PHYSICAL training instructor whose crowning wartime achievement seems to have been organising football games between Canadian and American military personnel stationed in the UK, Governor Sir Edwin Leather openly compared himself to World War Two's Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery as he pondered whether to lift the injunction on the inquest into the March 10, 1973 murders of predecessor Sir Richard Sharples and Government House Aide-De-Camp Captain Hugh Sayers.

Sir Edwin said he feared being led into a disastrous folly akin to Montgomery's Second World War Arnhem operation as a result of flawed advice and faulty intelligence being supplied by "overconfident" underlings, including the Attorney General and the Police Commissioner as well as Bermudian Cabinet Ministers.

In a vainglorious, historically inaccurate and characteristically idiosyncratic "position paper" composed in the summer of 1975, Sir Edwin suggested that reopening the inquest into the killing of his predecessor might amount to going "a bridge too far" ? overreaching in the way Montgomery had when he strategised the Allied thrust into Holland in September 1944.

Intended to secure bridges across the rivers in Holland so Allied armies could advance rapidly northwards and then thrust into the lowlands of Germany, skirting around the Siegfried Line, the chief German defence line, the plan codenamed Operation Market Garden didn't have the expected outcome.

The bridge at the Dutch city of Arnhem proved to be "a bridge too far" and after ten days of bitter fighting the operation ended with the evacuation of the remainder of the 1st British Airborne Division and the collapse of the campaign.

Sir Edwin initially had adamantly opposed reconvening all of the inquests into the 1972/'73 Bermuda murder spree that left five people dead because the suspected gunmen were already serving long jail terms for separate armed robbery convictions.

Evidently, though, Sir Edwin had been pleasantly surprised by both the swiftness of the first two inquests and favourable public reaction to the verdicts.

In June 1975, a coroner's jury determined former Prospect janitor turned self-styled-guerrilla Erskine Durrant (Buck) Burrows had murdered Police Commissioner George Duckett in September 1972.

In July verdicts were returned at a coroner's inquest naming Burrows and his known associate Larry Winfield Tacklyn as accessories before the fact in the April 1973 Shopping Centre murders during which supermarket executives Victor Rego and Mark Doe were bound, gagged and shot to death during the course of an armed robbery that netted the gunmen just $2,000 to $3,000.

But Sir Edwin once again baulked at discharging his constitutional responsibilities when it came to lifting the inhibition on the inquest into the Government House murders. At one point he lamely argued there was no need to set the judicial wheels in motion for the March 10, 1973 double killing, arguing murder charges for the Duckett assassination and Shopping Centre killings were pending and would satisfy the requirements of justice in the killing spree.

In the position paper dated August 1, 1975 Sir Edwin second guessed police intelligence about both the killings and the current state of Bermuda's internal security situation and questioned advice he had been given to proceed with the third inquest by Cabinet Ministers, law officers and the Police, suggesting he was being railroaded by "over-confident" colleagues.

"The simple, logical decision facing us at this moment is to proceed with the inquest on the Governor and Captain Sayers," said Sir Edwin in the paper that was circulated to his Deputy Governor, Premier Sir Edward Richards, Police Commissioner L.M. (Nobby) Clark, Attorney General Gerald Collett and the Cabinet Ministers who sat on his Governor's Council. "This would have all the obvious advantages of logic and consistency and could be defended with a clear conscience . . .

"But, I have a strong feeling that the process of thought and consultation must not be cursory: the very fact that we have had two such apparently easy successes is the very reason we should take nothing for granted. On the contrary I want to take full advantage of the two-month pause that the summer recess and the usual process of holidays gives us to reassess the whole picture, to answer three specific questions.

"1) We have to face the argument that 'The result of the inquests leaves a position where those mentioned cannot get a fair trial' is making a definite impact on public opinion. The (Bermuda) newspaper has already inferred that we rushed ahead with what we have done in order to beat some change of law in the UK which might have stopped us. I have no trouble convincing myself the argument is ridiculous; will it be so easy to convince public opinion? And if we cannot, what reaction might a hostile public opinion have on future course of events? A hung jury? Demonstrations and violence at a proposed hanging?

"2) Is our intelligence appreciation of the state of law and order really valid? Are we absolutely certain that the intelligence targets to which we have given priority (paramilitary and criminal figures) are the right ones? I have an uncomfortable feeling I detect a change of attitude, particularly among teenagers: that it is getting a touch of nastiness and militancy again which could explode without warning. I hope and pray I am wrong but I want to be proved wrong. I am in no way questioning our ability to deal with a violent situation: I am certain it is our duty, should we be set on a course that may cause violence, to know exactly what we are doing and what we are aiming to achieve.

"3) If we proceed to the third inquest, what effect, if any, is that likely to have on a subsequent murder trial?

"There is a vast difference between going straight ahead in the execution of one's duty, with a full awareness of the risks and dangers that may lie ahead, and recklessly rushing forward in what may turn out to be a Charge of the Light Brigade; we have no concern in trying to be " (because) this is ".

"The more I have pondered the events of recent weeks, the more my mind has turned to the tragic story of the Arnhem campaign, vividly described in (Cornelius) Ryan's book . If logic and duty and wisdom all argue for pressing on to the next bridge ? the next inquest ? by all means let us do it. But before taking that decision I want to be convinced that it will not be 'one bridge too far'.

"It was Montgomery, that most cautious and canny of all World War Two commanders, who made that disastrous mistake to press on to Arnhem, and the principal reasons he made it were faulty intelligence and over-confident intelligence appreciation. The reasons for those two cardinal errors were that both his intelligence officers and his field commanders had become over-confident; and the reasons for their over-confidence were their own recent successes, and their justified pride in the machinery they had themselves created.

"I just wonder whether, in our own tiny way, we may not be in danger of making the same mistakes? I just wonder whether our intelligence and our appreciation from intelligence are really as good as we think they are."

Governor seemingly hero-worshipped the "cautious and canny" Montgomery. But military historians, including Cornelius Ryan whose best-selling book Sir Edwin read, concur that the catastrophe at Arnhem did not result from Montgomery being provided with erroneous advice by his subordinates and intelligence officers. Quite the opposite was true.

The conceited Field Marshal had dismissed out of hand all data suggesting the campaign was a disaster in the making and pressed on with Operation Market Garden despite the advice he had been given. In fact, it was not Montgomery but one of his senior officers, Lieutenant General Frederick (Boy) Browning, who had prophetically remarked the Field Marshal was attempting to go "a bridge too far" in Holland.

Sir Edwin concluded his position paper by saying he was dealing with crimes that "contain a high content of potential political and social dynamite" and was clearly fearful that revelations made at an inquest into the Government House killings might provide the spark that could detonate the island's internal security situation

Left unsaid in his position paper but spelled out in a separate FCO summary of the Governor's thinking is the fact his qualms stemmed directly from a fear that Opposition figure and defence lawyer Lois Browne Evans would likely exploit the situation for political gain.

"The Governor doubted the wisdom of proceeding with the Sharples/Sayers inquest at this particular time," reads the FCO memorandum. "Not only did he believe public discussion of the two inquests might prejudice subsequent murder proceedings, he also feared that Mrs. Lois Browne Evans, Deputy Leader of the Progressive Labour Party Opposition and a leading criminal lawyer, would attempt to make racial and political capital out of any subsequent trials.

"He felt the options were either to lift the inhibition on the Government House inquest or do nothing for two or three months and then hold a trial on either the Shopping Centre or Duckett murders."

Although he personally favoured doing nothing about the Sharples/Sayers murders because of the perceived potential of political mischief-making, Sir Edwin was also fearful that his predecessor's widow, Lady Pamela Sharples, might go to her contacts in the British Press and publicly question why the inhibition had not been lifted on the inquest into the Government House murders.

Sir Edwin's comments about Lady Sharples, an iron-willed woman who was determined justice should be done in the case of the Government House murders, veered between the superficially obsequious and the overtly resentful ? the media-conscious Governor was clearly terrified she was in a position to besmirch him in the British media (until the end of his life, Sir Edwin remained blissfully unaware that most of Fleet Street regarded him as a figure of fun ? in the words of one former London gossip columnist ? as "the sort of ridiculously archaic and quasi-delusional Colonel Blimp-type figure who could have provided the raw material for the funniest Peter Sellers' film ever made.")

The FCO shared Sir Edwin's concerns about the possibility of Lady Sharples talking to the British Press but for very different reasons.

October 1973 she had approached Foreign Officer Minister Lord Goronwy-Roberts to inquire why the inhibition on the Government House inquest had not been lifted some three months after the Duckett and Shopping Centre hearings had been completed. Senior figures in the FCO were concerned.

They speculated Lady Sharples might publicly disclose details of a private briefing given to her husband by the Caribbean Department before he took up his Bermuda post ? a briefing in which Sir Richard was apparently told his ADC should always carry a side-arm because, in the wake of the September 1972 Duckett murder, the Governor could provide another symbolic target for the as yet unapprehended assassin or assassins.

Unusually, the FCO either failed to keep a record of this meeting or misplaced any notes that were kept once Lady Sharples became embroiled in a bitter dispute with the British Treasury following her husband's assassination.

"Lady Sharples' immediate concern (about resuming the inquest) probably stems from her dispute with the Treasury the question of Death Duties on her husband's estate," reads an FCO memorandum on the subject.

"Her solicitors have tried, unsuccessfully it would seem, to obtain exemption from estate duty on the ground that Sir Richard was a member of the armed forces and was killed on service of a warlike nature. It is possible that Lady Sharples hopes an inquest will throw up evidence in support of her case. The Governor, however . . . considers it inconceivable that anything that might be said at an inquest or a trial could possibly have any bearing on the subject.

"We are unable to confirm Lady Sharples' belief that someone in the FCO advised Mr. (sic) Sharples that his ADC should be armed at all times (and we think it is pretty unlikely that anyone in this Office would go so far as to make such a specific recommendation) . . ."

Given Sir Richard took up his position just weeks after Duckett's murder, it would seem remarkable indeed if the new Governor had not been briefed along precisely these lines.

So the FCO spent the autumn of 1975 in a state of chronic anxiety, worried it could at any moment be drawn into a highly public dispute and be depicted in the newspapers as backing a Governor who was shirking his duty to reopen the inquest into his predecessor's assassination and siding with another branch of the British government against the murdered Governor's widow.

That Lady Sharples may have been more interested in the application of justice never seems to have entered the minds of those on the Caribbean Desk or Sir Edwin Leather.

As had been the case earlier in the year when Sir Edwin found himself in a minority of one on the Governor's Council in opposing reopening of the Duckett inquest, when the advisory body reconvened in October 1974 after the long summer recess he discovered his rambling August paper on the Sharples/Sayers murders had won no one over to his cautious position.

The other members unanimously agreed the Governor should lift the inhibition on the inquest into the Government House killings as soon as was practicable.

"The position (on whether to lift the inhibition) has been continuously under review . . .," said Sir Edwin in a confidential telex to the FCO's Sir Duncan Watson sent on October 21, 1975.

"When the Governor's Council met for the purpose (of discussing the Sharples/Sayer inquest) on 9 October, the Police with US Navy help were about to start the search for the critical gun (one of two used at Government House and subsequently dumped at sea . . . Council agreed it was essential to await outcome of this search and other action (on lifting the inhibition) was thus deferred.

"The search has just been completed, no gun being found. This is disappointing but not surprising, sea bottom being very broken and as much as 200 feet deep in parts. I shall thus now consult Council again. In my present view the likelihood is that I shall deem it my duty to lift the inhibition on the inquest proceedings and that arrangements will be made for them to be resumed towards the end of next month."

In a terse postscript Sir Edwin addressed the possibility of informing Lady Sharples a decision on reopening the inquest was imminent: "If you deem it advisable to let Lady Sharples know this in confidence, I have no objection. But I am sure you will agree, and explain to her, that I cannot commit myself: it would be improper of me to prejudge the advice I shall be given or the decision I shall take. Please advise (Lord) Goronwy (Roberts) he has my sympathy but her incursions are not helpful and can do no possible good for anybody.

"I cannot even try to forecast whether a criminal charge in the courts will follow any inquest. For one thing, this may in part turn on what comes out during the inquest itself. For another, although I know that the Attorney General proposes to consult me (and the Premier) before deciding whether to prosecute, constitutionally the decision is his alone."

FCO's Duncan Watson, who at that time headed up the Caribbean Department that Bermuda fell under, agreed to pass these developments on to Lady Sharples. He hoped the news would pre-empt any plans she might have been entertaining to publicise both the stalled inquest as well as the Foreign Office's failure to assist her in the dispute with the Treasury.

"If on hearing this, Lady Sharples agreed to hold her hand a little longer, all well and good," he said in an internal FCO memorandum. " . . . If Lady Sharples intends to do no more than to write in confidence on the matter (of the Government House inquest) to the Premier of Bermuda, who is completely in touch with the situation as a member of the Governor's Council, I hardly think her intervention would matter much at all.

"It would of course be a different question if she thought to bring matter(s) into public controversy but I would hope this is not in her mind."

When the FCO was notified the inhibition on the Government House killings was indeed about to be lifted, an FCO functionary was dispatched to brief Lady Sharples. Much to his embarrassment, he discovered she had already "had word" on this still confidential development from friends in Bermuda.

, he was nonplussed to discover the Governor's widow had no interest in applying public leverage to either Sir Edwin or the FCO through the media but rather subscribed to the belief that justice delayed was justice denied ? and simply wished, if the evidence warranted, to see the perpetrators of the Government House killings brought to trial without further procrastination or official foot-dragging.

"Mr. (Ted) Rowlands told Baroness Sharples that we had just received confirmation that the inhibition on the reopening of the inquest into her late husband's murder had been lifted," reads an FCO minute of the meeting dated November 10, 1975. "A (public) announcement would be made in about 10 days time. In the meantime this information should be treated in the strictest confidence.

"Baroness Sharples thanked Mr. Rowlands and said that the decision ? which she had apparently already had word of from Bermuda ? was a great relief to her. She had been under some pressure from friends, including members of the Bermudian Police Force, who felt that the inquest should have been re-opened a long time ago. Without wishing to be unfair to the Governor, it was clear he would have preferred to put a decision off indefinitely: he had cold feet about the Duckett inquest but the public reaction had been entirely favourable: people were delighted the facts had been brought out into the open and those involved had been identified.

"Mr. Rowlands pointed out there had been real problems, including the possibility of prejudicing any subsequent trials. Baroness Sharples said she understood the difficulties but, after two-and-a-half years, there was nothing to be gained from further delay . . . She wanted to see the matter resolved. "

She thanked the FCO for its "help and sympathy."

The Government House murders inquest was reconvened at Magistrates' Court in Hamilton on November 25, 1975.