The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder And The Undoing Of A Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale Page B
Authors: Kate Summerscale
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Espionage, History, Biography & Autobiography, Literary Criticism, England, True Crime, London, Biography, Europe, Murder, Great Britain, Detectives, Murder - General, Murder - England - Wiltshire - History - 19th century, Mystery & Detective Fiction, Case studies, History: World, Wiltshire, Law Enforcement, Whicher; Jonathan, 19th century, Europe - Great Britain - General, Detectives - England - London, Expeditions & Discoveries
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children. That year Edward, now twenty-two, sailed to the West Indies with the merchant navy, and in July died suddenly in Havana of yellow fever.
According to a rumour reported by Stapleton, Edward was the father of Saville, his supposed half-brother. If this were so, Edward's anger about his own father's second marriage would have been prompted by sexual rivalry rather than disapproval. But Stapleton insisted that the new Mrs Kent and her stepson were not lovers - the evidence he gave for this, bizarrely, was the stillbirth of her first child. This event indicated that she had been made pregnant at least once by Samuel (Edward was at sea when the baby was conceived), although it suggested nothing about the paternity of her next two children, Saville and Eveline.
The family story that Whicher pieced together at Road Hill House suggested that Saville's death was part of a mesh of deception and concealment. The detective stories that the case engendered, beginning with The Moonstone in 1868, took this lesson. All the suspects in a classic murder mystery have secrets, and to keep them they lie, dissemble, evade the interrogations of the investigator. Everyone seems guilty because everyone has something to hide. For most of them, though, the secret is not murder. This is the trick on which detective fiction turns.
The danger, in a real murder case, was that the detective might fail to solve the crime he had been sent to investigate. He might instead get lost in the tangle of the past, mired in the mess he had dug up.
CHAPTER SIX
SOMETHING IN HER DARK CHEEK
17 July
On Tuesday, 17 July, Jack Whicher started to make inquiries outside Road. Taking his lead from the missing nightdress, he began by visiting Constance's school in Beckington. He set off for the village, a mile and a half away, down a narrow road banked high with brambles, grasses and nettles, and flecked with white hogweed flowers. He was armed with the breast flannel found in the vault of the privy. The weather was fine, the haymaking almost done.
As a gardener's son, Whicher was at ease among fields and flowers. Sergeant Cuff, the detective in The Moonstone , had the same background. 'I haven't much time to be fond of anything,' says Cuff. 'But when I have a moment's fondness to bestow, most times . . . the roses get it. I began my life among them in my father's nursery garden, and I shall end my life among them, if I can. Yes. One of these days (please God) I shall retire from catching thieves, and try my hand at growing roses.'
'It seems an odd taste, sir,' his companion suggests, 'for a man in your line of life.'
'If you will look about you (which most people won't do),' returns Cuff, 'you will see that the nature of a man's tastes is, most times, as opposite as possible to the nature of a man's business. Show me any two things more opposite one from the other than a rose and a thief; and I'll correct my tastes accordingly.' Cuff strokes the loose white blossoms on a musk rose, and speaks to it as tenderly as if it were a child: 'Pretty dear!' He does not like to pick the flowers, he says - 'It goes to my heart to break them off at the stem.'
When he reached the village Whicher called at Manor House, the school that Constance had been attending for the previous nine months, the last six as a boarder. The headmistress, Mary Williams, and her assistant Miss Scott had charge of thirty-five girls in term time, along with about four servants and two other teachers. Establishments such as this were, in effect, finishing schools that taught or perfected ladylike accomplishments: singing, piano-playing, needlework, dancing, deportment, the mastery of a little French and Italian. A girl of good family would typically attend for a year or two when in her teens, after being trained by a governess. The Misses Williams and Scott reported that Constance was doing well. The term before, she had been awarded the school's second prize for good conduct. Whicher showed the
According to a rumour reported by Stapleton, Edward was the father of Saville, his supposed half-brother. If this were so, Edward's anger about his own father's second marriage would have been prompted by sexual rivalry rather than disapproval. But Stapleton insisted that the new Mrs Kent and her stepson were not lovers - the evidence he gave for this, bizarrely, was the stillbirth of her first child. This event indicated that she had been made pregnant at least once by Samuel (Edward was at sea when the baby was conceived), although it suggested nothing about the paternity of her next two children, Saville and Eveline.
The family story that Whicher pieced together at Road Hill House suggested that Saville's death was part of a mesh of deception and concealment. The detective stories that the case engendered, beginning with The Moonstone in 1868, took this lesson. All the suspects in a classic murder mystery have secrets, and to keep them they lie, dissemble, evade the interrogations of the investigator. Everyone seems guilty because everyone has something to hide. For most of them, though, the secret is not murder. This is the trick on which detective fiction turns.
The danger, in a real murder case, was that the detective might fail to solve the crime he had been sent to investigate. He might instead get lost in the tangle of the past, mired in the mess he had dug up.
CHAPTER SIX
SOMETHING IN HER DARK CHEEK
17 July
On Tuesday, 17 July, Jack Whicher started to make inquiries outside Road. Taking his lead from the missing nightdress, he began by visiting Constance's school in Beckington. He set off for the village, a mile and a half away, down a narrow road banked high with brambles, grasses and nettles, and flecked with white hogweed flowers. He was armed with the breast flannel found in the vault of the privy. The weather was fine, the haymaking almost done.
As a gardener's son, Whicher was at ease among fields and flowers. Sergeant Cuff, the detective in The Moonstone , had the same background. 'I haven't much time to be fond of anything,' says Cuff. 'But when I have a moment's fondness to bestow, most times . . . the roses get it. I began my life among them in my father's nursery garden, and I shall end my life among them, if I can. Yes. One of these days (please God) I shall retire from catching thieves, and try my hand at growing roses.'
'It seems an odd taste, sir,' his companion suggests, 'for a man in your line of life.'
'If you will look about you (which most people won't do),' returns Cuff, 'you will see that the nature of a man's tastes is, most times, as opposite as possible to the nature of a man's business. Show me any two things more opposite one from the other than a rose and a thief; and I'll correct my tastes accordingly.' Cuff strokes the loose white blossoms on a musk rose, and speaks to it as tenderly as if it were a child: 'Pretty dear!' He does not like to pick the flowers, he says - 'It goes to my heart to break them off at the stem.'
When he reached the village Whicher called at Manor House, the school that Constance had been attending for the previous nine months, the last six as a boarder. The headmistress, Mary Williams, and her assistant Miss Scott had charge of thirty-five girls in term time, along with about four servants and two other teachers. Establishments such as this were, in effect, finishing schools that taught or perfected ladylike accomplishments: singing, piano-playing, needlework, dancing, deportment, the mastery of a little French and Italian. A girl of good family would typically attend for a year or two when in her teens, after being trained by a governess. The Misses Williams and Scott reported that Constance was doing well. The term before, she had been awarded the school's second prize for good conduct. Whicher showed the
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