The Duke of Windsor and Sir Harry Oakes

During a stormy night in the middle of World War Two — Wednesday, 7 July 1943—in Nassau, in the Bahamas, a multi-millionaire called Sir Harry Oakes was murdered in his bedroom. The cause of death was a blow to the head by some sort of spiked weapon or club causing four circular wounds an inch deep and a quarter inch in diameter. Shortly after, an attempt was made to set the victim on fire. Petrol was doused on the body and bedclothes and lit. The murderer — or murderers — then left, but the fire did not take. A house guest discovered the badly scorched corpse before breakfast the next day.

During the 1980s I visited the Bahamas on many occasions and heard all sorts of lurid tales about the Oakes murder — tales embellished with rumours of currency speculation, sexual innuendo, Mafia gangsters and millionaire Nazi sympathizers. I decided to feature the murder as an episode in a new novel to see if I could elucidate the mystery and began to read everything I could find on the subject. The truth, as far as I can determine, is more banal, but, in a way, no less sinister.

Harry Oakes had made his fortune prospecting for gold in Canada and had come to live in the Bahamas to avoid paying tax on his millions. However, he involved himself in the community, forming partnerships with local businessmen, and philanthropically encouraging the islands’ industries. It would be fair to say that Sir Harry Oakes was the colony’s most important citizen — after the governor of the Bahamas himself.

And that governor of the Bahamas was the ex-King of England, Edward VIII, now the Duke of Windsor.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor had been sent to the Bahamas in 1940, after the fall of France, in a deliberate attempt to keep them out of the public eye and under control. Both of them were infuriated by the appointment, seeing it as an insulting act of royal spite, and detested the place (the Duchess referred to it as “this moron paradise”). However, they both pursued their official duties with conspicuous diligence and no visible signs of bad grace — even though the Duke made every effort to have himself transferred away. He wanted desperately to be a kind of roving ambassador for Britain in the United States.

The death of Sir Harry Oakes came as shocking news to the Duke. He had known Sir Harry well but the last thing he wanted now was the scandal and notoriety that such a prominent murder was bound to encourage. The case had to be solved — and fast.

This can be the only explanation for the Duke’s next move. Instead of calling on the Bahamas’ perfectly competent CID force (headed by Police Commissioner Colonel Erskine-Lindop) he asked two Miami homicide detectives (one of whom had acted as his bodyguard on a trip to Florida) to fly immediately to Nassau and take over the investigation. The Miami police force at this time was one of the most corrupt in the USA: there is no reason to assume the Duke was aware of this.

The two detectives — Captains Melchen and Barker — arrived on Thursday after lunch and went to work. In the small, febrile and somewhat decadent community that was the wartime Bahamas speculation about the identity of the murderer was loud. Common gossip centred immediately on one Alfred de Marigny, Sir Harry’s son-in-law, as the likely culprit. De Marigny, an indigent playboy figure straight from central casting, had eloped two years earlier with Sir Harry’s eighteen-year-old daughter, Nancy, and they had married. Sir Harry’s death would see a significant amount of his fortune devolve on her.

Like most of Nassau’s white community, the Duke was convinced de Marigny was prime suspect. Melchen and Barker swiftly interviewed de Marigny and took away samples of his clothing for investigation. De Marigny had given a dinner party on the night of the murder but had driven some guests home, not far from Sir Harry’s house, West-bourne, and there was a damaging thirty-minute hole in his alibi. De Marigny had motive and means: if he could be placed in the house the case would look watertight.

Melchen and Barker summoned de Marigny to Westbourne for further interrogation. In the course of being questioned de Marigny was asked to pour a glass of water from a carafe and was made to handle a cellophane-wrapped packet of Lucky Strike cigarettes. He was then allowed to leave.

The next day, Friday, 9 July, the Duke came to Westbourne where he had an unwitnessed, confidential twenty-minute discussion with Melchen and Barker. This is the crucial moment in the investigation. In all their inquiries the Miami detectives had been accompanied by Erskine-Lindop or other members of the Bahamian police. But now the Duke wished to talk to Melchen and Barker alone. Two hours later de Marigny was arrested and accused of the murder. A perfect fingerprint — from the little finger of his right hand — had been found on a piece of furniture (a folding screen) in the murder room. De Marigny had been caught: it was almost as good as a smoking gun.

When de Marigny came to trial in October 1943 the prosecution case against him was demolished with brutal thoroughness by his counsel, Godfrey Higgs. Captains Melchen and Barker, the fingerprint experts, were rapidly exposed both as incompetents and liars. De Marigny’s fingerprint had been “lifted” (with a piece of Sellotape, probably from the cigarette pack) and placed on the screen. It was established beyond doubt that the print could not have been genuine. The case against de Marigny was a clear set-up and he was found not guilty and acquitted.

Now it was vital to keep a lid on the stench rising from the Oakes affair. The Duke was conveniently absent (in the USA) during the trial; he had not been interviewed and was not called as a witness. Neither he nor the detectives were ever asked about the substance of their Friday, 9 July conversation. Why? Simply because royal prestige and royal sway were still very potent in those days. Huge efforts were made to spare the Duke any embarrassment. He never explained why he had bypassed his own CID. More curiously still, after the trial the case was closed. Yet de Marigny was innocent: therefore, by definition, the killer was still at large. The Duke refused ever to talk about the subject of Sir Harry Oakes and his death and forbade the matter to be raised in his presence.

Why was the Duke so sensitive? What did he know? I now don’t believe the theory that he was speculating in wartime currencies — with Sir Harry Oakes’s help — for vast profits through Mexican banks (a treasonable offence); nor do I believe this murder was anything to do with American Mafia bosses wanting to build a casino in Nassau. The Duke called in Melchen and Barker because he wanted the affair solved quickly: he reasoned that the Americans would work faster than the local CID. And he was right. By planting a fingerprint Melchen and Barker had incriminated and arrested de Marigny in just over twenty-four hours. De Marigny was duly locked up in jail until the trial and everyone assumed he was guilty. Only the brilliance of the cross-examination saved him and exposed the detectives’ culpability.

But what about the Duke’s role in all this?

My theory goes like this. The planting of the fingerprint, in the context of Miami 1943, was routine work for Melchen and Barker. The carafe and the cigarette pack ploy testify to this. In their unwitnessed twenty-minute conversation with the Duke on Friday, 9 July, I believe they would have hinted that they had conclusive proof, or could manufacture the conclusive proof, that would put de Marigny in the murder room. Language would have been veiled and euphemistic on both sides. But the Duke — however covertly — would have to authorize them to go ahead. It is inconceivable that, having been summoned by the Duke himself, the two American detectives would have corrupted the evidence in a high-profile murder case on British colonial soil without, at the very least, a royal nod and a wink.

The governor of the Bahamas was a weak and worried man in 1943 but even the most charitable interpretation of his actions tends inexorably to the conclusion that the Duke of Windsor colluded with Melchen and Barker to pervert the course of justice. I deliberately don’t use the word “conspiracy”—that requires too much malice aforethought. The Duke would always be able to deny that he knew what the detectives planned, but he was no fool. De Marigny, thanks to his lawyer’s skills, was acquitted and the false evidence exposed. But what if he had not been? If de Marigny had been found guilty then he almost certainly would have been hanged. One wonders if the Duke’s conscience would have been unduly troubled. I suspect not.

So who killed Sir Harry Oakes, and why? That, as they say, is another story. But the Duke’s duplicitous role in the investigation and the incrim-ination of an innocent man is hard to gainsay. In 1943 the Duke wrote to the Foreign Office saying, “The whole circumstances of the case are sordid beyond description.” No one else was better placed to know.

2002

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