The brother, in the flat, EFL:
| Colonel Mustard in the arbar... arber... uhhh... greenhouse! |
French detectives are searching for the missing 10th Earl of Shaftesbury along the network of roads between France and Germany after his estranged wife allegedly revealed that his body had been dumped by her fleeing brother.  "Inspector! It was not me! I swear by my grandmother's moustache! It was... Oh, I cannot say it!"
"But you must say it, Madame!"
"It was... It was... It was my brother!"
"Mon dieu! How could I have missed it! Of course!" |
Jamila M'Barak, 37, was yesterday in the secure wing of a hospital in Nice after suffering a nervous breakdown four months after her husband - an eccentric English aristocrat who had a fondness for bargirls and nightclubs - disappeared.
| "Legume! Madame is having a nervous breakdown! Retrieve her from the chandelier, if you please, and call for the men in the white coats!" |
| Cops get close and she comes down with a case of the vapors. |
The earl, 66, was last seen at the Noga Hilton in Nice in early November last year. Anthony Ashley-Cooper, as he was born, was a flamboyant figure who frequented hostess bars and other attractions along the seafront.
"Aaaar! Who's that toff, Jean-Pierre"
"'At's the 10th or 11th Milord Shaftsbury, Jean-Francois! 'E comes here to watch the Apache dancers and to pick up les femmes!" |
The peer, whose family estate is in Wimborne, Dorset, had travelled to the south of France to sort out affairs with Jamila, including, it is alleged, what divorce settlement she would get from his £10m fortune.
| Looks like she was trying for 100%. |
Ms M'Barak, his third wife, had repeatedly denied any involvement with his disappearance but last Friday she was arrested in Cannes on suspicion of his murder. She is said to have blamed her brother for the killing at her home in Cannes on November 5 last year.
"Non, non! It wudn't me, Inspector! You mus' believe me!"
"Inspector..."
"Hush, Legume! How could a woman with legs like that commit murder most foul?" |
She allegedly told police her brother, Mohammed M'Barek, 40, murdered the earl during a violent row and dumped his body somewhere near the French-German border. According to police sources, Ms M'Barek claimed the fight broke out after her estranged husband arrived to discuss the terms of their divorce.
"M'lord, there's a man with a fez here to discuss your divorce!"
"Thank you, Higgins. What divorce?" |
Tunisian-born Mr M'Barek is alleged to have put the earl's body in the boot of his car and dumped it while driving back to his home in the suburbs of Munich, where he was arrested on Saturday.
"Herr M'Barak?"
"Yes?"
"You're ÃŒnder arrest! Schtick 'em up!" |
He is under official investigation for the murder.
"I am convinced, Legume, that he is the real killer!"
"Yes, Inspector!"
"That bosom... Mama mia!"
"Inspector! You speak Italian, too?" |
Ms M'Barek, 37, a Dutch national of Tunisian descent, was being treated for nervous depression at a psychiatric hospital in Nice last week, when she was interviewed by police and reportedly confessed.
"You can only see her for a few minutes, Inspector."
"She is that depressed?"
"She bites."
"We will leave as soon as she start to howl, I give you my word!" |
On Saturday, she appeared in court in Grasse where judge Catherine Bonici put her officially under investigation for complicity in murder.
"I am worried, M'sieur Advocat."
"What do you have to worry about?"
"The judge... She is a woman."
"A woman?"
"She isn't going to be impressed by my bosom!" |
A police source said she had blamed her brother for the killing, but officers are investigating the possibility that she may have lured the earl into a fatal trap.
| "Anthony, darling, why don't you come up to my flat for one last time?" |
She has not given any clues as to where the body was dumped. A few days before this weekend's arrests, the earl's sister Lady Frances Ashley-Cooper, who also lives in the south of France, told a French newspaper she was convinced he had been murdered.
"The bullet hole in the wall, the bronze statue of the Venus de Milo — bent double, the trail of blood... Yes, I think he may have been murdered!"
"But M'lady, there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for all those things!" |
She had spoken to her brother three days before he disappeared and he had been good spirits. "He was jolly and enthusiastic.
"Anthony! It's Frances! How are you, darling?"
"Oh, jolly and enthusiastic, old thing! How about you?" |
There was nothing to give the impression that he was about to suddenly disappear," she said. "I don't believe he's run off or that he's committed suicide. I think he's been assassinated. By whom and why I have no idea. He is careless and naive and has probably got himself mixed up with a dangerous set against which he was not prepared."
| "Like the time he took up with the Viennese chanteuse! And the Apache dancer from Marseilles... And the flamenco dancer from Barcelona... And the Cossack lady from Volgagrad... And the belly dancer frm Marrakesh... And the Maharini from Mumbai... And the Esquimeau girl, the one with the funny shoes..." |
Asked about her sister-in-law, Ms M'Barek, she said: "He loved girls, but he gave me the impression of having found happiness with his third wife Jamila who he met a few years ago in a discotheque at Versailles where she was digging gold working as a hostess. They got married discreetly in Holland in November 2002. I met her once with my brother. She was enticing, seductive. She had everything to please a man and she knew how to please them. My brother gave her a villa in Cannes as well as a mill in the Gers. Each month he gave her a large sum of money. The paper reported the amount as €7,000 (£4,900) a month." Mohammed M'Barek is due to be transferred to France for questioning shortly. |