Fenwick’s Legal Wife

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 752, 4 May 1933, Page 18

Fenwick’s Legal Wife

By

MARLEY CAMERON

CHAPTER IV. (Continued). He took the tube back to Charing i Cross and made his way on foot to her j son’s flat in St Margaret’s Mansions in Westminster. There was a curious air l of unrest about this normally peaceful j building in a quiet street. A knot of ! errand boys, some mounted on tricars, i had gathered opposite the building, arid a policeman was advancing on i them with measured stride, bent upon j dispersing them. The knot melted ; away, not without damaging remarks ! about “ coppers ” in general, and this 1 interfering " copper ” in particular. At the front door of the building Sam was stopped by a man in plain clothes. Excuse me, sir, but do you live here. l ' because, if not, I’m afraid you can’t come in. “ No. but I'm on my way to call on a gentleman who lives here.” “ What is his name, may I ask? ” “ Mr Bruce Fenwick. ” “ Ah, then will you kindly step this He led the way to the housekeeper’s little office which seemed to be filled with men like himself; they had detective written all over them. Sam’s guide whispered to one of them, “ Run upstairs to Mr Halloway and tell him that I’ve detained a gentleman who was on his, way to call upon Mr Fenwick.” To the others he said, “ You might give us a little room in here. One of you had better take my place at the door.” Left alone with his guide, Sam asked the cause of all this police activity. “ I gather that you are a metropolitan police officer. My name is Wrench, a solicitor from Plymouth. I am calling upon Mr Fenwick on legal business. To whom am I speaking? “ Detective-Sergeant ' Yarrow, sir, from Cannon Row. You have called at an unfortunate moment. Mr Fenwick is dead.” “Good God! lie must have died very suddenly.’’ “ Yes, sir; it was very sudden. Did you know the gentleman ? “ No, 1 have never met him, but I have just come from seeing his mother and she had not heard of his illness.” “ No, sir, no one knew anything until we were telephoned to about two hours ago ” , . r “ Do you mean that it was a case of suicide? ”

“My inspector will tell you that when he comes. My instructions were to detain anyone who might call on Mr Fenwick in order that we may learn as much as possible about his friends and relatives.” At that moment an older man passed the office window and the sergeant hurried out to meet him. The newcomer stopped on the threshold and stared at Sam. “ Surely you are Mr Wrench? I didn’t recognise you for a moment in this dim light.” “ Yes, and I remember you perfectly, Mr Halloway. We worked together on that forged note case five years ago. They gave your man a stiff sentence at Exeter.” “Yes, Mr Wrench, but he deserved it. They tell me that you were calling upon Mr Fenwick. You didn’t know that he -was murdered last night? ” “ No! ” “ Well, the police surgeon believes it to have been murder. Naturally we want to know as much as possible about his private life. You may be able to help us.” “ I’ll gladly tell you all I know about his family, Mr Halloway, but I know very little about him and nothing about his associates. I understood from his solicitor that he was a clerk in the Board of Trade and a verj T steady young man." “ Well, I may tell you confidentially that things had not been going well with him lately, and we thought at first that he had cut his own throat, but Sir Henry Mayfield, who made an examination of the body before it was moved, is of opinion that the wound was not self-inflicted. The body has been removed to the mortuary for post-mortem examination, and I do not yet know the result.” “ Can’t the housekeeper here tell you what visitors he had yesterday? “ He says that he had only one visitor—a dark-skinned. foreign-looking man who spoke very halting English. As Mr Fenwick was out at the time he left his card. H.ere it is.” Sam Wrench inspected a florid visiting card inscribed “ Sanchez Perez ” and in the bottom corner “ Havana “ This is interesting, Mr Halloway. I had better tell you some of the family history if you’ve time to listen to a longish story.” “ Certainly, Mr Wrench. We can put your statement into writing later on.”

Thereupon Sam related in as few words as possible the occurrences of the previous day and the result of his inquiries. “It’s a very interesting case,” remarked the inspector; “and though, of course, we are not concerned in the question of the missing will, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if vour story didn’t dovetail into our investigation of the murder.” Sam looked at his watch. “ Surely, Mr Halloway, you must lunch, however difficult your case may be. Why shouldn’t you lunch with me round the corner somewhere and we can talk the case over.” - “ It’s very kind of you. Mr Wrench. I’ll send the men off to dinner, leaving one of them to guard the flat, and I’ll be with you.” They found a quiet table in the little restaurant, and as soon as the waiter had withdrawn out of earshot Sam reverted to the death of Bruce Fenwick. “ I gather. Mr Halloway. that so far you have no clue to work upon.” “ I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. As vou have helped me. and as the case develops you are likely to help me still further. I think I should be justified in telling vou exactly how it stands. Yesterday I was sent for by the chief, who wanted me to make discreet inauiries about a confidential matter. It seems that the chairman of an official committee suspected leakage of information from his office. Bruce Fenwick was secretary to the committee, and when every member was asked to produce his numbered coov of the confidential schedule he said that his copv had been stolen from his fiat; that he had taken it home to work uoon at night, and that somebody had rot into the flat while he was out at dinner ” ** Sureb* they didn’t suspect a permanent civil servant of selling official ;secrets? ”

“It sounded unlikely, I admit. He had too much to lose if any of them were to round on him. But there were only fotir typed copies of the schedule typed, mind you, by Fenwick himself.” “ Did he report the theft to the police? “ No, he told the chairman a cock-and-bull story about thinking that it was a practical joke—said that he was expecting the papers to be returned; but within half an hour of his interview with the chairman he handed in his resignation from the Civil Service. “ H’m ! That’s extraordinary, but remember that if he typed the copies himself he might have run off twenty carbon copies to sell to importers and still have kept one to produce when called upon.” “ Quite right. That was the point I raised with the chairman, but the longer I live in this department the less I wonder at the idiotic things people will | do when they leave the straight and ' narrow path. The chairman gave him an excellent character; said that he was a walking encyclopaedia; that he worked like a nigger and was specially selected for the job by his chief at the Board of Trade.”

“ On a rough calculation. I suppose that he couldn’t have got more than a hundred pounds from the rascals who bought the information from him. It wouldn’t have paid them to give more.” “ I haven’t had time to go into that yet. My first duty was to see Mr Fenwick and hear what he had to say. I called at his fiat the first thing this morning; the housekeeper sent me up to tht first floor ; I could get no answer to the bell. I had to go back to the housekeeper for his master-key; I got the door open and had a full view of the sitting room. I tell you, Mr Wrench, that it wasn’t a pretty sight, and I’ve seen some ugly ones in my time. Bang in the middle of the carpet lay F'enwick in his shirt sleeves; he seemed to have pitched forward on his face with his right arm crumpled under him and one leg under the chair on which he must have been sitting. There was blood everywhere—a pool of it had coagulated on the ._urpet near the head. The first thing I had to do was to telephone to Sir Henry Mayfield and get him to come down at once; the body could not be touched before he saw it; then I rang up our central office to tell them what had happened and get them to send me help. While I was waiting I had a look round. The first thing I noticed was that the fingers of the left hand were crumpled inwards and that there was one of the old-fashioned razors open between them. Then I went into the bedroom and bathroom to see if I could find the razor-case. I hunted everywhere, but I couldn’t find one. What I did find was a safety razor in its case. Nor could I find any razor-strop. It was evident that the dead man used a safety razon only. I went back into the sitting room and stooped down to get a look at the razor blade. Through the bloodstains I could just make out the mark ‘ Rochester, N.Y.’ So it was an American razor. I had barely time to note this down when the flat bell rang. It was Sir Henry Mayfield. I told him that the body had not been touched and he went to work at once. He took off his coat, went down on his knees and gently moved the head. 4 Throat cut on the right side—a clean cut,’ he said. Then he turned his attention to the hand that lay on the razor. He spent some time over this and then called to me. ‘ Kneel down,’ he said, ‘ and look at this. The fingers are not grasping the razor. You see, I can draw it away quite easily. Now see, I’m putting it back exactly as it was. We ought to have a photograph of this before the body is moved.’ I telephoned for our photographer to come with his flashlight and came back to Sir Henry. I hear the photograph came out very well.”

“ Knowing what I did about the dead man’s difficulties, I felt that the theory of suicide fitted the case better than any other, and I put it to Sir Henry straight. He said that he wouldn’t like to give me a positive opinion until after the post-mortem, but that it seemed to him that a clumsy attempt had been made to simulate suicide by clasping the dead fingers round the handle of the razor—an attempt that had never yet succeeded and never would; that if the man had cut his own throat and was holding the razor in his right hand, he would probably have slashed at the left side of his throat, not the right. If he still retained hold of the razor when he fell his fingers would have tightened round it in what is called the cadaveric spasm, and would have remained so. The relaxed muscles of a dead person’s hand could not be made to grasp anything, and as he had just shown me, the fingers were not grasping the razor, or he could not have drawn it out; that if Fenwick had died with the razor in his hand it would have been held by powerful muscular contraction at the last moment of life, and he could not have drawn it out. I asked him whether there might not be exceptions, since Fenwick had a motive for committing suicide. He said. ‘ I have never come across an exception, and a learned German,’ named Ilofman, I think he said, ‘ made a number of experiments to induce the hands of people who had just died to hold objects firmly by using mechanical pressure on the fingers, '"he result was always the same—as soon as the pressure was relaxed the objects fell from the hand.” “ That’s an interesting fact. It is quite new to me.” ~ (To be continued daily.)