter of a century of married life, and on their way to Roehampton they chatted about the refurbishment of their new home, a grand mansion befitting the social status of a prominent London businessman which, of late, they had every reason to believe Roscoe Brunner would soon become.
They may also have touched upon other issues, more emotive and more profound, concerning events surrounding one of the most bewildering, colossal mergers of British business interest ever undertaken.
Whatever the nature of their conversation in those few minutes’ drive between the city centre and Roehampton, they seemed friendly and perfectly at ease as the chauffeur turned the limousine off Roehampton Lane and into the carriage drive of Green Cottage, the home of their daughter, Princess Shelagh, of the Royal House of Liechtenstein.
Princess Shelagh and her husband were away, enjoying an extended Continental holiday at their shooting lodge in the Austrian mountains, and Ethel Brunner, a talented and vivacious authoress, had taken personal charge of the household, as well as attending to the welfare of her baby grandson, Christopher.
At the front door of Green Cottage, Roscoe and Ethel Brunner were greeted by the maid who divested them of their outdoor apparel. Mrs Brunner ordered tea to be served in the first floor writing-room which, temporarily, doubled as her private bedroom. The coal shortage impinged upon everyone, even the wealthy.
Some minutes later, and after visiting their grandson in the nursery, the Brunners were settled in front of the writing-room fire and when the maid served their tea, everything appeared exactly as it should have been. Mr Brunner said he had an engagement in the city and would require the chauffeur at 8pm. His wife instructed that she would supper following his departure.
They never did either. Approximately three hours later, shortly before 10pm, on the evening of Wednesday November 3rd, 1926, the bodies of Roscoe and Ethel Brunner were discovered lying in a pool of blood in the Green Cottage writing-room. Ethel Brunner had been shot through the neck at close range whilst a single bullet through the temple had abruptly terminated her husband’s life. In his hand he still clasped a tiny revolver.
To detectives, on the scene by midnight, it seemed obvious that Roscoe Brunner had murdered his wife and then taken his own life. But why?
Affluent and successful beyond the dreams of ordinary men and women of the 1920s, the Brunners appeared to have had everything to live for. Roscoe Brunner was one of the most respected figures in the British chemical industry; his wife was making a name for herself as an accomplished writer and together they enjoyed wealth, possessions and social standing. They were also blessed with two fine sons approaching manhood and a daughter married into European royalty.
Reports of the Roehampton tragedy hit the national headlines on the Friday morning and the business world, family, friends and politicians in high places were stunned as the newspapers left little to the imagination in their quest for the most salacious gossip behind the appalling tragedy:
‘Secret of shot millionaire’, ‘Tragic quarrel over combine’, ‘A misguided wife’, ‘Millionaire’s death in Prince’s house’, ‘Secrets of mansion tragedy’, ‘A wife’s indiscretions’, ‘Impulsive Lady Bountiful’, ‘Drama of high finance’, ‘...the apparent eclipse of a magnate from his former eminent position’.
By the weekend, and to a column-inch, all of Fleet Street was of one steadfast opinion, that Roscoe Brunner had been driven to murder by his wife’s interference in his business affairs following his demise from the chairmanship of the Brunner Mond chemical company and then his failure to secure a seat on the inaugural board of directors of the newly-created Imperial Chemical Industries (I.C.I.).
Reported the Daily Mail:
Although Mr Brunner felt the change in his fortunes, his wife took it even more to heart. She felt the alteration in her husband’s commercial eminence so much that it obsessed her. He tried to pacify her, but apparently without success, and then came the formation of Imperial Chemical Industries.
This new combine is to include Brunner Mond & Company as its largest component, but there is to be no place for Roscoe Brunner on the new board of directors. He has been snubbed and his wife was known to be furious.
She said he had not been treated fairly and, letting her anger get the better of her discretion, she made a round of visits to influential people with the object of trying to get her husband’s grievances redressed. She visited people at their private houses, and at one, it is alleged, an unpleasant scene ensued. She went to newspaper offices and tried to arouse interest in her case, evidently moved by a deep-seated sense of grievance that in the constitution of the new board of directors no place had been found for her husband.
Though there did not appear to have been the slightest premeditation on the part of Roscoe Brunner, the wildest excesses of the press were brought into play and one newspaper, summing up the Brunners’ marriage, declared that their former happy relations had snapped and ‘...there was continual bickering regarding Mrs Brunner’s extravagance in the matter of entertainments, dress and other amusements’.
Others, not least the Daily Express, described Ethel Brunner as a ‘highly-strung, temperamental woman’ who had tried to dominate her husband. Another, perhaps delivering the coup de grace, revealed that six months earlier a celebrated West End clairvoyant had warned her ‘good friend’ Ethel Brunner that she was destined to meet a violent death.
It was compulsive reading and London society was agog as each revelation unfurled, no matter from whatever dubious source it might have emanated.
The newspaper reporting subsequently proved critical and at the formal inquest, five days later, not one new shred of evidence was revealed beyond that which had been so colourfully painted in the 1920s’ version of the modern tabloid press. Key witnesses were not called and information was withheld as the coroner, outraged by the media-inspired speculation, condemned the pre-inquest newspaper reporting as both indecent and improper. He complained that if just a one-hundredth part of the comment had been made in relation to a civil court action, then the editors would have been severely punished.
Precisely as directed, the jury formally returned verdicts of ‘murder’ and ‘suicide whilst of unsound mind’; verdicts that were as straightforward and merciful as anyone closely connected with the Brunners could have hoped. Ethel Brunner’s perceived interference in her husband’s business affairs had made her a convenient scapegoat for the whole tragic affair.
Yet, as this investigation seeks to show, it was a beguiling lie, the product of a masterful public relations exercise in damage limitation that has since grown in substance to become fact, erroneously repeated in practically every I.C.I. history and official record that has ever been penned. What is concealed is an extraordinary saga of conflict, loyalty, treachery and a lust for power involving the Brunners and Sir Alfred Mond, boyhood friend and erstwhile business partner to Roscoe Brunner.
Sir Alfred Mond was an immensely wealthy autocrat who had once knocked on the door of greatness but never quite entered. He was a ‘kingmaker’, a personal friend to Lloyd George, and often a financier to the Lloyd George cause.
He had risen to Ministerial rank, only to see his political ambitions crumble with the disintegration of the last great Liberal government. During the First World War, there were those who saw Mond as a fanatical patriot; others accused him of being a traitor and never before, or perhaps since, has a British political figure evoked such fierce emotion in his fellow countrymen and yet still succeeded in aspiring to high government office.
At the same time, and what is indisputable, is that Mond was one of the most dominant industrial figures of the century and as a political heavyweight and public benefactor he left an indelible mark on history. He made vast gifts to charity; he founded hospitals, promoted the founding of the British Imperial War Museum, organised the building of the Cenotaph, in London’s Whitehall, and played an immeasurable role in the advancement of the Jewish free state of Israel.
He also built his own empire, Imperial Chemical Industries. It was his dream, his vision and when he ruthlessly set his mind to return from politics to industry his knife strokes were measured.
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