CHAPTER 16

A Middle-Class Murder
1937

Stand away from those panels or I will shoot you down like a dog.

Although much fictional crime in both books and on TV concerns the middle class, in reality, it is the poor who tend to kill one another. Of course, this is not always the case and this tale concerns a double tragedy among Richmond’s middle class.

The Tribes seemed a fairly well-to-do, late Victorian family. The Reverend Odell Tribe was a clergyman, who had been the Congregationalist minister at All Hallows’ church in Tottenham, until 1891, then became an Anglican and was ordained Vicar of St Ann’s, at Brondesbury. He and his wife had several children. One of them was Naomi Tribe, born in 1888 and the youngest was Maurice Odell, born on 4 June 1893, also in Tottenham. The early careers of both these young people began promisingly. Naomi was involved in hospital work in West London in 1909, whilst her brother attended Radley School (favoured by the sons of the Anglican clergy), Oxfordshire, from 1907–11. He then went to St John’s College, Oxford, from 1911–14, reading Chemistry and gaining a BSc and beginning a career in metallurgy. He was also a member of the OTC there. In 1914, Naomi qualified as a surgeon, gaining her diploma of MRCS and her LRCP.