The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

The Reverend Peacock was foreman. Rowland Rodway, despite his misgivings, watched the proceedings on Samuel Kent's behalf.

The jury followed the coroner to Road Hill House to look at Saville's body in the laundry room. Superintendent Foley let them in. The corpse was that of a 'pretty little boy', reported the Bath Chronicle, 'but it presented a horrible spectacle, from its hideous, gaping wounds which gave it a ghastly appearance; still, the child's face wore a placid, innocent expression'. The jurors also inspected the drawing room, the nursery, the master bedroom, the privy and the grounds. As they left to return to the Red Lion an hour and a half later, Foley asked the coroner which members of the house-hold would be required as witnesses. Just the housemaid, who had fastened the windows, said the coroner, and the nursemaid, who had charge of the boy when he was abducted.

Sarah Cox and Elizabeth Gough headed down to the Red Lion together. Cox had sorted the week's washing into two large baskets, which she left in a lumber room for the laundress, Hester Holley. Before noon Mrs Holley and her youngest daughter, Martha, collected the baskets and carried them back to their cottage. They also took with them the laundry book, in which Mary Ann Kent had listed each item placed in the baskets. (Mary Ann's stained nightdress, which had been in the custody of Eliza Dallimore, the policeman's wife, was returned to her the same morning.)

As soon as Mrs Holley got home, within five minutes, she and all three of her daughters (one of them, Jane, the wife of William Nutt) opened the baskets and went through the clothes. 'It was not our custom to open the clothes so soon after receiving them,' said Mrs Holley later. Her reason for doing so was surprising: 'We heard a rumour that a nightdress was missing.' The Holley women discovered that Constance's nightdress, though listed in the book, was not in either of the baskets.

Down in the village the Red Lion had become so crowded with spectators that the coroner decided to move the inquest to the Temperance Hall, which lay a few minutes' walk up Lower Street towards Road Hill House. The hall was 'crammed to suffocation', reported the Trowbridge and North Wilts Advertiser. Foley produced Saville's nightclothes and his blanket, both matted with blood, and passed them to the jury.

Cox and Gough were first to give evidence. Cox described locking the house on Friday night, and finding the drawing-room window open the following morning. Gough gave a detailed account of putting Saville to bed on Friday night, and finding him missing in the morning. She described him as a cheerful, happy, good-tempered child.

The coroner next took evidence from Thomas Benger, who had discovered the body, and Stephen Millet, the butcher. Millet handed over the piece of bloodied newspaper found at the scene, and remarked on the quantity of blood in the privy: 'From my trade as a butcher I am acquainted with the loss of blood from animals when dying.' He estimated he had seen a pint and a half on the privy floor.

'My impression,' said Millet, 'is that the child was held with his legs upwards, and his head hanging down, and his throat cut in that position.' The spectators gasped.

No one could identify the piece of newspaper found by the privy. A reporter suggested that they were fragments of the Morning Star. Cox and Gough testified that Mr Kent did not take that paper: he subscribed to The Times, the Frome Times and the Civil Service Gazette. This suggested – faintly – that an outsider had been at the murder scene.

Joshua Parsons was the next witness. He reported his summons to the house and the conclusions of his post- mortem: Saville had been killed before three in the morning; his throat had been cut and his chest punctured, and he also showed signs of suffocation. Three pints of blood should have come out of the body 'at a gush', he said, but much less had been found.

After Parsons' evidence, the coroner tried to bring the inquest to a close, but the Reverend Peacock, as foreman of the jury, said that his fellow jurors wanted to examine Constance and William Kent. Peacock himself dissented – he felt the family should be left alone – but he was obliged to report that the others were insistent. Some jurors were demanding to interview everyone in the Kent family: 'Try them all; show no respect to one more than to another,' 'Give us the whole.' The villagers, said Stapleton, suspected the coroner of protecting the Kents: 'One law for the rich and another for the poor.' Unwillingly, the coroner agreed that Constance and William be interviewed, but on condition that the examination take place at their home, so as not to 'expose those children to insult'. He was disturbed by the way the pair were 'spoken of loudly in terms of execration, as being the murderers'. The jury returned to the house.

The interviews, which took place in the kitchen, were brief – three or four minutes each.

'I knew nothing whatever of his death, until he was found,' said Constance. 'I know nothing whatever of the murder . . . Everyone was kind to the child.' When asked about Elizabeth Gough, she said, 'I have found the nursemaid generally quiet and attentive, and perform her duties in every respect as could be wished.' According to the Somerset and Wilts Journal, she 'gave evidence in a subdued and audible tone, without betraying any special emotion, her eyes fixed on the ground'.

William's evidence was virtually identical, but expressed with greater warmth: 'I know nothing nor heard anything of this circumstance till the morning – I wish I had. Saville was a great favourite with all. I have always found the nursemaid very kind and attentive. I know nothing whatever of the murder.' His manner was more engaging than that of his sister: 'he gave his evidence clearly and well, his eyes being fixed on the coroner throughout'. By comparison, Constance was muted, shuttered.

Back at the Temperance Hall, the coroner told the jurors that it was their job to find out how Saville had met his death, not who had killed him. With reluctance, they signed a sheet blaming a 'person or persons unknown' for the murder. 'It is unknown,' said one, 'but there is a very strong suspicion which don't at all settle on my stomach.' 'So with me,' said another man. 'The same here,' said another. A shoemaker stood up to say that most of his fellow jurors believed that the murderer was an inmate of Road Hill House. He accused Parsons, the Reverend Peacock and the coroner of trying to hush the matter up.

The coroner ignored their disquiet. He comforted the jury with the thought that 'although the action was concealed from the eyes of men, yet it was seen and recorded by One above', and at 3.30 in the afternoon he declared the inquest closed. 'I say, gentlemen, it is the most extraordinary and mysterious murder that has ever been committed, to my knowledge.'

In Road Hill House after the inquest Foley handed the key to the laundry room to Mrs Silcox, who had laid Saville out. She finished arranging the body for burial. Elizabeth Gough and Sarah Cox then took it upstairs in a 'shell', the thin interior case of a coffin. Mrs Kent instructed Gough to 'screw down' the case.

Saville's mother was later asked if the nursemaid had kissed the corpse when she closed the coffin. 'It was then very much changed,' Mrs Kent said, 'and I do not think she could have kissed it at that time.'

On Monday night Constance asked Gough to share her bed.

At about eleven the next morning, Hester Holley returned the laundry book to Sarah Cox and collected her weekly payment of seven or eight shillings. She did not mention the missing nightdress. 'I never said anything to her about anything missing,' she later admitted. 'That's where my mistake was. I was in a hurry, like, but I knew it was