Kate Summerscale - The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher - A Shocking Murder And The Undoing Of A Great Victorian Detective

In the last days of November Jack Whicher wrote to his former colleague John Handcock of the Bristol police, reiterating his theory of the missing nightdress.

After all that has been said in reference to this case, and the different theories that have been advanced, there is in my humble judgment but one solution to it; and if you had made the personal investigations I did I am certain you would have come to the same conclusion. But possibly you, like others, have entirely been led by what you have heard, especially as regards the theory of Mr Kent and the nurse being concerned in the murder, simply upon the vague suspicion that he might have been in her room, &c. Now, in my opinion if there ever was one man more to be pitied, or who has been more calumniated than another, that unfortunate man is Mr Kent. It was bad enough to have his darling child cruelly murdered; but to be branded as the murderer is far worse; and, according to the present state of public opinion he will be so branded to the day of his death unless a confession is made by the person who I firmly believe committed the deed. I have little doubt but that confession would have been made if Miss Constance had been remanded for another week. Now, my opinion is . . . that the fact of there being two families . . . was the primal cause of the murder; and that the motive was jealousy towards the children by the second marriage. The deceased was the favourite child, and spite towards the parents, the mother in particular, I believe to have been the actuating motive of Constance Kent . . . Miss Constance possesses an extraordinary mind

.

Whicher's anger about Samuel's treatment may have been sharpened by the fact that he also stood forever to be stigmatised by the case. Both men were government inspectors who had become the objects of highly critical inspection.

In his letter, Whicher mentioned that one of the Wiltshire magistrates had been to visit him, to discuss the shift that the 'bungling' police had lost. Whicher suspected that the police had returned it to the boiler hole as bait, to lure back its owner and catch her red-handed - this might account for why the constables were posted to the kitchen on the night of 30 June. 'Foley never would explain that to me . . . Mr Kent said in his evidence that Foley told him it was to see if anyone got up to destroy anything.' When the dress vanished, Whicher concluded, the police entered 'a compact of secrecy'.

After the revelations at Saunders' inquiry, the Wiltshire magistrates investigated the affair of the shift in the boiler hole. On 1 December they convened a public hearing, at which both Cox and Kerslake denied that the shift was theirs. Watts described finding the garment: 'It was in . . . as if to light the fire . . . pushed back as far as possible.' This meant that the shift must have been hidden after 9 a.m., when Kerslake put out the fire. Watts said the shift was flimsy, with 'a flap to tie down before, and another behind', and was nearly worn out - there were holes beneath the arms. The blood 'nearly covered the fore and hind parts. There were no marks of blood above the waist; the blood extended about 16 inches from the bottom. I should think, from the appearance, the blood had been caused from the inside.'

Eliza Dallimore said she thought the shift was Kerslake's because it was 'very dirty and very short . . . it would not come to my knees'. The cook had told her that her 'under linen was very dirty, because she had so much work to do'. Dallimore observed that neither Kerslake nor Cox was wearing a clean shift on the Saturday of Saville's death - she had seen their underclothes when they tried on the breast flannel.

Mrs Dallimore's enthusiastic detailing of the servants' underwear stood in strong contrast to Foley's distaste for the subject. The Superintendent said he had not discussed the discovery of the shift with the magistrates because he was too 'ashamed'. 'I did not keep it in my possession a minute. I did not like to touch it . . . I said, "You see, it is a nasty dirty chemise, so put it away" . . . I considered it would be an indecent and improper thing to expose it publicly. I have seen a great many stained garments. I don't suppose any man has seen more. One Sunday morning I searched fifty-two beds in Bath, and you may think I saw some scenes there . . . but I never saw a filthier garment than this.' He said he had wished to 'screen' the shift's owner.

The magistrates castigated Foley but forgave him, describing him as a 'shrewd, clever' officer whose error had been prompted by feelings of decency and delicacy.

On Henry Ludlow's instructions, the clerk read out a letter from Whicher: the shift hidden in the scullery, the detective said, 'was never mentioned to me by any member of the police during the fortnight I was engaged with them at Road assisting in the inquiry, and in daily communication with Supt Foley and his assistants . . . If, therefore, the magistrates feel annoyed at the matter being kept secret from them, I beg to state that I was no party to it . . . I wish them to know that I am in no way to blame.'

Joseph Stapleton's book about the murder quoted a further letter from Whicher, which argued that the shift and the missing nightdress were one and the same. 'When the finding of the bloodstained garment in the flue, and the "direful secresy" that had been previously kept respecting it, oozed out,' he wrote, 'I felt quite satisfied that it was the actual nightdress in which the deed was committed . . . I have no doubt it was placed there as a temporary hiding-place, and that the police afterwards, by some negligence, let it slip through their fingers. Hence the necessity for secrecy before, as well as after, it oozed out.' Whicher's repetition of the phrase 'oozed out' is striking. He seems to have a vivid, visceral apprehension of the blood he had nearly got his hands on, echoed in his image of a dress slipping, like liquid, through the constables' fingers.

PART THREE

THE UNRAVELLING

'I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker obscure, and

within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity the

appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for the instant

confounding and bottomless, for if he were innocent, what then on

earth was I ? Paralysed, while it lasted, by the mere brush of the

question, I let him go a little . . .'

From The Turn of the Screw (1898), by Henry James

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

LIKE A CRAVE

1861-1864

The inquiries into the Road Hill murder petered out. At the beginning of 1861 the Lord Chief Justice turned down a proposal to open a new inquest into Saville Kent's death, dismissing the allegations that the coroner had acted improperly in failing to examine Samuel. The Bath police collected a few more clues, or rumours of clues, which found their way into the newspapers in January but were taken no further: a pair of India-rubber galoshes had been seen at the foot of the back stairs soon after the murder; a pair of stockings had gone missing. Joseph Stapleton claimed that some damp and dirty socks were found in a cupboard under the back stairs. The Frome Times said that Constance Kent, when at Miss Ducker's school in Bath many years earlier, 'in retaliation for a supposed slight, destroyed and then threw down a water-closet some property belonging to her governess'. At this school, it was reported elsewhere, she had tried to cause an explosion by turning on the gas.

In a letter to a Swiss friend on 1 February, Charles Dickens expanded on his theory about the culprits. 'You talk of the Road Murder, I suppose, even at Lausanne? Not all the Detective Police in existence shall ever persuade me out of the hypothesis that the circumstances have gradually shaped out to my mind. The father was in bed with the nurse: The child was discovered by them, sitting up in his little bed, staring, and evidently going to "tell Ma". The nurse leaped out of bed and instantly suffocated him in the father's presence. The father cut the child about, to distract suspicion (which was effectually done), and took the body out where it was found. Either when he was going for the Police, or when he locked the police up in his house, or at both times, he got rid of the knife and so forth. It is likely enough that the truth may be never discovered now.'