The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder And The Undoing Of A Great Victorian Detective Read Online Free PDF

cut,' said Benger, 'and blood was splashed over his face . . . he was a little dark about the mouth and eyes, but he looked quite pleasant, and his little eyes were shut.' Pleasant, here, meant peaceful.
    Nutt spread the blanket on the privy floor and Benger placed the body upon it. They wrapped the corpse together, Benger at the head, Nutt at the feet, and Benger, as the stronger of the two, took it in his arms and carried it to the house. Urch and Morgan watched him walk through the yard. The farmer bore the boy's body along the passage and into the kitchen.
    Saville's corpse, already stiff, was laid on a table beneath the kitchen window; upstairs the shape of his sleeping self was still indented on the sheets and pillow of the cot. Mary Ann and Elizabeth Kent, the two older sisters, entered the kitchen, Elizabeth holding the one-year-old Eveline in her arms. 'I can't describe the horror and amazement they seemed to be in,' said Nutt. 'I thought they would fall and I took them both round the waist. I went through with them into the passage.'
    The nursemaid was also in the kitchen. Nutt said to her 'that she must have slept very soundly to have admitted of any one taking the child from her room. She answered me, I thought rather harshly, by telling me I knew nothing of the matter.' Gough claimed that it was only now, when she saw the blanket wrapping Saville's corpse, that she realised it had been taken from his bed. Yet PC Urch, James Morgan and Mrs Kent all claimed that Gough had told them of the blanket's loss before Saville's body was found. The nursemaid's contradictory statements about the blanket were to make her a suspect.
    Outside, the servants and a growing gaggle of villagers began to search for traces of the murderer and the weapon. Daniel Oliver, the jobbing gardener, showed Urch some footmarks on the lawn near the drawing-room windows: 'There's been someone here.' But Alloway said he had made the footprints the previous evening: 'I had been using the wheelbarrow.'
    By the privy door Alloway found a piece of bloody newspaper, five or six inches square, folded and still moist. It looked as though a knife or razor might have been wiped upon it. The date of the newspaper was legible - 9 June - but not its title. Edward West, a farmer, advised Alloway: 'Don't destroy the paper; pick it up; take care of it - it will be the means of bringing about a discovery.' Alloway handed it to Stephen Millet, a butcher and parish constable, who was inspecting the privy. Millet estimated that there were two tablespoons of blood on the floor, and a pint and a half had soaked in to the blanket. West described the blood on the floor as 'about the size of a man's hand. I saw it in quite a coagulated state.'
    Upstairs, Elizabeth Gough was arranging Mrs Kent's hair - her last position had been as a lady's maid, and in Road Hill House she tended to her mistress as well as to the children. Samuel had left orders that his wife be given no news of the boy, so Gough did not mention that Saville had now been found dead, but when Mrs Kent wondered aloud where her son could be, she said, 'Oh, ma'am, it's revenge.'
    As soon as the Reverend Peacock reached Road Hill House he was told that Saville had been found, and was shown the body in the kitchen. He went home, saddled his horse and set off after Samuel. He passed through Ann Hall's turnpike at Southwick.
    'Sir,' she said to the vicar, 'this is a sad affair at Road.'
    'But the child is found,' he replied.
    'Where, sir?'
    'In the garden.' Peacock did not explain that he was dead.
    Peacock caught up with Kent. 'I am sorry to tell you I have had bad news for you,' he said. 'The little boy has been found murdered.'
    Samuel Kent headed home: 'I was not long; I went as fast as I could.' When he passed the turnpike gate, Ann Hall asked after Saville.
    'Then, sir, the child is found?'
    'Yes, and murdered.' He did not stop.
    Since his father was away it fell to William Kent to fetch Joshua Parsons, the