CHAPTER 29

The McKenzie Murder

1921

The man saw a woman’s legs.. there was a body under the bed

his is a Liverpool story, but it involves a detective from the city trailing a man across the North Sea to Antwerp and then having to hold the man until there was extradition; the killer he was after may well have slipped away. It is a tense and exciting tale, though at its heart is a morbid and everyday killing.

In May 1921 Mary Pannell advertised a room to let in her large Victorian property at 14 Brownlow Street. It was common practice then to let out rooms, and Liverpool was a busy commercial city with thousands of travelling men coming and going on commercial transactions. She soon had a response and a man with a foreign accent, wearing a bushy moustache, came to call. He was middle-aged and, strangely, brought no luggage with him. But he was quiet, well-mannered and smartly turned-out. He gave his name as John Brown and explained that he was in the sales business, concerned with textiles. He accepted the rent of ten shillings a week and was given a key.

Brown came and went at all hours and was usually out for most of the evenings. Sometimes he was away from the flat for several days and he explained this by saying that his sister was a woman who needed him to nurse her, as she had nobody else. All this added to the generally good opinion formed of the quiet man of mystery at number fourteen. In July he turned up with a woman whom he announced as being the sister he had spoken of previously. She was a thick-set, middle-aged woman who talked of her heart problems. The story was that she had had to retire from any regular work due to the deteriorating state of her health. The couple were seen around the area by several people and so everything about them seemed normal. But on 16 July, when she went to do the housework in Brown’s room, the door was locked, and was still locked five days later when she tried again. Had the man left without paying his rent? Miss Pannell naturally thought that because his rent was due on the day she went again to clean for him.