But comparisons with the Lucan case ended when the police revealed that, following detailed forensic examination of the house and body, they were satisfied that Verity Fenton had committed suicide. She had hanged herself from a rafter in the attic some time during the evening of 1 July while Peter Fenton was on a five-day visit to Washington. A reconstruction of the evidence suggested that, on his return from America during the afternoon of 3 July, he had found her suicide note on the hall table and then searched the house for her. There seems no doubt that it was he who cut her down and he who laid her out on the bed. Nor is there any doubt that he phoned his stepdaughter and asked her to come to the house that evening with her husband. He did not warn her of what she would find, nor did he mention that he wouldn't be there, but he told her he would leave the door on the latch. She described him as sounding "Very tired."
Unlike Lord Lucan, who was formally committed for trial at the Central Criminal Court after the Inquest into the death of Sandra Rivett, Peter Fenton was effectively absolved of blame for the death of his wife, Verity. A verdict of "suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed" was recorded, following evidence from her daughter that she had been unnaturally depressed while her husband was away. This was borne out by her suicide note which said simply: "Forgive me. I can't bear it any more, darling. Please don't blame yourself. Your betrayals are nothing compared with mine."
However, the question remained: why did Peter Fenton vanish? It seemed logical to many columnists that "betrayals" referred to love affairs, and there was much speculation that he had run to the comforting arms of a mistress. But this did not explain why his car was found abandoned near a cross-Channel ferry port, nor why he continued in hiding after the inquest verdict had been published. Interest began to centre on his job in the Foreign Office and the two postings he had held in Washington (1981-3 and 1985-7), where he was thought to have had access to highly secret information about NATO.
Was it coincidence that Fenton had vanished only weeks after the arrest of Nathan Driberg* in America?
* Nathan Driberg (b. 1941, Sacramento, California) joined the CIA from Harvard in 1962. Although a man of high intellect he failed to make progress within the CIA and is said to have become increasingly angry with the system. Some time during the early 1980s he conceived the idea of a syndicated spying ring whose aims would be purely profit-making and whose members would be known only to him. Information was supplied by syndicate members and sold on to a selected buyer. Purchasing countries are said to have included Russia, have contained other CIA agents, members of Congress, foreign diplomats, journalists and industrialists, but, as Driberg has consistently refused to name any other person, their identities remain a secret. The syndicate's activities were only discovered when one of its members, Harry Castilli, a CIA agent, began to adopt an overly lavish lifestyle. In return for immunity, he led investigators to Driberg and testified against him at his trial. Shortly after Driberg's arrest, a French diplomat and a prominent US Congressman both committed suicide. A UK diplomat, Peter Fenton, vanished.
Why had he made the five-day trip to Washington alone when it must have been clear to him that his wife was deeply depressed? Could it have been a desperate attempt to find out if Driberg was going to talk in order to then reassure Verity that he was safe? For why had she written of "betrayals" before hanging herself unless she had known that her husband was a spy? Parallels were now drawn, not with Lord Lucan, but with Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, the notorious Foreign Office spies of the 1930s and 1940s, who disappeared in 1951 after being warned by Kirn Philby that a counter-intelligence investigation by British and American agencies was closing in on them. Had Peter Fenton, like Donald Maclean, used his position of trust in our Washington Embassy to betray his country?
Sadly, we shall probably never know because, if Peter Fenton was a traitor, then he did it for the money and he is unlikely to resurface as Burgess and Maclean did in Moscow in 1956, claiming a long-standing allegiance to communism. With the sort of wealth that the Driberg syndicate is said to have made, he could have had millions stashed away in Switzerland with which to fund a new identity for himself. But, according to his stepdaughter, Marilyn Burghley, it would be wrong to assume that he benefited from his treachery. "You have to understand that Peter adored my mother. I never believed that "betrayals" meant he'd had affairs. Which means, I suppose, that I have to accept he was betraying his country, and that she knew about it. Perhaps he asked her to run away with him, and when she refused, he accused her of not loving him. I think they must have had a terrible row for her to kill herself like that. Whatever the truth, life without her would have been something he couldn't bear. My mother's death was a far worse punishment than anything the courts could have given him."
An examination of Peter Fenton's earlier life and background sheds little further light on the mystery. Born on 5 March 1950, he was the adopted son of Jean and Harold Fenton of Colchester, Essex. Jean always described him as her "little miracle" because she was forty-two at the time of the adoption and had given up hope of a child. She and her husband were both teachers and lavished time and effort on their son. Their reward was a gifted child who won scholarships first to Winchester and then to Cambridge, where he read classics. However, he became gradually estranged from his parents during his teenage years, spending fewer vacations in Essex and preferring whenever possible to stay with friends in London. There is evidence that he resented his humble background and set out to rise above it. He showed little love for his adoptive parents.
In a letter to his brother in 1971, Harold Fenton wrote: "Peter has broken Jean's heart and I shall never forgive him for it. When I tackled him about his gambling, he asked me if I'd rather he stole to buy his way out of our lives and our house. He's ashamed of us. Apparently, he intends joining the Foreign Office when he leaves Cambridge and he wanted to 'warn' us that we will see very little of him once that happens. His career must come first. I asked him if he had any explanation for why God saw fit to bless us with so objectionable a child and he said: 'I made you proud. What more did you want?' I would have struck him had Jean not been present."
Peter Fenton joined the Foreign Office from Cambridge in 1972, and was spotted early by Sir Angus Fraser, then ambassador in Paris. With Fraser's backing, Fenton seemed set for a glittering career. However, his marriage to Verity Standish in 1980 was seen by many as a mistake, and his meteoric rise appeared to falter. Verity, a widow with two teenage children, was thirteen years older than Fenton and, because of her age, was considered an unsuitable wife for a future ambassador. Interestingly, in view of what he had said to his father ten years earlier, Fenton chose to put his love for Verity before his career, and his decision would seem to have been vindicated when he won his first posting to Washington in September 1981.
There followed seven years of apparently blameless marriage and dedicated work. Fenton was awarded the QBE in 1983 for services to Her Majesty's government during the Falklands War, and Verity proved a loyal wife and much-sought-after hostess for official functions. Her children, who spent their vacations with the couple in whichever part of the world they were, remember Fenton with affection. "He was always very kind to us," said Verity's son, Anthony Standish. "He told me once that he always thought money and ambition were the only things that mattered in life until my mother showed him how to love. That's why I don't believe he was a traitor. The money wouldn't have attracted him. If you want my opinion, it was she who was having the affair. She was the sort of woman who needed constant demonstrations of love, probably because my real father was a womanizer and their marriage had been an unhappy one. Perhaps she felt neglected because Peter was working so hard at that time, and she slid into infidelity by default. If Peter found out about it and threatened to leave her, it would explain why she hanged herself."