Wimborne, Henderson & Carstairs

In the novel 4.50 from Paddington, Wimborne, Henderson & Carstairs is the London based firm of solicitors dealing with the legal affairs of the Crackenthorpe family. At the time of the events in the novel, Mr Wimborne is a senior partner of the firm. His father handled the Crackenthorp affairs during the time of the Second World War but had died some six years previously. Moreover during the war the firm was based in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The house next door to theirs had suffered a direct hit from a bomb and a great number of the firms records had been destroyed. Hence the firm's institutional memory on the Crackenthorpe family stretching back to the war is limited. Mr Wimborne cannot, for example, confirm or disconfirm whether Edmund Crackenthorpe had married someone during the war. His father might have heard something but might not have considered the story important enough, or if there were written records, they might have been destroyed.