In his more prosperous days, Oakes, it was told, entered a restaurant and asked for a certain table. The headwaiter, not knowing him, refused it. Sir Harry promptly bought the hotel and threw the headwaiter and his whole staff out into the street.
Such revenges have a touch of poetic justice, but they do not make for popularity. Sir Harry had been so fierce, so violent and so ruthless that when he was found slain and the usual first question was asked: “Who was his enemy?” the answer was easy: “Who wasn’t?”
Such a son-in-law to such a father-in-law did not suggest filial love; and the dullest private detective instantly “put the bee” on Alfred de Marigny. But Ray Schindler likes to demonstrate step by step what must be demonstrated and be able to put a real mathematical Q.E.D. at the end of every problem.
After Sir Harry Oakes had settled in the Bahamas and built his sumptuous residences, he formed a water company that drilled many wells in the islands. He was a frequent visitor to South America, where he had made such large investments that there was talk of his establishing a residence there. He was about to make another tour and had secured a passport with visas for various South American countries. If he had not delayed his departure for two days to confer with his engineers concerning a water project, he would have left the island before his murder.
But even that is guess work, for, according to Ray Schindler’s theory, he was murdered for revenge; and perhaps the murderer might have just moved the killing forward. Even that is uncertain. Perhaps the motive for the assassination was based on something that happened after he had postponed his sailing.
Or, even if he had sailed, he might have died on the ship; he might have been murdered in one of those Spanish American countries. Or he might not have.
Speculation is as fruitless as it is fascinating. In ancient Egypt, about two thousand years B.C., among the delightful short stories written by the brilliant inhabitants of that so modem and so ancient a country, there was a popular novelette about a man who travelled North and encountered a savage crocodile. He wished that he had gone South, and was given the privilege of retracing his steps; but again he was confronted by a crocodile. He turned back and travelled East, then West. Always there lay in wait for him a fatal crocodile. Almost four thousand years later, O. Henry, who doubtless never read the Egyptian fiction, rewrote exactly the same plot in modern terms.
Many people, fatalists, would say that Sir Harry’s death was in the books. That we shall never know; and perhaps it will never be proved in open court who really did kill him.
What concerns us is that he was killed. At the time his wife and his daughter, Nancy, were in the United States. His son-in-law, Alfred de Marigny, was in the Bahamas; but he lived at a distance from Sir Harry and shared a small house with a man friend, who joined him that night in giving a small party. The party lasted till a late hour, and de Marigny drove two women guests to their homes at such distances and returned so late that he would have had precious little time in which to commit the long and laborious murder. Furthermore, as Ray Schindler found out and pointed out, since de Marigny’s roommate also drove a guest home, returned later than de Marigny and left his car in the narrow driveway behind de Marigny’s, the Count would have had to get his friend’s car out of the way, drive a long distance, commit the murder, return home, drive his car in, then drive his friend’s car in after it, and go to bed—all without attracting the attention of the man who occupied the house with him. Such things as that, and the utter absence of anything like a reasonable motive that could have impelled the Count to kill his father-in-law, made the case against him so flimsy that it offended the presiding judge.
But to return to the beginning and start all over:
On the night of the murder, Sir Harry did not sleep in the home he occupied when his family was with him, but in another of his residences, called “Westboume.” An addition was being made to Westboume in the form of a long two-story building connecting it with a golf club house also belonging to Sir Harry.
Two night watchmen guarded the building material and were near the scene of the murder, but were not called as witnesses in the trial. They were also kept from any conversation with Ray Schindler.
Sir Harry’s own servants went home at night; but in the lot adjoining Westbourne, and separated from it only by a fence, was a neighbor’s house. Two Negro maids slept there. One of them, hearing a voice in the early morning, peered out of her window and recognized a man who was running up and down the porch calling “Help, help!” The other maid, from the opposite end of the house, recognized the same man when she saw him running to a neighboring home occupied by some people named Kelly. (The maids were never called as witnesses, though they would have contradicted the testimony of the man they identified.)
Yet it was some time after his murder before Sir Harry Oakes’ death was reported. This was on the morning of July 8, 1943. His head had been beaten in and then his bed had been set on fire.
It was a most peculiar kind of fire. The apparent attempt was to let the fire be blamed for his death, after it had consumed him and his bed. But, for some reason, this plan did not succeed, and the murderer left the room. He probably assumed that the fire would blaze up and devour all, and dared not return to complete his work.
In any case, Sir Harry’s body was horribly burned but only partly consumed. The fatal wounds on his head immediately in front of his left ear had penetrated the skull for about an inch and an eighth. The mortuary photographs show that the blood flowed down over his nose, proving that he was lying on his right side when struck. But his body was found lying on its back. It must have been turned into that position after the blows were stuck. Otherwise the blood would have flowed down into his hair and the back of his head.
The murder weapon was never found. So far as Ray could learn, no search was ever made for it, and no reward offered for its discovery.
Even more mysterious than the behavior of the murderer were the deeds and omissions of the prosecution. As the former Attorney General of the United States, Homer S. Cummings said, “The police found their suspect and then proceeded to search for the facts to fit him.”
After Sir Harry had been struck by the fatal weapon, and his body turned, the bed was set on fire. The bedclothing and his pajamas were quite consumed. A flame had been played over the lower part of his body as if in the sexual rage of a murder for revenge. Also his eyes had been deeply burned.
The room was in a dreadful state. The rug was badly burned, also a screen that stood near the bed. The prosecution claimed that an inflammable fluid had been sprayed about the room and the body, and a match applied. But there was also a strange pattern of burns about the room and even on the stairway. It led Ray to believe that something like a blow-torch had been brought upstairs and used.
The strange omissions and commissions in following up the crime were not due so much to the Nassau police as to the activities of certain detectives brought over from the United States. The actions of one of them provoked a scathing condemnation from the judge and led an American society of detectives whose standards are of the highest to convict him of conduct unbecoming a member.
As soon as the murder was discovered, the Nassau police, aware of the notorious feud between Sir Harry and de Marigny, promptly threw the Count into jail. They were at first satisfied of his guilt but before they could prove it conclusively they were forced to stand aside helplessly watching the activities of two American detectives whom the Duke of Windsor imported. These detectives seemed to Ray to have made no effort to approach the case without prejudice, but to have overlooked everything that indicated de Marigny’s innocence. They actually destroyed much evidence that might have proved him guiltless, and the prosecution forbade de Marigny’s attorneys and Ray Schindler access to everything that might controvert the theory of his guilt.
When Ray found in various places the imprints of a bloody hand he was calmly told:
“The fingers were stubby and de Marigny’s were not,
so we dismissed them.”
They not only dismissed them, but tried to erase them! And succeded so far that Ray could not use them for identification of one who seemed to him the far more probable murderer.
Even in Nassau the importance of fingerprints had been heard of, and a desperate hunt was made for some evidence that de Marigny had been in the room. No trace of him was found till an American detective alleged that he had lifted a print of de Marigny’s little finger from the scorched screen that stood by the bedside.
“Lifting a fingerprint” means, of course, dusting it with a powder, laying a tape over the powder and lifting away the tape.
The defense proved to the satisfaction of the judge, that the fingerprint could never have been taken from that screen, and the case was thrown out of court, while the detective himself was, as already told, censured by an American society of fingerprint experts.
In sharp contrast to the inquisitional mistreatment of de Marigny (whose alibi was as convincing to any unprejudiced judge, as to the presiding judge and the jury) was the tender consideration shown for the rights of the man who occupied a bedroom on the same floor with Sir Harry and adjoining the empty bedroom between them.
Another puzzling feature of the case was that Sir Harry had apparently feared some attack. For, though he had never been known to carry a weapon, a pistol was found in the drawer of the bedside-stand. Beneath it was a pile of bills that he had evidently put there when he undressed; after which he carefully placed the gun within reach.
Did he expect a possible attack? By whom? No effort was made to find out. The weapon itself was not even kept by the police but turned over to the caretaker of the buildings. Ray, when he arrived, was not able to see the weapon or learn if it had ever really belonged to Sir Harry. If it were borrowed, he could not learn from whom Sir Harry had borrowed it, or why, or if he had given a reason for suspecting a possible attack, or if he had ever mentioned to anybody that he thought he was in danger of one.
Ray wanted, and still wants, to put a number of Sir Harry’s acquaintances on the lie detector and ask them a few questions as to the situation at the time of the murder. Such action was forbidden to him then and has since been denied to him.
Nassau wants to forget the murder. It was so eager to be rid of it that Sir Harry’s body was shipped to the United States for burial in such haste that the airplane carrying it had to be recalled for even such casual examination as those hurried police cared to make.
No X-ray was ever taken of his skull beneath the wounds.
But to turn back to Ray’s appearance on the scene: As he says, he left for the island “with the thought in mind that I would probably help hang the fellow.” When Nancy Oakes, in her frantic wifely eagerness to save her husband from execution for murder, turned to Ray Schindler as her last and best hope she cried:
“Whatever else he is, he is not a murderer.”
Her own mother was convinced of de Marigny’s guilt; but Nancy fought for him and saved him by appealing to a man who, after a long lifetime of enormous activity as a detective, could say:
“I have never taken an assignment to clear a guilty man.” He could also say: “I do not enter a case with my mind made up, no matter what facts are presented to me. I do not accept the statements of others as facts. I prefer to make my own investigation and, if I come to the same conclusion, it is because of double-checking, which is a good rule to follow in any murder case. I have never been able to understand how officials investigating a crime can disregard evidence that does not fit in with the evidence needed to convict the person whom they have decided to be the guilty one.”
Ray had read the early accounts of the murder in the newspapers and had vaguely assumed that de Marigny was probably guilty. He seemed to be the most natural suspect. This was his third marriage to a wealthy woman. He had a reputation for working neither steadily nor often.
His first marriage was with the daughter of a Paris banker. After a divorce, he married a rich widow, who was much poorer when she divorced him.
Though he was born in a French province, it was taken over by the British and he became a British subject.
But Ray would not even accept de Marigny’s word that he was truly a Count. He searched the records and found his title registered officially long before the Oakes case. This disposed of the frequent charge that de Marigny was wearing a bogus title, as a decoy for foolish women.
His second wife, Ruth Fahnestock, was an American woman but became a British subject by marrying him. She made heavy investments in the Bahama Islands. During the second World War British subjects were forbidden to remove more than a small amount of money from British possessions. So she went to Florida and secured a secret divorce in order to regain her citizenship and claim her funds as an American. But she kept the divorce a secret, and returned to Nassau and to the Count, intending to remarry him as soon as her money was safely returned to the United States.
The Count had meanwhile acquired other ideas. He had sold some of the Nassau holdings, lent a thousand pounds to a local banker, and invested about ten thousand pounds in a large chicken ranch. He then went to New York to marry Nancy Oakes on her eighteenth birthday.
It is not necessary to defend or denounce these jugglings with the marriage sacrament. They are not evidence in a murder trial, though much was made of them by the prosecution in an attempt to picture the defendant in as despicable a light as possible.
It was known that Sir Harry Oakes did not approve of his daughter’s marriage with the Count. He had forbidden it. But the moment she was eighteen she had married the man of her choice. The relationship of her father and herself had never been very cordial. The wedding naturally did not enhance it.
Nancy’s mother did not approve of the marriage any more than her father did, but she spent most of her time at a distance. Sir Harry and his chicken-rancher son-in-law did not get along well together. Hardly anybody got along well with Sir Harry. The prosecution claimed that the Count had threatened the life of his father-in-law. It claimed also, as a motive for the murder, that de Marigny wanted to secure the great Oakes fortune as an inheritance for his wife, so that he could control it. The prosecution also insisted that de Marigny was in dire need of money.
But Ray Schindler disproved this last charge by evidence that the Count owned a valuable chicken ranch, as well as two homes on the island, and had a considerable deposit in the bank.
They say that “a man who marries for money earns it,” so de Marigny might be said to have earned his fortune before he married Nancy. In any case, evidence was produced to show that, once he was a father-in-law, Sir Harry had offered to buy de Marigny a large ranch and a beautiful home in Nassau. The Count had spurned the gift.
He was not at all the impecunious Count of fiction and fact with no skill except in the conquest of vain women and the spending of their fortunes. He had graduated from college with high honors, especially in agriculture. He had pride enough to refuse both Sir Harry’s handsome gift house and an offer to set him up in business and make him president of a Nassau bank that Sir Harry owned.
“I’m not a banker. I’m a farmer” the Count had said.
He was so independent, indeed, that he openly defied the autocratic Sir Harry and quarrelled bitterly with him in public. Though he lived at some distance from Sir Harry’s home, he admitted that on the night of the murder he had driven two young women guests at his party to their home and had passed within a block of Westbourne.
The Count’s young wife, Nancy, was not with him at the time. She was attending college in Bennington, Vermont, taking an advanced course in dancing. Her mother and the other children were at the Oakes summer home in Bar Harbor, Maine.
When Nancy appealed to Ray Schindler for help, he consented to make his investigations and report the truth and nothing but the truth, though it might mean the hanging of his client’s husband.
He flew to Nassau and studied the case as best he could. He had several interviews with
the Count in his cell. He was surprised to find the man a splendid athlete. He had never sailed a boat till he went to Nassau; but he had taken up the sport and had soon become a winner in the Star class. He won races also in Cuba and at New Orleans, Palm Beach, and on Long Island Sound. His chicken ranch impressed Ray as one of the finest he had ever seen, and, even while the Count was languishing in a cell, his ranch was selling eggs and chickens to the Government that was calling him a murderer.
The Nassau prosecution had not welcomed Ray’s cooperation. In fact, he had been formally informed that there was no need for private investigators. He was kept under observation constantly. Even on the golf course or at dinner, his guests were telephoned to and warned against him, as well as asked for information concerning his plans. Ray was hampered in every way; but he does not blame the Nassau police. They confessed that they were frankly humiliated and hamstrung by their subjection to the American detectives. The defense counsel was Sir Godfrey Higgs. He was efficient and eloquent, and when at last he placed the facts before the court, in open trial, they shocked the Nassau judge and jury. Even the local chief of detectives had been suddenly taken off the case and transferred to another island. It is Ray’s belief that this was because his testimony would not have been what the prosecution wanted.
Important witnesses were forbidden to speak to Ray, and others came to him in great terror, secretly.
After a brief preliminary scouting, Ray flew back to the United States, thoroughly convinced both of de Marigny’s complete innocence and of the appalling bungling of the case; also of the prosecution’s determination to throw every possible obstacle in the path of any defense.
The Complete Detective Page 9