“DEATH PUZZLE”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 July 1938, Page 6

“DEATH PUZZLE”

AN AUSTRALIAN TRAGEDY. The “death puzzle” will soon be presented for solution to Mr Justice Nicholas in the Sydney Probate Court. More than £lOOO awaits the next-of-kin of Edward Summerhayes, 69, and his wife, Ethel Summerhayes, 54. On September 17, 17936, the dead bodies of Summerhayes and his wife were found in a William Street fiat, near King’s Cross. Death was due to poisoning. A flat in the same building was being fumigated, and fumes of a certain poison leaked into the Summerhayes’ flat. Fumigators rang the bell at every flat in the block to warn tenants of what was being done. The Summerhayes couple did not answer their doorbell. Summerhayes will left his £6OO estate to his wife. Her will left her £5OO estate to him. The law of New South Wales presumes that, in the absence of evidence to prove otherwise, the husband died first. His estate would then pass to his wife and, on her death, to her next-of-kin. Mrs Summerhayes was the only child of United States parents, now also deceased. An American-wide search by Messrs Perry and Son, of Sydney, solicitors for the Public Trustee, has failed to trace her next-of-kin. However, two brothers of Mr Summerhayes have been found in N.S.W. To establish the claim of these two brothers, the solicitors will endeavour to prove that Mrs Summerhayes died first. It will be argued that the wife collapsed in the kitchenette and that her husband got out of bed to go to her aid. He was pulling on his trousers in the living room, it is deduced, when he, too, was overcome by the cyanide fumes.