The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

by Summerscale, Kate

  In the evening of 19 July a tremendous downpour over Somersetshire and Wiltshire brought the brief summer of 1860 to an end. The haystacks had not yet dried, and most were spoiled. The fields of corn and wheat, not having had time to ripen in the sun, were still green.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I KNOW YOU

  20–22 July

  At eleven on the morning of Friday, 20 July, Whicher reported to the magistrates at the Temperance Hall on his investigation so far. He told them that he suspected Constance Kent of the murder.

  The magistrates conferred, and then told Whicher that they wished him to arrest Constance. He hesitated. 'I pointed out to them the unpleasant position such a course would place me in with the County Police,' he explained in his report to Mayne, 'especially as they held opinions opposed to mine, as to who was the guilty party, but they (the magistrates) declined to alter their determination, stating that they considered and wished the enquiries to be entirely in my hands.' The chairman of the magistrates was Henry Gaisford Gibbs Ludlow, commanding officer of the 13th Rifle Corps, Deputy Lieutenant of Somersetshire and a rich landowner who lived in Heywood House, Westbury, five miles east of Road, with his wife and eleven servants. Of the other magistrates, the most prominent were William and John Stancomb, mill-owners who had built themselves villas on opposite sides of the Hilperton Road, an exclusive new district of Trowbridge. It was William who had lobbied the Home Secretary for the services of a detective.

  Shortly before three o'clock in the afternoon Whicher called at Road Hill House and sent for Constance. She came to him in the drawing room.

  'I am a police officer,' he said, 'and I hold a warrant for your apprehension, charging you with the murder of your brother Francis Saville Kent, which I will read to you.'

  Whicher read her the warrant and she began to cry.

  'I am innocent,' she said. 'I am innocent.'

  Constance said she wanted to collect a mourning bonnet and mantle from her bedroom. Whicher followed her and watched as she put them on. They rode to the Temperance Hall in a trap, in silence. 'She made no further remark to me,' said Whicher.

  A large group of villagers had collected outside the Temperance Hall, having heard a rumour that an arrest was being made at Road Hill House. Most expected to see Samuel Kent brought before the magistrates.

  Instead they watched as Elizabeth Gough and William Nutt approached the hall in the early afternoon – they had been called to give evidence – and then, at 3.20, they were startled to see the occupants of the trap that drew up before them: ''Tis Miss Constance!'

  She came into the hall on Whicher's arm, with her head bent down, weeping. She was wearing deep mourning, with a veil closely drawn over her face. She 'walked with a firm step but was in tears', reported The Times. The crowd pressed in after her.

  Constance sat facing the magistrates' table, Whicher on one side of her and Superintendent Wolfe on the other.

  'Your name is Miss Constance Kent?' asked Ludlow, the chairman.

  'Yes,' she whispered.

  Despite the thick veil with which Constance had masked herself, and the pocket handkerchief that she pressed to her face, the reporters gave minute accounts of her features and manner, as if enough attention to these surfaces would yield her inner self.

  'She looks to be about 18 years of age,' reported the Bath Express, 'though it is said that she is only 16. She is rather tall and stout, with a full face, which was very flushed, and a dimpled forehead, apparently somewhat contracted. Her eye is peculiar, being very small and deep set in her head, which perhaps leaves a somewhat unfavourable impression on the mind. In other respects there is nothing unprepossessing in her appearance, judging from her looks yesterday; at the same time, the fearful crime with which she stands charged doubtless modified in some degree the habitual expression of her countenance, the predominant characteristic of which is said to be sullenness. The young lady wore a black silk dress and mantle, trimmed with crape, and kept her veil down throughout the proceedings. She sat with her eyes fixed upon the ground, shedding tears, and never once looked up. Indeed, to judge from her demeanour, she seemed to feel her awful position most acutely, though she manifested no violent emotion from the time she was taken until she left, at the close of the inquiry.' The crêpe that trimmed the dresses worn during the initial period of deep mourning was a dull gauze made of tightly twisted silk threads, fixed with gum.

  Constance was 'strongly formed', according to the Western Daily Press,'with a round, chubby face, which does not convey at first either an impression of deep determination or of active intellect. She was collected in her manner, and preserved the same unmoved expression throughout the inquiry.'

  The Frome Times reporter seemed to detect in her a disturbing quality: a stifled sexuality, or rage. She looked 'somewhat peculiar', he wrote. 'While she has a girlish look, her figure is remarkably developed for her age, which is only 16. Her features, which were very flushed, are rather pleasing, but have a heavy, almost sullen look, which we believe is a characteristic of the family.'*

  Whicher made his statement to the court.

  'I have been engaged since Sunday last in investigating all the circumstances connected with the murder of Francis Saville Kent, which took place on the night of Friday, June 29th last, at the house of his father, situate at Road, in the county of Wiltshire. In company with Captain Meredith, Superintendent Foley, and other members of the police force, I have made an examination of the premises, and I believe that the murder was committed by an inmate of the house. From many inquiries I have made, and from information which I have received, I sent for Constance Kent on Monday last, to her bedroom, having first previously examined her drawers, and found a list of her linen, which I now produce, on which are enumerated, among other articles of linen, three night-dresses as belonging to her.'

  He read out Constance's answers to his questions about the nightdresses.

  'I now pray the Bench for a remand of the prisoner, to enable me to collect evidence to show the animus which the prisoner entertained towards the deceased, and to search for the missing night-dress, which if in existence may possibly be found.'

  The magistrates heard testimony about Saville's loss and discovery from Elizabeth Gough (who wept) and from William Nutt. Then they asked Whicher how much time he needed to gather his evidence against Constance. He asked for a remand until the next Wednesday or Thursday.

  'Will Wednesday be time enough?' asked the Reverend Crawley.

  'Under ordinary circumstances,' said Whicher, 'a week is the time for a remand.'

  The magistrates gave him a week, ordering that Constance be detained until 11 a.m. the following Friday. Ludlow then turned to her. 'I don't ask you to make a statement,' he said, 'but have you anything to say?' She did not reply.

  Whicher and Wolfe escorted Constance out of the hall and took her by britzska – a long, soft-topped carriage – to the gaol at Devizes, about fifteen miles east of Road. They drove away under a dull sky, 'she during the journey remaining in a kind of sullen silence', wrote Whicher, 'and not displaying the slightest emotion'.

  'The most blameless being on earth might have so demeaned herself under similar circumstances,' pointed out the Bristol Daily Post, 'and so (always supposing her to possess sufficient resolution) might the most offending.'

  The crowd was quiet as the carriage departed, said the Western Daily Press. According to the Trowbridge and North Wilts Advertiser, Constance was seen off with 'repeated cheering'. Most of the villagers felt sure of her innocence, reported this newspaper. She was merely 'eccentric', they believed: the true murderer had stolen her nightdress in order to implicate her.

  Once Whicher and Constance had left, the magistrates sent to Frome for Dr Mallam, Saville's godfather, and for 'a woman who had previously lived at Mr Kent's' – probably Emma Sparks, the former nursemaid. The likelihood was that Whicher had cited the testimony of both to the magistrates, who now wanted to hear it first-hand.

  The ma
gistrates ordered that Road Hill House be searched again for the nightdress. Samuel Kent let in the police, and in the late afternoon everything on the premises was 'turned over and emptied, from garret to cellar', said the Frome Times. The nightgown was not found.

  Whicher must have hoped that the arrest would shock Constance into a confession. One of his favoured ruses was to bluff when he had no evidence, to accuse with confidence. This technique played a part in his first reported arrest – of the housemaid wearing a boa in a Holborn brothel – and in a story that he told Dickens about catching a horse-thief in a lonely country pub. 'It's no use,' Whicher said to the man he suspected but had never before met. 'I know you. I'm an officer from London and I take you into custody for felony.' He saw off the crook's two associates by pretending he had friends in tow: 'I'm not alone here, whatever you may think. You mind your own business, and keep yourselves to yourselves. It'll be better for you, for I know you both very well.' The horse-thief and his pals had given way. Constance had not. Whicher now had a week in which to find the evidence to justify her committal for trial.

  From Trowbridge, Whicher sent a five-shilling telegraphic message to the day-and-night telegraph station on the Strand, near Scotland Yard, asking Sir Richard Mayne to send help. 'I have this day apprehended, on a warrant, Constance Kent the third daughter who is remanded for a week. The magistrates have left the case entirely in my hands to get up the evidence. I am awkwardly situated and want assistance. Pray send down Sgt Williamson or Tanner.' Williamson and Tanner were Whicher's most trusted sidekicks. When Mayne received the message later that day he wrote on the reverse: 'Let Sgt Williamson or Tanner go immediately.'

  Detective-Sergeant Williamson was summoned urgently to Mayne's house in Chester Square, Belgravia, on Friday afternoon. The Commissioner gave him his instructions to go to Road, and Williamson took a cab on to the Strand telegraph office, from where he dispatched a message to Trowbridge telling Whicher he was coming.

  Frederick Adolphus Williamson – 'Dolly' – was Whicher's protégé. They had worked together often, most recently on the capture of Emily Lawrence and James Pearce, the celebrated jewel thieves. Dolly was a clever, energetic man of twenty-nine, who studied French in his spare time. He had a round, soft face and kindly eyes. His father, a police superintendent, had set up the first police-station library. Dolly shared lodgings in I Palace Place, Great Scotland Yard, with sixteen other single policemen. One of these, Tim Cavanagh, later gave an account of Dolly's relationship with a cat that had attached itself to the house. This animal, Tommas, had a habit of 'killing and eating the local cats', according to Cavanagh, and the officers' neighbours demanded that he be destroyed. 'Much to our regret, we had to put a stone around the poor old fellow's neck and drop him into the river. This was a great shock to "Dolly," who was much attached to "Tommas," and, if I may let a secret out now, actually trained the "warrior" for his midnight work. On more than one occasion did [Tommas] bring in a nice piece of venison, or a hare, or a rabbit from a near neighbour.' Williamson emerges from this as both ruthless and tender-hearted, a man who could train a cat to kill and then mourn its death. In time, he was to lead the detective department.

  Whicher could not know whether the public would believe an adolescent girl capable of such a horrible, and well-organised, crime as the murder at Road Hill House. But he knew from his experience of the London 'rookeries', or slums, what dark mischief children could get up to. On 10 October 1837, during Whicher's first month in the force, a girl of eight was caught playing a sharp trick near the rookery of St Giles, Holborn. She stood in the street crying bitterly until she had gathered a crowd about her. Sobbing, she explained to her audience that she had lost two shillings and was afraid to go home for fear of punishment. Once she had been plied with halfpennies, she moved on, to repeat the ruse a few roads away. A constable of E division watched her do this three times before arresting her. In the magistrates' court, she again pleaded terror of her parents; it is hard to know whether she was justifying or replaying her scam. 'The prisoner, crying, said that her father and mother sent her out to sell combs,' reported The Times, 'and unless she took home 2s. or 3s. every night they beat her cruelly, and not having sold any during the day she acted in the way described to get the money required of her.' The next day, 11 October, a girl of ten was charged with having broken a pane of glass in a raid on a Holborn watchmaker's shop. A gang of fellow ten-year-olds accompanied her to the magistrates' court. 'They were attired in a flash style,' said The Times, 'and their appearance and manners indicated that they were thieves and prostitutes, although so young.' One of the boys said he had come to pay the girl's fine of three shillings and sixpence, the cost of replacing the window. He threw the money down scornfully.

  Criminal children were usually ill-used children. In Whicher's first weeks in Holborn he saw many examples of the careless or vicious ways in which parents could treat their young. His colleague Stephen Thornton arrested a drunken crossing-sweeper, Mary Baldwin (alias Bryant), a member of the most notorious family in St Giles, who was seen trying to kill her three-year-old daughter. She put the child in a bag and dashed it violently against the pavement. When a passer-by heard the girl's cries and remonstrated with the mother, Mary Baldwin ran into the road to place the bag in the path of an omnibus. The child was rescued by some of the passengers.

  Since those years, it had become apparent that middle-class children, too, could be damaged or corrupt; sometimes it was almost impossible to tell one from the other, the victim from the victimiser. In 1859 an eleven-year-old girl called Eugenia Plummer accused the Reverend Hatch, her private tutor and the chaplain of Wandsworth gaol, of sexually molesting her and her eight-year-old sister while they were boarders at his house. The eight-year-old, Stephanie, confirmed the story. After a lurid trial, in which Hatch (as the defendant) was not allowed to testify,* he was sentenced to four years in prison, with hard labour. But in May 1860, a few weeks before the Road Hill murder, Hatch successfully sued Eugenia for perjury. This time it was she who was the defendant, and therefore unable to give evidence. The jury decided that she had made it all up. They agreed with the clergyman's lawyer that her accusation was 'an entire fiction, the result of a prurient and depraved imagination'.

  In its influential editorial on the Road Hill murder, the Morning Post alluded to this case: 'That it should be a child [who killed Saville] would be incredible if Eugenie Plummer had not taught us to what length the wicked precocity of some children will extend.' Eugenia's precocity was sexual, but it also rested in her cool deceit, her composure under pressure, the containment and channelling of her disturbance into bare lies. If newspaper readers had been horrified to find a clergyman convicted of sexually molesting a child in 1859, they must have been even more disturbed, a year later, to find the situation had been turned upside-down to reveal the child as the agent of evil, a creature who had undone a man's life with her lewd imaginings.* But even this was not certain. As Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine pointed out in 1861, the only unassailable fact was that 'one jury or the other convicted an innocent person'.

  On Saturday morning Whicher travelled to Bristol, twenty-five miles north-west of Trowbridge, where he visited Chief Superintendent John Handcock, who lived in the city with his wife, four sons and two servants. Handcock was an old colleague of Whicher, who had worked the streets of Holborn alongside him when both were police constables twenty years earlier. Whicher spent two hours making inquiries in and around Bristol by cab, and then took the train twenty miles north to Charbury, Gloucestershire. A carriage took him the remaining eighteen miles to Oldbury-on-the-Hill, the home of Louisa Hatherill, fifteen, another of Constance's schoolfriends.

  'She has spoken to me of the younger children at home,' said Louisa, 'and said that there was a partiality shown to them by the parents. She spoke of her brother William being obliged to wheel the perambulator for the young children and said that he disliked doing it. She said she had heard her father, comparing the younger s
on with the older, say what a much finer man he would be . . . She never said anything particular about the deceased child.' From Louisa's account, it seemed that all the anger Constance felt was on William's behalf.

  Louisa, like Emma Moody, confirmed to Whicher that her friend was a tough young woman. He observed in his report that Constance was a 'very stout, strong built girl, and her school fellows state that she was very fond of wrestling with them, and displaying her strength and wishing some times to play at Heenan and Sayers'. The heavyweight boxing match between the American John Heenan and the Briton Tom Sayers in April that year had been a national obsession, and turned out to be the last fought under the old, brutal, bare-knuckle rules. Heenan was six inches taller than Sayers, and forty-six pounds heavier. In an extremely bloody two-hour contest that ended in a draw, Sayers fractured his right arm blocking a punch, while Heenan broke his left hand and was almost blinded by the blows to his eyes. The girls told Whicher that Constance boasted of her strength, and a tussle with her 'was dreaded by all'.

  That Saturday's piece in the Somerset and Wilts Journal, the newspaper most sympathetic to Whicher's views, gently hinted at William's complicity in the crime. It passed on to the readers Gough's observation that the boy was 'accustomed to use the back stairs because of his thicker boots'. This reinforced the sense that Mr and Mrs Kent demeaned William, and it associated him with the servants' staircase, by which Whicher believed the murderer had taken Saville from the house. The reporter suggested that the stabbing of Saville 'may have been done by the accomplice, if two were actually concerned, so that the two might be equally implicated'. While Constance was in gaol a rumour circulated that William, too, had been taken into custody.