Lady Lucan (pictured) was found dead at her home in Belgravia, London on Tuesday
Lady Lucan asked her publisher to remove two references about her close relatives in her book shortly before her death because she ‘didn’t want to upset them’.
The 80-year-old aristocrat was found dead on Tuesday at her home in Belgravia where her husband Lord Lucan famously disappeared from after bludgeoning their nanny to death 43 years ago, in the mistaken belief she was his wife.
Lady Lucan was one of the last people to see her husband John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan, alive before he vanished after the body of Sandra Rivett, nanny to his three children, was found at the family’s London home on November 7, 1974.
Lady Lucan’s was making the final changes to her book ‘A Moment in Time’ when she died.
Pam McCleave, her editor at the small publishing house Mango, told The Sunday Times she was ‘very determined to finish her book’ and made two crucial changes to the manuscript.
She said Lady Lucan had asked for references to her son, George, now the 8th Earl, and her sister, Christina Shand Kydd, who had gained custody of her children in 1982 as she struggled with mental problems, to be taken out.
‘She told me she did not want to upset them’, Ms McCleave revealed.
In a final text sent to her publisher at 6.30pm on Sunday evening she said: ‘Dear Pam, I’m more concerned about a possibly libellous text and hopefully have taken advice about this.’ The book will come out in December.
Her publisher revealed how Lady Lucan told her she was ‘very ill’ yet thought she appeared ‘fit as a fiddle’.
Police have described her death as ‘not suspicious’, meaning there is no suggestion of foul play.
The estranged family of Lady Lucan, whose husband famously vanished more than four decades ago, said she ‘was and is unforgettable’
Last week her friend Basia Briggs revealed to MailOnline how Lady Lucan died ‘devastated’ she never healed her rift with her three children – but had recently found love again.
She said: ‘There was a romantic entanglement with a gentleman for a couple of years. She had found happiness and at last she was happy. It had perked her up. They would go for walks together and he would scrub her back in the bath. I had hoped she would enjoy herself in her twilight.
‘Since her dreadful misfortune in 1974 she gradually grew suspicious of people and couldn’t understand why the world turned on her…she never did anyone any harm. She was fed up of talking about it. Her children didn’t want anything to do with her, and she was devastated and upset about it.
‘She couldn’t understand it, and I couldn’t fathom it either. She was the victim of extraordinarily bad luck.’
Lady Lucan asked for references to her son George Bingham (pictured on his wedding day) to be removed from her book shortly before her death, her publisher revealed
Officers found her body after forcing entry to the property in Belgravia (pictured) on Tuesday
Lady Lucan was reported missing by a friend after she failed to appear in Green Park, where she walked every day at the same time.
Police battered down the door of her mews house in central London on Tuesday to find Veronica, the Dowager Countess of Lucan, dead.
Lady Lucan was one of the last people to see her husband alive.
The countess was in the house watching TV in her bedroom that night when the 29-year-old nanny Sandra Rivett was killed as she went downstairs to the unlit basement to make her employer a cup of tea.
The countess contends that she disturbed her husband after the fatal assault. He hit her four times with a length of bandaged metal piping before she grabbed his genitals.
Then, after she had persuaded her husband to get her a glass of water, she fled to a nearby pub and raised the alarm.
Lord Lucan fled the murder scene in a car he had borrowed. His body has never been found.
Although a High Court judge granted a death certificate last year allowing his son to inherit his title, this has provided neither resolution nor a conclusion to the mystery.
In an interview with the Daily Mail earlier this year, Lady Lucan said she believed that ‘he got on a ferry and jumped off mid-Channel, and was chopped up by the propeller – which is why his body was never found’.
She said that as a powerboat racer he had a detailed knowledge of propellers and would have known precisely where to jump so his remains were destroyed.
Lord Lucan (pictured with his wife Veronica Duncan in 1963) famously disappeared from their home in Belgravia 43 years ago
An inquest jury at a coroner’s court named Lord Lucan, in his absence, as the murderer of Mrs Rivett – making him the last person in Britain to be declared a murderer by an inquest jury, before the procedure was outlawed.
He was never convicted in a criminal court.
Both his son George, a merchant banker, and younger daughter Camilla, a QC, had publicly made clear that their father should not be assumed culpable, to the fury of their mother.
Lady Lucan was the last person to see her husband before he disappeared on the night of November 7, 1974, after bludgeoning to death their nanny Sandra Rivett (pictured)
The bitter rift that divided her and her daughters Frances, 52, and Camilla, 47, and son George, 50, as well as her sister Christina Shand Kydd, who was distantly related by marriage to Princess Diana, had persisted for almost four decades.
Following Lord Lucan’s disappearance the children continued to live with their mother but custody was transferred to their uncle Bill Shand Kydd and aunt Christina in 1982 when Lady Lucan suffered a mental breakdown. Lady Lucan had five grandchildren but never met any of them.
Speaking earlier this year, she said: ‘Time has passed and my life has carried on in a quiet, untroubled manner. I cannot see any advantage in seeing them.’
The Earl of Lucan and Veronica Duncan after their marriage on November 28, 1963
Lady Lucan was photographed with her children Camilla, Frances and George at Christmas in 1974
Lady Lucan survived a 1974 attack by her husband that sparked a decades-long mystery