The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

NOTES

PROLOGUE

xix On Sunday, 15 July 1860 . . . for is.6d. From Whicher's expenses claims in the Metropolitan Police files at the National Archives – MEPO 3/61.

xix The day was warm. . . into the seventies. Weather reports in the July, August and September 1860 issues of The Gentleman's Magazine.

xix At this terminus in 1856 . . . excelled at untangling. From reports in The Times, 7 & 12 April 1856; and 3, 4 & 12 May 1858.

xx Dickens reported that 'in a glance' . . . 'chronicled nowhere'. In 'A Detective Police Party', parts one and two, House-hold Words, 27 July 1850 and 10 August 1850.

xxi 'the prince of detectives'. In Scotland Yard Past and Present: Experiences of Thirty-Seven Years (1893) by Ex-Chief-Inspector Timothy Cavanagh.

xxi 'shorter and thicker-set' . . . smallpox scars. In 'A Detective Police Party', House-hold Words, 27 July 1850.

xxi William Henry Wills . . . of the Detective police.' In 'The Modern Science of Thief-taking', House-hold Words, 13 July 1850. Dickens probably contributed to the writing of this piece. For details of the journal and its contributors, see House-hold Words: A Weekly Journal 1850–1859 Conducted by Charles Dickens – Table of Contents, List of Contributors and Their Contributions Based on The House-hold Words Office Book in the Morris L. Parrish Collection of Victorian Novelists (1973) by Anne Lohrli.

xxii The only clues . . . his eyes were blue. From MEPO 21/7, Metropolitan Police discharge papers.

xxiii A Great Western Railway . . . less than an hour. From Black's Picturesque Tourist and Road and Railway Guidebook (1862); Stokers and Pokers; or, the London and North-Western Railway, the Electric Telegraph and the Railway Clearing-House (1849) by Francis Bond Head; Paddington Station: Its History and Architecture (2004) by Steven Brindle; railway timetables in the Trowbridge Advertiser of January 1860.

CHAPTERS 1, 2 & 3

The narrative of these three chapters is drawn mainly from newspaper reports of the testimony given to the Wiltshire magistrates between July and December 1860, affidavits made to the Queen's Bench in November 1860, and the first book about the case, The Great Crime of 1860: Being a Summary of the Facts Relating to the Murder Committed at Road; a Critical Review of its Social and Scientific Aspects; and an Authorised Account of the Family; With an Appendix, Containing the Evidence Taken at the Various Inquiries, written by J.W. Stapleton and published in May 1861. The newspaper sources are the Somerset and Wilts journal, the Trowbridge and North Wilts Advertiser, the Bristol Daily Post, the Bath Chronicle, the Bath Express, the Western Daily Press, the Frome Times, the Bristol Mercury, The Times, the Morning Post, Lloyds Weekly Paper and the Daily Telegraph. Some details of furnishings are drawn from newspaper accounts of the auction of the contents of Road Hill House in April 1861.

CHAPTER 3

38 On a visit to the country . . . house is his castle." ' In The King of Saxony's Journey through England and Scotland in the Year 1844 (1846) by Carl Gustav Carus.

38 The American poet . . . privacy of their homes.' In English Traits (1856) by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Quoted in The English Home and its Guardians 1850–1940 (1998) by George K. Behlmer.

CHAPTER 4

43 It was still light . . . green as grass. From weather and crop reports for July in the Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette, 2 August 1860.

43 the railway station's narrow platform. Rowland Rodway, formerly Samuel Kent's solicitor, was leading a campaign to improve the facilities at Trowbridge railway station. The platforms were dangerously narrow, he argued, there was no raised walkway across the line, and no waiting room. The Trowbridge and North Wilts Advertiser of 21 July 1860 reported on the campaign.

43 Trowbridge had made money . . . muslin cheap. History of Trowbridge and surroundings from The Book of Trowbridge (1984) by Kenneth Rogers; John Murray's Handbook for Travellers in Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset (1859); and photographs and maps in the Trowbridge local history museum. Reports of wool trade in Lloyds Weekly, 15 July 1860.

44 Wine, cider, spirits . . . at the bar. From an advertisement in the Trowbridge and North Wilts Advertiser, 4 August 1860.

44 'I couldn't do better than have a drop . . . courage up'. In 'A Detective Police Party', House-hold Words, 27 July 1850.

44 Jonathan Whicher was born . . . outright villains. Details of Whicher's family from the St Giles baptism registers in the London Metropolitan Archives (X097/236), and the marriage certificate of Sarah Whicher and James Holliwell. Camberwell's history from the London and Counties Directory 1823–4, The Parish of Camber-well by Blanch (1875), Camberwell by D. Allport (1841) and The Story of Camberwell by Mary Boast (1996).

45 When Jack Whicher applied . . . good character. Whicher's referees were John Berry, a house painter of 12 High St, Camberwell, later of Providence Row, and John Hartwell, also of Camberwell. From MEPO 4/333 (a register of recruits to the Metropolitan Police) and the census of 1841. Police entrance requirements and procedure from Sketches in London (1838) by James Grant.

45 Like more than a third . . . submitted his application. The other constables were former butchers, bakers, shoemakers, tailors, soldiers, servants, carpenters, bricklayers, blacksmiths, turners, clerks, shop workers, mechanics, plumbers, painters, sailors, weavers and stonemasons. From Scotland Yard: Its History and Organisation 1829–1929 (1929) by George Dilnot.

45 His weekly wage . . . a little more secure. Police rates of pay from Parliamentary Papers of 1840, at the British Library; for comparative pay to labourers, see 'The Metropolitan Police and What is Paid for Them', Chambers's Journal, 2 July 1864.

45 The 3,500 policemen . . . sixteenth century). There was one policeman for every 425 inhabitants of the city. Figures from Sketches in London (1838) by James Grant. Nicknames from The London Underworld (1970) by Kellow Chesney and London Labour and the London Poor (1861) by Henry Mayhew, Bracebridge Hemyng, John Binny and Andrew Halliday.

46 Whicher was issued . . . sideburns instead. Details of police uniform from: Mysteries of Police & Crime (1899) by Arthur Griffiths; Scotland Yard: Its History and Organisation 1829–1929 (1929) by George Dilnot; Scotland Yard Past and Present: Experiences of Thirty-Seven Years (1893) by Timothy Cavanagh.

46 At a time when all clothes . . . degree of stupidity.' In 'The Policeman: His Health' by Harriet Martineau, Once a Week, 2 June 1860.

47 Andrew Wynter . . . neither hopes nor fears.' In 'The Police and the Thieves', Quarterly Review, 1856. Another commentator, James Greenwood, echoed this: 'So long as the common constable remains a well-regulated machine, and fulfils his functions with no jarring or unnecessary noise, we will ask no more.' From Seven Curses of London (1869). Both quoted in Cops and Bobbies: Police Authority in New York and London, 1830–1870 (1999) by Wilbur R. Miller.

47 Whicher shared . . . King's Cross. From the census of 1841.

47 This was a substantial brick building . . . recreation room. From the John Back archive at the Metropolitan Police Historical Collection, Charlton, London SE₇.

47 All single men . . . publican on the route. Regulations from: Policing Victorian London (1985) by Philip Thurmond Smith; London's Teeming Streets 1830–1914 (1993) by James H. Winter; and Metropolitan Police rules and orders in the National Archives. Details of a policeman's day from: The Making of a Policeman: A Social History of a Labour Force in Metropolitan London, 1829–1914 (2002) by Haia Shpayer-Makov; 'The Metropolitan Protectives' by Charles Dickens in House-hold Words, 26 April 18 51; and works already cited by Grant, Cavanagh and Martineau.

48 four out of five dismissals, of a total of three thousand, were for drunkenness. The estimate of Colonel Rowan and Richard Mayne, the Police Commissioners, given to a parliamentary select committee in 1834. See The English Police: A Political and Social History (1991) by Clive Emsley.

49 Holborn teemed with tricksters . . . burgled houses. Slang from London Labour and the London Poor (1861) by Henry Mayhew et al. and The Victorian Underworld (1970) by Kellow Chesney. Thieves acting as decoys from The Times, 21 November 1837.

In 1837, the year that Whicher joined the police force, almost 17,000 people were arrested in London, of whom 107 were burglars, 110 housebreakers, thirty-eight highway robbers, 773 pickpockets, 3,657 'common thieves', eleven horse stealers, 141 dog stealers, three forgers, twenty-eight coiners, 317 'utterers of base coin', 141 'obtainers of goods by false pretences', 182 other fraudsters, 343 receivers of stolen goods, 2,768 'habitual disturbers of the public peace', 1,295 vagrants, fifty writers of begging letters, eighty-six bearers of begging letters, 895 well-dressed prostitutes living in brothels, 1,612 well-dressed prostitutes walking the streets, and 3,8 64 'low' prostitutes in poor neighbourhoods. From Scotland Yard: Its History and Organisation 1829–1929 (1929) by George Dilnot.

49 The entire police force . . . June 1838. The Times, 30 June 1838.

49 Already the police were familiar . . . an asylum. The Times, 23 December 1837.

49 Jack Whicher's first reported arrest. From The First Detectives and the Early Career of Richard Mayne, Commissioner of Police (1957) by Belton Cobb and The Times of 15 December 1840.

50 There had been outrage . . . infiltrated a political gathering. The agent was Popay, the gathering Chartist – see Scotland Yard: Its History and Organisation 1829–1929 (1929) by George Dilnot. Peel had assured the House of Commons in 1822 that he was dead against a 'system of espionage'.

50 Magistrates' court records . . . buy him off with silver. Court records in London Metropolitan Archive – references WJ/SP/E/013/35, 38 and 39, WJ/SP/E/017/40, MJ/SP/1842.04/060.

50 The Metropolitan Police files show . . . under two inspectors. Details of the hunt for Daniel Good and the formation of the detective division from MEPO 3/45, the police file on the murder; The First Detectives (1957) by Belton Cobb; The Rise of Scotland Yard: A History of the Metropolitan Police (1956) by Douglas G. Browne; and Dreadful Deeds and Awful Murders: Scotland Yard's First Detectives (1990) by Joan Lock.

50 ('Dickens later described . . . bags his man'). In 'A Detective Police Party', House-hold Words, 27 July 1850. Thornton was born in 1803 in Epsom, Surrey, according to the census of 1851. He was married to a woman seventeen years his senior, with whom he had two daughters.

51 Whicher was given a pay rise . . . bonuses and rewards. Information on pay from Metropolitan Police papers at the National Archives and from parliamentary papers on police numbers and rates of pay at the British Library – 1840 (81) XXXIX.257.

51 'Intelligent men have been . . . in 1843. Chambers's Journal XII.

52 In the London underworld . . . classless anonymity. The term 'Jacks' is cited in The Victorian Underworld (1970) by Kellow Chesney. Detective officers also became known as 'stops', according to The Slang Dictionary published by J.C. Hotten in 1864, and as 'noses', according to Hotten's dictionary of 18 74. The 18 64 edition included some of the London detectives' own lingo: to 'pipe' a man was to follow him; to 'smoke' was to detect, or to 'penetrate an artifice'.

52 The first English detective story . . .1849. In Chambers's Edinburgh Journal of 28 July 1849. This magazine published eleven more stories by Waters between then and September 1853. The twelve were issued as a book in 1856.

52 'They are, one and all . . . speak to.' From 'A Detective Police Party', House-hold Words, 27 July 1850.

52 George Augustus Sala . . . questioning them.' From Things I Have Seen and People I Have Known (two volumes, 1894) by George Augustus Sala. More recent commentators, such as Philip Collins in Dickens and Crime (1962), have seen the novelist's relations with the detectives as faintly patronising.

52 In Tom Fox . . . higher intelligence'. This collection of short stories – sold for Is.6d. – was published in April 1860 and went into a second edition that summer.

53 ln 1851 Whicher. . . fleeing the bank with their loot. Bank robbery reports from The Times and the News of the World, June and July 1851.

53 'The credit for skill . . . Dickens and the like. Also that year, Charley Field was criticised for the underhand manner in which he caught two men who had tried to blow up the railway tracks at Cheddington, Buckinghamshire. He disguised himself as a match-seller, according to the Bedford Times, took rooms in the town and made himself at home in the local pubs, where he would joshingly introduce himself as a 'timber merchant', until he got the information he sought. See Dickens and Crime (1962) by Philip Collins.

53 Like Whicher . . . little finger'. Literary detectives were inconspicuous and quiet. Carter of the Yard in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's novel Henry Dunbar (1864) looks like something between 'a shabby-genteel half-pay captain and an unlucky stockbroker'. The police detective in Thomas Hardy's Desperate Remedies (1871) is 'commonplace in all except his eyes'. The narrator of John Bennett's Tom Fox (1860) says, 'I always made use of my eyes and ears, and said little – a precept every Detective should lay to heart.' The detective in Braddon's The Trail of the Serpent (1860) is mute.

54 In 1850 Charley Field . . . a lovely idea!' From 'Three "Detective" Anecdotes' in House-hold Words, 14 September 1850.

55 The artistry of crime . . . the analytical detective. The 'Newgate novels' of the 1820s to 1840s were melodramas about fearless criminals such as Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard. For the ascendancy of the detective hero, see, for example, Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel – a History (1972) by Julian Symons; Bloodhounds of Heaven: The Detective in English Fiction from Godwin to Doyle (1976) by Ian Ousby; Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science (1999) by Ronald Thomas; and The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction (1981) by Dennis Porter. The shift of focus was described by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish (1975): 'we have moved from the exposition of the facts or the confession to the slow process of discovery; from the execution to the investigation; from the physical confrontation to the intellectual struggle between criminal and investigator'.

55 Whicher, who was said . . . charge of the department. From MEPO 4/333, the register of joiners, and MEPO 21/7, a record of police pensioners.

55 In 1858 Whicher caught the valet . . . Essex cornfield. From reports in The Times, 30 June and 6 & 12 July 1858. Investigation into the murder of PC Clark from Metropolitan Police file MEPO 3/53.

55 In 1859 . . . sued Bonwell for misconduct. The Bonwell case inspired an extraordinary editorial in the Daily Telegraph of 10 October 1859: 'This London is an amalgam of worlds within worlds and the occurrences of every day convince us that there is not one of these worlds but has its special mysteries and its generic crimes . . . It has been said . . . that Hampstead sewers shelter a monstrous breed of black swine, which have propagated and run wild among the slimy feculence, and whose ferocious snouts will one day up-root Highgate archway, while they make Holloway intolerable with their grunting.' Quoted in Black Swine in the Sewers of Hampstead: Beneath the Surface of Victorian Sensationalism by Thomas Boyle (1988). See also reports in The Times of 19 September to 16 December 1859.

55 A couple of months before he was despatched . . . rings fall to the floor. From reports in The Times of 25 April, 4 & 7 May, 12 June 1860.

56 He was 'an excellent officer . . . take on any case'. From A Life's Reminiscences of Scotland Yard (1890) by Andrew Lansdowne.

56 If Whicher was certain . . . a man to me.' From 'A Detective Police Party', House-hold Words, 27 July 1850.

56 He was not above . . . left cheek. From Scotland Yard Past and Present: Experiences of Thirty-Seven Years (1893) by Timothy Cavanagh.

CHAPTERS 5 to 14

The main sources for these chapters are: the Metropolitan Police file MEPO 3/61, which includes Whicher's reports on the murder, Whicher and Williamson's expenses claims, letters from the public and notes from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police; The Great Crime of 1860 (1861) by J.W. Stapleton; and newspapers including the Somerset and Wilts Journal, the Bath Chronicle, the Bath Express, the Bristol Daily Post, the Frome Times, the Trow-bridge and North Wilts Advertiser, the Devizes Advertiser, the Daily Telegraph and The Times. Other sources are given in the notes below.

CHAPTER 5

59 It was another dry day . . . sailed overhead. Details of birds from Natural History of a Part of the County of Wilts (1843) by W.G. Maton; A History of British Birds (1885) by Thomas Bewick; The Birds of Wiltshire (19 81), edited by John Buxton. Weather here and subsequently from local newspapers and from Agricultural Records 22O-1968 (1969) by John Stratton.

59 In this part of England . . . suffocate it in mud. From The Dialect of the West of England (1825, revised 1869) by James Jennings, and Dialect in Wiltshire (1987) by Malcolm Jones and Patrick Dillon.

60 There were at least four pubs . . . impossible to unravel. Occupations and businesses from the census returns of 18 61. Information on mills from Warp and Weft: The Story of the Somerset and Wiltshire Woollen Industry by Kenneth Rogers (1986), Wool and Water by Kenneth G. Ponting (1975) and exhibits in the Frome and Trowbridge local history museums.

61 Samuel Kent was disliked . . . three or four shillings a week. From a report in the Frome Times of 17 October 1860. Joseph Stapleton did not accept that Samuel was unpopular – he claimed that his colleague's 'urbanity and concessory spirit' had done much to popularise 'an obnoxious law'. Elsewhere in his book, though, he said Samuel was victimised by those to whom he was 'personally obnoxious by his faithful discharge of official duty'.

61 the Temperance Hall. This was a building erected by the subscription of villagers who were opposed to alcohol, particularly the sale of beer on the Sabbath and the custom of children fetching beer for their parents. The Somerset and Wilts Journal reported that many had assembled in the hall on the Wednesday before the murder, while the rain pelted down outside, to belt out Temperance tunes; they were accompanied by the twenty-two members of the Road Fife and Drum Band, with Charles Happerfield, the postmaster, on piano.

62 A cloth merchant . . . finest houses in the area. Information on Ledyard from A History of the County of Wiltshire: Volume 8 (1965), edited by Elizabeth Crittall.

64 Affluent mid-Victorians . . . in their own quarters. In The Gentleman's House: Or How to Plan English Residences from the Parsonage to the Palace (1864) Robert Kerr advised: 'The family constitute one community; the servants another. Whatever may be their mutual regard and confidence as dwellers under the same roof, each class is entitled to shut its door upon the other, and be alone.' Quoted in A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (1999) by John Tosh.

66 Whicher was familiar . . . the wrong way. In 'The Modern Science of Thief-taking' by W.H. Wills, House-hold Words, 13 July 1850.

68 The writers of the mid-nineteenth century . . . cut off. From Mary Barton (1848) by Elizabeth Gaskell; The Female Detective (1864) by Andrew Forrester; and 'The Modern Science of Thief-taking', House-hold Words, 13 July 1850.

68 One case that turned on such evidence . . . Greenacre was hanged in May 1837. For Greenacre's capture, see Dreadful Deeds and Awful Murders: Scotland Yard's First Detectives (1990) by Joan Lock.

69 In 1849 the London detectives . . . railway-station locker. For the Mannings' murder of Patrick O'Connor, see The Bermondsey Horror (1981) by Albert Borowitz and MEPO 3/54, the police file on the case.

69 The detectives . . . steamships. During the investigation – on 1 September 1849 – the Illustrated London News drew consolation from the fact that 'detection is sure to dog the footsteps of crime – that the guilty wretch, flying on the wings of steam at thirty miles an hour, is tracked by a swifter messenger – and that the lightning itself, by the wondrous agency of the electric telegraph, conveys to the remotest parts of the kingdom an account of his crime, a description of his person'.

69 Whicher checked the hotels . . . against the killers. Details of Whicher's role in the investigation from MEPO 3/54 and Dreadful Deeds and Awful Murders: Scotland Yard's First Detectives (1990) by Joan Lock.

69 two and a half million copies. Figure from Victorian Studies in Scarlet (1970) by Richard D. Altick.

69 A series of woodcuts . . . dashing action heroes. In The Progress of Crime; Or, The Authentic Memoirs of Maria Manning (1849) by Robert Huish.

70 He awarded Whicher . . . £15. From MEPO 3/54.

70 The next year . . . the detective had found. From 'The Modern Science of Thief-taking', House-hold Words, 13 July 1850.

71 In east London in 1829 . . . her next two children, Saville and Eveline. As well as The Great Crime of 1860 (1861) by J.W. Stapleton, this account of the Kent family's past draws on certificates of birth, marriage and death, and documents in the Home Office file HO 45/6970.

CHAPTER 6

79 Joshua Parsons was born . . . hardy perennials. Information about Parsons from census returns of 1861 and 1871 and from 'Dr Joshua Parsons (1814–92) of Beckington, Somerset, General Practitioner' by N. Spence Galbraith, in Somerset Archaeology and Natural History, issue 140 (1997).

80 physicians who specialised . . . perfect little devils from birth'. From 'Moral Insanity', in the Journal of Mental Science, 27 July 1881. In The Borderlands of Insanity (1875) Andrew Wynter wrote: 'It is agreed by all alienist physicians, that girls are far more likely to inherit insanity from their mothers than from the other parent . . . The tendency of the mother to transmit her mental disease is . . . in all cases stronger than the father's; some physicians have, indeed, insisted that it is twice as strong.' For writings by Savage and Wynter see Embodied Selves: An Anthology of Psychological Texts 1830–1890 (1998), edited by Jenny Bourne Taylor and Sally Shuttleworth.

81 an almost naked woman stabbing the boy in the privy. The idea that the killer had been naked was to recur – the Western Daily Press of 4 August 1860 pointed out that near the kitchen door, 'two taps of water could have been made use of to wash away any marks, if the person was nude'.

82 Objects could regain their innocence only when the killer was caught. For an account of the way that objects are infused with significance during a detective investigation, and returned to banality afterwards, see The Novel and the Police (1988) by D.A. Miller.

82 the original country-house murder mystery. The horrible circumstances in which Saville's body was found also played a part in establishing the conventions of this form. The corpse in a detective novel, wrote W.H. Auden in his essay 'The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on the Detective Story, by an Addict' (1948), 'must shock not only because it is a corpse but also because, even for a corpse, it is shockingly out of place, as when a dog makes a mess on a drawingroom carpet'. The classic country-house murder is an assault on propriety, an aggressive exposure of base needs and desires.

82 'sensitiveness . . . detective faculty'. In Villette (1853).

82 'reckoned' em up'. In 'A Detective Police Party', House-hold Words, 27 July 1850.

83 'If you ask me to give my reason . . . safe keeping of the swell mobsmen.' In 'The Police and the Thieves', Quarterly Review, 1856. 'Between the detective and the thief there is no ill blood,' wrote Andrew Wynter in the same article; 'when they meet they give an odd wink of recognition to each other – the thief smiling, as much as to say, "I am quite safe, you know;" and the detective replying with a look, of which the interpretation is, "We shall be better acquainted by and by." They both feel, in short, that they are using their wits to get their living, and there is a sort of tacit understanding between them that each is entitled to play his game as well as he can.'

83 'That was enough for me'. In 'A Detective Police Party', House-hold Words, 27 July 1850.

83 'I could even notice the eye . . . saw him busy.' From The Casebook of a Victorian Detective (1975) by James McLevy, edited by George Scott-Moncreiff, a selection of pieces from McLevy's autobiographical volumes Curiosities of Crime in Edinburgh and The Sliding Scale of Life, both published in 1861.

83 The journalist William Russell . . . comparing both'. From 'Isaac Gortz, the Charcoal-Burner' in Experiences of a Real Detective (1862) by Inspector 'F', 'edited' by Waters.

84 'The eye . . . invisible to other eyes'. From 'The Modern Science of Thief-taking', House-hold Words, 13 July 1850. When Dickens accompanied Charley Field to a St Giles basement, he noted the detective's 'roving eye that searches every corner of the cellar as he talks'; he described the lanterns carried by Field's sidekicks as 'flaming eyes' that created 'turning lanes of light' ('On Duty with Inspector Field', House-hold Words, 14 June 1851). For a discussion of surveillance and the eyes of the literary detective, see From Bow Street to Baker Street: Mystery, Detection and Narrative (1992) by Martin A. Kayman.

84 He once arrested . . . pick pockets. From The Times, 4 June 1853.

84 The seemingly supernatural sight . . . theories of Sigmund Freud. For the fictional detective's ability to read faces and bodies as if they were books, see Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science (1999) by Ronald Thomas.

85 The standard text on the art of face-reading. Lavater's essays first appeared in 1789; a ninth edition was published in 1855. See Embodied Selves: An Anthology of Psychological Texts 1830–1890 (1998), edited by Jenny Bourne Taylor and Sally Shuttleworth.

87 Coolness was a prerequisite for an artful crime. Dickens wrote an essay about this: 'The Demeanour of Murderers', House-hold Words, 14 June 1856.

88 Even before Whicher's arrival . . . previous day's Daily Telegraph. Letters quoted in the Bristol Daily Post of 12 July 1860 and the Somerset and Wilts Journal of 14 July 1860.

88 A bump behind the ear . . . the seat of secretiveness. From the 1853 edition of George Combe's System of Phrenology.

88 This was probably the same. . . a tiger from a sheep.' Letter quoted in the Somerset and Wilts Journal of 14 July 1860.

CHAPTER 7

91 The warm weather . . . eclipse of the sun. From the Frome Times, 25 July 1860.

91 an odd episode that had taken place four years earlier, in July 1856. Account of the runaways episode of July 1856 from Whicher's reports to Mayne in MEPO 3/61, Stapleton's The Great Crime of 1860 and local newspaper stories.

92 In one newspaper . . . sister's affection.' Probably the Bath Express – the piece was reproduced, without attribution, in the Frome Times of 25 July 1860 and the Devizes Advertiser of 26 July 1860.

93 Another report . . . at the side'. Bath and Cheltenham Gazette, 23 July 1856.

93 'The little girl . . . mode of sitting.' In the piece reproduced in the Frome Times of 25 July 1860.

93 Emma Moody, fifteen . . . wool workers. From the census of 1861.

94 'I have heard her say . . . just the contrary.' This dialogue is reconstructed from Emma Moody's testimony at the magistrates' court on 27 July 1860.

94 According to Whicher's reports . . . in my place?' From report in MEPO 3/61.

96 'wonted sagacity'. From a report in The Times on 23 July 1860; 'knowledge and sagacity'. From a letter by Dickens of 1852; 'vulpine sagacity'. From 'Circumstantial Evidence' in Experiences of a Real Detective (1862) by Inspector 'F', edited by Waters.

96 'sleuthhound'. In Shirley (1849).

96 'the chase was hot . . . upon the right track'. From Recollections of a Detective Police-Officer (1856) by Waters.

96 'If any profession . . . ridding society of pests.' In The Casebook of a Victorian Detective.

96 'a vast Wood . . . being discovered.' From An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers (1757), quoted in The English Police: A Political and Social History (1991) by Clive Emsley.

97 In 1847. . . hummingbird skins. From reports in The Times, 9, 15 & 19 April 1847 and 14 October 1848.

97 Jack Hawkshaw . . . all his skins.' 'You detectives,' observes another character in the play, 'would suspect your own fathers.' The Ticket-of-Leave Man was first performed at the Olympic Theatre in Drury Lane, London, in May 1863, and proved a huge success.

CHAPTER 8

99 'At the back of the house. . . very accessible.' From testimony given on 1 October 1860, reported in the Bristol Daily Post.

100 Before Whicher's arrival . . . seen traces.' Testimony of Francis Wolfe on 2 October 1860, reported in the Bristol Daily Post.

100 'An intimate personal knowledge . . . village boys'. From the Somerset and Wilts Journal, 13 October 1860.

103 'I contrived to elicit . . . very suggestive.' From 'Circumstantial Evidence' in Experiences of a Real Detective (1862) by Inspector 'F', edited by Waters.

103 'In both we are concerned . . . detective devices.' From Psycho-Analysis and the Establishment of the Facts in Legal Proceedings (1906) by Sigmund Freud.

104 Smith was a Glasgow architect's daughter . . . hot chocolate. See The Trial of Madeleine Smith (1905), edited by A. Duncan Smith. Henry James quoted in 'To Meet Miss Madeleine Smith' in Mainly Murder (1937) by William Roughead.

105 a kind of heroine. In Latter-day Pamphlets (1850) by Thomas Carlyle.

106 The dizzying expansion . . . by 1860. Figures on newspaper readership from Black Swine in the Sewers of Hampstead (1988) by Thomas Boyle. The expansion of the press was fuelled by the repeal of the stamp tax in 1855, which ushered in the first penny newspapers the next year, and the repeal of the duty on paper in 1860.

106 The tailor had educated himself . . . do the same. Whereas Dr Kahn's anatomical museum was open only to gentlemen, according to advertisements in The Times, literate members of both sexes could read the newspapers.

107 In answer to their questions . . . William to go with me.' From notes taken by the lawyer Peter Edlin, who was present at the interview, and passed on to the author Cecil Street, who published The Case of Constance Kent (1928) under the pen name John Rhode. These and other papers about the case are in an archive assembled by Bernard Taylor, the author of Cruelly Murdered: Constance Kent and the Killing at Road Hill House (1979, revised 1989).

107 As the week wore on. . . body was found. A partly accurate version of the rumour was reported in the Somerset and Wilts Journal of 21 July 1860.

107 In the evening of Saturday, 30 June . . . wicks needed trimming. From testimony given by Samuel Kent, Foley, Urch and Heritage in the magistrates' court in October and November 1860.

109 'Every Englishman . . . closed to the world.' In Notes on England (1872).

109 Privacy had become . . . or a tea. For discussions of middle-class domestic life in Victorian England see, for instance, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780–1850(1987) by Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, The Spectacle of Intimacy: A Public Life for the Victorian Family (2000) by Karen Chase and Michael Levenson, and The Victorian Family: Structures and Stresses (1978), edited by A. Wohl. In an essay in this anthology, Elaine Showalter writes that secrecy was 'the fundamental and enabling condition of middle-class life . . . The essential unknowability of each individual, and society's collaboration in the maintenance of a facade behind which lurked innumerable mysteries, were the themes which preoccupied many mid-century novelists.'

In 1935 the German philosopher Walter Benjamin connected this new privacy to the birth of detective fiction: 'For the private citizen the space in which he lives enters for the first time into contrast with the one of daily work . . . the traces of the inhabitant impress themselves upon the interieur and from them is born the detective story, which goes after these traces.' Quoted (and translated) by Stefano Tani in The Doomed Detective: The Contribution of the Detective Novel to Postmodern American and Italian Fiction (1984).

110 A murder like this could reveal. . . middle-class house. In an article about the popularity of detective stories, Bertolt Brecht wrote: 'We gain our knowledge of life in a catastrophic form. History is written after catastrophes . . . The death has taken place. What had been brewing beforehand? What had happened? Why has a situation arisen? All this can now perhaps be deduced.' Published in 1976 in Brecht's collected works and quoted in Delightful Murder: A Social History of the Crime Story (1984) by Ernest Mandel.

110 A month before the murder . . . oftener, a family'. Notes on Nursing quoted in the Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette of 31 May 1860.

113 In the evening . . . were still green. Information on weather and crops from the Trowbridge and North Wilts Advertiser of 21 July 1860, and the agricultural report for July in the Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette of 2 August 1860.

CHAPTER 9

115 The chairman of the magistrates . . . the services of a detective. Information about magistrates from The Book of Trowbridge (1984) by Kenneth Rogers and the census of 1861.

116 Shortly before three o'clock . . . no further remark to me,' said Whicher. From Whicher's testimony to the magistrates later that day.

120 'It's no use . . . given way. From 'A Detective Police Party', House-hold Words, 27 July 1850.

120 Dolly was a clever, energetic man . . . the first police-station library. From the census of 1841 and Critical Years at the Yard: The Career of Frederick Williamson of the Detective Department and the CID (1956) by Belton Cobb.

120 Dolly shared lodgings . . . sixteen other single policemen. From the census of 1861.

121 One of these, Tim Cavanagh . . . a rabbit from a near neighbour.' From Scotland Yard Past and Present (1893) by Timothy Cavanagh.

122 His colleague Stephen Thornton . . . some of the passengers. From The Times, 18 November 1837.

122 In 1859 an eleven-year-old girl . . . depraved imagination'. From the Annual Register of 1860.

123 On Saturday morning . . . schoolfriends. From expenses claims in MEPO 3/61, the census of 1841 and the census of 1861.

124 'She has spoken to me . . . deceased child.' From Louisa Hatherill's testimony at the Wiltshire magistrates' court, 27 July 1860.

125 While Constance was in gaol . . . taken into custody. This rumour was reported in the Bristol Daily Post of 24 July 1860.

126 Whicher was careful . . . other policemen. Fifteen years earlier, in March 1845, Mayne had reprimanded Whicher and his fellow Detective-Sergeant Henry Smith for showing a want of respect to senior officers that was 'most indiscreet and legally unjustifiable'. As it was the first time that any detectives 'had improperly come into collision' with their uniformed colleagues, Mayne let the pair off with a caution, but he warned that any future offence would be dealt with severely. From MEPO 7/7, police orders and notices from the office of the Commissioner, cited in The Rise of Scotland Yard: A History of the Metropolitan Police (1956) by Douglas G. Browne.

129 As for her supposed lover . . . or the Neighbourhood'. In a note by Whicher on a letter from Sir John Eardley Wilmot on 16 August 1860, in MEPO 3/61.

129 the fullest version . . . fishing in the river. Reported in the Somerset and Wilts Journal, 13 October 1860.

129 In the county court the previous month . . . rival dairy farmer. From the Frome Times, 20 June 1860.

CHAPTER 10

134 A man in North Leverton . . . She fainted. Account of the Sarah Drake case from reports in The Times, 8 December 1849 to 10 January 1850.

136 In the spring of 1860 . . .the name of her employer. Reported in the News of the World, 3 June 1860.

137 Alienists detailed . . . cold cunning. Monomania was a condition identified by the French physician Jean-Etienne Dominique Esquirol in 1808. See Embodied Selves: An Anthology of Psychological Texts 1830–1890 (1998), edited by Jenny Bourne Taylor and Sally Shuttleworth.

137 The Times . . . the key to the asylum?' On 22 July 1853.

137 It was even suggested . . . puerperal mania. Stapleton reported this rumour in his book of 1861.

137 Perhaps the killer had a double consciousness. For double consciousness and crime, see Unconscious Crime: Mental Absence and Criminal Responsibility in Victorian London (2003) by Joel Peter Eigen.

138 'Experience has shown . . . seemingly irrelevant.' In 'The Mystery of Marie Roget' (1842) by Edgar Allan Poe.

138 'I made a private inquiry . . . as a trifle yet.' Arthur Conan Doyle's private detective Sherlock Holmes adopted the same techniques: 'You know my method. It is based on the observation of trifles'; 'there is nothing so important as trifles' – from 'The Man with the Twisted Lip' (1891).

138 He asked Sarah Cox . . . within the hour. From Whicher's reports in MEPO 3/61 and Cox's testimony at the Wiltshire magistrates' court on 27 July 1860.

139 'When I am deeply perplexed . . . work out my problems. 'From Diary of an Ex-Detective (1859), 'edited' by Charles Martel (in fact written by the New Bond Street bookseller Thomas Delf). In a similar passage in Waters' Experiences of a Real Detective (1862) the narrator mulls over a case as if assembling a jigsaw or a collage: 'I lay down on a sofa and had a good think; put together, now this way, now that way, the different items, scraps, and hints, furnished me, in order to ascertain how they held together, and what, as a whole, they seemed to be like.'

141 As Mr Bucket says . . . point of view.' A detective's greatest weapon, said Dickens, was his ingenuity. 'For ever on the watch, with their wits stretched to the utmost, these officers have . . . to set themselves against every novelty of trickery and dexterity that the combined imaginations of all the lawless rascals in England can devise, and to keep pace with every such invention that comes out.' From the second part of 'A Detective Police Party', House-hold Words, 10 August 1850.

In The Perfect Murder (1989) David Lehman observed that 'the detective novel took murder out of the ethical realm and put it into the realm of aesthetics. Murder in a murder mystery becomes a kind of poetic conceit, often quite a baroque one; the criminal is an artist, the detective an aesthete and critic, and the blundering policeman a philistine.' See also The Aesthetics of Murder: A Study in Romantic Literature and Contemporary Culture (1991) by Joel Black.

142 The nightdress was his missing link . . . evolved from apes. A nightdress that tied a respectable adolescent girl to murder, like the bones that would prove the connection between men and monkeys, was a terrible object, to be feared as much as sought. For the anxieties aroused by the idea of the missing link, see Forging the Missing Link: Interdisciplinary Stories (1992) by Gillian Beer. For negative evidence and the nineteenth-century endeavour to decipher fragments, see Victorian Detective Fiction and the Nature of Evidence: The Scientific Investigations of Poe, Dickens and Doyle (2003) by Lawrence Frank, and the same author's 'Reading the Gravel Page: Lyell, Darwin, and Conan Doyle' in Nineteenth-Century Literature, December 1989.

142 Dickens compared the detectives . . . new form of crime. From the second part of 'A Detective Police Party', House-hold Words, 10 August 1850. In the mid-nineteenth century the idea of detection imprinted itself on natural history, astronomy, journalism – any pursuit that could be construed as a quest for truth.

145 In Governess Life . . . destroying the peace of families'. For the sexual and social uncertainty provoked by the figure of the governess, see The Victorian Governess (1993) by Kathryn Hughes.

146 Forbes Benignus Winslow . . . their children'. In On Obscure Diseases of the Brain, and Disorders of the Mind (1860). An extract appears in Embodied Selves: An Anthology of Psychological Texts 1830–1890 (1998), edited by Jenny Bourne Taylor and Sally Shuttleworth.

146 The detective was another . . . sully a middle-class home. For the threats to middle-class privacy posed by servants and policemen, see Domestic Crime in the Victorian Novel (1989) by Anthea Trodd.

CHAPTER 11

157 During Whicher's inquiries . . . dreadful crime.' From the Frome Times, 18 July 1860.

158 The word 'detect' . . . fascination with the case. See Domestic Crime in the Victorian Novel (1989) by Anthea Trodd. In Alain-René Le Sage's Le Diable Boiteux (1707), still popular in Victorian England, Asmodeus perched on the steeple of a Spanish church and stretched out his hand to lift every roof in the city, revealing the secrets within. The Times in 1828 referred to the French detective Vidocq as 'an Asmodeus'. In Dombey and Son (1848), Dickens called for 'a good spirit who would take the house-tops off, with a more potent and benignant hand than the lame demon in the tale, and show a Christian people what dark shapes issue from amidst their homes'. In House-hold Words articles of 1850 Dickens referred to how the demon could 'untile and read' men's brains, as if bodies were buildings, and himself took 'Asmodeus-like peeps' into 'the internal life' of houses from the carriage of a train. Janin's reference to Asmodeus was in Paris; Or the Book of One Hundred and One (translated 1832).

158 'If every room . . . travelling exhibition.' From The Casebook of a Victorian Detective.

159 Mrs Kent gave birth . . . Acland Saville Kent. Acland was Mrs Kent's mother's maiden name; Francis, Saville's first name, had been her father's Christian name.

CHAPTER 12

161 Whicher reached Paddington . . . at number 40. Information about Whicher's links to Holywell Street from the census returns of 1851, 1861, 1871, 'Police Informations' of 20 January 1858 in MEPO 6/ 92, and the classified columns of The Times of 3 February 1858. 'The tricks of detective police officers' from The Female Detective (1864) by Andrew Forrester.

162 the 'Big Ben' clock . . . giving off a brilliant incandescence. From reports in the News of the World, 17 June 1860.

162 Dickens visited Millbank one warm day . . . as well as anyone in it.' From a letter to W.W.F. de Cerjat of 1 February 1861, published in The Letters of Charles Dickens 1859–61 (1997), edited by Madeline House and Graham Storey.

162 The part of Millbank . . . rising off the river. Descriptions of Pimlico from 'Stanford's Library Map of London in 1862', The Criminal Prisons of London and Scenes of London Life (1862) by Henry Mayhew and John Binny, and The Three Clerks (1858) by Anthony Trollope.

163 The public entrance . . . to the south the river. Description of Scotland Yard from prints and maps in the Westminster local history library, and from Scotland Yard Past and Present: Experiences of Thirty-Seven Years (1893) by Timothy Cavanagh. In 1890 the Metropolitan Police headquarters moved to a building on the Thames Embankment, which was named New Scotland Yard, and in 1967 to an office block in Victoria Street, which was given the same name.

163 The letters, addressed to Mayne . . . throughout the month. Most of the letters from the public are in MEPO 3/61.

165 In early August . . . employed as a Detective, or what?' These two letters are in the Home Office file on the case, HO 144/20/49113. Sir John Eardley Wilmot, a married man of fifty with eight children, was judge of the county court at Bristol. He went on to be Conservative MP for South Warwickshire from 1874 to 1885. He was not a very successful advocate, according to the Dictionary of National Biography, but in 1881 he helped to win compensation for Edmund Galley, who had been wrongly convicted of murder in 1835. Eardley Wilmot died in 1892.

168 The public was fascinated by murder . . . the investigation of murder, too. Punch magazine had satirised 'murder-worship' in 1849. See Victorian Studies in Scarlet (1972) by Richard D. Altick.

In an essay of 1856, George Eliot analysed the appeal of Wilkie Collins' stories: 'The great interest lies in the excitement either of curiosity or of terror . . . Instead of turning pale at a ghost we knit our brows and construct hypotheses to account for it. Edgar Poe's tales were an effort of genius to reconcile the two tendencies – to appal the imagination yet satisfy the intellect, and Mr Wilkie Collins in this respect often follows in Poe's tracks.' From a review of Collins' After Dark in the Westminster Review.

171 On Tuesday, 31 July . . . piece of pickled pork.' Account of the Walworth murders from The Times of 1, 8, 14, 16, 17 & 20 August 1860 and the News of the World of 2 September 1860.

175 dramatised for the London stage. In Vidocq, by Douglas Jerrold.

175 The Victorians saw in the detective . . . cast him out. Many learnt to find these thrills in detective fiction instead. 'Most traditional novels offer some of the pleasures of the keyhole,' observed Dennis Porter in The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction (1981), 'but apart from various forms of erotica none does so more systematically than the fiction of detection. The secret of its power resides to a large degree in the trick that makes of voyeurism a duty.'

175 A few voices . . . Whicher's defence. The Law Times was sure that Whicher had identified the murderer and her motive. 'The child was his mother's pet, and malice against his mother – a fiendish desire to inflict a wound on her through him – would be a motive neither impossible nor improbable . . . Both of them, brother and sister [William and Constance], entertained very strong feelings of hostility, almost amounting to hatred towards the mother of the child . . . they knew that she had won the affections of their father while their mother was yet living. They had complained of neglect and illtreatment by her, and of her partiality for her own children.' Since Saville had been taken from his cot by 'a light, practised hand', the journal added, a woman must have been involved in his abduction.

CHAPTER 13

181 A week afterwards . . . unrestrained crying.' Account of Young-man's execution from the News of the World of 9 September 1860.

183 On Monday, 24 September . . . quite innocent. A year later the Home Office, after prolonged wranglings, paid Slack's firm £700 for its work on the case. See HO 144/20/49113.

187 Mrs Dallimore was a real-life version . . . The Female Detective (1864). Amateur female detectives also appear in Wilkie Collins' 'The Diary of Anne Rodway' (1856) and in Revelations of a Lady Detective (1864) by 'Anonyma' (W. Stephens Hayward). This book's jacket shows the lady detective as a dangerously emancipated, sensual creature. She wears a plump red-and-white ribbon round her throat, a hat piled high with flowers, a fur stole and velvet cuffs. She gives the prospective reader a sidelong gaze while lifting her full black coat to reveal the hem of a red dress.

188 'the late Edgar Poe'. Poe had died, aged forty, in 1849. In life, he suffered from alcoholism, depression and episodes of delirium. The critic Joseph Wood Krutch wrote that Poe 'invented the detective story in order that he might not go mad'. Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius (1926), quoted in Peter Lehman's The Perfect Murder (1989).

190 'Mr Kent, intriguing . . . disposes of same.' See The Letters of Charles Dickens 1859–61 (1997), edited by Madeline House and Graham Storey.

190 The Saturday Review . . . beyond their routine'. In the Saturday Review of 22 September 1860.

191 The idea took hold . . . minds of our countrymen.' In Once a Week, 13 October 1860. The author pointed out that, by this argument, few murders should take place in sunny southern Europe, which in fact had many violent deaths.

191 A freak storm had hit Wiltshire . . . Saville Kent had died. The natural historian and meteorologist George Augustus Rowell gave a lecture on the storm on 21 March 1860 and subsequently published it as a pamphlet, A Lecture on the Storm in Wiltshire.

CHAPTER 14

197 Saunders asked Foley . . . he did not!' In a letter to The Times, Stapleton claimed that a microscope would not have helped determine the nature of the blood on the nightdress he saw. 'I had no hesitation in advising the authorities that the nightdress shown to me . . . furnished no clue to this crime . . . I hoped that this nightdress was withdrawn for ever from public observation. However, Mr Saunders has dragged it from its obscurity again, and, as it seems to me, in wanton and useless violation of public decency and private feeling.' The nightdresses had become the emblem of the Kent family's decency and privacy; to speculate about them was to repeat the violation of their home.

200 The persistent feeling . . . of the nightdress?'). In The Road Murder: Being a Complete Report and Analysis of the Various Examinations and Opinions of the Press on this Mysterious Tragedy (1860) by A Barrister-at-Law.

200 His colleagues had to conduct . . . leave of absence. From correspondence in HO 45/6970.

201 In the last days of November . . . compact of secrecy'. This letter was not made public until 24 July 1865, when it was published in The Times, but it was dated 23 November 1860. A letter Constance wrote that day has also survived, a note in which she thanks Peter Edlin, her lawyer, for 'the pretty pair of mittens and the scarf that he had given her: they 'will remind me whenever I look at them', she writes, 'of how much I am indebted to the giver'.

CHAPTER 15

207 At the beginning of 1861 . . . failing to examine Samuel. Nor was any importance attached to allegations that the jury had been 'packed' in Samuel's favour. Before the inquest opened James Morgan, the parish constable, and Charles Happerfield, the postmaster, had replaced two of the randomly selected jurors with 'men of judgement'. The two discharged were a tailor (whose wife had asked that he be excused) and William Nutt's father, a shoemaker who lived in the cottages next to Road Hill House. Their replacements were the Reverend Peacock and a prosperous farmer called William Dew, who – like Happerfield – was an activist in the temperance movement.

207 'You talk of the Road murder . . . may be never discovered now.' Letter to W.W.F. de Cerjat in The Letters of Charles Dickens 1859–61 (1997), edited by Madeline House and Graham Storey.

208 Later that month, Samuel applied . . . cannot be acceded to'. From correspondence in HO 45/6970.

209 The Kents instructed . . . dispose of their belongings. Account of the auction from the Somerset and Wilts Journal and the Trow-bridge and North Wilts Advertiser.

211 Over the summer the factory commissioners . . . in the Dee valley. From HO 45/6970. William may have visited Constance in Brittany that summer – according to the Passport Office files, a William Kent was issued with a passport for travel on the Continent on 10 August.

211 For several months . . . unlikely to attract attention. Whicher's name appeared in The Times of 2 March 18 61 when he testified against a man accused of stealing a crate of opium worth £1,000 from the London Dock Company, but this was a case that had been assigned to him a year earlier. The man he arrested was acquitted. Perhaps the jurors were suspicious of the prosecution witnesses – a convict and an opium dealer. Or perhaps, after the Road Hill case, it was Whicher they mistrusted.

211 Just one was covered in any depth . . . his uncle's will. Whicher obtained the vicar's address by pretending to be a lawyer – the adoption of a false identity was a common if unpopular detective practice. From reports in The Times and a transcript of the trial of James Roe at the Old Court, 21 & 22 August 1861.

212 In the summer of 1861 . . . since Road Hill. Account of the Kingswood murder from MEPO 3/63, the Metropolitan Police file on the case; and reports in The Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Annual Register of 1861.

215 The Kingswood investigation had unfolded . . . a mockery of a detective's skills. Franz's solicitor offered Dickens an article on the mindboggling coincidences of the case (see Dickens' letter to W.H. Wills of 31 August 1861, in The Letters of Charles Dickens). The solicitor's article was published anonymously in All the Year Round the next January.

216 'If I was not the cleverest . . . of their own accord.' From 'Bigamy and Child-Stealing' in Experiences of a Real Detective by Inspector 'F', edited by Waters.

216 'I believe that a chain . . . corrupt testimony.' From 'Circumstantial Evidence' in Experiences of a Real Detective.

216 'The value of the detective . . . what they mean.' In The Female Detective (1864) by Andrew Forrester.

217 This novel, a huge bestseller . . . terrified of exposure. It went into eight editions in three months.

219 'those most mysterious of mysteries . . . London lodgings'. From 'Miss Braddon', an unsigned review in The Nation, 9 November 1865.

219 In 1863 the philosopher Henry Mansel . . . conjured at Road. Sensation literature was 'moulding the minds and forming the tastes and habits of its generation', wrote Mansel, 'by preaching to the nerves'. From an unsigned review in the Quarterly Review of April 1863. For discussions of the sensation novel, see especially Black Swine in the Sewers of Hampstead: Beneath the Surface of Victorian Sensationalism (1988) by Thomas Boyle; Domestic Crime in the Victorian Novel (1989) by Anthea Trodd; From Bow Street to Baker Street: Mystery, Detection and Narrative (1992) by Martin A. Kayman; The Novel and the Police (1988) by D.A. Miller; In the Secret Theatre of Home: Wilkie Collins, Sensation Narrative, and Nineteenth-Century Psychology (1988) by Jenny Bourne Taylor; 'What is "Sensational" About the Sensation Novel?' by Patrick Brantlinger in Nineteenth-Century Fiction 37 (1982).

220 Joseph Stapleton's book . . . Rowland Rodway. It cost 7s.6d. a copy.

220 It was as if the domestic angel . . . bloodthirsty ghoul. Other writers had noticed women's enthusiasm for brutal crimes. Edward Bulwer-Lytton, for instance, argued in England and the English (1833) that it was women who showed 'the deepest interest over a tale or a play of tragic or gloomy interest . . . If you observed a balladvender hawking his wares, it is the bloodiest murders that the women purchase.'

221 Stapleton suggested that . . . corrupting sins'. As a physician, Stapleton would have been familiar with essays like Benedict Morel's Treatise on the Degeneration of the Human Species, serialised in the Medical Circular in 18 57, which argued that the sins of parents were visited on their children in the form of physical weaknesses.

221 Mansel, too, cited the Road Hill murder . . . and adultery. In 'Manners & Morals', Fraser's magazine, September 1861.

221 Its influence was evident . . . Aurora Floyd (1863). 'I think of a quiet Somersetshire house-hold in which a dreadful deed was done,' says the narrator of Aurora Floyd, 'the secret of which has never yet been brought to light, and perhaps never will be revealed until the Day of Judgement. What must have been suffered by each member of that family? What slow agonies, what everincreasing tortures, while that cruel mystery was the "sensation" topic of conversation in a thousand happy home-circles, in a thousand tavern-parlours and pleasant club-rooms.'

In the 1950s the popular historian Elizabeth Jenkins wrote an essay on the ways in which the Kent family story influenced Charlotte Yonge's novel The Young Step-Mother; Or, A Chronicle of Mistakes (1861). The stepmother of the title marries into the Kendal family, and faces resistance from a sulky adolescent stepdaughter, four of whose siblings have died in childhood. The stepdaughter accidentally knocks unconscious her half-brother, a three-year-old who is 'a marvel of fair stateliness, size and intelligence'. Jenkins subsequently discovered that most of the novel was published in serial form in the first half of 1860, before the Road Hill murder. Her mistake serves as a caution against seeing the influence of Road Hill everywhere; though Jenkins pointed out that the fact that the novel preceded the murder could make the similarities seem stranger still.

222 The novelist Margaret Oliphant . . . taste or morals.' From 'Sensation Novels', an unsigned review in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine of May 1862.

222 A year later she complained . . . modern fiction'. In the Quarterly Review of April 1863.

222 bestsellers in 1861. Curiosities of Crime in Edinburgh and The Sliding Scale of Life, both published in 18 61 – the first sold 20,000 copies in three months, according to an article in The Times in July that year.

223 'The modern detective is generally at fault . . . low and mean.' From 'Crime and its Detection', an unsigned article by Thomas Donnelly in the Dublin Review of May 1861.

223 The word 'clueless' . . . in 1862. The phrase was 'clueless wanderings in the labyrinth of scepticism', according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

223 'a cowardly and clumsy giant. . . who comes in his way'. Published on 25 October 1863 and quoted in Cops and Bobbies: Police Authority in New York and London, 1830–1870 (1999) by Wilbur R. Miller.

223 In the Saturday Review . . . middle-class crimes. In 'Detectives in Fiction and in Real Life', Saturday Review, June 1864.

224 This establishment . . . Anglican Church. See Wagner of Brighton: The Centenary Book of St Paul's Church, Brighton (1949) by H. Hamilton Maughan.

224 His friend Detective-Inspector . . . in charge of the department. From the census of 18 61, Thornton's death certificate, MEPO 4/2 (a register of deaths in the Metropolitan Police) and MEPO 4/333 (a register of admissions and promotions). The detective division had expanded a little but was still only about twelve men strong, in a force that now boasted some seven thousand officers.

224 In September 1862 . . . the Tsar's family. See MEPO 2/23, the Metropolitan Police file of 1862 on aid given to the Russian government to reorganise the Warsaw police. Joseph Conrad's father, Apollo, had been a leader of this insurgency until 1861, when he was arrested and exiled to Russia.

224 Superintendent Walker. Walker was with the detectives when they met Dickens in 1850 – Dickens dubbed him 'Stalker'. He was not himself a detective but a member of the Commissioner's office.

225 On 18 March 1864 . . . 'congestion of the brain. See MEPO 21/7, Metropolitan Police retirement papers.

225 'protracted mental tension.' From A Practical Treatise on Apoplexy (with essay on congestion of the brain) (1866) by William Boyd Mushet.

CHAPTERS 16 & 17

The account in the next two chapters of the events of 18 65 is drawn mainly from the Daily Telegraph, The Times, the Salisbury and Winchester Journal, the Observer, the Western Daily Press, the Somerset and Wilts Journal, the Penny Illustrated Paper, the News of the World and the Bath Chronicle, and from the files MEPO 3/ 61, HO 144/20/49113 and ASSI 25/46/8. Additional sources are listed below.

CHAPTER 16

227 On Tuesday, 25 April 1865 . . . Covent Garden. Weather conditions from reports on the Spring Derby at Epsom, seventeen miles from London, which fell on 25 April that year. After the coldest March since 1845, the Derby was the hottest in years, according to The Times, the temperatures higher than the July average.

227 The Bow Street office . . . discoloured walls. The Builder of April 1860 reported that conditions in the court were bad in winter, abominable in summer. Magistrates had been trying to secure new premises since the 1840s. Details of courtroom from Oliver Twist (1838) by Charles Dickens and Survey of London Volume 36 (1970), general editor F.H.W. Sheppard.

229 Wagner was a well-known figure. . . danger to the English Church. See Wagner of Brighton: The Centenary Book of St Paul's Church, Brighton (1949) by H. Hamilton Maughan and Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography (1999) by Matthew Sturgis.

231 In the course of this examination . . . summoned from Scotland Yard. Dolly Williamson had married since his return from Road, and now had a daughter, Emma, aged two. Durkin had been in charge of a notorious case of July 18 61 that inspired one of the essays in William Makepeace Thackeray's Roundabout Papers. A money-lender in Northumberland Street, off the Strand, had opened fire on a new client, Major William Murray of the 10th Hussars, a veteran of the Crimea. Murray fought back and eventually killed his assailant by smashing him over the head with a bottle. It emerged that the money-lender's rage sprang from a secret obsession with Murray's wife.

'After this,' wrote Thackeray, 'what is the use of being squeamish about the probabilities and possibilities in the writing of fiction? . . . After this, what is not possible? It is possible Hungerford Market is mined, and will explode some day.' The eruption of irrational violence could arouse excitement, wonder, even awe – the safety of the world was suddenly blown apart and anything at all could follow. The Northumberland Street crime, which also features in The Moonstone, is one of the cases explored in Deadly Encounters: Two Victorian Sensations (1986) by Richard D. Altick.

232 (John Foley had died . . . aged sixty-nine). His death certificate states that he died of a hydrothorax at St George's Terrace, Trowbridge, on 5 September 1864.

233 'angel in the house'. The term is from a poem published by Coventry Patmore in 1854, which describes the self-sacrificial purity and devotion of his wife, Emily.

233 'Constance Kent, it is said . . . other agency than their own.' In The Times, 26 April 1865. The Bath Express was similarly cynical about women's instincts. It argued on 29 April that this crime had a 'finesse of cruelty' of which only a woman was capable. The Saturday Review said it hoped that Constance was a 'psychological monster' rather than the embodiment of female adolescence. For attitudes to female killers, see Twisting in the Wind: The Murderess and the English Press (1998) by Judith Knelman.

235 Detective-Inspector Tanner . . . a week at a time. Tanner retired from the force due to ill-health in 1869 and opened a hotel in Winchester. He died in 1873, aged forty-two. See Dreadful Deeds and Awful Murders: Scotland Yard's First Detectives (1990) by Joan Lock.

241 The Reverend James Davies . . . very wicked young woman.' From The Case of Constance Kent, viewed in the Light of the Holy Catholic Church (1865) by James Davies and The Case of Constance Kent, viewed in the Light of the Confessional (1865) by Edwin Paxton Hood.

242 James Redding Ware reprinted his pamphlet . . . death of her brother.' From The Road Murder: Analysis of this Persistent Mystery, Published in 1862, Now Reprinted, with Further Remarks (1865) by J.R. Ware. The 1862 pamphlet was also published as a short story in Andrew Forrester's The Female Detective (1864) – 'Forrester' was a pseudonym, probably an allusion to a family firm of private inquiry agents based in the City of London.

243 From her cell . . . undeceived on this point.' Rodway passed the statement on to the press, and it appeared in several newspapers that summer.

244 Children, he wrote elsewhere . . . the figure of the child. See Embodied Selves: An Anthology of Psychological Texts 1830–1890 (1998), edited by Jenny Bourne Taylor and Sally Shuttleworth. 'The moral lesson to be learned is the existence of evil passions in the breasts of even young children,' said the Medical Times and Gazette on 22 July 1865 – quoted in Victorian Murderesses: A True History of Thirteen Respectable French and English Women Accused of Unspeakable Crimes (1977) by Mary S. Hartman.

244 Later, Bucknill told the Home Secretary . . . her father and brother. From a letter of 30 August 1865 in HO 1144/20/49113.

244 Rodway explained Constance's rationale . . . urged on her behalf.' From a letter in HO 1144/20/49113.

CHAPTER 17

248 John Duke Coleridge . . . getting up my speech.' Coleridge earned more than £4,000 a year, according to the Dictionary of National Biography. Diary extract from Life and Correspondence of John Duke, Lord Coleridge (1904).

248 He composed a letter . . . my conviction.' Correspondence in Bernard Taylor's archive.

251 As soon as the death sentence was passed. . . A maiden die on the fatal tree.' Broadside ballads, in order of quotation: 'The Road Hill Murder Confession of the Murderess', published by Disley, 1865; unnamed ballad quoted in the North Wilts Herald of 1 o September 1865; 'Trial and Sentence of Constance Kent', also printed by Disley, 1865, and reprinted in Charles Hindley's Curiosities of Street Literature (1966). See Roly Brown's article on Constance Kent and the Road Murder, no. 15 in his series on the nineteenth-century broadside ballad trade in Musical Traditions magazine (mustrad.org.uk).

252 A Devonshire magistrate . . . lunacy in the 1840s. See affidavit from Gustavus Smith, dated 24 July 1865, in HO 1144/20/49113.

253 On the morning of Thursday . . . slightest emotion.' Pritchard was hanged on Friday.

253 (in fact, Willes had decided . . . passed in confession'). Letter from Coleridge to W.E. Gladstone, 6 April 1890, quoted in Saint – with Red Hands? (1954) by Yseult Bridges.

258 Bucknill finished his letter . . . could succumb to insanity. In a lecture on 'Insanity in its Legal Relations' delivered before the Royal College of Physicians thirteen years later – in April 1878 – Bucknill said more about Constance's motive. The girl had stored up a 'fund of rage and revengeful feeling' against her 'high-spirited' stepmother, on account of the disparaging comments the second Mrs Kent made about Constance's 'partially demented' mother. Constance tried to run away from the stepmother's 'hated presence', but when she was caught and brought home resolved to take vengeance. She thought poison would be 'no real punishment' and decided instead to kill Saville. 'A dreadful story this,' remarked Bucknill, 'but who can fail to pity the depths of house-hold misery which it denotes?' Quoted in Celebrated Crimes and Criminals (1890) by Willoughby Maycock.

259 Forty years later . . . at every pore.' From 'Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria' (1905) in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (1953–74), edited by James Strachey, Alix Strachey and Alan Tyson. This essay concerned one of Freud's first patients, the eighteen-year-old 'Dora'.

CHAPTER 18

261 In October 1865 . . . behind Millbank's high walls. Information on Millbank gaol from The Criminal Prisons of London and Scenes of London Life (1862) by Henry Mayhew and John Binny; The Princess Casamassima (1886) by Henry James; and the Penny Illustrated Paper of 14 October 1865.

262 In 1866 he married his landlady . . . sheep grazed on the green. From Whicher's marriage certificate, on which he described himself as a bachelor, not a widower. Hippolyte Taine referred to sheep grazing outside Westminster Abbey in his Notes on England (1872).

263 Private inquiry agents . . . Ignatius Pollaky. Pollaky had become a successful private detective with offices at 13 Paddington Green, near the railway station. In 18 66, according to The Times, he broke a ring of white slave traders who were kidnapping young women in Hull and selling them in Germany. A song in Gilbert & Sullivan's comic opera Patience, which opened in London in 1881, praised 'the keen penetration of Paddington Pollaky'. He died in Brighton in 1918, aged ninety.

263 The work was well-paid . . . to divorce her. From a report in The Times of 9 December 1858.

263 In his new role Whicher took part . . . the Tichborne Claimant. Account of the case of the Tichborne Claimant from: Famous Trials of the Century (1899) by J.B. Atlay; The Tichborne Tragedy: Being the Secret and Authentic History of the Extraordinary Facts and Circumstances Connected with the Claims, Personality, Identification, Conviction and Last Days of the Tichborne Claimant (1913) by Maurice Edward Kenealy; The Tichborne Claimant: A Victorian Mystery (1957) by Douglas Woodruff; The Man Who Lost Himself (2003) by Robyn Annear; and reports in The Times.

264 'It has weighed upon the public mind like an incubus.' From The Tichborne Romance (1872) by A Barrister At Large (A. Steinmedz), quoted in Victorian Sensation (2003) by Michael Diamond.

266 'I daresay you hear me frequently abused . . . Your Old Friend, Jack Whicher.' Quoted in Scotland Yard: Its History and Organisation 1829–1929 (1929) by George Dilnot.

267 Jack Whicher was still living . . . until death. From census returns of 1861, 1871, 1881, marriage certificate of Sarah Whicher and James Holliwell, and Holliwell's citation for the Victoria Cross.

267 'It is a very curious story . . . the detective prime?' Dickens quote from a letter to W.H. Wills – see The Letters of Charles Dickens 1868–870 (2002), edited by Graham Storey, Margaret Brown and Kathleen Tillotson. Robert Louis Stevenson letter of 5 September 1868 quoted in Wilkie Collins: The Critical Heritage (1974), edited by Norman Page.

269 In 1927 T.S. Eliot compared . . . fallible.' From an article in the Times Literary Supplement of 4 August 1927.

270 Henry James characterised . . . works of science.' From 'Miss Braddon', unsigned review in The Nation, 9 November 1865.

270 In May 1866 Samuel Kent renewed his plea . . . congestion of the lungs. Papers on Samuel Kent's application to retire on full pay in HO 45/6970. In March the annual report of the factory inspector Robert Baker had referred to the great wrong done to Samuel in the years since Saville's death. An extract from Baker's account of his colleague's trials, including the 'threatened blindness' and subsequent paralysis of Mrs Kent, was published in The Times on 24 March 1866. According to her death certificate, Mary Kent died at Llangollen on 17 August 1866 – Samuel was present at her death.

270 That summer he was awarded . . . common and cruel. See The Times, 9 July 1866.

271 Through the winter of 1867. Information about William Kent's life after 1865 from Savant of the Australian Seas (1997) by A.J. Harrison. An electronic second edition of this biography, completed in 2005, is available on the STORS website of the State Library of Tasmania – members.trump.net.au/ahvem/Fisheries/Identities/ Savant.html.

271 He gave the name 'retrospective prophecy' . . . a word as "back-teller"!' said Huxley. From the essay 'On the Method of Zadig: Retrospective Prophecy as a Function of Science' (1880). In Lady Audley's Secret Mary Braddon described the detective's procedure as 'retrograde investigation'. The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce developed his theory of 'abduction', or retrospective deduction, in about 1865. 'We must conquer the truth by guessing,' he wrote, 'or not at all.' For the idea of 'backward hypothesising', see: The Sign of Three: Dupin, Holmes, Peirce (1983), edited by Umberto Eco and Thomas A. Sebeok; The Perfect Murder (1989) by Peter Lehman; and Forging the Missing Link: Interdisciplinary Stories (1992) by Gillian Beer.

272 'Alone, perhaps, among detective-story writers . . . more essential and more strange.' From Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens (1911) by G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton was adapting Job 19: 'For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth' (King James Version of the Bible).

Others have found the endings to detective stories disappointing: 'The solution to a mystery is always less impressive than the mystery itself,' wrote Jorge Luis Borges in the short story 'Ibn Hakkan-al-Bokhari, Dead in His Labyrinth' (1951). 'Mystery has something of the supernatural about it, and even of the divine; its solution, however, is always tainted by sleight of hand.'

273 He left his money . . . joint executors. From Samuel Kent's will, dated 19 January 1872 and proved by William on 21 February that year.

273 In January 1872 Samuel Kent . . . of a stillborn boy. Biography from Savant of the Australian Seas (1997, revised 2005) by A.J. Harrison; Guidebook to the Manchester Aquarium (1875) by William Kent; A Manual of the Infusoria (1880–82) by William Kent; death certificate and will of Samuel Kent; birth announcement in The Times; marriage certificates of William Kent; census of 1881.

275 In 1875 William's wife . . . obstruction of the bowel. According to the death certificate, she died in Withington, Manchester, on 15 February.

275 Jack and Charlotte Whicher . . . fields of lavender. Lavender Hill information from: Directory for Battersea Rise and the Neighbourhoods of Clapham and Wandsworth Commons (1878); Directory for the Postal District of Wandsworth (1880); The Buildings of Clapham, edited by Alyson Wilson (2000); and Battersea Past, edited by Patrick Loobey (2002).

276 In the summer of 1881 . . . went to his wife. From Whicher's death certificate, will and probate in the Family Records Centre and the Court of Probate.

276 After Jack's death . . . executor of her will. From Charlotte Whicher's will and probate at the Court of Probate.

277 Williamson was . . . unofficial hours.' From Fifty Years of Public Service (1904) by Arthur Griffiths.

277 The Chief Superintendent . . . a game of chess. From Scotland Yard: Its History and Organisation 1829–1929 (1929) by George Dilnot.

277 'A Scot, from the crown of his head . . . valuable public servant.' From Scotland Yard Past and Present: Experiences of Thirty-Seven Years (1893) by Timothy Cavanagh.

277 Field – who by the 1870s was reduced almost to poverty. In a letter written in January 1874 from 'Field Lodge', his home in Chelsea, he begged a client for £1 that he was owed – he had spent the past four months ill in bed, he said, and his doctor's bill was £30. From a letter in the British Library manuscripts collection: Add.42580 f.219. Field died later that year.

277 In a notorious trial of 1877 . . . six detective inspectors. From Critical Years at the Yard: The Career of Frederick Williamson of the Detective Department and the CID (1956) by Belton Cobb, and the census of 1881. Wilkie Collins also died in London in 1889, aged sixty-five.

278 According to a police commissioner . . . harassing work'. Unnamed police commissioner quoted in Scotland Yard: Its History and Organisation 1829–1929 (1929) by George Dilnot.

278 the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral in London. Most of the mosaic floor in the St Paul's crypt was made by female inmates of Woking prison between 1875 and 1877, according to the St Paul's chapter minute books for 1874–89.

278 Major Arthur Griffiths . . . intelligence was of a high order.' From Secrets of the Prison House (1894) by Arthur Griffiths.

279 Griffiths returned in another memoir . . . her name was never mentioned.' From Fifty Years of Public Service (1904) by Arthur Griffiths.

279 In 1877 Constance petitioned . . . marked her petition 'nil'. Petitions and letters of support in HO 144/20/49113.

CHAPTER 19

283 In 1884 William . . . and Florence (twenty-five). The information about William and his family in this chapter is drawn mainly from Savant of the Australian Seas (1997, revised 2005) by A.J. Harrison. Other sources include: 'Emigration of Women to Australia: Forced and Voluntary', a paper delivered to the Society of Genealogists in London by Noeline Kyle on 31 August 2005; the English census of 1881; and two of William's own books – The Great Barrier Reef (1893) and especially The Naturalist in Australia (1897).

286 At Burlington House, London . . . and torso'. From The Times of 11 June 1896.

287 Two Japanese scientists were credited . . . before them. The Australian pearl specialist C. Dennis George pointed out that the stepfather of the two Japanese pearl pioneers spent several months on Thursday Island in 1901, and had opportunity to observe William Saville-Kent's methods. George also argued that Saville-Kent succeeded in cultivating whole pearls before he died, and claimed that a string of these were found in the possession of a female vet in Brisbane in 1984; another set is rumoured to be in the possession of a family in Ireland. See Savant of the Australian Seas (1997, revised 2005) by A.J. Harrison.

288 Mary Ann and Elizabeth . . . corresponded to the end. Information about the Kent family from death certificates and wills, correspondence in Bernard Taylor's archive and research in Australia by A.J. Harrison and Noeline Kyle. St Peter's Hospital is described in Old and New London: Volume 6 (1878).

288 It emerged in the 1950s . . . under the name Emilie King. From Saint – with Red Hands? (1954) by Yseult Bridges. Bridges said that she obtained the information first-hand, from a woman who was twenty-two when she met Constance in 1885. When Bridges wrote her book, the story of what subsequently became of Constance was unknown.

288 In the 1970s . . . Miss Kaye died. Constance's Australian exile was disclosed in Cruelly Murdered (1979) by Bernard Taylor.

290 In her will . . . the first Mrs Kent. In this will, written in 1926, Constance bequeathed the nurses' home she had established to a fellow nurse, Hilda Lord, and left her money to the Joseph Fels Fund. Fels (1853–1914) was a Jewish-American soap magnate, social reformer and philanthropist who established model communities for the unemployed and for craftsmen in England and the US. He believed that taxation should be based solely on land ownership. The account of the discovery of the family portraits left to Olive is from correspondence in Bernard Taylor's archive.

CHAPTER 20

291 In 1928. . .the origins of his death. Rhode quoted and discussed this letter in an essay in The Anatomy of Murder: Famous Crimes Critically Considered by Members of the Detection Club (1936). The original letter was destroyed by enemy action in the Second World War, but Rhode's typed version survived.

294 At boarding school. . . gas leak is a convincing detail.) The gas leak was mentioned in the Somerset and Wilts Journal in 1865. Constance was boarding at a school in Bath, according to the newspaper, when 'being offended with her teacher, she deliberately turned on the gas throughout the house, making no secret of the fact that her intention was to cause an explosion'.

294 The letter claimed that Constance read Darwin. This was plausible, since The Origin of Species received a huge amount of attention when it was published in 1859. There was an impossibility in the letter, though – the author claimed that the young Constance used to shock people by referring to 'La Divine Sara' Bernhardt, but the actress – who was born in the same year as Constance – did not become famous until the 1870s.

295 Like the heroine . . . absorbed by the past. In an essay of 1949 the psychoanalyst Geraldine Pederson-Krag suggested that the murder in a detective novel is a version of the 'primal scene', in which a child witnesses or imagines his or her parents having sexual intercourse, and interprets the act as violent. The victim represents one of the parents, the clues represent the nocturnal sounds, stains and jokes that the child observed but only dimly understood. The reader of a detective novel, says Pederson-Krag, satisfies his or her infantile curiosity by identifying with the detective and thus 'redressing completely the helpless inadequacy and anxious guilt unconsciously remembered from childhood'. See 'Detective Stories and the Primal Scene' in Psychoanalytic Quarterly 18. In 1957 the psychologist Charles Rycroft argued that the reader was not only the detective but also the murderer, playing out hostile feelings towards the parent. See 'A Detective Story' in Psychoanalytic Quarterly 26. These approaches are discussed in Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel – a History (1972) by Julian Symons.

296 The letter from Sydney threw out . . . corruptions of his own body. Information on syphilis from Pox: Genius, Madness and the Mysteries of Syphilis (2004) by Deborah Hayden, and from Alastair Barkley, a consultant dermatologist in London.

298 the book by John Rhode. The Case of Constance Kent (1928).

299 The person best placed to solve a crime . . . its perpetrator. In Sophocles' Oedipus the King, sometimes cited as the original detective story, Oedipus is both the murderer and the detective; he commits and he solves the crimes. 'In any investigation, the real detective is the suspect,' wrote John Burnside in The Dumb House (1997). 'He is the one who provides the clues, he is the one who gives himself away.'

299 The holes in her story left the way open . . . the main players in the case had died. In Murder and its Motives (1924) Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse accepted Constance's guilt but lamented that the girl was born into an age unable to understand and accommodate her complex psychology. In The Rebel Earl and Other Studies (1926) William Roughead regretted that the alienists had not recognised that Constance had 'a mind diseased'. In Saint – with Red Hands? (1954) Yseult Bridges argued that the true killers were Samuel Kent and Elizabeth Gough, and that Constance confessed in order to protect them. In Victorian Murderesses (1977) Mary S. Hartman agreed that Constance probably made a false confession to conceal her father's guilt. In Cruelly Murdered (1979) Bernard Taylor proposed that Constance killed Saville, but that Samuel, who was having an affair with Gough, mutilated the body to conceal his daughter's crime and his own misdemeanour.

Among the fictional versions of the story is a scene in the British horror film Dead of Night (1945), in which a girl encounters the ghost of Saville Kent in a remote corner of a country house – he speaks of Constance's unkindness to him. Two years later Mary Hayley Bell's play Angel, directed for the London stage by her husband, Sir John Mills, so confused audiences with its sympathy for Constance that it closed within weeks and almost ended Bell's career as a playwright. Eleanor Hibbert, who as Jean Plaidy produced historical novels, fictionalised the case in Such Bitter Business (1953), under the pseudonym Elbur Ford. Two characters in William Trevor's Other People's Worlds (1980) become obsessed by the Road Hill murder, with horrible results. Francis King's Act of Darkness (1983) set the story in colonial 1930s India, and had the boy accidentally killed by his sister and his nursemaid when he surprises them in a lesbian embrace. James Friel's Taking the Veil (1989) placed the case in 1930s Manchester, and had the boy killed by his father and his aunt-cum-nursemaid after he witnesses them having sex; his teenage half-sister mutilates the body and makes a false confession of murder to protect the father, who has sexually violated her. In 2003 Wendy Walker compressed the story into a book-length poem, Blue Fire (as yet unpublished), which used one word from each line of Stapleton's The Great Crime of 1860.

299 his confidential reports to Sir Richard Mayne. In MEPO 3/61.

AFTERWORD

303 Stapleton's explanation . . . cut into his neck. Joshua Parsons, who was in charge of the post-mortem, disagreed with this interpretation of the cuts to Saville's finger. The incisions had not bled, he told the magistrates' court on 4 October 1860, which meant that they must have been made after death, probably by accident. In any case, he said, he thought the cuts were on the right hand, not the left. His reading of the body supported the theory that the child was suffocated, a finding that Stapleton was determined to disprove. The doctors' dispute returns Saville to the realm of riddle and debate. The image of the live child dims.

303 'The detective story . . . a happy ending.' In a letter of 2 June 1949 to James Sandoe. From The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Non-Fiction, 1909–1959 (2000), edited by Tom Hiney and Frank MacShane. Chandler argued in the same letter that a detective story and a love story could never be combined, because the detective story was 'incapable of love'.